CUBA IS THE NEW CANCUN

Pictured: Cuban President Fidel Castro and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; 1960s.

The CIA, thanks to some secretive method of information gathering (that is their job you know), has reason to believe that Cuban president Fidel Castro may have Parkinson's disease [Click here for the full article on CNN.com].

However, when reading this news, what interests and concerns me more than learning that the 79 year old man may have Parkinson's, is contemplating what the fate of Cuba may be when the cigar-smoking revolutionary dies.

Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, when the 26th of July Movement (led by Fidel Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara) seized power from Fulgencio Batista, the United States has kept a watchful eye on the small island state. In the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, the U.S. was concerned with Cuba's close ties to the Soviet Union. Now though, after 43 years under U.S. embargo, and remaining almost entirely self-sufficient (save their relations with a handful of South American nations that supply the country with assorted goods), it's hard to see what threat the country poses. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Castro supposedly offered to send a large staff of Cuban doctors to help tend to the victims. However, his generosity was met with silence.


Pictured: Fidel Castro with Che Guevara.

Honestly, I don't know enough about Castro or his ideologies to type up a brilliant comparison between U.S. and Cuban interests. I realize that Cuba was indeed a threat to America during the Cold War. But now, it seems more is at stake if Castro were to die in the near future. Knowing a good deal about Cuban music and art culture, as well as the resilience of the Cuban people, I just hope that when Castro passes away the small and steadfast island nation doesn't became a new spring break destination for rich white college kids. It would be a shame to see Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis landing his helicopter atop a Hilton in downtown Havana, asking 19-year-old girls from the University of Miami to show him their tits. Who knows though, in 5 to 10 years, Disney may own the whole fucking deal; ferrying families from Key West to the debut of its "Land Before Time" ride (housed in the formerly historic district of downtown Havana).