| Show I i The Salt Lake Tribune TRAVEL Sunday August Foreigners bask on beaches but most Cubans locked out of tourism revolution By John Rice THE ASSOCIATED PRESS CAY0 COCO Cuba —A decade ago this island off northern Cuba was noted mostly for charcoal wild cattle and 15 varieties of mosquitoes that had defeated nearly all attempts at settlement for 500 years : Now Canadian and Spanish tourists tan on Cayo Cocos beaches and watch the flamingos They : eat lobster in the tropical moonlight to the music of strolling mu sicians and the distant drone of fumigation patrols A resort hotel run by a Spanish company opened last year and another with 720 rooms is about to rise beside it Eventu ally officials plan to have 6000 rooms on the island a showplace of communist Cuba's effort to nriAle tourism a major industry "We want Cuba to have the age of an earthly paradise" President Fidel Castro told a confer ence on tourism He said tourism might produce more revenue this year than sugar king of Cuba's economy for a century and profits of about $220 million Tourism officials say 540000 foreigners visited Cuba in 1993 They hope for 1 million next year despite a US embargo that closes the huge market just 90 miles : 458-roo- : : - : - m away New resorts are being built and old ones refurbished in every part of the country mostly with foreign money Even the Bay of Pigs d where exiles tried to invade Cuba in 1961 is being turned into a luxury resort With the economy in crisis since the collapse of his Soviet-blo- c sponsors Castro told the conference that to reject foreign tour ism 'would not be socialist but : : US-backe- cretinist" However great the financial blessing of tourism it carries a curse for socialism creating a privileged class made up of foreigners with hard currency and Cubans who earn tips at hotels 7 H5 1994 THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SANTIAGO Cuba — Posters of Che Guevara are tacked on the shacks of workmen at the entry to San Juan Hill Spare roofing tiles lean against the old stone pillar at the gate On the grassy hilltop two Cubans take and resorts Cuban pesos are worth so little in other currencies that a waiter in a tourist restaurant can make more from one tip than a doctor or engineer is paid in a month Felipe Ramirez resident manager of the hotel on Cayo Coco said be was a lawyer before attending tourism school The four house musicians include a former medical student and two teachers The hunger for hard currency has spawned a subculture of scam e artists prostitutes and who haunt tourists in Habeggars vana and Santiago This embarrasses Castro who told the conference Cuba should project itself as "a healthy country morally and physically" His government proudly exterminated such capitalist vices after the 1959 revolution closing Havana's casinos and sex shows Castro opened the luxurious Varadero beach resort east of Havana to Cubans who had been barred from it "Now its true now it's true Varadero is for me ana you" the Cuban bard Carlos Puebla sang in the early 1960s No longer Although the new resorts are not technically closed to Cubans few have the necessary foreign currency Also police assigned to protect tourists tend to regard Cuban patrons as hustlers Scientists at a research station built on Cayo Coco in 1991 are trying to fight the mosquitoes while drawing up a master plan for preserving the flora and fauna of the island Hotels are to be limited to 4 percent of its area Cayo Coco's tropical forest protected by the maddening insects has survived incursions by charcoal-seeker- s from the mainland for centuries It shelters wild boar and white ibis or coco blanco for which the island is named Herds of wild cattle are descended from livestock abandoned by would-b- e settlers who gave up and went back to the mainland their lunch break in the shade of rustling trees near silent monuments to American Cuban and Spanish soldiers killed in the struggle for Cuban independence No site in Cuba is more famed in US history or illustrates more ambivalence toward the past San Juan Hill may be the only place left in Cuba where polite references to the Six species of fish that eat mosquito eggs have been introduced said Felix Flores Varela spokesman for research station Other tactics used to control the insects are occasional flights by spray planes and daily fumigation tours by tractors pulling vats of burning petroleum The station is part of an array of government construction projects to help tourist development on Cayo Coco including an 11- mile causeway from the mainland and power water and sewer part-tim- United States can be found It was on this hill that Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders fought the Spanish in July 1898 during the brief War The battle helped free Cuba from nearly four centuries of Spanish rule and propel Roosevelt to the presidency "The blood of the brave and true Cuban Insurgent and that of the generous and noble American Soldier sealed a covenant of Liberty and Fraternity between the two nations" reads one of the few remaining plaques that mentions US forces Three decades of hostility between the United States and Cuba have left their mark Spanish-America- n I Goon 01: 112 Peppermill IN MESQUITE R(AM Seeir4 (g 774avee wrer 4 BRANSON SHOJI TABUCHI & 9 OTHER SHOWS SEPT Oct & 1 HOTTEST BRANSON PACKAGE AVAILABLE ONLY $930 pp (dbl) Ina ere Meter Dams fel e) - 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Randy Minnesota" Additionally this y : ° LONE STAR STATE OCT I7N) ' L 1994 3 Florida Off the Beaten Path by & Bill SI NEVADA HAS CHAN6ED IT'S NAME 6 otedte Wyeee :1 iti MFNot : By Pamela Robin Brandt The hotel now popular with Spanish tourists was known until last summer as the Leningrad — homage to the sponsor of Fidel Castro's communist regime It is now the San Juan Hotel The only remaining monument to Roosevelt is half a mile away across a small valley A stone obelisk in the front yard of a well house marks his trench line On the hill itself references to the Americans have vanished Many references to the United States were removed in the early 1960s as host:lay between the governments increased But now -- the idea of how it was has returned and the history of Cuba is the history of Cuba- - said Anamaria Rodriguez the hotel's publicity officer Posters of Che Guevara now adorn Teddy Roosevelt's San Juan Hill kw : 5-4- - A rtio:))1 7 2 th 0 4 El 5 7) taTri : — r ---- |
