Cuba

Paper birds festoon a street during the Santiago de Cuba carnaval, in Cuba, the largest island in the West Indies. “Cuba’s allure lies not just in beautiful vistas and beaches, or its colonial history, or even in the spectacle of its entrapment in the past,” writes Jon Bowermaster. “Its real enchantment is in its optimistic people who carry on, and even celebrate life, in the midst of what appears to many as a failed political and economic experiment.”