Island that Dared

by Dervla Murphy

  At 11.00 a.m. the half-dozen jineteros awaiting the Viazul coach rushed towards me. Firmly I explained that I had friends to stay with and did not want a taxi or a porter to carry my rucksack. They gave me a few sullen stares, and muttered amongst themselves, but hassled no more.

  Pinar’s broken streets and pavements and paint-starved buildings reminded me of Centro Habana without the buzz – but with the stench of blocked drains and rotting garbage. The centre’s neo-classical buildings affirm lost prosperity, their Corinthian or Ionic columns austerely plain or lavishly decorated with bas-reliefs. The most striking edifice, on a corner of the arcaded Calle Martí, is the Palacio de Guasch – 1909, a late addition. This might be described as a souvenir of Dr Guasch’s travels. A wealthy globe-trotter, he acquired a taste for Gothic spires, Moorish arches, Baroque twirls, menacing dragons and other mythical monsters. The locals are very proud of this Palacio; I wondered what had been lost to clear its site.

  A long walk took me to one of those dreary suburbs created when Castroism took on Cuba’s housing shortage. My Key West letter of introduction to Aida and Garcia was unnecessary; they had been warned. English-speakers both, and recently retired, they lived on minute pensions irregularly augmented by their only emigré relative, not himself well-off. I knew how much he worried about their being doomed to a lonely old age. They had no children, were not fidelistas and had been badly shaken when some of their dissident friends were jailed.

  Only Aida was at home when I arrived – a tall, handsome, silver-haired woman evidently in poor health. Garcia was out working on their vegetable plot. This couple belonged to one of the categories most vulnerable to Special Period privations: unlinked to tourism with few incoming dollars and too many middle-class inhibitions to learn how to wheel and deal effectively.

  No doubt my exhaustion was obvious; after the ritual demitasse of coffee Aida suggested a siesta and I slept for three hours.

  Next, a shopping expedition, my least favourite occupation but now essential (trousers). Luckily an equine bus, rare in Pinar’s suburbs, soon overtook me; the other fifteen passengers were returning from some outlying market. Both mules looked over-worked and underfed; the Trio would have been outraged.

  Calle Martí was crowded – with linking, chattering strollers, not with shoppers. Many wide windows displayed only a few pairs of shoes, or one length of fading curtain material, or a few saucepans, or two bras and a pair of briefs. In Sloane Street this use of space sends a certain would-be subtle signal, in Calle Martí the signal is different. Numerous young men were wearing brand new shoes – totally unsuitable, heavy brogues – which meant a supply had recently arrived; new imports are ipso facto coveted. Perhaps, I thought, this also explained the many skin-tight T-shirts, seeming several sizes too small. Aida later confirmed that the sloppy model is no longer trendy and the latest fashion much prized because it emphasises well-developed biceps and torsos. In one tienda baseball caps were marked CP11.50 to CP14.80 and an Adidas track-suit CP66. All garment departments catered for the Cubans’ addiction to vibrant colours which somehow don’t look garish when worn by them. I had to settle for a pair of khaki trousers (male): it was that or scarlet slacks with orange and blue vertical stripes. I didn’t waste time seeking a new watch-strap; even in Havana such a luxury proved unobtainable. But a cobbler to mend my disintegrating sandal was spotted down a side street, sitting on his doorstep fixing a high-heeled slipper. A ten-minute job cost NP5.

  Most guide-books ignore Pinar’s stark two-towered Catedral de San Rosendo, standing in a bare yard surrounded by high railings. Happening upon it, I surveyed the porch notice-board; most eye-catching was an announcement that at 7.00 p.m. that very evening a meeting would be held to promote the beatification of Felix Varela. Interesting – beatification is a long step on the way to canonisation and a Cuban saint could be seen, by some, as boosting the counter-revolutionary cause. It was then 6.30 and, finding the inner door locked, I strolled nearby for twenty minutes.

  In 1998, when Pope John Paul II described Felix Varela as ‘the foundation stone of Cuban national identity’, he wasn’t greatly exaggerating. But the irony is that John Paul II might well have censured this brave Creole priest, a lecturer in philosophy and constitutional law at Havana’s San Carlos seminary and one of a small clerical team who imported the Enlightenment to his homeland. As a member of Cuba’s 1820 delegation to the Cortes in Madrid, he argued (without any support) that for the island’s well-being slavery must be abolished completely and soon. (It was abolished sixty-six years later.) In 1823, after liberalism’s collapse in Spain, Varela was exiled to the US where he published a newspaper, El Habanero, advocating Cuban independence. Although this had to be smuggled into Cuba, and distributed secretly, its message became so popular, especially among the young, that the Spanish authorities despatched a fortunately inexpert assassin to New York. Three years later Varela withdrew from direct political activity but his campaigning had already supplied a yeast to help the dough of nationalism rise faster.

  At 6.50 I joined the score or so (mostly men) awaiting admission to the cathedral. On my approach, everyone fell silent; had they been dogs, one could have seen their hackles rising. In response to my amiable ‘Buenas tardes!’ a young man wearing a track-suit stepped forward. ‘You want Mass? Not now, Domingo.’ When I expressed interest in their Varela meeting an older man snapped something decisive and the young man said, ‘Not for public, no enter now’ – and turned away. I retreated, feeling ridiculously at a disadvantage and slightly angry. A large notice in a church porch does not suggest a private gathering.

  Back with my friends, Garcia said he could have told me I wouldn’t be admitted to any such meeting. That led to talk of the Varela Project – nothing to do with canonisation, everything to do with regime change. The project’s aim had been to collect at least ten thousand signatures for a petition seeking a nation-wide referendum on multi-party democracy, respect for free association and free speech, an amnesty for dissident prisoners and more scope for private businesses. By now it was a dead duck within Cuba (shot down by constitutional lawyers) but its carcass was still being displayed and arousing sympathy on the international ‘Transition to Democracy’ scene.

  I had just observed Garcia filling buckets from a Heath Robinson tangle of roadside pipes and Aida was unhappily apologetic about their lack of running water; it therefore seemed a good idea for the guest to move on next day. But no, my host and hostess looked genuinely dismayed, said I must stay at least three nights if I could put up with the discomfort. Several of their friends, who had signed the Varela Project petition, would like to talk with me, one in particular was an expert on its rise and fall. Thus tempted, I stayed – with the proviso that I, personally, would haul all the water I needed from the pavement pipes.

  The next two days disquieted me not a little. Aida and Garcia and their friends were educated, thoughtful citizens, not rabid counter-revolutionaries but people who realised, when the Special Period set in, that Cubans needed, collectively, to reconsider the island’s future, to debate various alternatives to the ‘revolutionary socialism’ of the previous three decades, not necessarily rejecting socialism per se but devising modifications to the ‘Revolutionary’ brand. The little group I met (seven in all) recognised that in 1959 radical action was inevitable, there was no room then for compromises. Now, however, unavoidable compromises were being made, willy-nilly – with more to come – yet they and their kind didn’t feel free to contribute what they could to the restructuring process.

  In 1997 a prominent quartet of would-be reformers emerged, led by Vladimiro Roca, a government advisor on foreign investment whose father had helped to found Cuba’s pre-Revolutionary Communist Party. The others were Marta Beatriz Roque, an economist, Felix Bonne Carcasses, an engineer and Rene Gomez Manzano, a lawyer. Together they published a constructively critical analysis of the government’s economic policy, a sober work, not written in a counter-revolutionary key. Yet in 1999 they we
re jailed, having been found guilty of inciting sedition and undermining Cuba’s economy. Roca did about half of his four years and while inside became a convert to Catholicism. The others were soon released because of pressures applied by the Vatican, Mexico and Canada. If the quartet were not counter-revolutionaries when jailed, they certainly were on their release. All four then collaborated with Cuban-American hard-liners such as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Lincoln Diaz-Balart. And they were soon recruited by the US Interests Section for use in a campaign to encourage ‘non-violent actions of destabilisation’.

  When I asked what form such actions took I was given four examples from Pinar, three of which seemed to me not very ‘destabilising’. However, were such endeavours coordinated and sustained one can’t estimate the likely island-wide effect.

  Firstly: financial and other support was given to a press agency describing itself as the ‘Union of Independent Cuban Journalists and Writers’.

  Secondly: a bond was forged between Pinar’s Centre for Trade Union Studies and a Cuban-American Electrical Power Plants Trade Union in Miami.

  Thirdly: Pinar acquired an ‘independent library’, the Interest Section chief (US ambassador by another name) arriving in person to deliver cartons of books to a dissident’s home.

  Fourthly: (and here I could smell danger) – the shortage of medicines and medical equipment, mainly caused by the US blockade, left an opening for the Interests Section to subsidise ‘independent’ pharmacies and basic clinics, often in the homes of dissident doctors who in two cases had gained US visas as rewards for co-operation. Through the ‘independent’ press agency this ‘humanitarian aid’ was widely publicised, internationally. Radio Marti regularly announced the opening of new clinics and pharmacies and centres where people might obtain treatment for a specific complaint such as asthma. Pinar’s Union of Young Democrats of Cuba, egged on by two Miami hard-liners, Frank Hernandez Trujillo and Enrique Blanco, opened a pharmacy where medicines were handed out by a young man who knew as much about pharmacology – Garcia complained – as a dog about a holiday. Martha Beatriz Roque vigorously supported this medical project and claimed to have received enough money from Miami to equip two new clinics. The ‘independent’ Medical Association of Cuba depended on the Miami Medical Team Foundation, one of whose members, Dr Manuel Alzugaray Perez, was a friend of Otto Reich. In 1988 – Garcia recalled – Reich, as US ambassador in Caracas, organised the early release of the terrorist Orlando Bosch from his Venezuelan jail. In 2002, when Bush II appointed Reich his Special Envoy for Latin America, he at once set about securing government funding for Dr Alzugaray’s counter-revolutionary projects.

  In May of that year, as ex-President Jimmy Carter was on his way to Havana, the Varela petition, with 11,000 signatures, was handed in to the National Assembly. Days later, on Cuban TV, Carter praised the Varela initiative and Fidel – certainly embarrassed and probably enraged – started the legal scrutiny of the constitution that would kill it. According to the 1976 constitution, a ten thousand bloc of voters had the right to propose new legislation – but not to demand a referendum. The constitutional lawyers soon made this distinction clear. Anti-Castro legal eagles conceded that those lawyers did not have to distort the letter of the constitution to thwart the petition. Under Article 75, only the National Assembly may call a referendum and there is a crucial difference between an initiative to pass a new law and an initiative to amend the constitution – the pre-requisite for a multi-party election.

  Despite Castroism’s domestic victory over Varela the government’s twitchiness persisted and less than a year later seventy-five dissidents – Roca among them – were arrested. For this Aida, Garcia and their friends, all signatories of the petition, laid much of the blame on Special Interests and their Cuban-American allies. Garcia lamented that Washington’s attempt to impose ‘democracy’, US-style, on Cuba was leaving no space for ‘democracy’, Cuban-style, to grow. Those non-fidelista members of the intelligentsia I met in Pinar (and elsewhere) are genuine patriots in rather an old-fashioned, uncomplicated way that reminded me of my father. They value their country’s independence, are proud of its having survived the Special Period and resent the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. Aida spoke of the government’s catastrophic failure to distinguish between patriotic dissidents, like the people in that room, and US puppets.

  Cuba’s leaders have not forgotten that in 1964 the CIA engineered the overthrow of Guyana’s Cheddi Jagan government and initiated twenty years of extreme violence in Brazil. Also in the 1960s, they organised two military coups in three years in opposition to Ecuador’s non-compliant elected governments. Similar manoeuvres triumphed in Indonesia, Guatamala, Chile. In the mid-1970s it was Portugal’s turn; with CIA help the leftwing military government that had overthrown Salazar’s dictatorship was replaced. When Ronald Reagan visited Pope John Paul II in June 1982 they colluded to put Solidarity in charge of Poland. A generation later, in 2001, Senator Jesse Helms proposed spending a hundred million dollars ‘to duplicate in Cuba the success in Poland of the CIA, NED and the Vatican’.

  On 20 May 2002 Bush II presented his ‘Initiative for a New Cuba’, based on ‘increased and direct assistance to help build Cuban civil society leading to a new government’. A year later USAID boasted of spending six million dollars ‘to promote a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba’. The salient features of that transition had been made plain in the US Congress in 1998: the privatisation of agriculture, industry and education and ‘the complete restructuring of the social security system’. The USAID website specifies seven uses for those six million dollars: 1) Solidarity with human rights activists; 2) dissemination of the work of independent journalists; 3) development of independent NGOs; 4) promoting workers’ rights; 5) outreach to the Cuban people; 6) planning for future assistance to a transition government; 7) evaluation of the program.

  Realpolitik is now, more than ever, synonymous with double standards, as Robert Cooper made plain in the Observer on 7 April 2002:

  The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of double standards. When dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher methods of an earlier era – force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth-century world of every state for itself.

  Robert Cooper is a senior British diplomat, was head of the Defence and Overseas Secretariat in Tony Blair’s cabinet and then the prime minister’s Special Representative for Afghanistan 2001–2. No doubt in that nineteenth-century state it gratified him to observe all the methods he prescribes being used to slaughter uncounted Afghan non-combatant men, women and children.

  The Guantanamo Bay prison camp is, naturally, the Cubans’ favourite example of double standards. Why is it OK for the US to kidnap and hold men captive for years on end, without charge, in defiance of both US and international law, and not OK for the Cuban government to imprison, after due process, citizens found guilty of collaborating with the foreign planners of regime change?

  I suggested that certain collaborators may be too dumb to realise that on every continent Capitalism Rampant uses ‘the spreading of democracy’ and ‘the defence of human rights’ to disguise their real designs. That excuse was unpopular. One woman crisply observed, ‘Even dumb Cubans have memories. We all know about those designs.’ Garcia added realistically, ‘And some Cubans like them, if they themselves can make a profit.’

  Curiously, throughout all our long and intense conversations, Fidel’s name was never mentioned. Although everyone criticised aspects of ‘the government’ or ‘the Revolution’, there were no excoriations of ‘the dictator’ or ‘the tyrant’. I longed to ask, ‘What do you make of Fidel as a person?’ But such bluntness would have been a serious faux pas. The cross-currents were complex, many remarks delicately nuanced. I was with disillusioned people who still appreciated the self-respecting Cuba that Fidel had ma
de possible. At that point el comandante would insist on a correction, arguing that the Cubans themselves, when at last given a chance, had made it possible. But his leadership gave them their chance and one has to wonder about the durability of Castroism’s immaterial achievements.

  That last evening in Pinar I wrote: ‘Yes, all Cubans should of course be free to agitate for change, to protest against the Revolution’s errors and inflexibility and to argue for constitutional adjustments. But regime change, as planned in detail by Washington, is something else: a take-over of a sovereign state by interests indifferent to the welfare of most citizens.’

  Walking away from Pinar city, towards the Cordillera Guaniguanic, those wavy blue ridges along the horizon seemed puny substitutes for the Sierra Maestra. But in due course they would pleasantly surprise me.

  Tobacco harvesting was not quite over and I watched top leaves being tenderly gathered in red earth fields. This labour is not amenable to mechanisation and many vegueros (tobacco farmers) are reputed to talk encouragingly to their plants. Gauze netting covered several fields, protecting the wrapper leaves from too much sun: those must be more pliable than the rest. I ventured off the road to peer into one of the tall, windowless casas de tabaco, thatched barns crudely constructed of wood but precisely aligned east to west for consistent exposure to sunlight. These might have been built by the earliest vegueros; the twentieth century – never mind the twenty-first – has left no mark here. Objects made of metal, or any synthetic material, must never be allowed anywhere near these precious drying leaves; sewn together in batches, they hang from long horizontal poles for about two months before being packed in wooden chests and stored for three fermenting months. Then, after grading, they go to Cuba’s various factories to be carefully moistened and fermented for another two months. Again they are dried, packed in bales wrapped in palm bark and left to mature for four years before being rolled into the sort of cigars not many people can afford to smoke.