Jon Lee Anderson

But this time it was that plus no tourists,

And no people.

There was less people everywhere.

And I finally realized, wow, it's true.

The exodus, there is literally less people.

You notice that there are less people.

Every plaza I went to was empty of people.

The old crowded parts of old Havana where, you know, people would get hustled by people.

people selling cigars, girls, people wanting you to go in their restaurants.

There was still a few hustlers there, but now there were indigent old men lying on the street.

And when you got to the famous old colonial plazas, it was a guy with no legs, a couple of old women offering

how shall I put this, sexual favors, sort of grandmotherly aged.

It was miserable.

Yeah, you know, the thing is, for an older generation of Cubans that sort of came of age with the revolution and for a while believed in it, they would put up with the penuries, with the scarcities, because Fidel was still alive, Fidel Castro was still alive, this amazingly charismatic leader telling them

that the reason why they were putting up with scarcities was because of the blockade, as they called the American embargo.

And there was an element of truth to that.

During the Cold War, there was this kind of us and them.

There was a sense of purpose.

But that's been diminishing for years now.

For the United States, Cuba doesn't mean anything anymore.