Island that Dared

by Dervla Murphy

  When my body clock woke me at 2.00 a.m. I read Fidel’s My Early Years, then at 6.45 strolled alone to the Malecón.

  Below El Morro a freighter was emerging from the port, huge and clumsy-looking, vandalising the dusky blue of the dawn as its funnel trailed thick blackness. Already fishermen were sitting at appropriate intervals along the wall, singly or in pairs, watching their bobbing baits. They used only reels; rods are luxury items. As the sun rose through a shoal of rosy cloudlets the sea swiftly changed from a pellucid green to silver-blue. But why so few birds? I associate Atlantic coasts with ornithological abundance. That afternoon, in a Malecón bar, I was told, ‘We ate them all, in the early’90s – so they know to keep away from us!’ Perhaps a Tale for Tourists? Or perhaps not: that Period was very Special …

  Back at No. 403 the Trio were breakfasting off multiple fresh fruits, Candida’s fluffy omelettes, crusty golden bread warm from the neighbourhood baker, imported butter, lashings of mango jam made by Pedro and large glasses of hot honeyed milk with a dash of coffee. Casas particulares serve much better food, in both quantity and quality, than even the fivestar hotels. But such meals are comparatively expensive so Rachel and I opted for national-pesos breakfasts, eaten in the nearby Fe del Valle Park. Havana’s largest department store, El Encanto, once stood on this site. The park is named in memory of a woman who died here when CIA saboteurs set fire to the store two days before the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.

  Clodagh, my room-mate, complained after breakfast – holding her nose – about Nyanya’s smelly trainers. I assured her that I meant to replace them, ASAP, with strong open sandals. But first I must change euros.

  Candida escorted me to the nearest Cambio, warning me on the way about jineterismo, an unsurprising phenomenon of which she plainly felt ashamed. Jineteras and jineteros cultivate tourists met in the street, the former offering bodies, the latter offering half-price cigars (some stolen, some counterfeit) or cheap rooms to rent. (Some householders employ touts because by not registering as casas particulares they avoid tax). Jineterismo evolves wherever tourists congregate in the Majority World but Castroism sees it as a betrayal of the Revolution, and for Cubans – though not for their foreign friends – the penalties tend to be unduly harsh. My enquiries about specific cases met with evasions or contradictory responses.

  The Cambio lurked in one corner of a dusty, twilit emporium to which national-peso-priced clothing and footwear were irregularly delivered. By the door stood a security guard, uniformed but apparently unarmed, who closely observed every currency exchange. (On later occasions, when I was alone, he insisted that before leaving the premises I must tuck my new wad of convertible pesos somewhere inaccessible.) Candida advised me to convert some convertible pesos to national pesos as foreigners were now allowed to use both, though hard currencies could not directly buy national pesos. Confining tourists to the convertible-peso economy had proved too complicated and not really worth the effort, since few tourists are tempted by what national pesos can buy.

  Shopping in Cuba – even in Havana – has to be a hit or miss affair given the erratic supply of all goods. Three meagrely stocked shoe-shops on Centro’s main business streets offered only fragile high-heeled sandals (gold or pink), made in China. ‘You’ll have to go barefoot,’ threatened Clodagh. But it was fourth time lucky: the manager of a small shop was unpacking a consignment of sturdy brown leather sandals made in Brazil, price CP21. ‘Now you can give your trainers to some poor person,’ said Clodagh. But in Cuba there are no people poor enough to make such a malodorous donation acceptable. Moreover, those trainers had both monetary and sentimental value: I had bought them for US$60 in Severobaiskal, my favourite Siberian town. Granted, they were distressingly unsuited to a hot humid climate but I reckoned they might well outlive me and should be left with our winter garments in No. 403 for collection on the way home.

  A quest for fruits and peanuts took us to Vedado. (Rachel is a fruit and nut case and has passed that condition on to her children.) Walking the length of commercial Neptuno, we noted that each dollar-store employed two or three unsmiling security men with ‘SECSA’ emblazoned on their brown uniforms – SECSA being a newish organisation set up to guard banks, Cambios, dollar-stores and other repositories of wealth. In Russia, super- and hyper-markets employ their equivalents, bearing side-arms and looking even less smiley as they peer into the shopping-bags of all departing customers. It seems consumerism has become so febrile citizens may no longer be trusted to acquire only what they can pay for.

  In a covered market crowds jostled around trestle tables piled with fruit and vegetables – the produce of Cuba’s celebrated organoponicos, of which more anon. A recent drought had limited the variety available in November; greens were scarce and the Trio lamented mangoes being out of season. Through piped rumbas one could hear the clattering of weights in antique scales and the good-humoured banter of buyers and sellers, the former scornfully identifying defects, the latter denying or justifying them. Two juicy pineapples cost NP30, a large lush papaya NP15 and very many short fat bananas NP1 apiece. Cleft sticks held squares of cardboard on which all prices were clearly chalked and nobody attempted to overcharge us, here or elsewhere. Instead, the girls each received a gift banana.

  By chance we found ourselves in one of Vedado’s most attractive quarters, near the university. Here, at the turn of the twentieth century, many prominent families built new homes in a ferment of architectural eclecticism and planted magnificent trees – some eminently climbable, irresistible to the Trio. While watching them ascend to giddy heights Rachel and I sat on the pavement scoffing bananas. (From amidst the foliage an invisible Rose shouted ‘Don’t eat them all!’) Behind us loomed a neo-classical mansion, its stucco flakey, cardboard patching its stainedglass window, squat big-belly palms – less common than the royal palm – lining its garden path. Across the street small children were making merry in their kindergarten, the deep verandah and wide lawn of a recently restored Gaudiesque villa. Studying them, we agreed that Cuba’s variety of skin shades, and countless combinations and permutations of racial features, make official statistics seem absurd. Who came up with the ‘fact’ that in 2000 the population was fifty-one per cent Mulatto, thirty-seven per cent White, eleven per cent Black? And what about the missing one per cent? Are they the unrecorded descendents of Cuba’s indigenous inhabitants? Or those Chinese who have resisted miscegenation ever since their a hundred and twenty-five thousand or so ancestors arrived as indentured labourers between 1852 and 1874? We also agreed that, aesthetically, the dominant Iberian/African mix has been a sensational success.

  Clearing my eyes of sweat, I looked at my watch: 10.50, beer-time for those who rise before dawn – and Rachel, succumbing to Havana’s aura, rather fancied a daiquiri. The Trio grumbled slightly on being brought down to earth but were cheered by the mention of Coppelia where they could gorge on ice-creams after we had attended to our alcohol levels. During the descent to La Rampa I recalled that the name Vedado (‘prohibited’) dates back to the sixteenth century when all construction was forbidden on this slope overlooking the Straits of Florida. Platoons of sentinels were permanently on duty and needed to see the frequently approaching pirates as soon as possible.

  In an al fresco bar a dilatory waiter took our order and when the Trio began to roam restlessly Mummy registered guilt about their delayed gratification while Nyanya spoke up for Adult Rights.

  It seems socialism brings out the worst in architects – witness the Coppelia emporium, designed by Mario Girona and built in 1966 in the middle of a park that must, until then, have been a blessed antidote to Nuevo Vedado’s brash skyscrapers. Constructed mainly of reinforced concrete, it is topped by a single monstrous slab supporting a truncated cone. The six colossal circular ice-cream parlours on the upper floor are subdivided by naked concrete girders – grey and gloomy, seeming to belong beneath a motorway – and by pointlessly placed partitions of tinted glass. The habaneros are very proud of this ex
crescence, the first (and most bizarre) of a chain of Coppelias; all are open twelve hours a day, six days a week, serving affordable ice-cream of the finest gelato quality to the general public. In Havana a daily average of thirty-thousand addicts queue happily for hours, without shade. Latterly, however, the Coppelia ideal, like many others, has been tarnished; near the main entrance a small queue-free annex caters for convertible-peso users.

  During our fifty-minute wait the naval officer standing behind me (home on a week’s leave) spoke of his favourite ports, Murmansk not among them. That led on to the Cuban/Russian relationship when thousands of Soviet troops were stationed on the island for more than twenty-five years. Dryly Nestor said that there had been no relationship; the Soviets kept to themselves, importing their own food and entertainment (if any) and apparently remaining immune to Cuba’s charms. I wondered if they were obeying orders or simply found Cubans uncongenial? The latter, Nestor thought – because occasionally groups of Central Asians did venture out to their local Casa de la Trovo. Privately I reflected that the average Russian’s deep-seated racism, impervious for seventy years to Marxist egalitarianism, must have inhibited social (if not sexual) intercourse. This suspicion was confirmed later by visits to areas where the Soviets had had bases and left bad memories.

  Military precision marks the organising of Coppelia’s hordes. Neatly uniformed stewardesses/sergeant-majors stand at strategic points, counting the departing customers, then beckon an equal number to replace them. Should five leave together, and the first five in the queue include only one member of a group of friends, that group must either separate or give way to those behind them. No one seemed to object to this regimentation. But I (otherwise conditioned) felt exasperated when a security guard forbade me to sit on the ledge of nearby railings. Momentarily I was tempted to pull up my trouser leg to show him what long queues in hot weather can do to varicose veins.

  Once admitted to the high globe we were directed to a table and Rachel had to join two other queues – to pay for the docket listing our order, then to hand it to a server from whom a waitress soon after took our tray. The Trio pronounced that these gargantuan ice-creams were very good indeed, well worth waiting for – and they, being residents of Italy, are connoisseurs.

  Not far from Coppelia we noticed a plaque identifying the site where Fidel first labelled the Revolution ‘Socialist’ – on 16 April 1961, the eve of the US-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion.

  Surprisingly, the Cubans have no regular siesta-time but that afternoon the younger generations rested briefly while I refuelled in what was to become my favourite Malecón café. Small and shabby, approached by a shaky wooden step-ladder, it was dual-currency; Cubans paid for drinks and one-course meals in national pesos, convertible pesos were expected from foreigners.

  Miguel, the manager-cum-barman, kept Hatuey beer, brewed for the national-peso market, under the counter and filled the fridge with Buccanero and Kristal, favoured by tourists. The price difference was slight – NP18 and CP1 – yet my wish to sample Hatuey worried Miguel; he would get into trouble should a snooper from the local Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) chance to notice a tourist drinking Hatuey on the premises. I could however have lots of Hatuey to take away, concealed in my knapsack. Thus I discovered that this brew is less palatable than the tourists’, though equally potent.

  On my first visit, the previous day, Miguel had been discussing Wilma with a hurricane-damage inspector. The café, raised above the street, had escaped flooding though it lost one side of its roof – quickly replaced by the municipality. Now his three-roomed home, behind the café at pavement-level, was the problem: a waist-deep torrent had swept through, ruining all the family’s possessions. He had a pregnant wife and three-year-old twins yet the authorities were being slow to act. When the inspector had left Miguel glanced around at the only other customers – two young couples in far corners – then confided, sotto voce, ‘For the government this place makes tax money, a little home doesn’t. In times before – before ’92 – all little homes soon got fixed.’

  In January I was to hear about Miguel’s uncle-sponsored migration to Florida; otherwise I wouldn’t feel free to record that conversation.

  In some quarters the CDR (Committees for the Defence of the Revolution) have a bad reputation as groups of spies and bullies, ever ready to punish those who fail to uphold Revolutionary standards. While this may not be a baseless slander, it is certainly a wild over-simplification. When Fidel invented the system in 1960 he meant it to affect everyone’s daily life as an important instrument of civil defence and socialist reform. The president (unpaid) of each CDR is responsible for three hundred or so citizens (a barrio) and it is his or her duty to find out how people earn their money, what they spend it on, who does or does not march in demos, who is absent from home, where they have gone and why and for how long. We instantly recoil from such a system. Yet whether people are for or against Fidel it seems to be generally agreed that Castroism could not have been so quickly and firmly established, and made to work so well, without the CDR’s energetic observing, organising and persuading (or bullying) of their barrios.

  Nowadays, out of some eleven million Cubans, at least three million are CDR members, an influential percentage of the adult population. As the state’s most significant mass organisation, the CDR is involved in all Public Health campaigns, in school enrollment and attendance, in the National Bank’s saving campaign, in arranging barrio study seminars, in checking the quality of services in local shops and reporting defects to the managers, and as crucial links between municipalities and barrios. (That last function helps to sustain Cuba’s vibrant version of participatory democracy.)

  CDR presidents collaborate closely with the police and can in certain circumstances protect barrio members from over-zealous policing – or, conversely, expose them to it. A minority of presidents are themselves ‘counter-revolutionary’ and break laws while using their power to silence any who might report them. Much (too much) hinges on the individual president’s character. A minority are so dreaded that their barrios feel permanently at war with them. Others are so well-liked and trusted that people go to them with their troubles, emotional or economic. Most are genuinely public-spirited, do their snooping as discreetly as possible and are accepted as an integral part of Castroism.

  Early next morning, on our way to ‘do’ Old Havana, we paused in Fe del Valle Park to watch ti’ chi enthusiasts (including our host Pedro) being put through their paces by a stern mulatto whose Chinese genes were obvious. Havana has many action-packed corners. On the park’s far side primary schoolchildren were having a martial arts lesson, to the Trio’s envy.

  Pre-Revolution, guide-books described San Rafael’s short (pedestrians only) business end as ‘elegant’. Now it was being spruced up to include it in the tourist zone, and a central row of unhappy-looking potted shrubs decorated its newly paved length. Formerly fashionable emporiums were being restored by workmen balancing on wobbly scaffolding or demolishing interior walls with sledge-hammers – and without any of the protective gear mandatory in our wimpish world. Two stores had been reopened, on Cuba’s emergence from the Special Period, as government-run dollarshops selling a narrow though gradually widening range of expensive (for Cubans) but usually shoddy imported goods. Others remained boarded up or displayed only a few items of unappealing national-peso-priced stock in fly-blown windows.

  For me, Old Havana was a mixed experience. One can agree with UNESCO’s 1982 declaration that, as the largest and architecturally richest colonial centre in Latin America, it is part of ‘the cultural heritage of humanity’. But most such declarations have dire side-effects. La Habana Vieja is now among the Tourist Board’s main assets, second only to the ‘developed’ beaches, and it grieved me to see young black women in flouncy colonial costumes offering to read fortunes while elderly women, similarly attired, posed beneath porticoed arcades, smoking giant cigars, their placards saying – ‘Foto CP1’. A laughing
boy, aged perhaps five, was nimbly dancing in a doorway on Calle Obispo, his father on guard against the tourist police but grateful for whatever the child might earn. A pair of slender adolescent girls, wearing bikini tops and leaning over the photogenic balcony of their semi-derelict mansion, shouted and waved at us and suggested ‘Camera?’ The bands playing near open-air cafés, then passing a sombrero around, were as skilled as Cuban musicians are expected to be but performances aimed at tourists tend to have a sad unspontaneous quality. Prostitution comes in different forms. When ‘being Cuban’ becomes in itself a tourist attraction, what happens to the Cuban psyche? Cuzco, Bali, Khatmandu, Ladakh and too many other places know the answer.

  We made the most of our national pesos, buying from pavement entrepreneurs shots of hot strong sweet coffee, glasses of cold freshly squeezed fruit juices and ice-cream cones for NP1 each. Ham and/or cheese rolls, warm from the baker and generously filled, cost NP5 and substantial homemade pizzas (but the queues were long) NP10 to NP15. Outside tourist restaurants we studied menus and calculated that the most meagre meal for one, minus drinks, would cost NP260 – CP10.

  Throughout much of Old Havana motor vehicles are forbidden or restricted and generally Cuba’s acute oil shortage (now being eased by Venezuela) has had a benign effect. In 1992 half a million bicycles were imported from China, just as that country was foolishly planning to replace two wheels with four. Then bicycle rickshaws (‘bicitaxis’) were introduced and at once became popular. Another novelty, for the benefit of tourists who are not supposed to use bicitaxis (though some do) is peculiar to Havana: a small fleet of canary-yellow three-seater covered scooters (‘cocotaxis’). Ciclobuses, too, are an innovation, copied from Miami; these can carry several bicycles in metal containers, fore and aft. In contrast are the famous camellos, comically humped mega-buses serving distant suburbs; these carry 300 passengers in theory and more than four hundred in practice – including adherents to the outside.