cuba is the mother of all mindfucks for america brain. literal stray dogs in havana get more material support to exist than humans in the US.

i managed to get to go on a research/information/knowledge/cultural exchange through a short-lived university program for a few weeks, doing homestays almost the entire time, mostly havana, but travel around to communities in the western half. this was during the very minor relaxation of relations during obama. literally everyone else on the trip was a shitlib tenured labor aristocrat treating it like a tropical vacation, i was the only underpaid, soft-funded staff member. i only managed to slip onto the trip because they didn't have enough commitments at a critical point and one of the cooler faculty mentioned it to me, but of course i had to find my own funding inside of a few days in an institution at full austerity mode. i found a little and said i would cut a check from my personal money right there for whatever the difference was. apparently that embarassed my shitlib, overpaid boss and the other purse-string holders to unass the relatively minor amount of cash from the existing travel/professional development funds.

i was the only one that did the "homework", reading about the specifics of the embargo, practicing some conversational cuban spanish, etc. the guy who made our arrangements was from the states but had been living down there for like 15 years. he wasn't overtly political in conversation with the group, but he and i were the only ones that could discuss topics like adults. word got around, any time any of the other travelers had questions about the embargo or material provisioning of housing or property ownership worked, if they couldn't find our guide, they would ask me.

what i noticed was that there weren't destitute people. there were no walking wounded, sickly people with untreated disorders shuffling themselves to/from their shifts. no "sleepers"/unhoused. it took the others at least a week to notice, because they had trained themselves not to see them in the states. i was there for mayday, and i only saw cops once. 3 very young people in loose fitting shirts, no weapons, piled into a very tiny little fiat looking hatchback (one in the backseat). they were slow rolling somewhere early in the morning and did not look serious at all or even glance at the pile of pale skinned ameroids on the corner.

the city and streets are always busy (though the afternoon quiets a little from the heat), but not packed with cars. people hang out on benches and other spots everywhere (what we call loitering in the US) and smoke tobacco, chatting the day away. the nights are the busiest times, open house parties at random residences, lots of plazas where people congregate and play music on speakers and dance, kids skateboarding around monuments but no one is shitty at them and they aren't shitty to others.

the buildings are not lined with advertisements, but the walls have murals and there is public art everywhere, critiquing machismo, the commodification of che, or celebrating the revolution. the visual field looking around the city is busy with color and life, but not COCA COLA, MET LIFE, M&Ms, FIDELITY. that, admittedly, took me days to recognize as advertisements are things i've tried to filter out mentally. others noticed once i pointed it out.

i wish more working class americans could see it with their own eyes in a relaxed travel way, instead of how it seems like it's mostly the domain of affluent libs with no critical perspective, only going so they can stunt on people back home about having the social capital to go somewhere restricted. but, obviously, that is one of the benefits of the embargo system for empire, to keep us ignorant, uncertain, and afraid.