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Cuba journal: Impressions
from a road trip
By Mike Williams, Cox News
Service. GJ
Sentinel, Agust 12, 2005.
LA MAYA, Cuba - Our Cuban driver needed
to make a brief stop. Ten hours east of
Havana, near Cuba's far eastern tip, he
pulled over in this sleepy farm town and
jogged up the broken tile steps of a ramshackle
wooden house, tapping on his aunt's front
door.
He got a big smile and a kiss on the cheek,
then quickly slipped his aunt some money
sent by relatives in the capital.
Foreign visitors were immediately invited
inside, more smiles and cheek-kisses, along
with a warm welcome and some strong Cuban
coffee, served from chipped china cups.
The ragged wooden house had two tiny bedrooms,
a small hot kitchen with a gas burner, a
fireplace still smoldering with charcoal
and battered pots and pans hung from the
walls and rafters. The only appliances were
a beat-up fan, an ancient, rusting Russian
refrigerator and a boxy, black-and-white
Russian television that looked at least
30 years old.
The bathroom, reached by ducking under
sheets, shirts and jeans strung out to dry
on lines crossing the tiny backyard, was
a wooden-sided privy. It was neat and clean,
complete with a stone seat and a rusty nail
holding a sheaf of pages torn from the Communist
daily newspaper, Granma, placed strategically
for an obvious purpose.
During our 20-minute visit, there was no
talk of politics or dictators, just friendly
chatter about the weather, the sights of
Cuba, and the traffic on the highway.
But one interesting impression remains:
there were no portraits of the revolution's
heroes in the home. The only art was a large,
framed painting of Jesus, along with a 1999
calendar filled with photos of Pope John
Paul II's visit the previous year to the
Communist island.
Cuba is filled with such contradictions:
obvious signs of religious faith in an officially
atheist country, sparkling new Volvo tour
buses filled with European tourists barreling
down highways jammed with ox-carts, bicycle
taxis and untold numbers of people waiting,
often for hours, for rides in any state-owned
vehicle passing by.
A road trip across the island provides
a fascinating look at a culture at once
familiar, like that of other poor Latin
countries, but stamped with the indelible
handprints of 40 years of a totalitarian
control orchestrated by Fidel Castro.
Visiting Cuba is like stepping back in
time, back to about 1959, when Castro's
revolution triumphed. The whole country
is stuck there, it seems, but the difference
between Havana and the countryside is dramatic.
One of the hemisphere's greatest gems of
colonial architecture, the capital is slowly
being refurbished, most of the work done
on old hotels and historic buildings that
will draw more tourists. But while selected
areas are being restored to look cleaner
and nicer, the colonial ambiance is being
carefully preserved.
Leafy parks, horse-drawn carriages and
the stunning facades of buildings covered
in ornate architectural confection give
the historic Old Havana district a beguiling
charm.
But away from the tourist district, the
capital's back streets and residential neighborhoods
are crumbling. Once-grand mansions and apartment
buildings look bedraggled, while wretched
Soviet-era towers sport blotchy swaths of
mold growing on walls unpainted for decades.
In the commercial areas, streets are lined
with ghostly, empty storefronts, windows
covered with decades of dust and the insides
forlorn. There are stores and even a few
shopping malls outside the tourist areas,
but there are few signs and no commercial
advertising other than prices scribbled
in chalk on tiny worn blackboards.
At state distribution stores where Cubans
come with ration cards for monthly allotments
of food and basic necessities, there are
always lines of people, often 20 to 30 at
a time.
If walking around in Havana seems like
stepping back into the late 1950s, driving
through the countryside seems like a visit
to the 1930s or 1940s.
It's easy for tourists to travel, and you
don't get hassled by police or ordered around.
Most tourists take tour buses, but they
are free to rent spiffy new cars and head
out across the country on their own with
no guide or minder.
The island, about 800 miles from tip to
tip, is intensely cultivated and naturally
beautiful, filled with rolling vistas and
low mountain ridges that are heavily forested.
Great care - at least compared to other
developing countries - seems to be taken
to protect the environment.
There is almost no roadside trash, and
streams appear unpolluted, another stark
contrast with other Third World countries.
A divided, American-style freeway with
limited access and overpasses cuts across
the spine of Cuba for several hundred miles
before playing out into older two-lanes
on the eastern and western flanks of the
island.
Heading east toward Santiago from Havana,
the road is in fairly good condition, with
some rough spots, and is marvelously free
of traffic. There are occasional gas stations
and roadside cafes very similar to their
American cousins, where weary travelers
mingle with Cuban families, sipping cold
drinks and eating bocaditos, the ubiquitous
Cuban sandwich of ham and cheese.
As in Havana, ancient American sedans,
windows down and side vents turned out to
capture the breeze, chug down the highway,
most filled to capacity with passengers.
Public transportation
is one of Cuba's most acute shortages,
and people line the highways, usually standing
in the shade beneath the overpasses, waiting
for rides. Some wave a thumb or a hand,
others hold out Cuban peso notes in hopes
of getting lucky.
To deal with the problem, the government
has placed monitors in yellow uniforms at
the spots where people gather to catch rides.
Every state-owned vehicle, whether it is
a delivery truck, a bus or a tractor towing
a trailer normally used for hauling sugar
cane, is stopped. The monitor records the
license plate on a clipboard and fills the
vehicle with as many passengers as possible.
Many people, though, still wait for hours,
a simmering source of frustration for average
Cubans.
In the towns, there are small armies of
bicycle taxis with single front wheels and
two seats over double rear wheels behind
the driver. Most have shade tops and some
are lovingly maintained.
Others ride in horse-drawn wagons, or in
the larger towns, in carriages that look
like straight out of the 1890s. People on
one-seater bicycles are everywhere. There
are lots of ancient motorcycles, many with
sidecars for passengers, invariably trailing
black exhaust out the sputtering tailpipe.
Every town has a central square or plaza,
most festooned with shade trees, benches
and a bust of Jose Marti, the hero of Cuba's
early drive for independence from Spain.
La Maya's plaza is typical: a lazy tableau
of Latin summer living, people lolling in
the shade, men playing dominoes or checkers
in groups, a girl getting a pedicure at
a stand set up by a friend under a shady
sidewalk portico.
Women pass on the sidewalks, many under
umbrellas carried for shade against the
searing sun. Boys run around barefooted,
in shorts and without shirts, while groups
of young men hang out on the park benches
looking bored.
Vendors man portable ice-cream machines
with chugging motors and ancient rusty pulleys,
dispensing cool delights to children. Stores
sell cold drinks, although it appears few
Cubans waste their meager earnings on sugar
water.
Traffic is light everywhere but Havana,
and the sleepy atmosphere reinforces the
image of a country stuck in time.
Hanging over everything in Cuba is the
long shadow of Castro, backed by the powerful
internal security apparatus and the communist
ideology that demands lockstep loyalty.
The country feels like it has an oppressive
lid over it. The people, while mostly friendly,
seem resigned to lives of grudging endurance,
lacking much enthusiasm.
Everything in Cuba is for "el pueblo,"
the community, the people at large, and
everyone is constantly exhorted to forgo
individual desires for the common good.
People must be weary of the revolutionary
slogans jauntily painted on bus stops, billboards,
buildings and even rocks along the roadside.
Half are exhortations to battle: "Comrades,
we are in combat," and "United
we will be victorious." The other half
are high-minded appeals to conscience: "The
Revolution is like a sun," and "Our
weapons are our consciences and our ideas."
Cuban television is a fascinating mix of
movies, Latin soap operas and wonderful
culture pieces on jazz, art and architecture.
But there also is a dose of heavy-handed
propaganda, including programs in which
a university professor lectures on Marxism,
a mind-numbing discourse complete with cut-away
graphics featuring the grizzled theoretician's
portrait.
Castro is the absolute ruler here, keeping
his 11 million residents in thrall. His
July 26 speech commemorating the start of
the revolution pre-empted all other television
programming, of course, with excerpts replayed
repeatedly in the following days. The four-hour
speech was also printed in its entirety
in Granma.
A European tourist visiting the eastern
city of Santiago was at a festive carnival
party the night of the speech, and said
the whole affair - music, dancing, even
sales of drinks - stopped dead for the entire
four hours.
"People were holding their arms, sighing
and saying, 'I wish he'd finish so we can
get back to partying,'" the woman recalled.
Most Cubans are reluctant to talk about
politics, especially with visiting journalists.
Accompanied by a Cuban friend, I was sitting
in a government office one morning awaiting
an interview when my friend suddenly saw
an old pal walk past. After they exchanged
pleasantries, my friend explained that he
knew the man from their days in the army.
"I don't know what he does here,"
my friend said. "I don't want to know.
I don't want any information."
(Story can end here. Optional material follows.)
Along with the feeling of suffocation comes
a sense of overwhelming boredom.
Cubans are waiting, patiently, in resignation,
cowed by Castro's outsized personality and
oppressive police state, curious about what
will come after him, but unwilling to hazard
much speculation, or at least none they'll
share with outsiders.
Most have glimpsed life in the rest of
the world, either through foreign movies
on television, through rented videos, by
listening to foreign music, or by contact
with the millions of foreign visitors who
have flocked to Cuba in the past decade.
The jarring sight of so many tourists and
their obvious wealth isn't lost on Cubans.
While rural Cubans are shy about approaching
strangers and generally regard foreigners
strolling through their towns with guarded
looks, in Havana desperation has overcome
any such reserve.
A foreign visitor walking alone in Old
Havana is likely to be approached at least
a half dozen times in a half hour, usually
by young men who nonchalantly fall in stride
and strike up a casual conversation.
Some cut straight to the chase and ask
in broken English, "You want black
market cigars? A cheap private house to
sleep in? A good restaurant? A girl?"
Others are more artful, but can become
pests.
On our first day in Havana, we were approached
by a young man named Juan, who talked with
us for nearly a half hour as we strolled
the streets. We finally jumped into a cab
to escape him before he could make his pitch.
Five days later my colleague was out on
his own one evening, and Juan magically
appeared by his side, sticking to him like
a magnet, inviting himself to dinner, leaving
when my colleague politely demurred, then
appearing again when he left the restaurant.
Foreigners have money, and Juan was trying
to smoothly find a way to get some of it.
In a country where the average wage hovers
around the equivalent of $15 to $20 a month,
50 cents from a foreigner can be a small
bonanza.
It brought to mind a common joke told in
Cuba these days:
A Cuban cat gave birth to six kittens,
all of them, of course, born socialists.
After three days, two of the kittens suddenly
declared they were no longer socialists.
And why was that?
They opened their eyes.
Mike Williams' e-mail address is: mwilliams(at)coxnews.com
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