Cuba - Lonely Planet [27]
1989 Former M-26-7 loyalist and hero of the Angolan War, General Arnaldo Ochoa is arrested on charges of corruption and drug trafficking. After being found guilty of treason by a military court, he is executed by firing squad.
1991 The Soviet Union collapses and Cuba heads for the worst economic collapse of modern times, entering what Castro calls a ‘Special Period in a Time of Peace.’
1993 Attempting to revive itself from its economic coma, Cuba legalizes the US dollar, opens up the country to tourism and allows limited forms of private enterprise.
1996 Miami ‘Brothers to the Rescue’ planes are shot down by Cuban jets, provoking Bill Clinton to sign the Helms-Burton Act, further tightening the terms of the US embargo.
1998 Pope John Paul II visits Cuba and is watched by more than one million people in Havana. Despite conversing politely with Castro, he diplomatically questions Cuba’s human-rights record.
2000 The Elián González affair adds new drama to fraught US-Cuban relations when five-year-old Elián is picked up at sea and brought (illegally) to the US. After an international furor, he is returned to his father in Cuba.
2002 Half of Cuba’s sugar refineries are closed, signaling the end of a three-century-long addiction to the boom-bust mono-crop. Laid-off sugar workers continue to draw full salaries and are offered free education grants.
2003 The Bush administration tightens the noose for US citizens traveling to Cuba. Many political dissidents are arrested by Cuban authorities in an island-wide crackdown.
2004 In a sharp reaction to the Bush administration’s new travel restrictions, Castro takes the US dollar out of circulation and charges all foreign visitors an 11% tax to change money.
2006 Castro is taken ill just before his 80th birthday with divertilitus disease and steps down from the day-to-day running of the country. He is replaced by his brother Raúl.
2008 Castro officially steps down as Cuban president after 49 years at the helm. His position is filled by Raúl Castro who spends his first few months in power passing moderate reforms.
2009 The inauguration of Barack Obama in the US signifies a long-awaited thaw in Cuban-US relations. In an early act of rapprochement, Obama loosens restrictions for Cuban-Americans returning to the island to visit relatives.
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The Culture
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THE NATIONAL PSYCHE
LIFESTYLE
ECONOMY
POPULATION
SPORT
MULTICULTURALISM
MEDIA
RELIGION
ARTS
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THE NATIONAL PSYCHE
Funny, gracious, generous, tactile and slow to anger, the Cuban people are the Irish of the Americas; a small nation with a big personality, and plenty of rum-fueled backs-to-the-wall boisterousness to go with it. Take the time to get to know them on their own turf and you’re halfway to understanding what this most confounding and contradictory of Caribbean countries is all about.
Survivors by nature and necessity, Cubans have long displayed an almost inexhaustible ability to bend the rules and ‘work things out’ when it matters. In a country where so much is impossible, anything becomes possible, and from the backstreets of Baracoa to the hedonistic heights of Havana nobody’s shy about ‘giving it a go.’
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For the best up-to-date Cuban cultural news in English go to www.cubanow.net for an easy-to-read and informative exposé on everything and everyone connected with Cuban culture from Frank Sinatra to Graham Greene.
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The two most overused verbs in the national phrasebook are conseguir (to get, manage) and resolver (to resolve, work out), and Cubans are experts at doing both. Their intuitive ability to bend the rules and make something out of nothing is borne out of economic necessity. In a small nation bucking modern sociopolitical realities, where monthly salaries top out at around the equivalent of US$25, survival can often mean getting innovative as a means of supplementing personal income. Cruise the crumbling streets of Centro Habana and you’ll see people conseguir-ing