CUBA: Perfect Destination For A Quiet, Lazy Holiday And Timelessness

Despite a succession of sweeping changes in recent years – rapprochement with the US, Fidel Castro’s death – the rhythm of life on the island remains as languid as ever.

In Old Havana, locals still watch life go by from the balconies of their dilapidated colonial buildings, as classic American cars putter down cobblestone streets and seemingly endless games of dominoes play out on sidewalk tables.

Tourists love the island’s timelessness, which gives it the aura of a living postcard immune to change.

For Cubans, who have made standing in line an art form and bureaucracy a way of life, this vestige of communism is less charming. “We live in slow motion – because we’re an island, because it’s the Caribbean and because of the whole legacy of socialism,” said writer Wendy Guerra, a rising star of Cuban literature.

“Time isn’t money here. Very few people produce anything for themselves. The country stopped producing a long time ago. People act like they’re working, and the state acts like it pays them,” the 46-year-old novelist and poet said.

“There’s no schedule. No one ever has to be somewhere urgently. There’s no traffic, and public transportation problems have made us all officially unpunctual.”

In her novel Everyone Leaves, Guerra’s heroine ends up frozen on Havana’s famous seaside boulevard, the Malecon, “stuck in the immobility of Cuba.”

Cuban artist Alejandro Campins also addresses the island’s lethargy in his work. “Every Cuban’s subconscious is a waiting room,” he said.

Standing in line “is in our DNA,” said port agent Daniel Rios, 36, whose job involves a lot of queuing.

Speeding up

Many artists have found inspiration in Cuban time. “Coming to Cuba is like travelling back to the past. Time doesn’t move here,” said the artist Dagoberto Rodriguez.

He and a collaborator made waves in 2012 with a piece where a troupe danced backward up a Havana avenue, symbolizing Cubans’ peculiar relationship with time.

But things have been evolving since President Raul Castro came to power in 2008. Since he replaced his big brother Fidel, tourism has boomed, Wi-Fi hotspots have flourished and private restaurants and hotels have gone from banned to blossoming.

Besides the long-unthinkable rapprochement with Washington, Raul Castro has sought to modernize Cuba’s Soviet-style economy by allowing small private businesses, the sale of cars and homes, and international travel.

“Time has accelerated in Cuba as a result of the economic reforms,” said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a professor at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.

Not so fast

Still, the country is not exactly jumping to light speed.

“Time may be moving quickly by Cuban standards, but not by the standards of the rest of the world,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue research institute.

“For most Cubans, life remains unchanged even to this day.”

Nearly six decades after the Cuban Revolution, a Castro is still in power, dissent is muzzled, the US embargo remains in place and the island’s economy is 80% controlled by the state. Foreign investment is limited, and requires navigating a labyrinthine bureaucracy.

“Foreign corporations have a hard time understanding why things take so much longer here. A contract that would take three or four months somewhere else takes a year or two,” said cell phone maker Nokia’s Cuba representative, Charles Ferrer.

Cuba is stuck in “a different dimension of time,” said Cuban economist Pavel Vidal, who teaches in Colombia.

Raul Castro’s economic reforms, he said, could have been “faster and broader.” The president has said he will implement his reforms “without hurry, but without pausing.”

CUBA: Blame It On the Yanquis? Cuba Runs Out Of Beer Amidst Tourism Boom

The ubiquitous fridges that dispense beer in Cuba's bars, cafes and gas stations are running out of the island's favorite Cristal and Bucanero brands in recent weeks, as a surge in American tourists and new private watering holes strain the main brewery.

The ubiquitous fridges that dispense beer in Cuba's bars, cafes and gas stations are running out of the island's favorite Cristal and Bucanero brands in recent weeks, as a surge in American tourists and new private watering holes strain the main brewery.

Brewer Bucanero needs a new plant to keep pace with demand from tourists and a burgeoning private restaurant sector that competes with state-run outlets for supplies, Mayle Gonzalez, a sales executive at the company told state media on Friday.

As well as its namesake, Cerveceria Bucanero makes the Communist-led country's most widely consumed brew, Cristal. The company is a government joint venture with the world's largest brewer, Belgium's Anheuser Busch InBev .

After U.S. President Barack Obama eased travel restrictions to Cuba in his bid to end more than 50 years of enmity with the Caribbean nation, American tourists are arriving in significant numbers on the streets of Old Havana.

Hundreds will step off a cruise ship from Miami into the city next month, the first such voyage since the U.S. embargo that followed Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.

While the embargo remains in place, ordinary Cubans have warmed to their "Yanqui" neighbors, especially after Obama's visit to Cuba last month, the first by a sitting U.S. president in 88 years.

Cuba received a record 3.5 million visitors last year, up 17 percent from 2014. American visitors rose 77 percent to 161,000, in addition to hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans, testing the country's supply of hotel room, rental cars and beer.

The most recent tourism figures, for January, showed a similar pace of growth.

Small restaurants that cater to both tourists and Cubans have blossomed on the Caribbean island since President Raul Castro five years ago formalized changes designed to remove the Communist state from many small-scale economic activities.

"Private bars can go out and find supplies where they can, I can only sell what the government gives me," said the manager of a state-run bar that ran out of beer, while a private locale upstairs had a fridge full of cold bottles.

At its seventh Communist Party congress next week, Cuba's leadership is expected to push ahead with economic reforms outlined in 2011, although the tight-lipped party has given little sign of what will be discussed.

The congress is the country's main forum for defining leadership and economic policy for the next five years.

CUBA: Pope Meets Fidel Castro In Cuba

Pope Francis met with Fidel Castro on Sunday after urging tens of thousands of Cubans to serve one another and not an ideology, delivering a subtle jab at the communist system during a Mass celebrated under the gaze of an image of Che Guevara in Havana's iconic Plaza of the Revolution.

The Vatican described the 40-minute meeting at Castro's residence as informal and familial, with an exchange of books and discussion about big issues facing humanity, including Francis' recent encyclical on the environment and the global economic system.

Video of the encounter broadcast on Cuban state media showed the 89-year-old former president chatting animatedly with Francis and shaking the pope's hand, the pope standing in his white vestments and Castro sitting in a white button-down shirt and Adidas sweat top.

The meeting brought together the leader who shaped Cuba for the last half of the 20th century and Latin America's first pope, who many Cubans credit with opening a path to the future by mediating the warming diplomatic relations between their country and the United States. After his Cuba visit, the pope flies to Washington for his first ever trip to the U.S.

Since their historic deal, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro have reopened embassies in each other's countries, held a personal meeting, had at least two phone calls and launched a process aimed at normalizing ties in fields ranging from trade to tourism to telecommunications.

Francis called on both Fidel and Raul Castro after celebrating Mass in Havana's main plaza on his first full day in Cuba. Believers and non-believers alike streamed into the square before dawn, and they erupted in cheers when the pope spun through the crowd in his open-sided popemobile. Francis wound his way slowly through the masses and stopping to kiss children held up to him.

At one point, Francis was approached by a man who grabbed onto the popemobile and appeared to be speaking emotionally to the pontiff, who touched him on his hand and head before he was pulled away by security agents. Video showed what appeared to be the same man throwing leaflets in the air, and backers of a Cuban dissident group said on Twitter he was a member of the opposition.

The head of the opposition group Ladies in White said 22 of 24 members of her group who wanted to attend Mass were prevented from going by Cuban security agents. And two other well-known Cuban dissidents said agents detained them after the Vatican invited them to the pope's vespers service at the Cathedral of Havana.

Marta Beatriz Roque and Miriam Leiva received invitations from the office of the papal ambassador in Havana but said they were arrested as they tried to travel to the cathedral.

"They told me that I didn't have a credential and that I couldn't go to the pope's event that was taking place there in the Plaza of the Cathedral," Roque said.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said some dissidents were invited to events to receive a greeting from the pope, although not in a formal meeting. He said the dissidents never showed up but he could not confirm that it was because they were arrested.

While most Cubans are nominally Catholic, less than 10 percent practice their faith and Cuba is the least Catholic country in Latin America. The Vatican said 200,000 people attended Sunday's Mass, more than at similar celebrations in the same plaza by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012 and St. John Paul II in 1998.

"This is very important for us," said Mauren Gomez, who traveled some 155 miles from Villa Clara to Havana by bus, spending her time reciting the Rosary.

In his homily delivered under the gaze of a metal portrait of revolutionary fighter Che Guevara, Francis urged Cubans to care for one another out of a sense of service, not ideology. He encouraged them to refrain from judging each other by "looking to one side or the other to see what our neighbor is doing or not doing."

"Whoever wishes to be great must serve others, not be served by others," he said. "Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people."

Pope Francis and Cuba's Fidel Castro shake hands, in Havana, Cuba,

Many Cubans complain about the rigidity of the Cuban system in which nearly every aspect of life is controlled by the government, from cultural institutions to block-level neighborhood watch committees. While the system has softened in recent years, Cubans can be excluded or lose benefits if they are perceived as being disloyal to the revolution.

Cubans are also increasingly concerned about growing inequality, in which those with access to foreign capital live lives of relative luxury while others can barely feed themselves, generating jealousy and division.

"Being a Christian entails promoting the dignity of our brothers and sisters, fighting for it, living for it," Francis told the crowd.

Maria Regla González, a teacher, said she appreciated Francis' message of reconciliation.

"This is a crucial moment, and the pope's support for us is very important," she said. "He made a call for unity, and that's what we want."

Shortly after the Mass, Francis brought Fidel Castro three books including a volume of sermons by Fidel's former teacher, the Rev. Amando Llorente. Llorente taught at Colegio de Belen, a Jesuit high school where Fidel was a student. Llorente, a Spaniard, was forced out of the country after Castro's revolution and died in Miami in 2010.

Francis also brought two compact discs with Llorente's voice. Austen Ivereigh, author of "The Great Reformer: Francis and the Making of a Radical Pope," said he thinks the pontiff was using the Llorente books and recording to send a subtle message to Fidel, whose rule was marked by conflict with the Catholic Church and other groups.

"I can't help but think that it's Pope Francis inviting Fidel Castro to come to terms with his past," Ivereigh said. "There is clearly a lot of pain in this relationship," with Llorente.

Francis met afterward for an hour with Fidel's brother Raul, a declared atheist who has, perhaps jokingly, said he likes the pope so much he is thinking of returning to his Catholic roots. Francis thanked the 84-year-old leader for his pardon of thousands of petty criminals before his arrival. Castro presented the pontiff with a huge sculpture of the crucified Christ made of oars by the artist Kcho and a painting of the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, Cuba's patron saint.

The pontiff spoke off the cuff about the virtues of poverty at an evening vespers service in the San Cristobal Cathedral before a meeting with Cuban young people.

In an important aside, Francis ended Sunday's Mass with an appeal for Colombia's government and rebels, who have been holding peace talks in Havana for over two years, to put an end to South America's longest-running armed conflict.

"Please, we do not have the right to allow ourselves yet another failure on this path of peace and reconciliation," he said.