First Impressions of Cuba

History 875 - History and Culture of Cuba
April 7, 2000

Welcome to Cuba

The first moments on the well kept ATR 42 Caribbean Air flight from Nassau should have been a clue to what we found at the clean, modern José Marti Habana Aeropuerto Internacional.  The green uniformed airport security guards were a quiet but visible presence.  The well-behaved contraband-sniffing dogs begged for a snapshot, but the guard, catching my eye, quietly wagged his finger at me to remind me that, of course there should be no photographs at the airport.  Our guide, Ernesto, gave an effusive welcome to Jon and Avi, the professors leading our class group, and we were off to a week of eye-opening insights. 

Ernesto talked nonstop, a font of knowledge about his native Cuba.  Poised and articulate, gracious, well schooled in the art of discourse, posture, eye contact, and hand gestures, one supposed he had been to “Communispond” or the like to achieve his facility and ease in communicating.  As we met more and more Cubans, it is clear that they all have been schooled in public discourse.  Even the grade school children have the stance, confidence and presence of a practiced orator.  This must be one of Fidel’s legacies!  Or, perhaps it’s part of their genetics!

Our large, air-conditioned bus envelopes us and our luggage and we are off on the first leg of our journey, seeing what we could before nightfall. The streets of Havana are clean, swept every night with a broom by city workers.  The buildings are decrepit but clean.  They need renovation, but the shadow of their former grandeur is clearly present -- the ghost of Cuba’s past.  Men are washing their 50’s antique cars by hand with a bucket and a rag as we drive past.  The streets are lined with graceful old trees, evidence of urban planning at some key point in the past history of the city.  The impression is of grace, refinement and dignity.  This is not just any Caribbean island, this is the largest, most significant island in the Caribbean.  This is Cuba!

The Island

Our first visit is to the Hana Alkaddafi pre-school, which, we find out as we see other schools, is typical of the schools all over the island.  There is a “Patriotic Corner,” and a “Nature Corner” which tie into the curriculum.  The students are clean, well behaved, and engaged in their lessons and activities.  The national theme of “study and work” starts here.  At the elementary school we are treated to a song from a group of students:  “We Are The Hope of 2000.”  Again the bulletin board with “Simbolos de la Patria.”  

Grade school students wear uniforms of white shirts or blouses, red jumper skirts or trousers and a red neck scarf.  In the classroom, after they sang for us and answered our questions, they wanted to know our names and asked us to sing an American song for them.  There is a student garden, cared for by the students.  All children can come to this (or any) school, we are told, all who live or work in the area.  Again we notice the self confidence and poise of these students. 

The Literacy Museum, Museo Nacional de la Campaña de Alfabetización, on the campus of the Ciudad Escuela Libertad has no electricity when we arrive.  This is apparently not an unusual event.  The museum guide apologizes, this means we will not see the video, either, but she proceeds, practiced and proud of her message, to tell us the story of the Cuban Literacy Campaign, beginning on January 1, 1961, with some 300,000 men, women and children who canvassed the island, and erased illiteracy in one year.  Our guide recited the story of each literacy martyr.  Yesterday, the mother of one of the martyrs was buried, it is a hard day for her, she apologizes again, she is feeling the effect of the emotional strain.  We are a little tired ourselves, although appreciative of her enthusiasm.

The Literacy Campaign really came to life later in the week for us when we were privileged to visit with a panel of literacy volunteers.  They were in their 20’s then, in 1960, and are 60ish now.  Gracious, carrying the bearing of experience and wisdom, they are proud of the accomplishment of their campaign, and of their role in the campaign.  They mention again the mother of the martyr who just passed away.  They show us the well worn literacy manuals, one version for the students, and one version for the teachers.  The teacher manual is in three parts: 1) General Orientation; 2) Revolutionary Orientation; and 3) Vocabulary.  On December 22, 1961 Cuba was declared “free of illiteracy,” an important date in the history of Cuba.  The literacy workers brought not only literacy, but access to health.  They trained the people in the rural countryside to make a latrine, about hygiene, and brought access to medical care.

Our first lunch stop at Rumbos restaurant gave us an indication of the Cuban idea of fast food.  Twenty picky customers at once was enough to throw off whatever process they had, and the kitchen and waitstaff, all operating with manual tools, were consistently patient, if slow and error prone.  Capitalist process control has not penetrated this market as of yet!     

After lunch, a meeting with students and faculty at Instituto Superior Pedagógico, Enrique José Varona, the leading pedagogical institute (teacher’s college) in Cuba.  Again, they wanted to know about each one of us, what our fields were, who we were, after they told us about themselves.  They cited two main problems for Cuba now, the U.S. blockade, and the collapse of the Soviet Union (referred to as the “second blockade”).  The main priority for Cuba is to Preserve Independence.  They have everything they need, they would just like some technological supplies, they tell us.  Here in Cuba, information is not twisted; the information you have about Cuba is twisted, they tell us.  Cubans understand the distinction between the U.S. Government and the U.S. people, they say.  In closing, they ask us to go back and communicate what we experienced in Cuba to our family and friends in the U.S.  Very much a sales close, time and time again, they will say, here is what you can do.  They are well schooled to “ask for the order.”

The students and faculty in our meeting are all well trained in the socialist thought process, and part of that schooling is to mistrust the capitalist government of the U.S., as well as the “bourgeois management” of the media and corporations.  Their sincerity and integrity was obvious, but there is an element of denial, a not knowing and not wanting to know too much about life outside socialism.  On the other hand, we in the U.S. are trained to fear and distrust the socialism of Cuba and to regard democracy as the best political model for all countries.  

Later that night, at the disco, some of the same university students said off the record to some in our group “I hate The Revolution.”  Meaning, I think, that they feel The Revolution is just a bit outdated.  Not that they are ready to give up socialism, but this sacrifice for The Revolution mode just does not do it for them. 

Four of us had a gracious dinner at Puerto Isabela, a paladar in a grand old mansion near our guest house.  Our waitress, Lourdes, was one of the medical specialists we read about, working during the day as a speech therapist with cancer patients, children with birth defects, and the like, for the equivalent of about 30 U.S. dollars per month.  She had graduated five years earlier from the same pedagogical institute we had just visited that afternoon. At night, to supplement her income, she works as a waitress at Puerto Isabela.  She asked our names, what we did, and repeated our names when we left.  She thanked us profusely for the $8 tip we left her.  When we came back again a few days later, Lourdes greeted us each by name!

Visiting the “model city” of Havana the next day, we were not surprised that there was, again, no electricity, and thus no video.  This grand scale model of the city is used by city planners and developers to evaluate new projects.  The new buildings erected since The Revolution are white to distinguish them from previously existing structures.  At least in Havana, the city infrastructure is impressive, with power plants, water treatment plants and modern thoroughfares, planned and executed carefully.

Mercy Rivadulla, a local artist and architect, has an exhibit on the perimeter of the model city.  I listen in on her presentation to the local school children as she describes the symbolism in her bright, naif style, oil paintings.  The images are of the city of Havana, with caricatures of Picasso, Hemingway, Abe Lincoln, José Marti, Benito Juarez, Che, Fidel, Simon Bolivar, as well as the siren from the sea, dolphins, the Virgin of Charity, Adam & Eve, a centaur, Christ, and San Cristobal, the patron saint of Havana.  The paintings are rich with international imagery and vitality.  Later, I visit Mercy in her home where she lives with her daughter, mother and father in a small apartment jammed with paintings of hers and her father’s, and I purchase a few small images.  She asked me to write my opinion of her work in English, presumably for a future testimonial brochure.  Her father speaks a little English, and they express their gracious hospitality, their welcoming of me into their home, and Cuban kisses are in order all around on my departure.  I feel like family.

Trinidad

Sunday morning on the road to Trinidad, almost no cars are visible on this relatively well paved, divided highway.  Ernesto is talking to us about housing.  The government owns everything.  Most young couples live with their parents.  Housing is distributed by a complex process which escapes my understanding.  What I do understand is that most people live very modestly with their extended family, and at a nominal cost.  Ernesto tells us he is a “free agent” now, working independently for ICAP, the agency managing our tour arrangements.  The standard rate for his services is 15 Cuban pesos per day (a little less than one U.S. dollar) from ICAP.  Clearly he does not survive on that.  Although he is trim, he is clearly better fed than most of the other people we have so far encountered.  Almost everyone is thin -- the soldiers in the airport, the police in the city, the students and teachers we met, the people in the street, the merchants at the market.  We should have seen him a few years ago, at the height of the “special period” he tells us, he was really thin then. 

ICAP, literally Cuban Institute for Friendship Among the People, has a special section to work with tourists from the United States.  Ernesto and his supervisor, Rita, both are with the U.S. section.  After a while, there seems to be a design to the friendliness of the Cubans.  Not that it is not sincere.  It seems it is also a part of their specific political strategy to relate directly with the individuals who are visiting, understanding their context as much as possible, and closing with a request to go home and tell about what we saw and experienced in Cuba.  Socialist tourism, perhaps?  All tourists seem welcome everywhere.  There are no obvious closed doors, and the ever present “tourist police” watching out for the safety of tourists, encourage the interaction of tourists and natives.  One cannot help but be drawn into conversation walking down the street.  Where are you from? Canada, perhaps? Estados Unidos?  Miami?  No? Boston?  Where is that?  Near New York?  They have a relative in New York or Indiana.  Probably if the response was “Miami,” they would have a sense of one’s possible political alignment with the Cuban-Americans there, but I never experienced hostility in any encounter.

Hotel Ancon just outside Trinidad looked for a horrifying minute like one of those Caribbean Club Med places, but, no, it is just a touristy, all-in resort, a concrete edifice, stuck on a pristine beach on the south coast of Cuba.  There was the uncomfortable moment when Ernesto was refused service at the bar because he is Cuban, and Cubans are not allowed at the tourist hotels.  Ernesto, putting on his best tour guide manner, insisted it had never happened before, and he straightened it right out with the manager.  But there it was, a little of the seam showing, of the double standard for tourists and Cubans, and Cubans enforcing that standard against their own!  Then, after a lovely afternoon with sea and sand and rum concoctions, the requisite dinner buffet.  Plump foreigners speaking a multitude of tongues swarmed on the buffet tables, groaning with meats, special pastries, and fresh vegetables.  Thin but pleasant waiters brought our drinks to the table and cleared the used plates.  An extremely thin but cheery group of musicians loudly serenaded in Spanish at each of the tables with the plump tourists who were going back for seconds and thirds at the grand buffet.  One of our group wondered if the musicians might be making fun of us, and another said I hope so!  The musicians were selling tapes of their music for $5 each.

The Family Clinic is the foundation of the free health care service in Cuba.  The clinic we visited in Trinidad had explicit posters on how to use condoms posted on the walls, and the patients in the waiting area chatted with us.  Dr. Mayelin Simó Portieles, the resident physician, is five months out of medical school, on a 2 year rotation at the clinic.  Her clinic serves 1,000 community residents.  There is a high incidence of asthma and a high risk of alcoholism, she reports.  But the infant mortality rate in Cuba is one of the lowest in the world.

Santa Clara

Roberto Busto Santiago from the UNEAC artists’ union accompanied us in Santa Clara.  He was the photographer who traveled with Fidel during the early days of The Revolution, and he had stories to tell us about Fidel, Raul (Fidel’s brother), and his experiences in those heady times.  Fidel he loves, Raul he worries about, and he took a shine to Emily, the aspiring photographer in our group from Salem State College.  He had somehow developed the black and white images from our morning expedition, mounted the prints on construction paper with a Santa Clara, Cuba, Ciudad del Che inscription on it, and had them ready for us at our afternoon visit to the UNEAC facility.  The Union de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba is the elite membership of writers, performing artists and visual artists for the province.  The chief of the Santa Clara UNEAC was one of the few heavy-set Cubans we encountered.  After hearing about his 15 glowing years at the head of the organization, I felt perhaps he had strayed a bit from the original socialist ideals as a result of too many years in the seemingly powerful role as head of the local UNEAC.  He offered us the hospitality of the charming patio/gallery, and insisted we ask him any questions, no holds barred.  However, throughout our meeting, he consistently spoke too fast for Ernesto to translate, not stopping or slowing down even when it was clear that it was impossible to properly translate his lengthy monologues.  He displayed a disrespect for Ernesto and an arrogance which was consistent with his sarcastic cartoon images displayed on almost every wall of the gallery. The man turned out to be an uncharacteristic personality in the mosaic of easy-going Cubans that we encountered.         

Santa Clara is known as the “province of vegetables” and the visit to the women’s organic farm was certainly evidence of the reputation.  Yoked oxen creak up and down the narrow rows of crops, coaxed by one of the few men on the farm.  Organic fertilizers and biological pest control are used, no artificial chemicals are used anywhere.  Piles of lush tomatoes, bright red radishes, delicate leaf lettuce, fragrant herbs and more are in evidence everywhere.  The pay for the workers is 225 Cuban pesos per month, with a bonus for profitability, and last year the profit was 200,000 Cuban pesos (about $10,000).  There was a separate area for “tourist” produce, which was clearly a more select group of vegetables.

The “Che” Memorial is a grand structure, dominated by a huge statue of Che Guevara, and steps leading up to the statue.  Inside the museum/memorial is a jungle-like re-creation of (presumably) the environment where The Revolution was fought, reverently silent, and housing the remains of the revolutionary hero and separately, an exhibit of memorabilia and pictures.  There was no souvenir shop with tourist trinkets or t-shirts.  Just Che, memorialized, lionized, practically canonized.  It is curious that Fidel memorializes the martyrs and heroes of The Revolution, yet keeps such a low profile himself.  There are no pictures of Fidel in every home and public place, like one would see in Russia and in many Former Soviet States.  There is no grand palace, or minions of attendants.  One has to respect the principles and ideas that Fidel literally lives his life by.  Even though there are no pictures, Fidel is definitely in the hearts and minds, minute by minute, in each Cuban’s life.

Villa Clara Hospital boasts 318 beds, surgery, orthopedics, oncology, outpatient, and ICU departments.  There are 1,000 workers, including 243 nurses, 150 physician specialists, as well as foreign students from around the world on exchange training. I met a resident in training from South Africa, who had been here for 2 years, and was scheduled for 4 more years.  The main effect of the “special period” is the shortage of equipment, technologies, and medicine.  Relative to our own hospitals, Villa Clara Hospital seem extremely primitive and even unsanitary.  However, as we toured the oncology section, where there was a radiation treatment in session, we witnessed the physician giving a traditional Cuban kiss to his patient at the end of the session. We would be hard pressed imagine that kind of relationship between doctor and patient in the U.S.! 

What could be a more fitting close to the trip than a baseball game in Cuba!  The ballpark in Santa Clara was immaculately kept.  We got premium seats behind the batter’s box for 3 Cuban pesos each.  Pizza, a type of fried bread, and the ubiquitous tubes of sugar were sold.  I was loath to leave even a scrap of paper on the floor of the stands, they were so clean.  Santa Clara and Havana played an excellent game.  The ball players also make the typical Cuban wage, but they appear to be well fed, and one could presume they have certain privileges not  accorded to their countrymen. 

Last Words

Compelling, contradictory, courageous -- those words and more describe the Cuba we saw.  The principle of “work and study,” free education and healthcare for all.  Food and housing for all, even if it is not to our standards, it is there for all.  The Cubans wanted to have a personal relationship with us, they wanted us to know them.  They wanted us to go back and tell the story, in fact they asked us to.  They take care of each other, they love their country.  Is this the face of Socialism?  It seems a lot kinder than we have been led to believe.  They want to have political relations with the U.S., but they want to be independent.  The “Miami Cuban” I met on the return flight acknowledged what he had given up to leave Cuba and move to Key West.  His young daughter is not safe on the streets of the U.S. like she is in Havana.

The last words from Rita of ICAP were the now-familiar inquiry about how we liked Cuba and the request to talk about our impressions of the Cuban people when we go home.  One cannot but hope for “venceremos” for the Cubans after getting to know them this way!

SSC Cuba 2000 Web Project Managers: Christopher Hall, Emily Uddin-Alves, Amanda Warnock