Word: cuba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...qualities that hit a visitor most forcibly on arrival in Cuba are its beauty and its buoyancy: the crooked streets and sunlit Spanish courtyards of Old Havana; the chrome-polished 1953 Chevrolets that croak along tree-lined streets past faded but still gracious homes of lemon yellow, orange and sky blue; the warm breeze that comes off the sea at night. In contrast to the gray functionalism of other Communist countries, Cuba is, after all, a decidedly Caribbean island of gaiety and light. On balmy nights, the sound of rumbas pulses through Coppelia, the central park, where brightly dressed teenagers...
...prostitution, which flourished when the place was a raffish offshore playground for Americans, have now gone underground. But in the face of those advances, the man in the Havana street is still unable to speak or travel as he pleases. Money is more than ever in desperately short supply. "Cuba is suffering an economic crisis of massive proportions," says a foreign diplomat. "Here is a country with no free press, no opposition parties, no capital flight, a controlled economy and $4.6 billion from the Soviets each year -- and they're still, in hard-currency terms, almost bankrupt...
...want you to come and do three months of military service." "If I do," said the dissenter, "I will lose my job." "No problem," said the recruiter. "We will take care of you." The uninvited visitor ultimately agreed to go away, indicating that some free choice still exists in Cuba. But that the summons can come at all shows just how fragile that freedom remains...
...stares across at an equally large poster of Barry Manilow. Downtown in central Havana, a 15-year-old schoolgirl goes him one better. On top of her dresser she has carefully fashioned a collage of her three great heroes: Michael Jackson, Jesus and Che. Thus the unlikely eclecticism of Cuba's revolutionary experiment...
Reagan's list of loonies included Iran, Libya, North Korea, Cuba and Nicaragua. In fact, this is a list of small states that have tormented the U.S., delivering pinpricks that America has found impossible either to tolerate or prevent. Admitting this, however, is difficult. Easier to dismiss it all as the work of crazy states. Reagan was certainly right that these countries are "united by their fanatical hatred of the United States." But that in itself is not proof of derangement. Hatred is a common, often useful, phenomenon in international relations. And fanaticism is a measure of passion, not irrationality...