By Vanessa Bauza The
Sun-Sentinel. Web-posted: 9:44 p.m. Feb. 13, 2001
HAVANA -- The M-1 bus screeches to a stop, jostling the crowd as the doors
hiss open. There is no room to move. The air is thick with dust and diesel
fumes. But more passengers squeeze aboard regardless. Women hold their purses
and children close. Arms reach over heads, stretching to grasp the railing
above, anything for a firm hold. Hips locked against each other, the crowd is
crammed ever tighter. The doors close once again behind a group of poets who
have boarded the bus.
Zona Franca, or Free Trade Zone, as they call themselves, is a group born
from a cultural center in Alamar, a vast housing project about 20 miles east of
Havana. They have come to the camello, one of the city's many hulking buses
pulled by a semi, to bring poetry to the people -- whether they like it or not.
The camello is a symbol of Havana's transportation shortage and therefore
a fitting stage for a poet concerned with the ebb and flow of everyday life.
Zona Franca's members position themselves across the split levels and so begins
a moveable poetry slam, an oral anthology of urban living they call Sin Dinero,
meaning that their poetry is free.
One woman recites a poem about child prostitution, another man shouts out
an erotic, quasi-rap riff. Another, Amaury Pacheco del Monte, tells the story of
a peanut vendor on the street.
He calls out the Spanish word for peanut, "maní, maní,
maní." As he repeats it, it begins to sound like "Money, money,
money" -- an allusion to the growing need for dollars in Cuba's double
economy.
For Pacheco del Monte, 31, Zona Franca is about bringing art into
everyday life.
"Not everyone has access to books," says Pacheco del Monte, who
wears a knobby winter coat over his green shorts. "But they do have direct
access to the voice of the poet."
Zona Franca was founded about three years ago in Alamar, the heart of
Cuba's rap culture and also a home to many painters and sculptors.
Many of the group's members, who number about 30, say they often recite
their poems spontaneously on the camello. Some are students and most earn their
living by working at Alamar's cultural center.
The bus rattles past the marble capitol, winding across the city and
through the tunnel that runs under Havana's bay.
Some passengers are impassive, others shout back. "You are
aggravating me," an exhausted high school teacher tells one of the poets.
She hates riding the camello and like many others is annoyed by the
ruckus of Zona Franca's shouting. The members of Zona Franca welcome the
criticism. At least, they say, people are listening.
"We need people who are asleep to wake up and learn to live, not be
like puppets," says Edwin Reyes, 29, one of the leaders of Zona Franca. "I
have to write and say things. I have to live in my time and place. Whatever
happens happens."
Halfway to Alamar, about 30 minutes into the ride, one of the passengers
calls to a police officer, who stops the bus in the middle of the road.
Reyes gets off and explains that Zona Franca is an accredited group of
poets. He hands over his ID card and says he is responsible for the group.
With that, the cop takes down Reyes' information and waves everyone away.
They get back on the bus and it rumbles on.
State sponsorship has promoted many artists here and President Fidel
Castro often proclaims that Cuba is on its way to becoming one of the most
cultured countries in the world. However, many artists and writers whose work is
considered anti-revolutionary have been banned on the island -- their work
censored and exhibits shut down. The government's intolerance of "subversive"
art has led to an exodus of artists from the island.
Vanessa Bauza can be reached at
vbauza@sun-sentinel.com
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