There is much that is true in this account of street life in Cuba, but the poetic language should alert one to the fact that it is very much a rose-tinted view. In fact there is very much traffic in La Habana - just about every conceivable vehicle type crowds the streets at times, from new little Korean cars to Eastern European sixties and seventies models to huge fifties American models to buses to side-car motorcycles, etc. As for the disintegration of the colonial architecture, well there is something poetic in that, but how much can you allow it to disintegrate withour any kind of renewal? Another fact about the streets is the number of panhandlers and dollar bums that plague the very tourists on whom the country is increasingly dependent. The social spinoffs of the introduction of the dollar are not so idyllic and include a massive increase in prostitution - it is well known that the line between flirtation and prostitution in Cuba is a very thin one indeed - and the impression that a 'foreigner' (a blanket term) is a very desirable thing to be. Don't get me wrong, I like Cuba and its people and will return, but paradise it ain't. I think the subject line above should include a question mark, because it suggests to me way too problematically that this kind of de-linked, semi-autarkic regime is in itself the path to a better world. Tahir >>> "Sam Pawlett" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 10/14 5:02 AM >>> "So going somewhere where there is very little motor traffic can be a revelation, even when this lack is not so much planned but produced by economic strangulation. There are few places where a major city can be experienced without the assaults of the internal combustion engine, but Cuba is one. Lying awake listening to the sounds of Havana, you have the impression of being in a vast dormitory. Only an occasional engine masks the tapestry of sound woven near and far of peoples' voices and animals' cries. While in most cities the life of the place is blanketed out by the monotonous drone of traffic, here the complex spaces seem alive with incident. The remarks of your neighborhood are distinct. Crowing cockerels wake you in the morning, and in the soft light you can feel the city stretch. At night artificial light is scarce. The city has protective darkness thrown over it, lifted in some areas only by candles and oil lamps from open windows, in others by occasional electric lamps which dramatically highlight some crumbling coloumn or portico, while throwing the area around it into it is the people and particular sounds that seize the attention against a background of deep silence. "Daylight reveals a disintegrating city of grand colonial palaces and mansions, impresssive in scale and detail, inherited by the poor, who nowlive in a chaotic and ramshackle splendor. Each doorway is a porch and each workplace open to gaze. People treat the street as their home, and it returns their intimacy and warmth. Children wander freely and without fear. They play hide and seek in and out of the doorways, or around skips and giant 1950's cars beached on the curb; or they careen down the streets on makeshift go carts. Even hardships are remade as virtues by these people; petrol shortages have led to the rule of the bicycle each one precariously carrying two or three people over potholes and obstructions, their warning bells rung assidiously. "Cuba's strong sense of community life is of course based on many other factors besides the lack of motor traffic. Nevertheless it is important that here streets are no longer merely roads, where people pass but do not stop and where no one can afford distraction (on pain of death), but rather a common ground on to which homes exit, a place owned and used by people. In surrendering this to the car, we have unwittingly given up a precious asset, owned by no one and everyone, andin doing so have altered every facet of our own lives." *Gargantua*.Julian Stallabras. Verso.1996.p131-2. Sam Pawlett _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
