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Published: November 3rd 2011
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La Esquina Caliente, at the corner of Parque Central, was buzzing this morning. This is the place Havana’s baseball-mad fans come to talk and argue about anything baseball. Last night, a nation hunched around their TVs to watch Cuba wrap up a comfortable 4-0 series whitewash against the USA in the World Series – baseball’s version of the World Cup. Although it’s mostly an amateur competition, with the MLB’s biggest stars staying away for insurance reasons, it didn’t seem to matter to these fellas; they’d got one up on public enemy number one. Completely out of our depth, we congratulated an old guy beaming into his plastic cup of rum and moved on.
It was time to immerse. Cuba has hundreds and hundreds of art museums and galleries so we thought we’d start with the Cuban art exhibition in the Museo National De Bellas Artes . In a country where there is no X-Factor and the closest thing to Simon Cowell is Fidel reciting speech after speech, more emphasis is placed on classical arts and music. Like most of my circle of friends, I don’t really know what to do in an art museum. I’ve had a bit of practice
taking girlfriends to the Tate Modern, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for. Ian, on the other hand, knew exactly what he was looking for - see photo. My overall impression with Cuban art is that there’s a lot of nudity and, despite the slim figures that walk the streets below, exaggerated body parts. Someone had even depicted Jesus on the cross with arms bigger than JT’s and calves bigger than Sparky’s. Blasphemous, really. Or maybe that’s just how people looked before the revolution…whatever it was like, there does seem to be common theme, even in the more modern stuff of a yearning for pre-revolutionary luxuries and glamour.
The tourist information desk mentioned that something about a revolution so we thought we’d pop in to the Museo de Revolucion, Havana’s must-see museum. It showcases everything: from Fidel’s RayBans here wore in the jungle to a glass-encased showpiece of the Granma – the boat that took Fidel, Raul, Che etc. from Mexico to the Sierra Maestre. In a museum full of pro-revolutionary quotes and a plethora of anti-imperialism, anti-American conspiracies, it was interesting to see that the only note on the controversial plane crash that killed the popular
Camilo Cienfuegos was that: he died in 1959 in a plane incident. His popularity with the people was on a par with Che’s in 1959, having been one of the original crew on the Granma. His political stance was openly populist, not communist, and he voiced his concerns to Castro’s left-leaning policies. The rumour is that Fidel, who sent Cienfuegos on a mission to arrest an outspoken anti-communist, had something to do with the mysterious disappearance of the plane. At a time where there was a hot bed of CIA activity in Cuba, so you’d think this could have easily been blamed on them, but the investigation was shrouded in secrecy it concluded that this was just a tragic accident. Whatever happened, Cienfuegos didn’t do enough to get his own personal exhibition in the museum. Che did.
Next we took a little stroll around Habana Vieja. Unlike the rest of Habana, many of the old 16th and 17th century houses here have been restored and tastefully painted in a variety of greens, blues, pinks and yellows. The narrow, little streets are full of more museums, art workshops, book stalls and souvenir shops. Something wasn’t right though…and suddenly it hits
you: no one actually lives in these beautiful colonial houses. The only signs of life come from the quaint restaurant balconies and the odd plaza, full of fortune tellers and beer gardens. Even the cathedral in Plaza de Catedral has the same unused, unloved feeling you get from the streets around it. The busiest place we walked past was the Museo del Chocolate. It’s actually a café that sells warm melted chocolate in a mug with pepper and nutmeg or, for hot days, cold milk chocolate in a tall glass. All for less than a $1. We celebrated finding this place by sharing a chocolate cigar (not our first time) before ending the afternoon in Plaza Vieja, with 6 jars of Habana’s best beer, brewed on site, at Taberna de la Muralla.
We’d been warned about these jineteras by several people. In Casa de la Musica that night, some of the most incredible girls I’ve ever seen sat down at our table, stroked our arm and flirted outrageously before asking for a drink. They’re aren’t prostitutes, but they are an extreme equivalent of those girls back home who will do anything to get an invite to the VIP section
for free drinks and rich men. In the short term, they get a decent night out (a beer for $1CUC is a day’s wages for these girls) and in the long term, they want to get out of Cuba. Every five minutes, new girls. It was really obvious and really uncomfortable. After we told the girls we were gay, boys came over. Thank Christ, six Israeli girls we met on the plane turned up and we immediately pounced. It must have looked really keen, but we had a great night out after that. I even managed to offload Luis’ hat to some old swinger, who won a dance-off and some free beers for us.
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