Talk:Havana

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[edit] Off-topic

[edit] U.S. billboard controversy

 Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (January 2007)
  • The U.S. Interest Section [1] billboard controversy [2] has been making national news in the U.S. Can anyone familiary with Havana put it in context? -- Beland 01:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
See United States Interests Section in Havana --Zleitzen 02:34, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photo: Dusk on Havana's waterfront

[edit] Overly calmness of the cubans

When you look at this picture, you may see a feature in the cuban mentality and sentiment. People are always calm and relaxed. Maybe they don't have anything to do. They should try to enjoy themselves to pass the time, which lacks creative, evolving and exciting things.

Perhaps Castro's policy of "everything within the revolution, nothing outside the revolution" really means that in Cuba an individual can exist only by "letting go", by being intellectually and politically passive and by letting the government both choose and rule the society.

Perhaps the cubans have no alternative to their relaxed mentality, and if an individual should become politically active, he/she would immediately be attacked by the authorities. Unless he/she should gain access to the oligarchically selected political inner circle, where he/she would be expected of total allegience to Fidel Castro.

Or perhaps the famous Cuban representative system is a suffiencient forum for the peoples' political self-determination. Does it take anything more; power to decide the policies and laws of the country, while the political elite could safely run the system with a certain amount autonomy granted to the people?

Or perhaps it is understandable that Castro wants to control "everything outside the revolution". USA is antagonising Cuba and causing heavy damage, while the political elite tries to maintain the stability of it's radical regime. I could believe that an individual gets into a confrontation with the authorities only if he/she represents a sort of hard-liner antisocialism, the cuban-floridan 40 years old anti-castro lobby, which constantly tries to hurt the regime rather than expressing contructive critisism. Perhaps Castro or his regime wants to defend itself against this, but to acknowledge other critisisms towards the system.

In the picture people are indeed relaxed, calm and spontanious, but on the other they do not laugh, celebrate or let themselves go.

Do the cuban people see their government and system justified, or is the threat of USA and the oppressing "el bloqueo" the explaining cause for this prominent absence of joy?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cuba.Habana.Malecon.01.jpg

Teemu Ruskeepää 10:10, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

"Bye Bye Havana"

By J. Michael Seyfert (2005?) Also the WINNER BEST EDITING: 1st Intl. Documentary Film Fest Atlanta, 2006

"For all Havana's crumbling structures and piles of rubble, its disintegrating roads and toxin-belching jalopies, its plethora of armed policemen and sun-bleached billboards espousing their pat, revolutionary slogans, it attracts over a million pink-skinned, camera-toting, snack-munching mojito-swilling tourists each year.

Cuba stands pummeled by an unworkable socialism and a voracious consumer appetite. What began more than forty six years ago seems spent, "patriotism or death" are simply not enough. Cubans want other choices, other points of view, and they can't wait any longer. But defeating the autocracy also means Cubans will need to relinquish much of their collective conscience in order to chase individual profit and personal freedom."

http://www.byebyehavana.com/

Teemu Ruskeepää 05:46, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Additions and general quality

[edit] this article needs work

"Havana has a good people, it is one of the city with more hospitality in the whole world." Grammer aside, was there a study to gauge the hospitality of Havana

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[edit] About article's consistence

You've got to be kidding me. A city of 2.2 million people, not only located in, but the capital of one of the few remaining Communist nations on Earth, and it gets reduced to an article that barely fills out a page? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.165.87.40 (talk • [[Special: Contributions/67.165.87.40|contribs]]) .

The town of Alice Springs with not even 30 thousand people is triple the size of this article... Something needs to be done.

You think this is short ? See the version in Spanish ! http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Habana -- Beardo 15:36, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A bit gushing

Some of the recent changes are a bit too much like a travelogue - need to be made more NPOV. -- Beardo 22:25, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Possible copyvio

"With a great deal of history, culture and tradition, the City of Havana is the destination par excellence in Cuba. It is also one of the most charming places in the world.

According to Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway, in beauty is only surpassed by Venice and Paris. This is a bustling, maritime, open, unbiased and happy that has learned to live its own inner life. From the XVI century the city of Havana has been the capital of Cuba.

Havana treasures several attractions, beautiful beaches, colonial architecture and special entertaining sites. You will find in this city the greatest hotels, the most shining cabarets and the most noted restaurants.

In Havana, cosmopolitan city where Spanish and black traditions mingled, events tourism become stronger every year. Nautical activities and health provide tempting programs to the development of these tourism modalities.

It is located in the north western coast of the Cuban island, having the Strait of Florida to the north and the province of Havana to the south, east, and west.

There paragraphs seem to have come straight from http://www.cubatravel.cu/client/destinations/destinations.php?id=1, which claims copyright. Thus this appears it could be a copyright violation.

-- Beardo 04:11, 25 May 2006 (UTC)


[edit] More deletions

I have taken out the following:

The visitors say that once one gets Havana City it is not like any other. Its streets, its houses, its people, the malecon, are unique and there is always a sea aroma that makes the city impossible to forget.

And the most curious thing!! It is the only City in the world which is capital for 3 times. Capital of Cuba, Capital of 2 provinces; Havana and Havana City.

The first is travel guide, not encyclopedia. The second conflicts with the information on La Habana Province.

-- Beardo 11:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Time Zone

Time zone EST (UTC-5)

- Summer (DST) EDT (UTC-4)

I'm trying to learn time zones and long formats, and wikipedia could be better. Specifically, on this page, shouldn't the time zone be America/Havana? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.37.75.130 (talk) 21:56, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Especially as I am not sure that is true. At the moment, Cuba is on the same time zone as EST, but for a few years recently it stayed on UTC - 4 even in winter. -- Beardo (talk) 00:35, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

[edit] Sister cities

It seems mention of Mobile, Alabama as sister city were removed at some point. I added this. I have personal knowledge of this relationship, including the people on the Mobile end who are organizers and have traveled to Havana many times in this capacity. -- MikeGasser (talk) 04:15, 6 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Intro

[edit] City / province

I don't believe there is any difference between the city of Havana and the province Ciudad de La Habana Province and so the two pages should be merged.

-- Beardo 05:54, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Sounds ok to me. Since you apparently live in Havana I guess you should know!
Unless we have any information that is valid for the province, but not the city, I don't see why we should keep them apart.
Erland Lewin 10:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I am no expect on Cuban local government, but I am pretty sure that Havana is similar to London, England - the city and the province "City of Havana" are the same things.

I think we just need to copy the material from the other page, and then put in a redirect. Though I am not sure why the names of municipios are shown twice. That can come out. I have made a start.

-- Beardo 15:18, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I suspect that this may be a historic thing - that the modern province "City of Havana" was carved out of the larger Havana province - I guess in 1976. But most sources say that Havana is a city of 2+ million people - that is the whole Ciudad de la Habana. Beardo 16:32, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] General

[edit] Irrelevant

"On the night of July 8-9, 2005, the city took a direct hit from Hurricane Dennis." - unless we are going to mention every hurricane strike. Wilma was more significant to the city.

"Havana was a candidate to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, but was not shortlisted." - is this important ?

"Jacomino is a stretch along the San Miguel road (west-east), between Vírgen del Camino and Ciudad Mar, and between Guardiola and La Fernanda (north-south). Its three major streets are Santa Emilia, Calzada and Beltrán." - unless we are going to list every one of dozens/hundreds of neighbourhoods.

-- Beardo 06:04, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Municipalities

[edit] boroughs

I don't think this section is correct. (and shouldn't be spelt burough ?)

My dictionary says that borough = municipio in Spanish. In that case, Miramar is not a borough, but is part of Playa, and Vedado is part of Plaza de la Revolucion.

I think the full list of municipios needs to come in from Ciudad de la Habana. -- Beardo 07:17, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, I changed the word "Borough" to "Neighbourhood" as a temporary solution to make the page more correct.
I agree on merging the province and the city. Since no-one has commented your proposal in about two weeks, I guess it should be ok to go ahead and do it. I'll try to read up on how to do the merging (like getting forwarding to Habana from the province article)
Erland Lewin 10:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Should each municipio have its own page ?

-- Beardo 15:56, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I think that depends on how much information we have about each municipio.
When you moved the municipio list you lost the information about sights or interesting places in each municipio which was in the 'neighbourhood' list. I think that information deserves to stay, and organizing places (and thereby wiki-links to interesting places, such as the Museo de la Revolucion) in Havana under the Municipios seems like a logical way to do it.
If we get more than a couple of paragraphs about a give municipio, then I think we can split it into a separate article.
Until that time, I think we could do redirects for the municipio names to the Havana article.
What do you think?
Erland Lewin 22:22, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't lose it - someone else removed it - see next section.

-- Beardo 23:27, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] AlbertR's revision

Earlier today, AlbertR removed:

"== Central Neighbourhoods of Havana and their Sights== - Listed in order from west to east, along the coast, central Havana is divided into the following boroughs:

- ===Miramar=== - The border of Miramar and Vedado to the east is the Río Almendares (the Almendares river). - - ===Vedado=== - Vedado stretches from Miramar to the Calzada de Infanta street, where it meets Centro Habana. - - In Vedado lies: - *the Hotel Nacional - *University of Havana (Universidad de La Habana) - Founded over two hundred years ago, this is Cuba's most famous university. - *the Museo Napeléonico, the huge Necrópolis de Colón cemetery, The Plaza de la Revolución with monuments to José Martí and Che Guevara, and the Plaza Anti-Imperialista where the U.S. Special Interests Office lies. - *La Rampa is the segment from Calle L (L Street) to Malecón of the 23rd Avenue in which we can find many night-life atractions (clubs, cinemas, hotels, bars). Its terraced slope allows a specatcular view of the sea. - - ===Centro Habana=== - Centro Habana lies between Calzada de Infanta street and Paseo de Martí, also known as the Prado. - - On the eastern side, facing the Capitolio, lies the Fábrica de Tobacos Partagás where much of the production of Cuba's most prestigious cigars takes place. Tours are given of the cigar production process. - - ===Habana Vieja (Old Havana)=== - Old Havana preserves a wealth of Spanish Colonial architecture, and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. - - It is the main tourist area of Havana, containing: - - *the Plaza de Armas - *the Plaza de la Catedral - *the Museo de la Revolución - *the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes - *the Museo Fundación Destilera Havana Club - *La Punta, the starting point of Prado Ave., or Paseo del Prado. It is the intersection of Prado with Malecón Ave. - - ===Habana del Este=== - Habana del Este lies across from Habana Vieja, on the other side of the Canal de Entrada."

with the comment "wikipedia is not a travel guide". However much of that information is useful and should be incorporated.

-- Beardo 23:33, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

User:AlbertR: What parts more precisely do you object against?
Is listing the borders between the neighbourhoods irrellevant? I can see that it might seem a bit detailed, but my thought was that if we eventually turn each municipio into its own article, this is a part of a definition of the areas.
Do you object to listing major landmarks, museums, and the university (for which there is a separate article)? I don't think this contradicts the "Wikipedia is not a travel guide" rule; the rule itself states that it is ok to list for example the Eiffel tower and the Louvre in Paris.
Do you object to stating that Old Havana is a UNESCO World Heritage Site? To me that would seem like obviously relevant information in an article about Havana.
Erland Lewin 08:31, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent additions

Someone has added a lot of new stuff here. Some seems to be translated from another language, and the English certainly needs to be improved. -- Beardo 12:40, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've had a go at a few paragraphs but there's a lot to get through and it's time consuming.--Zleitzen 13:39, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Why instead of complaining about the language don't you edit it and it will be much better, or you could of write it everything if you knew the information. Thanks!

That's what I've been doing out of respect to your additions, rather than deleting your work as per guidelines. It's taking up a fair amount of time. It would have been more helpful if you'd have taken the time yourself to ensure that your material was coherent. Another option would be that we nominate an editor to decipher your work so it can be read by users, I nominate you. In future such material will be reverted on sight.Thanks.--Zleitzen 23:53, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photos

A picturesque city like Havana certainly has a lot of nice vistas, but overloading an article with images breaks the usefullness and flow of information; just a word of caution: limit the use of images to what is necessary; on the other hand, there are a lot of articles about parts of Havana that lack images, maybe they could be re-distributed towards those pages. - Qyd(talk)16:57, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mistakes

About those taxis named colectivos: What are the Colectivos mentioned in the section about transportation? I do live in Havana and I do not know anything resembling the description given. They are described as taxis, but on the other hand they are said to be cheaper than buses. Buses here cost 40 cents of a Cuban peso, so I would like to know about these cheaper taxis, because I could make a better use of my salary. No, seriously, I could fix this, but I would like to know who got this information and/or why is it here.

The location of the second foundation: La Chorrera and Río Almendares are not on the southern part of the island, but are within the city!!! Río Almendares divides the current municipalities of Vedado and Miramar, and Puentes Grandes is just a district in Marianao, crossed by the Almendares river, not a town by any means. If the Rough guides ever said so, they're downright wrong! La Chorrera is about 8 kilometers away of Old Havana (every habanero knows El Malecón starts at La Punta and ends at La Chorrera). Obviously, the text in the article was literally translated from [3], but the translation was incorrect.

As you say - part of the problem is punctuation - the reference to south relates to the previous part. Barrio clearly should not be translated to town. -- Beardo 23:55, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The city's official name and status: is Ciudad de la Habana, not San Cristóbal de la Habana. That was the historic name alright, but it became extinct as of 1976, with the new División Politico-Administrativa. There's no difference between the city and the province, they are the same thing, and occupy the exact same space.

The 1976 change's purpose was to excorporate the city from the province, due to the fact that the city's population was big enough to warrant this. So, even if some areas in Ciudad de la Habana appear to be near rural, they are to be considered part of the city as well.

Carenas Bay is incorrect: Puerto Carenas or Carenas Port would be the precise term. There's no geographical bay with that name (the bay of the city was, and is, plainly named Bahía de la Habana). The bay hosted several ports (as well as the shipworks) and Puerto Carenas was just one of them (others are Casablanca, Regla, etc.)

Corrected this in the article. Careening Bay was the closest translation I could find. Bartolomé de las Casas, in the XVI century, already called it "Bahia de la Habana", but does say its previous name was de Carenas. Puerto means harbor, but could also double as bay. I also corrected the paragraph about the city's name, whose text was a bit criptic and told about Saint Cristopher being a giant saint who crossed rivers with a palm tree doubling as a cane (???) -- EmirCalabuch 10:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Cathedral's construction:

...Between 1789 and 1790 Cuba was apportioned into individual diocese by the Catholic Church. Shortly thereafter, Havana Cathedral was erected...

The Cathedral's works started on 1748, that's shortly before the 1789-1790 period indicated.

Columbus remains:

On January 15, 1796, the remains of Christopher Columbus were transported to the island from Santo Domingo...

While right, it fails to notice that Columbus' remains were not so shortly thereafter (1898) transported back to Spain, where they rest now on Seville's Cathedral.

Fortifications: while La Fuerza, La Punta, El Morro and La Cabaña are Havana's most famous fortresses, the city had a few more, specifically El Príncipe, Atarés, which defended the Shipworks at the farthest angle of the bay, the same La Chorrera mentioned in the first paragraph, the Santa Clara battery on the Taganana hill (where the Hotel Nacional now raises) and the famous (at the time) Doce Apóstoles battery located at sea level below La Cabaña, as well as a couple other fortified hills and surface batteries. Most of these fortresses, although built between the XVII and the XIX centuries (most of them between 1762 and 1780), are not located in the Old Havana area, but are extramuros (literally, outside the walls, except for La Punta, La Fuerza and perhaps Atarés). The Old Havana district is considered to be delimited by the perimeter of the city walls, most of the area outside the walls was military zone and therefore off-limits for citizens (the penalty for trespassing involved chopping off a leg, in fact the Vedado district, whose name means Forbidden, was baptized as such for this very reason). Therefore, describing these fortresses as places to see in the Old Havana area is incorrect, as most are technically outside Old Havana (unless the term "Old Havana" refers to the older city in its entirety, and not the Old Havana district).

When I have some spare time I'll correct these issues. In the meantime, I look forward for comments or corrections.

Oops, I forgot to sign. -- EmirCalabuch 07:52, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trivia

"Melbourne is sometimes considered the Havana of the first world". Where did this come from? Is it NPOV? The only source I can find is on google, on this blog.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.61.134.116 (talk • contribs) 02:06, 23 August 2006

"Trivia" and "Notable residents" are arguably OK for small, low importance articles. The Havana article is comming along quite well, it improved nicely over the past few months. Some sections grew to the point where they need sub-articles. It has enough true and intersesting facts, I say we delete the Trivia and Notable residents sections alltogether, as they are, well, trivial.--Qyd 14:40, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
The notable persons is a bizarre pairing. Do other cities have anything like that ? -- Beardo 18:22, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ?

I think is just rediculous how someone is deleting everything and making it their way. There has being an article for Old Havana, Old Havana is not a city, it belongs to the city of Havana; so why is there an article for Old Havana instead it should be a part for Havana. What's up with the edit war? 9/3/6 Ricardo.

I am not sure what edit war you refer to, but Old Havana is a municipality. and is a separately designated UNESCO world heritage site. It therefore deserves its own page. This page is getting too long anyway. -- Beardo 07:28, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not sure what this means...

Can someone please translate the sentence "Before the hotels and restaurants, the Cadillac, Chevrolet and Buick park in triple line waiting, to the buttons."? This sentence is listed under the Republican Period Paragraph...and I really can't figure out what it means. Maybe its just me...but it seems to be totally out of place. --Tbkflav 01:59, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

See JACKELINE CASA RENTA http://www.jackehouse.metropoliglobal.com/spanish/ciudad-y-cultura.html - "Ante los hoteles y restaurantes, los Cadillac, Crevrolet y Buick aparcan en triple fila aguardando, a los botones." I am not sure if that is a reference to bellboys.
Much of this seems taken from that site - http://www.jackehouse.metropoliglobal.com/english/city-and-culture.html - copyvio ?
-- Beardo 05:43, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Coat of Arms

The current Coat of Arms of the city does not includes the oak branch and the laurel wreath on the sides and the crown on top which the original one has, as does the Coat of Arms of Cuba and the Province of Havana. I've found the original one to replace it. DanishWolf 22:46, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Miami?

With the extremely large numger of Cuban ex-patriots living in Miami, why isn't it listed as one of Havana's sister cities? -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.247.23.12 (talk • contribs) on 00:43, 6 July 2007

Miami would be the last city in the world they would make sister cities with. Don't you know much about their politics. -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.176.46.88 (talk • contribs) on 23:18, 14 July 2007

[edit] Sports

Who said Cubans like soccer? It's one of the few latin american countries who doesn't play or like much soccer. I mean, they like it, just not enough to mention it. Boxing and other sports should be mentionned before. -- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.134.71.133 (talk • contribs) on 15:44, 10 August 2007

  • Cubans seem to be more interested in soccer in recent years - it is shown on TV regularly, and you see kids in the street playing it a lot more than only a few years ago. -- Beardo (talk) 00:32, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Split

This article is getting ridiculously long, with some sections diving in excessive detail. Is it time to split to some sub-articles such as Architecture of Havana and Transportation in Havana? --Qyd (talk) 16:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)