Cuba Diaries

Isadora Tattlin was born and raised in California and spent her early adulthood in New York City. She lives wherever her husband's job takes them and their two young children.

Isadora Tattlin is the American wife of a European energy consultant. In the early 1990s he was posted to Havana for 4 years with Isadora and their two small children, during the periodo especial, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Cuba - which had been subsidized by the Soviet Union to the tune of USD 3 million a day - was plunged into crisis. To ease economic freefall, the ban on the US dollar was lifted, which meant that the salaries of anyone in contact with foreigners went into orbit. Cut off from the capitalist world until the end of the Cold War, the face of modern-day Cuba is in many respects still frozen in the 1950s - the classic American cars, moustachioed cigar-smoking farmers, horse-drawn carriages and colonial Spanish architecture all apparently unaffected by the breakneck pace of modernization. In a place where taxi drivers earn more than doctors (who earn on average USD 11 a month), understanding Cuba is a compelling but never-ending task. Into Castro's fortress of dollar-fuelled hedonism and communist austerity came the Tattlins. Their comparative wealth and status secured her family an enormous house with a staff of seven, and wisely she kept diaries throughout her stay. Fascinating, witty and full of absorbing detail, Cuba Diaries is far, far more than a privileged outsider's take on an impoverished society. Adventurous and intuitive, Isadora travelled wherever she could - not easy in a country with few road signs or places to stay or eat - and befriended Cubans from all walks of life. Fidel even came to dinner!