I explained that the issue was not pesos but my liking for walking alone over mountain ranges. At this point one could see Maribel diagnosing a nut-case, possibly senile but harmless. Next morning she sent me on my way with three hard-boiled eggs, five homegrown tomatoes and a chit to her colleague in Jibacoa asking him to shelter me for the night. She ordered me not to go beyond Jibacoa: I must stay with Carlos. An unnecessary stricture given that day’s gradients; twelve miles was quite enough.
Another wet night had made for another almost cloudless sky with a coolish breeze. The badly broken road curved around wooded slopes, then dived into deep clefts – briefly climbed – dived again – each descent testing my brake muscles. I sauntered, often stopping to gaze over the jumble of hills on my left, separated by shallow irregular valleys, all green and glistening after the rain. Beyond those hills rose a phalanx of forested mountains, their crests irregular.
Near Herradura a barn-like coffee factory appeared – the region’s only industry, a simple enterprise where beans are dried and packed. This village was a recruiting centre for the ‘bandits’ (Castro-speak) or ‘patriots’ (Eisenhower-speak) who fought on in these mountains until 1966, the terrain helping local militia to set up deadly ambushes while evading capture. The Escambray conflict, small scale but embittering, dragged on only because of lavish US air-drops: weaponry and food and medical supplies.
Jibacoa, an agreeably ramshackle little town, swarmed with pigs and poultry but in mid-afternoon people were absent. Eventually a trio of youths, astonished by my arrival on their baseball field, led me to Carlos’s house (breeze block, 1970s), then hung around to observe my reception. A tall, muscular, light-skinned mulatto was sitting at the living-room table dealing with documents. He read Maribel’s chit with comically raised eyebrows, then removed his spectacles to study me silently before summoning Rafael, his grown-up English-speaking son who shook my hand before translating. ‘My father says you are not a tourist, not living like that. Why in Cuba did you not drive car? Every city have cars for tourist hire.’ Carlos did want to see my passport and visa. Then his wife Carmen, black and plump, came bustling in, asked to see Maribel’s chit, told her husband to relax, invited me to sit and have a cup of coffee. Whereupon the three youths, who had been listening from the doorway, returned to their baseball practice.
Sipping my coffee, I hypocritically admired the family dog, of a repulsive breed seen occasionally in Havana – completely hairless, looking more porcine than canine. I certainly wouldn’t want to live with one yet Hoalla’s engaging ways soon won me over. He was named, Rafael informed me, after some famous baseball player.
In many Cuban schools the English language is poorly taught and Rafael apologised for his limited vocabulary, then put it to good use while explaining the importance of his job as the Public Hygiene officer in the polyclinic. Preventative health-care underlies Cuba’s impressive medical statistics. You don’t ignore people until they’re sick, you teach them how to stay healthy for as long as possible.
Carmen, a primary school teacher, spoke of her concern about the spread of STDs around tourist areas (Trinidad, for instance) where young girls, craving the things convertible pesos can buy, forget their sex education and are easy prey. At that Carlos frowned, muttered angrily and abruptly changed the conversation. Given tourism’s current importance, any criticism of its negative side-effects could, I suppose, be seen as counter-revolutionary.
One hears rumours about CDR members having exceptional access to luxuries but neither of my sample households showed evidence of this. Supper was cooked on wood stoves and the breakfast coffee brewed on small electric rings such as we used in Ireland during the Second World War. In both homes the evening meal was identical: rice, beans, pork fat and a tomato salad.
Despite my protestations Rafael insisted on vacating his bed and sleeping on two large sacks stuffed with palm fronds and inscribed in English ‘Vietnamese Broken White Rice’.
The most blissful and most gruelling stage of this mini-trek (a not unusual combination) took me from Jibacoa to Topes de Collantes. Two faded notices marked fourteen percent gradients, a third warned: Pendientes y Curvas Peligrosas.
For much of the way, sub-tropical forest pressed close to the road. The fungi were multi-shaped and multi-coloured – some massive three-storey growths, some tiny fragile spots of crimson or orange. Six-foot-high ferns drooped gracefully, their fronds inhabited by busy blue-black beetles. Instead of the previous day’s breeze, a strong wind tossed the trees, swaying their curtains of tangled lianas, and a few detached epiphytes lay on the road – grotesquely beautiful bundles. Occasional shafts of sunlight gilded patches of lichen, their sudden glow amidst the green shadows seeming almost artificial. Two cars overtook me, and a van that coughed loudly as it tackled the gradients. All three drivers offered a lift and seemed worried as well as baffled by my preference for walking.
As I gained altitude the many unfamiliar trees were gradually mixed with, then replaced by, tall spindly pines; here the wind changed its tune to that distinctively mournful conifer music. When I found myself, unexpectedly, on a wide level shoulder, the trees thinned and below me lay vast expanses of summits and linking ridges – the very heart of Sierra del Escambray.
Then – a severe shock. Standing still, I could feel rage pushing up my blood-pressure. A mile or so ahead, on Topes de Collantes’ highest ridge, loomed a monstrous edifice of incomparable ugliness. Perhaps to do with hydroelectricity? Or a factory? Or a high-security jail? That mile was ‘as the crow flies’. Where the road dipped, before a final climb, the edifice disappeared. An hour later, around a sharp bend, its ten storeys loomed above the road, approached by scores of wide steps, stretching the whole length of that dominant ridge. It presented a curiously blank façade despite rows of small, square, close-together windows. Nothing indicated that this is the Kurhotel, built by Batista in 1936 as a luxury TB sanatorium and given spa hotel status when the Revolution had eradicated the disease. In Trinidad I borrowed an Eyewitness Guide and was diverted to find this Batista souvenir, which had so raised my blood-pressure, described as an ‘anti-stress centre’.
From Topes de Collantes one can hike on approved paths through a national park covering more than a hundred square miles: guides are for hire in a little-used ‘Visitors Facility’. Topes was my first and worst experience of a Cuban tourist zone, a harrowing example of ‘development desecration’. The Kurhotel’s three rivals occupy forested slopes linked by concreted roads, all the gradients so severe that stairways replace footpaths. At 5.30 p.m. one hotel was closed, another only half-built, the third almost full of Germans and Italians newly arrived in five coaches. My large, well-appointed, motel-type room, opening directly off a courtyard studded with flower-beds, seemed like good value for CP37 (buffet breakfast included) until I realised that its insatiable mosquitoes were undeterred by screening.
Next morning I overheard an elderly heavily-bearded German growling that Cubans can make even scrambled eggs unpalatable. His young Italian partner (English their common language) alleged that this was because Cuban hotels use Chinese powdered eggs. While helping myself to a third course I slipped three hard-boiled eggs and three triangles of processed cheese into my shoulder-bag: fuel for the twelve miles to Trinidad.
Repelled by those concrete stairways, I took a forest path to the road and soon a two-inch thorn, strong as steel and sharp as a needle, had penetrated my sandal’s thick sole and my right foot. (Every misfortune strikes my right foot; its companion has survived unscathed throughout seven decades of equally hard wear.) I let the blood flow for a moment, before applying antiseptic ointment and a plaster. Later, at a wayside bar near Trinidad, where I sat with one sole visible, the barman drew my attention to another, shorter thorn. Very observant of him, I thought and typically Cuban to care about the welfare of a passing stranger. I last met this particular hazard in Tanzania where such thorns are the cyclist’s bugbear.
Below the hotels, bohios mingle with
traces of military occupation; Topes was a Rebel Army base during the Escambray campaign. Since then an Institute of Mountain Agronomy has been built, and its staff live in the scattered holiday villas of the pre-Revolutionary rich.
After a few switchbacking miles I was suddenly overlooking a calm sea glittering under a cloudless sky, two thousand one hundred feet below. Here the Escambray’s wall rises abruptly from a narrow plain – narrow when seen from above, yet wide enough to have abundantly enriched a colony of cane-planters. On their southern slopes these mountains are treeless, having been clear-felled during the nineteenth century to fuel giant sugar mills. Until motor roads were built in the 1950s Trinidad depended mainly on sea-transport, supplemented by mule-trains. The clear air allowed me to see the indented coastline – a pirates’ delight – for many miles to east and west.
During the descent a geological freak fascinated me – many tall, slim outcrops of silver rock, their tops symmetrically serrated as though a giant had bitten off mouthfuls. Isolated cacti flaunted flaming flowers, a yard long, and down on the plain towering stands of bamboo swayed and squeaked in the wind. Here grazed cattle, goats and sheep, on drought-stricken pastures with prickly pear hedges. At first I mistook the sheep for goats; they wore short dark brown fleeces and long silky blonde cravats.
Over the last two miles, on the Cienfuegos-Trinidad road, half a dozen vehicles felt like heavy traffic. Crossing the sluggish Rio Guaurabo, I thought of Diego Velasquez sailing upstream in December 1513 to found Cuba’s third settlement. Hereabouts a hideous example of ‘public art’ welcomes visitors to ‘Trinidad a World Treasure’. Then an odd sound intrigued me, a prolonged wheezing, moaning whistle – coming from an 1890’s steam engine, drawing two carriages at five miles per hour and emitting a spectacular column of thick black smoke that half-filled the sky for ten minutes and smelt of my childhood.
Trinidad is over-supplied with casas particulares and touts compete on the outskirts. A youth offered to lead me to his mother’s casa – ‘Very near with all comfort!’ Firmly I showed him the address I was seeking and cheerfully he said, ‘I lead you, if no place you come my house’. In the wrong street he rang a doorbell and quickly muttered something to the old woman who hesitantly peered out. ‘She has no room,’ he declared. ‘You come now my casa.’ Angrily pointing to the street name I told him to get lost and went on my way feeling guilty about that anger. Toutish tricks are distasteful but one should make allowances …
I soon found the correct address but Candida’s friend was at a wedding in Cienfuegos. Her neighbour directed me to a nearby alternative where the welcome was warm but the accommodation cramped: a windowless cell, a dim electric bulb, two single beds, no writing space. Camilla, my hostess, was understandably neurotic about payment; she had been twice cheated by back-packers who stayed a few nights – then vanished before dawn. My arrival without convertible pesos made her fidget until I’d been to the Cambio.
Camilla was a fortyish creole with an elderly mulatto husband. Their twelve-year-old daughter, Ana, was not on good terms with Mamma but could easily enlist Pappa’s sympathy and support by bursting into tears. Such details were easily observed because I had to write at the dining-table. An adult nephew, mildly mentally handicapped and an orphan, occupied the cell beside mine and Camilla was more patient with him than with Ana. He spent hours being happily excited by the two TV sets (both on simultaneously) in the spacious front room and guests were rightly expected to take him in their stride. Within a few days a gossipy neighbour had informed me that he wasn’t really an orphan. His parents had abandoned him, as an obviously defective infant, when they joined the Mariel exodus. But his Aunt Camilla chose to conceal that shameful fact.
That evening my fellow-guests were three repulsive young Swedish men, carrying ludicrous amounts of luggage for a fortnight in Cuba, with bellies flopping over their belts and an unpleasant way of exchanging significant gestures whenever Ana passed by – she pointedly ignoring them.
From my diary:
In over-rated Trinidad foreigners seem to outnumber natives. Coach-loads arrive almost hourly: Dutch, Swedish, French, Italian, German, Canadian – even a few daring yanquis. In the Plaza Mayor, hub of tourist gawping, an ancient little man, wearing a huge sombrero, sits all day on a bony mangey donkey with a notice fixed between its ears: PHOTOS fifty cents. So far that sums up Trinidad for me. There’s no charge for shots of the Plaza’s two larger-than-life bronze greyhounds on plinths. (Perhaps commemorating those Taino-hunting Irish hounds?) But of course this ‘unspoiled example of a Spanish colonial town’ is visually delightful around daybreak – the tourists still dormant … By European standards it’s newish, most buildings dating from the 1820s to ’30s. The cobbled streets (sacrosanct since it was declared a World Heritage Site in 1988) are the oldest feature. Out of thirty thousand Trinitarios, six thousand or so populate what’s lavishly sign-posted as ‘The Historic Centre’. Unusually, many of the original families still live in these pastel-washed houses; some have arched, unglazed windows – almost as big as the doors – with radiating wooden slats in place of shutters. No two buildings alike: endless variety of detail – turned wood or decorated iron grilles, much fanciful plaster moulding, terracotta tiles covering roof-beams – but none of Old Havana’s porticos or vestibules. The narrow streets and laneways (horse traffic only) are quite steep where the town climbs a hill and one glimpses the sapphire sea glittering between red-tiled roofs. The opulent mansions are now museums and a convent houses the Museum of the Fight Against Bandits. Much knowledge and skill has been devoted to Trinidad’s preservation – but it’s too restored, for my taste. This was my ‘dutiful tourist’ day: I ‘did’ Palacio Brunet (1808, stunningly beautiful), the Palacio Cantero, the Bandit Museum and the unexciting Holy Trinity Church (1892). Tomorrow I’ll see where the other twenty-four thousand Trinitarios live.
Those cantankerous instant-reactions were soon forgotten as Trinidad revealed its less obvious charms. Many of the other twenty-four thousand live in a noisy, colourful district no more than ten minutes walk from the quiet colonial splendours. Here the simple brick shacks, each on it own little plot, look like DIY jobs – government-subsidised, immediately after the Revolution, when Cuba’s housing shortage was, as it had long been, at crisis point. (Even now it’s close to that point.) The humpy, broken laneways – litter entangled in weeds along the verges – would challenge a four by four; after a rainy night the potholes were serving as toddlers’ paddling-pools and cyclists were wheeling their machines. The residents, mostly black, were jolly and animated and much given to spontaneous music-making but rather shy of the ‘lost’ foreigner. Guides do not lead their flocks in this direction. Four youths, riding bareback, recklessly raced young horses, seemingly only half-broken, up and down the wider streets – to the shouted disapproval of their elders.
Further on, towards the coast, I found Raimundo’s Uncle Gustavo in one of several 1970s apartment blocks, built at a respectful distance from the Historic Centre. Like his nephew, Gustavo was very tall, very black, very kind and very articulate. He had been warned that one day ‘a peculiar Irish traveller’ would arrive on his threshold. Removing an indignant dachshund from a cane rocking-chair he invited me to sit and asked with a twinkle, ‘Why are you so peculiar?’ That was a good beginning.
Half an hour later we were discussing a topic still delicate in Cuba. Personally Gustavo was not complaining; he had reached the top of his academic ladder and experienced no difficulties on the way up. But the Special Period’s destabilising effects on race relations bothered him. ‘We’re short of supportive relatives in the US. The Centro de Antropologia in Havana reported recently that thirty to forty per cent of whites receive regular remittances but only five to ten per cent of blacks.’ Even worse, Gustavo had observed the foreign investors’ racism reinfecting Cuba’s whites. ‘Look at the tourist coaches, how many guides or even drivers are black? Go to the tourist hotels, how many staff are black?’ When the first foreign
investors arrived, agreements were made to safeguard Cuba’s anti-discrimination laws but the foreigners went their own way. Gustavo admitted, ‘I’m naïve, I was shocked, I didn’t know Europeans were still like that. I’ve lived in the US but I’ve never visited Europe. There’s a bit of déjà vu around – some of the worst racists are Spanish investors! People tell me it’s getting better since Guitart Hotels S.A. had their contract cancelled. When administering the Habana Libre Hotel – I suppose Cuba’s most famous – they sacked eight hundred black employees! Said their sort of customer would prefer white or light-skinned mixed race. But our Foreign Investment Act of 1995 says Cuban laws apply to foreigners’ employees. The Cuban Confederation of Workers took action against Guitart and won. Raúl Castro stayed on their side, saying any establishment discriminating against blacks must be closed, whether or not it’s a joint venture. The Parque Central Hotel also had to sack all its racist management or have its contract voided. El Commandate has always been an extreme anti-racist. I’m his age, I grew up watching how the Revolution worked for blacks, mulattos and the poorest whites.’
I quoted the comments of a ‘black foreign student’ (Miranda, as we walked in the Hanabanilla woods). ‘My friend believes the Special Period killed the Revolution. The government pretended it was possible to compromise with capitalism, to have “regulated” outside investors. That was dishonest, she argues. Those people can’t really be “regulated”, they come with strings and once they’re in they pull them.’
‘It’s a point of view,’ said Gustavo. ‘But what I’ve just told you partly disproves it. How long is this young man in Cuba?’
‘Actually a young woman – five years in Cuba – and she herself has noticed racism increasing in all sorts of little ways. She arrived uncritical, now she has doubts, thinks maybe the Revolution should have gone more slowly, getting rid of Batista’s gangs at once but letting ordinary counter-revolutionaries feel there was space for them.’
Island that Dared Page 24
