The Wrongologist

There
will be limited or no blog posts in the coming week as the Wrongologist and Ms. Oh So
Right visit Cuba. This trip is part of a US Government-sanctioned visit. There
are way more Americans visiting Cuba than you might think. According to cubaabsolutely, some
500k Americans traveled to Cuba in 2011 on a sanctioned basis, and at least
another 100k visited without authorization, via a third country.

That’s
huge: 600k visitors who (let’s say) stay on average for 7 days. That’s 4.2
million US tourist days per year. Cuba limits tourist expenditures to
$179/person/day. If people spend their limit, that’s $752 million/year spent
by Americans in Cuba each year.

Not
chump change.

But alas,
Internet use is highly regulated. And based on our cold war status, US mobile phones
do not work there, the US dollar is not accepted and US credit cards cannot be
used. There are work-arounds for some of those issues, but no simple solution
works for the Internet, or for the lack of SMS-based communication, so limited
or no blog posts.

According
to The
Guardian, Cuban and US representatives
met today in Havana for a new round of restarted migration talks. From The
Guardian:

The most recent discussions in Havana occurred last September,
and focused on mail delivery. One issue that may come up this week is Cuba’s
recent banking woes at its diplomatic missions in Washington and at the UN.
M&T Bank, which had processed Cuba’s diplomatic banking in the US, moved to
sever the relationship in late 2013, prompting Havana to suspend nearly all
consular services in the country.

While in country, we will be meeting with staff from
the Ministry of Health, (MINSAP), visiting the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) and participating in discussions
to learn about the training and education of medical professionals in Cuba. We
are meeting with staff from the Cuban
Society of Nurses (SOCUENF). SOCUENF is a scientific society,
non-governmental organization under the National Council of Scientific
Societies of Public Health Ministry of Cuba, whose primary purpose is to raise
the scientific and technical level of its affiliates.

We are also meeting with the staff at Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX).
This is the National Center for Sexual Education and is best known for
advocating tolerance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues on the
island.

We are also doing some
fun things, seeing a Cuban jazz show and meals at some of the private
restaurants in Havana.

Sadly, we will be unable to bring home a pristine ’56 Chevy
Bel-Air or any Cuban cigars.

Also, we will not be meeting with Raul or Fidel.