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Daily Planet
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By Rachel Louise Snyder

Feb. 24, 2000 | Here is the truth: Before I came to Cuba I loved Fidel Castro. And still do, a little, in the way that you love an ex who once seemed so right for you. It's not a romantic, yearning-in-the-loins love, but an idealistic respect for someone with the gall to think he could change an entire country and the ability to succeed.

It wasn't falling in love with Castro or Cuba that surprised me; I knew before I left Chicago that it would be a place that would speak to me, a place where passion wouldn't be a thing defined only in bedrooms and whispers, but a place where I'd get my color back, make my vision a little sharper. I need that every now and then. Like Samson and his hair, travel's where I get my strength. What did surprise me was how separate Castro came to be when I spoke of Cuba, like understanding that Vietnam is so much more than the setting of America's biggest 20th century blunder.

The latest U.S.-Castro muscling over Elián González is a case in point, the best example of what Fidel's done for Cubans. U.S. media shows the 50,000-plus demonstrators in Havana to bring Elián back home. Indeed, billboards and posters with a confused looking Elián punctuate the city declaring Devuelvan a Elián a su Patria -- return Elián to his native country. Thousands of similar T-shirts are passed out. It is government-perpetuated, declares the United States, which is meant to somehow render it devoid of meaning.

Indeed, like many events in Cuba, the Elián protests appear to be, in part, cause for socializing as much as anything. At one of the events I saw, groups of blue-clad security men sat amid the protesters, chatting and eating peanuts from funneled pieces of paper. The speakers evoked rage at the situation, but wandering through the masses felt a lot like a walk through a summer festival -- not because conviction here was less than total, but because this is Cuba.

So begins the new Revolution. Each Cuban with dollars is a budding entrepreneur, an independent capitalist. Throughout our first week here, Ann and I commented on those strange gas fumes emitted from each car we rode in. Then we learned that the employees of state-run gas stations skim off the top and resell the gas on the black market for U.S. dollars, which the car owners, or renters, keep to siphon from small jugs in their trunks. Same with cigars. And soap. And food. And shoes. Anything for sale anywhere -- tools, stereos, cassettes, refrigerators -- nearly all is available on the street to those with dollars. And since rations only cover the average Cuban for two weeks, such grand-scale thievery is tolerated. Franqui, our sputtering Subaru, initiated us into this system.

This is not to suggest Cuba is a rich economy -- there isn't all that much to buy. I searched in Havana for days for a banana and finally gave up. Bottled water, very expensive in Cuba, is more prevalent in remote areas of Tibet and Cambodia. Public transportation is the worst I've seen anywhere. Cars are few and buses fewer.

There is a free farmer's market now, following Castro's reforms in 1994, but it is expensive even for foreigners. Beef is saved for tourists and pregnant women. Each Cuban gets roughly six eggs a month, but omelets are plentiful in hotels. Toilet paper is rare, even in hotels, and most households use newspaper or magazines. Taxis have become the domain of those wealthy enough to own cars. To get a ride, one need only wave an arm and Juan Q. Public will pull over and take you anywhere within the city for a few dollars, offered inside the car while the police look the other way. One man in Cienfuegos even took us on his horse and buggy down a labyrinth of side streets to avoid the police. For $2.

My Cuban friend Leonardo, who spent time in the States, told me that he did not live in so repressive a society as I might think. We were driving to Havana from the new José Marti airport, built last year. I did not answer, but sat smugly in the back of his gasoline-smelling car and thought he didn't really know oppression because he'd never really known freedom. But slowly, over the course of my weeks in Cuba, I began to see that it was I who'd been wrong.

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