Things Cubans Can’t Tell You About Cuba

Why Cuba is so special is all the little things they don't even know are special. To this people, everyone is always entitled to full human dignity.

Cubans rally in defense of the Revolution, April 2 -- image via Granma on Facebook

By Macdonald Stainsby

Getting off the plane in late February to arrive in la Habana was an exercise in apprehension. The American attempt to completely choke and starve the country of Cuba had just been given its greatest assist by the Carney government, whose administration had convinced or forced all of the airline carriers to stand down, grounding all those who flood Cuba with Canadians that love the country in a normal setting.

I had been told there was no fuel for the Canadian carriers, but I had been part way to Venezuela and being told to abandon Cuba was the international political equivalent of being told to abandon my partner and our collective pets on a sinking ship. There was simply no way.

I struggled a bit to get my luggage, and it was the last off the plane-- and I erroneously believed for a couple of days that this is when two of the larger solar items I had brought as aid to Cuba went missing from my bags. As it turned out, it was from within Colombia, and I was able to retrieve these items from the airport when I ended up back in Bogota.

Thing is, this type of minor but real crime has previously been an issue at José Marti Airport, but not these days. So, the constant drumbeat of the media, even while I talked to Cuban residents on my way through Mexico and Colombia had bore a tiny doubtful hole in my head.

The man who did, in fact, drive me to my new apartment in Vedado refused to take a fare for the ride when he learned I was there to try and do solidarity work. But getting a ride in a time of genocidal oil blockades and legitimate fares of $50 to get into town? This was reminding me quickly of how Cuba is, how the people in the worst situations just simply refuse to impose this on others and how a people raised in solidarity just live that way. Bad capitalists are great people.

So, I am writer and it’s time to list a few of these types of moments-- just a few-- that I have been with in my days in the first free country of the Americas, over the years.

My first time in Cuba was from December of 1998 until early in January 1999; I arrived in la Habana, with all of my 23 years of age, and wandered while taking in the country for a few days. Then I took the train from the Central station across the island for Santiago de Cuba-- in time for Fidel Castro to emerge on the very same balcony he had done so 40 years prior, announcing the triumph of the Revolution.

Somewhere between landing in Cuba and getting off the train on the other end of the island, I got dysentery. Not fun, and while common for a north American traveler in this part of the world, never recommended. Taken by a cabbie to a clinic for free, I felt the presence of being watched over.

I was laid up for the entire day, hooked up to IV drips and using charcoal drinks to try and solidify that which was liquid.

I realized that my costs for this-- as a tourist (of course, Cubans do not pay for medical treatment)-- was going to be bad. I asked the doctor the amount, and showed him what was in my wallet. It was basically almost exactly what this treatment was to cost. In global terms, pennies; In broke traveler terms it meant I was broke.

The doctor tried to hide my bill and sneak me out, but just before I left a party boss sauntered by and I had no choice. The doctor that was trying to refuse to charge me apologized and I realized that the people themselves hold the values of free health care and services for all even more strongly than the members of government. That “the people” are to “the left” of administrators in a society already built on solidarity. It was heart warming, even if I still ended up paying that bill.

**

In the summer of 2010, my uncle died; He was the brother and best friend to my mother, and the one she often traveled to Cuba with. Their plans for travel to Cuba had been multiple times over-- and the resistance to both of their physical ailments was wrapped up in using Cuba as the benchmark for recovery. My uncle had heart problems; What the doctor told him he needed before travel back to Cuba became how they both discussed his time-table.

Then, days before they were to head back, my mother suffered her aneurysm. During her time in and out of consciousness in the hospital, she would regularly speak Spanish to people who worked there. She never did that anywhere else, injury or not; For her, she was going to Cuba, practicing her Spanish and that was that.

Her recovery got far enough along that she went again with her brother in about 2008. In 2011, by mere minutes in time for New Years, having just lost her brother months before I took Donna to Cuba myself. As it was 2011-- 50 years since the Yankee defeat at the so-called “Bay of Pigs”-- that’s where we went.

I was with her most of the day, and then in the evening was chatting with a Russian tourist who had a lot more energy than my mother. I walked mom back to our cabin, pointed to it, and left her to have another few Cristals with the Russian guy.

After I’m guessing 2 hours, I went back-- and saw a little trail of blood from a few feet in front of the cabin leading into where my mother was. I opened the door, and that blood trail went across the floor, up on the bed and had coagulated on my mother’s chin in a dark, nearly brown mess. I yelped.

“What happened?” to which she tried to tell me she was just fine. Clearly she tripped outside the door, bounced her face on the rocks, and was able to crawl inside and just sit/lie there bleeding, being glad she wasn’t a hemophiliac. I got her up, and we went to the front desk where they took one look at mom and didn’t make us explain anything.

There was a doctor on call who immediately was there, stitching and cleaning my mother’s face. It took a little while, but not enough to drive you batty. He finished up, and I tried to pay him for this. His refusal to take money for helping my mother not bleed out was not the story entirely-- his confused, and startled, annoyed at me for attempting it was something lovely. His hands went up as if to block my attempts, and he shook his head with a clear indication he didn’t see the world that way and found this borderline offensive. I still find it beyond borderline beautiful.

My mother would-be fine, and rode home through Toronto with a big bandage on her face, and had her stitch clipped out shortly after we returned-- she neither had scars or pain from it afterwards. Just this little story.

**

So ahead now to 2023: I had been my mother’s full time caregiver for almost 8.5 years, and she had moved out a few months before due to my incapacity as a result of exhaustion. Over Xmas, she came home and suffered a broken arm. I did what I recommend to others-- I fled to where it was both safe and relaxing and spent a week and a half in Cuba. I needed to go somewhere, Cuba was safe enough for someone who looked, acted and was very vulnerable.

I quickly rented an electric bike that I used to travel all over la Habana, and I had visions of taking it to Matanzas; When I tried I failed, missing my turn-- and realized I was now near the town of Cotorro and the battery of the bike stopped working as well.

So I was nowhere, had a very heavy bike with no “electrical boost” and needed to go back to Havana. Anywhere else, this would be a nightmare.

Of course, even in Canada where I hitchhike as a mainstay of my travel to this day, I don’t think there are many situations where I would take an expensive electrical bike, fold it up but display it on the edge of the road for the local drivers to see and then just hitch a ride.

I never once thought this was even sketchy, I have hitched for many years entirely on instinct and gut.

The guy who picked me up? He did that within about 3 minutes. He had to readjust the back to find a way to get a brand new, EU made E-bike into his re-re-re configured 50’s American Chevy. I sat next to three others who were also just going home. No one thought it was strange some white dude with an expensive bike was sharing the ride.

Later on that same trip to Cuba, I was staying with a family in their home and had been out riding the electric bike across all of Havana. There was no such thing as a “dangerous place,” just a lot of places that I had not seen before. I rode and rode in all directions, and then near the end of my day I got a flat tire.

I had the bike locked up at my home, and the rest of the family saw it there. I went out on foot one day, and when I got back? They had picked the lock, taken my bike across town, got the flat tire fixed and had given the battery a full charge. When they showed me, they didn’t give a pregnant pause where they were waiting for my praise and thanks. They received it anyhow.

Later on that same year (but different visit), my home was in Miramar // Playa on the western side of Havana. This was almost 3 years ago, but it also reminds me of blackouts. I was staying relatively close to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela embassy, and enjoying the quieter neighbourhood. I could wander around at night in near total blackness and feel not only safe, but like it was absurd to think otherwise.

One night I wandered off to find some food, and ended up at a restaurant where it seemed that a few families were gathering. I ate something, and was readying to head back to my place when a younger man with a clear neurological disorder affecting his balance was there. I saw as a few other people tried to suss out what to do to help him from his wheelchair to his crutches, and so on. The woman (likely a relative) who held the chair was giving directions, but the person she was talking to looked lost. I discovered in that moment that when such a thing happens in front of me, I now just deal with it as a result of the many years I had doing so with my mother.

Help with ambulatory issues, making sure how to maneuver a wheelchair in limited space or with uneven ground (Cuba’s near total uneven ground is what held me back from bringing late life mom here more than anything else), these things are just instinct to me now, but what got me in that moment? As I did this, there were other patrons and people from the place also trying to help. I got high praise and warmth for my knowledge rather than my efforts, and felt very useful and ‘good’ in the moment.

Seeing how I was just one of many who tried to help was a statement about where I was; In the times since that moment I have noticed as well that I still do the same thing: If an elder is struggling for a few seconds near me, I just deal with it. It’s just part of my makeup now, and it took 8.5 years of relentless care for my mother to get there.

But for Cuba? I still do this-- always. I’m just almost never the guy who gets there first in Cuba. Just days ago, two others quickly beat me to a woman in a wheelchair trying to get off 23 in Vedado. Everyone in Cuba seems to be have been raised with “see something, do something” not as a “find the terrorist” slogan, but a slogan for showing even minor solidarity in every day situations.

One of my favourite self-attributes took 8.5 years of looking after my mother, wheelchair bound and with dementia, to ingrain in myself. For most Cubans, that was part of simply growing up.

**

I am not conducting a long term study here, but I also believe this phenomenon is why, even in this very moment of genocidal oil blockade, Cuba remains one of the safest countries and places in the world. It’s not because in the current level of desperation that no one will resort to crime. The longer this level of starvation and choking of Cuba continues, the more petty crimes to simply survive will advance.

The reason it is so very uncommon is that those who are not robbing others will speak up. Cubans-- just like in my tale of elders who need a hand-- don’t look at minor injustice as a non-threat. If one person is trying to rob another, the odds are at least 90% that someone else who can see this will speak up, act or otherwise intervene. The place where you get to normal, first world levels of danger for being mugged is when you are in the most capitalist parts of the country: Wandering around Habana Vieja and losing track of where you are.

The sense of what is right and wrong in Cuba is wedded to action. In most places around the earth, staying out of it, and standing back, “minding your own business” and these types of sentences we have heard since we were children predominate.

Learning the need to act when you see anything clearly violating the solidarity that exists silently between all peoples is a part of growing up in Cuban society. This-- not some mythical perfect people-- is what maintains the ridiculous safety I spent part of early April, 2026 enjoying, and wandering around in the pitch black hanging out with street cats.

When I went to the University of Havana in 2024, I went to the Playas del Este about 20 minutes outside of the city after classes finished. While I was there, one night I ordered a burger and forgot that my cash was back in the place I was renting-- I ate and I was broke.

I tried to explain to the obviously private restaurant what had happened, they took it in stride. I proposed going back (about 30 minutes each way) to get my cash, I was told that wasn’t needed. I offered to leave my phone or otherwise leave proof of future intention to pay-- I was refused.

When I went back in the early part of the following day with intention to settle up and leave a larger tip, they again balked. I had to order a lemonade and tip 300%.

**

But that’s not my favourite such example. For that, I wrote this before and I just simply now re-present it, as it needs nothing but to be read, from this recent March 2026:

So I had time to kill during this last five hour blackout that just ended.

I Went to get a meal, ate it and then the restaurant refused my USD bill because it wasn’t in mint condition. This is a bigger problem for me than the blackouts. It’s the most annoying thing here, once you have a Yankee bill with even the little, tiniest tear in it? No one will take it, because the banks won’t take it from them. It’s annoying, but at least I know that won’t be a problem when I leave.

So I had to leave the restaurant-- who simply trusted me to come back, in part because Cuba is like that, in part because I had talked about the war with them last night and we all enjoyed watching American military bases burn, and probably also because they didn’t have much choice. I walked up to 23 to find a place to take a larger bill with no tiny tears on it.

I went into a swankier looking place that was quite busy. I ordered some colas and asked if I could pay with my bill, changed into CUP. Yes, and that was resolved very quickly with a calculator. I was leaving, when I saw a woman wearing a loose hijab and I suddenly had a flashback to two years ago while I was at the University.

All the Arabs I met there were Palestinian, and they were all medical students on a full free scholarship. After I tried to interrupt their meal and ask where she was from, I heard ‘Palestina’ and tugged on my futbol jersey I am wearing today. I chatted a little bit, not for long, but long enough to know she is a medical student here getting Cuban hospitality and solidarity as well.

She beamed at my sweater, almost seemingly relieved that the gringo was asking her questions for good reasons. She and her family are from Gaza. I made a broken Spanish little rant about how deathly important to the struggle Palestinian and Cuban unity is. She grinned, agreed and I kept touching at my heart in this moment.

I walked away from that moment more convinced of the need to defend Cuba no matter what the situation. That the end of one genocide must beget the end of the other. It is no accident that every single country that the Yankee Zionists are or have recently attacked all are anti-Zionist, anti-genocide and will defend the principles of humanity.

That’s why they come for all of us. They have destroyed the international order, the UN and so much more in the pursuit of a global genocide-- to protect the Zionist genocide. It really feels like such a bad plot twist for a movie too insane to be believed.

Earlier today? The Yankee Zionists attacked more hospitals; Their resisters attacked military bases. They attacked kids schools yesterday, and they murdered more of the leaders of Iran as well.

But I digress. Talking with the woman from Gaza I tapped my head, and said I was sorry for her family back home, but that the struggle of education is resistance itself. She fully agreed, while I put my keffiyeh back into my backpack (that I never wear traveling anywhere else). I tapped my head “Resistencia es aqui!” and we nodded warmly one last time.

As I walked down the street, I felt so profoundly human, so grateful that this magical place that knows she can’t do very much to ever pay back Cuba financially, or politically in any sense. Cuba is helping the country where doctors are targets grow a new generation of doctors again. Thanks to Narco Rubio, she is studying medicine from home on an unstable wifi connection.

And for this reason, Trump, Rubio, Starmer and Carney want to starve this place, where people are already needlessly dying in hospitals. The needed fuel coming from Russia-- 200 000 barrels of diesel-- turned off course today, nervous about Yankee seizure. They are willing to turn Cuba into Gaza, in part to punish Cuba for never, ever forsaking Gaza.

The world needs to get their act together on this as immediately as possible. Mark Carney is an utter disgrace-- he sanctioned that tanker only days ago. Specifically, as it headed to help Cuba. Don’t be fooled by that pittance crap of $8 million dollars. It’s both nothing and they won’t let it be distributed by the revolutionary state.

This situation here is maddening. They very best values of humanity are on constant display. It makes me proud to be a human, and deeply ashamed to be from north America. I was asked while I spoke to our friend from Gaza where I was from and I told the truth. They looked a little confused that a Canadian would be standing there with his heart bleeding solidarity attempts like that. I can’t blame them at all.

Sometimes the natural world does the poetic ending for you. Wandering back to the restaurant, I pulled out my little bag of cat food that I carry around here; I bought a bag in Bogota just before I got the plane. These cats had been trying to get some snacks when I ate, so I grabbed the ziplock baggie of dry kibble. I paid the restaurant, and the boss guy asked if I was annoyed. I said absolutely not.

Then I crossed the street where a light rain was now falling. The power has been out a long time, but lightning suddenly illuminated everything. I poured some food out for the very nervous street cats. They ate after I backed away. The lightning flashed, and it was as if the bolts hit the power grid as the street lamps began to glow and I realized I could come back here and type these words while they desperately wanted out of my fingers.

There is no greater human value than true internationalism, and there is no internationalism without solidarity in real time. I came up the stairs, came into my little Cuban flat here, and was so glad that the banks won’t take a $10 bill with even a tiny prick in it. That led me to wandering around in the dark, seeking change and finding the most powerful type of change there is. Real transformation.

***

Literally a couple of days after that last story? I was in my rented room and my Spanish teacher and friend came by. She was noticeably upset upon arrival, and I managed to get the story from her.

Given the Trump/Rubio genocidal oil blockade, the ability to simply just get into fixed route taxis is expensive to civilians in a prohibitive manner. While doing this is normal on an average day, since January 29 nothing is normal.

The fare for a fixed taxi is, in this story, about 600 pesos. This is more than $1, and is also out of state level wages that are being held down through the forcible boycott of that same state. Whereas normally the state wages were adequate though just barely a few years ago, and not quite adequate but above starvation since the end of the pandemic lockdowns, today they are not sufficient because of artificial run-away inflation from the oil blockade.

There was a senior waiting at the taxi bay, he was struggling with a cane, got up to the taxi and showed that he did not have enough cash. He had a few hundred but not the 600 needed. He humbly looked to get help, and the driver refused him, making a scene and essentially making the elder who had trouble on his feet stay on the street having trouble on his feet.

That sounds like a normal, every day situation where I live. It is of zero difficulty imagining a senior struggling to pay bus fare near my home and having no one step in to help, a driver say no, and this person struggling just to stay on their feet before ultimately looking for another way home. In my capitalist country, it comes to my mind as easily as an image of someone impatiently waiting in line at a coffeeshop does.

But it hit my friend very differently. Tears formed in her eyes. This is the kind of barbarism we don’t any longer see as barbarism in Canada; “Sorry Gramps, you’re walking without coin!” is a normal attribute of our world now. But in Cuba? Treating an elder that clearly needs help as if their money is worth more than their struggles, their life, their dignity? That “little thing” was enough to bring fear, sadness and shame to a proud Cuban.

When Rosa said “It’s socialism or barbarism,” this is a small but normalized example of the barbarism. We are tamed to this reality.

In Cuba? Decent people do not treat seniors like that, ever. Not even during a Yankee imposed starvation campaign. We do not accept that this will ever be the decent, or even simply “normal” way.

For her, the problem wasn’t just the driver being “like that,” its the eating away at this society that has someone else who will speak up in such a moment. Worms eat apples without being seen doing so-- this is why Gusano remains the perfect description of those who would betray the revolutions ethics. It begins with denying seniors on crutches the ride they need home.

**

Another day in March I was walking near the old city for my only time doing so (I was with a local which gives you breathing room from the hustlers) this year. I have recently developed sciatica, and this was really acting up on this day. I got nervous about it, and I visited doctors in a hotel.

Long story short, they asked me about my injury as well as my reason for being there, and when I was clear that I was there for a lot more than tourism, I went from getting warm and good help to being treated like an old friend.

I finished dealing with them (3 doctors at the same time checking me out made me feel well checked over!), and they paused to look at each other, before telling me that I didn’t need to pay. Or, rather, they pointed at the door and told me to leave with a smile. Yet another “doctors not taking money” moment.

**

I have visited Cuba two times since my own Canadian government told me not to do so for my own safety, and I have been in a car to and from the airport 4 times. Going simply on supply and demand, some cabbies are able to get over $50 for a ride into Havana right now.

I have paid $20 once, and been able to ride free three more times-- by someone who barely knows me but wants to encourage those of us who are trying to help in this most crucial moment. As hug worthy and amazing that is, it’s really bad business practice and that’s even more worthy than words. In a crisis, on the edge of starvation and powerlessness everywhere, human values still triumph over capital.

**

I returned to Colombia in March; I remember two things as they pertain to Cuba from this flight to Bogota. I was walking through the airport, the same way as always, through those Pac-Man like lanes created with velvet ropes for line-ups. I wasn’t moving quickly, my sciatica was bothering me so I was trying to walk at a pace to not aggravate it further.

A large, probably roided out younger fellow slammed into me from behind as he pushed through, clearly wanting to get to the same lineup five seconds earlier. The straight up rudeness, the “me me” attitude, the jack-ass who has somehow been through a life that made him feel special enough to be this guy at an airport? He metaphorically slapped me across the face with the “You’re not in Cuba anymore” feeling, and it hurt.

Even in this airport, I could suddenly sense the lousy way of people, the individuality to the level of poison manner of people; These things were here, and the way we treat each other better wasn’t. After a few generations, Cubans are just better. Both our selfish ways, as well as the solidarity of every day life for Cubans, are things we don’t see if we were raised in them.

Human beings don’t really suck as bad as we think they do, our society warps and promotes the worst aspects of us. Cuba does the opposite, and has results to prove it as well.

**

I just returned to Cuba in April. I began learning about the incredible medicinal advances Cubans have made towards the end of Alzheimer’s and similar dementia conditions. When I arrived, the very first evening I went for an ice cream near La Rampa.

I wrote these scritches for that moment:

So I'm eating ice cream in a restaurant. On the patio outside. A "scrubby looking" guy in a bad situation asks people for help as he walks by.

The guy who runs the place walks over to him and engages him in a full conversation. Treats him like a human being.

In the middle of this Yankee imposed crisis. This is an example of why the rest of us must fight for this place to our last breath.

The guy left, not awkwardly and embarrassed, and the boss guy went about his thing.

Why Cuba is so special is all the little things they don't even know are special. To this people, everyone is always entitled to full human dignity.

I just had a lot more than ice cream. I had a moment.

**

This moment above, perhaps more than every other, showed me why we fight to our last breath for this place. Humanity, so ingrained in daily living we don’t pause to think it over or mull what to do. It’s just Cuban now, and it takes a couple of generations to get there.

There are so many other little stories to go with all of these little stories: My mother identifying which people in another group were developmentally delayed, and myself realizing that I couldn’t “see” them as such because their entire social group treated them as absolutely equals and involved as such; When I realized that a small motorcycle accident happening in front of me in Bogota was being stared at by onlookers because they hadn’t been raised to act in such a moment (like the Cuba I had left the day prior).

When I was trying to upload a video on my phone during the blackouts in March, so I sat in front of a hospital and my battery was dying before the upload finished. I simply asked the guy there to hold my phone while I spent 10 minutes going home to get my charger and backup battery; I wouldn’t do that in Canada, and when I got back to this guy he was trying to charge my phone for me and apologizing for it being incomplete.

So many moments like this. Over and again.

These are all examples of how we don’t deserve Cuba in this world, and how Cubans don’t even understand how special they are because as a society that have attained these basic ways of interaction within humanity to the point where it’s no longer contested.

It’s now being contested by Trump, Rubio and others, against children on dialysis, seniors walking on canes and living on pensions and more than 30 000 pregnant women in waiting rooms.

Yet, as always, siding with the good people of Cuba is as easy as getting onto a plane. Cuba needs your face, and your voice, in their lives.

Cliché for a reason:

Cuba has been there for the world, now we must be there for Cuba.

My last anecdote is from my first ever arrival in Cuba-- back in late 1998. I was 23, and looked 100% like the pothead I was at the time. One young border officer spotted me, pulled me out of the line and started to give me standard cop talk.

“Just give me the drugs now and everything will be fine, don’t make me look for it,” he said. There’s nothing to find I explained, and he went through my luggage. He then came across my books. Fidel Castro Speaks, Conversations with Fidel, and a couple of others. He pulled a Fidel book out, held it in front of me and asked

“Do you like this man?”

“He’s one of my greatest heroes,” I answered. He changed his posture. “This is the greatest man alive today,” he stated matter-of-factly. “What are you doing here?” he followed up.

“I’d like to see how I can help,” I replied (23 and determined!). He then looked at me staunchly. Paused, then decided to continue.

“If you want to go somewhere to help people, you should be in Iraq.”

I felt at home, and the very first and still one of the only times I felt a bond with a cop doing cop things.

Thing is, that was during Bill Clinton’s assault on Iraq called “Operation Desert Fox.” In fact, I had just left an active anti-war group in East Vancouver to go on this trip to Cuba and already felt guilty about it. Now, we are multiple American regime change wars later, and things have predictably gotten a lot worse.

The next time I am at Cuban immigration and a younger revolutionary asks me why I am there? I can give the same response. I will not be told to go anywhere else this time. I will simply get answered:

“Thank you, welcome to Cuba,” then I will walk into the next room, pick up my luggage after I get my sim card working in my phone, prove to security that yes, these bags full of medications and solar things came with me. Then I’ll step outside, feel the warm Cuban air, kiss the free earth and get back to work.

#CubaNoEstaSola

Macdonald Stainsby

Caregiver, writer and social justice advocate

In the contradiction lies the hope.

-Bertholt Brecht.