So during the week afer the Pope left Havana, Cuba s union of artists and writers remained an oasis of cultural activity and a strong bastion of government support. Ramon Font is a poet who also writes and produces a weekly program for Cuba s government-controlled television network. Even after 40 years and the Pope s implied criticism, he insists it s necessary for Cuba to remain a Marxist one-party state. That s what we want to be. We also spent some time taking Cuba s political temperature in Central Havana, returning to a part of the city we visited four years ago.
Today there are still shortages of water and electricity.
And much of Havana is still crumbling. But at the free market, known as Cuatro Caminos, food is much more plentiful and whether because of increased police surveillance or because the economy is better, fewer people were willing to criticize the government. Certainly there was no evidence that anything the Pope had said was about to have an immediate political impact. Eduardo Guerra lived in the United States for 10 years before returning to Cuba in 1979. We asked him if he thinks the Pope s visit will lead to change.