Remembering how, centuries earlier, pirates had sent friendly visitors into Havana to gather information about the harbor and its fortifications so that they could report back to their ship and attack, the government for decades after the revolution forbade anyone from shooting photographs of the harbor. If a tourist or journalist so much as held up a camera in the vicinity of the waterfront, an official was on hand to intervene.
This kind of paranoia has few boundaries. In Antonio Benítez Rojo’s 1967 short story “Buried Statues,” the narrator suggests, and his mother agrees, that butterflies “were some secret weapon that we didn’t understand yet.”
And yet, who can say what was, or is, real? The CIA always denied the story that Operation Mongoose had included plans to assassinate Castro with an exploding cigar. But the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, which investigated CIA excess in 1975, identified eight separate attempts on Fidel Castro’s life. They could not confirm the exploding cigar, but poisoned cigars intended for the Cuban leader were sent to Cuba, and there was a plot to slip a depilatory into his shoes to cause his beard and eyebrows to fall out. If the depilatories stuffed in shoes and the poisoned cigars were real, who can say with certitude what butterflies are up to? Or what else might be coming from across the sea?
A system of neighborhood snitching is extensive in Cuba. It is called the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) and is founded on the same idea as the “If you see something, say something” campaign against terrorism in the United States.
The Cubans may have over-organized. There are fifteen thousand committees in Havana, and one hundred thousand throughout the island. Many of the people doing this work are nothing more than neighborhood gossips inundating the intelligence service, G2, with trivia. Gossip has always been a way of life in Havana. People know that what they do and say will get reported. Yet Habaneros have grown accustomed to this and don’t seem to speak particularly carefully.
The CDR is also involved in neighborhood services such as day care and community health initiatives. It is part of a government that is extremely good, for better and worse, at organizing people. The CDR has managed to guarantee that there is at least one working doctor on every block in Havana.
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When Fidel Castro was Cuba’s leader, every May 1—May Day, the traditional holiday of world socialism—a huge rally was held in the sprawling trapezoid-shaped Plaza de la Revolución, at the southern end of Vedado. Built by Batista, who had named it Plaza Civica, it contains a tall obelisk that appears to have fins running up its side like a great white sea monster rising straight out of the plaza. Nearby is a white marble statue of José Martí, who seems to be squatting uncomfortably.
On May 1, Fidel would march out onto the platform to deliver his speech. When he was younger, he was a very large, powerfully built, and athletic man with a virile charisma, a kind of electricity that I have seen fill large rooms and that even pulsated through this enormous plaza.
I attended a number of these May Day events. The government wanted foreign journalists to cover them, so it was an easy time to get a press visa. The plaza was always full, because these were events for which people from the countryside were bused in. They were now housed in dormitories rather than the luxurious Habana Libre, but they still showed the enthusiasm of home team fans at a World Series.
The people carried various symbolic props. In 1985, they had a huge shoe, perhaps twelve feet long, that was paraded around. By then, after two decades of struggling for shoes, and constantly repairing old ones, even sneakers, Cuba was finally manufacturing enough shoes to meet the needs of its people. It was, as the government liked to say, “achieving shoe self-sufficiency.”
One of the big problems, especially in Havana, immediately after the revolution and the U.S. trade embargo, had been how to replace American products in a society that had been completely dependent on them. People struggled to find basics like soap and shoes.
Then the Soviet Union stepped in to fill the void. Essentially subsidizing the revolution, it became the island’s source of foreign goods. The Cubans had no money during those heady days, and no one was getting rich, but, step by step, problems were being solved with the help of the Russians, and it felt as though the revolution was working.
In time, the Cubans learned how to make many of the things they needed, even baseballs. One of the first problems they solved was how to produce a local Coca-Cola substitute. After all, how were they to drink cuba libres in Cuba Libre without cola? They figured out a formula, but then there was another momentary crisis because, while they could now produce enough cola, they didn’t have enough cork for the thin piece that seals the inside of the bottle cap. Soon that problem was solved too, and at the rallies, stands distributed free bottles of Tropi-Cola. In time the government, with the help of Nestlé, produced a similar cola, named TuKola because of the Havana street vendors who’d shout, “Compre tu cola”—“Get your Cola.” Today the government even exports Tropi-Cola.
Even after solving the cola problem, cuba libres were still in trouble. There was the problem of rum: the island’s principal rum makers, including Bacardi, had left. But then the Bacardi distillery at Santiago became nationalized, and Cubans began producing their own rum. Another leading brand, Havana Club, was owned by the Arechebala family, who had also left. The Cuban government solved that by forming a partnership with Pernod Ricard, the French liquor multinational, to make Havana Club, and the future of cuba libres seemed secured.
Then there was the problem of ice. Once Havana’s cocktail trademark, ice had started to become scarce. Only certain bars catering to foreigners had ice, because ice making requires a great deal of electricity and Cubans were being pressured to conserve energy. Leonardo Padura wrote of a character trying to order a daiquiri in a bar, the way Hemingway liked them, with lots of shaved ice and no sugar, only to be sneered at by the bartender: “The last time I saw a piece of ice was when I was a penguin.”
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The lack of new cars and car parts has always been another problem in Cuba, although it is a problem that for all these years has spared Havana from another problem: the traffic congestion that plagues most cities. Perhaps this is why Habaneros habitually walk in the middle of the street, stroll the road on the Malecón. But walking in the middle of the street is also a Havana habit that began long before the revolution. It probably began in Habana Vieja, because the sidewalks there are too narrow for a couple to walk down abreast.
By the 1950s, however, the affluent Habanero family was no longer living in the cramped center of the city, but farther out, and had an automobile—to be precise, an American car. By the end of the decade there were 170,000 cars in Cuba, almost all American, and most were in Havana. A ridiculously high number of them were Cadillacs, but there were also Buicks, Chryslers, Studebakers, Chevys, Fords—everything people were driving in America.
After the revolution, when an affluent family wanted to leave Cuba, they were required to take their car to a garage for a tune-up and present the car to the government with a certificate that it was in top working order. The government could then give out these cars, many of them late models, to whomever they pleased. Being a good revolutionary came with perks.
Yet the perks also came with challenges. Like the shoe repairmen who had to learn how to rebuild sneakers, Habanero mechanics now had to learn how to keep cars running without parts from their manufacturers. Some solved problems by adapting engine parts from other models. Today many Chevies and other classics run with newer Toyota engines. One mechanic even claimed to have installed a boat engine in a car. Meanwhile, some original engines rumbled and grumbled so loudly that they got the name cafeteros—coffee percolators.
But there is a Havana club of vintage car owners who value only cars that are purely, or almost purely, original. There is more to this than just hobbyism. A quality antique car can land its owner a job as a tourist taxi driver, and tourist taxi drivers can earn one of the better incomes
in Havana.
During the Soviet era, Ladas came to Cuba. A Lada was a Russian-made car built mostly for export. The cars were designed to endure the rugged conditions of Siberia, and so were thought to be ideal for Cuba’s deteriorating roads and streets. Boxy cars that were extremely rigid and uncomfortable, Ladas were almost the exact opposite of the 1950s American cars, with their plush upholstery, spacious seating, and design that emphasized curves. But even worse, Ladas turned out to be not at all durable. A ’55 Chevy today is usually in better condition than an ’85 Lada.
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The deteriorating Ladas may be taken as a metaphor for Cuba’s entire relationship with the Soviet Union. Little has endured, despite thirty years of intimacy. There must have been some affection for the Russians, though, because Russian names such as Vladimir became fashionable, and many people in Havana born in the sixties, seventies, and eighties have Russian first names. People of that generation also learned to speak Russian, but they seldom speak it now, and most say they can’t remember it. Russian style never caught on in this Latin country, either. Though most Habaneros do not have the resources for fine clothes, they do have a sense of fashion, and they found the ill-fitting suits and jeans and baggy dresses and head scarves of the Russians unappealing.
While the Russians contributed to the country economically and in other ways, they seldom spoke Spanish and were seldom integrated into Cuban life. Rather than take a stately old mansion for an embassy, for example, they built a huge, intimidating concrete structure that looked more like a fortress than La Cabaña or the Morro. But the modern design was well suited for surveillance systems, some of which are still visible from the outside.
The Russians shopped, buying vodka and caviar, in their own separate stores, at least one of which still exists, if you know the right people. In 2012, a Cuban chef who had access took me shopping, though he declined to explain why he had access to the Russian store. It seemed like a visit back to the Soviet Union that had disappeared twenty years before. The shop was in a gated compound in Vedado. It seemed to be modeled after an old speakeasy. Each prospective customer would come up to the man at the gate and whisper something, and the gate would open or the customer would be waved away.
Once inside, we found ourselves in a small room with a counter in front of somewhat sparsely stocked shelves, just as in a real Cuban store. There were various European liquors and liqueurs and a few prized Russian products, such as red and black caviars. Prices were more than most Cubans could pay, but not particularly expensive by Western standards. There were also some mundane items like soaps and detergents, many of which, despite the embargo, seemed to be American. For an American, these items did not seem worth bothering with, but for a Cuban they were basics that had disappeared with the embargo.
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The revolution closed the casinos and most clubs and ended private ownership, which meant that stores and restaurants either closed or became state-operated. The suppression of small shops and restaurants drove from Havana two of its important ethnic communities, the Jews and the Chinese, both of whom, like immigrants in most places, were strongly centered around private entrepreneurship.
Jews have a long history in Cuba, and particularly in Havana—especially long if it is true, as is believed, that Columbus’s crew included Jews escaping Spanish persecution and passing themselves off as Christians. In Havana, Jews are called polacos. Nobody knows why, since the name appears to predate immigration from Poland and the community has always had a large Sephardic component from Brazil and Turkey, among other places. Nobody knows why Americans are called yumas, either. Some Americans suggest it is from the 1957 Van Heflin/Glenn Ford film 3:10 to Yuma, based on an Elmore Leonard story, but I have never met anyone in Havana who has even heard of this movie. Then, too, why are all Spaniards in Cuba called gallegos, meaning the people who come from Spain’s northwest province of Galicia, when gallegos are only one of several Iberian populations on the island? And why are Italians amicis? And why is a blonde woman a negrita, though she is the opposite? All of these have come about for the same reason: Habaneros love nicknames, and they use them without rancor, prejudice, or logic.
By the 1930s there were twelve thousand Jews in Cuba. Some were American Jews who had fought in the Spanish–American War and stayed. Later, Jews came to escape Hitler.
Jews came but also left. The last rabbi left in 1958, before the revolution. By the time of the revolution, the twelve thousand had grown to only fifteen thousand. There were several synagogues, and Jewish stores and restaurants, which of course were popular with visiting New Yorkers. But after the revolution, most of the remaining Jews, not wishing to have their businesses taken over by the state, left. By the mid-1980s only eight hundred Jews remained in Cuba, most of them in Havana. They still maintained two synagogues, but there was very little religious observance.
Most of the Jews who stayed were secular, and often enthusiastic supporters of the revolution. Among their numbers were Fabio Grobart, a Jewish founder of the Communist Party of Cuba, who used to introduce Castro at party meetings, and Ricardo Subirana y Lobo, who had helped finance Castro’s return from exile to begin the revolution.
There is no history of anti-Semitism in Cuba, despite the government’s strong anti-Israel stance post-1967 and despite the government’s official disdain for organized religion. The government even gives unique privileges to the tiny community, importing special foods such as matzoth for Passover, state-financing religious burials in Havana’s Jewish cemetery, and providing extra food rations for Jewish holidays to supplement the basic food rations given to every Cuban.
Once part of the life of Havana, the tiny Jewish community is barely noticed now except by visiting Jews. Young Cuban Jews, like other young Cubans in this very secular society, rarely show interest in traditional religion. Even so, in 1985, one of their leaders, Adela Dworin, who was raised before the revolution as a strictly observant Orthodox Jew, told me, “You can eat pork, you can say, ‘I love Communism and hate religion,’ but you still feel you are a Jew.”
Most of the Chinese also left Havana after the revolution, and today Barrio Chino is just a name, like Vedado. As the last of the restaurants vanished from Chinatown—only two were left in the 1980s—Cuban-Chinese restaurants became a dining trend in New York City.
But the Chinese had a huge impact on Havana life.
In the nineteenth century, as one slaving society after another renounced slavery, Cuban planters looked for an alternative. They brought in Mayan workers from the nearby Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The Maya found conditions unbearable and either went back to Mexico or settled in Habana Vieja, in a neighborhood near the wall called Barrio Campeche, after the Mexican state from which they came. Today the neighborhood no longer retains its Mayan character.
The first Chinese workers came to Havana in 1844 from Canton. Conditions on the ships from Asia were barely better than those on the slave ships, and an estimated 12 percent of the Chinese laborers did not survive the passage.
Many had been virtually kidnapped and had no idea where they were going. Upon arrival, they were instantly shipped to plantations, where they worked with African slaves and were kept in similar but separate barracoons. They were forced into eight-year contracts at twenty cents a day, and at the end of their term, if they hadn’t died or killed themselves, most returned to China.
But some stayed on the land and worked their own farms; the Chinese are credited with introducing the mango to Cuba. More moved into Centro Habana, to a new neighborhood beyond the wall, and established shops and restaurants. The first Cuban-Chinese restaurant opened in 1858, and many more followed. They created their own cuisine, a natural fusion of two traditions, both strongly rooted in pork and seafood. By the twentieth century, Barrio Chino had become the largest Chinatown in Latin America, with signs in Cantonese and Mandarin, brightly colored paper lanterns, Chinese-language newspapers, and also, this being Havana, prostitution, girlie shows, and gambling
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In Havana, Chinese culture fused easily with Cuban culture, which meant also African culture. One of the most famous Chinese Cubans was the artist Wifredo Lam. Though born in rural Santa Clara Province, he is often said to be the quintessential Habanero—a man who looked Asian, thanks to a Chinese father, but whose mother was the daughter of an African-born slave and a mulato. Lam was a painter who sought to express the African traditions with which he was raised. He studied in Paris in the 1930s and was greatly influenced by the artists he came to know there, including Breton, Miró, Braque, Léger, and Matisse. He once exhibited in Paris with Picasso. But his work always had African underpinnings.
Another example of the Cuban Afro-Chinese blend is the Chino de la Charada, an illustration that appears to be rooted in Chinese folklore but has overtones of Santería, the West African–derived religion. It is a drawing of a Chinese man in traditional dress carrying a fish in one hand and a pipe in another. His body is covered with images—a butterfly on one ear, a snake on an ankle, a jewel, a chicken, a cat, a skull, a turtle . . . Each image has a number next to it. The drawing was used by the Chinese for numerology-based divination, but others had another use for it—they saw it as a key to what number to play in the lottery. For example, if you saw a butterfly fly by, you could look at the number by the butterfly on La Charada’s ear and play that number. Cubans of all ethnicities knew the system. In Graham Greene’s autobiography, he tells of a driver in the countryside who accidentally hit a chicken and felt compelled to play the number for La Charada’s chicken, number eleven, on the lottery.
Havana is neither the gambling place nor the Chinese place it was in Greene’s day, but La Charada is not forgotten. In contemporary Havana slang, Fidel Castro is known as El Caballo, the horse. One of the easier Cuban sobriquets to explain, it comes from the horse on the top of El Chino’s head. More difficult to explain is why Habaneros call Raúl—Fidel’s brother, now the president—La China, which is a Chinese woman.
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