Changes in Cuba

The media is abuzz and in a frenzy about all the changes taking place in Cuba under Raulito. Cubans can now buy cellphones. Cubans can now go into tourist hotels. Do you see a pattern? CAN NOW as in they COULDN'T BEFORE. Yet no matter how many times we spoke of the Cuban apartheid, we were laughed in our faces; dismissed as Batistianos or an elite group of exiles that wanted to take Cuba back to the Vegas era. Huh?

Not long ago I watched a "documentary" in the Discovery channel of The Mafia in Cuba. I love all things Cosa Nostra so I watched in order to visualize the stories I had heard from my father, the tropical ganster, about Meyer Lansky. Papi was a big Cosa Nostra fan. I digress. Somewhere in this documentary, because you know Batista had allowed the gangsters and Americans to take over Cuba, and I quote "Cuban women had no choice but to turn to prostitution" because of lack of resources - food, shelter, etc.

Ah, the typical propaganda I thought as I screamed at the TV. How bad Cuba was before Fifo and what a fucking paradise it is today. So much of a paradise that things that had been called lies for years, the apartheid in Cuba in favor of foreigners, are now agents of change. Look at the new freedoms! Look at how good Raulito is!!! Look we are changing!

Where was all this press heralding when Cubans couldn't own cellphones nor couldn't go into hotels?