Posts filed under 'Cuban diary'
A tourist view of Havana from the roof of the Saratoga hotel
Nice coincidence. I am posting my letter to Raul Castro the day the Royal Ballet begins dancing in Havana. UK media applauds ‘a new cultural exchange’ with Cuba while I finally get round to supporting the PEN campaign for a different cultural exchange.
English PEN asks us to urge Raul to release 22 writers, journalists and librarians detained since March 2003. That would be a fine gesture from the head of a revolutionary state inspired by the writings of an earlier poet, writer and philosopher. For goodness sake, the Royal Ballet will have landed at the Jose Marti airport – along with all the other tourists now flooding into Cuba.
I wonder if the dancers will get the chance to explore side streets as Ray and I did – mixing the official (and to me still inspiring) propaganda of the Museum of the Revolution with more complex messages from ordinary people in bars and market places. We found it disturbingly easy to move between smelly, vibrant streets and the air conditioned luxury of hotel rooms with bathrooms possibly bigger than the crumbling apartments housing whole families just a short walk away.
My letter to Raul quite honestly congratulates the Cuban government on their great achievements in health and education. Even the most disaffected person we met took pride in the fact that the government and army do their best to protect people during hurricanes – “not like Bush in New Orleans”.
Nothing is simple. I went longing to find Havana the way I imagined it from films and music: heroic old cars symbolising a romantic communist triumph over US capitalist oppression. We found some of our fantasy and feel sad that it will probably soon fade away. Yet within the first 24 hours of our short stay I could also see that change must come – people are longing for an end to poverty which restricts families to a subsistence ration of essential foods.
The economy is upside down. A musician or a waiter, through daily contact with tourists, can earn far more than a doctor or teacher: the convertible peso, tied to the US dollar, is worth 24 times as much as the Cuban peso.
And yet there is wonderful wealth in the vibrancy of the streets. And culture of all kinds. After decades of British consumerism, it feels liberating to be in a city where the flow of life is not dictated by shopping; people talk, dance and make music in the streets. Or perhaps there is nothing else for them to do. Salsa is a safety valve in a state where the government controls television, radio, newspapers and access to the internet.
Languishing in prison (as Rob reminded us) are people whose only crime is to criticise the government in the way I take for granted. With another cruel irony, the prisoners are often denied good medical care.
Dr Che
Denied medical care. In Cuba where the constitution says “Everyone has the right to health protection and care” and the heroic Che was a doctor! Dear Raul, this does not honour the Revolution in the year of the 50th anniversary. I have found a poem for you by Jose Marti.
I Cultivate a White Rose
I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his hand frankly.
And for the cruel person who tears out
the heart with which I live,
I cultivate neither nettles nor thorns:
I cultivate a white rose.
July 17th, 2009
Last night we finished our bottle of Havana Club with two lingering cocktails. It seemed only sensible to do it while I still remember how to make them they way they did in Cuba. Pay no attention to the recipe quoted in the Guardian last week. Here is how you make a real mojito.
We learned the easy way. Leaning against a dark mahogany bar in the Cafe Taberna while the band played a lunchtime salsa (we liked it all so much we came back later the same day to hear a band featuring two Buena Vista veterans).
Some first day. We had been round the Museum of the Revolution and the Partagas Tobacco Factory. Abel, our guide for the morning, ended the tour in one of his favourite bars in Havana Vieja where he told us the secret of a perfect mojito. Well, actually, two secrets. The first one is cane sugar. Fancy bars around the world make the big mistake of using cane syrup, Abel said, (and Victoria Moore makes the same mistake in her book previewed in the Guardian) but that is not the Cuban way.
There’s no mahogany left growing in Cuba and, with a little US hindrance, the sugar cane industry is not what it was but Abel seemed to know what he was talking about. At any rate, we tried mojitos in all kinds of bars. And whether it was in a private house with Raul Castro giving his evening address from the telly in the corner, or on the rooftop of the Saratoga hotel surrounded by sunbathing tourists, Hemingway’s favourite drink always always came with a crunch at the bottom of the glass. And plenty of mint too, loads of the stuff. None of your delicate sprigs.
The other secret, which Abel kept quiet until our glasses arrived, is Angastura bitters, just enough to add a little hint of pink round the brim.
So, here’s the recipe for a real mojito:
- 2 teaspoons cane sugar
- a splosh of freshly squeezed lime
- 2 sploshes white (Havana Club) rum
- generous handful of mint leaves
- soda water to taste
- 2 or 3 ice cubes, or more if you must
- a tint of Angastura bitters
All the bartenders we saw, seemed to spend a lot of time pummelling the mint, lime and sugar before adding rum, soda, ice and bitters (my friend Helen says you can get the same effect by thwacking the mint on the table first)
Abel, I might add, graduated in English and French language and culture after five years at Havana University (”five really great years”). He has travelled in Spain and France and one day he says he would love to visit the UK. But so far apparently we have refused him a visa.
Salud to Abel and all the other great people we met in Cuba.
Be warned. That first mojito can go to your head.
May 11th, 2009
As directed by the woman at the garage, we turn left just past the picture of Che and head for Cienfuegos, pausing only to pick up two hikers on the road from Trinidad. They can’t speak English and our Spanish is pathetic so we settle into comfortable silence as bruising miles bump by, happy in the thought that our passengers will keep us on the right road. And they don’t seem interested in our dwindling supply of pesos.
If I was any good with a camera I would make a road movie about our journey from Havana to Trinidad and back again. It’s roughly 340 kilometres between the two cities, probably not much further than a trip from Edinburgh to Carlisle, but it can take six hours of hard driving on roads with no markings, few signs to tell you where you are going. And the guide book gives no advice on how to handle hijackers.
Hiring a car brought us closer to real life in more ways than we expected. Roadside posters celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolution. Castro’s communism may control the economy, the news and the nation’s food rations. But something more like anarchy rules on the autopista.
Every road junction, every roundabout, every road in and out of every town is lined with people desperate for a lift – to work, to home, to play, carrying bags or sleeping children. Transport is a problem in an impoverished country where Chinese investment is only just beginning to boost the supply of buses and few people can afford cars of their own.
On the road to the autopista, a rare glimpse of white lines.
Sadly, my efforts to snap cowboys riding carelessly along the motorway produce endless shots of my knees or Ray’s nose while lonesome riders disappear into the rear view mirror, hat pulled down, upright but easy in the saddle holding the reign with one hand.
Ray had more luck photographing a horse rider from a steam train inTrinidad: part shanty town part World Heritage site.
Miles of empty land roll by. At times much of it seems to be on fire – at supper last night our new friend Eduardo tells us farms burn vegetation to release nutrients. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union agriculture has withered. Castro’s green revolution does not entice workers back to the land beause they get paid too little. Even so we see green patches where the co-operative Organoponicos are producing crops of fruit and vegetables without benefit of oil-derived fertilisers.
My road movie would show tall palm trees rising out of charred ground, white egrets fishing by green rivers, bony cattle in brown fields, an occasional horse and cart ambling casually across six lanes of a highway where cars suddenly appear at over 100 kilometres per hour, and the incredible shock of hawkers jumping out from the central reservation waving goods for sale – mangos, bananas, guavas, pineapples, even cigars. Under every bridge clusters of people wait for a lift, some of them waving pesos.
It feels mean to keep on going but we have given one lift today without mishap (those were indeed good guys on the road to Cienfuegos) and don’t want to risk another bad experience like the one when we somehow ended up paying three roadside pirates to get out of the car after they forced their way into the back seat to take us a long back to the motorway. The ‘favour’ cost us 30 convertible pesos, almost three times the average monthly wage in Cuba.
So there would be heroes and villains in this road movie. No, actually, there are no real villains (we never feel physically threatened), just different people trying different ways to survive. But the real stars would be the old cars that roar past us in the fast lane. Some are rattling war horses, pockmarked with rust. Others are gleaming with new paint and polished chrome. Miracles of engineering, a weird and wonderful Cuban sting in the tale of the US motor industry.
Even the most discontented young Cubans we meet are fiercely proud of these old cars: Cadillacs, Chryslers, Chevrolets, Pontiacs (we did see the odd Lada and Hillman Imp too). More than 50 years old and still motoring. As Ray comments from behind the wheel of our hired car (a Korean Kia, still going strong after 104,000 km on awful roads): “These old American cars will outlast the US motor industry.” [Prophetic words, that beautifully restored Pontiac we saw has indeed outlived the company].
The movie would end where it began in Havana. But that will be another story.
May 4th, 2009