Word: santiagos
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...mine workers in the mountain town of El Cobre, west of Santiago de Cuba in Oriente province, where the revolution was born, are afraid of the dreamers in Havana. Oh, yes, Cuba needs to change, says a 57-year-old welder we'll call Alberto. "But we need something for everybody, not just for a few." He does not want his real name used, and he keeps looking nervously over his shoulder. "If they see me talking to you, tomorrow I will have trouble with the police," he says...
...much of the lethargy is fear? Cuba's detachment from the Soviet orbit has not lessened the state's powerful instruments of political control. The security apparatus is omnipresent. Driving through Palma Soriano in the mountains above Santiago, we stop in a tiny cafe and strike up a conversation with a customer. In less than five minutes, a car screeches to a halt outside and four hard-eyed men stride in. Everyone falls silent as they shake hands all around, staring intently into each face. We get up to leave, and the leader smugly inquires, "Going already?" Marked...
Bone-thin after four years of declining rations, Mario Caballero, a 52-year- old school administrator in Santiago de Cuba, is one of the older generation whose faith in Fidel is well-nigh religious. If his rhetoric recalls communist dogma of the '50s, it still reflects sentiments deeply etched in the Cuban soul. "Before, our best land was Yankee. The sugar was Yankee. The electric system was Yankee. The phones were Yankee." Never mind that the sugar crop is failing for the second year, that electricity and phones rarely work. "We may be living through a special period," he says...
...precipitous descent. On each successive appearance, Matthew Bakal, as King Ferdinand, becomes increasingly wooden. Jennifer Breheny interprets Queen Isabella as a Marie Antoinette-Queen of Hearts hybrid, gleefully discussing mass executions in the off-with-her-head mode. Kitt Hirasaki portrays the severe Master of the Order of Santiago like a spoilt schoolboy, ready to stamp his feet with frustration...
...Cuba's case, the choice was to promote economic reform first. That will transform the state." The yummies admit that major alterations in the political system are unlikely anytime soon. "How can you open up political reform while the economy is a mess? It's suicidal," argues political scientist Santiago Perez Benitez. "Gorbachev did that, but now there's no one in Russia to make the economic changes...