I was trawling around on one of my favorite Web sites, The Real Cuba, and happened upon a whole section called ‘Cuba B.C.’ or ‘Before Castro.’ It’s a huge collection of photos of what Cuba looked like before Fidel Castro turned it into a communist wasteland, rife with poverty, corruption, absence of truth, and total decay. How strange to look into the window of the past and see a society completely comparable to our own, completely similar in development and dynamism. Those days are gone, of course, in the name of Castro’s so-called ‘revolution.’ More and more, that looks like a long road to a grave.

The whole haunting, affecting photo show of what Cuba once was can be seen here.