Regarding the expectation of some 45,000 Russian tourists this year, Agence France-Presse reports "Havana's secret weapon for Russian tourists is nostalgia, officials said, playing off a 30-year relationship between the countries due to a once strong political and economic alliance between them."Ah, yes. Remember the good old days when both our countries tortured and imprisoned innocents, when we both enacted severe controls on information, when we both held on to the corrosive creeds of Communism? Well, come to Cuba, comrades, where we still have these things! Bask on our beaches and dream of the good old days of tyranny, show trials and the Gulag...the days before things went sour on the great Soviet schemes of world domination...the days before you lost the Space Race and the Arms Race and Eastern Europe...the days before Solzhenitsyn and Walesa and, especially, Ronald Reagan.
No, come to the worker's paradise in the Caribbean where the Wall still hasn't come down, where a corrupt dictatorship still enslaves its people. You who yearn for the old ways, be assured you are among friends. So, by all means, relax here. Reminisce here. And, above all, please run through your rubles here!
Because (most unfortunately for the cause) that hasn't changed either. Cuba's economy is still a complete disaster and the old man desperately needs your cash. Please come soon.
