While I feel a lot of sympathy for the kid and his mother, there has been a whole lot of irrational verbiage spewed about concerning this story. I know how I would feel if it was my son, but that does not change the facts. As Gengen points out, if you are driving and involved in an injury accident, you can be prosecuted. So if that is the law, each tourist has the responsibility to be aware of it and to understand the consequences. And another point of law, is that he was underage, and shouldn’t have been driving. The car rental company apparently was wrong also, in that they shouldn’t have listed him as a driver. (Report is that they did.) But, what is that old saying? … Oh, yes, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
I agree with Lenny that with all the hearsay, we can’t form any educated opinions. That also goes for radio talk show hosts, but when did that ever stop a radio talk show host? I listened, for a while, to Roy Green on the radio yesterday, and he was spouting off at the parliamentary secretary to the Foreign Affairs Minister, saying basically that Canada should intervene. It is not our place to pass opinions on Cuba’s laws. It is up to us to abide by them when we go there. End of.
There was also some moaning about how Cody’s situation, in a hotel in Cuba, costing his mother x dollars per day is “extortion.” If a member of my family was in that spot, I would be glad he wasn’t in jail. I agree, it’s an awful expense, but there seems to be plenty of fund raising action going on, so I suspect the family will not have to pay it all themselves.
And then, there was the remark that the Cubans are not providing the medical care that Cody needs. Actually, the comments that his mother made sounded like she didn’t think that the Cuban hospital was good enough. She said, “he needs to be in a Canadian hospital.” Sounds like the medical care is available, they just aren’t accepting it.
Bottom line: if you go to any foreign country and plan to drive, be aware of the laws, follow them as best you can, understand the implications, and be a whole lot more careful than you would be in familiar surroundings.
JMNSHO
Jack