This piece originally appeared at The New Republic on April 13, 1963.

Unless evasive action is taken early, the spirit of any visitor to a country experimenting in socialist methods is liable to be tamed by an organized tour of a collective farm. In Cuba, last month, a couple of other Western correspondents and myself were rescued by a group of Russians from a hot mid-day slog round a state farm in Pinar del Rio. We had tramped over acres of land that looked remarkably like the land outside; we had gazed at pigs that were indubitably pigs and admired chickens that were certainly chickens. The farm was called a cooperative, but this seemed a confusion of terms: the workers did not own any land themselves but were paid regular wages, and although plots had been set aside for individual cultivation, nobody as yet had bothered to cultivate them. Obediently, we thought up other questions, but the men in charge of the farm were nowhere to be found.

Then we came upon the Russians, pottering round their dismantled jeep, and they invited us into their house for guava juice, a rest and conversation. Two of them were agronomists, the third an engineer; they were all three very young and had volunteered to come on Cuba on leaving Leningrad University. They liked it very much, they said. They had their own house, their own cook, lots of work to do and a movie program that changed twice a week. It had been impossible in Havana to tell the precise function of the droves of pink-faced, fair-haired burly young men driving around in Russian trucks; the Cubans I asked probably would not have wanted to tell a Westerner anyhow, but they gave the impression of neither knowing nor caring themselves. But with these young men on the farm it was easy to believe that they were what they seemed: earnest young missionaries doing a useful job.

The compensations for working in Cuba do, after all, outweigh the frustrations. My own work permit allowed me to practice as a correspondent in Havana, the airport and the nearby beaches. If I wanted to go anywhere else, and in the end I traveled the length of the island, I was supposed to apply for permission to the press department of the ministry of foreign relations, which handed out impressive-looking letters of authorization from the ministry of the interior. I never had any trouble getting these authorizations, nor did anyone at any time ask to look at them or at any other of my credentials. The press department was helpful, even to the extent of arranging appointments with some of the people I had asked to see. Feeling discourteous rather than a law-breaker, I would sometimes sneak out of Havana in a friend’s car without asking permission. Once when I was caught out by the ministry through my own indiscretion, I was scolded by a peeved official but it all ended amiably enough.

Looking back, it was probably silly of me to have flouted the rules just because I was bored by the time wasted in getting a permit. The Cuban law does not seem to follow any logical pattern in its treatment of Western correspondents. The day I left, a British colleague, David Holden of The Manchester Guardian (which can be criticized, perhaps, as a dull paper but certainly not as a reactionary or prejudiced one) tried to enter the country, spent four days in a police cell and was then bundled out by the first possible flight. I had luck, but it is clearly a mistake for a Westerner, however well-intentioned he knows himself to be, to rely on the Cubans recognizing his good intentions.

Havana itself is a good place to wander about in. One is not brought up short by the sickening signs of poverty and deformity that are part of the scene in so many Latin American cities. Although the reports say that it is worse in some of the countryside (and no doubt in sections of the cities too) I never saw any children suffering from malnutrition. Cubans are big eaters and the rationed allowance of most foods is large by British wartime or postwar standards. The ration cards are kept by the stores, and everybody, whatever his job or age, is supposed to draw the same amount. The snag up to a short time ago was that the full ration was seldom obtainable; the distribution of food was inefficient and the stocks in some of the cities were badly depleted. The situation now is slightly better. It was possible to find restaurants serving good meals, but the prices were high. Resident foreigners, on the larger expense accounts, regaled themselves on steak, butter, and wine at one of the few exclusive clubs left in Havana; the waiters at this rather improbable place outnumbered the diners and the elevator might have been taking one up to the moon for all the atmosphere had to do with Cuba today.