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Published: April 27th 2006
Cool Cars
And even cooler street art in Havana.The trade and economic embargo held against Cuba by the USA has lasted for some decades now. America has prohibited American companies and their subsidiaries trading with Cuban entities and prohibited its citizens from spending money in Cuba. (That’s right - I’ve always thought that US citizens were prohibited from visiting Cuba - however the various pieces of legislation that piece together the embargo actually only make it a crime to SPEND money in Cuba. SO for all those Americans aching for some April sun in Cuba I guess you just need to find a philanthropic friend to pay your WHOLE way.) As a result I naively thought that this may mean that American culture may be less prevalent in this tropical island nation. Disappointingly, as I jumped into the cab at the airport bound for La Habana the first song on the radio was not some great piece by the Buena Vista Social Club (I guess they are still touring Guatemala) but the great American ditty “Hotel California” by the Eagles. It was followed by Toni Braxton’s “Un-break My Heart” - a stirring melody that provided a great soundtrack as I viewed for the first time the crumbling streets of
View from the top
The view from our hotel room - our first night in Cuba. Havana.
It’s hard not to notice the lack of new millennium commercialism in Cuba. Instead of the usual billboards lining the highway from the airport selling phones, cameras and any number of useless products, the drive into Havana is dotted with signs selling the continuing revolution. It’s all Che, Fidel, Marti, Cienfuegos and dozens of billboards explaining how the “Bush Plans” is to destroy the Cuban Way of Life.
Considering our drive into town, arriving at our very expensive hotel (our first night was included with our plane ticket) I was expecting everything to be very foreign in Cuba. However, the first thing the concierge mentioned when he found out that I wa Australian was that he watched Skippy as a kid. In fact as my time in Cuba progressed not a day would go by where I wasn’t reminded of the amazing deeds of this talented kangaroo. Apparently Skippy and his pals were a BIG part of the revolution in Cuba a while back.
After a busy first night in Cuba - walking along the Malecon, mojitos and salsa - we went headlong into finding somewhere to live. Although it is supposedly easy to find a
Some cool building
Havana is very beautiful, no? family to live with after all of the stories of hustlers, hidden commissions and under the table payments we were meant to be wary and we pounded the pavement in search of somewhere cheap and central to live. This is when we happened upon Jennifer - the crazy Canadian who stopped us in the street and demanded to find out where we were going and whether our intention was to stay “with that evil woman” in the building we were heading towards. That was our intention. However, Jennifer reliably informed us that this woman was Havana’s number one hustler and that we should stay away from her. Needless to say, I was skeptical as Jennifer promised to take us to where she was staying and organize accommodation on our behalf. Having never before relied on the kindness of Canadians I whispered to Tenna and Pia that we had to “wait for the sting” and then reluctantly followed her for a few blocks, past dozens of those fantastic 1950’ cars that adorn every guidebook to Fideland.
Our decision to follow Jennifer ended up completely changing the flavour of our trip and I don’t think I have ever used the phrase
Planet of the Ches
What's a diaroma? A VERY life-like Che battles though the jungles in Havana's Museum of the Revolution. “hear comes the sting” so much in my life. And, a few days later, as Jen and some random Cuban guy led us 200 metres into a cave filled with water and turned the torches out I couldn’t get two things out of my head - the music piece “the Entertainer” and that awful movie “Wolfe Creek” where all those tourists stupidly trust the psychopathic murderer and end up paying very dearly for doing so. But whether Jen was in it for the hustle or not she still managed to find us a great apartment opposite the university for a good price. So the sting wasn’t so painful after all.
One of the pleasures of living in a tightly controlling socialist bureaucracy is the maze of rule and regulations that you must adhere to. To stay in a Cuban’s house you must be registered for each night in an official homestay. Each homestay is strictly limited in the number of guests that they are allowed in their house at any one time. Human nature being what it is however(hang on, isn’t socialism meant to rid us of the tendencies towards greed and making money?) most families realise they can
Che's tribute to the grannies
That's right - a tapestry of Che! make more money by registering an extra person in their house and claiming that the two people are sharing a room - while in reality the two people don’t know each other and use a bedroom each. The family move out to relatives’ houses and pocket the profits. Everyone’s a winner and capitalism triumphs. Well at least that’s what I thought. Jorge rented me my room for three nights without enlightening me that for the government’s purposes I was sharing a room with some other girl who was living in the house. The next day when he popped around he casually mentioned that if anyone from the government stormed the house for a visit I had to refuse them entry, tell them that “Jorge has gone out to eat” and that I was sharing a room with this random girl. Every day Jorge would visit and tell me the same thing and every day my nerves would grow and grow as I expected some Cuban officials to drag me away because I could never remember the girl’s name. I had visions of being dragged off to Cuban prison all because I was hopeless at remembering names.
Ever the ingenious
Gangsta Cubano
The coolest Cuban street hip-hoppers I ever did meet. one, I came up with a foolproof plan to avoid capture. I figured that any country as bureaucratic as Cuba would mean that the government officials would keep government hours even more rigidly than the Australian public service. Consequently I timed my days so that I was out of the house by 8:47 AM and not back until 5:30 always certain that I had evaded my interrogators once more.
Luckily for me and my “Evade Cuba’s Public Servants” Plan Havana is full of interesting sites and is probably the most beautiful city I have ever visited. The mix of colonial architecture, tropical location and revolutionary propaganda means that everywhere you turn there is something interesting to watch, explore or involve yourself in.
Our first real night out in Havana was with Jennifer and two of her Cuban friends. Michael and Michel were two guys that Jen had met at some hip-hop club some months earlier. Michel was “in the rap business” and Michael was am ex-physiotherapist who was now making ends meet by selling clothes on the street. He explained that this was more profitable than working in the Cuban health care system.
We downed a bottle
Gangsta Cubano
Alas, their CD kinda sucks. of rum in Jen’s room and then caught an old style Chevy down to the club where we were planning to watch a Reggaeton act named Eddy K (one of the biggest in Cuba). However, our timing was bad because it was the same night as the final of the World Series Baseball Competition and Cuba was playing Japan. (Interestingly, the World Series was being played in the US and many Cuban-American politicians had attempted to block Cuba participating in the competition but were unsuccessful.) Consequently the club wouldn’t be open until the game finished. As some of you may know, baseball is a long, involved and primarily boring game so we spent the next few hours standing in Havana’s central park watching Cuba lose the World Series while drinking rum with several thousand Cubans. Before the end of the match we went in search of food. Out of nowhere Michel and Michael (supposedly two best friends) began beating each other up and Jen demanded that we flee the scene (and the fighting Cubans) immediately. As we fled, Jen confessed that she had been dating Michael and had recently found out that he was a jinetero (hustler) who, while they
The Malecon
Cubans swimming in the Malecon. Please - no "Are they swimming to Florida?" jokes. were going out was basically prostituting himself to rich tourists. Although she was basically cool with it, Michael had apparently been acting weird over the last few weeks and so it ended up that Michel needed to “sort him out” so he would quit bothering Jen. It was all a bit dramatic (and reminded me that I have missed my daily shot of Neighbours) for my liking and so we skipped the club so we could be home a few hours before we needed to be at the Museum of Revolution.
Our next day in Cuba took us to the “Museum of Why the CIA is Evil”. A comprehensive display and discussion of all the evil things the CIA did to Havana and Cuba after the revolution. Unfortunately the Museum fails to give a very clear picture of the interesting stories of the revolutions (attempted and actual). I did like the display of the Granma, the boat that Fidel, Che and their band of revolutionaries arrived in Cuba on, and I particularly enjoyed the tapestry of Che - a tribute to all of the revolutionary octogenarians around the world.
On our way for ice cream we were stopped
The Jose Marti Tower
I even got a certificate after taking the lift to the top. Who says socialism doesn't pay? by a new force in Cuban revolutionary activity - “Gangster Cubano”. At first I couldn’t work out what the hell their name was because in Spanish the Cubans have a tendency not to pronounce the letter S. Consequently we thought their name was “Ganta Cubano” but we soon realized our mistake when the duo started rapping about ho’s and bitches. They were actually really good so I bought their CD and look forward to them winning grammies ASAP.
The music of Gangster Cubano gave us something to talk about as we spent the next 35 minutes waiting in line for the best ice cream experience imaginable. Coppelia is a 2 storied monstrosity of a building that happens to be the most famous ice creamery in all of Cuba. Split into three sections you have to choose a queue as soon as you enter off the street. Each queue is for a different section of the building. However in a stroke of socialist-marketing genius each section only has certain flavours of ice creams available on each day. Which means that one level may have chocolate, choc-mint, banana and coffee while another (as was the case when we visited) may only
The Che Building
In Revolution Square. Che's face adorns the foreign ministry building. Lucky them. have pineapple. So after choosing lines carefully you spend the next 30 - 45 minutes being ushered through the grounds of the store by numerous security guards who try to pick tourist from the line and direct them towards the overpriced ice cream store for foreigners. You see, the thing about Cuba is that there are two currencies: National Pesos - 25 National Pesos equal around one Euro, and Convertible Pesos - 1 Convertible Peso equals 1 euro. Most things are in Convertibles but if something is in Nationals it means it’s really cheap. And the ice cream at Coppelia is 7.5 National Pesos (around 25 cents) for 5 scoops! That being said I promptly joined all the other Cubans and ate 10 scoops of great ice cream and thanked Fidel for the Revolution.
That night we headed out to actually SEE a Reggaeton concert. At the club Pia broke it down and beat all the Cuban girls in a dancing competition. I’d swear she won because she was the only girl in the dance floor that wasn’t dressed like a total tramp but others claim it’s just ‘cause she’s blonde. Either way her victory wasn’t the most mysterious
What ya waiting for?
The line for Coppelia thing about the club. The headlining act started at 2 AM (go figure) and in the meantime we had a standup comedian for an hour as well as a guy who provided commentary on everyone’s dancing. As people were getting their groove on this fat and seedy looking Cuban would blurt into a microphone what he thought of the way you were dancing, what you were wearing or what you or anyone else on the dance floor looked like. Coupled with this was the fact that whenever he spoke about a girl on the floor (all of whom looked to be 15 years old) he would start to stroke his crotch. NICE!
“So what of Fidel, Che and the Revolution” I hear you ask. I must admit that it is hard to say. Clearly some things are a lot better in Cuba than in nearby Central America (i.e. you don’t see the abject poverty that you do in Guatemala or Honduras) but there is something chilling about the all pervasive bureaucracy, the 4 page national newspapers with only fluff for articles and the constant reminders from Fidel that “we’re going well” or that the revolution is still continuing. Honestly,
Who said heaven wasn't sign posted?
Coppelia - some things are just done better by Socialists. how long can you revolve until you are back where you started from?
And as for Che - he is everywhere. Everywhere you turn you see him staring off into the distance. But his image appears so often and in so many forms that it’s just like all the ads for useless products on the side of the road which we usually block out of our minds as soon as we have passed them. He’s on belts, shirts, posters, beer mugs and more. Any souvenir you wish for has the bearded revolutionary sullenly glaring back at you. If its true as they say - that the memory of Che lives on - then it’s really only in the chime of the cash registers of the tourist shops that line the beautiful but decrepit streets of Old Havana.
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fruzsi
non-member comment
oy patgat! i have only just discovered your roving reports in earnest, have done some giggling and am looking forward to hearing all the censored bits when we cohabit in LONDON (are we still on? when do you aim to get there? i should be there start of aug, going via russia(!!)) woooo