Although Havana is only a 45 minute flight from Miami, it is indeed a world apart from the rest of the world. It's curious to me that my travels around the globe in some respects never took me so far away as the country closest to home.
Havana has basic infrastructural elements, international visitors, some fancy restaurants, and no shortage of well-educated Cubans, but in this city you will not find anyone texting on the fly, or any kind of advertisements anywhere, or American pop music blaring in the street, or an easy place to buy light fixtures, jeans, drinking glasses, or socks.
Instead, you will find people fixing old shoes and car engines on the sidewalk, carrying trays of eggs on bicycles, lining up to buy bread, chatting with neighbors in crumbling archways, making clothes with sewing machines, swinging their hips to Cuban music, drinking coffees and eating little ham sandwiches purchased from neighbors through their windows, or selling bananas off a bicycle cart during the day before they go to university in the evening.
I came to Cuba for two months this winter for some of my favorite reasons to travel: to have a chunk of time in which to paint paint paint and write write write; to discover a culture that is simply a question mark for me, one I knew was important but really had little understanding or pre-conception of; to learn something about sustainable agriculture, this time by just glimpsing and visiting farms rather than long-term work/stay; and to understand the roots of many of my students and fellow Bostonians. I planned to stay in Havana most of the time, not try to see everything in the but really live in Havana for a little while. All of these things are happening, so well.
My introduction to Cuba was among my most challenging travel experiences, I must confess. Though I've traveled in poorer countries and some far-flung remote regions, there still seemed more available, more transparent systems, and more comfort to the simplicity than I found here initially. Lots of rain, much colder weather than I was prepared for, several bouts of food sickness and flu, constant nausea from diesel fumes, the difficulty of finding food, and initial residence in a gritty and not easily inspiring neighborhood rolled over me like a tractor.
After a couple of weeks here, though, I had found my way to a neighborhood and casas I love, I had found the libraries, parks, and a handful of alternative cafes where I can sit and work for long hours, and I had made friends and acquaintances who welcome and inspire me. I am painting and writing for full days every day, running by the water in the morning and letting the light, textures, and rhythm of the city make their imprint on me. I have certainly fallen in love with Havana. Still, Cuba finds me generally weak and with less spark than I know myself to have... Maybe that veil of dust on the soul is part of the Cuban experience. I am so glad to be here and looking forward to every day of my remaining month, but I want to dispel any romanticism around real Cuba, in my experience or in what I'm observing in the lives of Cuban friends and neighbors.
Below are some more topical written sketches from this first month. Because I know there is particular interest among many readers in the details of life here, I've included more than less and divided this into sections, hopefully for easy scrolling.
A series of small paintings has taken shape and will be visible here tomorrow, and in a rotating gallery show around Cambridge/Boston later in 2016.
Made in Cuba
Cuba's greatest asset and biggest challenge - for locals and visitors alike - is that most of what is in Cuba is made in Cuba. Crops, clothes, building materials, knowledge, music, shampoo - nearly everything. On my block there is a bakery, a shoe-maker, a carpentry workshop, and a bicycle taxi being repaired on the sidewalk as I write this. Every Cuban carries the same umbrella in one of five colors, state-made. This is the story for virtually everything in Cuba, which means that the scope of "virtually everything" is small, very small, and very unpredictable.
This self-sufficiency and simplicity is different from "urban homesteading" because there is no supermarket down the road for special items, emergencies, or for that matter the neighbors and rest of the community to use. The only choices are a very small handful of varieties of basic items, rationed food staples and a few varieties of fruits and veggies if they can be afforded, and infrastructure that gets re-patched countless times rather than re-built. There is none of the homesteader's cheerful industriousness or sense of agency in creativity, here there is no choice and no alternative against which to identify the local skills and industry that make Cuba so distinctive.
It occurs to me that, as Cuba and the US open to one another and more alternatives and choices may become visible and available, perhaps Cubans will gain a new realization of the unique skills they have cultivated, and more energy of pride in what they are able to do, independently. Here I am palpably feeling the lesson that an important ingredient in making simplicity enlivening is the option, or at least the glimmer of possibility, of choice.
Still, I will wear the little pink socks I finally found, with their "hecho en Cuba" label, with pride.
La Habana - Street Scenes
Imagine the most beautiful European city you've ever seen. Imagine it in a post-war bombed out state of crumbling desolation, staircases leading nowhere, tangles of wire and mounds of rubble in every view, facades with windows gaping to a jungle of plants growing where floors and walls once were, every sidewalk jagged, flaking paint and exposed plaster giving the city a muted ghostly color. Imagine it in the Caribbean, with tropical plants growing out of those crumbling balconies and warm light falling on those broken walls. Imagine gentle brown folks filling this city, living in these buildings in all states of repair, walking and chatting with neighbors calmly in the dusty streets, going about their lives as normal and making it work. There are indeed many pleasant homes in Havana behind the crumbly walls, above the dusty streets, but they are hidden.
Life is in the street in Havana. From dawn till midnight the streets are filled with people walking calmly with friends, standing in the doorways chatting. Little dogs and cats wander about, munching scraps. Tropical living means no need for real distinction between inside and outside, so tall windows and tall doors are thrown open without screens, the music and conversation from inside floating out to the street, and vice versa.
The virtual absence of internet and the inaccessibility of mobile phone technology for the vast majority of Cubans means that no one -- really NO ONE -- is looking at their palms or talking loudly into phones in public. It's true that some websites are censored - things like American banks and some political material, for instance - but the bigger issue is that internet connections are so hard to come by and so unreliable and expensive to use, regulated as they are by the government. Home computers seem extremely rare - in one month I've seen two. Locals who do have mobile devices stand outside the hotels and get online briefly with passwords they purchase on the black market, a chance to communicate with family outside of Cuba. For me this web-lite life is blissful, a treasure that Cuba may or may not prize in itself. Life is what happens in front of us.
And life happens to local music, old school style. Bands play in the squares of Habana Vieja where tourists gather, with drums, guitars, flutes and violins, castanets and singers, always Cuban and Spanish-language music. The tunes that float gently from homes and cars would make anyone want to sway their hips, which Cubans of all ages do expertly. But none of this is loud or showy, simply normal calm fun among family and friends. Whereas most of the rest of the world seems to have a conscious or unconscious desire to imitate MTV when the radio or DJ comes on, Cuba is just calmly dancing to its own beat.
Out on the street, modes of transport tell a story about any country, Cuba no less. Tricycle taxis pass by, especially over the cobbles of the Old City, pedaled by young men with fancy hairdos who call out in friendly voices to passers by (especially the ladies). I've caught sight of them carrying trays of eggs or cakes on their knees for their passengers as they pedal, giving lifts to locals and tourists in all weathers, blessedly diesel-free.
The wider streets are populated by old American cars, painted and repainted with their chrome still shining, polished daily by owners who maintain these relics out of necessity, their exhaust pipes obscured by clouds of black diesel smoke. The world inside these cars is porous, spacious, and very bumpy. The thick diesel fumes from their fleets can turn vintage charm to nausea on or near virtually all of Havana's streets outside of the cobble-stoned Old City where cars rarely travel. On the up-side, these "almendrona", so-named for their almond-shape, symbolize Cuban resourcefulness in maintaining what exists rather than buying new (though there's really no chance to buy new cars here). Plus, they're used cooperatively. Most of the old Chevys and Buicks are "taxi collectivos", packed with six passengers per car who hop in and out between some standard destinations for 50 cents per bumpy and often eventful fare. This is my favorite way of getting from one end of the city to another, now that I've learned the technique for flagging them down by the side of the road.
Official taxis, which are some not-quite-as-old cars with far less character or some beautifully polished vintage cars, are $10 per ride regardless of distance, far too expensive for the vast majority of Cubans (and this traveler). Most Cubans walk at a relaxed pace, taking in the city and their neighbors, and I do too.
For me perhaps the most impressive of ubiquitous Havana street scenes is simply people fixing things. Fellows sit in doorways repairing cigarette lighters which they re-sell. Cycles taxis on their sides get repair jobs on the sidewalk. Clusters of people forage under the hoods of those rickety almendrona. Old men repairing shoes, ladies with sewing machines making or mending clothes, old men selling cleaned used bottles - these sights are not surprising.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention the school children, all outfitted in identical state uniforms -white shirts with red scarves for the little ones, mustard miniskirts and pants for the older kids -who trot along the streets and line up for ice cream and tiny street pizzas after school. Perhaps their lives are the most different from their international counterparts and I wonder how life will change for the next generation of Cuban schoolchildren.
The streets of Havana are not filled with music and people dancing and laughing and calling out, they are not what I would call jovial or boisterously happy. Rather, they are filled with people living with quiet, humble dignity in the uniquely Cuban tradition.
The Casa Window onto Cuban Generations
"Casa particulars", the equivalent of B&Bs which many many Cubans run out of spare rooms in their houses, are a beautiful opportunity for travelers to get to know real Cuba, from the living room. I've now stayed in seven different casas, but three stand out as some of my best Cuban teachers, friends and inspiration.
My first Casa host was Cari, a sassy 60-year-old with a platinum bob who danced salsa in the kitchen, had dapper friends with whom she lunched in the city, and explained to me in Spanish that she and her classmates were taught Russian - never English - in school. She said she raised her family in a garage - she showed me this garage - but they gradually built a business, her son moved to Miami where he helps manage her Casa through AirBnB, and now she lives a comfortable life. One of the first questions Cari asked me when I arrived was whether I like White or Mulato men because, as she went on to explain, in Cuba there are White, Black, and Mulato men - she wrote this down in my notebook for emphasis. When I waved my arm widely and said "I like everyone" she said, "Wow!" I only stayed at her house five days.
The first moments of real inspiration I felt in Cuba were when I climbed the seven flights of stairs to Casa Alta Habana, the bird's view home and guesthouse of two Cuban brothers in their 20s and 30s. Working with their friends and girlfriends, they've renovated the top floor and roof of a gorgeous old building in the heart of the Old City into a chique modern-classical home and guesthouse. Although they cater to high-end cosmopolitan clients and are affiliated with a terrific tour company, this is still their home - they have family-style lunch in the kitchen, play video games and watch soccer on the ikea-style couch and enjoy rum on the roof deck with their friends. In this house there are always people laughing and working - renovations still underway - and the energy of both pride in breathing new life into Cuban culture and welcoming international visitors. Everyone speaks some English, some very very well, and many friends of the house are tour guides. The brothers grew up on a farm in Cuba's rural East, and their practical skills come out not only in the renovations which they did themselves, but also in the impressive rooftop garden they have started, with plenty of mint "for all those mojitos".
At Casa Alta Habana, I feel really at home, and have been designated as "belonging to the house." I sit on the roof and paint, listen to music wafting up from the old square, sleep with big windows open onto the courtyard, run by the harbor, and chatter with the girls in the kitchen who look after us all. Their specialty, perfection of a Cuban classic, is frothy pineapple frappes served up every morning pitcher after pitcher, each containing a whole pineapple whipped with ice and a dash of water, like drinking clouds with sunshine inside.
When Alta Habana is booked up, my favorite place to stay is right around the corner at Casa Calle Luz, the intriguing home of a dignified elderly couple, Ernesto and Juanita, who hugged me the minute I walked through their sturdy cathedral-like door. Their large, airy top-floor residence is filled with light, African masks and statues of Christian saints, an eclectic mix of art and furniture that seems to really embrace all corners of Cuba's beauty. The kitchen is always busy with their friends, children, and grandchildren of all colors, all kind and welcoming to me. Ernesto and Juanita watch Latin American international news, which they explain to me in Spanish, and they were the only people who asked me what I thought of my president. My answer, in halting and slightly nervous but sincere Spanglish, must have been sufficient because they smiled and still give me hugs as I come and go.
Cuban Agriculture - Old School
A week in the country, out in the tobacco-producing Vinales Valley, was a brief peek onto Cuban farming. Surrounded by a ring of mountains like elephants lounging with their cigars, the Vinales Valley is a tapestry of tiny farms with ambling small fields and red dirt roads. Ox and plow, driven by leathery old men smoking cigars, were responsible for all the cultivation I observed throughout the valley; light horse carts are used for all farm transport. Tobacco plants are alternated with swales of sugarcane, corn and beans inter-planted, yuka, and sweet potato. The earth is red, and the air is humid.
As farmers' luck would have it, the father/grandfather of the Casa I was connected to in Vinalles, Pedro, is a retired math teacher who now helps out on the tobacco farm down the road in the morning. Pedro took me along with him every day, we cycled to the farm together and he let me follow him around helping with harvesting yuka and feeding the animals. By the end, he was introducing me enthusiastically to his friends as "compasina" - female farmer. I was proud of that.
I learned a tiny bit about tobacco, namely that leaves from different parts of the plant are used for different parts of the cigar. And I observed large old ladies, with deep brown skin and green eyes, sitting on in front of their tiny farm houses smoking cigars. Mostly, though, I was breathtaken by the tobacco houses, cool and mysterious, sweet-smelling and ancient in their secrets. The same land has been worked for so many generations for these tobacco fields, rotated and laid fallow regularly, families cultivating the land and their tobacco processing technique - I had never seen anything like that.
The farming I observed was traditional, without use of fossil fuels or synthetic fertilizers, and included things like a large food forest of tropical fruit trees canopying the chicken house and tethers for goats and pigs. The farm animals roam and forage, following the plow like a crowd of second graders at recess. Fields are rotated, and the crops are the subsistence foods for the house and animals. Some farmers on the hillsides are beginning to make terraced beds, framed out with wood, where they grow lettuces, herbs, carrots, and squash. There is no such thing as single-use in Cuba and especially in the countryside, so re-purposed materials and multi-functional design are part of the quite traditional landscape.
Compared with the amazing permaculture farms I've had a chance to experience elsewhere in the world, the striking thing here is not innovation in good design but rather the fact of simply having done most of the basics and doing them effectively over time. I didn't see anything new here that I hadn't seen before, I just saw lots of things working with apparent consistency. Like any traditional system, there are things that are done simply because they've been done for generations, not because they make the most design sense today. For instance, Pedro spent most of his time feeding a handful of skinny animals raised for meager meat for the home; I wondered why a bit of cover crop wasn't planted specifically for direct animal foraging, or why they didn't just phase out the animal diet if it was so meager and time-consuming - but tradition is important here as everywhere. The farming appears to be organic, but a truck passes through town three times a day spraying thick clouds of mosquito insecticide that coats all of us thickly with palatable chemical and obscures the air for a good 20 minutes. Diesel fumes from the road also coat the nearby crops, planted to the road. This is perhaps the story of Cuba - it's mixed.
And to Eat? The Thin Cuban Diet
As a traveler who loves to shop at markets and either eat my veggies, fruit, and snacks out of hand or cook something simple at home, pickings are as sparse for me as they are for most Cubans.
Little public fruit and veg markets, open aired and dirt floored, are scattered around Havana in abandoned lots. Presumably these are stocked by farms near the city, though vendors in the city are definitely not the farmers themselves; all the produce seems to come through "collectivo" produce distribution centers in the city. Here is exactly and only what you will find at every virtually every market in Havana: bananas, plantains, papaya, guava, pineapple, three varieties of root veggies, green peppers, garlic, small purple onions, a few cucumbers, tomatoes, possibly cabbage and eggplant, occasionally some book choi and parsley, four varieties of dried beans, raw peanuts, bars of extremely sweet peanut paste and guava paste, and a few lean shanks of meat hanging with scary flies on them.
Little corner stores are scarce and, though they sell plenty of rum, their stocks are paltry and vary dramatically from day to day, typically carrying a couple of types of juice, bottled water, rolls of ham and sausage, cigarettes, the Cuban brand of toothpaste and shampoo, and four types of soap. In the countryside, the two tiny stores in town only allowed a couple of people in the store at a time and had very variable supplies, so I often joined lines of folks outside the store waiting to simply see what what in stock.
In Havana there are a small scattering of bakers, in the countryside only one per town. City or country, when you see lines of people in the street it's usually for simple bread rolls, whenever they're available. I have found two bakeries in Havana that sell pastries made with flaky light crust and guava, which are sometimes a food group for me depending on what else is available. However, over the course of this month I've seen days together when no bread or baked goods are on offer anywhere in the city or town, because the government rations of basic ingredients to those businesses have not come through. On those days the bakery shelves are empty, or the door shut.
Street vendors, who in so many other countries I've visited are cottage industry folks, here sell government- issued crackers (2 varieties), cookies (1 variety), candy (2 varieties), and sometimes popcorn or peanuts, but they come in waves. Bike- or horse-drawn carts of fruit and veg sell the same on offer at the city markets. Little soft serve ice cream cones and little cheese pizzas sold through windows are the street-treats most Cubans, especially the school kids, enjoy.
One of the most interesting food systems for me to observe is the dry-goods vendors with basic staples - rice, sugar, beans, oil, salt - scooped from large sacks delivered by government ration trucks. Cubans get vouchers for rations of these staples, and if they wish to purchase more they pay market price. Meat, eggs, and bread wok the same, though the meat vendors' scales are often empty. Eggs are significant for Cuba, probably the cleanest and most reliable protein aside from beans, and people cary them everywhere in trays of 25 eggs each.
Although I don't usually eat everything locals eat, I'm always curious to observe the food habits and home dishes wherever I am. The average Cuban diet seems (not surprisingly) quite consistent and goes like this: breakfast early of eggs maybe cooked with bits of ham, bread rolls and butter, and a tall glass of a thick fruit juice, fresh blended. Lunch around one or two would be a slice of ham on a round roll with or without cheese, or if you're not so lucky just a mayo sandwich, or if you have a nice home kitchen cooking for you maybe stewed meat with rice, beans, a banana and some peanuts scattered in, some shredded cabbage and sliced tomato on the side. A lighter dinner around eight would be boiled root veggies and more stewed meat or fish, beans, rice. Tiny coffees are enjoyed on the street through neighbors' windows at any time of the day or night. There are two national brands of beer which are cheap and available at every place that sells anything, along with Havana Club rum, to which everyone is very, very loyal.
The subject of food would not be complete or honest without me mentioning food poisoning, a topic which has struck me for three prolonged bouts in the last month. Despite avoiding all the "danger" foods, drinking only bottled water, and cooking most of my own cooked food, it still found me. I'm surviving, skinny.
Red Cuba, Pink Cuba
To me it feels like Cuban Communism has given rise to a particular Caribbean type of rugged innocence. Objectively speaking, there are no apparent cultural obstacles to Cuba quickly becoming a highly developed country - people are studious and well-educated, willing to work hard, genuine and kind, and show moderation and pride in caring well for themselves and their homes. Obviously the infrastructure and political history here do not place this in the cards for the immediate-term, but for me the more interesting question is not whether it is possible for Cuba to become a highly developed country, but whether Cubans want to become a highly developed country. I certainly can not assume to answer that question, but I feel quite clearly that there is no interest in the air for following the model of development that holds the US as its exemplar. Most Cubans are very very poor, with basically the bare minimum of urbanized subsistence. If there is a feeling of resentment or angst here, I have not felt it. It's more like a question hanging in the air: isn't there another way to live well, without following America's brand of capitalism?
This is the same question I have wondered most of my adult life, even as I appreciate (and embody) much of capitalism's spirit and fruits. My heart goes to a country that has sincerely tried, and still suffers. Would there have been another way?
About 15 years ago my bookshelves and desktops were covered in Lenin, Luxemburg, and Lucacs as I completed a Masters' in Political Philosophy focusing on socialist theory and practice across Europe in the late 1800s and into the 1900s. Then, I was particularly interested in the poisonous dissonance between the cults of charismatic dictatorial leadership that arose in socialist countries and the theory of egalitarian, people-centered collectivity that these leaders were meant to embody.
As a traveler more recently in Russia, I observed iconography of "grandfather Lenin" everywhere, now that the statues of Stalin are all but absent. Here in Cuba, Fidel's image is relatively scarce but iconography is widespread around Jose Marti and Che Guevara. The virtues of these Renaissance men of Cuban history and their love of the people is recorded in quotations on the walls of bakeries, libraries, hospitals and schools everywhere. I still sense something painfully anachronistic about the idea of heroes, mystically large individuals, who preach populism, the quiet and egalitarian pueblo.
Yet, Che's martyrdom at a young age, and both his and Marti's historical distance mean that the ideals set out by Cuba's heroes are safely removed from present hardship, leaving present Cuban Communism seemingly without a celebrated figurehead. Though we all know that Cuban leaders exist, they are not idealized publicly, and their strength in practice or image is not something which I perceive at all as a mindful visitor. I do not see Fidel or Raul's faces in the public square, in the schools or interrupting the odd baseball game Cubans watch on TV; I've heard no one speak of these fellows. In Russia, everyone had something to say about Putin, and most rolled their eyes but said, "Russia needs a strongman".
Government soldiers are everywhere here walking the streets and standing at taxi stops, occasionally issuing tickets at what appears to be a lower rate of frequency than the Boston Parking Department. I've never seen or heard a scuffle or a siren, though I'm sure they exist. Cubans tell me they may have to pull away if they see the police approaching because they can get fined for talking with a tourist. I don't have any particular reason to admire the Cuban justice system, though I've never lived anywhere that seems to very admirably or consistently implement its ideals of justice.
Cuba is clearly not a success story for communism, but it is indeed an interesting variation, still somewhat an open-ended tale.
*
Some say Cuba has stopped in time, but I disagree. Time has indeed passed and worn it's mark here; there is no semblance of a pristine romantic past. New life exists in the people only, not in the environment or tempo of life, not in the promise of or curiosity about the future. Palatable stasis here might be the biggest throwback, the ethos of eras and cultures without a constant undercurrent of pulsing hopes and feisty dreams for progress. Or maybe Cuba's hopes have worn thin, it's dreams diffused, it's voice lost.
When I said to my friend Romey, a sophisticated and cosmopolitan Cuban, "things might change soon for Cuba, what do you think?" He replied with a smile, "I try not to 'think' this way - so many people have been thinking and hoping for so long..."
Since my roots are in the land of hopes and dreams, I will hope for Cuba: that the coming generations hold up a mirror and Cuba can see itself with pride, find its voice.