My cousin, Robert the Red, has actually been there, just a few years ago. For him, it's the worker's paradise: a free people liberated from colonialism and slave labor, rebuilding the country in their image. Sure, the economy is down and people are poor, but its only because of the Yanqui economic blockade. People will tell you what's on their mind, and speak freely, even critically, about the government. At least, all the people he met did so. But I suspect the government lets you talk all you want, as long as you don't organize. Still, I've learned that eyewitness testimony is not to be trusted. You only see what you expect to see. We all see the universe we want to see.

Other people whose opinions I also respect tell me its a dump, where the architectural and cultural treasures of the island are decaying from a lack of simple paint and plaster, where the environment is being devastated by desperate attempts to mine it for timber, crops, minerals and cattle (all for export), where the population lives off the hustle and the black market, everyone is on the make, although the Party lives pretty well, but not extravagantly so. The police and the militias have snappy uniforms. The Party folks have jeans and guayaberas. Everyone else is in t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops. Cuba is like the old Cold War East Germany, except its much poorer.

I won't go there, because I couldn't bear to eat good Cuban soul food at my hotel or restaurant, purchased with my American dollars, meals that were not available to the people who actually live there. The tourists have anything they need, if they have dollars or pounds or yen or marks or pesetas to buy it with. I don't want my dollars supporting that regime.

The Canadians and the Germans and the Dutch come for the hookers, young, beautiful girls with college degrees and multiple languages--free education, you know? You can take them anywhere with pride. And they are really cheap, if you pay in foreign currency. Drugs and AIDS are everywhere.

The national slogan is "there is no work, and if you work there's no pay, and if they pay you there's not enough, and if you scrape together enough there's nothing to buy".

THe official minimum wage for foreign companies hiring Cubans is $19US per month--paid in Cuban pesos, of course. You only get dollars if your relatives in Miami send you some. Now you know why the US Chamber of Commerce and Agribusiness is so keen on the Obama initiative. Vast potential markets, cheap labor, abundant natural resources, and a beautiful landscape and beaches ready for tourists. The Russians have left, but I hear the Chinese are everywhere.

Even if the regime falls tomorrow, it will take Cuba a century to recover its former civilization. The revolution has turned the population into predators and parasites, everyone who was able to leave left. And the ones who are managing to leave now are the scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. You can see them now in Miami, I call them hip-hop Cubans. They all have the baggy pants, the thousand yard stare and the chip on their shoulder. The current generation will have to die off completely so a new one can have a chance to grow up straight. As my other cousin tells me, (he's my age and came to the US at 16, and lives in Miami among the exiles), "They're not like your people that came to Tampa around the turn of the century, or even mine who came in the 60s. These are a whole new race of Cubans, and they are deadly."

Cuba is a gangster state, run like a big racket. It could be argued it's Communism that made it that way, but I think there's more to it than that. Puerto Rico was very similar when I lived there, as is the black ghetto, the Indian Reservation, the decaying Midwest small town, and there's nothing Communist about those places. I think its going to be that way for a long time, even if the Party is thrown out and replaced with some other economic system. Cuba is no Scandinavian social democracy, and I don't think its ever likely to wind up that way, regardless of what kind of politics takes over next. The social institutions of moderation and sound management have all been driven off. The best they can hope for now is a Party oligarchy on the Russian or Chinese model.

Of course, that's just what I hear, and most of my correspondents have just gone back to visit family and have no intention of ever living there again. I haven't been there since the summer of '58, and from what I remember, it was pretty and clean back then. There were poor people out in the country, but you never saw them.