The goal of taking my tour of Cuba was to get outside of Havana (an urban Center, which one of five Cubans calls home) and see what life is like in the rest of the country. I am glad I did. Outside Havana, even in the larger cities, life is quite different for Cubans. It seems quieter, slower and economically less vital even than Havana - a place where frankly there was not all that much going on.
One of our stops, Trinidad, (no not the Island, rather the small south coast town) seemed to be pretty typical of life in provincial Cuba. The dominant economic activity is agriculture and much of the work you see being done relates to the care and processing of the local products. But agriculture moves in cycles. There are busy times and there are quiet times. February appeared to be a quiet time. Folks did not seem like they had a whole lot to do. Lots of people just hanging out, sitting in the streets, shooting the breeze.
There is a second economic activity in Trinidad, the one that brought us to town. Tourism is big there. In 1988 Trinidad was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. The tour books like to say the whole town is a museum and they might be right. Trinidad's glory days came (and went?) a couple centuries ago, when sugar was king and plantation owners used slavery to create great wealth and its trappings.
They built for themselves great palaces around a beautiful central square. Cuba’s economic stagnation has served Trinidad well, leaving it little changed from those glory days and ready for its new role as a ‘must see’ stop for bus tours. During our short stay, I saw bus after bus arrive, disgorge its Russian or German or Canadian tourists who wander through the cobblestone and Car-less streets enjoying the views, but seeing nothing in particular. The town and its ambience is the attraction.
It's not that there's nothing else to do there. There was a nice old church with wooden carved altars brought at great expense from Europe. And the museum in the building next door, the Brunet Palace, houses an extraordinary collection of colonial finery. A grand building, it was outfitted with even grander furnishings creating a stark contrast between the way the sugar barons lived and the reality of working people - either then or now.
It made me wonder what I was supposed to be thinking. Should I admire the beauty of their things or despise them for the exploitation required to afford those things? I think I know the answer Cuba had in mind - but for me it was a little of both.
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