Just a short walk toward the sea from a Hemingway hangout called La Floridita, the sounds of the metaphorical phoenix begin to rise and its feathers become apparent.
A stroll along the narrow, crammed walkways of O’Reilly, Obispo or Empedrado streets anytime near dark provide scattered variations of the Afro-Cuban beat that once rivaled cigars as Cuba’s most successful export, the memorable mambo, rumba and cha-cha-cha.
From the patios of bars or restaurants, groups of musicians again are strumming, drumming and piping a music they vow will regain worldwide fame after a three-decade hiatus.
In the colonial district of Old Havana, handicraft markets and street performers draw crowds of locals and foreigners. Legions of men and women hit on both, offering black market cigars or a date for a night in their search for dollars in tough economic times.
Here and there, grand colonial palaces and homes have undergone restoration or are being overhauled with cement and paint after 37 years of neglect, deterioration and decay.
“Havana is coming alive,” said a French businessman bobbing to the salsa beat in El Patio restaurant in Old Havana’s imposing Cathedral Square. “Yes, the phoenix is rising.”
Left with few choices after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the evaporation of Cuba’s economic support from Eastern Europe, a reluctant leadership has felt the need to compromise crucial elements of its drive toward socialist purity by allowing capitalist outsiders to invest in island industries, raising tourism to priority levels and allowing the re-establishment of dreaded entrepreneurs.
The restoration work and the return of street scenes formerly considered decadent is a byproduct of all three.
Whether the mythical phoenix, which consumed itself in fire and then lifted itself from the ashes, in fact will ever rise above Havana and soar across Cuba depends almost entirely on aging ruler Fidel Castro and his powerful adversaries in the United States, less than an hour’s flight away.
Experts in Cuba believe Castro’s current challenge is walking the line between cracking down on developing private marketeers and cottage businesses, or lightening up even further.
As he weighs his historical legacy, Castro’s principal enemy remains the U.S., and Washington returns the favor. More than 35 years ago, the U.S. determined that a trade embargo and the insurrection it supposedly would provoke was the best way to bring down the man popularly know as Fidel, who turns 71 next month.
The two antagonists remain locked in a conflict of will and ideology on one of the Cold War’s last political battlefields.
Conversations in Havana with Cuban and foreign officials provide virtually no hope that the battle, or the embargo, will end anytime soon. Meanwhile, Cubans edge further toward pessimism and an uncertain future.
Forty-four years after Castro led a failed attack on the Moncada military barracks on July 26, 1953, in Santiago, a daring raid that initiated his successful revolution, Cuba’s Maximum Leader remains firmly in power amid predictions he could remain at the helm another 10 years or more. This Saturday the island will celebrate the anniversary of the barracks attack, once again reveling in defiance of the U.S.
Repeated predictions of Castro’s demise–“next year”–have failed to materialize despite a variety of assassination attempts, a CIA-sponsored invasion and periodic tightening of an embargo which critics believe has served no purpose beyond providing Castro an excuse to maintain repression disguised as national security.
But the price of maintaining that control has been high in the 1990s for Cuba’s Communist leadership and for common Cubans.
As the Communists head toward their Fifth Party Congress in October, economic experts in Havana are forecasting a dismal year. They cite a low economic growth rate of 1.5 percent between January and May, compared with growth of 7.8 percent for all last year.
Government officials insist this year’s figure will top 4 percent, but they admit that significant damage will be done by a poor sugar harvest and a lack of foreign money to keep the nation’s industries fueled and lubricated.
A reluctance to ease a totalitarian control of human rights appears destined to bring dreaded retribution from Cuba’s European and Latin American friends, who appear ready to link any improvement in diplomatic relations with Havana on Cuba’s freeing of political prisoners. But in a typical tactic, police on Wednesday arrested another four dissidents on charges of “counter-revolutionary” activities.
An immigration agreement between the U.S. and Cuban governments has practically shut down a pressure valve that allowed thousands of the island’s more frustrated and dissatisfied residents a means of escape. The U.S. Coast Guard now routinely returns to Cuba rafters picked up off Florida’s coast.
Although the food crisis that hit Cuba earlier this decade was eased considerably by Castro’s decision to reinstate private farmers’ markets and legalize the dollar, which is Cuba’s most practical currency, disquiet over the food problem has been replaced by a growing dissatisfaction over the government’s failure to meet rising expectations.
“Certainly, the mood here is not as optimistic as it was a year or a year-and-a-half ago,” said a frequent foreign visitor to Havana.
Most Cubans are quick to discuss the troubles. “Cuba is like an old coat full of patches; you can never quite fix it up,” said a woman whose husband left Cuba for work in a Latin American nation that pays wages higher than the Cuban average of $10 a month in pesos.
“Sure, we’ve got wonderful doctors here–that Castro can brag about,” said a retiree. “But what good does it do one to go to a doctor and get a prescription for medicine that the pharmacy cannot fill because of the shortage?”
U.S. officials attribute Cuba’s economic failure to the government’s hell-or-high-water dependency on Marxist-Leninist policies that failed elsewhere. But Cuban officials quickly blame the 35-year-old U.S. embargo for much of the island’s miseries. They roundly condemn U.S. political leaders who uphold the trade policy and try to tighten it.
“We know that the State Department operates under tremendous fear of being spanked by congressional members who represent (anti-Castro members of the Cuban community in) Miami,” said Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, director of the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s North American desk.
Other officials are quick to criticize President Clinton, asserting that in Cuba’s case he has yielded his foreign policy power to congressional figures controlled by the powerful expatriates in southern Florida.
“The administration hasn’t the power to improve bilateral relations,” said one official. “No elected official will fight these guys.”
While far from plentiful, food supplies in the capital seem greater than they did two years ago, and power blackouts caused by energy shortages appear less lengthy these days. More important, unlike in past summers, foreign diplomats and other international residents in the capital are not talking about the potential for urban rioting in the torrid, tropical dog days of August.
Average Cubans, even party members, are quick to invite visitors to the island into their homes. They appear more open than ever in their conversations with strangers.
“If you were to take a poll of the Cuban people, 70 percent, 80 percent would tell you they love Castro,” said a laborer in his mid-50s who fought with Castro’s rebels and met the Cuban president after the revolution. “But I think that it’s time for Castro to take a rest. He has to give room to the new ideas.”
Others agree with that assessment.
“A lot of people whom I’ve known for years have expressed something along those lines of respect for Castro,” said Wayne Smith, an American scholar, while sipping a mid-afternoon drink on the rooftop of the picturesque, restored Ambos Mundos hotel, another Hemingway favorite.
“At the same time they are saying that, `We think it is time Castro began to think of stepping down, but at this time of crisis he really can’t.’
“They also express concern over a future without him, because they don’t know who will take his place; there’s nobody standing in the wings,” said Smith, who headed the government’s U.S. Interests Section in Havana during the Carter and Reagan administrations.
“My best prediction is that he’s not going anywhere and will be here for at least another 10 years,” said a foreign diplomat with acquaintances close to the Cuban leader.
“When I was here from ’79 to ’82, there was no economic crisis, but Cathedral Square on weekends was nothing,” Smith said.
“Now Cathedral Square on weekends is alive. There are musical groups playing, they are selling beer and sandwiches to one another; it’s alive and vibrant in a way it never was before the economic crisis began.”
