Thanks for the links, Piers. On just a quick look (don't have much time right now)...yes, I'd say that's an excellent article on Cuba. It is no paradise. It is far from perfect. What it is though, is a tremedous step up from the grotesquely corrupt conditions that preceded Castro's successful revolution on that island. While visiting there I met many people who supported the revolution and many who did not...all for their own particular reasons. The ones who did not tended to be young men...people with no memory of life under the Batista government or of the Revolution. Castro is all they have ever known, and like most young men they are tired of the "old men in charge" and restless for a change. They have little or no idea what the Revolution gave them...but they do long for DVD players and stuff like that. There is quite a lack of modern consumer goods in Cuba.

You can buy anything you want in Trinidad at the fancy shopping centres...if you can afford it. Of course, somebody may kill you for it on your way back home...or break into your house and take it. That's why so many people in Trinidad have guard dogs on their property...and broken glass on top of their walls, and stuff like that.