The News: Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders duked it out in debate last night over future relations with Cuba, immigration reform, and healthcare. Both candidates said the US should normalize relations with Cuba, but did their best to please the Cuban ex-patriots in the crowd. Sanders said, “Cuba is, of course, an authoritarian undemocratic country, and I hope very much as soon as possible it becomes a democratic country.”

>George Martin, the record producer who first signed the Beatles and allowed them to become one of the greatest musical groups of all time, died in England at age 90. Martin was sometimes known as “The 5^th Beatle” for his importance in developing the group.

“God bless George Martin,” Ringo Starr said on Twitter.

From 1962 to 1970, Martin produced 13 albums and 22 singles for The Beatles, a collection of work that rocked the world.

An Educated Country: Our group took a ride in a 1939 Plymouth taxi the other night. It fit seven people in three rows of seats very comfortably. The driver said the original engine is long gone and the car is now powered by Toyota.

The Cubans have been brilliant about keeping these old cars running. They make new parts and scrounge for old ones. An old American car might have a Korean diesel engine and a Russian transmission. On the streets of Havana there’s even a working Ford Edsel, one of the biggest lemons in the history of the car business.

Some are maintained in mint condition, but for most the original colors are painted over. Fords, Pontiacs, Chevys and Buicks from the 30s into the late 50s are now painted bright blue, orange, gold, red, lime green, pink, and bubblegum.

Many are used for taxis and these days you see Western tourists joyriding around Havana in old American convertibles, their video cameras running and selfie sticks held high as they hold onto their hats.

Like the mechanics who keep these cars running, Cuba is a country of smart people and they are very proud that immediately after the Revolution Fidel Castro insisted that the 20 percent of Cubans who were illiterate should be taught how to read. They tell the story at the literacy museum on a big military base left by the Batista regime.

The guide says that children, some as young as seven but most of them teenagers, were sent to the country to teach the peasants. Housewives and retired people taught in the city. They say that in just one year the rate of illiteracy was down to 3.9 percent and that today it is .2 percent. In the old days people who learned how to read were encouraged to send their first letter to Fidel Castro.

Education in Cuba is a little ahead of peoples’ ability to do something with it. The big industries are medicine, tourism, biotech, and cigars. Not everyone has a use for their education. In the restaurants and music halls around the Parque Central it’s evident that there’s a good business in prostitution. At night two girls, with the permission of the doormen, sit quietly in the lobby casting appealing looks at the men. You see older European men squiring beautiful young black women. The French, Germans and Italians like the girls with the darkest skin. The girls, teenagers, appear bored staring at their cellphones and barely speaking to their date until the man says it’s time to go to the hotel.

The streets at night are spilling with music. Walk a block or so and there’s a great band playing Cuban music. People just spontaneously dance in the streets.

And there is an explosion of art. Our group visited the home of the ceramic artist Jose Fuster, who has covered his house with tiled domes, arches, and ceramic murals of faces and creatures done in cubist style. The steps, the walls, the railings are all tile.

Fuster is working on the rest of the neighborhood. Homes next door and the walls that line the streets are covered with his ceramic art. Fuster’s son translated for his father, “Picasso is my spiritual father and Gaudi is my favorite uncle.”

For pictures of Cuba today go to https://www.facebook.com/TheRooneyReport

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