The Castro File [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONEkiOn the fourth day of his stay in Havana, as he walked slowly past the docks of Havana Bay watching a Russian freighter being unloaded, Richard Camellion reflected that ' ' there were those occasions when Fidel Castro did tell the truth. The bearded dictator had not exaggerated when he had made the statement, "Havana is the superdeveloped capitol of an underdeveloped country."Another ugly truth was that the capital of Cuba had / changed considerably since Castro's takeover in January of 1959. Camellion frowned, thinking of the Malecón, that long broad avenue skirting the coast, the street that had carried the tourist and the American gangster, the revolutionary and the sugar broker, from the pillared arcades of old Havana past the remains of the old fort La Punta, on to Maceo and Marti.At one time the Malecón had been one of Havana's grandest thoroughfares, bordered on one side by brightly colored buildings and on the other by the clear, ultra-blue bay. Now the buildings were dirty and peeling, and the only thing that didn't need repainting was the water itself.As for Havana in general, while the city stiU resembled other Spanish-American capitals, such as Lima or Mexico City, a lot of the old flavor was missing. Prostitutes no longer roamed freely through the Virtudes or along the Prado, the latter with a double line of laurels leading up the center of the old city. In pre-Castro days the Prado especially had been lined with whores, bootblacks, waiting i taxis, and an estimated 5,000 beggars. All these were now a thing of the past. The whores, bootblacks, and beggars7