It was a shaggy dog story that had grown legs, if not paws. Havana and I were featured on ABC and Univision, and stories about Havana (the dog) were in hundreds of local newspapers across the United States, proving that there is nothing as good as a woman-bites-dog story. Plus, it provided amusing insights into life in Cuba, giving me an opportunity to poke fun at the regime and share stories about how restricted life in Cuba is for everyone, including diplomats. But I expressed doubt that this was an intergovernmental spat, pointing out that, as far as I knew, Amalia Castro was upset because my dog Havana was beating out her hounds in the dog show competition.
Undoubtedly realizing that he had been outperformed, Fidel decided to curb the negative publicity. He did so by grandly announcing to a visiting former US military general that “I’m going to give her husband’s dog a pardon.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to admit that he was pardoning my hound, not my husband’s. The next morning, Dagoberto Rodríguez Barrera, Cuba’s director of North American affairs, called to officially confirm the pardon. Fidel Castro, the president of Cuba and the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, had pardoned the American envoy’s Afghan hound!
A few days later the villainous Amalia Castro and the six-person board of the Afghan Hound Association sent me a letter that read, “It has come to our attention through the international foreign media that there has been a distortion of the letter sent to you. … We wish to clarify that at no point in the letter did we talk about expulsion … rather, this was a matter of patriotism.” This meant that only I had been expelled—not the lovely Havana! Still, Amalia conceded that Havana had been “slandered,” and, “We wish to pay an homage of amends to the beautiful and exemplary daughter of Hassan [Havana’s sire].” Asked for a reaction, the State Department spokesman said, “Woof, woof.”
Havana’s tale was also a story about her trainer, Ana Maria, whose keen intelligence and Afro-Cuban heritage had brought her to the attention of the government when she was young. Identified as a promising student and potential loyalist, she was sent to school on the Isla de Juventud (Island of Youth) where Castro built schools for foreign students. Each block-like structure housed five hundred students from foreign countries, among them Ethiopia, Namibia, South Africa, and the Soviet Union. Fidel had a special interest in the island because he and the survivors of the aborted attack on the 1953 Moncada Barracks had once been imprisoned there for nineteen months. At that time it was known as the Isla de Pinos for its large pine trees. There, among the many foreign students, Ana Maria learned to throw the javelin and qualified for a scholarship to study computers at Patrice Lumumba University outside Moscow.
Ana Maria and other Afro-Cubans had benefited from the government’s efforts to improve the lives of its black population by providing educational opportunities. Nevertheless, Cuban society remains highly attuned to color. All shades of Cubans live together in the same apartment buildings and housing projects, and there is considerable intermarriage among them, but prejudice remains. Cubans describe each other by the shade of their skin and whether they have curly or straight hair. They will draw two fingers across their wrist to indicate—without having to say it—that someone is black. Habaneros generally look down on darker skinned Cubans from the east. There are only a few blacks in the top ranks of the Council of Ministers, and high-level political leaders in Cuba are mostly lighter skinned.
Blacks are generally poorer then lighter-skinned Cubans. I never met an Afro-Cuban who owned a show dog; to feed, groom, and train a purebred hound, an owner had to be sufficiently well-off. Ana Maria couldn’t afford the care of a show dog on her wage of about twelve dollars (in Cuban pesos) per month. She had been raised in one of Havana’s poorer barrios and would have never left the small house she shared with her mother, far from the center of the city, had she not been extremely ambitious and courageous.
Ana Maria aspired to a better life and was willing to take big risks to get it. A dog whisperer, she demonstrated her uncanny ability to train police dogs before moving on to show dogs. When I met Ana Maria, her clients included the owners of Havana’s sire, Alina and Jaime, as well as a colonel at the Ministry of the Interior. Working for me initially changed Ana Maria’s life for the better. I introduced her to the Swiss ambassador and another American diplomat who both paid her in dollars for training their dogs. This arrangement made Ana Maria rich by Cuban standards, leading her to quit her job as a computer technician with an Italian firm that paid her in pesos. The only downside of working for me was that Cuban state security—the Ministry of the Interior—did not approve. Within a week, state security stopped and questioned Ana Maria. This was standard practice for any Cuban who dared associate with me.
Alina and Jaime had been questioned after they were seen talking with me at the Jose Martí International Airport. I had been fascinated with their beautiful Afghan, Hassan, and I asked them to contact me if they had a litter in the future. In typical Cuban entrepreneurial fashion Alina had brought Hassan to the airport hoping to find a foreigner with dollars who wanted to buy puppies. They called the next day to offer me a puppy for two hundred dollars, which was a good deal for me but a significant sum for a Cuban. They also asked me why state security had stopped and questioned them. I told them who I was and explained that security officials not only followed me but questioned Cubans who came in contact with me. I assured them I would buy a puppy and asked if they could recommend a trainer, which was how Ana Maria and Havana became part of my life.
Ana Maria followed my advice and answered state security’s questions honestly; there was nothing she could tell them that my Cuban household staff had not already divulged. A few weeks later I asked Ana Maria to stay at the residence to care for Havana while I traveled around the island with my family. A day or two after I departed, security officers picked her up in the narrow back alley between my house and Castro’s fortified residence that doubles as a military barracks. I suspected the security officers were annoyed because Ana Maria’s presence in the house while I was away would have prevented them from checking or installing listening and video devices. They warned her not to return to the residence. Fearing to leave Havana with no one to look after her, she disobeyed them and returned to the residence to collect Havana and take her to her own home. It was brave of Ana Maria to defy state security. I was grateful, but they were not pleased.
Ana Maria’s life was changing fast. This was her chance to have a champion dog and make a decent living. She asked me to register Havana in both our names, believing that if she were a co-owner the organizers could not exclude Havana from the dog shows simply because she belonged to me, the regime’s number one enemy on the island. Ana Maria was wise to suspect that the dog show hierarchy might use the fact that I owned Havana as an excuse to rid itself of the competition. But she also had another problem: the more time she spent training Havana the unhappier state security became. What they disliked was her continual presence in the residence. The other staff was thoroughly vetted and provided to me through the state employment agency. Ministry of the Interior officials likely feared that Ana Maria, a keen observer of humans as well as dogs, would inform me of who among the staff was an informant. Moreover, Ana Maria set a bad example for the staff, because she could come and go as she wished, and it was becoming increasingly clear that she neither feared nor respected the state security agents. I worried that a confrontation was coming, but was surprised by the cleverness of the attack—I was informed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that I had illegally hired Ana Maria and that she would have to immediately leave the job. It was true that I had not hired her through the state employment agency, which provides Cuban workers to all foreign entities, embassies, and hotels—but had instead hired her directly. I also paid her in dollars, which was another infraction of the rules.
Ana Maria was a fighter. She liked her new life and the opportunities it offered. As co-owner of the lovely Havana, this was her big chance to have a prized show dog and perhaps one
day realize her dream of becoming a renowned trainer. Determined not to lose this opportunity, Ana Maria obtained the list of jobs that the government has authority to fill, and dog trainer was not among them. She gleefully shared the news with me: I now had a good excuse to reject the government’s order to fire her. I invited Dagoberto, the Cuban official with whom I usually dealt on all but the most sensitive issues, to lunch so I could argue our case. I pointed out that Ana Maria worked for the Swiss ambassador and another American diplomat, so she should be able to work for me. He remained unconvinced. Then I made Ana Maria’s point that dog trainer was not included among the jobs that the government alone was authorized to fill. Dagoberto, a reasonable man who stuck closely to the rules, was impressed with this argument. He conceded that for the time being Ana Maria could continue to work for me.
As a result of working for me, Ana Maria began to see the Cuban government through my eyes. Although she was apolitical, she happily sought out opportunities to exercise her independence that would test but not actually provoke the authorities. Until she met me she had no idea that there were dissidents, learning about them only when I advised her to stay away from the house because I didn’t want her to be associated with a lunch I was hosting for independent journalists. She was impressed that I would stand up to the Cuban government because no one on the island did so without suffering severe consequences. There were also consequences for me, but they weren’t severe because I was a diplomat and a foreigner, a fact that Ana Maria sometimes forgot when she rebelled. Although Ana Maria was as defiant as the dissidents, she wasn’t interested in publicly protesting the government. Her desire was simply to act independently, but in Cuba that often meant confronting the government, whose expectations were that every individual would behave in accordance with established norms. Ana Maria wanted to emulate my willingness to ignore the petty rules and do as she wished, but I had the power of the US government behind me, and she did not.
Ana Maria couldn’t resist making sure that her competitors knew that she worked for the jefa (chief) of the US Interests Section. She delighted in bringing my husband Bob or me to the dog shows, if for no other reason than to introduce us to the colonel who owned Havana’s sister and to Amalia Castro, the president of the Afghan Hound Association. It is hard to say to what degree our problems originated with state security, the colonel who feared even to shake hands with me, or Amalia. The colonel and Amalia were unhappy that Havana took prizes away from their Afghan hounds. And state security resented the fact that I had outmaneuvered them and continued to employ Ana Maria, who clearly had no respect for them.
Ana Maria provided me with all manner of insights into Cuban life. With her at my side, I could pass for a Cubana so long as I kept quiet so no one would hear my American accent. We walked all over the city with Havana, around El Laguito, the upscale prerevolutionary housing development where Elián González’s family had lived for a time, and through popular barrios on the other side of Havana Bay. We struck up conversations with kids who wanted to pet Havana and with people sitting in parks. I saw how difficult life was for most Cubans, who despite having little hope for the future could always make fun of themselves and their leader—without mentioning his name, of course.
Life was tough even for the dog owners. On one occasion, dogs and their owners from Camaguey arrived wet and bedraggled for the show. They had all endured a long rainy day sitting in the back of a flatbed truck. Transportation was scarce for everyone, but especially those who were accompanied by large dogs. Even the Ministry of the Interior colonel had difficulties. His hound, a beautiful silver-gray Afghan, had become increasingly aggressive. In Ana Maria’s opinion, the problem was that he kept her locked up in a windowless room. His home was small and he didn’t have the resources to pay someone to walk the dog regularly, but he wasn’t about to give up his prizewinning dog. Everyone, from the Afghan owners in Camaguey to the colonel, Amalia, and Ana Maria enjoyed presenting their dogs to the judges from Canada, Mexico, and Spain. It was an adventure, an escape from a life of prescribed monotony.
It seemed as if Ana Maria’s dream might come true. The champion dogs, including Havana, were invited to represent Cuba at an international dog show in Mexico City. Ana Maria applied and received a passport, but then she was denied an exit visa. Ana Maria suspected that Amalia had intervened with the authorities, recommending that Ana Maria not be allowed to travel to Mexico with the others. After all, it would be embarrassing if the Cuban champion turned out to be Havana, a hound owned by the top American official in Cuba.
I was not a good role model for Ana Maria. I got away with confronting the Cuban hierarchy, ignoring various rules, and supporting the dissidents. The more Ana Maria accompanied me, the more daring she became. State security was becoming increasingly annoyed. One of her offenses occurred when I returned from the United States with a new very short haircut. Seeing someone who looked like my daughter, Alexandra, who had short hair, driving the official car, my minders, who were never far away, ran their little white Lada right up next to the official sedan, which I was driving. As they began taking photographs, which presumably they would use to blackmail me for breaking my government’s rules by allowing my daughter to drive the car, I turned and looked at them. Shocked to see me, not my daughter, they quickly stowed their cameras and dropped back, but not before seeing Ana Maria, who was sitting in the passenger seat, heartily laughing at them for their mistake.
My transgressions were adding up. I had broken into a meeting of senior officials at the airport, held an alternative art exhibit during the Biennial, and was carrying out an increasingly aggressive outreach program to assist the dissidents. No Cuban, least of all one that had the audacity to laugh at them, should be allowed to associate with me. I had no doubt that my minders were fed up.
Thus, shortly after the embarrassing media spectacle during which Fidel was compelled to “pardon” Havana, Ana Maria was informed that she would have to submit to an acto de repudio (act of repudiation), a humiliating event that is usually only used by the regime against dissidents. Ana Maria would be forced to sit and listen while her fellow association members enumerated and criticized her presumed faults. The event was similar to a tribunal pronouncing a prison sentence for a counterrevolutionary.
Ana Maria always had an abundance of courage, but now she feared she would never again be allowed to train dogs. If she could not follow her passion, she would be miserable and left without a source of income. Her friends would fear to support her, lest they also be subject to retaliation. I, too, was shaken. Dissidents who were subjected to an acto de repudio were spit on and beaten up; a poet had been made to eat her poetry and dragged down the stairs of her apartment building. The regime claimed that these were spontaneous events organized by neighbors who were disgusted with antisocial behavior. Although Ana Maria’s shaming would likely not be violent, the consequences would be disastrous. She would be humiliated, intimidated, isolated, and never allowed to show dogs again. She would also never be able to work in an official job and would in several respects become a nonperson.
I was furious. I couldn’t let this happen, especially because I felt responsible. I called Dagoberto, who by now was probably doing his best to forget he had anything to do with the embarrassing Afghan hound incident. I told him that if the Cuban government wanted to fight a second round, I was ready and willing. I would inform the international press corps about the proposed acto de repudio and would make sure they understood that Ana Maria was being targeted as a scapegoat. I reminded Dagoberto that I had made clear to the media that the original incident was not government sponsored; however, if the government was going to punish Ana Maria, I would make sure the media knew that the Cuban government treats its own people worse than dogs. Dagoberto did not have to check with his bosses; he assured me that there would be no acto de repudio. Ana Maria and Havana returned to the ring and won even more ribbons. But after I left Cuba, Ana Maria had no protection and state security struck
again. They attempted to revoke the exit visa she had recently obtained for a visit to the United States. Without a second thought, she boarded a plane to the United States before the order went into effect.
Today Ana Maria is an American citizen, but leaving Cuba was not easy. She made a difficult choice, as do tens of thousands of Cubans each year. She left because she justifiably feared she would be marginalized, barred from her profession, and unable to find employment. Far too many Cubans face the same difficult choice. Some, like Ana Maria, flee because they fear persecution and marginalization, but most leave in search of better lives.
In order to provide a legal way to immigrate to the States as well as reunite families and protect those who are persecuted, an INS refugee processing center in Havana provided refugee visas to those who qualified. Many of those who successfully applied were internally displaced rebels and their families who had fought against the revolution until the mid-1960s. After their victory, the government forcibly relocated these rebels from Trinidad, a town in the verdant mountainous region near Cienfuegos, to encampments in flat, hot, and dry western Cuba. On a road trip to the western tip of the island, I saw the chain-link fences that surrounded these communities. Over thirty years later, these former rebels and their children were still kept segregated, though perhaps a better word would be imprisoned. But most Cubans are neither refugees like the displaced and abused former rebels nor part of the dissident community.
The consular section issued immigrant visas for those who were not refugees, if they were fortunate enough to either win a spot in the international or special Cuba visa lottery or have close relatives in the United States. Otherwise they must decide whether to flee or remain in Cuba. The Wet Foot–Dry Foot policy which allowed Cubans who made it to US soil remain in the States, tempted Cubans to attempt the hazardous journey across the Florida Straits in an unsafe vessel or pay a smuggler with a fast boat. Using a smuggler, who was often paid several thousand dollars by a relative in Miami, was generally safer and more likely to succeed. But there were no guarantees; some migrants are killed, abandoned by the smuggler, or never make it to the border, where then can declare themselves Cuban and freely enter the United States.
Our Woman in Havana Page 15