There Are 
No McDonald's 
In Cuba

by Jocelyn Weiss

in issue four
Scintillations
Purple Bikini
Saraswati
Change In Air
Sarah's Gift
Fairy Chimes
Real Dreams
Xena
Writer?
Younger Self
Fledgling Artiste
Goddess Poetry
No McD's In Cuba
AF Photographers
Goddess On Phone
Moody Girl
Met The Goddess
To My Mother
Life Changing Books
Girl Crushes
Universe Spoke
Visualize This!
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There are no McDonald's in Cuba.  It's amazing.  I mean, there are McDonald's everywhere.  There's a huge McD's on the Champs Elysees in Paris where you can get wine and beer with your Big Mac.  When I was in the Soviet Union in 1985 a McDonald's had just opened in then-Communist Moscow.  In China, people spend a month's wages for a Big Mac.  In India, where the cow is sacred and most people don't eat beef, Big Macs are made with chicken or lamb.  The Golden Arches are recognized worldwide, but not in Cuba.  There are no McDonald's in Cuba.

For better or for worse, there is very little U.S. corporate culture present in Cuba at all.  No McDonald's.  No Disney.  No Yahoo.com.  No Charles Schwab.

While a few European and Canadian companies have broken the 50-year U.S. blockade, foreign investment is still rare.  The blockade prevents U.S. companies from doing business in Cuba or doing business with companies that do business in Cuba.  This has caused great economic hardship, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba's former trading partner.

I've done a fair amount of traveling and I've seen some really poor places.  Places where homeless people live in cardboard boxes on the street and have distended stomachs from lack of food.  Where men stagger through the dirt streets with faces so red from alcohol they look like they haven't been sober in months.  Where barefoot children with faces and arms caked with dirt hang out on street corners.

I didn't see any of that in Cuba.  The people I saw looked healthy, well-fed, clean.  And while that may be surprising for a poor Latin American country, it's not really surprising in Cuba.

The Revolution brought many changes to Cuba, some bad, but mostly good. One of the first steps of the Revolution was to create universal education.  Literacy brigades went out into the countryside to teach peasants to read and write.  Now, Cuba’s education system is unsurpassed - free at all levels, from infant childcare through advanced academic degrees.  Cuba has the most well-educated population in the world.  Their literacy rate is over 90%, no industrialized country beats it.  And the government provides for everyone's very basic needs of food, shelter and clothing.

So, while Cuba may be poor economically, its healthy and educated populace has made it rich culturally and spiritually.

Cuba is truly a melting pot.  Not only do you see it in the music and food that so richly blend the Latin and African, but you see it in the faces of the Cuban people who are a fabulous blend of the native Indian, the Spanish conqueror and the African slave.  You see beautiful dark-skinned people with blue eyes and European features.  You see light skinned blondes with African features.  You see every imaginable combination of color.  Nowhere in my life have I seen such a true blending of races.

Cuba is a place where music and dance flourish.  Everywhere I went people danced.  I saw colorful street performers dancing in the square one beautiful Sunday afternoon.  At every restaurant or bar I went to there was live music and the waiters came and danced with me and my companions.

And the Cuban people have to be the friendliest in the world.  People stopped me on the street to chat and ask where I was from.  When I told them I was from the U.S., they would literally light up.  Most everyone has a relative or friend living in Miami.  Ex-patriots, who send money to friends and relatives in Cuba, are a very important part of the Cuban economy since, oddly enough, it is a U.S. Dollar-based economy.  They use Cuban Pesos for the staples they buy with their government rations, but for everything else they require U.S. Dollars.

Everyone I met, cab drivers, tour guides, strangers on the street, wanted to know what I thought of Cuba.  And, they felt free to tell me all of their opinions about their own country, both pro and con.  If those I met were an example, the Cuban people are very proud of their country's achievements and while they may disagree with some of the policies, they support their government whole-heartedly.

I went to Cuba expecting it to be either another impoverished Third World country or a utopian paradise.  It is both and it is neither.  I left Cuba more certain than ever that my country's economic blockade is a travesty and yet, not certain at all that I want it to end. Without the influences of U.S. corporate interests, and now free from the demands of the Soviet Union, Cuba has developed into a unique place, one rich with diversity and dichotomy.

I wonder what would have happened had President Eisenhower embraced Fidel Castro after the Revolution instead of shunning him, forcing Cuba into the arms of the Soviet Union in the 1950s.  I wonder what will happen after Castro dies (he's almost 80 years old, after all).  My hope for Cuba is that it is able to find some happy medium, some way to uphold the ideals of the Revolution while improving it's economic conditions.  And I hope that it is allowed to find that happy medium on its own, without external military or economic force.

Yes, there are no McDonald's in Cuba – and maybe that's a good thing.

Photos by Jocelyn Weiss and Joan Weiss