This lovely beast is a living relic of Fidel Castro’s legendary quest to cross-breed Cuban cattle with Indian Cebu cows in the 1960s and 1970s. After nationalizing most dairy cows and confiscating the medium-size farms that produced milk and cheese for domestic consumption, low productivity on state farms forced the government to guarantee milk only to citizens under seven years old as early as 1963. That was later reduced to kids under three. Yet Fidel crossed this exotic species with Cuba’s Holsteins with the promise that Cuba would soon produce “more milk than Holland and more cheese than France”. Of course, nothing of the kind ever materialized. I encountered this male humbled to the status of a tourist attraction at a state-owned hotel. The woman riding atop was its wrangler. Viñales, Pinar del Rio, November 2011.
