Can anyone tell me how is it living in Cuba?

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Mojack

I was for 2 weeks in cuba, and it was awesome experience.
I was eager to get there, as long Mr. Fidel is sitll alive and in charge. In 20 years, when Fidel will be dead, and somebody else will take over the country, I am eager to get back there and see the difference.
I can speak spanish fluently, and its a huge difference go there and be able to talk to the people in Havana in their lagnuage. Ask them all the quesitons you have, they will give you straight response. Thats what I did. So besides ppl asking me for money, they told me their oppinions.
I was pretty shocked, how many people prefered the system in Cuba, then the evil capitalism. shocked, because there you see, how brainwashing works. They go to the free public shools, and learn all those Fidel slogans, how bad the evil capitalism destroys the poor guys, etc...
Its interesting, how many people will defend their system in Cuba, even if they live in the biggest misery. They believe, because they dont have ways to know about how it is in the rest of the world. They dont have access to internet, in the TV all they see is the national Cuba TV, so basically they just see, what Fidel allows them to see.
Then, there are those other people, who managed to communicate with the outside world, or who managed to leave the country and see the world, came back, and told their friends. Or, they know, what all those tourists telling them, like the people working in Hotels.
the capital city, Havana, is a disaster. You wont believe when you see, how ppl live. SOme buildings totally destroyed, missing the outside wall. Its really, like time stopped 50 years ago. Awesome are those cars !! Its like beeing in a movie of the 50th. Its awesome, how they are able to keep those cars running, even with the US embargo.
They dont receive any parts, still they are able to keep them run. Well, if you think about it, its also a sign of misery, just to fix old things, becasue they is no possibility to buy something new.
Cubas history, is unique in todays world. Its somehting, which is impossible to repeat again. One guy, who managed to win a war agains the countries military, who survived like 2 years, and when he marched into HAvanna, there were no resistance by the military. The old dictator fled, and Fidel became the new dictator. I bought some books written by fidel, to understand whats up in his head. I was very suyrprised to find, that in my oppinion he is a very intelligent man, understanding a lot about how this wordl works. He is talking about things, where no politician of the industrial countries would dare to speak. The problem with all those things are, that in theory comunism sound very cool, but its not realistic (as we saw it already)
The thurth is, when you walk the streets of HAvanna. This once so great city, today destroyed, thats a fact.
Fidel of course blames the greedy capitalistc countries, number one enemy the USA. Its pretty easy to blame others for things going wrong in your own country.
Still, to read his book, is really great. In the bool is also an interview, a guy asking him all those questions, confrontating him with the desparate life of his people.
For example, the interviewer asks Fidel, why he dont allow open speech in this country. Fidel sayd, becase they are to stupid to know what they are talking about. Lol, so much to the free public schools. However, many thing, what Fidel says, are alot good ideas, and often I thought, wow! thats really somehting those modern countries could think about.

to answer the question: For me, life in Cuba would suck, because I have needs which I can never satisfy in Cuba (like motorbikes, cars, a NICE house to buy, Internet, etc) but there are some inhabitatans, who dont know or who dont care, and who are just happy with what they got.
Like in the song by monthy phythons...."if you have nothing, what you have lost ?...NOTHING"

itsmevic

it's hot and humid. you would not want to live there you would only want to visit, to much corruption and dangerous in some parts.

ra3000gt

If you have money and have political connections you will be in heaven...if you are a regular person you will oppressed

Mr. Stratocaster

I bet it would be better than living in Iran

Poor

blueknight

Cuba is good if ur an aetheist...know wht that means..i mean u can live comfortably in Cuba if don't have a religion. Coz cuba its is said officially does not have any religion.

cuteboymom

I was told that it's like living in the past. Beautiful Island.

mica33801

not if your a cuban .....the living conditions are VERY poor..no money...little food...very few cars...the ones they do have are from the 50's/60's.. no running water in your house......not a great place to live....visit..maybe....live...NOT A CHANCE

busa09072191

it sucks balls, never go there unless you are getting cigars

Dave

Cuba, I would love going there too, but I feel now that its society would prey upon anyone with dollars to spend.

I am not sure if Castro has made it illegal to have American dollars a crime, if he had it might have changed things a little.

When Cubans were able to have dollars (via relatives sending it to them from Florida, or from tourists) it made a them a two class society. Those with dollars and those without dollars.

There were shopping centers that catered to "dollar" customers. Imagine, Doctors, politicians, police-officers, dentists, educators, business owners, that would be paid in the peso, and then concierge, waiters, bellboys, taxi drivers, prostitutes, all getting paid in dollars.

Those that were paid in dollars made much,much, more money than the higher skill, college educated, workforce.

Kind of like a backward economy. It was forcing many many women into prostitution, also boys.

Unless Cuba is allowed to trade only then can consumerism beat Communism.

I would love to go there...someday, I feel that I will.

Aware1

I went as an "mature" student 3 years ago for 4 months and I loved it! I lived in Santiago de Cuba in a casa particular and attended classes at the University. While there, I had the freedom to travel to other areas of the country and visited Guantanamo, Baracoa, Holguin, Guardalavaca, Trinidad, Las Tunas, Camaguey, and others.

It's true that the people are relatively poor in comparison to Americans (or Canadians, as I am), but they are in a developing country that has been tyrannized by the big, bully to the North. If American trade embargos and sanctions had been loosened after the collapse of the USSR, and the Soviet dependency that Cuba had developed hadn't been used as a noose by the American government, Cuba would be further down the road to recovery and self-sufficiency.

The Cuban governemnt has managed to keep its land sovereign; which is a true thorn in the side of the American powers. The relationships that the Castro government has forged have been with countries who are not interested in "annexing" the Cuban countryside and resources. These are cooperative arrangments that benefit both countries, not like the one-sided "free-trade" agreements that the US has somehow arranged with Canada and Mexico!

You can live in Cuba for less than it would cost you in Canada, but the style of life may be more basic than what you're accustomed to. The casa particulars do have hot/warm water showers and good beds, and there's usually a TV, but there aren't a lot of extras. I loved it though.

I've been back twice, the last time I took my 65 yr. old Mom with me and we rented a car and toured all over. It was sometimes challenging to find a gas station, but we always managed, and the experience was priceless. I was online tonight just looking for flights to go again in May!

Go for a few months...you don't have to stay permanently...though you may decide to marry a Cuban so that you can!

From Canada...I check www.escapes.ca, www.itravel2000.com, and www.selloffvacations.com for flight and/or package deals. Air Canada has regular scheduled flights year round out of Toronto and Montreal, and Vancouver and Calgary in Season. The charters such as Air Transat also have flights, but they are on a 7 or 14-day cycle.

Go...Have fun...you'll love it!!!!

coconut

I've never lived there, but I know very well about the living conditions. It's the only country in the world that has NO crime. Tourists are VERY safe, wherever and whenever they walk in the streets. Tourism is the largest industry so they treat their tourists like gold. Although Cubans mainly live in poverty, Fidel Castro sees to it that they are VERY educated. Cuba has some of the BEST doctors in the world, however, they earn VERY little! People cannot be materialistic because they don't have much but they know how to smile and have fun!

jitudhkbd

its fantastic!

rafi

Stay away is a communist place.

After 40 years, the economic Standard of Living in Cuba is less than 1% of what it was in the decade of the 50's.

As a Cuban who has lived during the last forty years in the 'North', working among 'Americans', I have run into many situations where friends and acquaintances, once they get to know I was born and raised in Cuba, ask me about 'how things are in Cuba', a theme that seems to have universal interest. Many seem to want to confirm reports that appear sporadically in the press and television, and which for whatever reasons have captured their attention. Those who are up in years still remember the October 1962 episode, some have heard about the Bay of Pigs, and considerably fewer know about the 'balseros'. Many have had great interest in the Elian Gonzalez case.

Depending on the kind of questions, my answers have focused on the issues around the tyrannical repression and on the monumental economic failure of communism, particularly as it relates to the daily procurement of food. That is, the use of rationing cards, etc. As I go into details, many become somewhat incredulous, since it is nearly impossible for them to understand circumstances so far and foreign from their daily lives existing a mere 90 miles from the richest and most powerful nation on the world.

During the last few years, my focus has been towards numbers, since there is no question those are well understood in this country particularly as they relate to individual income and results from investments. For example, I explain to them that a teacher or an engineer in today's Cuba earn respectively approximately 210 and 350 cuban pesos. And that, furthermore, when one uses the ongoing monetary exchange rate of 25 cuban pesos for one dollar, those cuban peso salaries represent $8.40 and $14.00 on a monthly basis. Their reactions to those numbers represent generally significant surprise; then they proceed to mentally figure out the real standard of living in Cuba, since the purchasing power of the dollar is a universal unit used to define the relative position of standards of living throughout the world. A favorite measurement among those who travel widely, is to ask what is the price of a 'big mac' in the different countries, as an appropriate tool for comparison.

More recently, I have gone on to more clearly define for those who ask me, the net change in the standard of living in Cuba that has taken place from the mid 50's to the mid 90's. This of course would be the result of the atrocious destruction of the country caused by the communists' failed economic policies and government. To arrive at this, more refined understanding, it is necessary to introduce two incontrovertible facts, readily available in reference books. The first is the fact that in the 50's, cuban pesos and dollars circulated freely in Cuba, on a par basis. This means that if a cuban traveled to the US with cuban pesos, he could exchange them into dollars one for one, and use those dollars normally. And of course, this helps to directly compare the standards of living in Cuba and the US at that moment in history. The second fact is the change in inflation index during the same period, that is, from the 50's to the 90's. That number is approximately 6.4. Which simply means that if something cost $1.00 in the 50's, the same article would cost $6.40 in the 90's. For example, a gallon of milk in the US today costs $2.80. The same gallon would have sold for $0.44 in 1955.

With this information, a comparison of the change in the standard of living in Cuba becomes quite easy and understandable for a great many people: for example, the same teacher that today earns the equivalent of $8.40 monthly would have earned $1.31 monthly in the 50's, and the same engineer would have earned $2.19 monthly. Since it has been solidly demonstrated that the corresponding salaries were in reality 150 and 300 cuban pesos, and that at that time cuban pesos and dollars were of equivalent worth, then we can see that those $1.31 and $2.19 today represent less than 1% of the salaries in the 50's.

The combined effect of the devaluation of the cuban peso against the dollar and of inflation during the last 40 years: 25 x 6.4, that is, 160 has been devastating. A peasant in the fields, a worker in a factory, would have to earn 160 times more in cuban pesos today just to keep up to par with where he was in the living standard he had in the 50's. And this of course assumes that the cuban economy would be able to supply against such demand, something we know is impossible in an inefficient, tyrannical communist system.

Such is the horrible reality of economic life in Cuba. The standard of living is less than 1% of what it was before the communist revolution. It is sufficient only to read a few letters from the island country today to agree that such brutal impoverishment is the terrible representation of daily life in Cuba.

Many of my 'American' friends, of course, experience an infinite difficulty accepting these facts that they clearly understand. Many would mention 'free public health' and 'free housing'. So, what can we add to answer those questionsâ€¦? Simply that those who know, understand that the 'famous' public health system in Cuba is a hygienic disaster, lacking in the most basic medicines, facilities and resources. And that housing includes innumerable families forced to live sharing run-down homes. Not to mention public transportation, electric power, the so called telephone system, water supplies and sewersâ€¦ Of course, the concept that there are 'free' things in this world has gotten out of favor with those who use our God-given reasoning. Simply stated, 'free' things supplied by the government are no more that one of the 'slogans' of communism for those who do not want to accept that man is individually and basically responsible for his own life in this world.

x2daz80

Obviously, it isn't too great a place to live if every person that lives there waits for that one opportunity of their life to get out of there and never go back for fear of an tyrannical dictator

themanwhorides

call fiddle

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