Mandy Macdonald - Cuba--Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

eISBN: 978-1-85733-578-1

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue entry for this book is available from the
British Library

Copyright 2006 Kuperard
Second printing (revised) 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Culture Smart! is a registered trademark of Bravo Ltd

First published in Great Britain 2006
by Kuperard, an imprint of Bravo Ltd
59 Hutton Grove, London N12 8DS
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8446 2440 Fax: +44 (0) 20 8446 2441
www.culturesmart.co.uk
Inquiries:

Series Editor Geoffrey Chesler

Cover image: Market scene in Hue, North Vietnam.
Travel Ink/Colin Marshall

v3.1

MANDY MACDONALD is an Australian writer, researcher, editor, and translator living in Scotland. A graduate of Sydney and Cambridge Universities, she specializes in international affairs with a particular emphasis on Latin American development issues and gender equality. She has lived and worked in Cuba as a translator and has written articles and books on Cuba and Central America.

The Culture Smart! series is continuing to expand.
For further information and latest titles visit
www.culturesmartguides.com

The publishers would like to thank CultureSmart!Consulting for its help in researching and developing the concept for this series.

CultureSmart!Consulting creates tailor-made seminars and consultancy programs to meet a wide range of corporate, public-sector, and individual needs. Whether delivering courses on multicultural team building in the USA, preparing Chinese engineers for a posting in Europe, training call-center staff in India, or raising the awareness of police forces to the needs of diverse ethnic communities, it provides essential, practical, and powerful skills worldwide to an increasingly international workforce.

For details, visit www.culturesmartconsulting.com

CultureSmart!Consulting and CultureSmart! guides have both contributed to and featured regularly in the weekly travel program Fast Track on BBC World TV.

Cuba is extensively written about, and from a very broad spectrum of political opinion, of which the loudest and most inflexible voices are heard at the extremes. I hope in this little guide to steer a course between the rock of uncritical support for Fidel Castros government and the hard place of U.S.based Cuban exiles hatred of it. What is undeniable is that Cuba is endlessly fascinating and full of contradictions: a poor country with one of the best health care systems in the world, a developing country with almost 100 percent literacy; andas many commentators point outone of the few countries in the world to have seen off three imperial powers: Spain, the United States, and the Soviet Union.

To a great extent, the country is symbolized by its president, commander-in-chief, and mximo lder, Fidel Castro, and he is inevitably central to any account of Cuba. Surrounded by speculation and the source of endless anecdotes, he excites ferocious loyalty, entrenched hatred, and pretty much every emotion in betweenthe only common factor is that you cant ignore him. It is now widely believed that he will leave office only when he is carried out; but he will leave in place a government and a political class run no longer by superannuated revolutionaries but by a new generation of young, university-educated, competent politicians and administrators who have been groomed for government over the years.

In this book you will find chapters on the history and the values that together make Cuba the unique mixture of cultural vibrancy and political intransigence it is today. We look at what everyday life is like for Cubans, how they celebrate on special occasions, and how you can meet Cubans outside the tourist enclaves. We offer some hints on traveling around the country, on activities beyond the beach that you can enjoy as a visitor, and on doing business in Cuba.

Cuba is a great deal more than its controversial system of government. It is physically beautiful and seductive, and it has a rich and ever-evolving culture that existed long before the revolution of 1959 and will certainly long outlive it. The Cuban people are tough, resilient, egalitarian, and pathologically sociable. At the same time they can be opinionated, self-dramatizing, and sometimes infuriating or exhausting to be with. But they are always generous-spirited and invigorating. In Culture Smart! Cuba, we aim to help you get to know them better.