Island that Dared

by Dervla Murphy

  Replacing the cutting in my folder I unkindly remarked, ‘British firms of architects may be less popular than the Canadians and the Spanish.’

  By 2.00 p.m. we were approaching Havana, flying slightly out from the coast. The first change was seasonal – a landscape vividly green. The second change was equally predictable: that long, bare, dingy space where Rachel, the Trio and I had waited through the small hours was now a garishly commercialised concourse – we might have been in any international airport. And the taxis, all licensed and in good condition, were under traffic officer control with no bone-shaking free-lancers parked around the corner.

  My middle-aged black driver, Gerardo, became chatty on hearing that this was my third visit. ‘For you Cuba is good! For me too! From Ireland many come – another island, maybe we same sort?’ I acknowledged a certain temperamental affinity, then ventured to ask, ‘How is Fidel?’

  Gerardo chuckled. ‘He’s OK, not dying the way the Yanquis want! He came on TV last week, with an interviewer for an hour, quick with his mind but thin and tired. He says a lot with his pen in Granma, still seeing what’s wrong with the world. And next week we’ll watch him talking with Chavez.’

  Noticing Havana’s shiny new buses I exclaimed in wonder. ‘From China,’ said Gerardo. ‘Hundreds of them and the oil from Venezuela, 90,000 barrels a day, below half-price. We give 14,000 medical people to work free for Chavez – it makes the Yanquis mad! Radio Marti says in any country our brigade workers can go to the US embassy and get a free ticket to the US. And a work permit. And citizenship after a year. Then they get madder so few want to go!’

  When we had said goodbye I turned into San Rafael, happy to be back but soon demoralised by the humid heat, incomparably worse than in November-March. Candida reminded me that it would be even hotter in Oriente – and hottest of all when I reached my ultimate destination, Playa Las Colorades.

  A saddening change was the permanent police presence (always a lone young officer) at a street corner close to No. 403. I had never before seen police keeping Centro under surveillance. Crime was rapidly increasing, warned Pedro. I shouldn’t carry my passport with me, or much cash, and I should always wear my shoulder-bag around my neck.

  Candida added, ‘Last year we had two million tourists, mostly European and Canadian, spending one and a half billion dollars! But they also bring problems …’

  Overnight the weather relented slightly and as a gusty wind delivered frequent heavy showers I revisited the former presidential palace, now the Museum of the Revolution. Here one is educated in such detail that my previous two visits had left many rooms unseen. As usual, groups of schoolchildren were imbibing history and neither they nor their teachers looked bored. English children may not know their Corn Laws from their Magna Carta but Cuba can’t afford to neglect history; it nourishes the Revolution’s roots.

  The Wars of Independence had inglorious aspects, some creoles favouring annexation by the US, some mulattos distrustful of their white comrades-in-arms, many blacks – even after 1886 – not too keen on being counted as Cubans. Yet with hindsight one sees how much those struggles achieved. Gradually and painfully they created an emotional environment in which people were prepared to be forged – by Martí and then by Fidel – into a unified nation. (Did processes not dissimilar happen in Europe millennia ago, as disparate tribes fought over territory and resources?) By 1950 one of Martí’s most important messages (‘Being Cuban is more important than being white or black’) had been dripping steadily on to the stone of prejudice for some sixty years.

  Pre-1959 racism per se was not on Fidel’s agenda. For obvious reasons the Rebel Army’s leadership was mainly white, as was the first interim government which at once opened to all Cubans the previously segregated clubs, beaches, parks, theatres, hotels.

  Ironically, Spain’s exit in 1898, followed by the island’s take-over as a US playground, had led to more rigidly enforced segregation than any previously experienced. In 1985 Martha Gellhorn revisited Cuba where she had lived as Ernest Hemingway’s wife from 1939–44. After a forty-one year absence she observed:

  I had never thought of Cubans as blacks, and could only remember Juan, our pale mulatto chauffeur … A form of apartheid prevailed in central Havana, I don’t know whether by edict or by landlords’ decisions not to rent to blacks. Presumably they could not get work either, unless as servants … The mass of Cubans had no education and no sense of identity. Being Cuban meant being somebody else’s underling, a subordinate people. I knew a few upperclass Cuban sportsmen; they spoke perfect English. Not in words, nor even in thought, but instinctively they were felt to be too superior to be Cubans … Now, through innumerable museums, Cubans are being shown their history, being told they have been here a long time: they are a nation and they can be proud to be Cubans.

  This psychological transformation is arguably the Revolution’s greatest triumph; it is easier to raise a people’s material standard of living than to raise their morale. To many Rich Worlders it seems the Revolution nurtured self-respect in a paradoxical sort of way, not by encouraging Cubans to value themselves as individuals (our route to ‘self-esteem’) but by educating and organising them to co-operate for the general good, persuading and sometimes coercing them to obey government directives in order that they might enjoy a range of benefits denied to their ancestors. Even the jineteros and jineteras, officially and unjustly labelled ‘counter-revolutionary parasites’, have a non-obsequious way of going about their business rarely observed among their equivalents elsewhere.

  That afternoon I searched through Havana’s second-hand book market in Plaza de Armas for copies of the English translation of Fidel and Religion, subtitled ‘Castro talks on Revolution and Religion with Frei Betto’. I wanted several copies, for distribution among my friends, this being, in my estimation, one of the single most important books written about Cuba since the Revolution. When first published in 1987 it became an instant bestseller in Cuba, where more than 200,000 copies were sold within a few days and 1.3 million within a few months – to a population of, then, some ten million. All over Latin America sales were comparable and soon editions had been published in the USSR, the GDR, Italy, Poland, Spain, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Bulgaria, India – twenty-three countries in all, served by fifteen translations. In Santiago thousands queued to buy copies autographed by the Brazilian Dominican priest, Frei Betto. In Switzerland the Roman Catholic Church devoted an hour-long TV programme to debating the book. Harvey Cox, in his introduction, wonders why there was such worldwide interest and remarks, ‘The loquacious Fidel’s sermon, whatever else one may say about it, is keeping the folks in the pews awake’.

  Shortly before leaving home I had read an advance copy of My Life: Fidel Castro with Ignacio Ramonet, based on a hundred hours of interviews spread over three years. Fidel and Religion is based on four long conversations – real conversations, not interviews; the Dominican scholar was on Fidel’s spiritual wavelength. Ignacio Ramonet deals with twenty additional years, using a journalist’s technique and being at times too hagiographical. My Life, though full of fascinating detail, fails to dig deep, stays on the political surface, doesn’t alert us to the extraordinary nature of the Cuban experiment and its relevance to twenty-first century needs. Frei Betto’s three hundred and seventeen pages take us to the place where Fidel’s vision shines clear.

  In the Cuban Book Institute, under the Plaza de Armas arcade, I made a new friend. Tall and thin, white-haired and sad-eyed, Donatilo wore threadbare jeans and a too-big bush-shirt that didn’t suit his non-macho persona. We got into conversation about my failed quest for Fidel and Religion, then I had to explain myself and soon Donatilo was inviting me to his Miramar flat – ‘Come to drink coffee, I offer no more for I live alone and don’t cook.’

  Donatilo’s English was fluent; in 1959 he had been halfway through a Yale course when enthusiasm for the Revolution drew him home. ‘I’m a maverick; as my family took off for Miami, I
took off for Havana!’ Later I learned that this maverick had resumed his academic career at Havana University, become an internationally recognised authority in his field and married a fellow-academic whose death, a few months previously, explained those sad eyes.

  Next day even the habaneros were glistening with sweat and complaining about the humidity. It drastically reduced my walking range so I waited twenty-five minutes for a Chinese bus; the public transport improvement was relative. From the coast road many hurricane souvenirs were visible: smashed rowing boats flung far from their moorings, roofless sheds, ponds of scummy stagnant water, jumbles of driftwood to which householders had added garbage of interest to mangy, stray dogs.

  For me Miramar – Havana’s early twentieth-century development beyond the inconsequential Rio Almandares – was (almost) terra incognita. The seriously rich once occupied super-mansions on its wide tree-lined boulevards and Miami’s influence is perceptible, as is the recent recovery of Cuba’s economy. Here be handsome embassies, and sleek speeding cars with CD plates or corporate logos, and a disfiguring rash of brand new multi-storey tourist hotels. My search for Donatilo’s flat took me up and down a few pleasant, narrowish avenues, linking the boulevards – the residences smaller, flowering shrubs spilling over garden walls, dachshunds and poodles with smart collars guarding flimsy gates.

  Donatilo’s ground-floor flat (two rooms, plus kitchenette and baño) overlooked a privately-owned organoponico, created and cultivated by Donatilo’s daughter and son-in-law and two grandsons, who lived upstairs. I had anticipated a tête-à-tête over coffee but the family invited me to join them for supper. Julia and Felipe were both government officials – senior civil servants, in our terms, a species not often encountered by chance in Cuba. The boys were out at their ballet class, an acceptable interest for your average Cuban lad.

  Over cervezas and daiquiris Felipe guesstimated that in 1985, when Fidel and Frei Betto so fruitfully conversed, the former was long-sightedly preparing people for the emotional as well as economic shock of the Special Period. Fidel, he believed, longed for the world to recognise that Cuban Communism was a separate phenomenon, far removed from the Soviet version.

  Julia doubted that el comandante was all that long-sighted, Donatilo agreed with his son-in-law and felt the book had helped Cubans by drawing a clear ideological line between Havana and Moscow. All were agreed that it had had a drip-drip effect in Latin America and contributed to the region’s new assertiveness.

  Remembering those two hundred thousand who bought Fidel and Religion as it came off the presses in 1987, I enquired about the present publishing scene. Felipe’s aunt had helped, pre-Special Period, to run Ediciones Vigia, an illustrious publishing house which produced hand-made books in limited editions of two hundred – for free – to be presented as academic prizes. Youngsters keen to learn book-making used to queue up for apprenticeship places. Now Ediciones Vigia must bow to market forces and sell its books for convertible pesos to be able to afford recycled paper.

  In 1989 more than four thousand titles (including schoolbooks) came off the presses: a total of fifty-five million copies, yet supply could never satisfy demand. By 1993 book production had fallen to 1959 levels and from the Casa de las Americas came many wails and much gnashing of teeth. Yet now I was again hearing good of the Special Period. Said Donatilo, ‘Comecon wasn’t only an economic storehouse, it was a cultural muzzle. Being left on our own was liberating and stimulating. Subsidising books as much as we did was unhealthy – depressed standards. Recently we’ve had a good crop of vigorous young writers, not expecting subsidies, just wanting to be left to write as they think. Having no cash for foreign authors is a problem but some present us with their rights – like Gunter Grass and Alice Walker.’

  Ediciones José Martí, the main publishers of political writings, could only bring out twenty titles in 1993. By now its commercial reincarnation, allied with foreign publishers for co-editions of poetry and fiction, is thriving – though without any foreign distribution network. When I condemned the poor quality of its expensive translations Julia urged me to complain to the Minister of Culture; later I discovered that she worked in his department.

  Bus routes only serve the edges of widespread Miramar and it’s not bicitaxi territory; carless residents either hitch-hike or use car-owning friends as unlicenced taxis. Donatilo advised against hitch-hiking after dark. ‘A few years ago, always safe – not any more.’ Felipe telephoned a neighbour who drove me as far as the Malecón in a vintage Lada.

  Next morning Candida lent me a detailed street plan of Necropolis de Colon’s one hundred and thirty-seven acres. Among the world’s largest cemeteries, it accommodates some two million dead Cubans, equal to Havana’s present population. The Church authorities bought this farmland in the 1860s, planning to provide enough consecrated ground for at least one hundred and fifty years, then ran a competition won by a well-known Spanish architect, Calixto Aureliano de Loira y Cardosa. His inspiration was a Roman military camp – everything rigidly symmetrical – which no doubt appealed to the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The construction took fifteen years (1871–86: there were money problems) and Calixto never saw his design completed. Dying at the age of thirty-three, he became, as it were, a pioneer corpse.

  I set out on foot but even at 7.00 a.m. the humidity was obliterating. A CP 0.50 bicitaxi ride left me opposite the main entrance half an hour before opening time. Sipping coffee on a café verandah I contemplated Faith, Hope and Charity in Carrara marble, decorating the massive triple-arched portal. This is described in guidebooks as ‘neo-Gothic’ though to my eyes it looks closer to neo-Romanesque.

  Here, alone on the verandah, I was exposed to another of Cuba’s sad recent changes: a child beggar, aged perhaps eight or nine, insistently pleading for ‘one dollar, pleeeze!’ He was well-fed, well-dressed, well-shod, well-groomed and on a weekday morning would certainly have been at school. Sternly I told him he should be ashamed of himself, this was not how José Martí, or Che, or Fidel expected Cuban children to behave. That litany of ‘role models’ brought an interesting reaction. He blushed (he was a white child), stared at the ground for a moment, then ran away. I had seen several other little boys, equally sturdy and well-turned out, pestering tourists in al fresco cafeterias along the Malecón. Poor Fidel! It used to be one of his proudest boasts that there were no beggars in Cuba. Gloomily I reflected that those children represent the fraying edge of the Revolutionary ethos.

  I ‘collect’ cemeteries (have done since childhood) and this necropolis is like no other. Disconcertingly, it seems part of the city – as might a recreational park – rather than the last resting place of two million. Avenida Colon bisects it, a tarred dual carriageway on which stands the octagonal three-tiered Capilla Central (1886). All the main ‘streets’ – many shaded by towering fig-trees and ceibas – are long and straight. The living are much in evidence – workers clipping shrubs, scrubbing monuments, sweeping streets – little groups strolling to or from family graves – cyclists, motor scooters, the occasional taxi. Two tourist coaches parked by the Capilla for their loads to admire its attractive cupola, very beautiful German stained glass and a Cuban artist’s less pleasing fresco, above the altar, in which fallen angels look more congenial than the Christ who is packing them off to hell. These unfortunate tourists were only given time to photograph the nearby Falla Bronat pantheon before being rounded up by a guide with a whistle.

  A combination of great wealth and Roman Catholic mythology is no guarantee of aesthetic satisfaction and many prominent tombs, statues, vaults and pantheons had the unintended consequence of making me want to giggle. Among the more austere memorials, at the end of Avenida Colon, is the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, housing scores of heroes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces including Celia Sanchez, Fidel’s constant companion for twenty-two years. (Some say he has never fully recovered from her death in 1980.) Two pleasant soldiers were guarding these special bones and the young woman obligingly took ph
otographs of me saluting the life-size bas-reliefs of Fidel and Che on the monument’s otherwise undecorated façade. Behind this pantheon lie the scores of Granma warriors slaughtered by Batista’s Rural Guard at Alegria de Pio on 5 December 1956. Having paid my respects to them I took a dirt-track going towards the as-yet-unused wilderness at the southern end of the necropolis – whereupon the male soldier came hurrying after me, shouting agitatedly. I must turn back, stay on the calles, that area ahead was closed to the public. I could see no STOP sign or barrier and this bossiness irritated me; it seemed petty to try to exclude tourists from the untidy acres. However those soldiers, being on guard duty, were easily eluded.

  Turning east, towards the Osario General (1886, one of the oldest constructions) I soon found another path into a semi-wilderness where the thorny marabu had been controlled but the grass grew long. Here were occasional simple, newish graves, adorned with bunches of dried flowers. Ahead loomed four ugly, incongruous concrete block edifices – enormous, doorless, with three floors, like open-sided car-parks. Before investigating, I looked around: there was no one in sight. Moments later I was walking along a narrow corridor surrounded by thousands of concrete boxes, about three feet square, untidily stacked from floor to ceiling, crudely inscribed in black paint with names and dates. Each bore a large ‘X’ chalked in white. Those close enough to be legible dated from the mid-1990s. Many lids were loose, several had fallen off, exposing jumbled skulls and bones – the spines of necessity broken. I was tempted by one femur which would have fitted neatly into my shoulder-bag and been a companion for the Tibetan thigh-bone bugle in my study. But sounds of an approaching funeral deterred me, thus averting a possible headline in Granma: ‘Irish Author Jailed for Stealing Cuban Bones’. Nearby were two other half-built ossuaries. From all my friends I sought information about this ‘not-for-tourists’ corner of the necropolis. How had all those corpses been so quickly reduced to clean bones without, apparently, the use of fire? And why had they not been buried, given the amount of unused land available? But blank stares gagged my questioning. I seemed to have come upon a Cuban family secret.