Reply #43: Castro's Cruise Ship Remarks And More Unpleasant Facts [View All]

[Vogon_Glory]

Once again, a Fidel Castro admirer lets his enthusiasm for the current Cuban regime interfere with his ability to face unpleasant facts. Fidel Castro DID in fact say that about cruise ships.

Here's another citation:

http://www.ratb.org.uk/html/fidel150405.html

<<...There are many hotels and buildings there, but what they mostly have are the cruise ships —they come from miles around— that have everything on board; bedrooms, dining rooms, recreation, everything. What is more, they are ruining the economies of Caribbean countries which also suffer from hurricanes, droughts sometimes, and from measures, like those taken by Europe, which removed the preferential treatment their bananas had, because of pressure from the United States which protects and shelters its big transnational which have developed big plantations on the continental mainland and don't want to know anything about small competition —if that's the right name for it— from countries in the Caribbean, like Jamaica and others, where the banana was one of the most important products. They took all that away from them.


They had sugar preference as well, in sugar production, others were producing sugar and recently they also took the preferences the Caribbean had away from them.


The basic thing left to these islands, and I have just been talking for hours and hours with the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda and with others, the prime minister of Dominica —you have read in the papers that they were here and that we had a lengthy talks— and they explained the tragedy affecting them because of these cruise ships. And I said to them: Look, we had a few cruise ships here when they were European cruise lines, now all these lines have been absorbed by big companies from the United States. The cruisers are getting bigger and bigger, 2,000, 3,000 passengers, so that hotels are hardly needed. They leave their rubbish in some of those places, they spend a few dollars buying some souvenirs, they don't stay in any hotel, they don't provide any works for the labor force there that make their living from tourism. Everything is on the ships, it's ruinous. I said to them, "You may be sure that no cruise ships will come here. Cuba will not allow cruise ships to come and those who want to travel, let them travel in what they can find, but cruise ships will not be allowed to enter". We already know them well enough.


I have told them, and I see they are giving more thought to rejecting them because I think they even pay four of five dollars per tourist and really the Caribbean —including Cuba, but they are even more needy than us-- has great possibilities for tourism...>>

That was Fidel himself (howbeit translated)--NOT a letter to the editor.