The View from the Ground

by Martha Gellhorn

  Before, street boys would have drifted around here, selling lottery tickets or papers, collecting cigarette butts, offering to shine shoes, begging. They were funny and talkative, barefoot, dressed in dirty scraps, thin faces, thin bodies, nobody's concern. They did not attend school. Nor were they Afro-Cubans.

  I had never thought of Cubans as blacks, and could only remember Juan, our pale mulatto chauffeur. Eventually I got that sorted out. A form of apartheid prevailed in central Havana, I don't know whether by edict or by landlords’ decision not to rent to blacks. Presumably they could not get work either, unless as servants. But of course there were blacks in Cuba as everywhere else in the Caribbean, descendants of African slaves imported for the sugar-cane plantations. In my day, they must still have been concentrated in the eastern provinces, still cutting cane. Roughly one third of Cubans are of African or mixed blood, two thirds Caucasian.

  Calle Obispo, formerly my beat for household supplies, had been turned into a pedestrian street. At one of the cross streets I saw the only cops I noticed in Havana, trying to disentangle a jam of trucks, motorcycles and hooting cars. The shops were a surprise: bikinis and cosmetics, fancy shoes, jewelery, a gift shop with china and glass ornaments. Not high fashion, but frivolous. And many bookstores, a real novelty; I remembered none. And a neighborhood store-front clinic.

  Faces looked remarkably cheerful, unlike most city faces, and the street was enveloped in babble and laughter. Men met women, kissed them on the cheek, talked, moved on. That public friendly cheek-kissing astonished me; I had never seen it in a Latin American country, and never here in my day. Most of the women wore trousers made of a stretch material called, I think, crimplene; and most women were amply built. Their form-hugging pants were lavender, scarlet, emerald green, yellow, topped by blouses of flowered nylon. The young, boys and girls, wore jeans and T-shirts. T-shirts printed with Mickey Mouse, a big heart and LUV, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. Presents from relatives in the U.S.? Grown men wore proper trousers of lightweight gray or tan material and white shirts. These people were much better dressed than average Cubans before, and much better nourished.

  At the top of this street, Salomon, a very small tubercular man of no definite age but great vitality, sold lottery tickets. Salomon was a communist and lived with the certainty of a glorious communist future, when everyone would eat a lot and earn their keep by useful work. I remembered him out of nowhere, and hoped with all my heart that he lived to see his dream come true, but doubted it; Salomon didn't look then as if he had the necessary fifteen years left.

  I was staying at the Hotel Deauville, a post-war, pre-Revolución blight on the Malecon. It is a plum-colored cement Bauhaus-style tower. I came to dote on the hideous Deauville because of the staff, jokey and friendly with each other and the guests. The Deauville is classed as three-star, not suitable for rich dollar tourists. My room with bath cost $26. Like all tourist hotels, the Deauville has its own Duty-Free Shop. Tourists of every nationality pay for everything in U.S. dollars. You are given your change, down to nickels and dimes, in American money. For practical purposes one dollar equals one Cuban peso, a parallel economy for natives and tourists. President Reagan has tightened the permanent U.S. economic embargo to include people. Cuba is off limits to American tourists. But that year, 1985,200,000 capitalist tourists, from Canada, Europe, Mexico, South America, uninterested in or undaunted by communism, had caught on to the idea of the cheapest Caribbean holiday.

  At the Deauville, I had my first view of the amusing and economical national mini-skirt: above-the-knee uniform for women employees, different colors for different occupations. And was also plunged into the national custom of calling everyone by first names, beginning with Fidel who is called nothing else. I was rather testy, to start, hearing “Marta” from one and all and the intimate tu instead of usted, a disappearing formality. But I quickly adjusted and was soon addressing strangers as compañero or compañera. You cannot say comrad (American) or comraid (British) without feeling silly, but compañero has the cozy sound of companion.

  I wanted to be on my way. I had not come to Cuba to study communism but to snorkel. At the Cuban Embassy in London, I found some tourist bumf, describing a new glamorous hotel at Puerto Escondido, which included the magic word, snorkeling. I was going to Nicaragua, serious business, and meant to treat myself en route to two weeks mainly in the lovely turquoise shallows off the Cuban coast. A couple of days in Havana, to retrace my distant past; then sun, snorkeling, thrillers, rum drinks: my winter holiday.

  You can go anywhere you want in Cuba, except to the American naval base at Guantanamo on the eastern tip of the island—an extraordinary piece of property which most foreigners do not know is held and operated by the United States. You can hire, with or without driver, a small Russian Lada sedan belonging to INTUR, the Ministry of Tourism. The Lada is as tough as a Land Rover, Third World model, with iron-hard upholstery and, judging by sensation, no springs. I asked INTUR for a car with driver, intending to look over the hotel at Puerto Escondido, the goal of my Cuban trip.

  The driver, rightly named Amable, said that Puerto Escondido was half an hour from Havana; my introduction to Cuban optimism. “No problem” might be the national motto; it is the one English phrase everyone can say. We drove through the tunnel under Havana harbor, new to me, and along the superhighway, adorned with billboards, very depressing: progress. The billboards are exhortations, not advertisements. A light bulb, with ENERGíA in huge letters and a plea to save it. A bag of coins and a single-stroke dollar sign for the peso, recommending the public to bank their money at two-and-a-half percent interest. Many patriotic billboards: “WE WOULD DIE BEFORE WE GIVE UP OUR PRINCIPLES.” Two hours from Havana found us bumping on a mud road through lush jungle scenery. A solitary soldier stopped us where the track ended. Puerto Escondido was not finished; it would be ready next year. More Cuban optimism. The soldier suggested a tourist resort at Jibacoa further on.

  Amable managed to find Jibacoa—small brick houses, newly landscaped—and a bar and a restaurant. At the bar two Canadian girls, secretaries from Toronto who had arrived yesterday, were full of enthusiasm and information. They had a nice double room: the food was “interesting” rape was punished by shooting; Cubans were lovely people; and they looked forward to a night out at the Tropicana, Havana's answer to the Paris Lido. Goody, but what about snorkeling? A man in a wet-suit was coming up from the beach; the girls said he was Luis, in charge of water sports. Luis guaranteed that the snorkeling was fine and we both stared to the north where clouds like solid black smoke spread over the sky.

  “Un norte?" I asked with dismay. I remembered only perfect winter weather.

  “Yes, come back in a few days when it is past.”

  But it did not pass.

  By morning, the sea was greenish black, matching the black sky. Waves smashed across the Malecon, closed to traffic, and drove sand and pebbles up the side streets. The wind was at gale force; it rained. A gigantic storm and worsening. I was cold and slumped into travel despair, an acute form of boredom. With no enthusiasm, I arranged to fill time, meeting people and seeing sights, until the storm ended.

  The distinguished Afro-Cuban poet and I talked in the crowded lobby of the Hotel Nacional, an old four-star hotel. Suddenly she made a sound of disgust and said, “I hate that stupid out-of-date stuff.” She spoke perfect American. The object of her disgust was a wedding party: bride in white with veil, groom in tuxedo, flower girls, bridesmaids, beaming parents and guests, headed for the wedding reception. I was pleased that the out-of-date could be freely practiced by those who wanted it.

  I had an important question to ask her but was very unsure of my ground. “Something puzzles me,” I said. “Fidel made a decree or whatever, as soon as the Revolución started, forbidding racism. I mean, he said it was over; there wouldn't be any more. And there isn't. Surely that is amazing?'’ It sure is. Even more amazing, it seems to work.

  “Of course you can't change people's pre
judices by law; you can't change what they feel in their hearts. But you can make any racist acts illegal and punish them. We hope that as we live together more and know each other better as human beings, the prejudices will disappear.”

  We had no racist problem, she and I, just the wrong vibes. She thought me too light; I thought her too heavy.

  I was interested in how writers earned their livings. Very few of the 600 members of the Writers’ Union can live by books alone, like us. There are many publishing houses, state-owned but managed by distinct staffs for a varied public. You submit your manuscript; if accepted, you get sixty percent of the retail price of the first edition, whether the books are sold or not; then forty percent of further editions. Cubans love poetry, so poets abound and are widely read.

  Feeling dull but dutiful, I went to look at Alamar—a big housing estate, white rectangular factories for living spread over the green land off the highway outside Havana.

  “Marta, why do you say you do not like such a place? I have friends there. They have a very nice apartment.” Today's driver, called Achun, part Chinese, had served in Angola. He said he was truly sorry for those Africans; they were a hundred years behind Cuba.

  I asked,” How big?”

  “Two bedrooms, three, four, depending on the number of the family.”

  I told him about vandalism as we know it. Achun was dumb-founded.

  “Why would people ruin their own homes?”

  Close-up, Alamar was not bad; no graffiti on the white walls, no broken windows—on the contrary, shined and curtained—a skimpy fringe of flowers around each building, and thin new trees. The buildings are four stories high, widely separated by lawn.

  “The cinema is behind those buildings,” Achun said.

  Here the bus stopped; a few weary people were piling out. The forty-minute ride to and from Havana in the always over-crowded buses has to be a trial. (Havana is about to get a needed metro system.) This central shopping area reduced me to instant gloom. I thought at first it was filthy. The impression of grime was not due to dirt but to unpainted cement. Of course Cuba is poor and needs many things more vital than paint, yet it distresses me that these people, who adore bright color, must be denied it.

  The bookstore was attractive because of the gaudy book covers. A soldier and a child were the only customers in the middle of a chilly grey weekday afternoon. A corner of the room had been set aside for children's books. The paper is coarse, the covers thin, but books cost from forty-five to seventy-five cents.

  “Every year we have a quota,” said the middle-aged saleslady. “And every year we exceed it.”

  “How can you have a quota? You can't force people to buy books, can you?”

  “Oh no, it is not like that. Every year we are sent a quota of books and every year we must ask for more, because they are sold. All ages buy books. Fidel said, ‘Everything basic to the people must be cheap. Books are basics.’”

  “What is most popular?”

  “Detectives and romantic novels.”

  I drove around Havana, sightseeing, half-curious, and wholly sick of the miserable weather. I chatted in the dingy main market where the toy counter and meat and poultry counter were the busiest. I asked about fares at the jammed railroad station, learning that the best fast train to the other end of the island costs $10.50. I cruised through the stylish section of Vedado with the big hotels, airline offices, shops, restaurants, movies and the large Edwardian houses. I peered at the Miramar mansions. The rich departed Cubans left a bountiful gift to the Revolución, all their grand homes and classy apartment buildings. The big houses are clinics, kindergartens, clubs for trade unions, and whatever has no public use is portioned off for private living space.

  Then I decided I needed some action and barged into a secondary school, announcing that I was a foreign journalist and would like to sit in on a class and see how they taught their students. This caused extreme confusion. (As it probably would if I barged into the Chepstow comprehensive.) The school sent me to the local Poder Popular office where I met the very cornerstone of bureaucracy: the woman at the door. Behind a desk/table/counter in every government office is a woman, preferably middle-aged; her job is to keep people out. Poder Popular sent me to the Ministry of Education. There the woman at the door said that Public Relations at INTUR, the Ministry of Tourism, must write to Public Relations at the Ministry of Education. I reported this to INTUR, decrying it as an absurd fuss about nothing. INTUR promised that a school visit would be arranged. “Be patient, Marta,” said Rosa, an INTUR director. “Everything is done through organizations here.”

  To their credit, the Ministry of Education sent me to a very modest school in a poor suburb. The Secondary School of the Martyrs of Guanabacoa. The driver could not find it. We were twenty minutes late. I got out of the Lada and saw school kids in canary yellow lined up along the path to the front door and a greeting committee of adults. I apologized unhappily for keeping everyone waiting and walked past the honor guard, feeling absurd. Instead of a twenty-one-gun salute, I got a shouted slogan. On the school steps a little Afro-Cuban girl stepped from the ranks, shouted something and behind her the official chorus shouted an answer. This went on for several minutes but I could not deciper a single shouted word. I was then presented with a sheaf of gladioli and lilies in cellophane and began to feel as if I were the Queen Mother.

  The man in charge, whose position I never understood, presented the school principal, a large shy Afro-Cuban woman in dark blue crimplene trousers and white blouse. I was shown the school bulletin board with its smiling photographs of the “martyrs"—handsome girls and boys, not much older than the children here, killed by Batista's police for their clandestine work in the Revolución. Asked what I would like to visit, I said the English class. The school was unpainted cement inside and out, built on the cheap in 1979.

  The English teacher was nervous and nice and desperately eager for his class to perform well. Each child read aloud a sentence from their textbook, dealing with Millie's birthday party. Offhand, I could not think of a deadlier subject. “Toothbrush and toothpaste.” [Millie's birthday presents!] “are very hard for them to say; also room.” His own accent was odd; the kids were choked with stage fright, rivaling mine.

  A bell blessedly rang. Here, the children stay in one room, the teachers move. It was the history hour in another classroom. The children—the top form, aged fifteen—rose to their feet and shouted a slogan, led by the elected class prefect who was always a girl. Hard to understand, but it sounded like promising Fidel to study and be worthy of the Revolución. Each class devised its own slogan, a new one every month, and five times a day, at the start of their class periods, they shouted this at the teacher. The history teacher was a thin intense shabbily-dressed young man who described the sugar crisis of 1921, when prices fell and the people suffered despair and starvation though their work had enriched the bourgeoisie and the American capitalists. I wanted to say that American workers suffered too in times of depression and unemployment, but didn't feel that speech-making was part of my new role.

  Biology was taught by a stout mulata compañera in lavender pants, and taught brilliantly. The subject for the day was the renal system, up to that moment a total mystery to me. All the kids raised their hands, competing to answer. This subject—their bodies—clearly interested them much more than history or English. After class, the teacher explained that by the end of the term they would have studied the sexual organs, the nine months of pregnancy and birth. To finish, they would discuss “the human couple, and the need for them to be equals and share the same ideals and interests.” She showed me their laboratory, a small room with a few Bunsen burners. Her only teaching-aid was a plaster human torso, open at the front, with all the brightly-colored alarming organs in place.

  There were 579 children, more Caucasian than Afro-Cuban, and fifty teachers, about equally divided as to color and sex. School is compulsory through the ninth grade, age fifteen. After that, children
can choose to continue for three years in pre-university studies or technical schools, according to their grades. At eighteen, the boys do military service, but university students are exempt since Cuba needs all the professionals it can train.

  Snacks had been laid out in the principal's office. I looked at these poorly-dressed men and women and grieved to think of them chipping in for this party. They were so excited about me because the school had never received a visitor before, no Cuban personage, let alone a foreigner. They spoke of their students with pride; it must feel good to teach such lively and willing children. Never mind that they had no library, no workshop, no gym, no proper laboratory in this bleak building. The staff invented substitutes and got on with the job. I asked to meet the Head Prefect, elected by her peers. She was a lovely tall slim girl, almost inaudible from shyness, blonde with grey eyes. She said that the entire school went on two camping weekends a year and for a week to Varadero, Cuba's famous beach. The top student (this girl) joined all the other secondary school top-graders for a whole summer month at Varadero. Fun and sport as a reward for work. I remember winning a school prize, a richly-bound uninteresting book.

  I liked everyone and told them they had a fine school, meaning it, and thanked them for the visit. In the Lada, returning to Havana, I gave my character a shake and became again a normal, not a Very Important, person.

  That night, on the thirteenth floor of the Deauville, I listened to the howling wind. The storm had renewed itself with spiteful vigor and would never end. Snorkeling was a dead dream. I gave up. I had no choice; there was nothing left to do except cramp myself into a Lada, drive around the country and get a general idea of how communism works in Cuba.

  For transport on this journey to the Cuban hinterland, I went to Rosa at INTUR, my sole contact with the Cuban government She is small, brunette, very pretty, very bright and kind and patient above and beyond the call of duty. My manners to her were abominable and in no way deserved. I was rudely determined that nobody was going to show or tell me anything; I would see and question for myself. Rosa assigned Rafael as my driver. Rafael is grey-haired, mid-forties, overweight, racked by a cigarette cough, intelligent, good and a charmer. We drank a lot of delicious ice-cold Cuban beer and he laughed at my disrespectful jokes.