Nicole Gonzalez: Student Report from 2017 Alternative Fall Break in Cuba
The following pictures are of various people that we encountered during our adventure in Cuba in August of 2017. Everyone was very flattered to have their picture taken and eager to share about themselves and their lives. There is limited personal information due to the difficulty with the language barrier though.
This woman was sitting outside the Museum of the Revolution selling the “Granma” newspaper. This newspaper is the main newspaper of Cuba and once a week there is an English version of the newspaper that is published. This particular day’s edition featured Fidel Castro, as it was his birthday.
This is a picture of typical street musician performers that can be found in many of touristy areas of Havana. They play music that has been memorized. Many of these groups also showed the diversity in the physical appearance of native Cubans.
This man maintains the garden in Havana dedicated to Princess Diana of Wales. He has been doing this for years and can be found sitting in the shade in the garden waiting for visitors to come observe his hard work.
These are the group of people that regularly work at the Christo Project. Many of the people live in Casa Blanca district. The project is helping to provide jobs and a tourism attraction for this poor area of Cuba. They are some of the kindest people we encountered on our trip.
These two people sell churros every day by the harbor where there are a lot of tourists and where cruise ships dock. The churros were delicious and a few members of the UT group got to try churros for the first time from them.
Meet our personal chef. She is a cook in Havana and she taught the UT group how to make Ropas Veijas and made us lunch one day.
This is one of the sailors from the Ecuadorian Navy. The Navy sailed all around South America and the Caribbean Islands in their ship while touring in the countries they visited.
This man makes his living selling ice cream in the plazas for tourists close to where the cruise ships dock.
This woman is a native Cuban selling her produce at an outdoor market. Markets like this are for the native Cuban people because the produce is lower cost, quality, not refrigerated, and in the heart of Old Havana.