For me,
some of the most
exciting parts of travel are markets and street music. I love to see all
the stuff that people use
in their
daily life and street music is just
plain fun.
Farmers’ markets exist in
Farmers’ markets exist in
every country in
the world. Often
they are the only
source of food for
the people outside of things they
produce themselves. Markets in
Cuba are no exception. You can buy
nearly everything you need to feed
your family at the Sunday market in
Santa
Marta. Vendors hawk long
braids of
garlic and onions. There
are piles of
carrots, cabbages and
tomatoes. Sides of
pork, delicious
sausages and skinned rabbits
hang from hooks in the meat
market. Or, if you prefer, you can buy a rabbit to butcher at home. Missing
from
this is beef. In Cuba, it is illegal to
kill a cow. Doing so will bring a 20
year prison sentence.
from
this is beef. In Cuba, it is illegal to
kill a cow. Doing so will bring a 20
year prison sentence.
Cubans like to
joke that killing one’s
mother-in-law will get you only a
10 year sentence.
The
prohibition against killing a cow
dates to the early 1990s. Prior to
that, Cuba’s primary ally was the
Soviet Union. The USSR provided
big sums
of money and Cuba’s
exports went there.
When the
Soviet Union fell apart, this source
of money dried up. The Cuban
economy collapsed and the people
suffered greatly. Food became scarce and
people began
killing cows-cows they did not own so it became illegal to kill a
cow. Cubans refer to this time as their
“special period”. They emerged from it
in 1995 when they began
to exploit tourism.
Today, tourism is the biggest industry and people consider themselves lucky
when a family member becomes employed in it.
If there’s
anything you’ll find everywhere in Cuba, it’s music. “Guantanamera” is virtually the
national
anthem. The song is about
a young girl
from Guanatanamo province with whom the singer was in love and who left him. So, it’s kind of sad. However, a poem by José Martí can be sung to
the tune of Guantanamera so the song was 
often looked at as a coded way to
sing
the poem. José Martí is a great
hero of
the Cuban people.
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