Cuban Voices

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.3 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2019

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ordinary Cubans reveal what their lives have really been like under Castro’s socialism and, more recently, its transformation into a more capitalistic economy. For some, the Cuban Revolution was the last bastion of the communist dream; for others, a repressive, authoritarian regime. Largely missing from those debates were the voices of ordinary Cubans. Almost 60 years on from the Revolution, professor Elizabeth Dore discovers how people from different walks of life and generations have experienced life, work, housing, racism, sexism and corruption on the island.

Transcript

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0:00.0	For me, this is a historic moment in Cuban history. The Castro dynasty finally has handed over to a new president, Miguel
0:18.0	Diaz-Kinnell. I am Elizabeth Dor, Professor of Latin American Studies at Southampton University, and I am in Cuba for the BBC as the Cuban Revolution heads for its 60th anniversary this year.
0:42.0	The story I'm about to tell is not found in tourist brochures, history books, or even novels.
0:50.0	It is an intimate record of life under Cuba's socialist experiment told through people's life
0:56.8	stories.
0:58.8	People, my team of Cuban and British researchers have been interviewing in the first large oral history
1:07.4	project permitted by the Cuban government in 40 years. What you will hear is not the official line, but the real, lesser-known,
1:19.2	unexpected side of life and socialist Cuba.
1:25.0	60 60 years from the
1:27.0	60 years on from the revolution Cuban society bears little resemblance to Fidel Castro's
1:40.6	egalitarian dream. Castro's egalitarian dream.
1:43.0	Castro's Cubans were to be well educated,
1:47.0	receive excellent and free health care.
1:50.0	No one was to be hungry or homeless. But internal opposition was firmly
1:57.5	suppressed and the perceived threat of a communist state so close to the US resulted in an American ban on US tourism
2:08.6	and a trade embargo which contributed to Cuba facing major economic problems.
2:15.0	Cuba now is a country of contrasts. In Old Havana, Havana, down the back streets where tourists don't go.
2:24.1	It's a story of shortages,
2:36.6	dilapidated housing, and a struggle to put food on the table.
2:41.9	Hala. Hey there.
2:43.0	Just say it.
2:44.0	Yes, thank you.
	...

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