Mojito!

About the only place to get real facts about Cuba is on a number of blogs (I have a page with links to the most important ones here).

And now the Castros are clamping down on this, by banning Cuban citizens from accessing the web in tourist hotels to update their blogs. This is as anti-freedom as, say, the Canadian Government banning the Star or Globe and one more sign that there is no prospect of human rights in Cuba as long as the Fidel gang are in control. It's not believed, but may be so, that the timing of this restriction next to the Press Freedom Day was not an accident.

Here's Yoani's post

I have gone a couple of days without connecting to the Internet, because a new complication has appeared in the road of alternative bloggers.  Several hotels in the country demand, in order to connect to the web, that you prove a life in a place outside the Cuban archipelago.  The desk clerks tell me—even though they are just as native as I am—that that blue card will not allow me to dive into the vast World Wide Web.  “It’s a decision that comes from above,” a woman says to me, as if a decision of this type could be taken at a level other than the offices of the government. I see it will be hard to change myself into a foreigner overnight.  So the only thing left is to protest against such a ban and to make public the existence of a new apartheid.  I will have to go back in the guise of a tourist, although this time I will have to learn a language as complicated as Hungarian to fool those who sell the access cards.  Maybe I can prowl around the hotels, ready to ask the foreigners to buy—for me—this forbidden entrance key, this safe conduct I need “to not be Cuban.”Link to Yoani's Blog

from a commentator on Generacion Y xeusater dice:
Who describes the Cubano connection with the universe far better than I ever could as an outsider.:
Cubans are like this:
Cubans have left from a small island and have spread throughout the world. One is professor at a university in Australia, another opened a restaurant in Alaska. Nothing stops them, neither cold nor heat. They are seduced by the tropic heat of Florida, but also bear firm-footed the ice in Boston and New York. They don’t beg, but work. Those who were poor in Cuba, here are rich. No obstacle stops their belligerent laboriousness if the offer is decent. One is rector at a University, another puts makeup to dead people. They change, but only on the surface. In Miami they still play the “bolita” (forbidden lottery), fighting roosters in secret and sending their children to private schools. In Madrid, they are against Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and in Caracas against Hugo Chávez, always in opposition. They are criticized and envied but deep inside they are admired. Like Galicians at working and Jews for the will to survive, they are a legion, stubborn not to be left ignored.

They bring their warm music, the noise of their drums, black beans, steak with “Moros y Cristianos” and banana. But also bring the sympathy, warmth and dedication. Who are they? Cubans, children of the exile, the only transplanted population (except for Jews), which has not lost its identity in almost half a century. Those who admired Cuba from afar as an example of supreme strength in Latin America, which saw Cuba as an ethnic and cultural miracle, where everything seemed a mess but all worked well, no longer have to go to Cuba to meet it! Here it is in the inside of the United States. This is Cuba. These are the Cubans. Exaggerated, bragging, loud, yes, but also intense, deeply creative and good friends.

And what have Cubans not done in these 50 years of exile to survive with dignity? Which manual activity have they not tested in this or that country? What would seem complicated, they have it done to not stay behind, to avoid being discriminated. In any of those activities they have gone so far, beyond migrations which preceded them by nearly half a century. There’s no hospital in United States where there is no Cuban doctor. No newspaper where there is no Cuban journalist, or a bank where there is no Cuban banker, or advertisement company without a Cuban, or a school without a Cuban teacher, or a university without a Cuban professor. In the Major League Baseball their names also shine. In Madrid, the first Latin American poet is a black Cuban. At Coca Cola, Kellogg s, McCormick, Pepsi Cola and many others their leader is or was a Cuban. In the Congress in Washington there are four Cubans, in the U.S. Senate there are two, the Minister of Commerce is a Cuban, the Deputy Minister of Health is a Cuban doctor. Wow, they are few in this country and arrived very recently.

In the borrowed land from abroad they seem to always carry on the forehead the mark of the place they came from. Cubans take Cuba with them. They praise and worship it, because, as well as in the forehead they wear it in they heart. But there is something in the Cuban exile superior to that triumphant career, and that is their hatred to the despotism from which they fled and their love for the land they left. That is what separates and defines them. That gives to their triumphs in the midst of rootlessness, a greatness that otherwise they would not have.

They have finally settled on this land that had received them and where they live on the material things many times better than how they lived in Cuba. But even having everything, if they lack Cuba, they have nothing. Perhaps for this reason they have made their Cuba here. So if you take a good look, you will see that sometimes it seems that the Cuban laughs, but is really crying inside. His son is born, grows, graduates from the University, but the Cuban sighs. “Oh, if he were in my Cuba!”. He buys a house, a car or a boat and still sighing. “Ah! If I had everything of this in Cuba!” In a mysterious way, which they can not define, there is a link that drags them over there.

Now that he lost his country, he gets to know that he can not live without Cuba, and he dreams of it at night, and enhances its values and beauty, and idealizes it, and blames himself for not having understood it better, and recreates it in his songs and dances and relive their stories in their customs and their food. Why do Cubans buy today more Cubans books than ever?. Why are their houses, their businesses and their offices filled with palms, flags, coats of arms and portraits of José Martí? Why are they U.S. citizens but STILL CUBANS? Why do they meet in their municipalities formed in exile, erasing old antagonisms of party or class?

Because the Cuban knows that the only thing that genuinely belonged to him was HIS CUBA and to it they want to return. They do not care about being returned their residence or business, if they had. All they want is to return home. The house where he was born was destroyed, the village he knew has become unrecognizable, his mother has died. It doesn’t matter. The exiled Cuban wants anyway go to that house in that village and to that tomb. The homeland starts there.

While in Habana, got a chance to say hello to famed HR crusader Yoani Sanchez of Generacion Y. For facts and truth about the status of Cubans visit Yoani's blog.

Went down to Cuba with my sweetie Kate to catch rays, catch up with friends, and get an up to the minute update on how things are going as well as see how Cubanos were celebrating 50 years of papa Fidel. Last year went to Santiago de Cuba, so it's been two years since my last visit to the place.
The more things change, the more they stay the same and the more they don't.
First off - for the first time in my eight years of travelling to Cuba the food was great - providing you have about $25 pp per meal to spend. Not so good for the local folks. Langosta was available almost everywhere - likely to make the 50th anniversary more celebratory for those who can afford to buy it.
The license fees for paladars (as high as $1500 / mo) have changed the entire dynamic of eating - paladars are getting squeezed out of business and need to charge much higher prices than before - more than gov't restaurants.
They can't make do with $7 pollo, so are selling fixed price meals at around $20, which is costing them customers to their public sector competitors. Quick - call the CFIB.
Police harassment of residents was not being exercised as strongly as two years ago and several buildings along the Malecon are renovated or in the process of being so. The 50th anniversary celebration on Jan 1 wasn't noticeable; a big salsa party was held on the Malecon near the Hotel Nacional, and it was loud and a lot of people attended, but mostly Cubans just went about their business - survival.
Kate and I tracked down a little girl and her mom that I'd met through a friend two years ago - they had shared Christmas Dinner with us. I had taken some delightful pictures and wanted to present them. I did and they were delighted!
Listened to lots of okay music, nothing really great except for a string orchestra concert at St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral. Nacional Ballet was, of course, outstanding - Alicia Alonso was present which made it more special. Went to a friend's birthday party was a buncha interesting characters there. One guy made a point of letting me know he just got out of prison for murder. In Cuba the penalty for murder is 8 years, the penalty for killing a cow is 10 years. I understand that government is still clamping down on unlicensed attempts by Cubans to feed themselves - some have been arrested for catching fish and growing vegetables.
Met Yoani Sanchez who is the famed blogger I link to a lot who is the best source for real news in Cuba. She remains under watch by the government, and plays a dangerous game to get her blog reports posted.
Arrived home at 0400 on Tuesday to find neither kids nor dog present, just a note that the kids were staying with person who was looking after dog. Smelled fishy. Was awoken at 0900 by said dog watching person who advised that instead of looking after our much loved little hairy family member, they let it get killed by a car. We are feeling great pain.

Entire Blog entry at: http://desdecuba.com/generationy/?p=362
Yoanie Sanchez is a Cuban hero - daring to expose Castro regime's human rights violations.

While preparing extensive reports on the fiftieth anniversary of the Cuban Revolution, few ask themselves if the celebration is the birthday of a living creature, or simply the anniversary of something that happened. Revolutions don’t last half a century I advise those who ask me. They end up devouring and excreting themselves in authoritarianism, control and immobility. They always expire, trying to make themselves eternal. They die because they want to remain unchanged.

What began on that first of January has been, according to many, under the earth for many years. The debate seems to be around the date of the funeral. For Reinaldo, it died that August of 1968 when our bearded leader hailed the entry of tanks into Prague. My mother saw the death throes of the Revolution when they imposed the death sentence on General Arnoldo Ochoa. And the Black Spring of March of 2003, with its arrests and summary trials, was the final death rattle heard by some stubborn believers who had believed it was still alive.

I’m telling you, I met its corpse.