Conversations With Cuba

by Ripley, C. Peter

• ISBN13: 9780820321639
• ISBN10: 082032163X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr

Summary

Here is a fresh story behind this passionate, struggling, frequently discouraged, but always proud country, told by ordinary Cuban citizens -- the people who still struggle with a revolution that is far from over. Sparked during his high school and college years by an admiration of the Cuban revolution -- the first successful bourgeois revolution of the twentieth century -- C. Peter Ripley subsequently developed a fascination with Cuban culture that took him on five illegal trips to the struggling country between 1991 and 1997. During his travels, Ripley visited and revisited the Cuban landscape and its people, closely following the lives of citizens who were deeply influenced by the revolution and its effects. Through his experiences and observations, Ripley taps the real hearts and minds behind his long-romanticized perceptions of the Cuban Revolution.

Conversations with Cuba takes place during the height of the "special period, " the ambiguous name given to the years of hardship following the end of the Soviet Union's vital aid to the country isolated by t

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Bob Shacochis
Acknowledgments	xvii
Batista's Vase	xix
REVOLUTION AND TOURISM May 1991
Gettin' Inside	3	(16)
Necessary Rules	19	(16)
Playa Giron	35	(11)
Casa Grande Hotel	46	(13)
Benedictions	59	(10)
THE SPECIAL PERIOD July 1992
Resolviendo	69	(21)
26th of July	90	(17)
FOOD AND DOLLARS December 1994
Dollars	107	(14)
Paulo and Neddie	121	(16)
FORMS AND TRADITIONS September 1995
Fathers and Sons	137	(12)
Things Held in Common	149	(7)
Seeking Santiago	156	(8)
Known in Santiago	164	(9)
Following Fidel	173	(10)
In Search of Saints	183	(12)
GOLD AND SCANDALS May 1997
Havana Gold	195	(8)
A Good Life	203	(16)
Acts of Public Scandal	219	(9)
Neddie and Luisa	228	(7)
Epilogue: July 1999	235	(9)
Second Epilogue: July 2000	244