I was assured by nearly anyone with the slightest understanding of the Cuban government that I would never be granted approval to interview any of these people and if I pursued the matter in secret I’d be escorted promptly to the airport and probably never be allowed to return. Or worse. An American, Alan Gross, had just been imprisoned for illegally working as a covert U.S. operative supplying satellite equipment to people on the island.
Everything fell apart the moment I landed. I went to the Habana Libre to check where everything was with the people I wanted to meet and discovered Mucho Macho had backed out after getting spooked about the risks. At the other hotels in Havana where I’d arranged interviews I was stood up by every contact I’d had lined up through journalists in New York. Cars began to drive past with strangers smirking and pointing up at the cameras hanging over the street, heightening my paranoia. Any knock at the door could be police offering an escort to the airport or worse.
“Beeeg brother eez watching, gringo!” I was warned by the people renting me their apartment illegally in Centro Havana. “Welcome to Hotel California! Leezon to Mr. Henley’s words. ‘Check owwd aanee time bhat joo can never leave …’”
Any country becomes ugly and sinister once Don Henley’s lyrics begin to carry any significance.
I made more calls around Havana to sort out something, anything, and salvage the two months I had already committed to being there. At that point the warnings I received from the people who were renting me an apartment escalated to begging on the lives of their children that I cease anything that could get their families in trouble. Everyone was too scared to talk about anything related to Rigondeaux or other defected fighters. “You’re on your own,” I was told repeatedly. I heard the same things over and over: Security knows everything. Taps the phone. Checks your e-mails. Talks to your neighbor. When your boxer tried to defect, Castro wrote about Rigondeaux himself. This is not a man to ask questions about. Officially he is a traitor. Surveillance had escalated since Castro had stepped down from power. Cameras were on most street corners now across the entire city. More uniformed police. More secret police than ever before. (How does one measure this?) The CDRs (Committee for Defense of Revolution) on every block had stepped up their vigilance. More informants. Government clamping down on everything, especially with an issue as touchy for the government as defecting athletes. Leave this situation alone. You can leave. We cannot. We live with the consequences of your actions. If you are not careful you will not leave or ever be able to come back.
The first place I went after arriving was to meet a cinematographer at a wedding and plan some shooting. She’d agreed to help me film interviews for fifty dollars a day. If I could still get any interviews. I hired a gypsy cab to take me the twenty miles back into Havana. The old Ford overheated before we were even halfway.
“I knew she was angry about me listening to Reggaeton at this hour.” The driver shook his head, scrambling around the radio dial until he found the classical composer Ernesto Lecuona. “Even at her age she requires a little seduction at night. Now she will punish us for denying her. Cubaneo.” The driver shrugged and grinned at me in the rearview.
Only in Cuba was the driver’s last remark. About thirty seconds later, when a father and son pulled over with their horse-drawn carriage to offer a hand, I wondered if Cubaneo had a twin word encompassing all the beautiful things that happen here that would mostly never happen anywhere else. The closest one I know in Cuban slang is palanca, meaning when someone helps you out of a jam. Nearly every aspect of life in Cuba is a jam. Survival itself depends on palanca on a daily basis. It cuts both ways. Here people actually give a shit about your misfortune. Nobody may have much, but you’re never on your own.
Other people came by to help. Cyclists stopped. Every Cuban is a mechanic. They have to be. In this place you can be sure anything that hasn’t broken down yet will soon. While hardly anybody has any money to replace anything, nearly everyone who sees trouble will stop to help.
I had a lot of trouble during the wedding. Just after we’d sat down, out of nowhere, a sonic boom exploded over our heads as fighter jets broke the sound barrier. I jumped out of my chair and several people came over, laughing, to explain that on Tuesdays and Fridays, at that hour, the Cuban Air Force conducted test flights. “Tranquilo, chico. The gringos are not invading our island again tonight. Relax. Remember, Cuba doesn’t have an army. An army has Cuba.”
The next morning I went looking for Félix Savón at a tournament being held at Kid Chocolate in Old Havana, opposite the mammoth Capitolio, a replica of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. I was sitting in the rafters next to a father and son for the first of three sets of boxing competitions going on all day. My high school gym might’ve cost more to build, but even with hundreds of millions of dollars you couldn’t have re-created what Chocolate looked, let alone felt like. The murals and quoted passages and chipped paint and scoreboards and rafters and leaky ceiling take your breath away—yet it’s the faces in the crowd that still manage to steal the show. Everyone who wants to can come for free.
The father next to me offered a cigarette and told me that one day his son would fight here. His boy was around ten and rolled his eyes.
Cuban tobacco in most cigarettes off the street is obscenely strong and vaguely sweet. I felt a little self-conscious smoking in front of his son. Self-consciousness hasn’t been invented in Cuba yet.
He asked if I was a boxer myself and flexed his muscles while his son laughed. The boy raised his fists to his face and glared menacingly at me until my laughing obliged him to give me a friendly shove.
Just then I heard the cheering subside for the fight that was going on and noticed an enormous, towering man in Cuban track pants stroll across the gym floor alone.
“Quien es esto?” I asked the dad, to make sure it was who I thought it was.
“Oh that’s just Félix. He’s a friend.”
“Savón?”
“Claro.”
Savón, like Teófilo Stevenson, was a three-time heavyweight Olympic champion. Don King had offered Savón a whole lot more than the $5 million Teófilo Stevenson rejected for Savón to turn pro and fight Mike Tyson. More in the neighborhood of $15 or $20 million. He had turned it down flat. I saw an interview with him where he slowly made his way, speech impediment and all, to explain, “I may not be a millionaire because of what I turned down, but it’s possible I made a million friends with my decision here.” Félix Savón functioned in Cuban society as a kind of living Lenny from Of Mice and Men who doubled as the sweetest and baddest man in the country.
There he was, all by himself, waving graciously to a few people who called out his name.
“Félix Savón is coaching a team?”
“Claro.”
“And he’s a friend of yours?”
“Familia.”
“Familia?”
“Jes.” The father broke into English, to emphasize his point. “I will introduce you. Félix! Oye!”
“Fuck! Man, don’t. What are you doing!”
“Oye! Félix !” Then, leaning over to me: “Familia. My berry goo’ frien’. Berry goo’.” Félix, still striding toward an empty chair near the ring, raised his hand to acknowledge the piercing scream of the man sitting next to me in the stands. Clearly he had no idea who he was looking at.
“I really think Félix wants to be left alone.”
“Qué va! Bullshit. Félix is like my hermano. Let’s get him over here and you can have a photo with Félix. Félix! Oye!” The pitch of this oye! felt pleading and defiant at the same time.
Félix waved again, but I could tell he dreaded what was to come next—though it was highly unlikely he dreaded it half as much as I was dreading it.
The father abandoned his son’s hand and got to his feet, shoved both hands in his mouth, and whistled with such ferocity that Félix stopped, turned, and glared in our direction as I had never seen him glare at any opponent in the fourteen years he flattened ev
erybody during his boxing career. Right then Félix flashed the Lenny dreaming-of-the-rabbits-grin.
“Please, God, stop,” I pleaded with this man. “For the love of your child.”
“Oye!”
“Your son.”
“Madre mía, Félix!”
Félix squinted until he spotted us and then frowned.
The father waved him over and grabbed me by the arm. “Coño, grab your fucking camera.”
I dutifully grabbed it even though I didn’t want a photograph with Félix Savón.
“Félix! Oye! Don’t pretend like Miguel Antonio Torres has not known you since you were a child of seven! Get over here, you!”
Félix Savón, six feet six inches, two hundred forty pounds, one of the greatest fighters the world has ever produced, had dropped his head and begun the walk of shame over to us.
The child of Miguel Antonio Torres could not have been more pleased with this glorious day, the day his father regained the heavyweight championship for daddies everywhere.
“Miguelito, wait here for us. Papi must take care of this.”
I was grabbed by the elbow and hauled down the stairs toward the first row. We were on a platform on one of the bleachers as Félix arrived, so I found myself at eye level with the Cuban legend.
Félix sheepishly apologized for inconveniencing him and Miguel, five foot four in sandals, reached up and slapped his cheek gently. Miguel introduced me as a close family friend and Félix extended his hand, which looked as though it could palm a beach ball. As we shook hands I tried not to feel like a Muppet in the exchange.
Félix asked softly how I’d liked the tournament. He had a speech impediment that wasn’t quite a stutter; he just had a lot of trouble enunciating his words.
All the Olympic coaches who’d come through Rafael Trejo, the gym where I trained, crossed their hands together to make a butterfly take flight and whistle when they described Félix. It wasn’t meant to be mean-spirited. The premise was as accepted as the theory of gravity at Trejo and I wasn’t sure what to make of it then or now. Fidel Castro had once said homosexuals didn’t exist in Cuba, yet Félix was one of the most beloved heroes in the country. Just another Cuban paradox.
The father mentioned a photo, and Félix warmly put his arm over my shoulder, which cued me to put mine over his. We had a considerable section of the crowd enjoying my awkwardness over holding Savón hostage. Miguel Antonio Torres stood before us with the camera pointed and both Félix and I smiled at him. We continued smiling for another thirty seconds that extended to nearly a minute. Félix, not breaking the smile, asked if there might be a good time to take the photo.
“Hijo de puta! Mierda!” Miguel screamed.
I asked if the disposable piece-of-shit camera was broken. Félix looked over at me and clenched his massive jaw, striations spread out over his cheek like a cracked windshield.
Click …
The comedian Mitch Hedberg once opined, “I think Bigfoot is blurry, that’s the problem. It’s not the photographer’s fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that’s extra scary to me.” So are certain freakish moments in your life. Miguel’s blurry photo of Félix and me standing together captured the moment crystal clear.
I asked Félix if I could speak to him after the fights and he gave me a strange look and took my notebook to write down his phone number. As he strode off toward the ring, he said he was free that evening and to call.
I went outside Kid Chocolate to look for a phone to call my cinematographer and see if she could shoot an interview that night. Across the street, sailing by in front of the Capitolio, was a fleet of bicycles carting birthday cakes around town. Every kid in Havana is entitled to a free cake until they reach fifteen (plus a free cake on their wedding day), and the state delivers. It was always one of the prettier sights around town.
Taking no chances on scheduling a visit in case, as everyone warned, phone lines were tapped, I paid Héctor Vinent a visit at Rafael Trejo and got Félix Savón’s address. As a further precaution, in case anyone was watching, I moved all of my belongings from the apartment I was renting in Centro Havana into another place two blocks away, one not officially registered to rent out rooms. I was curious to see if anything would happen at my old residence. “Consistency is based on surveillance” is not an uncommon billboard around Cuba. I was interested to see if anyone would come looking. Everyone in Cuba knew discussing anything openly could get you reported.
That night I hired a gypsy cab driving around Calle Neptuno for a few hours and gave the driver Savón’s address. The driver laughed and asked if I minded paying double the fare he’d accepted. While Fidel Castro’s residence was a state secret, every Cuban knew his address, along with all the other people foreigners might pay to visit. I agreed to the fare hike. Maybe every major name in Cuba had a camera on their house by now.
Savón lived in a humble suburb of Havana, just a few minutes away from the airport. He shared a modest, three-bedroom home with his wife, mother-in-law, sister, and a handful of kids. Nothing about his house stood out from any of the others on his block; it looked like any residential, suburban home you might find in Edison, New Jersey. Evander Holyfield, about the same age as Savón, who probably had less earning power than Savón as a professional boxer given that he wasn’t a big puncher, had been able to purchase a 109-room mansion in Atlanta. Keeping that mansion was a different story, since he lost hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings and promptly went bankrupt, his home going into foreclosure.
Savón had grown up in Guantanamo, the son of a bricklayer. Boxing hadn’t come naturally to him, but he worked at it. He was turned down three times by the Gitmo boxing school before they let him in as a teenager. Savón went on to win 362 amateur fights for his country, six world championships, and three Olympic gold medals, never suffering a defeat that he didn’t avenge. According to Cuban media reports, he used to shadowbox while staring out at the U.S. naval base, dreaming of victories against Americans.
At the turn of the twentieth century, after the Spanish-American War, Gitmo had been handed over to the Americans without any negotiations involving Cubans. The century-old deal was written so that it never expired, and the U.S. Treasury continued to send out annual checks for a few thousand dollars that Castro, in protest, hadn’t cashed since 1959. Some Cubans joked that if the United States gave Guantanamo Bay back to Cuba, then they could have Miami back.
I opened the gate of the rickety fence outside Savón’s front yard just as the front door opened and music splashed out into the neighborhood. A child spotted me from inside the foyer and ran down the main hall only to return holding the enormous right hand of a smiling giant waving at me with his free hand.
“Oye, campeón!” Félix howled.
He insisted that he had some things he could sell me to help with whatever project I was working on. He said he had a book and a film others had helped him with about his career and life. He had an agent I should talk to.
“An agent?” I asked. That was an interesting occupation in a communist state.
“A friend who helps me with things,” he clarified.
“Okay.”
“Come inside. How much time do you need?”
“Not long.”
“Is a hundred dollars for thirty minutes okay for you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I start my watch now.” Félix reached over to fiddle with what looked like the world’s first digital watch. Finally it beeped to his satisfaction and he winked at me. “Please come into my living room.”
Savón’s severe speech impediment was probably not helped much by the effects of twenty years of boxing, which made each syllable of the words he spoke remarkably difficult for him. His mouth and jaw worked impossibly hard just to complete brief sentences in less than thirty seconds, so I wasn’t sure how much ground we could cover in thirty minutes.
Savón’s living room sat next to his extensive, glassed-in, trophy room. He refused to allow me to look it over and
tapped his finger on his watch.
“We’re on your time, my friend. What would you like to talk about?”
I took a deep breath as I set up my camera on a small tripod on Savón’s coffee table.
“Guillermo Rigondeaux.”
“The same boxing promoters interested in him came here.” Savón smiled, lifting his fist and poking his index finger toward his carpet.
“The same ones?”
“The same.”
“What did you tell them?”
“My wife answered the door when they arrived.” His wife came over and stopped for a second at the doorway to listen. “My wife told them, ‘Félix is more revolutionary than Fidel.’” As I laughed with him, Félix looked back at his wife, they smiled to each other, and she went back into the kitchen to be with their children.
“Entiende?” Félix asked coyly, grinning.
“Rigondeaux left this country. What are the reasons that you stayed here and turned down the money?”
“I have many reasons why I’m a Cuban boxer.” Savón lifted his chin and pondered them fondly. “The love of my family. My love of the motherland. In Puerto Rico I was offered five million to leave. In Mexico ten million. Even more later—”
“These offers were to fight Mike Tyson?”
“Yeah, that was part of it. But none of it mattered to me. They tried other times to convince my wife to speak with me. But I’ve always said I’m not a millionaire in Cuba, but I have millions of friends that can always lend me a peso or a piece of bread if I need it. Entiende?”
“How do you feel about Rigondeaux?”
“As time goes by the younger generation loses values.” Savón paused and gathered himself. “They lose the will we had in my time. When Rigondeaux was a boxer here I was the captain of our team. Due to the confidence I had in him, I left him as captain of the Cuban national team. He betrayed his principles. I’m sure he had his reasons for doing that. But life’s motives for most people nowadays are giving more value to money than honor.”
A Cuban Boxer's Journey Page 9
