The hiss is loud and insistent. Actually, it`s two short blasts: ”Tss, tss,” followed by the sweet jangle of a bicycle bell. In the merciless Havana heat, the sounds mingle into something come-hither-not quite a compliment but no insult either.
Ricardo Fernandez pulls his bike along the curb of the Malecon, a seaside stretch dotted with Art Deco buildings in faded pink and blue. ”Tss, tss,”
he says, using idiomatic Spanish for ”Hey you!” ”Need a lift, amiga?”
The offer is tempting. Gasoline, like most everything in Cuba these days, is rationed. Beyond the big tourists-only hotels, taxicabs are as scarce as soap. Politely, reluctantly, I decline. But Fernandez is not about to let a foreigner slip away so easily. That sound trails me, louder and more insistent than before.
”Tss, tss. Amiga, don`t you remember me? You took my picture the other day. Hop on. Fidel says we should give rides to our friends.”
With his smooth smile and choppy haircut, Fernandez does look familiar. Unlike his bicycle, he also looks strong and reliable. And so the two of us teeter off down the Malecon. A harrowing half-hour later, we are leaning against the crumbling sea wall and a sweat-soaked Fernandez is summing up the Cuban paradox. What he offers me is half lecture, half lament. Like much of his generation, the 24-year-old Fernandez has an almost schizophrenic outlook on life in Cuba.
”Yes, I want it to be easier to eat,” he says. ”No, I never want to leave Cuba permanently. For sure, life is getting harder every day. But my support for Fidel is as strong as ever.”
Fernandez phrases all of this in typically Cuban style: one run-on sentence, no pauses, no breaths. In a Cuba not yet numbed by cable TV, conversation-good conversation-is a national pastime. A favorite topic is the United States, and Fernandez has never met an American before. He has seen us in the movies, danced to our music on Radio Marti and heard us harangued in Castro`s all-day orations. But few Americans-most of them academics, journalists and enterprising leftist sympathizers-make it to Havana anymore. I`m his first real-life Yanqui.
”Really? American? Really?” he asks, having guessed Spanish, Mexican, Italian and, as a last stab, Greek. Fernandez is struck silent by his luck. But only for a moment.
Then opinions start tumbling out of him. In part, the machine-gun pace reflects Fernandez`s desperation over impossible economic times. Mostly, though, it`s the way Cubans talk about everything, especially their beloved baseball. Even before the summer Olympics, they were yammering about how their team would whomp the United States at its own game. Winning in boxing was an added jab against U.S. imperialism.
Fernandez tells me he is enraged over the ongoing U.S. trade embargo, frustrated at Cuba`s empty store shelves. He also insists that the socialist revolution will not be undone by a lack of cooking oil. Since kindergarten, Fernandez has been taught that we are the enemy; the government`s latest slogan is ”Socialism or death.” Rather than tearing Cuba apart, the embargo is unifying Cubans in their suffering. The caption on an unflattering museum portrait of Ronald Reagan: ”Thank you, Cretin, for Making the Revolution Stronger.” But Fernandez is as affectionate toward actual Americans as he is infuriated by that all-purpose effigy, Uncle Sam.
”I know you are not my enemy, but your government is,” says Fernandez, a telephone line repairman who himself cannot afford a phone. ”Reagan was the devil, and Bush is worse. Fidel is charismatic, intelligent, strong. I have seen him speak many times. Have you ever seen your president in person?”
Fernandez makes these statements loudly, unnoticing of the young lovers strolling the Malecon. He drops his voice to a whisper just once. Sure, he wants reforms, he says. What Cuban doesn`t?
– – –
In the United States, everyone wants to know when Fidel Castro will fall. Not if. When. Seven U.S. presidents have tried to asphyxiate Castro. Now that its East European trading partners have evaporated along with Soviet aid, the assumption is that Castro is about to go. Must go. Exiles insist the day is coming.
But young Cubans who live in Cuba-rather than Miami, New York or Chicago- have trouble fathoming life without Fidel. Sixty percent of the 10.7 million islanders were born after the 1959 revolution. He`s all they know. Of course, Cuba will have to do without Castro eventually. He is an old man now, the famous beard having long since gone gray.
Beyond simple biology is hard reality. Life in Cuba is hard and getting worse. Basic necessities have become luxuries. In 33 years of socialismo, Castro has raised health and education standards to among the highest in Latin America. But these days medical clinics are short of aspirin and the red-scarved schoolchildren known as Young Pioneers plead for visitors` pencils.
(”You have so many,” my hotel concierge says enviously late one night, as pencils spill out of my backpack and onto the counter. ”Please, my daughter needs one.”)
In truth, Castro has eliminated much of the poverty, racism and sexism that pervaded Cuba in the days when gambling, prostitution and the Mob flourished. No homeless Cubans wander the pothole-marred streets. No Cubans are starving, despite shortages of black beans and rice. Women and blacks can be found in every occupation and in significant numbers.
Still, every night finds dozens of young women and some men, too, hanging around the hotels. They are known as jineteros, ”jockeys,” and to the Castro government`s distress, they can be had for the price of a not-so-decent meal. ”No, no. I`m not one of them,” Paula insists. It is noon, and she is seated between two 30-ish Englishmen in a hotel bar. Paula is curvacious, with brown-black eyes and long ringlets. She is 17.
”Well, yes, I did spend the night with him,” she finally stammers.
”But not for money. I would never take money. Who needs money since there`s nothing to buy? I was just curious to see the hotel.”
Like other Cubans, Paula is forbidden to enter Havana`s better hotels, restaurants or shops unless accompanied by a tourist. She can`t buy $65 jars of Lancome moisturizer or $10 T-shirts emblazoned with Che Guevarra`s face or even take a tour of the Bay of Pigs. These privileges require U.S. dollars. Castro craves them. All foreigners are forced to use them. But it is illegal for Cubans to have them, although every other young man on the street is eager to trade pesos for dollars.
One of the many ironies of life in Cuba is that the survival of socialism depends on hard currency. And the government goes out of its way to secure it. At ”official” appointments, tables of souvenirs materialize along with spokespeople for the revolution. For the convenience of tourists, dollar stores chock-full of food, film and Che Guevarra trinkets are open all night. At Copellia, a spaceship-shaped ice cream parlor in central Havana, Cubans wait an hour or more. Tourists are whisked upstairs, where prices are at least twice as high and the serving staff tries nightly to talk me into an even more elaborate sundae.
Not surprisingly, tourist apartheid has fueled resentment among many Cubans, especially the bored and restless youth. Hector, a 23-year-old art-history major, calls the situation ”pseudo-socialism.” A one-party state, he says, should not have a two-currency economy.
”The revolution teaches us that you and I are equal, but we are not so equal anymore,” says Yamillo, a clerk in a tourists-only bookstore. ”I take your dollars and see what you can buy, and I can`t have it.”
Like many Cubans, Yamillo can ably defend spending millions of dollars to restore Havana`s hotels to their prerevolution splendor. She has more trouble understanding why Cubans can`t enjoy them too. One evening a cabdriver named Isaac provides a circuitious explanation.
”You need dollars to go in, and Cubans don`t have dollars because we can`t have them,” says Isaac, a former math teacher. ”It`s hard to understand. But I`m sure it`s necessary.”
Cubans aren`t the only ones confused by the system. It makes visitors feel funny, too, and angry at both the U.S. and Cuban governments.
Late one evening, a new friend and I approach the blocklong driveway to the National Hotel, an opulent building lit up like gold against the sky. Spotting us, a security guard barks into his walkie-talkie. He glares at my companion, a veteran of the Angolan War. He smiles at me.
”How can I declare myself in solidarity with the Cuban people if I`m obliged to walk around spending dollars all day?” asks Marieke Kamerbeck, a Dutch social worker. ”I guess they have to do this because of the embargo, which is another example of America`s horrible foreign policy.”
Marieke and I are sitting in The Plaza, a jewel of a hotel on the Parque Central. Caged parakeets chirp in the bar. An ornate fountain gurgles in the center. A double room in this Mediterranean-style hotel costs $90 a night. It is cocktail hour, and all the other tables are empty.
So far, Cuba is doing a better job of keeping out its own than bringing in foreigners.
——-
”It`s really not that special,” Alberto Baez, my dinner guest, says with obvious disappointment. We are at La Bodeguita del Medio, yet another famous Hemingway haunt. The restaurant is casual, crowded and loud. Graffiti cover the walls. The guidebook says we must drink mojitos, a syrupy concoction with a kick. We settle for beer. It`s cheaper.
By Caribbean standards, Cuba is no great bargain. Rental cars run upward of $50 a day; a typical cab ride costs $5 or more. The Tropicana nightclub`s dated floor show, complete with Ricky Riccardo impersonators and plumed showgirls, is $40-plus. It costs at least $10 to get in the door at the big discoteques, drinks not included. At every hotel, representatives of Cubatur and Cubanacan, the official tourist offices, encourage dollar-wielding visitors to partake in all of this and more.
Baez, my peso-earning friend, is scandalized by our dinner bill-$60 for two salads, two chicken entrees, three beers and side orders of beans and plantains. Later we stop in at the Floridita, an elegant Art Deco restaurant once frequented by the ubiquitous Hemingway, who also has a marina named after him. The house specialty is daiquiris at $5 a pop. Baez refuses to order one. Still, the food and drink are a delicious relief. Until now, my meals have been undercooked, overcooked, underseasoned or oversalted. Like our rooms, the buffet breakfasts and dinners included in our hotel package are stark and functional. Like Havana`s bus system, service everywhere is slow and unreliable. It`s harder to summon a waiter than to obtain a long-distance phone line, which itself is a virtually impossible feat.
Everything in Havana seems slightly out of whack. Physically, the city is stuck in another era. Beyond the narrow, winding streets of Old Havana, filled with the sounds of Orthodox Jewish prayers and Afro-Cuban rhythms, much of the city has a 1950s feel to it.
Vintage DeSotos and Chevys, with their tail fins and chrome grills, cruise the wide boulevards. The Malecon`s classic Art Deco buildings have become trendy again as they were when Castro commandeered Granma (a 75-foot yacht now preserved in the Museum of the Revolution) and invaded Batista`s Cuba in 1957. To stand in the vast Revolution Plaza is to step back in time.
Government propaganda would have visitors believe that Cuba is an island paradise. The beaches are pristine, but the country itself is collapsing. There`s no money to fix streets, repair clogged sewers or replace smoke-spewing buses. Without fuel to haul it to market, sugar cane stands rotting in the fields. Bicycles are the only reliable transportation (the latest Chinese model has been mistranslated the ”Flying Pigeon”), but bike helmets are too expensive to import. In Havana, the houses-to which everyone in theory is entitled-including the mansions on the outskirts of town, need everything from paint to new roofs.
”We have more than enough workers but no money,” says Mayda Perez, a housing specialist with the Group To Develop the Capital. ”We have more than enough architects but no materials. You can`t even buy what you need on the black market.”
Pulling Cuba into the 1990s will require intergovernmental cooperation of the capitalist kind. While multi-national companies plan their return to the island, Cuba is busy forming joint ventures with Spain and other countries. So far, most of these projects are geared toward physical improvements that will increase tourism.
Pulling Cuba into the 1990s psychologically will be trickier. For every efficiency gained, a slice of Cuba`s special character will be lost.
Cubans are a generous, hospitable people. Time after time, they welcome me into their homes for birthday parties, coffee and conversation. A group of youths invites me to dance to reggae music at its impromptu street party. Individuals with little in the way of material goods offer their opinions instead. If they ask anything of me, it is to carry letters to relatives back in the United States. Sometimes they make this trade at great risk to themselves.
——-
Agustin Casasayas Ramirez comes bounding out of the crowd and heads straight for me. ”You`re not from here, are you?” he asks, already suspecting the answer. ”Please, I need to talk to you.”
Casasayas, 22, has just come from the U.S. Interests Section, a mini-embassy of sorts. He is seeking political asylum. Casasayas says he was imprisoned for creating the wrong type of posters.
”I wrote bad things about Fidel,” he says, pressing a finger against his own lips. ”I wrote, `Down With Fidel.` ”
Casasayas spent two years in jail. During that time, he says he was beaten severely. To prove it, he pulls out a letter that prison authorities sent his parents. His father, who has been watching us edgily, rushes over to tell Casasayas that he is mad to be doing this out in the open, in full view of everyone. His son says he doesn`t care anymore. He wants Americans to hear what is happening in Cuba.
The official-looking document explains Casasayas` injuries; he fell and hit his head, it says. Ominously, implicitly refuting itself, it also warns that he can avoid future accidents by behaving himself. The document ends with Revolucionariamente, Revolutionarily (yours).
”I don`t want to stay in Cuba because it isn`t democratic,” Casasayas says in that now- familiar whisper. ”A lot of people think like me. But they are afraid to say so. I am tired of being afraid.”
Cubans who disagree with Castro`s pronouncements and policies have reason to be afraid. After a short period when Cubans were allowed to organize their own groups, Castro is again stifling dissent. Cuba is among the few socialist islands remaining in an increasingly democratic world. And Castro wants to keep it that way.
Last winter, more than a dozen university professors were fired for signing a mild declaration the government considered subversive. Dissenters and human rights advocates have been arrested. For issuing a call for a national dialogue, poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela was expelled from the writers union. She was also forced to eat her words-literally.
The government insists that these ”acts of repudiation,” which often include beatings, are spontaneous gestures on the part of loyal Cubans. No one, however, disputes that the government sanctions these ”gestures.” It is as if Castro hopes to unify Cuba against foreign influences by pitting neighbor against neighbor.
Even Natalia ”Naty” Revuelta, Castro`s lover in the late mid-1950s and the mother of his daughter, cautions me to be careful in my conversations. But she herself is only momentarily wary. Then she throws open the door to what would be a luxurious house, were it not falling apart, and invites me in.
Revuelta, who is not in contact with Castro but devotes a closed-off corner of her house to him, expects Castro to make reforms. She says he knows that Cuba cannot afford to isolate itself from the rest of the world, a changing world. ”Stagnation is death, advancement is life,” she says, not intending to sloganeer.
”It`s a difficult time for all of us, for those in front of the pushcart and those behind it,” says Revuelta, 66 and still stunningly beautiful.
”We`re all poor these days. But Cubans are a tough people. We`re used to struggling.”
I take this as an opening to offer Revuelta the cigarettes, soap, oil and magazines in my backpack. The exchange is always uncomfortable, and it is especially so for the well-educated, widely traveled Revuelta. From her balcony, where all the neighbors can see us, she offers me coffee and hours of conversation. It`s clear that I come out way ahead in the trade.
