Locals, Tourists Bemoan Trashing of Cuba's Beaches Andrea Rodriguez - The Associated Press
go to original August 19, 2016

An empty beer can lies on the beach near Havana, Cuba (AP/Desmond Boylan)

Litter is a problem virtually everywhere in the world. But the trashing of Cuba’s world-class beaches by beachgoers themselves has become so extreme that tourists are complaining and Cubans bemoan it as a symptom of something amiss in a nation that’s long cherished cleanliness, order and mutual respect.

“No one has a sense of ownership, not of the environment, or of the beach or anything. People think, ‘This isn’t mine so it doesn’t matter if it’s dirty,'” said Yanelis Silva, who was selling snacks, drinks and fried chicken at a beachfront stand on the eastern outskirts of Havana.

“It was really disappointing to get to one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and find mountains of trash,” one tourist wrote on TripAdvisor about her time in Varadero, one of Cuba’s best-known resorts.

Particularly extreme during summer vacations, the beach trash problem fuels a widely shared Cuban belief that national values disintegrated during the post-Soviet economic collapse known here as the Special Period. For many Cubans who remember the Cold War decades of subsidized plenty, the economic deprivation that began in the 1990s caused permanent damage to standards of personal behavior in one of the world’s last communist-run societies.

Read the rest at The News

Related: 7 Things You Need to Know Before Going to Cuba (Yahoo)

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Related: U.S. Air Marshals Will be Aboard Cuba Flights (Miami Herald)

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