Cuba, the two blockades and more...

On one occasion, I travelled with a group of Afro-Cuban rappers to a recording studio in the apartment of a dissident rock group. Uninformed as to the meaning of the location I was in, I found it odd when an old man began to ask me several questions. Presumably one of the relatives of one of the young men from the rock group, his eyes widened when I told him I was of Chilean parents. "Ah yes... Chilean president Allende", he said. "He was a socialist, but a democratic type." "Yes", I replied, "and he was also overthrown in a violent U.S.-backed coup because he did not control the armed forces."

Looking around me after leaving the studio, which inside is covered with street art and some anti-government slogans, the thought crossed my mind that I might be approached by someone from a Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), or maybe even the state security services. No such thing happened and the rappers I was with showed no signs of being even remotely edgy. Inside the studio their lyrics discussed their daily struggles but none of them were actively working against the government.

Walk through the streets of Havana and you won't find secondary or tertiary students throwing stones battling police, or harshly criticising the government like their counterparts are currently doing in neoliberal Chile. The country's economic problems are on their minds, but a bottle of rum, a stroll through el Malecon or an outing in a nightclub will often suffice to placate discontent.

Programs on state television like Deja Que Te Cuente (Let Me Tell You), which mock government bureaucrats and the inadequacies of the economy, also provide some type of a vent for popular criticisms of the system.

The latest issue of censorship in Cuba is in fact surprising. It is not around a song or concert by Los Aldeanos – a distinguished underground hip hop duo and perhaps the government's harshest critics inside the country –, or an article by Sanchez. Instead a song called Chupi Chupi by local reggaeton artist Osmani Garcia has upset some party stomachs. And what is Garcia's call to arms against the establishment? A cheesy chauvinist video clip about oral sex.

Leaving Cuba on my way to the airport I was once again reminded of another part of the island, the one Western journalist often ignore completely in their hunt for an interview with dissidents.

Speaking to a cab driver he told me he recently bought his taxi and was making a fair living. When I told him I was returning to Venezuela, where two or three times a week young men will jump on my bus route and tell passengers they once use to "rob and shoot people", have now "reformed" themselves, and are only asking for a "small collaboration" because they "do not want to hurt anyone onboard", the cabbie shook his head and showed me his political stripes:

"My father was part of Fidel's personal security team. When the U.S. supported the military coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002, my father wept and I was truly sad."

Like this cab driver and his father, there are hundreds of thousands of Cubans who still feel some type of loyalty to the political system. Often they have worked in Third World countries as doctors, teachers or in the military. In Venezuela there are over 40,000 Cuban medical professionals practising in miserable violent slums. While some of these professionals defect to the U.S., the overwhelming majority does not.

As we continued our journey exchanging views, I told this cabbie that despite the rundown aspect of Havana and many of Cuba's serious problems, I was still amazed with the tranquillity, safety and human warmth of the island's contemporary society.

I informed him that in Havana I did not see homeless children begging for food, or looking to pickpocket me like I have experienced in other cities in the Latin America. Neither are there violent armed gangs, enormous drug infested slums, or levels of police corruption where an officer of the law is only too happy to mug or execute someone for a few hundred dollars.

While Cuba these days certainly needs a little more capitalism, a shake-up of its ageing bureaucracy, and yes, more democracy, the crude one-party state capitalism which China has adopted, at the cost of leaving 50 million Chinese homeless by developers, should not be embraced.

Furthermore, instead of being the objectives of a select dissident minority, which lacks "leadership and legitimacy" in Cuban civil society as thoughtfully explained by Rafael Hernandez, the abolition of the current political system would have to be something most people on the island were actually presently striving to achieve through a mass popular movement.

The coming years of course will indicate what aspects of their system Cubans will decide to keep, modify, or abolish completely. As always, their belligerent and self-interested historical neighbour 90 miles away will keenly be following events.