You can’t go to Cuba and be apolitical.

A few weeks ago, when I heard Conan O’Brien was in Havana to shoot an episode of Conan, my heart sank. I’ve always liked him but I’m allergic to the tourist gaze. My many trips to Cuba have taught me how damaging it is. The Cuban regime, like all dictatorships, depends heavily on propaganda and learning it would take center stage on a late night show filled me with dread. Conan promised that his goal in Cuba was to make people laugh, that he wouldn’t touch the complicated politics of the situation. Ay Conan, if it were only that easy. […]

You can’t go to Cuba and be apolitical. Traveling there is a political act alone. The brands he joked about at the grocery store were all companies that were appropriated by the Cuban government. That cigar factory he visited was taken from a Cuban family of cigar makers. Cubans cannot afford to eat at paladares because the average Cuban only makes $20 a month, creating an unofficial tourist apartheid where foreigners enjoy Cuba while Cubans endure the regime. The “ruins” that took Conan’s breath away are dilapidated buildings that thousands of people have to live in because they are not free to move out of them without government permission.

Did I expect Conan to go deep? No. That would be unfair of me. […]

He was there to connect with the people. But he was only connecting with the people that work in tourism — which any Cuban will tell you are a small and distinct sector of the population. Even acknowledging that would have been nice, but instead Conan lamented that in a few years there will probably be American stores in colonial Havana. That’s when he lost me.

I’ve observed a certain conceit among well-heeled liberals, and that is the “charm” they find when visiting third world countries should be preserved in a kind of cultural amber for them. Oh look at the happy peasant kids playing soccer in the dirt road with a ball made of a sheep’s bladder! Snap a few pictures, buy some handmade clothing from the women who stitch while tending cooking over wood fueled stoves in homes with no plumbing – then fly back to the first world of air conditioning and jacuzzi bathtubs.

I don’t doubt that Conan’s intentions were sincere. Cubans are awesome. We know how to have fun and have always had a natural kinship with Americans. But by the end of the show I felt I had watched a very friendly stranger go to a party on the third floor of my family’s house, while my family was being held captive in the basement, desperate to escape. I would have loved to have seen him connect with all the floors in that house and not just the ones approved by watchful, very political eyes.

Conan should be careful of not following Walter Duranty’s path.