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haha you naiive hypocrite
never said i went on a package holiday did i?!
i stayed in people's houses (CUban people's houses). there is no law on who's you can stay in, but you are allowed to stay. you immediately assumed i'm some leftie tourist but i'm not; i'm a musician and i went out there to play and learn more about afro-cuban music i play over here. stayed with my drum teacher amongst others - about as far from a package holiday as you can get - its a true insight into life of REAL cubans. you're right with one thing. the one's in hotels are completely cut off from it because they get ridiculous tips which is petty cash to most tourists. it's creating an awful class gap out there atm.
anyway as i said in my original posts get your facts straight about ME and what i did before you go shouting your mouth off. just because i disagree with you doesn't mean you can be so condescending. i was merely offering what is FIRST hand experience.
therefore i am in a better position than you to comment saying as (unless i'm wrong) have never been to the counrty. yes have an opinion, but don't tell me mine's wrong when i've seen it first hand.
didn't stay in one hotel when i was there
I'm sorry.
In dictatorships - even some pretty bad ones that are essentially police states you'll find people amongst the population who don't think it's so bad. In East Germany lots of people could somehow see past the brutality, political persecution, the Stasi, the shortages, etc. The GDR was a very authoritarian state. But - if you kept quiet, lived an ordinary life and didn't cause trouble it wasn't that bad... Okay there were shortages, it took years to get a Trabant (far better than a West German car... give me a Trabant over an Audi, BMW or VW any day ) And in Cuba - there's the healthcare system and if you're an ordinary working person who doesn't speak out, doesn't ask questions and keeps out of trouble I'm sure it doesn't seem particularly oppressive.
But there's no getting around the fact that Castro himself is a mass murderer. There's no democracy - there's censorship, journalists and political dissidents are imprisoned or worse and human rights are not very good...