In the Americas With David Yetman

In 2016, the U.S. government made it easier to visit Cuba. Now, a Cuban cultural expert shows us Havana once off limits to us. Hidden among its fine old buildings we find a village created by artists, an African-Cuban cultural center, a canalside restaurant, a school for women boxers, a women’s bicycling cooperative, and a street dedicated to live African- Cuban music.

Revenues from Amazon oil mean prosperity to many Ecuadorans, but the benefits for native peoples of the Amazon are less clear. Chinese oil interests are scouring the ancestral lands of Huaorani people for petroleum. The results are varied and controversial as the Hauorani lands and pristine rain forest are invaded by oil explorers and their machines.

Six centuries ago the Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlán, now Mexico City, was the world’s grandest urban center and its market the world’s busiest. Now home to more than 20 million souls, Mexico City’s museums, monuments, galleries, public celebrations, and vast ethnic mix reflect its past and present glories, and make it Latin America’s most vibrant city.

In the Arizona desert, scientists study a small ocean at Biosphere II facility, where researchers measure sea changes under controlled conditions. But the real ocean is uncontrolled and vast. We journey to the Bahamas to join researchers in caves and in reefs who are making startling findings about changes in climate and their effects on our oceans.

Situated along the U.S.-Mexico border, the Pinacate Volcanic Range houses a violent history of fire and brimstone. Visible from outer space are five massive craters, hundreds of cinder cones, and lava flows miles long, all set in a varied desert of epic dryness only a few miles away from a burgeoning ocean resort town. Peoples, ancient and modern have left their traces.

Researchers at Biosphere II in Arizona have re-created tropical rainforest in a closed environment to study the effects of climate change. Scientists compare that artificial environment with a tropical rainforest reserve in Costa Rica, a living laboratory where scientists record the effects of global warming on the forest and its dwellers.

Dominican Republic has survived a troubled history of dictators and intervention from the north. Now it is a hotbed of baseball, a hotspot for viewing humpbacked whales, and home to one of the liveliest carnivals anywhere, the best place to view diablos cojuelos—limping devils—on parade: the Carnival of La Vega.

More than any other of the contiguous United States, Oregon has been shaped by volcanoes. East and west of the Cascade Range are two different landscapes. On the east side, we climb through lavas of volcanic glass and follow a mountain bike trail at the edge of a flow, then venture west to the fertile valleys and the wild Pacific coast in all its glory.

Santiago de Cuba, a thousand kilometers southeast of Havana, was once Cuba’s most important city. Ravaged by hurricanes and impoverished by the U.S. blockade, it has endured and still celebrates its African roots and an ancient religious shrine. Residents of African descent celebrate an old French custom.

In the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, we find nations apart from mainstream Mexico. Populated for centuries by peoples speaking Mayan languages, they retain their customs and dress–while struggling to protect their homelands. Their towns and villages retain traditional pre-Columbian governments. They have invited us to one of their annual ceremonies.