okay, i was wrong. no one is happy.

idealism has its place. i apply it liberally, seeing no better alternative than finding the beauty in something, or believing in the potential of what anything could be.

when i arrived to cuba, idealism came easily. there was color, music, dancing, and a spirit i mistook for celebratory.

but i was wrong. no one is really happy.

color and personality aside, the combination of poverty with the lack of almost any sort of freedom has a stranglehold on the lives of possibly the entire cuban population.

we tourists are able to romanticize it only because of the captivating nature of the cuban spirit, expressed through their culture of street life, music and dance.

one can easily choose to see the smiling faces and shining eyes, the seductive charm, the sexy, empowered way cubans carry themsleves. and one would be right. but these qualities have survived despite the daily reality of the cuban experience; a reality of extremely difficult and opressed lives, struggling to make it work every single day.

poverty is endemic. all official jobs are nationalized, and the wages are not enough to live off.most can afford food. but clothes, transport and the most basic appliances or equipment, they cannot.

everything is old and broken, and when a TV, or a stereo, or a fan breaks, people have to save up in order to fix it. i met many people who had never taken a two hour ride to a neighbouring town, because they could not afford the bus fare.

there are limits on energy usage, and there are often outages. one curious requirement is that cubans do not watch overseas tv channels, just in order to save electricity, of course.

i had lunch with one cuban family, who fed me abundantly and deliciously, and then apologized that i couldn't wash my hands because they wouldn't have running water until the next day, probably.

another small girl loved my boots, and asked where they were from. when i told her, she nodded politely, and proudly told me that she too would be getting new shoes, in february.

many waiters make less in a month than we spend on a meal. and there is a mini-fast food industry consisting of dripping pizzas and hotdogs being sold from street windows for $0.20 cents a pop, to provide quick affordable meals for cubans on the street.

and while it is true that the cuban education system is exemplary, and that doctors from russia still come to cuba for their training, after years of excellent education, cubans can't use it to find a good job or earn a decent living.

as one cuban told me, “we must find jobs within our jobs”, which means that whatever they do officially, they have to find ways to make more on the side.

i can't post pictures here of my spanish or dance teachers, because by giving me private classes, they risked losing their official jobs, getting fined, or arrested.

i met one journalism student who ran a radio show and gave guided tours of his town on the side. i asked him where i could buy vitamins, and he said he didn't know much about tourist shops because cubans have their own separate shops they have to go to, so tourists don't see how little is actually available to them.

"cuba is not for cubans any more," he said.

some said that while under the USSR's wing, life was better. they could afford milk and fuel, there was more electricity, and stores had shelves with some stock on them. but dependence was the opposite of what Socialism had promised them, so when the USSR collapsed and took cuban social progress with it, people had a very rude awakening.

since then, propaganda has replaced progress. and there is something almost juvenile about the way cubans have to pretend to believe in a system that is so obviously not working.

dissent is so illegal that the entire surface layer of cuban culture has become a blanket disguise for how people really feel.

cubans live in pretence that they believe what they're being told. and i was shocked to see the extent to which they are trapped, without any outlets, within a web of enforced reality.

it is not only freedom of expression that is dangerous, but even freedom of opinion.

neighbors help each other to survive in every way, but are simultaneously paranoid of each other, hiding aspects of their lives that could get them into trouble. this paranoia, it seems, is warranted. after a while, there really is the sensation of everything being watched, everything being known.

security guards at hotels where i only use the internet, knew where i lived, and where i liked to eat. the owner of my casa would know everything i said to the owner of another casa blocks away, and so on.

a couple times in swarming salsa clubs, under cover of darkness, i quietly borrowed a single chair from an empty table (there are never enough chairs or tables in clubs). without fail, 15 or 20 minutes later, whenever the chair is needed, security walks directly over to me, wherever i am, however far away, and asks for the chair returned.

i met some people shooting a secret documentary about african culture in cuba. twice people whom they were about to interview, or were working with, suddenly got arrested. the crew were sure they were being followed.

most shocking to me, however, were the limits on movement and self-determination.

cubans are not permitted to leave cuba. even if they had the money, which most don't, they can not travel. exceptions are made for government approved work, or approved vacations, which are both very difficult to get.

cubans cannot move houses. if they do want to relocate, they must swap houses with another person who also wants to move, and pay offs must be made. moving house is a very rare, and complex, thing.

while the spirit on the street is in many ways upbeat, cubans have almost no human right to self determination. they don't decide where they live, what they experience, how much to work, where they want to go, what they want to say, or even which feelings they are allowed to express.

the things they do have a right to, such as travel within cuba, or enjoy basic appliances and comforts, they often can't afford.

checkers with plastic bottle tops

the u.s. embargo has given fidel's government something to blame for all this, but the people i spoke to feel that while this is partly true, it is also largely an excuse.

(excuse or not, the embargo continues to cause immense suffering amongst the population, while politically achieving nothing i can identify. surely, if the u.s. really wants to isolate someone, there are more dangerous countries than cuba to do it to? to me, the embargo is a farce and a crime.)

i asked one man whether cubans want democracy. “we don't know”, he answered. “we don't know what it means. maybe it is good, maybe it is bad. we don't know.”

“okay, so what do the cuban people want?” i asked. again he answered the same thing: “many people don't know. they are neutral. they don't have any information to trust.”

cubans have never known anything but occupation. first the spanish, then the english, then the americans, then dependence on russians, and now on the venezuelans. they have been made many promises, but none have been kept, or not for long. self-determination has never been, in reality, part of the deal.

and yet, my idealized initial posts were also somehow true true. cuban culture is vibrant, and the cubans themselves have a deeply joyous attitude towards life.

having lost their revolutinary idealism, having lost faith in the promises of patrons, and having rejected negativity as not joyful enough to contain their vibrant spirit... the cuban continue do as they have always, throughout all their hardships, done...

get together, eat, play music, and dance. that's the part most tourists like to see. and by

focusing as much as they can on this as well, cubans keep their lives rich, their hearts open, their blood hot, and their dancing shoes sweaty.

idealism may not come as easily to cubans as it does to me. but in the spirit of cuba, it has its place. and applied liberally, cuban life still is, very very much, worth celebrating.