Island that Dared

by Dervla Murphy

  Juan had lived in English-speaking countries for several years and our mutual friend had described him as ‘a new breed of dissident, over-loyal to Revolutionary ideals’. When his criticisms of certain ‘joint ventures’ with foreign investors were too widely repeated, he was asked to retire early. He knew exactly where he would like to see the ‘new Cuba’ going and lamented its already being off in the opposite direction.

  Listening to Juan’s development of this theme, I understood why our mutual friend had identified us as kindred spirits. He longed for a Cuba that looked ahead, recognising the long-term significance of the Special Period’s achievements.

  ‘We’ve been there,’ said Juan. ‘We’re an important example because we’ve survived. We’ve proved a people thrown back on their own resources, without warning or outsiders’ aid, can survive. The Revolution’s greatest achievement was not ousting Batista but quietly making an alternative plan after the Soviet collapse. We’ve adapted to having to go backwards, which is how even the US will have to go one day not so far off.’

  ‘But,’ I objected, ‘you weren’t really without warning. Fidel foresaw the collapse ahead of most world leaders. And isn’t tourism outside aid? And how many Cubans are willing to continue going backwards? Adapting to a temporary crisis is different.’

  Juan believed that the majority could be educated to accept a permanently ‘green’ society. ‘If Fidel had twenty more years he could make them proud of that!’ In 2006, when the World Wildlife Fund singled Cuba out as ‘the only country now developing sustainably’, Juan was not surprised. Obviously horse-buses and ox-ploughs can contribute more to solving the world’s environmental problems than ‘new technologies’. We agreed that the technologists who made so much of the mess can’t reasonably be expected to clean it up while maintaining the value of shares. Do the world’s corporate and political leaders really believe that this is possible? ‘Maybe they have to fool themselves,’ said Juan, ‘or they’d get scared. Going backwards doesn’t protect power and profit!’

  By then we had retreated to the cerveza tent though its few torpid table fans did nothing to relieve the humidity. Opening our Buccaneros, Juan deplored the nature of Venzuela’s industrial aid: a petro-chemical factory, a monster cement factory, an expanded nickel-smelting plant – ‘How will our sustainability look in 2010?’ Given the urgent need for more consumer goods, to replace essentials worn out or broken, President Chavez’s petro-dollars should be used, argued Juan, to set up little factories, here and there around the island, providing jobs for redundant sugar workers.

  In Casino Campestre, as elsewhere, T-shirts saying ‘VIVA Chavez!’ and baseball caps inscribed ‘Venezuela’, were now popular amongst all age groups. Juan commented on Cuba’s feeling much less isolated in recent years, partly as a result of Fidel’s reception (an unprecedented demonstration of affectionate respect) at the momentous Mercosur summit ten days before his illness struck. Latin American leaders are, understandably, better informed than any others about Cuba’s revolution and the reasons why its humane social policies go with varying degrees of repressive authoritarianism. Juan added, ‘Che should be here to feel how the Latin American currents are moving – even after his death he stayed powerful. Who said “You can kill a man but not an idea”? It’s a favourite Fidel quote, I should remember the source.’

  We talked then about the adjective ‘communist’ as incessantly deployed to confine Cuba to an ideological territory despised throughout the capitalist world. Even now its Cold War accretions make the average reader/listener/viewer recoil, while putting a gloss on anti-Castroism per se. I recalled how my generation grew up hating and fearing Communism; the Cold War distorted international relations for most of my lifetime – beginning when I was fourteen, ending when I was sixty. In Roman Catholic Ireland it was easy to instil a loathing of atheistic Russia where churches were desecrated, children taught to revile God, priests and nuns slaughtered and raped (‘violated’ was the 1950s word). We didn’t hear anything about the Russian Orthodox Church’s sometimes lethal detestation of Roman Catholicism: that would have spoiled the picture. Personally I had decided by the age of eighteen that Christianity (or any institutional religion) was not for me; yet I abhorred Soviet Russian’s dogmatic and brutal atheism. (Fidel was surely right – ‘Every people in the history of the human race has had some diffused religiousness’.) Then, with the Cold War’s ending, came a persistent sleight-of-tongue campaign. ‘Socialism’ was disgraced, defeated, dead; deliberately ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ were and are used as synonyms – confusing a generation, making them all the more reluctant to challenge the morality of Capitalism Rampant.

  With sudden vehemence Juan exclaimed, ‘There was no Cold War! It was an arms race that only the richest could win. And communism wasn’t defeated in Russia – like Gandhi said about Christianity, it would be a great system if someone tried it.’

  ‘That depends,’ I said, ‘on what you mean by “communism”. But I agree the Cold War was phoney.’ And then we marvelled at the Western public’s gullibility – its sheer want of common sense – throughout those decades. Picture the Soviet Union in 1945, gutted by its contribution to defeating Nazism – at least twenty million dead, the economy in ruins. The notion that within the foreseeable future that country could – or would want – to invade Western Europe or anywhere else was insane. But it was a notion dear to the military-industrial complex’s heart, the best possible fertiliser to keep ‘defence budgets’ growing.

  Juan described Cuban Socialism as ‘a more authentic popular movement’ then the Soviet version ever was. Yet even friends of the Revolution, he complained, didn’t recognise – or misinterpreted – its genuinely populist foundation while critics ascribed Fidel’s mass support to authoritarian manipulation. ‘It’s the other way round,’ asserted Juan. ‘Fidel’s mass support gave a permit for authoritarianism – or what looks like it.’

  My negative reaction to the word ‘populist’ brought a quick assurance that Fidel was a populist leader in the best sense, the ordinary Cubans’ spokesman and facilitator, someone so directly linked to the populace and who empathises so strongly with them that he can voice their deepest wishes and often unexpressed thoughts. When Juan asked, ‘Do you know Ernesto Laclau?’ I shook my head.

  ‘You should read him, an Argentine political theorist, I did my thesis on him. He says there can be no socialism without populism and the highest form of populism can only be socialist. I believe that.’

  Scornfully Juan dismissed those who make fun of Fidel’s long speeches. Such oratorical marathons were, he insisted, an essential ingredient of a populist leader’s relationship with his followers. Mysteriously, over the years, those apparent monologues had had the effect of dialogues, strengthening the bond between speaker and audience while creating a powerful collective identity among vast crowds. Moreover, outsiders didn’t appreciate how often Fidel’s speeches from podiums or on TV were reinforced by leisurely conversations with ordinary individual workers or small groups. Until shortly before his illness, he regularly toured all the provinces, listening to the populace no less attentively than he used to listen, in his guerrilla days, to the Sierra Maestra campesiños. ‘Remember,’ said Juan, ‘we’re not talking about blind, stupid followers. The populist leader and the populace are interdependent. That’s why Gaitan said, “I am not a Man, I am the People”.’

  Soon after Jorge Gaitan’s famous declaration, in April 1948, the Columbian oligarchy used assassination to abort his revolution. Then Argentina’s Colonel Peron foretold, ‘That country will not return to normality for fifty years’. An understatement, as Juan pointed out. ‘It’s now sixty years and no normality in sight.’

  Juan was an unusual Cuban in several respects, not least in his willingness to speculate with a foreigner about the future of Cuban Socialism.

  ‘So where,’ I wondered, ‘does all you’ve said leave Castroism post-Fidel?’

  Juan didn’t feign optimism. He had
a sharp-edged (or simplistic?) vision of the Revolution as a noble project demeaned by Sovietisation. ‘Communism wasn’t – isn’t – our problem. Sovietisation is still holding us back.’ This idiosyncratic fidelista went on to define Sovietisation as a worse handicap, during Cuba’s present critical transition stage, than the US embargo which only has practical consequences. He diagnosed ‘intellectual paralysis’ within the Sovietised bureaucracy, just when new thinking is needed to protect the Revolution’s gains and build on the unity Fidel’s populism achieved. He condemned the habitual use of stale Soviet-speak – a considerable irritant to the younger generation, a signal that their leaders feared to ‘think new’. Meanwhile they were ‘acting new’, compromising with capital, openly looking to China as their model. At that point Juan shuddered – visibly, physically shuddered. After a moment’s pause he said, ‘China mixes the worst of both worlds, capitalist greed with communist tyranny. Odd how we don’t hear Washington demanding “free and fair elections” before trading with those tyrants.’

  Plainly Juan’s recent ‘career change’ had inflicted a deep wound, been traumatic enough to distort his perception of Cuba on the cusp, a country with no alternative but to compromise Revolutionary ideals. I urged him to look on the bright side. What Washington had been dreading for years – a smooth transfer of power to Fidel’s designated successors – was now a fait accompli. The friends I had contacted since my return spoke of their new collective leadership with pride; even those most critical of corruption, inefficiency, bureaucracy and chronic shortages were not at all eager for US ‘help’. The ‘intellectual paralysis’ could, I suggested, be overcome in time by the new leadership. Professor Fred Halliday, an occasional advisor to the Cuban Foreign Ministry since the early 1980s, described in 2000 ‘an impressive group: witnesses of four decades of revolutionary upheaval and international drama, familiar with the leaders and inner workings of the Cuban state, well-travelled, committed to the broad aims of the Cuban revolution, sceptical of much of what passed for Marxist or radical writing in the west, and devoid of the kind of rhetorical posturing that so often characterises officials of such regimes.’

  Repressing my own pessimism, I argued that the current compromise with capitalism didn’t have to lead to the abandonment of Castroism, only its modification. Capitalism Rampant is now being exposed as inherently unstable, dependent for its survival on the use of high-tech military power – therefore doomed eventually to be defeated by the Majority World’s low-tech resistance. And it could be that Cuba’s experiment will serve, throughout the bloodiness, to hearten those who believe in people before profit.

  The Camaguey Ballet Company, founded in 1967, is a close second to Cuba’s Ballet Nacional which leaves foreign audiences breathless when it goes on tour. Juan had planned a Giselle evening at the Teatro Principal; he knew the Director who might wish to meet an Irish member of the CSC. The Birmingham and London Royal Ballets regularly donate shoes to Cuba’s ballet schools, their transport organised by CSC’s Music Fund. Astonishingly, Cuba has eleven provincial dance schools, in addition to the National School, and all performances draw wildly enthusiastic mass audiences – though before the Revolution classical ballet was unknown on the island.

  At Sadler’s Wells in 1952 Alicia Alonso’s dancing in Swan Lake so enchanted me that I spent all my food money on a repeat performance. A few years later this prima ballerina returned to Cuba in Messianic mode and personally funded a small company, with foreign dancers. Here the narrative has a fairly-tale tinge. Fidel was intent on providing culture as well as food and medicine and one day he appeared without warning at Alicia’s side. Would she help the Revolution by founding a state ballet company? Fidel made two hundred thousand dollars available – at that date a powerful sum – and added a colonial mansion as headquarters.

  Alicia immediately set about training local dancers while introducing the population to ballet. The latter task took her to many factories, collective farms, military barracks, universities and hospitals: everywhere she demonstrated her art under the most taxing conditions. (No wonder she and Fidel became life-long friends!) Recruiting pupils was not difficult; most Cubans respond to rhythm like trees to the wind and dance spontaneously as soon as they can toddle.

  In parks and plazas I had often been puzzled by little groups of boys, aged perhaps ten to sixteen, practising turning very fast on a curved wooden board. Now Juan explained: they were striving to master double-figure pirouettes. Because ballet dancing is not mocked as an effete profession, Cuba produces an abundance of male talent. When Carlos Acosta was a very naughty nine-year-old his truck-driver father reckoned a discipline-plus-fun ballet school would sort him out – and so a star was born.

  Alicia danced on stage into her mid-seventies but most ballerinas retire much earlier, then coach their juniors. Cuban ballet dancers’ dedication to their art is single-minded; it puzzles them to hear of retired dancers in other countries seeking second careers.

  The bad news came at 5.30 in a note to Juan; rain-damage to the Teatro had forced a postponement of Giselle. However, compensation was just around the corner in Casa Agramonte’s gracious courtyard – chamber music with a programme I might have chosen myself: Beethoven’s ‘Archduke Trio’ and ‘Spring Sonata’, Mozart’s ‘Piano Trio in G Major’, Schubert’s ‘Death and the Maiden’ Quartet.

  At 8.00 a.m. next day I was back in Casino Campestre because five-year-old Patricio insisted on taking me to the zoo, a routine Sunday treat and his elders seemed relieved to have a stand-in. Supplied with bread for the flamingos and biscuits for the monkeys we paid, respectively, half a national peso and quarter of a national peso, sums too minuscule for a euro conversion. This ordeal was even more harrowing than expected, the centrepiece a deep lion-pit recalling Dante’s Inferno as illustrated by Doré. An adult lion and three lionesses were confined in a stinking enclosure, some twenty yards by ten, with brick walls and stone paving – not a blade of grass to be seen. A jaguar and a puma, both alone, endured much smaller enclosures. The bedraggled flamingos shared their opaque lake and muddy islet with a variety of ducks, the only healthy-looking creatures around. Two baboons, a chimpanzee and several smaller monkeys seemed less unhappy, being fed by their regular visitors. A few children were allowed to tease them, which shocked Patricio; I couldn’t help hoping for nipped fingers. Desperate to escape, I offered three goat-cart rides – a successful bribe.

  On the way home the streets were bicycle-busy as families pedalled to Sunday gatherings. Maximum load: pappa with three on board – handle-bars, cross-bar, carrier. Mamma followed with a prone infant roped to her carrier.

  Glancing into the churches we passed, I saw meagre congregations and octogenarian priests. In one simple, half-restored small church eleven women and one man were standing in front of the tabernacle fervently reciting the rosary aloud. In an otherwise empty side-chapel of de la Soledad, Patricio lit a candle while I watched a semi-crippled elderly woman receiving some odd treatment from a stalwart forty-ish mulatta – much use of hands but they never touched the body, being slowly moved over its contours with murmured incantations. Throughout the city many Santería devotees were to-ing and fro-ing, recognisable by their all-white garb.

  The open-air cafeteria where I was to meet Juan at noon overlooked an unprotected railway crossing on a main street and one could watch Neanderthal goods wagons indecisively shunting backwards and forwards. Tourists were scarce in Camaguey but two fat elderly Irishmen and one trim white-haired Canadian sat at this bar and had each acquired an early teenage jinetera – slim, honey-skinned, glossy-haired girls wearing very short shorts and bikini tops, expertly stroking and nuzzling their sex-peditioners. Why can’t I ever take this commonplace scene in my stride? Am I laughably out of synch with the real world? Those six were the only other customers. Then I saw Juan’s face as he came through the vine-draped entrance archway to find himself beside them. Obviously he, too, was out of synch. Grimly I remarked that we were looking at part of the c
ost of Cuba’s recovery from the Special Period – a part overlooked the day before as Juan dwelt on the island’s self-sufficiency.

  By now I felt able to question Juan about the criticisms I had heard of Cuba’s ‘humanitarian internationalism’. A few people had hinted that not all the teams sent to work in remote regions are enthusiastic volunteers. Others had dismissed these missions as mere propaganda stunts, arguing that the money thus spent is needed at home, could improve housing and agriculture, could be spent on essential imports. Even those who seemed proud of Cuba’s capacity to help the victims of callous capitalism doubted if such programmes could continue, because the idealism fuelling them belongs to Cuba’s isolated past and can’t be expected to survive its contamination by free-marketeers.

  The coercion hint infuriated Juan, on the whole an equable chap. How could thousands of Cubans, dispersed across three continents, possibly be controlled from Havana? ‘As for “propaganda”,’ said Juan, ‘even if our intervention is a sort of stunt, isn’t it a more civilised way of “power projection” than militarism? If the Yanquis sent medical brigades to Afghanistan instead of bombers – inoculations instead of stealth missiles – they’d have friends all over the country helping them against the Taliban! Our “power projection” shows poor people what anti-capitalism means down on the ground, in their barrios and villages. That way, we do menace the neo-liberals. In the US, with money you get every best medical advance, without money you’re left to die.’