Peter Coyote Article About Cuba

In today's San Francisco Chronicle, they printed an article by the actor and writer, Peter Coyote, about traveling in Cuba. He is a Bay Area lad after all. People in the Bay Area love to go traveling and meeting new people, experiencing other cultures. (Personally, I head up Slightly Agoraphobic Twats Against Nirvana ... so I won't be traveling there. I could never be a Van Dyke ... but that's an article of a different fish -- see this week's New Yorker.)

Peter Coyote is a damn fine writer! The article is beautifully written and very interesting. Here's an excerpt:

Eventually, our bags our cleared, our coffee cups are drained and we are released to the balmy winds of Cuba. Three minutes from the clean and modern airport, I am surprised to see a farmer plowing an extensive field with a team of oxen. Then we pass a cart on the road drawn by an ox and I am reminded of the costs the U.S. trade embargo has levied on Cuba. It is a poor country and must struggle for the resources of energy, cash, etc., that many countries take for granted. It's not, as neo-cons and free-market ideologues would have us believe, simply because the economy is socialist -- France, Britain and Italy have all been socialist countries at one time or another, and thrived. It is because as soon as it became clear that Fidel intended a communist model in Cuba, the United States reacted as if he were a syphilitic they had caught in the first lady's bed. Thus began the relentless 50-year struggle to overthrow, undermine and suborn the Cuban revolution -- an unseemly intention where the richest, most powerful country in the world dedicated inordinate amounts of resources to destabilizing a tiny Caribbean nation and, if they couldn't assassinate its leader, tried in whatever way they could to destabilize its economy and terrorize its people. Isn't that how we would define terrorism, or have I missed something?

President Obama, please revoke the embargo against Cuba!

Hey, they, too, fly the old red, white, and blue!

Plus, if you ask me, I think they're going to be in better shape than we are if the collapse keeps collapsing. They already know how to get things done without all the damn gadgets and oil. We're gonna be begging them for oxen!

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