Snapshots from the Caribbean

I have a large collection of photos I took during various trips to Cuba.  And I have a smaller batch of photos Charlene took during her trip there in April 2012.  On searching through all these photos, I realized that she and I have different ways of looking at the world.

It wasn't really a surprise for in all the years I've known her she has demonstrated an almost extreme orientation toward animals.  Extremely compassionate, that is.  My own history shows some compassion and humane interest, but it can hardly be called "extreme."  She is, but I am not, ready to parody Barry Goldwater to say, "Extremism in the defense of animals is no vice."

How does this manifest itself in my picture collection?  We both take pictures of dogs and cats, but she concentrates on animals much more than I do.  She snaps street animals and pet animals—sick ones and healthy ones, cases of mange and good shiny coats of fur.

My own photographic efforts betray my intense tourist's interest in being in a foreign country.  I record architecture I like and street scenes, monuments and especially Cuba's old cars, and people in public scenes and small groups of friends.  You can find animals in my pictures, but to nowhere near the extent they appear in Charlene's collection.

Is this really important?  Well, probably not, but any marriage is a long process of getting to know your spouse, and the photos clearly show me her lifetime of dedication to animals.  Mine, on the other hand, are the photos of a traveler in a very unusual, long isolated, historically important part of the world.  The animals are there in my pics too, but not with the same emphasis or frequency as in Charlene's.

I think also that our respective photo collections suggest something significant in my own make-up.  I suspect that subconsciously I am reluctant to document animals who show the ravages of homelessness, lack of medical care, and starvation.  I resist taking some pictures perhaps to avoid broadcasting unwelcome images of suffering.  It's kind of a karma thing.  Still, the central purpose of my trips to Cuba is to reduce animal suffering, and I'm sure we've made progress in that area.

The Humane Society of the US tells us that massive spay-neuter campaigns are the only effective long-term solution to reducing homeless animal populations.  On some of my later trips to Cuba, I have felt there were perhaps fewer animals on the streets than in earlier years.  Just wishful thinking?  I can't prove it as no one can take a census of the animals in a city of 2 million people.  But I think several years of large numbers of animals being sterilized by Aniplant have helped the situation noticeably.

Just this week I found another clue.  Havana's homeless dogs are rounded up by prisoners into trucks and taken to Arroyo where they are kept for a few days and then poisoned.  It sounds barbaric, and it is, but five years ago they were processing 15,000 dogs a year, and today the rate is down to 5,000 a year. That's 10,000 slow, agonizing animal deaths a year saved.

No, we can't count the animals in the streets, but really neither can we count the large numbars of suffering dogs who aren't there because of Aniplant's spay-neuter campaigns.

That's the number we are working to increase.

Les Inglis