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Las Terrazas
"Las Terrazas was originally conceived as an environmental socialist project."
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By Belia Mayeno
 Cuba is one of only two countries in Latin America that has increased its forest cover at a time when most forest environments are being depleted. Youth Radio’s Belia Mayeno-Choy brings us the story of a model eco-village in the country, and the young people who are the first generation to grow up in this utopian community – now the flagship of Cuban eco-tourism.
Las Terrazas is a small town surrounded by a lush tropical forest about an hour west of Havana. 23 year-old resident Noel Rivero says because so many farmers used to cut down trees to make charcoal, it wasn’t always so green…
NOEL (on tape)
They reforested with trees all the area, and at the same time they built a community called Las Terrazas...
BELIA
Like most of the local campesinos in the area, Noel’s family was relocated into the planned community to provide labor for the massive environmental program. Noel’s family has lived in these mountains for generations. His grandfather was a peasant farmer with 24 children.
GRANDFATHER (on tape)
And the idea was to concentrate all the farmers who were living in the area, they were living in really bad conditions, they didn’t have a school, they didn’t have doctors, anything.
BELIA
Once Las Terrazas was built, they had access to basic services, and their livelihood went from cutting down trees to planting them. But their lives changed AGAIN with the beginning of the Cuban economic crisis in 1991. The socialist government realized that Las Terrazas could also be a lucrative eco-tourism site, even if this wasn’t the project’s original intention. Noel recently completed his compulsory military service, and he’s now learning English in order to become a tour guide.
But you don’t have to learn English for every new job at Las Terrazas. Local musicians can roam the restaurants performing for tips and selling their CD’s. 18 year-old Jose Luis is a drummer for one such band, called “Cuestion del Tiempo” or “A Question of Time”. He says there are other work options too.
JOSE LUIS (on tape)
Here in Las Terrazas, tourism has given young people many opportunities to find work as waiters, office workers, cashiers, tour guides, and custodians.
BELIA
With so many young people seeking lucrative jobs in the dollar-driven tourist economy, Las Terrazas is no different from the rest of Cuba. The country is facing an ongoing internal “brain-drain” phenomenon. Cubans are choosing service-sector jobs to make more money. There’s a joke here about a young woman who brings home her new boyfriend, who is a doctor. When her mother learns of the boyfriend’s profession, she cries because her daughter can’t find a nice bartender or waiter to settle down with.
 Las Terrazas has built an eco-restaurant, El Romero, to cater to traveling herbivores. While some environmental ideals have taken root here, the changes to local culture are not always welcome. Las Terrazas was originally conceived as an environmental socialist project. But now that it's reoriented to the international tourist market, there’s sometimes a conflict between the goal of serving the Cuban people and courting travelers’ dollars. Maikly Gonzalez Casanova grew up in Las Terrazas, and he has seen the changes.
MAIKLY (on tape)
“apretaron mucho”.. Everything here is a lot more restricted here now because of tourism. I wish they just left it the way it was before. I wish tourism hadn’t changed everything so much, because now Las Terrazas is starting to look like every other tourist place.
BELIA
Just another twist to a place that was built with the goal of environmental preservation, but has found its sustainability through environmental capitalism.
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