The beautifully crumbling facades of buildings and infrastructure attract many visitors from all over the world who wish to catch a nostalgic glimpse of the 1940s and 1950s Cuba. However, this nostalgic beauty, and the disarming warmth of the people of Cuba, hides a reality that faces most Cubans; a reality of poverty and oppressed aspirations. Cuba has seen little change since the Revolution instigated by Fidel Castro Ruz in 1959 and there is a strong hidden desire for desperately needed change. No one wants to live like this.The photographs in this essay capture an elusive hope in the sadness of waiting and a strange beauty in the decaying idealism of the revolution.
