Hate Canadians?

Hate Canadians?

Do I hate Canadians? It would be easy to hate Canadians for supplying Raul with the vital revenue necessary to pay for his police gang. After all, you Canadians, Europeans and other tourists are Raul’s last hope of staying in power. Without your money his terror apparatus would collapse in a matter of months. He and his brother have already mismanaged every other nook and cranny of the Cuban economy. After the Soviet Union collapsed following this exact business plan the country was heading south fast and people were actually beginning to revolt. Castro, realizing that he himself was a moron about matters of economic investment and management, decreed that capitalist dogs like Sherritt International, Thomas Cook and Virgin Atlantic, Spanish construction firms and many others seeking to profit on the backs of everyday Cubans’ fifty cents per day labor pool, be invited into Cuba for joint ventures. Of course most of these capitalists are very sorry they ever got into this swindle. So if you think Raul gives a rat’s ass about you tourists, this is how he treats his A-list customers. But that’s another story.

To answer my initial question – no, I do not hate any of you travelers. It is true that you all as a group are ignorant and too selfish to take the time to find out the truth about Cuba in lieu of using that time to soak up some rays at Plantation Raul. But life takes from the takers and gives to the givers. You cosmic types probably know it as karma. So even though I do not hate you and I believe that your cruelty to Cubans is not driven by malice but by ignorance, you ALL are doing a very bad thing by giving Raul your money. Therefore, in the universal scheme of things, even though you can claim ignorance, you will be punished for those bad things. It is just the way of things. The reason most never make the connection is because it doesn’t happen like on TV where the villain is punished before the credits start rolling every week. It may be decades from now when that horrible thing happens to you and you ask yourself: “Why? Why me?” Now you don’t need to ask. Bon Voyage…

Tomás Estrada-Palma