Cuba is no paradise – it’s hell. I base that statement on the relationships I established with many Cuban exiles while working in Miami several years ago. These weren’t politicos – they were just regular people; barbers, toll collectors, system administrators.

They told me stories about being sent to East Germany to school, then told to leave their wives and children behind when the were forced to return to Cuba.

They told me about near starvation after losing their “jobs” when they were accused of being insufficiently revolutionary and effectively shunned by the entire society, fearful that they too would be accused through guilt-by-association.

They told me about sex tourism – Europeans going there on cheap tropical vacations to fuck underage girls pimped out by their mothers (and boys probably too, but nobody said so).

They told me about how each and every person they knew would head for Miami except for the fact that the US patrols are so effective, and the result on the families left behind so awful, that only the strongest and most desperate dared try.

They told me about all the people who just disappeared in the water trying to get away, attempting to cross 90 miles of ocean hanging onto anything that would float – literally any damn thing.

Don’t buy the happy-happy crap – in the US black slaves invented recipes that define Southern cuisine to this day and sang spirituals that ultimately transformed religious worship over wide swaths of this country – I don’t remember hearing any contemporary blacks longing for the “good old days”.