Embargo inhibits Cuban culture

by Lyndsay Lundgren

(U-WIRE) SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (California Poly State U.) – I am not patriotic. I understand the benefits of life in the United States and appreciate the rights I am awarded, but the "Star Spangled Banner" does not bring tears to my eyes. In a previous era, I would have been an expatriate, a Hemingway type. This desire to flee the perfect American life has taken me around the world, and what I saw went against everything I had ever learned.

Having grown up in the United States, I don't remember learning much about Cuba. I learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, but this is all I recall. Textbooks did not bring Cuba to life – it was merely an island in the Caribbean and one of the last communist strongholds in the world. In our time, the era of McCarthyism had passed, and with it the Soviet Union and the fear of communist takeover.

In 1962, however, the United States enacted an embargo against Cuba. This embargo, which blocked exports to Cuba, Cuban imports to the United States, direct flights, food and medical supplies, remains part of our policy today.

Until last year, little of this affected my life. In the middle of the "Elian crisis," I traveled to Cuba, and what I saw changed my view and my life. Cuba came alive. The people, colors, smells and sounds of La Habana Vieja immediately erased any previous ideas I held.

The thought of Castro hovering over this Caribbean paradise seemed ridiculous. Mariachi bands lined the cobblestone streets, and Cubans danced their way through the night. The old and the young walked the streets in health and safety. As I sat in the shadow of a cathedral that rose above pastel buildings in the Plaza De San Francisco, my thoughts of a tyrannical Castro faded.

Because Castro did curb capitalistic enterprise, we ate in a "paladar," an "illegal" private restaurant. Food is often hard to come by because of the embargo, and the state-run restaurants are lacking, but the palarades offer irresistible choices.

The more time I spent in Cuba, the more I began to see that communism succeeded in some ways. After Castro's 1959 revolution, Cuba achieved a 95.7 percent literacy rate, free health care, free education and a life expectancy rate of 76 years. These numbers are comparable to the United States' 97 percent literacy rate and 77-year life expectancy.

There are downfalls to communism: no freedom of speech or ability to rise above the nationally pervasive poverty. These downfalls, however, are not reason enough to cut Cuba off. The United States' attempts to erase Cuba from the maps have failed. Blockade-runners from the United States and tourists from Europe, especially Spain, flock to Cuba. Its rich history, warm-hearted population, clean beaches and mysterious aura provide Cuba with a developing tourism market. Castro, an old and feeble man, cannot take over the world. Cuban communism is changing daily, and the only thing the embargo does is put the United States in a compromising position. All the embargo stops is 11 million people from contributing innumerable talents and ideas to the world society. We have the chance as the next generation of leaders to end an embargo against a non-threatening country, a country that is far richer, in many ways, than ours.