From 1998 to 2000, I made three trips to Cuba. In 2001 I made a fourth trip, this time to Miami to look at Little Havana. Collectively, these images examine the situation in Cuba at the turn of the century, late in Fidel’s tenure, in all of its deep ambiguity. My work involved a range of exploration: in part artistic, journalistic and sociological. By this time, the majority of the population had been born after the Revolution. To those under 40, Fidel was a fixture who’d simply always been there. An icon who represented Cuba’s past rather than its future, he was referred to as “El Viejo”, a term in part playful and in part derisive. The considerable seductions of Castro’s voice and persona continued to be alluring, but it was a fading attraction with scant connection to everyday lives and concerns. Instead, by then, the juggernaut of American culture was perhaps the greater seduction, poised to consume and erase a nearby island world.