It was meant to be an adventure: 10 days in Cuba, hiking in Vinales National Park, basking in the sun and the turquoise water at the famous 21-kilometer-long tourist beach at Varadero, and indulging in the gorgeous art, music and cuisine of Havana.
OK, all that was lovely (especially the coffee), but the surprise vacation bonus was the radically altered mindset we brought home.
We realized we have never understood Cuba.
Which means we’ve never understood the United States.
Let’s stipulate from the start that Cuba is an economic disaster area. Colonial architecture crumbles into piles of rubble on the streets of Havana Vieja. Drivers spend six hours — or more — in line to fill their tanks with expensive gasoline. Food supplies are inadequate for the vast majority of families who rely on monthly government rations. Inflation is out of control.
Tourism, the country’s primary economic driver, has yet to recover from the collapse during the pandemic years.
And the hope for the future that glowed so brightly during the historic visit by President Obama in 2016 has been thoroughly extinguished, replaced with dogged perseverance, resignation, family solidarity and just plain grit.
Still, while many Cubans we encountered would quietly admit they wished they could move to Miami or Spain or Italy to be with relatives and pursue careers that seem out of reach at home, just to say such a thing brought a rush of emotion or even tears.
To be Cuban is to be part of something radical and inspiring. To give up on it is to abandon a dream.
This is the country, after all, that outlawed bigotry in 1940. Its constitution declares, “Any discrimination by reason of sex, race, color, or class, and any other kind of discrimination destructive of human dignity, is declared illegal and punishable.”
Meanwhile in the U.S., the Equal Rights Amendment, proposed in Congress in 1923, has never been adopted and couldn’t get through our dysfunctional House of Representatives if Speaker Mike Johnson’s life depended on it.
We are awash in bigotry. Hate is Donald Trump’s middle name.
Cuba is the country that was exploited by pirates and profiteers almost from the moment Christopher Columbus landed. Slave traders, including a prominent and appallingly wealthy U.S. senator, trafficked in human cargo even long after the trade was outlawed there by the Spanish in 1817.
Before Fidel Castro’s revolution, the sugar industry was overwhelmingly controlled by U.S. investors, who enabled extreme brutality toward workers, many of whom were former slaves, freed only to be abused by a system infamous for its cruelty. Then the U.S. overlords hoarded the profits to build their mansions and their financial portfolios offshore in the U.S.
And the blatant corruption and paternalistic meddling by arrogant U.S. government leaders from the end of the Spanish-(Cuban)-American War until the 1960s turned out to be Fidel’s greatest asset in the revolution that brought communism to the island. Like fostering slavery and propping up corrupt leaders, we have to own that.
Contemporary Cuba also is the country where almost no one is homeless, medical care is guaranteed to everyone and education through college, advanced degrees, even medical school, is free. When the U.S. embargo did not allow distribution of COVID vaccines in Cuba, its homegrown scientists developed their own vaccines.
The result decades later, despite all the hardship, is national pride and deep reverence for Castro, Che Guevara, Jose Marti and the vision of equality and self-determination that inspired the movement.
There also is simmering unease.
The protest song, “Patria Y Vida,” written and recorded by Cuban expats in the U.S., has created much controversy in a culture where freedom of speech is severely limited. With its message criticizing the government for giving people rations of political ideology instead of food, just to listen to it is an act of betrayal.
A taxi driver’s responses to our questions about it were evasive.
“Google it,” he said, as he expertly steered the van around potholes, past horse-drawn carts and through clouds of fully-leaded exhaust from vehicles that rolled off the assembly lines in Detroit in the 1950s.
Clearly, the glorious vision of the revolution has yet to be realized. Everybody knows it.
And this is where our cultures collide most dramatically.
Our countries’ revolutions, with all their exalted propaganda messages, have failed miserably.
When we landed in Miami on our return and reconnected with digital communications, we waded into dozens of emails and text messages and gleefully tuned back into pop culture.
Then we tried to avert our gaze from the horror show playing in Iowa and New Hampshire, with an avowed dictator leading in the polls.
As Trump’s numbers proved accurate in Iowa, a friend mentioned that he’s investigating avenues for an expat life. He’s serious, he said.
I had told our guide in Havana that I knew several people who had obtained dual citizenship so they could easily leave the U.S. if Trump is re-elected, and she was stunned.
So many Cubans look to the U.S. for refuge from political strife. She had no idea that U.S. citizens feared for their future the way Cubans do.
“I love my country,” she said. “I have always had hope for the future. But I worry we’re running out of time.”
A lot of us know the feeling.
Diane Carman is a Denver communications consultant.
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