Our woman in Havana

Marie-Josée asked how, or if, we’d changed during the course of our travels. I didn’t have a good answer at the time. One thing I think has really affected me, though, is a growing awareness of the preciousness of water. So many places that we’ve traveled in the world, people can’t take for granted just turning on the faucet and having clean water to drink. And in some cities, like Cape Town, there is real danger of running out of water, unless people drastically change their habits. Meanwhile, a country like Canada is sitting on most of the fresh water on earth.

I hope I am more conscious now in my own habits. When tap water is drinkable, as in North America, I see no reason to buy bottled water. If you don’t like the taste of water in your area, there are filters—anything but plastic that takes petroleum to make, and may end up in the ocean! I was not as aware of these issues when we were first traveling in developing countries, but it made an impact that our hosts in Arusha, for example, kept reusable (glass) bottles of filtered water on hand. Before we left Canada, I bought some water purifying tablets—a few dollars for enough to purify 50 liters of tap water. Or, when we have access to a kitchen, we can boil water vigorously for 1 minute. One minute to effectively purify water and save on plastic bottles!

I am making a big deal about this because it is such a simple thing. We usually travel independently, but for various reasons, we chose to visit Cuba on an organized tour. We still wanted to travel on a budget, and the company we chose was Intrepid. One of the things Intrepid does is provide jugs of (chilled!) filtered water on its vehicles, so travelers can refill their reusable bottles and cut down on the need to buy plastic. It’s so simple—guesthouses can do it too. If other tour companies took a simple step like this, we could save so much pollution and waste of fossil fuels (not to mention our own travel money).

Our plan on these two years of traveling has been "two women, six continents." North America was the fifth of the traditional six continents we have visited, and South America will be the sixth, a new continent to both of us. But Cuba is an island, the largest in the Caribbean and the first one I have visited. And it's a fitting place to begin our travels in Latin America, because Cuba is an island in more than just the geographical sense.

Aboard our flight from Toronto I was looking at a route map in the Air Canada magazine, realizing I knew little about the geography of the Caribbean. I've heard of most of these islands, as cruise ship destinations, the type of places I rarely visit. But I didn't know that Cuba is westernmost, or contains half the land mass of all the islands in the Caribbean Sea. I did know one fact that has probably been more significant in Cuba's modern history than any other: it is very close to Florida and thus, to the U.S.A.

I was there to gather information and I will present my impressions, as best I can, in the order they were made on me. I haven’t come to a conclusion of my own, so I won’t be building to one for my readers. Cuba is unique in the world today, and it definitely has its problems, but that doesn't mean there is nothing to learn. I found that my assumptions and expectations were frequently overturned.

The expectations start with Cuba’s troubled 19th- and 20th-century history with the U.S., but let’s step back for a moment. Five hundred years ago, the island was colonized by Spain, and before even that, its original people were the Taíno, who named their home Cuba. The Taíno were one of those indigenous peoples of the Americas who were actually not warlike, but had the misfortune to be discovered by Columbus. Not that he personally exterminated them--his son did that, with the generous help of European disease. So no one on the island of Cuba today is descended from its original inhabitants.

Many Cubans, however, are descended from African slaves, who were brought here to work the sugar cane plantations. Before we left Toronto, Wayne showed us Anthony Bourdain’s documentary on Cuba, in which a black Cuban complained that people like her are more likely to be stopped by police. (Are you as tired of this as I am?) The Cuban revolution's approach to racism was to declare that it no longer existed, but as we see from the American revolution, merely declaring that all men are equal does not guarantee that they will treat each other so.

Having now been to Cuba, I cannot think of anywhere I've been in the world where black and less black people appeared to associate as commonly together--not just in families and relationships but as friends and acquaintances. Is this a real Cuban characteristic?

A few years ago there were no scheduled commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba. Now, it's hard to avoid them. José Martí International Airport in Havana has Delta and Southwest planes coming and going, along with Aeroflot direct to Moscow. This is the main reason I wanted to come to Cuba and I wanted to do it now. It’s a country that is changing, almost before a traveler’s very eyes. It has changed in the past few weeks and years, and if you visit in another year—or week—it will be different again.

Since we previously traveled in Vietnam, another communist country with which the U.S. had a troubled history, I kept making comparisons with Cuba. But both immigration/customs and our prearranged pickup from the airport were quick and efficient. Things slowed down somewhat at the currency exchange outside the terminal (the one inside was closed, as it was midnight!) At the moment, Cuba has two versions of its peso: the currency that Cubans use, and a convertible peso or CUC (“cook”) that foreigners can buy with our currencies. Also at the moment, this can only be bought in Cuba; it has no value outside. U.S. dollars (at the moment!) incur a 10% fee to exchange; fortunately we’d brought Canadian dollars. (In one of many ironies of Cuba, the CUC is actually pegged at 1 to the U.S. dollar, but that's not what you'll get.)

Our taxi looked pretty beat up, so again I was expecting a southeast Asia experience. But inside it had modern seatbelts—chest belts in the back seat. We whizzed by exactly one poster with the word Socialismo and image of Fidel Castro, who led the nation in an increasingly dictatorial way from 1959. I’d expected to see Fidel everywhere in Cuba, but over our week of traveling, I saw very little of him. Nothing like the prevalence of Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam or, even more ubiquitous, the king in Thailand.

It was late at night when we got to our casa particular or guesthouse. Fidel might be rolling in his grave, but the country he led into the communist bloc is now awash with private enterprises such as these. Our host was up late waiting for us. He spoke no more English than I do Spanish, but somehow we worked it out. It’s amazing how that happens, when I’m in a country that uses the language and actually have to speak it. I had expected no toilet seat (like many items, they’re hard to come by in Cuba). We had one of those, but no towels. Out came our quick-drying travel towels.

A rooster crowed all night. There are roosters all over Cuba, but perhaps in Havana they get confused. It is, relatively speaking, the big, lit-up city. (Compared with Arusha, maybe.)

We had, indeed, anticipated such basic facilities that until the next morning we thought we didn’t even have a bathroom door. It turned out to be a folding wooden door that we just hadn’t seen. So much of having a good experience is just where you set your expectations!

Not many hours of sleep later, we made our way to the third floor terraza for breakfast. This was lovely. Fresh tropical fruits, freshly squeezed juice, and even eggs, which can also be hard to come by in Cuba. 

Hey--has Ivan taken my glasses? Photo courtesy of T.

We’d arrived the day before our tour started, because of the late scheduled arrival of our flight. I was glad we had, because we had the whole day to explore Havana. First, though, there was an unexpected wrinkle. The casa particular from which we’d be beginning our tour was not the same one Intrepid had booked us in (though I’d been assured it would be). So I wasn’t sure where we were supposed to go, and it seemed that my phone would not connect to Cuban telephone numbers.

Our friendly hosts sprang into action again, phoning on my behalf and showing me the way to our next guesthouse, Vista al Mar. (“View of the sea”—at a stretch, maybe, from the terraza!)

These guys had towels and a toilet seat! But no eggs. And we couldn’t get hot water in the shower either. After a full year in what the Cold War era called the First World, we were getting back into the rhythm of traveling in a Third—or, perhaps more exactly, Second World country.

Again, I could not help a comparison with Vietnam. Its cities were the loudest and craziest I’ve ever been in; the streets of Havana felt calm and peaceful. Sure, the sidewalks were often broken and folks just walked in the street, but no one was gunning for us. I never felt in danger of being run over in Cuba, but it must be the only place on earth you could get run over by an Oldsmobile.

For ever since 1959, people have hung onto their American cars: unable to get new cars or parts, they've held their beloved vehicles together with whatever it takes. The Cuban revolution was not ahistorical, like Cambodia's. If it had been, the communist revolutionaries would have razed Spanish colonial buildings and destroyed U.S. cars. Instead, both remain in abundance, highlighting the extent to which Cuba is in a unique time warp. Don't get me wrong; being less destructive than the Khmer Rouge is a pretty low bar for a government.

Chevy Bel Air, the pride of its owner

Our tour guide, O., later told us that Canada is the #1 country from which visitors come to Cuba. This doesn't surprise me. Canadians come because it's cheap, it's Caribbean, and the resorts, at least, are devoid of Americans. O. said that most Canadians don't come on tours like the one he was leading. They fly straight to Varadero, lie on the beach for a week, and fly home. Not that I blame them; I took a trip like that to Mexico one year when I was weary of the winter. But U.S. law bars its citizens and residents from this type of tourism so for now, Canadians (and Europeans and South Americans) have the resorts to themselves. If the embargo ever lifts, Cuba will be overrun with millions!

Of course, this is a stereotype, not true of the Canadians in our group or, for that matter, of my friends. At Wayne’s suggestion, we spent our afternoon in Havana walking to the steps of the Capitolio for a fine view. 

Capitolio (modeled after the U.S. Capitol) with cocotaxis (like tuk-tuks)

Then we walked up the Prado, a wide pedestrian street. Apart from the odd tout, there was no hassle at all. This also reinforced my sense of being in a unique, Second World city. 

At the top of the Prado is the Malecón or seafront walk.

View of modern Havana

On the way, we stopped for some Cuban food: ropa vieja or “old rope,” a kind of beef stew with rice. Cuban food is known for not being varied or exciting, and so it proved. The mojitos, on the other hand, were excellent—even to someone who doesn’t normally like rum.

Cubans also love their helado or ice cream, but most of all, their music. Music is played everywhere in Cuba. If it’s not a live band—even at the smallest and most modest of establishments—there’s still music playing: in stores, in public squares, on buses. I of course do not know the hearts of individual Cubans but I’m tempted to describe them as happy people. Their smiling faces and constantly swaying bodies gave that impression.

Finally, we met O. and the rest of our group of ten travelers. There were a Canadian mother and daughter, both born in England. There was a couple from Tasmania, a young man from Melbourne, and an Australian woman who turned out to have been born in Sydney, but to live in Athens. There were two other young women, a Swiss German backpacker and an Italian who lives in Brussels. And T. and me. If you're on an organized tour, this is the kind of group you want to go with. Everybody was friendly, flexible, warmed to the local people and genuinely wanted to learn about their country and culture. 

A poignant moment in O's introduction came when he said that there were things he would not "discuss about" (he actually meant argue as we did discuss them): politics, religion, and just to round it off, sports (which is religion to some people). My initial assumption was that this was a prohibition by the communist government, but in fact Cubans spoke to us freely about the many limitations of their government. O. explained that he has never had the opportunity to travel, so Cuba's is the only system he knows. Again, I assumed this was a limitation placed by the Cuban government, but most other countries restrict Cubans from visiting as well. After all, they are considered potential immigrants. 

And above all that, where would O., or most Cubans, get the money to travel abroad? I'd heard that Cuban salaries are low, but the equivalent of US$60 a month for a doctor, or $25 for a teacher, is really low. By comparison, Peru, a country with vast contrasts between rich and poor, has minimum monthly salaries equivalent to ten times that amount. 

The Italian-Belgian, who also speaks Spanish, told us that literally in the past week, Cubans had become able to use their phones to get the Internet. This is what I mean about a country changing before our eyes. But how can Cubans even get phones, on those salaries? One clue was the subsidized restaurants for poor or old people; another was the shops where people use their ration books to buy limited amounts of groceries (eggs!) at very low prices. 

Bread shop

We would never have seen these things without O. showing them to us. We’d walked these same streets in Old Havana the day before. What do subsidies and rations accomplish? Everyone gets the same amount, but the government controls it. I saw very little either begging or apparent wealth in Cuba; the effect of its system seems to be that everybody is equally poor.

If you’re doing better than average, and equality comes in with the force of revolution, it would feel like oppression, wouldn’t it? There were many losers in the Cuban revolution, not just wealthy people (and the foreign companies that owned 70% of the country’s wealth). Ordinary shopkeepers and middle-class people like that also saw their property nationalized, or stolen, as they would describe it. This has been called “the tragedy of the Cuban diaspora.” 

But in 1959, when Fidel Castro first became prime minister, he was not replacing a functioning democracy. He was replacing dictator Fulgencio Batista, the latest and most brutal in a long line of corrupt and inept Cuban leaders. I am trying to imagine another point of view, that of someone living a subsistence, serf-like existence in rural eastern Cuba, suddenly given a government apartment with a doctor and education. Would I see that brutalist block of flats in quite the same grim way? Maybe it didn’t seem as grim to someone who hadn’t always had enough to eat. Maybe freedom means something different to those of us who have leisure time—the kind that middle-class Americans first enjoyed in the years before 1959, when they traveled to Cuba en masse.

You can buy these authors, but not, say, The New York Times. Unlike in Hanoi!

It’s a country of strange, strange contrasts. Economically, it appears more like the Soviet era than any other country I’ve been to, yet casas particulares and paladars (privately owned restaurants) are everywhere too. These are the local businesses we're there to support, so O. took us to a paladar on our first night. Good food and high prices, both by Cuban standards. We loved the paella, we loved the music, we loved the rum. The Greek-Australian and a new friend surprised us with their salsa dancing.

Photo courtesy of T.

But Cubans can’t afford to eat in these places. O's meal would cost a month of his salary! He ate with us on the house, because he’d brought the group. It’s the way it works, and yet I can’t figure out quite how it works. How can a paladar be financed by Cubans? They must have moved abroad and come back, or have friends abroad. There just isn’t that kind of money in Cuba.

If this is the case, then there’s always been an artificial subsidy for the Cuban system. Because the revolution’s reforms turned out to be socialist, Fidel Castro cast his lot with the U.S.S.R. Money came from the Soviets until their system collapsed, at which time the “special period” of great deprivation began. Cuba might have been expected not to survive backing the wrong horse in the Cold War, but one look at those lovingly preserved pre-revolutionary cars shows you Cubans are more resourceful than that.

Classic American car or Soviet Lada? This Cold War is no contest!

Our walking tour of Old Havana was not all bread shops and prescriptions for fish (yes, you can get one of those). O. also showed us religious buildings, including the temporary mosque and the Catedral de La Habana.

His explanation was that religion is not prohibited in Cuba, but proselytizing is. He was open about conflict between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church in the early days of the revolution, when children were separated from their parents and sent to the U.S. This was in response to fears that the communist government would separate children from their parents and send them to the Soviet Union. More tragedy of the diaspora.

Physical education in Plaza Vieja (Old Square)

For most Cubans, poet José Martí was the founder of Cuba. There are statues of him everywhere (unlike Fidel), but I was more interested in this one, of Carlos M. de Céspedes.

He was the first president of the republic, a plantation owner who freed his slaves, then asked them to help him resist the Spanish colonial government. In this struggle, he lost his son. As in Vietnam, I sense a long history of national pride in Cuba, not something that originated in the twentieth century, or even started as communism. 

I left Havana with more questions than answers. The Cuban government controls many aspects of people’s lives, apparently making everyone the same—poor. In the U.S., government fails to protect citizens from gun violence, which forces them to live with random shootings. Cuba is safe, but is that because it is a police state? Some opponents of gun control think a police state is the only possible alternative to the U.S. system. 

Our last stop was in the modern city, at Plaza de la Revolución. Here, there is a José Martí Memorial, but what dominates the square is the Ministry of the Interior, with a steel sculpture of its onetime head, Ernesto “Che” Guevara. 

To me, this picture sums up the contrasts of Cuba. The deceased hero of the revolution, whose image (based on the iconic photograph by Alberto Korda) adorns a bazillion products for sale. And in front, one of an equal number of pre-revolutionary American cars, stubbornly chugging along.

Next time: more ironies, surprises, and impressions from other parts of Cuba. Meanwhile, if you have any questions of your own, please add them to the comment section.

Recycling, Plaza Vieja