#1643 A Cultural Tour of Cuba

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

Russ Eagle is the guest host for a discussion of Clay’s recent cultural tour of Cuba. Clay, Russ, and guests spent 10 days in Cuba, traveling in a small bus across the island. They began in Santiago, where the Cuban Revolution touched off on July 26, 1953, and ended in Havana, once one of the most vibrant cities in the Caribbean. It is still full of creative people exhibiting extraordinary resourcefulness under difficult circumstances. They visited two Bay of Pigs museums, one in Little Havana in Miami (pro-insurrection) and one at the Bay of Pigs itself (pro-Castro). They spent an afternoon swimming in the Bay of Pigs! Clay performed as Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill, followed by a thoughtful refutation by a Cuban professor of law. At the end of our journey, they visited Ernest Hemingway's villa outside Havana and the fishing village from which he took his boat, Pilar, out to sea in search of marlin.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome everyone to my introduction to this week's podcast of listening to America.
0:05.7	Russ Eagle, my dear friend and I talk about our recent cultural tour to Cuba.
0:11.2	We spent 10 days in Cuba, and this wasn't a pop-in, pop-out to Havana sort of thing
0:16.8	or get in a couple of old cars.
0:19.2	We did the whole island.
0:21.0	We flew into eastern Cuba.
0:23.2	We went to Fidel's ranch, where his boyhood home.
0:26.7	We went to his tomb in Santiago.
0:29.2	We went to the Monkato Barracks where the revolution began on July 26, 1953.
0:35.3	We worked our way across the island.
0:41.8	We went to one of Cuba's number of national parks.
0:56.4	We went to the Bay of Pigs, swam in the Bay of Pigs. I lectured about the Bay of Pigs. I performed as Theodore Roosevelt at San Juan Hill. That was a bit of a weird but lovely experience. We had a pig roast with a family that wanted to befriend us.
1:03.8	We heard from a law professor who has a very different view of the rough riders than Theodore Roosevelt would, as you might expect.
1:06.8	It was a great, fabulous, troubling, exciting, inspiring, dispiriting journey,
1:15.6	dispiriting to see these good and decent Cuban people suffering because of the embargo that has continued for 64 years for no good purpose.
1:23.6	We went to a Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami, which was very much against the Castro
1:30.2	regime, pro-insurrectionist, and then we went to a Bay of Pigs Museum at the Bay of Pigs, which
1:35.4	was pro-Castro-Pro-Revolution, pro-Cuba. So we got the Yin and Yang on all of that. Russ
1:42.5	and Liz have been partners in our work for the last few years,
1:48.0	friends for many more than that, and they were the host couple. Wayne Fairchild of Lewis and
1:53.4	Clark Trail Adventures in Missoula, Montana, organized the trip. He loves Cuba. And this is his
1:59.1	ninth, I think, trip to Cuba my second we saw
	...

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