Cuban Rock Climbers Inspired by Foreigners Irk Castro Regime
Youths are asked for permits and visited by Officials; no fraternizing allowed.
(Wall Street Journal – Tues. Nov 28, 2006 – front page)
Vinales, Cuba – Seventy feet up a sheer limestone cliff known as La Cuchillita, or Little Blade, 17-year-old Roylandi Gonzalez held onto a ledge by his fingertips. Then he glanced down to check the harness around his waist, grabbed hold of the rope that was tethered above him and started shimmying downward.
Over the past several years, adventurous Cuban youths like Mr. Gonzalez, schooled by an influx of foreign rock climbers, have turned this western town into an extreme-sport mecca. Climbers test their mettle on dramatic crags, barely touched by man, which soar above the green valley designated as a UN World Heritage Site.
But climbers who have conquered Vinale’s jagged peaks and imposing walls are now bumping up against a more formidable obstacle: the Communist political system. As. Mr. Gonzalez touched earth and removed his hard hat, he cast a wary eye for park rangers and police. “They threaten us and chase us off the hills,â€
Cuban Rock Climbers
Yes, interesting article. Their government is messed up too. What gets me mad is US citizens can't go to Cuba. Brits and Canadians, and anyone else can go climbing there, but not us. It would be great to be able to climb there in winter - lots cheaper than flying to Thailand. Write to your congressmen: open cuba.
Just fly to Canada first. There was a write up about all of the outdoor activities in Cuba recently in National Geographic Adventure and different websites for travel agencies in Canada that can arrange travel plans to Cuba for Americans.
"Birth and death are easy. Life is hard." -Tom Robbins in Jitterbug Perfume
Bashie wrote:Yes, interesting article. Their government is messed up too. What gets me mad is US citizens can't go to Cuba. Brits and Canadians, and anyone else can go climbing there, but not us. It would be great to be able to climb there in winter - lots cheaper than flying to Thailand. Write to your congressmen: open cuba.
It used to be that if you were:
1. going with an approved educational trip, you could go as a student
2. as a reporter
3. as a researcher.
But Bush has since clamped down on those categories.
I went, legally, 6 years ago and it was AWESOME!
I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
- Robert McCloskey
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
- Emo Philips
- Robert McCloskey
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing.
- Emo Philips
Former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill famously said "All po.litics is local."
The whole problem with the "Trading with the Enemy" Act (the basis for the de facto ban on American trade/tourism with Cuba) is that it's a lousy tool for improving the lives of ordinay Cubans, but it's great fodder of US domestic pol.itics. (Same thing for the Helms-Burton Act). Pol.iticians have been getting campaign contributions from the "nutjob anti-Castro Cuban American Community" for years in exchange for proposing and, unfortunately sometimes passing, thse stupid laws. Plus it's been great for the schlockiest right-wing US pol.iticians to have a little bastion of the "Communist Threat" 90 miles from Florida - gives you something to rant about and claim that you're protecting your district in whereever from a "Red Dawn" scenario!
Let's be clear - the Castro regeime sucks. They hold people in prisions without charges and loaded the judiciary with judges who put their political allegence ahead of the rule of law, they're anti-democratic and run a one-party political system, they use fear of absurd exterior and interior threats to cow the population into obedience... (uh, good thing we don't have any of that here in the US...
)
But it's good to know that the Cuban bureaucrats are as short-sighted, paranoid and stupid as you would expect. They seem to have no clue how much Armando's work helps to romanticize Cuba in the eyes of many thousands of Americans.
The whole problem with the "Trading with the Enemy" Act (the basis for the de facto ban on American trade/tourism with Cuba) is that it's a lousy tool for improving the lives of ordinay Cubans, but it's great fodder of US domestic pol.itics. (Same thing for the Helms-Burton Act). Pol.iticians have been getting campaign contributions from the "nutjob anti-Castro Cuban American Community" for years in exchange for proposing and, unfortunately sometimes passing, thse stupid laws. Plus it's been great for the schlockiest right-wing US pol.iticians to have a little bastion of the "Communist Threat" 90 miles from Florida - gives you something to rant about and claim that you're protecting your district in whereever from a "Red Dawn" scenario!
Let's be clear - the Castro regeime sucks. They hold people in prisions without charges and loaded the judiciary with judges who put their political allegence ahead of the rule of law, they're anti-democratic and run a one-party political system, they use fear of absurd exterior and interior threats to cow the population into obedience... (uh, good thing we don't have any of that here in the US...
)But it's good to know that the Cuban bureaucrats are as short-sighted, paranoid and stupid as you would expect. They seem to have no clue how much Armando's work helps to romanticize Cuba in the eyes of many thousands of Americans.
Bacon is meat candy.