Away from the sea, the Trio showed little interest in Havana, being too young to be excited by its architectural glories, its web of historical associations or its proliferating political question marks. They had long been looking forward to stamina-testing expeditions so now it seemed only fair to move on to the undeveloped (so far) Oriente coast.
Candida and Pedro were adamant that a train journey, our preferred option, would involve cruelty to children. We must do it the tourist way, in a comfortable overnight Viazul coach to Santiago de Cuba. Like most casas particulares hostesses, Candida repeatedly exerted herself for her guests beyond the call of duty. Having rung the Viazul office to book our seats, she organised a cut-price taxi to the terminus and arranged for us to lodge in Santiago with her old friend Irma.
Chapter 3
Capital cities and ‘the next biggest’ tend not to love one another: London and Birmingham, Rome and Milan, Dublin and Cork, Havana and Santiago. Doubtless social anthropologists (maybe psychologists too?) have secured lavish grants to study this phenomenon but in the Cuban case one needs only to know a little history. Santiago was founded as the capital of Spain’s new island colony – a very long time ago, but Santiago hasn’t forgotten.
When Diego Velazquez de Cuellar came upon a desirable natural port at the foot of gold- and copper-bearing mountains, conveniently close to Jamaica and Hispaniola, he at once set up a central trading station, named it after Spain’s patron saint and gave it ‘capital’ status. That was in 1515. A few decades later when Spain had extracted eighty-four thousand ounces of gold, failing seams put Santiago’s importance at risk. So did increasingly audacious pirates – and Nature. After a series of devastating earthquakes Cuba’s Governor, Gonzalo Perez de Angulo, moved his headquarters to Havana, just in time to miss the 1554 sacking and capture of Santiago by French privateers. Their mini-fleet had been able to take the town so easily because of peninsular/creole tensions, already common throughout Spanish America. Santiago’s governor, Pedro de Morales, distrusted the local creole militia and, while he dithered about deploying them, his small Spanish-born garrison was overwhelmed. All governors, administrators and regular troops had to be peninsulares, most of whom saw creoles as a lesser breed. This uneasy relationship was to colour Cuba’s history, often with blood-stains, until Spain handed the island over to the US in 1898.
In 1620 Cuba’s total population was less than 7,000, in 1650 it hardly exceeded 30,000. The island attracted few settlers while Spain’s continental conquests promised bigger bucks faster. Until the 1760s not many slaves were imported: an annual average of 240 between 1511 and 1762, if we can depend on El Escorial’s figures.
The multinational swarms of pirates and privateers who threatened shipping routes for so long resembled modern ‘terrorists’ in one respect – they occupied a grey area. One monarch’s pirate might be another’s privateer. To Phillip II, Francis Drake was unquestionably a pirate. Yet in 1570, before his first voyage to the Caribbean, Elizabeth I gave him ‘a regular privateering commission’. All privateers were licensed by their governments who appreciated, when war broke out, having privately owned and provisioned ships to reinforce the national navy. (Never mind that those owners invariably ran extensive smuggling operations, usually detrimental to their government’s trading. In that respect they were analogous to such twenty-first-century mercenary armies as Blackwater.)
The Governor of Cuba’s first duty was to protect the empire’s loot from both foreign pirates and creole freelance traders (aka smugglers). Therefore it was decreed, in 1558, that all commerce must go through Havana’s port and Santiago dwindled to thirty households. But a generation later its revival began when Cuba was bisected. In military matters the Governor of Havana retained control over the whole island, otherwise the province of Oriente was to enjoy virtual independence under Santiago’s jurisdiction. Oriente then incorporated the modern provinces of Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas, Granma and Santiago.
When the defence of Havana became Spain’s priority, Cuba’s unguarded coastline, fretted with countless small natural harbours, developed into a buccaneers’ paradise. Throughout the Hispano-English war (1585–1603) creole cattle ranches and sugar mills were regularly raided. Also, barter flourished; disloyal creoles living hundreds of roadless miles from Havana were delighted to form cordial trading relationships with the empire’s foes, exchanging meat and hides for European luxury goods and African slaves.
Oliver Cromwell caused a demographic upheaval when he sailed on to the Caribbean scene in 1655. (He was good at that, as we Irish have reason to remember.) This expedition, to take both Santo Domingo and Cuba, formed part of his ‘Western Design’ which had to be modified after the Spaniards’ successful defence of Santo Domingo. The fifty-five somewhat battered English ships, plus transport vessels carrying considerably fewer than the original 9,000 soldiers, prudently forgot Cuba and set sail for tiny, almost undefended Jamaica. Its seizure served as Cromwell’s consolation prize and caused some 10,000 wealthy planters to flee to Oriente, more than doubling its population overnight.
By 1768 Cuba’s population had risen to (approximately) a hundred and ten thousand whites, seventy-two thousand slaves, twenty-three thousand free blacks; some of those whites were almost certainly mulatto though not yet named as such. After Haiti’s 1791 revolution, thousands of French refugee-planters arrived, complete with slaves and the latest technology. Most of those refugees invested lavishly in cane growing which became very big business – much too big – for Cuba’s future welfare.
In 1662 a fleet of twelve English ships, captained by Christopher Myngs and carrying 2,000 soldiers, easily captured Santiago, sacked the town, demolished the harbour’s fortress by blowing up its powder magazine – and then withdrew. This show of force achieved both its objectives by demonstrating that Jamaica would remain an English possession and forging a Santiago-Jamaica trade link. Spain could do nothing to hinder the brisk ‘informal’ trade in copper, sugar and slaves that soon developed to the mutual benefit of Oriente and Jamaica.
Thus Santiago evolved as a predominantly creole city, resentful of any peninsulare-directed meddling in its commercial affairs. Oriente men led all Cuba’s nineteenth-century wars of independence and around Santiago battles were frequent. Many Oriente campesiños supported Fidel’s guerrillas as they fought the US- and UK-armed troops of Cuba’s military dictator, the mulatto Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar. With some justification, Santiago proudly describes itself as the ‘the cradle of the Revolution’.
As some of my readers will be aware, I’m not an urban person. Shortly after arriving in a city – any city, however historical, beautiful or politically intriguing – my mind strays towards the exit. So why (I asked myself in the taxi to Viazul) did Havana not have the same effect? Was it because the habaneros behave more like villagers than like urban dwellers? I looked forward to spending longer among them on my solo return.
The Viazul terminus has an airport taint. Glossy coffee-table volumes of scenic photographs fill the little bookstall, unappealing souvenirs gather dust in display cases, revolving stands show postcards (printed in Italy) of stereotypical Cuban activities. Spaced-out processed passengers sit in mute orderly rows while new arrivals queue to have each item of luggage weighed, labelled and pushed away on trolleys. Another queue ensures a seat number chit so skimpy one has to concentrate hard on not losing it. From corners, impassive anti-jineterismo police watch over all. Our Oriente journeys would, we hoped, be very different – and they were …
Many of our fellow-passengers being Cuban surprised me; Viazul was initiated for tourists only. Cuba’s sudden dependence on foreigners’ hard currency agitated Fidel, who fantasised about protecting Revolutionary standards behind what came to be derided as ‘tourism apartheid’. No relevant law existed, yet from 1992–97 Cubans seen in conversation with tourists were often reprimanded and occasionally arrested. Then, a few months before the papal visit of January 1998, the official mood abruptly changed and normal
relations became possible. Yet the ‘apartheid’ policy hasn’t sunk without trace. Quite a few Cubans, especially in the provinces, remain uncertain about how they should react to unpackaged foreigners.
Soon after a punctual departure at 6.15 p.m., the Trio were sound asleep and as Rachel studied our map, planning treks, I watched the crimson sun sinking towards a frieze of royal palms and distant factory stacks. Havana’s twentieth-century accretions cover many miles and offer nothing distinctively Cuban, apart from numerous Che Guevara portraits on gable ends and huge wayside hoardings exhorting the citizenry to do their bit to keep the Revolution on course.
As early as the 1930s Cuba was an exception in Latin America, most Cubans being city-dwellers. When tourism’s possibilities attracted many more to the capital, Fidel began to have nightmares about mushrooming shanty-towns threatening public health yet he dared not put the hungry Cubans on too tight a rein by forbidding ‘change of residence’. April 1997 saw a compromise, a new law restricting job-seekers to one-month absences from their native place: thus, at intervals, all would have a chance to earn a few convertible pesos.
On Cuba’s Central highway, built in the 1930s and well maintained, the traffic was light. At 10.15 we parked outside an imitation of a US fast-foodery on the edge of an anonymous town. Here most passengers supped and I sauntered to and fro with an earnest young Australian journalist, tanned and long-limbed and puzzled by Cuba. How come so many habaneros were so jolly and welcoming when they were so deprived? On the bus he’d been scribbling a list – most couldn’t afford essentials like cosmetics, detergents, deodorants, nappies, vitamin supplements, shampoo, hair dryers, toasters, electric kettles, cell phones, computers. He loved Cubans, was upset by all those missing essentials, was keen to promote the tourist industry. At the end of a very hot day I had no energy to spare for argument – beyond asking why, given Caribbean sunshine, Cubans should need hair-dryers? (Come to think of it, why should anybody, apart from the manufacturers? For millennia we’ve been drying our hair without technological assistance.)
Later I reproved myself for not having tried to educate that young man. He had been commissioned to write a series of articles on ‘Cuba in Transition’ and, as climate change works its way up the political agenda, journalists should be emphasising Cuba’s energy-saving habits. Little things do count. When one buys a homemade fruit juice from a pavement seller it comes in a glass to be handed back – not in a ‘disposable’ mug to be tossed into a litter-bin (or on to the verge). The sheer enormity of ‘climate change’ deters us from thinking about such minutiae although, cumulatively, they’re at the core of the problem.
Throughout the long night I envied my sleeping companions. As greyness replaced blackness, low humps replaced flatness – the Sierra Maestra foothills. Now the Trio were awake and hungry and thirsty. Promptly their ever-ready mother provided oranges, nuts and water while I furtively opened a tin of Buccanero – but not furtively enough to avoid Zea’s informing the general public, ‘Nyanya’s having beer for breakfast!’
An extravagant sunrise celebrated our arrival, all gold and crimson, surging upwards from the horizon to fill half the sky. In Santiago’s suburbs tropical vegetation almost overwhelmed the solid little tiled houses. Fiacres drawn by smartly trotting horses were taking people to work – or towards work, because these vehicles are excluded from the narrow Old City streets.
A dozen taxis, parked at random outside the lucrative Viazul terminus, competed for emerging passengers by playing jolly tunes on their horns. Most were government-registered, their takings therefore taxed quite heavily. We chose an unregistered veteran, bright red where it wasn’t rusty. ‘Cadillac 1954!’ boasted its beaming black owner as he packed our rucksacks into the boot where chicken-wire replaced the lost floor.
As we drove uphill Rachel, pointing left, exclaimed, ‘There’s the Moncada barracks!’ Moments later Rose, pointing right, exclaimed, ‘They’ve a Coppelia here, in that park!’ Beyond this wide, busy boulevard one descends to the quiet, sloping streets and alleyways of the Old City.
Discreet logos mark casas particulares and No. 197 San Pedro was easy to find, a single-storey late eighteenth-century home, washed pale blue, its finely carved double door opening off the street and protected by an elaborate wrought-iron grill. We were welcomed by Candida’s friend Irma – sixtyish, blessed by the sort of bone-structured beauty that changes but never fades, looking elegant in a house-coat. She hugged us on first sight, as is the Cuban way, then led us through a short hallway into a spacious drawing-room, rarely used, where the burnished mahogany furniture was nineteenth-century imperial and the high ceiling, of collar-and-beam trusses, had been copied, we later realised, from Casa Diego Velasquez. Here dozens of frighteningly valuable china ornaments were displayed on window ledges, in wall niches and corner cabinets, on numerous frail occasional tables. They ranged from tiny figurines of courting couples to ornate jugs, tall slim vases, dogs sitting and lying, transparent coffee sets, delicate floral bouquets, birds perched on branches and angels perched on clouds. Urgently I warned the Trio – ‘Never run through this room!’
In the patio, cooled by much potted greenery, life-size plaster statues of a smiling black couple wore nineteenth-century cane-cutters’ attire. On three sides stretched long corridors tiled and pillared, their walls replete with stags’ heads. Our accommodation took us aback: two enormous bedrooms, each ‘en suite’ with two double-beds, bedside lamps, a large fridge and efficient (unless the electricity went off) standard fans. One motive for our journey had been to introduce the Trio to another way of life and this was another way in the wrong direction – incomparably more luxurious than their own spartan home near the top of a mountain in the Dolomites. However, the water supply was sluggish at best, non-existent at worst and the electrical fittings – mostly in unexpected places – made sounds not normally associated with plugs and switches.
The Trio devoured their four-course breakfast in a long narrow dining-room across the patio from our bedrooms. This was also the family living-room where Irma and Antonio watched TV in the evenings, seeming genuinely interested in what Fidel (or Ricardo Alarcón, his possible successor) had to say. In the nearby kitchen, from early morning, Irma’s two daily helps were busy – both black, we noticed, as was Candida’s cleaning lady. But those relationships were free of any whiff of ‘mistress and servant’, the women addressing one another as ‘compañera’.
On the way to Parque Cespedes Rose noted approvingly, ‘Here’s much cleaner than Havana’. She was right, Santiago’s municipality is either better funded or better managed than Havana’s (or both).
Zea observed, ‘It’s too much hotter than Havana! Why?’ The adults didn’t know why – maybe something to do with the nearby mountains?
Clodagh scrutinised my face and exclaimed, ‘Look at Nyanya’s sweat! She’s leaving drips behind her on the ground!’
Parque Cespedes (originally, and more accurately, Plaza de Armas) is Cuba’s first town square, a space left free of buildings for the convenience of the military, and never encroached upon over four centuries. But would those sixteenth-century town planners recognise it today? Trim shrubs surround neat little flower beds, a few trees provide inadequate shade and as we arrived the grey and red flagstones were being thoroughly swept with grass brooms. While the Trio romped Rachel and I, feeling Viazul-lagged, shared the sparse shade of palms with Carlos Cespedes on his pedestal. ‘They’re like a litter of puppies,’ I remarked, ‘the energy seems limitless.’ ‘Who are you telling!’ rejoined their mother.
On all sides stood buildings so often photographed I almost felt I’d been here before. The sonorously named Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion, built in 1922 on four-hundred-year-old foundations, has quite a pleasing neo-classical façade but can’t compete with Casa de Diego Velazquez. This Andalusia-flavoured stone building has a fortress-like solidity, relieved by many Moorish gratings, and wooden lattice-work shutters and balconies. It took fourteen years (
1516–30) to build, as the conquistador’s official residence, and in 1965 was intelligently restored. Santiago presents it as Cuba’s oldest surviving residence, a claim contested by Havana though it seems not implausible. Less convincing is Santiago’s assertion that Velazquez’s bones lie beneath the cathedral.
On the Park’s west side rises the dazzling white four-storey Hotel Casa Granda, a tourist base since 1920, agreeably conforming to Cuba’s eclectic style of colonial architecture. The blue and white Ayuntamiento (Town Hall), simple and dignified, was built in 1950 to replace an earthquake victim but had been designed two hundred years earlier by an anonymous architect whose drawings were found by chance in the Indies Archive. From its short central balcony, on 1 January 1959, Fidel first spoke to the Cubans as their new (twelve-hours-on-the-job) leader.
It was too early in the day for tourists (at no time were they numerous) but on a bench under a weeping fig tree two youths were sharing a cigarette and, we sensed, measuring us up as a possible source of convertible pesos. One joined us adults while his friend asked the Trio where we were staying and how much paying? When Rachel enquired about the nearest Cambio both offered to escort her up steep Calle Aguilera. The Trio stayed with me; they were developing a group allergy to queues.
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