December seems to remind me of machine guns. (No, this is not a Second Amendment Letter.)
I was thinking about machine guns because it reminded of my trip to Cuba in December 2002. It still seems like yesterday.
We were on the road back from Vardaro to Havana. It was morning and we crossed an immense gorge by a bridge. Up on the hill overlooking the gorge, just beyond the bridge, was a pub. This bar is reputed to serve the best pina coladas in Cuba - that sweet mixture of coconut liqueur and rum. There is a lot of rum in Cuba.
I wasn't interested in drinking a pina colada in the morning, but I was interested in what made these drinks so special. I watched the bartender as he served my friends. The answer was simple. He kept pouring rum until the patron waved him to stop.
Several of us were fascinated with the bridge over the gorge. We were looking at it from the balcony of the pub and some of us decided to take a walk down to look at it more closely. I watched from the balcony as my friends walked down through the parking lot to the road and toward the bridge. It was one of those spanning structures off which one could picture a bungee-jumper diving.
As my friends approached the bridge a jeep pulled up and two paramilitary police got out. They had machine guns and looked rather threatening. Just like the patrons waving off the rum they waved my friends off the road. There wasn't any debate. My friends hustled back up to our bus. We left the parking lot shortly thereafter back on the road to Havana. Within a few moments Fidel Castro passed in his motorcade. The machine guns then made sense.
Now before you jump to conclusions, I wasn't in Cuba illegally. I had a government license to travel. But a lot of Americans do go there illegally. That's because for the past 47 years we have blockaded Cuba with an embargo on trade and travel. Two things have resulted from this - the common people of Cuba have been hurt and the dictator Fidel Castro has had an excuse to stay in power. It is time for this blockade to end. If we are a free people, we ought to be able to travel freely and, yes, drink pina coladas in the morning - without the machine guns.
