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Post by mich64 on Jan 16, 2018 2:47:40 GMT
The photo of the bizarre renovation build reminded me of many of the renovated homes we seen on our city tour a few years ago. One couple from our group that took the private city tour was shown around to a few of these places and they had these type of roofs. They were taken up to the roof and they were set up as outdoor living space, patio type furniture, patio lights, there was music playing and drinks served by the owner, a B&B type situation with nightly entertainment. So perhaps this place is such a situation?
I did find that while in Cuba I found myself often wondering more than anywhere else I have been and I was so glad that we went off the resort discovering even the little bit that we did.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 16, 2018 4:01:41 GMT
That does make sense, Mich. I had wondered if the odd wall indicated some kind of recreational area.
And I totally understand what you mean about wondering so much about so many things! The whole time I was there, I kept trying to figure things out in terms of how they had evolved to what I was seeing.
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Post by mich64 on Jan 16, 2018 5:00:55 GMT
When we were on the bus ride from the resort to the town we seen many of the new rural home builds. You would be driving along watching workers in the fields and then the bus would slow a bit and you would see some new small homes, really well cared for with tiny flower gardens bordered by rocks or bricks and either some fruit trees or a vegetable garden. I noticed there would always be a produce stand at the beginning or end of these tiny towns and I imagined they sold the extra once they bartered amongst themselves because they all seemed quite alike. It seemed like they parceled away blocks of land at the edges of fields along the roadside. The houses were all the same, front portion was one floor and the back of the house was two floors. The homes alongside the highway did not have the roof decks.
There would also be a military post, with soldiers, at each tiny town.
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Post by bjd on Jan 16, 2018 6:33:00 GMT
Of course, Bixa, you are right about photo ops vs living in crappy conditions.
To follow up what Kerouac said about all this being the fault of the boycott, I would agree to a large degree but would add that it's also the fault of the political system. If you are told everything to do and believe by the government, then you end up not taking responsibility for anything outside your own lodgings. I have seen that in other countries that had communist governments: in Poland, Ukraine and the USSR. Inside people's houses, it was clean and they did what they could with what was available, but outside nobody cared because they had no personal interest in anything. In Poland, where there were private shops and restaurants, service was polite; in state-owned places, the staff was bored and unpleasant and didn't care if people had to stand in line only to learn that what they had hoped to buy wasn't available.
In any case, thanks for this interesting tour of Havana. You both did a great job, with the advantage of liking to take lots of photos and Bixa's knowledge of Spanish.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 16, 2018 17:38:54 GMT
Inside people's houses, it was clean and they did what they could with what was available, but outside nobody cared because they had no personal interest in anything. This must be some unpleasantly infantile aspect of human nature. I once lived in a compound here in Oaxaca (never again!). Every morning many of the young women would go into a frenzy of sweeping and mopping their rooms. But they'd sweep everything into the common area and just leave it there. Once I heard one of those neighbor's visitors ask why she didn't plant a few nice flowers like the other neighbor (me) did. The answer: "Why? It's not my house." " style="max-width:100%;"] Thanks so much for that look at the contrast between state-owned places vs privately owned ones. It precisely describes what we encountered in Havana. To follow up what Kerouac said about all this being the fault of the boycott, I would agree to a large degree but would add that it's also the fault of the political system. Absolutely! Before visiting Havana I also subscribed to the facile explanation that all Cuba's woes were due to the embargo. If the Supreme Butthole had not become president of the US, we'd probably be on track to a resolution to the impasse between the two countries. ... there has been no physical, naval blockade of the country by the United States after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. ... The United States does not block Cuba's trade with third parties ... Despite the existence of the embargo, the United States is the fifth largest exporter to Cuba (6.6% of Cuba's imports are from the US). Cuba must, however, pay cash for all imports, as credit is not allowed. The above is quoted from the Wikipedia entry on the embargo, which is most illuminating on history and details. Going back to the Eisenhower era sheds light on the a major impasse and why reopening diplomatic relations between the two countries is crucial to there ever being some kind of solution: In October 1960, a key incident occurred that led to the Cuban government nationalizing all three American-owned oil refineries in the nation. Cuba nationalized the refineries following Eisenhower's decision to cancel 700,000 tons of sugar imports from Cuba to the U.S. and refused to export oil to the island, leaving it reliant on Soviet crude oil that the American companies refused to refine, which led to Cuba's nationalization response. The refinery owners were never compensated for the nationalization of their property. Today the refineries are owned & operated by the state-run company, Unión Cuba-Petróleo. This prompted the Eisenhower administration to launch the first trade embargo—a prohibition against selling all products to Cuba except food and medicine. The Cuban regime responded with nationalization of all American businesses and most American privately owned properties on the island. No compensation was given for the seizures, and a number of diplomats were expelled from Cuba. The second wave of nationalizations prompted the Eisenhower administration, in one of its last actions, to sever all diplomatic relations with Cuba, in January 1961. Note: the wikipedia article contains many citations on its statements -- I've removed those number links here for easier reading.None of the above is meant to imply that I whole-heartedly support the embargo, simply to show a fuller picture. There is a belief that casting himself as David against Goliath was a main factor in keeping Fidel in power for so many years, and I think there is more than a grain of truth in that. I also believe that the revolution had noble goals. But goals such as housing for everyone have probably failed through lack of foresight and a means to fairly implement them.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jan 16, 2018 17:47:00 GMT
Well, if we start going into how many countries have nationalised companies with no compensation as an excuse for a boycott, then the United States should have put a boycott on at least 20 other countries. Then of course there is the country where the United States struck back on September 11th, 1973. That was a less than glorious achievement of the CIA.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jan 16, 2018 17:52:13 GMT
That's hardly the point.
As stated, the quotes I used were not meant as an apologia for the embargo. Rather they are to show that to some degree Cuba had and has ways to help itself without the US and further, that it is incumbent upon the US to find ways to reopen full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the benefit of both countries.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 1, 2018 4:56:51 GMT
One thing I've been wondering about is Eusebio Leal, who seems to have been City Historian since before he was born. I've looked him up and, except for the Wikipedia entry (damn, does that man have some awards!), almost everything is in Spanish. Not any more! This rather star-struck piece from The Smithsonian just popped up in one of my feeds. It's long & will probably be made even longer by the necessary reading between the lines ~ The Man Who Saved Havana <-- click
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 2, 2020 2:10:04 GMT
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Post by lagatta on Aug 2, 2020 18:46:12 GMT
I would like to point out that it is not only under Soviet-inspired systems do we find such anomie. It is common in some areas of Italy for people to keep their interiors sparkling clean but dump litter and worse everywhere else. Suspect that this is the case in other parts of southern Europe as well.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 2, 2020 21:28:40 GMT
That's rather a blanket statement, LaGatta, and quite possibly outdated. Any mess I saw in Italy was a result of inadequate garbage pickup, but it was obvious that people tried to use the overburdened public receptacles properly.
I'm not sure to exactly which part of this thread you're alluding with the comment about Soviet-inspired systems and anomie, but the mess I saw in Havana seemed to be more the result of a completely overwhelmed system rather than a general lack of standards.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 2, 2020 23:03:08 GMT
I did say some regions, but it is true that I haven't been to the regions where such antisocial behaviour was rife for at least 20 years, and perhaps 30. The reference comes from Sciascia, but he wasn't only speaking of Sicily. My last stay in Italy took me only to Perugia (central Italy, prosperous university town halfway between Florence and Rome) and a short stay in Florence (similar, but suffering greatly from overtourism - and the trash came from tourists, not Florentines).
My main point that what bjd was decrying was not the only source of social anomie. In prosperous Germany, most people are tenants, but they take care of their environment. Yes, perhaps it is a cultural trait, but it is an example that not all tenants are slobs, and there are plenty of rich slobs, but they have "help".
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Post by fumobici on Aug 2, 2020 23:23:19 GMT
I did say some regions, but it is true that I haven't been to the regions where such antisocial behaviour was rife for at least 20 years, and perhaps 30. The reference comes from Sciascia, but he wasn't only speaking of Sicily. My last stay in Italy took me only to Perugia (central Italy, prosperous university town halfway between Florence and Rome) and a short stay in Florence (similar, but suffering greatly from overtourism - and the trash came from tourists, not Florentines). My main point that what bjd was decrying was not the only source of social anomie. In prosperous Germany, most people are tenants, but they take care of their environment. Yes, perhaps it is a cultural trait, but it is an example that not all tenants are slobs, and there are plenty of rich slobs, but they have "help". I haven't seen a lot of litter and trash in Italy, but I haven't explored South of Rome. In Perugia, a lot of the trash in the centro is from students and assorted young people drinking late into the evenings around the duomo and the famous fountain. If you go out for an early walk especially you'll see it, but they are good about picking it up when it gets light. By the time the businesses open in the morning it's all cleaned up and you'd never know it had been there.
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Post by lagatta on Aug 3, 2020 0:10:28 GMT
Yes, Perugia is a particularly well-administered city. The public transport is good too, but unfortunately the micro-tram/metro didn't run late enough due to some townspeople complaining about the noise, though I hope that has changed.
Until recently, Perugia always had left (socialist/communist etc) city councils, but not in the authoritarian sense evoked earlier in this thread. God knows what they have now.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 3, 2020 11:27:24 GMT
My tuppence for what its worth in regard to chucking out your garbage straight in front of your own front/back door, is very real in South Africa. Shopkeepers sweep their interior floors directly onto the sidewalk, so it's all ready to be trodden in once again. Our bins are ill designed and overflow in a very sort period leaving trash everywhere. As a matter of fact people deliberately throw their trash from bus/car/taxi windows - their reasoning is they are creating work for other people who need to earn a living sweeping up and disposing of trash. They haven't worked out that the piles of rotting garbage they have to walk through is because the municipality cannot employ the hundreds of workers it needs to clean up. Therefore the streets and sidewalks are always filthy. A law is long overdue that everyone must clean up directly in front of their property or else face a heavy fine.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 3, 2020 14:25:57 GMT
I found Havana quite clean and tidy compared to so many other countries. The buildings are often crumbling of course, but that is not the fault of the residents when the state owns almost everything and is unable to maintain it properly. But in terms of trash, people are the same everywhere in the world -- when there is a secluded place where people can dump trash, they will do it.
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Post by nycgirl on Aug 4, 2020 2:56:58 GMT
I'm just now seeing this interesting report. It's a shame to see so many dilapidated buildings that only retain vestiges of their former beauty, like the tiles building on Galiano Street. It's an even bigger shame that so many people are forced to live in bleak and dangerous conditions. But, as mentioned before, if these places were spiffied up, the residents would be forced out. It's lose-lose.
Thanks for taking us on this thought-provoking tour.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 4, 2020 20:56:14 GMT
Thank you, NYCGirl! Whereas it is true that in most places run-down areas eventually get discovered and gentrified with the end result of pushing out the lower-income residents, I don't think it would happen in Havana unless things changed radically. For one thing, I can't imagine where the higher-income gentrifiers would come from en masse. For another, there is nothing about the present political or infrastructure state of Cuba to attract well-off retirees or other immigrants who'd change the face of the place. I'm quoting Breeze here partly because I fear I failed to reply to her the first time around, and partly because what she says is a pretty accurate portrayal of how I felt upon first landing in Havana. Yes, I was really disconcerted at first, although natural curiosity took over and made me into a somewhat better observer. But yeah -- the decay remained a shock. I've been following all the Havana threads. Before I saw bixa's and kerouac's photos, I thought I knew how I felt about Havana, but I was wrong. It's not what I thought. I've been waiting to comment till I was sure how I feel about it, but I still don't know. It's disquieting to see the dilapidated conditions of the buildings and the amount of garbage in the street. Once I'd seen this background of decay, I couldn't set it aside and couldn't any longer enjoy or appreciate the brightly painted and elegant facades, which ordinarily I would love.
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Post by nycgirl on Aug 5, 2020 0:28:04 GMT
You are definitely a keen observer.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 7, 2022 18:35:17 GMT
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Post by kerouac2 on May 7, 2022 19:14:19 GMT
When I saw the news, I had an urge to go back through our photos see if we had taken pictures of the Hotel Saratoga, but Bixa beat me to the subject. When you have walked through Old Havana, an event like this cannot leave you indifferent.
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Post by mich64 on May 8, 2022 3:04:08 GMT
Thought of this thread immediately when I heard the news of the explosion. Devastating news.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 8, 2022 4:54:25 GMT
I guess one saving grace is that it wasn't open for business. The fact that it could have been worse, though, is no consolation to the friends and relatives of the dead, injured, and missing. After all the photos from the Ukraine of shattered apartment buildings with their bathtubs, furniture, etc. on display we have seen in the past two and a half months, this explosion still had the power to shock. www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/26-dead-80-injured-explosion-hotel-saratoga-havana-cuba-rcna27789
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Post by bixaorellana on May 8, 2022 5:15:12 GMT
Bingo! I knew if there was a photo, my beady little eyes would find it. As it happens, there are two, both taken by Kerouac2. The thread is Impressions of Havana 2017: anyportinastorm.proboards.com/thread/8224/impressions-havana-2017The two pictures are in Reply #59 of that thread. In the second one, you can clearly see the hotel's proximity to the Capitol ~
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Post by kerouac2 on May 8, 2022 6:55:03 GMT
Gee, Kerouac2 took a really good picture of the building. My profound thanks for your diligence, Bixa.
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