The humidity hits you as you step out from the rarified, air-conditioned confines of the plane, the heat dances off the tarmac, playing tricks on your eyes. But by the time you make your way past the tense sea of olive green uniforms in the lobby, you’re already in a blissed out ‘island state of mind’.
In 1492 when Columbus stumbled onto Cuban shores looking for India’s fabled treasures, he called it the most beautiful land he’d ever seen. Five hundred years later, life here is still a party and the world's invited. Beaches, resorts and hotels are teeming with new age saviours; western tourists with American greenbacks in their Tommy Bahama shirts, who will pay any price for a piece of Cubanidad-Cuba is for sale. The need for tourist dollars has reduced Cuba to just another Caribbean island, a tempting yet tired cliché of sun, sand and surf, but my experience begins right here in Havana as a java jolt of countless colors, sights, and sounds awakes me from a gray black winter slumber.
Founded in 1514, San Cristobal de la Habana was a docking port for Cortes’ ships returning to Spain with Montezuma’s gold. (He found no gold in Cuba, but when Columbus planted some sugarcane seedlings, he had no idea of the far-reaching effects. Sugar remains inextricably linked to Cuba’s destiny—a gift from a fickle mythical god that became a curse as centuries of slavery and colonization followed.) Today the fortified El Morro castle, one of Havana’s oldest landmarks, is a grim reminder of pirate sackings. Along the Malecón, images become anecdotal snippets in your mind: waves crash playfully over the seawall, drenching promenading Havanans, friends sit down to an impromptu game of dominoes, two guys carry a 1950s candy pink fridge down a narrow street and an amigo stops to say hi, and lend a hand; a couple of kids with defiant body art check out what’s hot in the music world on their radios.
Havana means nights drinking crisp mojitos at Hemingway's favourite bar Bodeguita, waiting for a literary revelation, and watching the shimmering Tropicana showgirls dance splendorous whirlwinds. Memories of a rat race life are insignificant, distant, dissipating into the ethers with the soothing smoke from an exquisite Cohiba. Summer evenings are long, spent under a vast, free sky of the bluest blue, listening to the warm sea caress the beach in hushed whispers, right before sleep comes easily, abundant, in a purple cloak. You agree with Columbus.
Cuba’s warm, passionate people amply express their spirit in sensual song lyrics, and their traditional son music. This is a country with a song in its body, the most dance prone society in the world. At a local El Rapido restaurant, revelers spill out on the streets, dancing to the music coming from within; I have to get into the rhythm of this place to feel its soul. People are friendly and share their worldviews or talk baseball over a cup of strong coffee or a stiff shot of rum. They are optimistic and resilient, feet firmly rooted in the past, and eyes toward a hopeful future.
The impressive Hotel Nacional overlooking the Malecón pays iconic homage to Havana’s colourful past when Americans just went south to drink and Prohibition era high rollers with big cars and bigger lifestyles frolicked here on the beaches. For Hollywood royalty, hippie child brides of statesmen, pioneering gangsters of dubious distinction, and suicidal novelists of genius, this was the mecca.
¡Hasta la Victoria siempre! (Ever onwards towards Victory)
¡Venceremos! (We shall overcome)
¡Socialismo ou muerte! (Socialism or death)
Revolution for Cubans is more than an intense looking guy on a t-shirt. The incendiary nationalist graffiti on Havana’s streets tries to give hope to a people who have lived through forty years of trying economic conditions. Combined with the breakup of USSR and the trade embargo, these are difficult times, making tourism an economic necessity. The pace of life is leisurely but waiting is a way of life here. People wait at food stores, for the bus, to pay the bill. Progress is like the sputtering 70s Ladas. The promise of the final victory is now wearing old, but they carry on, with hope towards the elusive Victoria.
Images of Che abound all over Cuba, most prominently the steel and glass sculpture on the façade of the Ministry of the Interior building. It is based on one of the most iconic images of our time that captured the revolutionary zeitgeist. Alberto Korda, a photographer for LA Revolucion took the picture in 1960. Years later, the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli stopped in Cuba on the way back from Bolivia, where he had heard that Che's capture and execution was imminent. Korda refused payment for the print since his visitor was ‘a friend of the Revolution’. Within days Che had achieved instant mythical stature in death; millions of reproductions later all over the world, Korda never received as cent as he was ‘not averse to its reproduction…to propagate…the cause of social justice throughout the world’. Castro had a different take on the issue, describing the protection of intellectual property as imperialistic ‘bullshit’.
The world's eyes are once again on Cuba. Will a post Castro Cuba remain communist? Is Cuba at the brink of another revolution? This time the Cubans are poised to determine their own future.
Fast Facts: Area: 110,860km; Pop: 11,382,820; GDP (PPP): $3900; Literacy: 97%; Main crops, sugar, tobacco, citrus; Main cities: Havana, Santiago, Camagüey, Holguin; Currency: peso, convertible peso: Religion: (85% Roman Catholicism); Govt: socialist republic. (source: CIA World Factbook)
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