Wholesale Havana by Claudia Lightfoot

[Interlink Publishing Group] From its humble birth as a few thatched huts along the shoreline, Havana has emerged from five hundred years of turbulent history as the most fascinating city in the Caribbean. Spain’s “Pearl of the Antilles” was in turn plundered by pirates, invaded by foreign fleets and then turned into a Mafia-run playground under U.S. tutelage. Since 1959 the seat of Fidel Castro’s revolutionary regime, Havana is now shaking off forty years of blockade to face the new challenges of mass tourism. A city whose fabric has always been threatened by hurricanes and political upheaval, Havana has developed a wild edge, an energy and an alluring exoticism that have intrigued and enchanted visitors as diverse as Alexander von Humboldt, Anais Nin, Lorca, and Sartre. Claudia Lightfoot explores Havana’s history and its paradoxes: a city where architectural treasures survive among crumbling tenements; where a vibrant street life takes place amid shortages; where revolutionary pol