Australian Left Review

Article Title

Cuba at the crossroads: twenty-five years after the revolution

Authors

Will Silk

Abstract

For the first and only time during our stay in Cuba, we are subject to strict security no cameras, no bags. The factory is a prime target for CIA saboteurs. In the foreground a welcoming committee from the complex is clustering lightly. Perhaps 200 people: women favouring bright bandanas to cover rollers in their hair, some of the men a fleeting cord or denim peaked caps, all save lot a sprinkling in white lab coats — wearing Tshirts and jeans. Behind them, standing the law of perspective on its head, shrinking the group to a tiny vari-coloured mass, isa huge, functionalist topography of flat, bland surfaces and blind factory walls. The textile complex cuts a great raw swathe across a Santiago hillside through the detritus of an urban slum.