Cuban Art & Living

I’ve just rediscovered an essay in an old journal from 1999 that describes my first impressions of Havana.  Before we get very far blogging about the here-and-now adventures of discovery of Cuba, perhaps this post might be of interest.  

February 18, 1999 - Two days is far too little time to see a city, let alone a country.  Not much time to explore or meet many people, derive truths or understand politcal idealogies, only time for first impressions…

…which doesn’t lessen the value of first impressions.  A strong original imprint is part of a live continuum of knowledge.  Tomorrow it can be proved false, exaggerated or understated, but still, a first impression is important, because a first impression is always just and only that… a first, inarguable, notion concieved at a particular point in time.

I might see things differently down the road, but right now, visiting Havana is like witnessing an unfolding drama.  Since 1959, this island nation has embraced socialism then Communism, and now drifts somewhere between both, and Capitalism.  The doors to tourism have been opened as the country maneuvers to provide for basic needs in the wake of the Soviet bloc pullout, the loss of its largest market - sugar, and a tightening of the U.S. economic embargo.

Havana is disheartening.  Tourists in their comfortable Toyota minivan tours get the canned experiences of Havana.  They live with, despite the smiles of Havanatur tour guides (whose yearly incomes far exceed the incomes of the country’s doctors) inept bureaucracy, shortages and a muffled press.  The material disadvantages of their lives are apparent…rusted out hulls of American cars from the glory days of Havana in the “50s, hundreds of people queued for public transportation, few food products on the shelves of the few grocery stores.  And except for a few public buildings currently in restoration, a city badly in need of paint.

Havana is uplifting.  Tourists are free to go anywhere they want, but rely on Havanatur tours, Cuba’s national tour company.  They miss the smiling children inside the neighborhoods, outside the tourists areas, or the well-educated teenagers who play chess in the parks.  Shirtless men and spandexed women (young and old, they are sexy…sex is the only enjoyable thing that is not rationed) sit in the shade on their steps (there is no A.C) watching laughing kids chase a ball down the street.

Habaneros are lovely, but then I’m a tourist.  Habaneros seem to like Americans.  They seem to like me.  But, why?  Is it me, or for the potential business I might offer for black market cigars?  They say they know we are not our government, and I believe they are not, all of them, their government.  I observed open, trusting, laughing, kissing affectionate people.  A plethora of poignant humanity resides within this environment of few material possessions.

Everyone is “the same.”  As descendants of African slaves, Spanish slave-holders, and Asians who came to work the cane fields, the mix of skin hue is infinite and beautiful within whole families:  pink, beige, tan, ochre, caramel, brown, charcoal.  No time to know for sure, but no “attitude” here.  If egalitarian romance is a part of what socialism brings, should the world take note?

No one wants a piece of me.  Perhaps the strongest impression I have of Havana is this.  There is a stunning dearth of hype.  It is a visual and auditory silence in which I find surprising relief.  As Americans at home, we are bombarded with thousands of messages every day:  TV, radio, internet ads, bus benches, newspaper and magazine ads, leaflets, flyers, store front signs, theater posters, logos on our clothes, dealerships on our cars, labels on everything in our kitchens, workshops and offices, signs, signs and more signs.  We are begged to look, go, know, eat, try, invest and buy, buy, buy.   We’ve grown so accustomed to the offer of help, that sometimes we don’t know what we want.

But in Cuba, no media ads, no racks of travel brochures in hotels, no garish flashing signs.  Anyone who’s gone south for a tropical vacation has seen this on small islands, but this is a major, large city.  And it is chillingly quiet.

What you do see is the only promotion the government wants you to see, party billboards such as the one in Habana Vieja that espouses the party line in Spanish, “There is, and always will be, a Cuba,”  and, another strategically placed across the street from the American Interest Section, “Imperialist Americans, Cubans are not Afraid of You.”

Is “propaganda” a bad word?  Doesn’t matter.  We ALL hear it.  The rhetoric of “the system” in Cuba is a reminder to me that the United States has its very own brand.

These are some of my first impressions of Havana, and this is only the beginning of my understanding of this important island nation so close to our shores and so closed to us.  And there is hope for the Cuban people.  You can feel the heat of their  spirit on any street in Habana Viaja.