Closer to the big town of Moa (est. pop. 93,000), the pipeline divides into four or five smaller pipelines. There are numerous billboards, but most of them simply bear stirring Revolutionary slogans, and none indicates what commodity is being refined, manufactured, exported, or imported. There’s a Cuban flag blowing in the breeze, and immediately below it a Canadian flag similarly all a-flutter, and behind it is a picture of Che about twenty by thirty feet, with the slogan: Hasta la Victoria Siempre. Somewhere around here there is a well-known Canadian-Cuban nickel-cobalt mining venture (Cuban-owned, Canadian-operated, formerly owned and operated by Freeport of Louisiana but expropriated in 1959), but surely raw nickel couldn’t be mistaken for cocoa. There’s a huge reservoir full of something, and several others in the background, with green pipelines leading out from them. The soil around the vats is a chocolate colour. But there is no chocolate smell in the air, no matter how hard I sniff.
A security guard with a gun in his holster looks as if he’s going to give me the business. He calms down and smiles when I tell him I’m a Canadian, but he still wants to know where I’m coming from and where I’m going. When I tell him – from Baracoa and to Holguín – he says this is not a thoroughfare, go back to the port and turn left. You came a little too far up, he adds. And then, charmingly, he apologizes – perhaps for not having the road properly signposted, perhaps for thinking I was a terrorist sniffing out places to bomb.
But then as I took off I did get a strong sudden whiff of chocolate in the air. And I could see that only one of the vats contained a cocoalike substance, the others seemed to contain clear water. One doesn’t think of a cocoa-refining plant being that large, but this one is.
Where do the U.S. chocolate bar manufacturers get their cocoa from. From Mars? I wouldn’t be surprised if they get it from countries that have imported it from Cuba. No wonder the United States is in financial trouble. All it has to do is accept one of Fidel’s numerous olive branches, then it can start trading straight with Cuba again. But big countries tend to carry big grudges for long periods of time, while little countries, though they may have a bit of a (chocolate) chip on their shoulder, tend to be very forgiving. Fidel could be won over in a flash. Everybody knows that. But winning Fidel over is not on the U.S. agenda. All they want to do is murder him over and over again. In Estela Bravo’s documentary film, Fidel, a reporter asks El Beardo how many attempts on his life have been made. Fidel looks very thoughtful for a long minute, as if counting, then gives up and says, “I’ll tell you when I get to heaven.”
Now it’s late afternoon. How long will it take to reach Holguín? Shadows are starting to obscure the potholes in the road, so that they become like sharks in the water. This could be a problem. So one must be ever vigilant regarding shadows on the road. That shadow could be concealing a deadly pothole. And is it true they’re called potholes because hippies used to hide their marijuana in them? Maybe not, but these potholes are so deep you could grow marijuana in them. And in Cuba, everywhere you turn it’s some magnificent new tree or flower you’ve never seen before. Just passed a group of five or six tall trees with huge white flowers, interspersed with a group of equally tall trees with bright orange flowers. And, towering over them all, a single royal palm.
I stop to stretch my legs and along comes a group of teens. They see me and start pointing to a sixteen-year-old girl in a white dress with a big smile on her dark brown face, with her big bright red lips. And they’re calling me over, as a stereotypical single male tourist, and saying, Here here here, she’s all yours. Take her! So I’m rubbing my hands together and licking my lips, pretending I want to take her away with me, and they don’t mind at all, and neither does she. I can take her wherever I want and it’s no disgrace to anyone. As long as she’s willing and has passed her fifteenth birthday. If they want to f**k foreigners to finance their future, they’re free to do so. Then along comes an Afro-Cuban daddy, his wife, his brother, an old horse, and two very handsome Afro-Cuban boys, identical twins, about eight years old. The boys were quietly listening as we grownups chatted. A couple of times I said “yes” rather than “sí.” One of the boys said “yes” out of the blue, just as an experiment in sound. Then he kept saying it over and over again, just because he liked the sound. Finally I laughed and called him “El Inglese!” Everyone laughed, so I pointed at his brother and said, “El Cubano!” Again more laughter, but this time the laughter was more serious, more hesitant, as if this might prove to be some kind of omen, some eerie precognition that foretold something that was going to happen to the two little guys when they grew up. Suddenly we all felt a bit spooked.
—
Holguín is a big city – population 200,000 people and a garbage truck, according to the tragically brilliant counter-revolutionary novelist Reinaldo Arenas. But in recent years the estimated population has leaped to 319,100. It’s very quiet in the suburbs this late at night. First impression was of a clean and well-maintained city of broad main streets and interesting art deco buildings. Arenas also referred to Holguín as “a town totally lacking in spiritual or architectural beauty.” But he felt that way about pretty well everything to do with Cuba.
I parked my car at the main square named after the nineteenth-century general Calixto García. Everything was open, with lots of music – but actual people seemed to have gone to bed early and all the main hotels were fully occupied. I was referred to the Hotel Turquino farther from the square, but there were no vacancies there either. A young woman with a warm smile earned a nice tip by walking me several blocks to a casa particulare. She told me Holguín was an extraordinarily difficult city to find your way around in. She couldn’t explain why, but even people who have lived here all their lives still get lost on a daily basis. It was like an ancient curse come true.
But the casa seemed just right and I decided to take it for two days. Then I went back to the main square to get my car and park it in their garage, as per their kind offer. But even though it was only a few blocks, I couldn’t find my way. I hailed a bicycle taxi and he got lost. He was a good cyclist, but he didn’t know his city well. Finally he got me to my car and I took off in it only to get lost myself almost immediately, in spite of my seemingly excellent map of the town. The casa was marked on the map to ensure I wouldn’t get lost, and I knew exactly where I was on the map at just about any given time. But somehow I couldn’t manage to get from where I was on the map to where the casa was on the map.
It was after midnight and I was so tired I hired a young fellow on a bicycle to guide me. He said he knew exactly where the place was. He asked if his chica could ride with me in my car and he would bicycle ahead and we could follow. He cycled very fast, like the wind, all over town, with his chica chatting amiably with me. She was twenty-three, very pretty, and with a shy look many young Cuban women adopt. She had very bad halitosis as if she had been eating something she had found at the side of the road.
Her friend soon had taken us from one end of town to the other several times, so I told him I’d find the place on my own if I could. He had no idea where the address was, even though I could see clearly on the map it was just a few blocks from the main square. So the chica got out, I paid him and continued searching on my own – without success. My hosts, who were keeping the light on for me, would be getting very tired, as was I.
After ten minutes I ran into the cyclist and his chica again. They were frantically flagging me down. The chica, who had been propositioning me in the car, apparently on orders from her boyfriend, who frankly didn’t seem smart enough to be a pimp, had left her keys in my car. She was overjoyed to get them back in her possession.
And then I found the place, all on my own. My hostess, Yoelkís, and her husband, a couple in their sixties, were standing outside, suspecting I was lost, and hoping to flag me down even though they had no idea what kind of car it would be, except probably a tourist rental car with TO on the licence plate.
DAY SEVENTEEN
AN AFTERNOON IN HOLGUÍN
Monday, March 1, 2004. El Parque Calixto García is paved with marble tiles about four feet by four feet. Some of them are coming up a bit, creating dangerous conditions for the roller skaters. Dozens of laughing children, in ordinary running shoes but with rollers attached, are zooming around and around the statue at top speed, but they seem to know the location of every loose tile, and they do an excellent job of negotiating disaster. I don’t know if the Cuban people get their fearlessness from Fidel or he gets it from them, but it’s everywhere.
The park is very crowded. A feeble older fellow walks by wearing a T-shirt saying, Old Men Marry Nurses. Excellent advice. Young men too. You never know when you’re going to need a little nursing, young or old. I never knew a man who regretted having married a nurse. There must be a hundred schoolkids in the park, some wearing mustard trousers or skirts, some in red trousers or skirts, with matching scarves and white blouses – and they are all randomly intermingled. But as soon as the teachers blow their whistles, all the mustards go to one teacher and all the reds go to another.
An Afro-Cuban woman is sitting next to me on a shady part of the long bench that goes all the way around the park. She starts talking about her hair. She says, “See, my hair is African,” and she has these long strings with beads on them that must consume at least an hour a day in maintenance time. “Most people just comb their hair, but I have to do this. I don’t know why, I just have to do it.” I told her it looked lovely and she was pleased. And I was pleased because something about me aroused her curiosity, and she wanted to know everything about me, seriously asking me personal questions in a very gentle and non-threatening way. She was trying to figure out what a guy from Toronto was doing in Holguín. So I told her I was on a tour, gathering impressions for a little poetic travelogue.
It turned out she’d seen me walking around the park and talking into my tape recorder, and she said, “You better watch out, the police will think you might be a spy, and will be interested in listening to your tapes.” I suddenly felt a bit foolish, and quickly put the tape recorder away. But I convinced her easily enough about my innocence, and so I felt I’d have no problem convincing the police likewise.
Three other Afro-Cuban women joined us, one close to nine months’ pregnant. When they found out how friendly I was, and that I had wheels, they suggested all four of us go up to Playa Guardalavaca – one of the more famous beaches on the north shore – for an afternoon swim in Bahía Naranjo. All four were making swimming motions to make sure I knew exactly what they meant. I told them I didn’t bring my bathing suit. They laughed and said don’t worry, they could find something for me. I can’t remember how I managed to get out of that without being too rude, but I managed somehow. It was tempting, they were very nice, I could pay for everything and it would still be a cheap date, and I was sure it would be a ton of fun, but I had visions of disaster. And so I declined. I liked these women a lot, they were beautiful, muy simpatico, full of joy, but for reasons I don’t understand I told them I was on a tight schedule and had to move on.
—
Among the numerous schoolchildren, with their teachers shepherding them around, many seem to have eye problems. In one class of about fourteen kids, four of them had bandages over their eyes – freshly applied medical patches. And there were several such groups of kids milling around with their teachers. And one girl was completely blind: she didn’t have any patches over her eyes, was staring off into nothingness, and the teacher was escorting her by hand. It’s a cool breezy day and even though she was blind, whenever she felt her skirt was going to fly up with the breeze she made sure her hand was there to keep herself from becoming overly exposed to the sight of others. She was about twelve, but close to six feet tall and with pure white hair and pale skin.
The wind did blow the skirt of an older woman in her midtwenties way up, and she “forgot” to hold it down. Before I could avert my eyes I saw all the way to her belly button, and she looked very astonished, and I looked very astonished, then she turned away with the cutest little smile. A sexy moment. She was quite happy about it happening, and you could tell she was only pretending to be shocked and surprised.
There are at least three large two-storey departmentlike peso stores around this park. I was looking for a string for my eyeglasses but couldn’t find one. The saleswomen just shook their heads no. One woman wearing glasses with a string on them gave me a very conscious smug look when she refused to sell me her string, as if she was pleased that she had one and I didn’t; furthermore, I must be the cheesiest tourist of the day for even asking, and what kind of a cheapskate is this guy for trying such a trick in a peso store. But I did take my belt off and had a fresh hole punched in it by a young leather worker who refused to take my money. It’s hard to beat the security of knowing that your pants won’t fall down as you walk down the street. For those with U.S. dollars there is no real shortage of food in Cuba, but with the heat and all, I’ve been abstemious in the extreme on this trip, and the flab from head to toe has been melting off me. I’m skinnier than I’ve been since I bought this belt ten years ago, and it feels good. The less blubber we have to carry around the happier we have to be. Also it can’t be good for the soul to gorge yourself on three-course meals when all around you are people who can only afford to nosh.
The kids in this park are full of unalloyed joy, delightful spontaneity, and unsurpassed innocence – even the ones with eye problems. Anything that moves in the wind, from a tissue to a cola can, the boys have to stop it with their feet and play soccer with it. Two kids right now, believe it or not, are playing soccer with a stiff little leaf that has fallen from a laurel tree, although they prefer to play with an unsquashed can if they can find one, but these seem to be in short supply, so they will settle for a squashed one. But now and then a plastic beer cup, unsquashed, will appear out of nowhere and a new game of soccer will ensue.
A grungy old lonesome guy came by, and he was going along the perimeter benches, stopping at every person and asking for a handout. The entire park is ringed with benches, as with most of the central squares in the larger towns and cities sprinkled here and there randomly around Cuba. He was getting the occasional handout. I churlishly told him no, so he very cutely pretended he was going to hang himself with some of the Sentería artifacts on an old leather cord around his neck. Oh all right, I said, and gave him a little brown coin, with a picture of Che on one side and a five-pointed star on the other. The guy next to me, a male sex tourist from Italy, gave him substantially more, maybe to impress his beautiful Afro-Cuban amiga. And the supplicant then tried to throw his unwashed arms around him and give him a big wet kiss, causing the Italian to squirm out of the way, saying, “No, no, no. ¡Vamos!”
A white kid and a black kid, both wearing sleeveless T-shirts with number 10 on the front and SATISFACTION on the back, were kickboxing for a while, but now they have reverted to ordinary boxing. The white kid is much smaller, but he’s lightning fast. Now they’ve stopped boxing and are reviewing the few strategic moves they’ve picked up so far, such as how to know when to bob and when to weave. Soccer and the martial arts are the perfect sports for the poor countries of the world: no sports require less equipment. Parents invest obscene amounts of money in outfitting their kids for hockey in Canada.
“Boxing is well suited to the Cuban character: we are brave, resolute, selfless,” says Alcides Sagarra, a coach at Cuba’s National Boxing School in Havana. There was an interview with him in a recent report from Reuters. “We have strong convictions and clear definition. We are pugnacious and we like to fight, to win. We are training to take all eleven gold medals in Athens. Thinking small doesn’t give results.”
Alcides must have received a huge jolt of inspiration in 2002, when Cuba’s wrestling team won all seven gold medals at the Pan-American Games in Santo Domingo, restricting the U.S. team to four silvers.
—
The statue of General Calixto is dated 1912. He looks a bit like Teddy Roosevelt, leaning on his sword,
and with a long moustache. But strangely, from this distance, it looks as if he’s wet his pants – his crotch area is all dark and greasy while the rest of him is white as chalk. The plaque on the side has been torn off, also a plaque on the other side has gone the way of all plaques. But the one on the front is still there for now.
I’ve been walking around the park, being pestered by touts who want to sell me cigars, and trying to avoid the extremely beautiful, well-dressed, bright-as-blazes street hookers who are just trying to make ends meet, so to speak. They snuggle right up to you, and touch you intimately, and tell you about a little casa particulare that wasn’t very particular, and where the two of you could go, and they ask what sort of things you like. I asked one very comely and intelligent young woman: Where is your boyfriend? Is he watching us right now? She said nothing but shyly looked over to a handsome young fellow sitting on a bench watching us with a big smile on his face.
Then she became very nervous and abruptly walked away for about ten paces, then turned around and beckoned me to follow her, at a safe distance. Apparently she saw a police officer heading toward us, looking as if he was going to tear the heart out of our budding relationship. She said that kind of thing happens all the time. Personal enrichment is what the charge is called, and it seems that the less well off you are the more you are likely to get punished for it. But it’s not nearly as bad as it was ten years ago, when it was common to be thrown in jail for operating a restaurant out of your home (called a paladare), even on the most occasional basis. Fidel still doesn’t approve of that kind of home cooking, so it’s said, but at least he’s been convinced it has to be allowed, and although Fidel has often been called a Stalinist by his enemies, I don’t think it was possible to get Stalin to change his mind about anything. Fidel is constantly changing his mind as his thoughts evolve, and the thoughts of the Cuban people evolve.
An Innocent in Cuba Page 21