• Submitted by: manso
• Travel and Tourism
• 09 / 02 / 2010

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Humanitarian mission to Cuba produces kinship among Americans

Cubans who ostensibly support the Cuban government — with the reservations we all have for our governments — practice a double standard in regard to Americans of the U.S.A. (We must remember, in a hemisphere that contains both North and South America, that we aren’t the only Americans around.)

Cubans don’t confuse people with their governments. Again and again, we were met with surprise and delight. Surprise because Americans there are rare, delight because Cubans are predisposed to like us.

We’re such near neighbors — the famous 90 miles to Key West, which a Cuban tried to cross in a Styrofoam boat recently — that they feel a kinship. And before we’d been there very long we felt a kinship, too.

We were in Cuba legally, as participants in a humanitarian mission, distributing medical items and other needed supplies.

In the course of our distributions and from Cubans we met, we learned something of the history of the place and something of what’s going on today.

History reaches all the way back to Christopher Columbus, who set foot there in 1492. The city of Trinidad, for example, was founded in the early 1500s, which makes Cincinnati’s 1788 debut seem like just the other day.

What we think of as our 1890s war with Spain, when Teddy Roosevelt famously charged up San Juan Hill, is called by Cubans their War of Independence. Much money has been made in Cuba at various times, and wonderful architecture still reflects those times.

This opinion doesn’t pretend to be deeply informed but results from a quick visit among a responsive people in a beautiful land.

By Jane Durrell

Source: www.citybeat.com/cincinnati/article-21537-surprise-and-delight.html