Wednesday, April 11, 2007

What they may or may not think in Havana


The photograph above, which was taken by Claudia Daut for Reuters, carries the following caption:

A barber works in a makeshift barbershop in Havana April 10, 2007. While the outside world watches Fidel Castro's slow recovery from stomach surgery and speculates about Cuba's future, talk in Cuba is still more about the daily battle to stretch one's income than the politics behind it. Older Cubans get tearful at the idea of a post-Castro Cuba. Younger Cubans say they are tired of living in a time warp. But in a country with no public opinion polls and a state-run media it's hard to measure what Cubans really think, and there is a long-held reluctance to criticize the one-party communist system to foreigners.

Not sure where they got that bit about older Cubans getting all tearful at the prospect of a future without the 80-year-old dictator. Who knows?

But I think they are right about younger Cubans being sick and tired of “living in a time warp”.

3 Comments:

Blogger Henry Louis Gomez said...

The bit about the young people is probably the closest thing to truth published by Reuters about Cuba. Reuters of course has Marc Frank as one its Cuba correspondents. Marc Frank wrote for a and official newspaper of the US Communist Party (people's daily world), penning literally more than a thousand articles.

Link to story about Marc Frank.

3:12 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Reluctance" to criticize? Try FEAR. And the fear is perfectly justified, as the reporter knows perfectly well unless he or she is incompetent or retarded. Why not tell it like it is, instead of dancing around the truth?

1:58 am  
Blogger Manuel A.Tellechea said...

Older Cubans get teary-eyed at the prospect of having wasted their entire lives in the service of a regime which failed them in every respect.

3:17 pm  

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