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    Two Months in Cuba
    Two Months in Cuba
    Two Months in Cuba
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Two Months in Cuba

    By Don Baxter

    ()

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    About this ebook

    An autobiography. A travelogue. An adventure in history. A geopolitical exposé.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateMar 30, 2016
    ISBN9781483566740
    Two Months in Cuba

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      Book preview

      Two Months in Cuba - Don Baxter

      18

      CHAPTER 1

      The world is made from molecules:

      Little bits so small,

      Ten thousand kings in crimson robes

      Could never count them all.

      The planet on which we live, earth, orbits a star, the sun.

      While the earth is orbiting the sun, it is also rotating around a fixed axis, like a spinning top, at a speed that allows it to complete almost three hundred and sixty five rotations for each trip around the sun. This rotation creates what we think of as night and day, as the sun appears to rise in the east, travel across the sky, then set in the west, on a daily basis.

      The fixed axis of the earth is tilted in relation to the sun so that, as the earth orbits, the position of the sun above the horizon slowly changes. This creates what we think of as the seasons, as the sun appears lower or higher in the sky, on a yearly basis, and brings with it cooler or warmer temperatures.

      At certain points on the Earth, at certain times, the sun is directly overhead. There are limits to this phenomenon. The northern limit is the tropic of Cancer, very near twenty four degrees North latitude, where the sun is directly overhead around the twenty first of June. The southern limit is the tropic of Capricorn, very near twenty four degrees South latitude, where the sun is directly overhead around the twenty first of December. The area between these two points is known as the tropics, a part of the earth that enjoys warm to hot weather year round.

      In the western hemisphere, at the northern edge of the tropics, lies the island of Cuba, the largest in a chain of islands known as the Antilles, that separates, along with the Eastern shores of parts of Central and South America, a portion of the Atlantic Ocean into what is known as the Caribbean Sea, a mythical land of white sands, gentle beaches, stinging jellyfish and violent hurricanes.

      It is generally accepted that Cuba was the first piece of land discovered on the fateful voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492. If it was not, it was likely one of the first. Of course, Christopher’s discovery is only relevant in European terms, as the island, along with most of the Antilles and virtually all of North, Central and South America, was already inhabited by people that collectively came to be known as "Indians", since Columbus believed that he had sailed all the way around the world and arrived on the shores of India. Columbus, though not Spanish himself, was sailing his ships in the service of Spain, then known as a rather bloodthirsty lot, and he and his men proceeded to rape, murder and otherwise exterminate the native people of Cuba in short order.

      Subsequent Spanish ships brought slaves of African descent, along with settlers from Spain, and began the business of colonizing, not only Cuba, but most of Central and South America and parts of North America. For the most part, this was done in a brutal fashion; killing, raping and enslaving the native peoples and bringing in successive waves of African slaves, European colonists and incredible levels of vice and corruption.

      One might ask: Why? Why could this not be done in a humane, civilized way? Certainly, Christianity played a role. It had evolved into a religion of brutality and not only allowed but encouraged its followers to consider themselves superior to all non Christians. The pursuit of wealth was also a factor. Many of the areas the Spanish conquered were rich in gold and silver, as well as gems that were considered precious by Europeans. One does not have to look very hard at the activities of the various gold and silver rushes of subsequent years in North and South America to realize that these metals and the promises of instant riches they bring can and will drive people into a frenzied state of insanity. Or maybe that’s just the way people are. Maybe we’re just a bunch of savages. That would certainly explain a lot of history.

      Whatever the reasons, this area of the world has a history tied to Spain and has come to be known as Latin America, since Spanish, the predominant language spoken, is descended from Latin, a language that is now considered dead. That’s why Latin is used by lawyers and doctors. It’s dead. It doesn’t change. Latin America, like all the tropical areas of the world, has many problems. All of these areas provide easy living due to the warm weather and abundant natural resources and their peoples did not industrialize the way Europeans did. This made them easy prey when they were discovered by the Europeans and they have all been colonized by one European power or another at one point in time or another. This has come to be known as Colonialism. Those powers have reaped enormous fortunes from the tropics, leaving them with horrendous poverty, devastating social problems and rampant corruption. In some of these areas, the power has passed from the original colonizers to successive powers, like the United States of America, in a process known as Neo-Colonialism. In other areas power has passed, not to a specific government, but to monopolistic corporations that employ mercenary forces to keep the native populations in line. This is often referred to as Imperialism.

      And for some reason, possibly the natural tendency of people from the tropics to simply be less aggressive than those from cold areas, the tropics were not only easy prey for the colonizers, but seem to have tremendous problems throwing off the yoke of Colonialism, Neo-Colonialism and Imperialism.

      CHAPTER 2

      Human nature transcends politics,

      Geography, history and economics.

      It is what is it is, a wise man said.

      Enjoy what you can. One day you’ll be dead.

      I was born in 1955, on the planet earth, in the country of Canada, the province of Manitoba, and grew up in the village of Brooklands, which was then a self contained part of the city of Winnipeg, the capital of the province. Back then, what people thought of as the city of Winnipeg was really a collection of smaller cities, like St. Vital, St. Boniface, St. James and Fort Rouge. Winnipeg was only one of these cities, albeit the dominant one. At some point in my youth, the decision was made to amalgamate these cities into one larger city which took on the name of Winnipeg. Greater Vancouver is similar, composed of Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster, etc.

      Brooklands sits somewhere in the middle of Winnipeg and was originally established by the railroad as a repair and resupply depot for steam locomotives. It is a piece of land, one mile square, bordered on the east by Keewatin Street, the west by King Edward Street, the north by Logan Avenue and the south by Notre Dame Avenue. There is a set of railroad tracks running diagonally through it. In the centre there was a coal yard adjacent to the tracks, many years disused when I was growing up, and there are two hotels on Keewatin known as the Brooklands and the Westbrook, rough and tough remnants of a bygone era. North of Logan was a swamp which has disappeared since my childhood and two small streets running parallel to Logan; Gallagher, where I grew up, and Midmar, both of which were originally a collection of squatter shacks that, by some vagary of railroad law, somehow became permanent and independent. While the streets in Brooklands proper were paved, Gallagher and Midmar were not and turned into a treacherous quagmire in heavy rain. North of those two streets were several sets of railroad tracks, from which the Brooklands tracks originated, then another set of houses that were known locally as Dogpatch, another set of squatter houses that were in varying stages of disrepair and that had far less legal standing than Gallagher and Midmar. It was against railroad law to be on those tracks for any reason, yet they had to be crossed by the Dogpatch residents to attend school, go to the store, etc. Incidents of confrontation with railroad cops were common and the residents of Dogpatch were a hardy and militant lot.

      My parents were among the flotsam washed up on the shores of the depression and WWII. In spite of this, they were doing quite well, with a house, a car, a steady job and six children, when their house burned down. No insurance. Nothing. Absolute poverty. They lived in a car in the summer. They broke into vacant houses in the winter. They stole. Lied. Cheated. Only someone who has known the despair of homelessness, especially with dependent children, could understand what they went through. How do you get a job when you have no address? How do you get any sleep when you live in a car with seven

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