Inequality in the Land of the Equals

Paradise, For whom?

Picture a country where its own citizens are discriminated over those coming from other countries to spend their precious dollars.  Imagine you work long hours and save your money to be able to take your family to a nice hotel and restaurant, enjoy a day out while your children play in the hotel pool.  Then take them all to a nice restaurant and have a great family dinner and then retire to a clean beautiful room on the 5th floor of the magnificent hotel. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

Well that happens daily almost everywhere in the world except in Cuba.  Cuba is and has been for the past 50 years, a dual society. Those that come from outside have all the privileges of enjoying the beautiful beaches, hotels and restaurants.  The typical Cuban is not allow indulge themselves in this kind of lifestyle.

Cubans are not allow to stay in the hotels since not only are they not paid enough, but these are only reserved for the foreigners visiting the island bringing with them hard currency.  Ironically, Castro and his government has always criticized the United States for being a society based on racial inequality and driven by the insatiable consumerism.
More ironic is the fact that this doesn’t apply to all Cubans, there are two groups exempt from those prohibitions. One is the Cuban political elite those closest to the tree of power who enjoy vacation homes, hotels, cars, good food and fun.  Yes, there are privileged Cubans there,  not all are equal including the friends and family of the poli-bureau, starting with Fidel and Raul Castro’s families.

It is no longer a secret -the extravagant lifestyle these two families enjoy including yachts, houses, farms, and exclusive vacation spots all over the impoverish island.
Then there is a second group of Cubans able to enjoy the good life in Cuba, who are they? you may ask ,well this group is even more surprising, these are the so called “exilados” (exiled) who after leaving the island and in many cases under constant repudiation by their own neighbors now return with the mighty dollar and are welcomed by those same people who felt so repugnant by their daring desire to be free and leave the island.

When you are leaving Cuba you are consider a traitor to the revolution and the motherland yet upon your return with the money to spend you are welcomed and allow to go into those same places where the everyday Cubani s not allowed to.  It is to some extent comforting to see the double moral standards where a communist Cuban who at one time may have fought for the revolution is not able to visit the same places a so called traitor who left the island is able to visit.

Mind you an exiled Cuban residing in the United States can’t as in any other country return when he pleases.  That is not the case here. Any Cuban wanting to return has to obtain a visa, yes as incredible as it may sound a visa to enter his country of birth.  Can any of us who enjoy the freedom of this country ever imagine having to apply for a visa and wait some times for months to be able to return to the place of our birth?.  Well that happens every day for those born in the Pearl of the Antilles.

Just this fact along the humiliation of having to wait for a visit to see the family you left behind and enjoy the land that you yearn for every day has kept many Cubans from visiting the island many never returning after leaving decades ago. 
 
So there is inequality in the land of the equals.