From our Bureau of Delayed News Reporting with some assistance from our Bureau of D’oh
As Homer Simpson might say, slapping his forehead: “D’oh !!! The masters of understatement and climate change alarmists with the stiffest upper lips in the world, have finally let their readers know that Cuba is no longer as safe a travel destination as it used to be.
Bloody Hell: Are you chaps trying to destroy Castro, Inc.’s apartheid tourist industry? Well . . at least you’re still referring to Fidel Castro as “leader of the Cuban Revolution.” Whew . . . But judging by the tone of your article, it seems possible you might switch to “brutal dictator” any day now. [Yeah, sure. That’ll be the day . . .]
From the BBC
The late leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, once famously called Cuba “the safest country in the world”.
In terms of the island’s low rates of violent crime and the scarcity of guns circulating among the civilian population, he may well have had a case for that title.
His critics, of course, responded that the low crime rate was achieved through intimidation, that Castro’s Cuba was – and still remains – a police state which brooked no criticism of its communist-led government, and which rode roughshod over its opponents’ human rights.
However it was done, few could deny that Cuba’s streets have traditionally been among the safest in the Americas.
Yet it doesn’t feel to Samantha González like she lives in the world’s safest nation. Her younger brother, an aspiring music producer called Jan Franco, was murdered two months ago in an apparent gang-related dispute.
From the low-income Havana neighbourhood of Cayo Hueso and just 19 years old when he was killed, Jan Franco was stabbed twice in the chest outside a recording studio, caught in the middle of an argument when someone pulled a knife.
“I still can’t understand it,” says Samantha, struggling to express her grief as she scrolls through old photos of her brother on her phone.
“He was the light of our family.”
Just 20 herself and mother of a one-year-old boy, Samantha says that Jan Franco was one of many young people to lose their lives in the streets in recent months:
“So many young people have been killed this year,” she explains.
“The violence is getting out of hand. They’re basically gangs, and they fall out with each other as gangs. That’s where it’s all coming from, these killings and deaths of young people.”
They often solve their quarrels with knives and machetes, she says.
“Almost no-one settles an argument with their fists anymore. It’s all knives, machetes, even guns. Things I just don’t understand,” her voice trails off.
The situation has been worsened by a new drug in Cuba called “quimico” – a cheap chemical high with a cannabis base. Samantha says that it’s increasingly popular among Cuban youth in the parks and on the streets.
Previously, even suggesting that Cuba had a problem with opioids and street gangs – especially to a foreign journalist – could land you in difficulties.
The Cuban authorities have always been fiercely protective of their island’s reputation as crime-free and quick to point out that the streets are demonstrably safer than those of most cities in the US. Anything that highlights Cuba’s social problems is generally painted as biased criticism of their socialist system or as anti-revolutionary fabrications originating from Miami or Washington.
However, such has been the public perception of a worsening crime rate, a perception shared by many Cubans on social media, that the authorities have openly addressed it on state television.
In August, an edition of nightly talk programme Mesa Redonda – in which Communist Party officials are invited on air to deliver the party line – was titled Cuba Against Drugs.
During the broadcast, Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, the head of the interior ministry’s anti-drug unit, acknowledged the existence, production and distribution of the new drug, químico, and its impact on Cuba’s youth. He insisted the authorities were tackling the issue.
In another edition, on crime, the government denied the situation was worsening, claiming only 9% of crimes in Cuba were violent and just 3% were murders.
However, critics question the transparency of the government’s statistics and say there’s no independent oversight of the bodies which produce them or the methodologies they use.
Continue reading HERE
So does that mean fewer “dream holidays” for Brit twits?
As for the dictator label, that’s reserved strictly for Batista, of course.