Cuba

Nelson and I have been together for 41 years.  His parents brought him to the U.S. in 1962 when he was 2 years old.  He had never been back to Cuba.  Our friends Mario Perez and David Prestigiacomo go to Cuba as often as they can.  Mario is a Marielito and first returned to Cuba in 2000, soon after obtaining his U.S. citizenship.  He has been re-patriated to Cuba and now has dual citizenship.  After talking to Mario and David, I decided that I wanted to visit Cuba.  To my great surprise, Nelson did also.  My friend, Phil Willkie, who had been to Cuba in the 70s, wanted to go as well.  This is the footage I shot when we were there in February 2023. 

Cuba is a very complicated place.  Because of “el bloqueo” (the U.S. embargo), food, medicines and other necessities are in short supply.  The infrastructure is falling apart, but the people are resilient.  Most of the houses are in very bad repair, but some people who receive dollars and euros from relatives abroad have fixed up their apartments to look like upscale apartments in Miami or L.A.  El Capitolio, which resembles the U.S. Capitol and was built around the same time, gleams from a recent rehab.  I still don’t understand the fetishism around gigantic 1950s U.S. cars.  It may be a form of resistance, but it just looks like capitalist nostalgia to me, and I had no desire to ride in them.  Besides they are very expensive and kind of a fake since they all have Nissan engines in them and have been repainted in colors that didn’t exist in the 50s.  The beaches are exquisite, and the weather is wonderful.