A great deal of the wealth that historically has sustained the Cuban economy, especially agriculture (amassed with sugar, coffee, mines) is contributed by the so-called orientales (people from Cuba’s eastern region), who live at the very foot of the Sierra Maestra (a hem soaked by the sea in the south), or at its top. They are country people generous with outsiders, because it’s a sin to answer with the gesture of the nature that gives them abode, feeds them, makes life beautiful for them with magnificent scenarios…. That life has another tempo and another character, at times surprising travelers: it is in the east of Cuba where surrealism becomes a routine. Photo by Wanda Canals Living there are fishers with infinite nets that each morning comb the sea to snatch from the exhausted beach three mochuelos. And even so, they will repeat the hard maneuver that “following day” in which they will always have more luck. It could also happen that a man crossed your path with his head coming out of a latrine, the easiest way to transport on foot the type of latrine preferred in the region. Photo by Wanda Canals   In the most isolated rolling hills...

The Cuban economy’s locomotive – tourism – is still running, but the number of wagons it has to pull and the speed it has been forced to maintain is concerning. Last 2017 the island received 4,689,895 international visitors, representing an increase of 16.2% in relation to the previous year. In these results the growth in cruise tourism (251%) should be highlighted as well as that of the arrival of travelers from the United States (67.3%). According to the principal indicators of the Cuban economy in 2017, reported to the National Assembly of People’s Power last December, the Cuban GDP grew 1.6% and the most dynamic sector was tourism (4.4%). According to that report the incomes from tourism grew by 10.5%. International tourism forms part of the export of services, and increased from 2.503 billion dollars in 2011 to 3.069 billion in 2016 (a 22% growth in five years). However, the estimate of incomes for the total export of services was reduced during these years by 959 billion dollars, for a 9.5% drop, which implies that the increases in tourism did not compensate for the decrease in incomes for the export of skilled workforce. Its weight in the total of export...