Cuba Diaries
An American Housewife in Havana
by Isadora Tattlin
A Shannon Ravenel Book
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
For “Thea” and “Jimmie,”
our good-natured fellow travelers
Contents
Introduction
The First School Year
The Second School Year
The Third School Year
The Fourth School Year
Epilogue
Map of Cuba
Glossary
Principal Characters
Introduction
IN THE EARLY AND mid-1990s, Cuba suffered several major setbacks. The first, in 1990, was the abrupt withdrawal of economic subsidies by the Soviet Union following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Cuba, which was being subsidized by the Soviet Union at the rate of $3 million a day (it is estimated), entered economic free fall. The value of the peso dropped from 1 peso to the dollar to 140 pesos to the dollar. Gasoline, transport, food, and material goods were in dramatically short supply, and Cuba entered what was defined by Fidel Castro as its periodo especial en tiempo de paz, or “special period in time of peace,” a time in which the Cuban people were asked to endure shortages for the sake of the survival of the socialist revolution while their government adjusted to new realities.
In 1993, in an attempt to stem the economic free fall and to put more hard currency in circulation, the possession of dollars by average Cuban individuals, which until then had been illegal, was decriminalized. Dollar stores containing goods that before then had been available only to foreigners were opened to Cubans as well. Foreign investment of up to 49 percent in manufacturing, agriculture, and the tourist industry was encouraged and facilitated.
Legalization of the dollar and foreign investment, however, were not timely enough to prevent the balsero crisis of 1994, in which tens of thousands of Cubans took to the Straits of Florida in anything that floated and were not impeded by Cuban authorities. This led to a change in the U.S.-Cuba emigration accords. Cubans leaving Cuba for the United States were no longer welcomed as political refugees but classified as economic migrants and required to undergo the same screenings as economic migrants from other countries.
Further liberalizations of the economy included the opening, in 1994, of agropecuarios, or fruit, vegetable, lamb, and pork markets, in which farmers, who had been obliged to produce only for government entities, could now sell on the open market a portion beyond what they produced for the government. Cuban shoppers no longer had to rely solely on undersupplied bodegas, or neighborhood food stores, where Cubans shopped for subsidized basics with ration books. Agropecuarios brought variety to Cubans’ diets and helped to alleviate malnutrition, which was beginning to take hold in the provinces. Self-employed workers, or cuentapropistas, such as manicurists, shoe repairmen, seamstresses, tire repairmen, piñata makers, or rent-a-clowns for children’s parties, were allowed to operate. Paladares, or private restaurants in peoples’ houses, were legalized.
The downside to legalization of the dollar and liberalization of the economy was (and continues to be) the rise of inequality between Cubans with access to dollars and Cubans possessing only pesos. The relationship between salaries became skewed. People in less-skilled jobs but in daily contact with foreigners, such as domestic servants for foreign families, hotel workers, and taxi drivers, made salaries up to twenty times greater than the pesos-only salaries of doctors and engineers.
The early and mid-1990s saw social liberalizations as well. Gays no longer faced active discrimination. In 1992, the Cuban National Assembly changed the definition of Cuba from an atheist state to a lay state. Those who openly professed religious affiliations no longer faced professional or political ostracism, and a surge in church attendance occurred. Artists, musicians, playwrights, and writers were allowed to travel more freely. More and more tourists visited Cuba, which put more and more Cubans in contact with foreigners. In 1998, the pope visited Cuba.
My family and I arrived in Cuba at this time of liberalization and of opening. It lasted until the Miami-based Hermanos al Rescate airplanes were shot down by the Cuban Air Force for an alleged incursion into Cuban airspace. The result was a tightening of the U.S. embargo by way of the Helms-Burton Bill, signed into law in 1996. Subsequent developments (with the exception of the visit of the pope) witnessed, for the most part, stepped-up repression on the part of the Cuban government and a contraction on the part of Cuban society.
It is still difficult to gauge, at the vantage point of a few years, how intentional or foreseeable the results of the Cuban government’s liberalizations in the early and mid-1990s were. Foreign investment was encouraged, dollars were legalized, some categories of cuentapropistas were permitted or tolerated, and agropecuarios were opened as direct decisions of the government. Further developments, however, in which it appeared that average Cubans seemed to be taking the reins of society in their own hands, seem not to have been intended, and seem to have been the result of the government’s inability, for a brief but raucous lag time, to integrate the myriad ripple effects of its liberalizations with the goals of socialism.
It is this rowdy, ambiguous, ironic, and sometimes even exhilarating time that, the longer we lived there, the more I felt the compulsion to document. It was a time that seemed to be defining itself as a time, unique in itself, which would not and could not last, but which called out to be preserved, in memory and on paper. Every day was extraordinary.
Our identities and the identities of most Cubans and others have been disguised for protection. Criticism of the government or of its leadership is punishable by imprisonment of up to thirty years. The Cuban government remains the principal employer of the population. Activities that are perfectly legal in most countries, such as the buying and selling of goods and services from and by individuals, were and are in some instances permitted by the government; in other instances not permitted but tolerated (with the limits of toleration constantly shifting); but in most instances neither permitted nor tolerated—neither permitted nor tolerated at the time of our living there, and neither permitted nor tolerated now—and can lead to loss of employment, fines, and imprisonment.
My husband’s generous salary, a small legacy from my own family, and the low cost of goods and services in Cuba allowed us to live in a style far more grandiose than the style to which we are accustomed. Because of the low cost of living, nondiplomatic foreigners in Cuba with even modest incomes can afford to rent spacious houses (either discreetly, from private sources, or less discreetly, from the government) and have one or two domestic servants. Nondiplomatic foreigners are generally the employees of foreign companies; some foreigners, however, do manage to maintain houses in Cuba as vacation homes. The low cost of living is one reason foreigners have servants; the other reason is that the spacious houses foreigners rent, though start-of-the-art in the 1950s, are no longer chock-full of smoothly running labor-saving devices nor served by an efficient infrastructure. One or two servants, at least, were necessary during the time we lived there if a resident foreigner wanted to do something more with his day than coax more life out of a forty-five-year-old Kenmore refrigerator or spend half a day on the telephone trying to get a tanker truck to come to fill his cistern, the aqueduct leading to the cistern having not been patched since 1957.
I am a U.S. citizen, born and raised in the United States. I hold a U.S. passport, but I also hold an “X——ian” passport, acquired after my marriage to my husband, to facilitate my moving around the globe with him. Our children hold both U.S. and X——ian passports. Though the United States maintains a forty-year-old embargo against Cuba, which bars most U.S. citizens from traveling in Cuba, Cuba maintains normal diploma
tic relations with most other Western countries. My children and I used our “X——ian” passports for entering and leaving Cuba. We presented U.S. passports to U.S. immigration officials when entering the United States. This was perfectly legal for us, as X——ians and Americans, to do. Though I at times, especially in the beginning, played down my norteamericana identity and played up my X——ian identity, thinking that Cubans would feel less inhibited in expressing themselves about the United States if I did that, I never did attempt to hide the fact that I was norteamericana and soon discovered that the fact of my being norteamericana, far from being inhibiting, was, more often than not, a source of curiosity and at times even delight.
My editor has asked me to write a word about religion. It would take another book—and there are in fact many books—to describe the vast range of religious expression in Cuba. In spite of Cuba’s having defined itself until 1992 as an atheist state, Cuba is a deeply religious country. This is the product not only of its traditions, but also, I believe, of its astounding physical beauty, which compels you to marvel at the virtuosity of the Creator at every turn of a country road or every glimpse of a ceiba tree.
Catholicism and Santeria are the predominant religions of Cuba. Santeria is the blending of Catholicism with the polytheistic beliefs of West Africa, brought to Cuba by West African slaves.
In the attempt to make Cuba’s slaves Catholic, the worship of West African gods, or orishas, was forbidden by early Spanish colonists. The resourceful slaves continued to worship their orishas, however, while appearing to be Catholics by masking their orishas as Catholic saints. Female saints often became stand-ins for male orishas, and male saints often became stand-ins for female orishas, in order to mask them more thoroughly. Hence Santa Barbara, who in Catholicism is the protectress of powder magazines, stands for Changó, the orisha of thunder and war.
In Santeria, the message of Jesus is amplified by the inexorable forces of nature (as represented by the orishas) and of fate. Each Santeria devotee has his or her chosen orisha, to whom he or she makes offerings and obeyances. Babalaos, or Santeria priests, are consulted regularly for guidance and knowledge of the future. The predictions of a council of babalaos, made on the first day of every year and circulated on photocopied sheets throughout Cuba, are read with intense interest by practically all Cubans.
Santeria is not solely the religion of Afro-Cubans. A growing number of Cubans of European descent not only listen to the New Year’s predictions of babalaos but follow Santeria with varying degrees of adherence. Cubans of all shades can be seen wearing beads in the colors of their orishas.
In addition to conducting religious services, the Catholic Church is active as a source of medicines and as a caregiver, especially of the elderly, in Catholic homes run by nuns and priests. Though Catholic schools are not allowed, the Catholic Church is increasingly active in after-school programs and in adult classes in a variety of subjects. People in all sectors of society pay attention to Catholic publications and the sermons of outspoken priests, as they are among the few (though limited) alternatives to government messages.
All faiths in Cuba respect the mysticism and power of La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (The Virgin of the Charity of Cobre). Cobre means copper, and it is also the name of a town where a shrine to her was built, in the middle of a copper-mining region. According to popular legend, three fishermen were caught in a dangerous storm in a small boat in Nipe Bay in the year 1628. In some versions of the story, the three men in the boat were a Native American, a Spaniard, and an African slave, representing the three races of Cuba. Just as they began to believe they were doomed, a small statue of a mulata Madonna came floating to them across the water on some wooden planks. Though there was a storm, the statue of the Madonna and the dress clothing her were dry. In her left arm she held the infant Jesus, and in her right arm, a cross. On the wooden planks on which she was floating were written the words, “I am the Virgin of Charity.”
At the entrance to the church in Cobre is a vast display of ex-votos, medals, photos, offerings, and other testimonials from those who have been helped or healed by their faith in the power of La Caridad. The Nobel Prize of Ernest Hemingway, which Hemingway left as an offering to La Caridad, is also there (but kept locked, at the time of this writing, in a closet for safekeeping, after the brief theft of it several years ago).
La Caridad’s Santeria counterpart is Ochún, the orisha of femininity and of rivers. According to the The Orishas of Cuba, by Natalia Bolivar Arostegui, a Cuban anthropologist and expert on Santeria, Ochún “is the symbol of flirtation, grace and feminine sexuality.” In Cuba, “she is represented as a beautiful mulata who is kind, a good dancer, likes parties and is always happy.”
Ochún “can also resolver anything.”
I will not translate for you at this point the meaning of the word resolver. Though you can guess its superficial meaning, the full, Cuban meaning (amplified by vicissitudes, just as La Caridad herself is amplified by Ochún) is for you to discover in the following diary.
August 2001
The First School Year
I. 1
Call me Isadora.
Nick says, “What about Cuba?”
“What do you mean, ‘What about Cuba?’”
“What about being there for a few years? L. proposed it.”
L. is Nick’s boss. “Are you kidding me?”
“What do you think?”
I cannot speak. I am thinking about how I have said to Nick sometimes that it would be nice to be a little closer to the United States on Nick’s next assignment. It was as if some overly zealous fairy godmother had heard me. Either that, or I had not specified enough when I made my wish. You have to be careful with those wishes, for they can come true.
“Cuba?”
“How about it?”
“I . . . I just don’t know. When do we have to get back to them?”
“This afternoon.”
One hour later, I’m in the station wagon, going to pick my six-year-old up from school, and suddenly I’m not there anymore but under my desk during bomb drill, staring at the red rubber soles of Jonathan Muller’s Buster Browns. It’s California, 1962. Something about the Cubans, the Russians, and nuclear missiles pointed directly at Saint Stephen’s School. People with beards are very dangerous. Also, panic buying in the supermarket. Cans of chicken noodle soup smashed, lying on the floor. Soon after that, it is determined that the fifth grade should stop learning French and start learning Spanish. A big Cuban boy appears at school. Carlos. But he is the nice kind, we are told, not the mean kind, who want to bomb us. He does not know any English but quickly learns to say, “Shadap.” His mother comes, too, to teach us Spanish. She has long black leg hairs smushed under her stockings and a mole hidden in the fold of her double chin, which pops out when she looks up at the clock, so that we can hardly get past the “Yo soy, tu eres,” so much are we waiting for that mole. The other teachers cannot speak about her among themselves without making violiny sounds with their voices. She had to hide her wedding ring in her shoe to get out of Cuba. I picture people leaving Cuba with little circles printed on the soles of their feet, tiny holes gouged by diamonds.
Cuba. Now I find myself breathing fast, and I have a racing feeling up and down my arms, which is what happens whenever I have to move or do anything new. I don’t like doing new things. I don’t like traveling and living in weird places. I would have been happy to sit in my loft in New York City for the next hundred years, except that there were no men in New York who were not married or gay. I had to go to another city to find Nick, and then he had to be a foreigner, and not a foreigner from a standard country, like France, but one from a weird little country, X——, and not even a foreigner who stayed in one place, but an energy consultant for a multinational corporation, Energy Consulting International (gas, electric, geothermal, hydro, solar, wind: everything but nuclear he’ll tell you how to produce in the most efficient way), who stays a few years in one co
untry, then moves to another. So I keep on having to do new things and keep on traveling and living in weird places, being married to Nick. He makes me do it, only this time, it’s more new somehow, more racing-feeling-up-my-arms making. Cuba really is scary: it’s not just me.
I see the bright blue South China Sea coming up ahead of the station wagon and realize how clean past the six-year-old’s school I’ve gone.
I. 2
A friend of ours who lived in Cuba tells me on the phone that I really won’t have to spend my time in Cuba hunting for this item and that item because if it’s not in the Diplomercado, they just don’t have it, and that’s that. The Diplomercado, our friend explains, or “Diplomarket,” is a supermarket in Havana, more plentifully stocked than other markets, and with higher-quality goods, where, until the legalization of the dollar in 1993, only diplomats or other foreigners (who were the only people with access to dollars) could shop. It is now open to anyone with dollars. If you really get desperate for something, and it’s not in the Diplomercado, our friend explains, you have to go find it in another country. One time, he says, he flew to Mexico to buy a toilet seat. He has heard, though, that the material situation is changing, and that there are more stores opening and you can find more stuff around.
I read that in the city of Trinidad, a perfectly preserved Spanish colonial town that has been declared a world monument by UNESCO, housewives stand in doorways asking for soap from passing tourists in the gathering dusk.
I have three months to get our supplies in before we pack and leave.
I. 3
Our shopping list for Cuba, to be packed in the container with our clothes and furniture and sent to Cuba for free by Nick’s company:
18 gallons Clorox
3 dozen boxes gallon-size Ziploc freezer bags
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