As Cuba celebrates 50 years` of its revolution, I am reminded of what I wrote about my visit to Cuba in 2004. It was posted on the Blue Ears site (which later became Global Ear, now alas no more!). Am planning to see `Che` tomorrow. Here, then, is my blog of November 2004:
Sunday, November 21, 2004
Travel::
Impressions of Cuba
Having just returned from a week`s trip to Cuba, let me record my impressions of the country here. My fascination for the place goes back to 1961. To a 20-year-old student radical, when the `Bay of Pigs` happened, Castro`s Cuba became instantly and inextricably linked with revolution and resistance, and acquired an aura of rustic romance. So it was thrilling to set foot there some 43 years later, and to find that the `Revolution` (of 1959) is still alive and kicking, personified by Castro as a much revered father figure of the nation.
Our trip started at Varadero, which used to be the Americans` den in their backwaters for gambling, prostitution, tax evasion and other associated vices in the 1940s and 50s. Evidence of this can still be seen nearly 50 years on, in the faded facades and forticos of crumbling buildings of the period and the empty but well laid out streets and avenues, reminiscent of US mid-town life, flowing with the ubiquitous and battered Fords, Pontiacs and Chevrolets, whose colourful bodyworks are of course powered by reconstructed Russian engines as maintained and further modified by Cuban ingenuity.
From Varadero to Cienfuegos to Trinidad and then on to Havana, as we drove through the lush countryside, one could not but notice how leisurely and peaceful the pace of life was. People milled and mingled around in town centres, just as they would anywhere else. More noticeably, they waited by the roadside for transport, which is the one public utility that is most evidently lacking in Cuba. They have an excellent universal health care service and an equally comprehensive education system (both free at all points of use) but do not have a good transport infrastructure either in terms of a road or rail network or of trams and buses. And so it is customary for drivers to stop and give lifts to pedestrians.
In general, then, people are not prosperous, but they are not poverty-stricken either. They enjoy a subsistence level national wage (reputed to be around US $15 a month) which means their necessities of life (basic food, shelter, clothing etc) are assured; anything above that would depend on extra-curricular activities! There is a large bureucracy designed to ensure that people follow rules: eg. ration books are essential for daily purchases; every cow and horse (believe it or not) has an ID assigned at birth and any such animals to die have to be accounted for (to prevent `black` marketing in meat and skin products); inspectors check that vehicles stop at every railway crossing (which are invariably unguarded) even along disused lines for trains that may never come or appear infrequently; and records are meticulously kept of the most mundane transactions, again so that no one derives any unfair or unmerited advantage.
But at the top layers of government, access to officials or ministers is easy. Indeed, as a (British Asian) business contact explained, state security of the kind that we are used to is afforded only to Castro, his Deputy and his brother (who is professionally involved in such matters); others can be approached like ordinary citizens, without corruption or backhanders. The economy runs on an extraordinary rather than a complex dual Cuban Peso and US $ level, except that two days after we arrived there (on 8 November) the US Dollar became `non grata` as a trading currency, to be replaced by the CUC (the convertible Peso) which meant that one could exchange US Dollars at par. So for tourists and foreigners, everything is always quoted in terms of the US $ and the rates and prices are not that cheap either - for example a small beer (Crystal) at a cafe, restaurant or hotel, usually cost between $1 and $2.50. The same applies to food in such places; though marginally cheaper for visitors it is of course wholly out of the economic range of the locals. But the remarkable thing is that the Cubans live with this dichotomy as routine; there is no resentment, no embarrassment and no envy.
Walking in the grottiest parts Old Havana for example, at no time did I feel either threatened or out of place. On the first evening, I deliberately wandered about wearing a tee-shirt bearing the Canadian colours and the logo of Niagara Falls, with a pouch around my waist, just so that if I did anything out of the ordinary it could be seen that I was a foreigner - but nobody either accosted me or even gave me a second glance. At other times, most people tended to assume that I was a Latino - because of the brown skin of course, even though I was better dressed and looked like a tourist. Now, not knowing a word of Spanish was a major drawback of course. But we managed to get by, though I did wish I was better at languages.
Even so, I had a most enjoyable cultural experience one afternoon when I left my British English group to take an excursion in Matanzas in the company of tourists from Mexico, Argentina, Spain and Venezuela - albeit with a bi-lingual Cuban guide who interpreted everything of importance into English for the benefit of poor me and a German couple. What it showed was that when it comes to social niceties, learning about strange lands and other forms of personal communication there is no fundamental difference between the English- and the Spanish-speaking worlds.
If Varadero is a reminder of the American presence in the pre-Castro period, Trinidad is living testimony to the grandeur of a more distant past, with its streets, squares, cathedrals and palaces preserved as they were some 3 or 4 centuries ago with the help of UN funding for world heritage sites. Driving up and round the coast from there, we even visited the famous Bay of Pigs and a couple from our party, in typical British eccentric fashion, stripped bare to take a swim there just to prove something (?).
And what of Havana? The city is full of monuments, to the victorious revolution, of course, and lots of historic towers and buildings of the colonial era. It is essentially a mixture of the old and the new. There is even a Fountain of India, which at first I thought might be to celebrate the post-colonial Gandhi/Nehru connection, but no, it is a picturesque marble structure erected in 1837, with nothing (that I could detect) to indicate why. One dominating feature of the city`s landscape is the Malecon - the gigantic sea wall around the northern shore. I had my business contact host`s driver stop along it at night to take a closer look - even on a normal evening the waves were fearsome and some lashed over; so imagine what it would be like during one of those hurricanes?
And then, of course, there is Hemingway`s House, with its large surrounding grounds and gardens. It was left by him to the Cuban nation as a legacy and has been preserved in the same state - now as a tourist attraction - solid, stately and serene. We are allowed to peep into all the rooms through large windows and see the furniture, the rugs, the objet`d`art and other decorations and, above all, the books - hundreds of them lining the walls of every room, including the spacious toilet in the main house, and in the guest cottage outside. Anyone with long eyesight or a special lense could read the titles of the books; in the study it was possible to make out some of them, eg. `The Partisan Reader` (no other details), `Enemies of Promise` by Cyril Connolly, Nevil Shute`s `Beyond the Black Stump`, `The Republic` by Charles A Beard and `Doctrine and Action` by Dr Oliveira Salazar.
The opulence of the estate was unmistakeable; there is the huge swimming pool (now empty and exposed), while his yacht `El Pilar` remains anchored on stilts in a seemingly navigable condition in the large boatyard. And as if the property was not set high enough, there is the inevitable stone tower, which one can climb up to along an iron ladder of the modern fire exit variety; so I did and the view was fantastic. Oh, and I forgot to mention a stuffed lion, as a trophy, below in one of his studies - as proof of his East African safari! But though much is made of his Cuban connection, he was really an expatriate - not so much The `Quiet` American as a gregarious, party-loving playboy (there are stories about him seen swimming naked with Ava Gardener who was rumoured to be his daughter!) and, to paraphrase Graham Green again, he could even have been `Their Man in Havana`, `their` here meaning the FBI - at least they were keeping track of him!
On the long flight to Havana, I had finished Jon Snow`s extremely readable `Shooting History - A Personal Journey`. To those not familiar with his name, he is of course the celebrated British TV journalist and now Channel 4 news anchorman. In it he recalls a conversation he had with Castro (he had been asked by Neil Kinnock to record a meeting he, Kinnock had with Castro) when he confirmed that the Americans had once tried to blow him up with an explosive cigar. But he also told Kinnock during a banter about beards and baldness that he saved some eighty hours a week by not shaving! I thought of this when we visited the Plaza de la Revolucion where Castro gives his annual speech on 1st January when up to 2 million people gather to hear him. It is surrounded by buildings housing all the principal ministries, the most notable of them being the Minstry of the Interior which sports a giant mural of Che Guevara. Che of course is perhaps the best known revolutionary hero after Castro to be admired, and here again I was reminded of `The Motor Cycle Diaries` about his early life that I saw less than a couple of months ago. The Plaza is not large in comparision with other similar places; Tiannamen Square in Beijing for example is much, much bigger, though there the presence of the Chinese army is unmistakeable, whereas here there were no visible guards.
We also visited the famous Hotel Nacionale de Cuba, built in elegant Colonial style in 1927 and set on a landscaped crag overlooking the Malecon and the Atlantic Ocean. The bars and the galleries of the hotel contain photos and sketches of people like Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Paul Robeson and Winston Churchill (among others) all of whom had stayed there at one time or another. Another night, my business friend took me to a live show there, but quite frankly it did not compare favourably with the Cubanacana Cabaret that I have seen performed here in London. And that brings me to music; this is such a fundamental aspect of life in Cuba that one simply cannot escape it, nor should we want to. Just as when you land at Las Vegas`s McLaren Airport you are immediately drawn into the gambling culture of the place (with one-armed bandits placed in the customs hall and so on) so here in Cuba, the music beguils and captures you the moment you arrive. The air is filled with the rhythms and sounds of `son bembe`, `salsa` and `Trova`. In hotels, restaurants and public places, they play - not to serenade you as much as just to infect you with the spirit of the music, and so if you get up and do a few steps they are delighted - of course you are then expected to tip them!
From music to literature and art : there is no shortage of galleries, museums and meeting places. So many of these were within a hair`s breath of our hotel; I ventured into the `Palacio de Bellas Artes` right across, attracted by a large expectant crowd of people who had gathered and were obviously waiting for something to happen. I usually find, in foreign cities, that the best way to make some local contact is going to an art gallery, museum or college/university related cafe or site where one is bound to meet some intellectual type who speaks English! Well, this for once did not work: I could not find anyone with whom I could have a conversation in English and it was only after a broken and elementary exchange with a couple of people that I managed to find out that about to open was an exhibition of paintings by the celebrated Cuban writer, painter and musicologist Alejo Carpentier. They gave me a brochure in Spanish which maybe someone will translate for me some day!
(And food? I should have mentioned that my business friend, living a bachelor style existence in a sleek upmarket kind of apartment block where he also had his office, entertained me to an Indian meal there prepared and served by, wait for it, his Cuban-Indian cook! Cuban-Indian not of the native Indian variety but rather from India - originally from Kerala who had been settled in Cuba for some three decades and married to a local Cuban woman. He said he had cooked for top people, including even Castro, and of course spoke Spanish. The vegetarian meal he had prepared was like one we would have at home, with hot chapatis, curry, rice and dahl and other condiments, served as they do in India, straight off the oven! My friend spent a certain number of months only in Havana and needed home comforts).
As for the flow and exchange of information generally, we could get CNN in both English and Spanish at all the hotels. The locals do not have such easy access but news cannot be suppressed. Special editions of local papers announcing the death of Arafat were on sale in the streets almost immediately and hotel workers did ask about Faluja; so they knew what was going on and were concerned about world affairs, though from a different perspective - and why not?
So to sum up, I am glad I went and saw for myself that Cuba has stood up to the American hegemony and is surviving despite the embargo that has now lasted some 40 years. Cuban technology, engineering and medical expertise developed and flourished as a direct result of American sanctions because, as our guide emphasized time and again, `necessity is the mother of invention`, These professional skills have not only made the country into what it is, largely self-reliant, but they have long been exported to other Third World countries, particularly in South and Central America. The Cubans` contribution is valued and respected there.
But I fear for its future: for once Castro goes (and despite all the anti-Cuban rhetoric repeated by Bush during the recent election, it is clear that the Americans are now basically waiting for him to die rather than wanting to topple him) the country will get sucked into the global market economy - because the capitalist hawks are waiting in the wings and, let us face it, the country is ripe for `development`... . Are there any parallels with other Communist societies? In China and Vietnam, we have the spectre of a dynamic, though paternalistic, leadership embracing the pragmatism, if not the ideology, of capitalism, in a measured and controlled way (unlike in Russia). In both those countries, there is a long historical tradition of self-help interacting with the competitive spirit and the survival instinct, against the background of a burgeoning population.
In Cuba, a different kind of cultural environment prevails and the people are fairly laid back. The sound social structure of the Cuban nation will therefore be severely tested by any push towards a free market type economy, and the present broad mass of an equally poor population will be split into those who can ride with the new wave and those who will be left high and dry - thus giving rise to all the ills of extremes of poverty and wealth that we have come to see in other parts of the developing word. So maybe the end of the Revolution is not too far off, who knows?
PS> After returning from my trip, in the last couple of days, I have resumed reading "Dirty Havana Trilogy" a fictional account of low-level life in Cuba by Pedro Juan Gutierrez, translated by Natasha Wimmer, and must say it all makes sense! RAMNIK SHAH, Surrey, England
Posted By Ramnik on 11/21/2004 Travel Add your comments Reads: 32
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Impressions of Cuba Posted by Ramnik on 11/21/2004
Castro saves 80 hours a WEEK by not shaving? No, of course not. I have checked the reference - at page 234 of Jon Snow`s book (HarperCollins/Publishers 2004 - Hb - ISBN 0 00 717184) - and it should of course have been `eighty hours a year`. Sorry. RAMNIK SHAH
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