The Social World

Tag: Che Guevara

  • In Cuba, a revolution is over

    In Cuba, a revolution is over

    If you’ve ever thought of visiting the crocodile-shaped island of Cuba, or run into someone recently returned from sultry nights in the country’s salsa halls, there’s a good chance you’ll have heard the phrase “See it before it changes.” And I don’t mean because of Hurricane Melissa.

    The idea is that the centrally planned communist state, one of the last on Earth, will soon morph into America and a balmy Brigadoon full of people unencumbered by money, modern cars or Alexa will evaporate.

    I think most people, if they knew what Cubans have endured, wouldn’t use that phrase, which is up there in its lack of tact with “they’re poor but they’re happy.”

    But shortly after I arrived on the Caribbean island almost eight years ago, the same idea was put to me by a Cuban, although in a different way. She asked: “When does a revolution end?” That’s a question that has stayed with me. I remember my sweaty journey in from Havana’s José Martí International Airport that January 2018 evening. Having visited the island regularly before, on the cusp of turning 50 I’d come for a three-month break. I’m still here, married, with a four-year-old son.

    The roadside billboards advertised nothing other than the government’s answer to my friend’s question: “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!” (An imperfect translation: “Until the eternal victory.”)

    At the time, the country was still enjoying a great burst of hope that had begun in 2016, when then-US president Barack Obama flew in to “bury the last remnant of the Cold War.” The Rolling Stones played and Chanel used Havana as a catwalk.

    Yet, the city still had rebel undercurrents that I remembered from earlier visits, a population of offbeat expats, some on the run from the US authorities. There were fraudsters and rogue CIA agents, Black Panthers and South and Central American liberation fighters – or terrorists, depending on your point of view.

    It was still easy to meet Cubans who, if critical of the day-to-day work of the government, supported the Castro brothers’ grand project. The young intellectuals, the artists and musicians, were often offended by the abuse being thrown across the Florida Straits by the exile community in Miami.

    The older generation were even more bonded to the revolution. Having answered Che Guevara’s call to subsume personal ambition to the common good, they were living on the promised reward of free healthcare and food.

    The government, however, which controlled everything including the importation of food, was low on funds, a situation soon worsened by the Covid pandemic. Shortages cut in, with days-long lines for essentials. Botched economic reforms then saw inflation take hold and pensions and wages reduced, in real terms, to what is now less than $10 a month.

    Soon many people were pondering when a revolution ends. In July 2021, protests erupted and were put down with force. Private entrepreneurs were given permission to import food, sold at prices far beyond what most people could pay. The rations of rice, sugar and beans distributed by state bodegas faltered.

    While there have always been people who go through the street-corner rubbish bins, their numbers blossomed. Older people, their dignity still showing in their neat if frayed clothes, began to ask for money from other Cubans on the street. The fumigators who used to demand access to your house to spray for mosquitoes disappeared.

    A grand exodus began, with estimates of up to 18 percent of the population leaving for the US, Latin America, Spain and oddly – due to a lack of visa restrictions – Serbia. Some fools even went to Russia to fight against Ukraine. The obsolescent electricity grid collapsed, again and again, and the water system with it. Power cuts have become a fact of life.

    I live a far more privileged life than most of my neighbors, but I find the water shortages hard. Nothing spells “¡Hasta la victoria siempre!” like glancing up to see your child pooping on the floor when you haven’t had running water for two days. But, like the frog in boiling water (lucky him), somehow we seem to get used to it.

    It’s not easy. As I write, the awful Hurricane Melissa, which caused chaos in Jamaica, carried on through Cuba’s east, bringing landslides, flooding and misery. Meanwhile, there is an outbreak of chikungunya fever, spread by the mosquitos that the state can no longer afford to spray against. (Chikungunya means “contortion” in Tanzanian Makonde, and is as much fun as it sounds.)

    Yet, to my surprise, I still feel that same thrill as I take the sweaty journey in from the airport, past the increasingly faded slogans on the billboards, through this city of crumbling grandeur, to what’s become my home, looking forward to being among the Cubans once more. This is what I hope to write about in this column as we move forward.

    So, when does a revolution end? I was talking to my Cuban friend again, blathering on about how her question could currently be asked of the American Revolution. But she remained focused on Cuba’s own, saying: “Maybe it’s already over, and we just haven’t noticed it.”

    This article was originally published in The Spectator’s November 10, 2025 World edition.

  • Socialism ends in Bolivia after two decades

    Socialism ends in Bolivia after two decades

    Bolivia is to be treated to a nail-biting run-off this autumn between two conservatives in the race to be the next president after the spectacular collapse of the socialist movement that has dominated the landlocked state for the past twenty years.

    A presidential race between two right-wingers is unusual in Latin America whose countries in recent years has been largely run by democratically elected leftists after the fall of the brutal military dictatorships that ruled so many states in the 1970s and 1980s.

    The second round of Bolivia’s presidential race will be decided on October 19th between the veteran former President Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, 65, who gained 26 percent of the poll, and his center-right rival Rodrigo Paz Pereira, 57. Senator Paz Pereira, a relative political unknown, (though his father Jaime Paz Zamora was president in the early 90s), led the race with 32 percent after the first round this weekend, having started with just 3 percent in polls at the outset of the campaign.

    But the big loser in the race is the Movimento Al Socialismo (MaS) the left-wing movement that has held power in Bolivia for most of the past two decades. The outgoing MaS President, Luis Arce, a British-educated economist, chose not to risk running again amidst mounting unpopularity, and his fears were borne out when the MaS candidate Luis del Castillo, 36, was reduced to a humiliating 3.15 percent.

    MaS is blamed by many for Bolivia’s worsening economic woes, including steadily rising inflation, but the devastating defeat in a country where the left has traditionally enjoyed strong support is a stinging indictment of MaS’s perceived mismanagement.

    MaS was also undermined by a bitter dispute between President Arce and his predecessor, the charismatic Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous Indian president, whose controversial rule ended in 2019 with his exile.

    Now back in Bolivia, but forbidden to run again for the Presidency, Morales was accused of having sex with a 15-year-old girl while in office – a charge that he denies. Morales fell out with Arce, who served as his Finance Minister, but says he also fears the consequences of a right-wing presidency. Both Pereira and Quiroga have threatened to arrest Morales if they win.

    Morales enjoyed ecstatic support from his own indigenous people, but their patience seems to have run out with the mess that his MaS regime made of the economy.  A competent government would be a welcome improvement, especially considering the discovery of large deposits of lithium in Bolivia, a mineral vital in the manufacture of mobiles, laptops and SUVs.

    A period of stability and increased prosperity would make a change for a country that has traditionally swung between military dictatorship and democracy. In 1967, the legendary left-wing revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was hunted down and killed by Bolivian special forces after the Cuban rebel attempted to launch an uprising among Bolivia’s impoverished peasants.

    The swing to the right indicated by the result of Sunday’s first round could mean that Bolivia is following Argentina, where President Javier Milei was elected in 2023 on a platform of radical libertarian economic reforms combined with conservative social attitudes.

  • The restaurant that set Miami ablaze

    The restaurant that set Miami ablaze

    You’d think that a restaurant named Café Habana would be a perfect fit in Miami. But when it emerged this week that the New Yorker-owned joint specializing in Cuban/Mexican fusion was “inspired by a storied Mexico City hangout, where legend has it Che Guevara and Fidel Castro plotted the Cuban Revolution,” all hell predictably broke loose.

    The restaurant, slated to open in downtown Miami in the spring, has since scrubbed the Castro and Che reference from its website. But no amount of damage control will appease commie-hating Miamians, many of whom are surely cooking up protest plans, pots and pans at the ready.

    The original Café Habana opened in New York in 1997, and like so many other restaurants before it — the famed Carbone, etc. — its ownership decided to head down south to escape the cold and blue-state pandemic paranoia. Miami, the restauranteurs surely thought, would be a free-for-all and a haven for its overpriced and overrated fare. They’re mostly right, of course. Miami is open and free and down for just about anything. But that same Miami, my ignorant blue-state friends, is not down with communist-themed restaurants.

    The restauranteurs are feeling the heat and are sure to alter Café Habana’s theme, but if they want a true down and dirty Miami-style free for all, maybe these New York bros should commit to the commie-loving gimmick and open the place as they originally intended. Throw up some pictures of the bearded bastards. Have waitresses parading around in olive-green military garb while they puff on fat Cuban cigars. Perhaps even have a kitschy little theme night where guests playact as political prisoners and are holed up in a private dining area away from all the other guests to eat in near darkness — fancy candle lights provided, of course — and munch on some high-end slop infused with beet puree and tamarind extract.

    Go all in, amigos. It’ll be such a fusion of chaos, old Cubans in walkers and bullhorns descending on downtown Miami and reliving the Bay of Pigs invasion alongside young Cubanitas letting it all hang out and looking for any excuse to take the dancing to the streets. The New York bros would never have to advertise again. Café Habana might be in ruins by the end of opening night, but no one ever said the restaurant game was easy.

    The restauranteurs surely — sadly — won’t go this route, but their massive mishap couldn’t have come at a worse time, and not because Miami is fresh off of last summer’s anti-communist protests. Miamians have a long history of hating commies, but there’s a new band of usurpers they’re beginning to hate almost as much: monied blue-state outsiders, especially from the Northeast, who are invading the city and attempting to take it over.

    The pandemic-influx honeymoon is over now and the disdain for the invaders is beginning to bubble to the surface, driven by skyrocketing rents and a mayor who’s seemingly obsessed with courting tech bros. So it’s beautifully ironic that Miamians newfound hate for elite outsiders will be directed at a band of clueless New York restauranteurs who just so happen to idolize the only people that locals hate more than them. This is a category five shitstorm.

    Miami is a free-for-all, but the chaos is for the most par controlled. A Miamian knows that certain American traffic laws don’t fly down here, and if you take to streets with the mindset of a sweet Midwesterner, you’ll never get where you’re going. A Miamian knows which hoods to avoid, and which hoods offer up a good time, and how these hoods are often separated by a single street. A Miamian dreads, but also kind of looks forward to hurricane season — there’s nothing like a party induced by an incoming storm.

    The point is that, down here in the 305, away from all you Americans, Miamians have been mostly left to our own devices. In the past, outsiders came for a weekend, got a taste of the action, and then bolted. But now the outsiders have taken command and are ushering in a new form of chaos Miamians are unaccustomed to.

    Miami feels like it’s transforming before our very eyes, and there’s not much, if anything, that we can do about it. Rents keep going up and up. Outsiders with no connection to the city’s culture and history, like the Café Habana crew, are flooding into town and reshaping Miami in their image. Local politicians are either welcoming the outsiders or clueless as to how to even begin navigating this shifting landscape. The controlled chaos they were used to — that they controlled — is gone. For better or worse, Miami, a city of perpetual change, of booms and busts, in transforming once again.

    The guys behind Café Habana surely didn’t have any ill intent behind their idiotic mistake. But their arrogance and lack of due diligence epitomizes what Miamians have feared ever since their city became the “freest” and hippest place to be — that they’re coming, they’re staying, and they’re changing everything.