HAVANA, Cuba -- This Caribbean island is a country in amber.
Fidel's forces wrested power from the dictator Batista in the '50s. Much of the island looks the same today.
The gorgeous, yet deteriorating, Spanish-influenced architecture is home to government workers, residents, state-owned restaurants and hotels. You walk the streets and hear music from the bars (many sounding like the Buena Vista Social Club). Children play in the streets. The best GM cars of the '50s ply the roads, albeit with a lot of belching smoke and homemade parts.
But while it looks the same, it's not the same. The communists took away private property and put people to work. Now they earn an average of $18 a month. Despite free housing in deteriorating buildings, free medical care, free education (What do you do with a Master's degree?), and subsistence food rations from the state, life is tough.
Early in January, I joined a tour to Cuba, led by world class photojournalist Peter Turnley. We traveled under an educational/cultural expedition license. The intent was that we would meet Cubans, and experience their culture, and their country.
For me, and I suspect and the other half dozen fantastic photographers on the trip, the primary attraction was to be able to take photos of this dramatic, colorful, vibrant, sensuous place.
But for all of us, the focus of the memories of the trip are the warm and welcoming - and incredibly positive - people we met.
