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Summary Of Carlos Eire's Waiting For Snow In Havana

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Young upper middle class boys in Cuba had many freedoms due to the culture norms and lack of laws that allowed their behavior. President Batista held power before the revolution, and under his rule few laws regulated the life of upper middle class children. When Fidel Castro led Cuba into revolution, he focused more on reforms and did not pay much attention to young boys, allowing them to continue on in a similar way as before. When Castro’s reforms began to affect the upper middle class way of life, children began to see direct effects of Castro’s revolution. Carlos Eire wrote ‘Waiting for Snow in Havana’ about his first hand experiences as a young upper middle class boy during Castro’s rise to power. In the high society world of Cuba …show more content…

The lack of laws, societal standards, and general rules in the household all allowed the boys the freedom to do whatever they pleased without the threat of lasting consequences. Under the regime of President Batista in prerevolutionary Cuba, there existed few laws that inhibited the play of young boys in the upper middle class. Free from house work, large amounts of school work, and the pressure to make money, they roamed the streets with abandon. Eire recalls a time when he and his friends, also of upper middle class status, chased a truck spraying pesticides down the street. Eire refers to it as “that awful pesticide banned in the United States,” but would still breathe in deep whenever the cloud consumed him (35). The government has no enforced regulations against the type of pesticide used in the country, or against whether or not the children could breathe it in and bask in its cloud. Eire’s father, a prestigious judge in Cuba, often received bribes from his court cases, such as material for …show more content…

Free from house work, large amounts of school work, and the pressure to make money, they roamed the streets with abandon. Eire recalls a time when he and his friends, also of upper middle class status, chased a truck spraying pesticides down the street. Eire refers to it as “that awful pesticide banned in the United States,” but would still breathe in deep whenever the cloud consumed him (35). The government has no enforced regulations against the type of pesticide used in the country, or against whether or not the children could breathe it in and bask in its cloud. Eire’s father, a prestigious judge in Cuba, often received bribes from his court cases, such as material for jeans. Free movie tickets along with free candy and soda at the courthouse pushed themselves to the forefront of Eire’s mind as a child, without regard to who paid for these items. No one stopped the cronyism from happening, and Eire’s father readily accepted it. Eire’s father also allowed him and his brother to buy high power fireworks and use them without supervision. There government did not enforce any regulations against the selling of these fireworks, and no strict regulations about placing them in the hands of children. Eire, along with his friend group and father, often partook in ‘car surfing’. Four or five kids with no seat belts

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