By John Wood. Special to The Washington Post. Sunday, February 27, 2000; Page E01
When touring today's Havana, talking about a little boy can lead to big trouble.
It is only my second day in Cuba, and I am being whisked down one of the narrow cobblestone alleyways of Old Havana in the back seat of a tiny Peugeot police car, which is designed to hold two people uncomfortably but is now stuffed with two policemen, four giggling teenage boys and a thoroughly
perplexed me. We squeal around a corner, startling a horse pulling a carriage full of tourists (I know they're tourists because they're wearing Che Guevara T-shirts; Cubans prefer American ones), and enter an ancient weathered-gray fortress with "Policia Nacional Revolucionaria" etched
into the stone. As we cross the wooden drawbridge (rumble, rumble) and zip under the entrance, I wonder what unspeakable suffering awaits those brought here who, like me, have wronged the state.
I wouldn't be so worried, but I've just finished touring the Museo de la Revolucion, where dictator Fulgencio Batista's old fingernail-removing clamps and testicle-squeezers are cheerfully on display, and the thought crosses my mind that it wouldn't take much for someone having a really bad day
to suddenly have a Batista flashback.
I have been seized for conversing with four Cuban boys about Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old boy who was rescued at sea and brought to the United States last Thanksgiving after the boat in which his mother sought to flee Cuba sank. Billboards and graffiti everywhere in Havana proclaim, "Devuelvan
nuestro hijo!" ("Return our son!") Hey, forget Elian--free me!
Visitors to Cuba can't help but get drawn into politics. If you don't bring it up, Cubans surely will. During breakfast one morning, my hotel waiter, Jorge, tells me he used to be a high school geography teacher but had to quit because it paid next to nothing. He has many family members living
in Florida, but he can't travel there. "I can't even travel to the eastern part of my own country," he says. "Hotels in Cuba are for foreigners only. Cubans aren't even allowed in most restaurants. I studied world geography, but I'll never be able to see it."
The conversation leads to the U.S. embargo and I tell him I believe it will be lifted soon. He gets very excited. "You think so? When? How do you know? You hear this?" I say I'm sorry, it's just my opinion, and he deflates. My reasoning is that President Clinton isn't averse to lifting
embargoes--he ended our trade barrier with Vietnam in 1994; Cuba has been in the doghouse long enough; the Cold War is over; U.S. businesses are desperate for the embargo to end; the fervent anti-Cuban lobby in Miami is beginning to wear thin with most Americans; and Clinton could use the gesture as
a last grand historical hurrah, tantamount to Richard Nixon's opening relations with China in 1972. I apologize for getting Jorge's hopes up. He says it's okay, "but it would change so many things."
He says the police have been very nervous the last year or so, and especially now, during the fervor over young Elian, who is living with a great-uncle in Miami. Terrorists, hired by Cubans in Miami, he says, have planted bombs in hotels in an attempt to disrupt the tourism industry and topple
President Fidel Castro's communist government. One bomb went off, killing an Italian tourist. The fact that I didn't have the suitable ID on me--and was talking about Elian--alarmed the policeman.
"Any foreigner speaking to a group of Cubans makes them think you may be trying to break the revolution," he says.
Later that day I witness a "Million Mother March" for Elian along the Malecon, the massive three-mile-long seawall that is the city's most popular esplanade. The legion of women wave Cuban flags along the jetty and pass scaffolding where speakers vent their outrage over huge
loudspeakers. Billboard-size cartoons lampoon Uncle Sam as a mobster. I snatch a newspaper comics section from the ground that consists entirely of Elian cartoons. One shows the 6-year-old boy in a cage with Pinocchio. Pinocchio asks him, "Are you here because of Mr. Stromboli?" Elian
replies, "No, I'm here because of the Miami Mafia." Another one depicts Elian as a tree on a tiny island being ripped out by a hook painted with the stars and stripes as he screams, "Papi!"
The Elian incident began rather innocently as I was strolling down El Prado, a tree-canopied promenade that leads from Parque Central, one of Havana's great plazas, to the ocean: Four boys race past me playing futbol using a flattened soft drink can as a ball. They come back my way and I snap a
couple of pictures. They ask me where I'm from. "Estados Unidos" and I'm instantly inundated with questions in Spanish. One of the boys ask if I know about Elian Gonzalez. I say yes, of course. "What do you think?" I say I hope and believe he will return to Cuba soon--as do most
Americans (70 percent, according to a recent poll).
A nearby policeman, wearing a smart gray beret and a single stripe on his uniform, motions me over. "Passport and visa," he says without looking at me. "Uh, I don't have them." They're secured in my hotel safe, I tell him, which one of my guidebooks (one I will never use
again) had advised me to do. He asks for other identification. I show him my driver's license, which he studies for a long time and gives back. I gather my things. Okay, I'll be sure to carry it with me next time, officer. Nice meeting you. Buenas tardes.
Then he asks, "Why you talk to boys?"
"Excuse me? I'm staying in Cuba for two weeks and plan to talk to a lot of Cuban people. Do you have a problem with that, officer?"
"You talk about Elian Gonzalez?"
"Yes, isn't everybody?" As my voice rises, he steps back calmly, tells me and the boys to stay where we are, and radioes in via his walkie-talkie. A few minutes later, another cop arrives and the grilling begins. How long have I been here? When am I leaving? Where else have I been that
day? What are my intentions in Cuba? What hotel am I staying at? What is my room number? One Stripe radioes the hotel, spelling out my name. Good. They'll tell him I'm registered there, leave good tips and hang up my towels. Once he learns I've been telling the truth, he'll let me go.
After One Stripe speaks to my hotel, I ask if I can go, but he yawns and shakes his head. I decide to take the offensive. "Many tourists walk here," I say in broken Spanish. "Why did you stop me?"
He shrugs. "I can stop anyone."
"Why did you ask for my passport?"
"I can ask anyone for their passport."
"You stopped me because I was talking about Elian, didn't you?" He shakes his head with a look of amusement.
"Then why are you questioning the boys?"
"Another matter," he says dismissively. A few minutes later, a police car pulls up and out step more policemen. The four boys and I are instructed to cram into the back seat. I am heartbroken to see that One Stripe will not be joining us. I would love to see the dressing down he gets
when I walk out a free man. What's lower than one stripe in the Cuban police system?
At the police headquarters, we're led into a grand lobby. The boys are ushered into a separate room; I am directed to stand against a marble pillar facing my inquisitors--two women sitting behind a small table. One of the women approaches. She explains in perfect English that the reason I have
been questioned so much is that many tourists in Cuba are really illegal aliens, criminals or "others." She says she is mystified at my contention that I was simply talking to the kids and that Elian just innocently popped into the conversation. She walks away, baffled.
The second woman calls me up to the desk. She hisses each question at me again in rapid-fire fashion. This must be Cuba's version of the Good Cop, Bad Cop routine. She seems just as confounded by my answers. We have reached a stalemate. Looking down at her papers for a long time, she suddenly
mutters "Goodbye" and jabs a finger toward the entrance.
As I leave, I wave goodbye to the boys, who are laughing and roughhousing in the next room. I assume they'll get a stern tongue-lashing about the perils of speaking to foreigners. They seem the type who'll say, "Yes, certainly, of course, never again" and then go right back to El
Prado, resume their futbol game, and ask the next tourist they see what country, state and city he's from. It would be tragic if they're cowed into never greeting a foreigner again.
Jorge, my hotel waiter, invites me to his village the next day to meet his family and see the "real" Cuba. He lives 22 miles south of Havana in San Antonio de los Banos, the birthplace of a Batista-era cartoonist whose character, El Bobo (The Fool), was a biting social critic. He gives
me his address and says to come by any time after 12, but I can tell he doesn't really think I'll show up.
The next afternoon I hail a taxi and pull into the town at about 1 o'clock. It looks just like Old Havana except it's smaller and has fewer tourists and more donkeys. The driver stops in front of a doorway in the middle of an alley and says this is it. I knock on the door. A plump middle-aged
woman opens it. She rattles off something in Spanish, and the driver says Jorge went to Havana for a short errand but will be back soon. To Havana? I guess he really didn't believe I would come. But the woman, his mother, demands that I go inside. "Venga! Venga!" ("Come!")
The house has cathedral ceilings with crucified Christs looking down at me from the stone walls in every room. In a central courtyard is an outdoor kitchen and a pigpen where an enormous sow scuffs contentedly among several piglets. Jorge's wife, Alina, joins us a few minutes later, and the two
ask if I'd like to see the town. Before we've gone a block, they've already gotten several waves and how-do-you-dos. That's why we love this town so much, Alina says.
We walk down the main "boulevard," which is just a slightly wider alley than the others. Tables and carts are set out with vendors selling what are perhaps the most worthless garage-sale items I have ever seen--doorknobs, rusty wrenches, pieces of plastic, strings of yarn. We return
for a game of dominoes. Mother says she plays every night and rarely loses. I counter by saying I am very competitive. She beams and says, "Juguemos!" ("Let's play!") I've only played twice in my life, but I take the third game. It is the only one I win. I soon learn the Cuban
way of banging my wooden tile holder on the tabletop whenever I can't play, and the claps echo off the high ceilings.
The sound of a motorcycle approaches, and Alina squeals with delight. We had been hearing motorcycles pass us all afternoon, but she knows the sound of Jorge's. With him are two friends, Emilio and his wife, Marta, who also speak English. We gather in the living room and talk about, what else,
politics. They lament about having only two TV channels. "But I get ESPN in my hotel room," I moronically interject. "Your hotel has a special cable for tourists," Emilio explains as if to a child. "If we're found with cable or a satellite dish, we would be arrested."
Oh. They ask me how many cable channels I get in my house at home. I don't want to tell them. They insist. I tell them. They look at me in shock. How many without cable? Seven--see, not that much different from you. Yes it is, they cry! Seven is a lot more than two!
Okay, okay. "But don't all Cubans have national health care?" I counter. "We'll never have that."
"Oh yes, of course," Alina says mockingly. "But we have no supplies, no good doctors, no good facilities. You come out worse." They all relate horror stories of friends or family members who went to the dentist with minor problems and emerged with mangled teeth and
infections.
"I'd rather pay for something and have it done right than get it free and have my teeth fall out," Alina says.
We walk a few blocks away to a restaurant where I'm served some of the best chicken and rice and black beans I will have during my stay. Whenever I say I'm done, someone at the table says no, no, there's still meat on those bones. When I finally gnaw and suck the last piece clean, everyone
applauds. "Now you're eating the Cuban way!"
Back at the house, we hug and take pictures all around. I jump on the back of Jorge's motorcycle and we zoom back toward Havana. "You are very brave man to come all the way to my small village," he shouts as a cool Cuban breeze blows through our hair. "I will never forget it. If
you ever return to Cuba, you have a home."
Yes, I want to say, so does Elian.
While the U.S. government still prohibits American tourists from spending money on travel to Cuba, restrictions have loosened. One way to travel legally is to go as a "fully hosted" visitor, meaning you are sponsored by a Cuban organization. And there's a sizable contingent of
travelers who ignore the legalities and travel to Cuba through other gateways, including Mexico and Canada. Marazul Tours (1-800-223-5334, www .marazultours.com) specializes in arranging travel to Cuba and has developed several programs for traveling legally to Cuba.
John Wood last wrote for the Travel section about an African safari.
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