All of which leads up to a solemn declaration. I can assure my readers that the foregoing pages give a true and faithful account of the condition of Cuba’s Havana-Bayamo rail service in the year 2006 AD.
How does the chemistry work, between people and places? Some find Bayamo ‘dull’, yet within hours it had captivated me – a quiet little city with a strong persona. In 1975, when Oriente province was divided, it became the capital of the new province of Granma but its significance has nothing to do with that ‘promotion’. As the second (1513) of Velazquez’s seven settlements, and the starting point of the Ten Years War (1868), and one of the starting points of the Revolution (1953), it is proudly and palpably history-soaked. My hostess, Miranda, disapproved of the few townsfolk who foolishly aspired to compete with Trinidad as a foreign exchange earner. She abhorred the prospect of thousands of coach passengers swarming through her territory. ‘It’s nicer,’ she said, ‘if people come with their independence – nicer for us and for them!’ I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Since the seventeenth century Bayamo has been one of Cuba’s most prosperous towns, its wealth based on the usual mix of cattle, cane, rare timbers and large scale smuggling. For some two hundred years pirates visited regularly, despite the city being some forty-five miles inland, and in 1604 a French contingent killed the bishop. Prosperity was displayed in many fine buildings, of which few remain; Céspedes torched most of the town in January 1869, rather than surrender it to the Spaniards from whom he had captured it three months previously.
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes (rich planter, flowery poet, canny lawyer) also sacrificed his own son to the cause of liberty. The Spaniards held Oscar hostage and, when his father rejected a peace deal on their terms, they shot him, as threatened. In reply to the threat, Céspedes had declaimed, ‘Oscar is not my only son. I am father to all the Cubans who have died to liberate their homeland’. He is therefore known as ‘Padre de la Patria’ though in fact he was less concerned about independence than about getting rid of Spanish rule. I was taken aback, during our train conversation, to realise that my well-read companions knew nothing about Céspedes’s annexationist tendencies. Silly of me to be surprised: in most (all?) countries, history’s sails are trimmed to the prevailing wind.
The 1869 fire spared the town centre, and Céspedes’s home survived. (Could the rebels have engineered this? Many were Céspedes’s freed slaves, armed with machetes and a few guns.) Now Casa Natal Céspedes is a museum, the finest building overlooking the Plaza de Armas, its ground floor eighteenth century, the top floor an 1833 addition. The curator has contrived a credible copy of a colonial sugar magnate’s residence with Cuban Medallón-style and nineteenth-century Spanish rococo furniture mingling beneath ornate chandeliers in high-ceilinged airy rooms. After Céspedes’s death (in a skirmish with Spanish soldiers) in 1874, Oscar’s infant son, another Carlos Miguel, inherited both the casa and those annexationist genes.
All vehicles, motor and equine, are excluded not only from the Plaza de Armas (aka Parque Céspedes) but from the narrow surrounding streets of single-storey, brightly-washed terraced homes. This tranquil park, bounded on four sides by mature trees, is paved with glossy pinkish marble. A bust of Perucho Figuerado, who fought in the front line during the Battle of Bayamo in the Ten Years War and composed ‘La Bayamesa’, has the words of Cuba’s national anthem (since 1940) engraved on its plinth:
To battle, run, people of Bayamo
Let your country proudly observe you
Fear not a glorious death
For to die for your country is to live.
To live in chains is to live in insult and drowning shame.
Listen to the bugle calling you
To arms, brave ones, run!
Dominating the park from atop a heavy granite column is a larger-than-life bronze ‘Padre de la Patria’. Both this statue and the bust in his casa natal depict a remarkably handsome man without humour or warmth: but that could be the sculptor’s fault.
Just around the corner, on the cobbled Plaza del Himno, is another survivor of the fire, Bayamo’s most treasured possession, the sixteenth-century Iglesia de Santisimo Salvador, partly damaged in 1869, subsequently neglected but recently well restored. Here an unusual mural above the high altar unites religious and political themes: Bayamo’s parish priest is blessing the rebels’ flag on 8 November 1868. At that same service ‘La Bayamesa’ was first sung, by a women’s choir. The flag itself, sewn by Cespedes’s wife, is on display in a very beautiful side-chapel, Capilla de la Dolorosa; its Mudejar-style ceiling, dating from 1740, remained miraculously (some say) untouched by flames.
Old Bayamo’s long commercial street, General Garcia, had just been repaved with golden-brown stone slabs and showed ominous symptoms of ‘joint ventures’ – workmen converting dignified old buildings into snazzy tiendas and restaurants. This street takes one to Parque Ñico Lopéz, formerly the grounds of the military barracks.
Ñico Lopéz was a black printer from Havana, one of the youthful Fidel’s closest friends and a founder member of the Movement, as Fidel’s pre-Moncada following was known. On 26 July 1953 he and twenty-seven other young men attacked Bayamo’s barracks while Fidel and his chrysalides guerrillas were attacking Moncada barracks. The plan was to stymie Batista reinforcements for Santiago. But even the best trained cavalry horses are scared by the unexpected and so many dark shapes silently swarming over the barrack’s walls provoked much loud whinnying. Several of the rebels were immediately shot dead and are commemorated in the park. Ñico himself escaped, joined the Moncada exiles in Mexico in 1955, and in 1956 sailed back to Cuba aboard the Granma. When she was wrecked on the Cuban coast, he was among those killed by the Rural Guard. The few survivors, including Fidel and Che, went on to form the nucleus of the Rebel Army.
In this secluded and well-tended little park, divided into sections by flights of marble steps, one suddenly feels close to the birth of the Revolution – much more so than around Santiago’s Moncada barracks. Groups of abuelos were relaxing under the palms, reading Granma or playing chess. Finding the museum locked I made enquiries, then got into conversation with two octogenarians; both had learned basic English while training Rhodesian guerrillas in the late 1970s and had been encouraged, back home, to maintain their acquaintance with the language. To my astonishment, I set off an explosive argument by referring to Lopéz as the man who introduced Che to Fidel. One abuelo furiously contradicted me, insisting that Raúl had introduced them. His friend took my side (not that I had any strong feelings on the matter) and as they continued their argument in Spanish I marvelled at the passion aroused by this detail. Later I discovered that Raúl was in fact responsible for that momentous introduction – but Che first heard of Fidel through Lopéz, then asked Raúl to introduce them. So in a sense both grandads were right. To my disappointment, neither was willing to reminisce about their posting abroad. Velazquez’s settlement was built on a highish curving cliff-top overlooking the Rio Bayamo, a site close to Parque Cespedes but now occupied by bohios and a few shaky-looking two-storey dwellings. When I went that way at sunrise, pigs and poultry were foraging along the grassy cliff edge and the shallow river was hidden by a dense mass of water-lilies – a serious environmental deterioration, complained Miranda. No more fish … She disbelieved in the municipality’s plan to organise a clearance; they were spending too much on repaving General Garcia.
New Bayamo comes suddenly into view, most of it developed after the birth of Granma province. Here are the standard model four-storey apartment blocks, enormous schools, hospitals and municipal offices, sports grounds, playgrounds, a theatre, a cultural centre and dual-carriageways with thriving shrubs down their spines.
Beyond a suburb of substantial villas, a long walk took me to the almost-rural lakeside Parque Granma whence the Sierra Maestra, only rarely glimpsed in the city, is magnificently visible. Here grass grows high around tamarind and wild cotton trees, and an expansive children’s park is fully furnishe
d. The longer I spent in Cuba the more clearly I saw concern for children as one of Castroism’s most significant features.
Returning by a different route, I passed under an incongruous motorway on stilts where squealing pigs were up for auction, arriving on bicycle carriers ingeniously adapted for the purpose. The bidding was brisk, men leading their purchases away on ropes. Pig manure is a precious fertiliser and two women carrying buckets and shovels were angrily disputing ownership of the various deposits. In New Bayamo other forms of litter were not being removed: evidently the historic centre keeps most street-sweepers fully occupied.
Even in February Bayamo is hot hot and by noon I was flagging and dehydrated. Wearily I plodded along a dual-carriageway, longing for a tienda. (Britain and Ireland, sharing a lurch into excessive drinking as a hobby, have much to learn from Cuba. Castroism has made drunkenness socially unacceptable and alcohol quite an elusive commodity – easily done, when a government is not in thrall to corporate interests.) I was about to take a horse-bus towards the centre when, outside the Astro bus terminus, a delivery man appeared carrying two crates of Hatuey. Following him into a bare little yard, behind a high blank wall, I saw five rickety round tables shaded by torn umbrellas. There was no counter, no shelving: one fetched Hatuey (only) from a small window in the bus station’s rear wall. The young barman hesitated to serve a tourist: I should have been elsewhere, drinking Buccanero or Kristal. But he was a kind – and honest – young man who broke the law for this exhausted abuela and declined my profferred convertible peso, insisting on the correct Hatuey price: NP18.
The only other customer, a stocky white man in his mid-thirties, had observed my arrival with interest. On his way to fetch another Hatuey he paused to look down at my open note-book and asked, ‘Pais?’
‘Irlanda! My lovely country for reading! And you my first irlandesa to meet! Wilde, Shaw, Joyce – all translated I read! I am artist, painter, many pictures – and ten the inspiration by Ulysses! But Finnegan’s Wake makes too much problems for me … You have time to talk, we sit together?’
I was very happy to talk provided my companion did not expect me to solve his Finnegan’s Wake problems.
Nelson had learned his English working on the fringes of Santiago’s tourist industry and might be described as a ‘dissident’. ‘My parents named me for honouring Nelson Mandela, a better leader than ours. For his Africans he made many friends with big strong rich foreign companies. In South Africa everybody can buy everything they want in their own shops – not tiendas.’
It felt strange – almost shocking, yet reassuring – to hear a Cuban in Cuba referring to someone as ‘a better leader’ than Fidel. Then I wondered by whom (Radio Marti?) Nelson had been misinformed about the average South African’s purchasing power.
Both Nelson’s grandfathers had been imprisoned for a year or so in the early 1930s when they opposed Machado’s regime. His father, a Communist Party official, had retired a few years previously. Likewise his urologist mother, though she had immediately volunteered to work on in Venezuela where she was earning no more than her keep. The 1998 Papal visit had caused a family rift. Nelson became deeply emotionally involved, deciding that only Roman Catholicism could save Cuba and the world. His parents were not amused when he condemned Revolutionary Cuba as ‘a country of materialists’ where Catholicism has been ‘made dirty’ by ‘pagan superstitions’. He brushed aside my comment that his 72-year-old mother, working for nothing in some comfortless Venezuelan hilltown, could hardly be described as ‘materialistic’.
Nelson was married to a young woman gainfully employed in a tourist hotel. He wanted five children, she wanted two at most and none until she had saved up enough ‘to give them everything’. Nelson frowned at me and said, ‘That’s materialism!’ I agreed, but pointed out that it was generated not by the Revolution but by its enemy, consumerism. Nelson thought for a moment, looking puzzled and worried: he was a very mixed-up young man. Then he fetched two more beers, refusing in a macho way to allow me to pay, and confessed that he was thinking about a divorce which would make him sad and guilty because the Catholic Church forbids divorce. However, it is also pro-babies – perhaps five babies would cancel out the divorce? What did I think? I suggested his seeking advice elsewhere, Roman Catholic moral theology being ultra vires for me.
Moments later the barman shouted a warning: the Santiago service was filling up. Nelson hugged me, thriftily poured the rest of his beer into my half-empty glass and rushed away. On his advice I spent the rest of the day in the Casa de la Trova where the most celebrated local group, La Familia, were playing – and where my impression of Bayamo as Cuba’s friendliest city was reinforced.
My plan for the morrow was to try to get an eight-mile lift on the Bayamo-Manzanillo highway, then walk into the Sierra Maestra on a minor cul-de-sac road, via the little town of Bartolome Maso.
The packed truck-bus would accept no pesos, because I had to stand on its steps, clinging to a bar. From this vantage point I had a good view of expansive ranches, their arched and crested hacienda gateways still in place though rusted, their cattle in prime condition despite desiccated pastures.
Where my trek began the landscape was hilly and partially wooded and the Sierra Maestra loomed seductively, its creased ridges now discernible. For miles this narrow, broken road was accompanied by a clear green river in which campesiños laundered and ducks swam. The humidity was punishing; I became a Niagara of sweat and needed frequent rests. Here bohios were scattered on open slopes, their livestock numerous: pigs, sheep, horses – no cattle. At noon I collapsed under a ceiba tree and for two hours read The Fertile Prison, Mario Mencia’s account of Fidel’s educational time in jail – foreshadowing those ‘universities’ that were to evolve in Northern Ireland’s jails. Meanwhile I was being persecuted by tiny ferocious red ants. How can creatures so tiny contain a weapon able to cause such pain?
By 4.30 the scene had changed: cane fields surrounded me and the road was shadeless. An hour later I arrived in the straggling village of San Antonio de Baja, fifteen miles from my starting point and five miles from my destination. Five miles too many: heat exhaustion had defeated me. Unhopefully I roamed around asking, ‘Tienda?’ But of course there was none. Then my roaming bore fruit. As I was leaving the village, in search of a secluded camp-site, an anxious looking young mulatta pursued me. ‘You need food? Where you sleep? Come my house!’ Alicia was a school teacher, living with her parents in a large roadside bohio. There was, unfortunately, a spare bed: her brother lay in Bayamo hospital with a fractured spine having fallen off an ox-cart piled high with cane. Both parents worked in Bartolomé Maso’s ingenio – her mother as an accountant – and they farmed in a small way: three pigs, twenty sheep, uncounted poultry and four hectares of cane.
Over supper (the usual menu) Alicia translated her father’s childhood recollections of three of Fidel’s compañeros being hunted after the Moncada barracks attack, then finding refuge in this village. Alicia’s maternal grandfather had been associated with the Bayamo barracks attack, as a provider of weapons.
I soon realised that this was another amiable and paradoxical CDR intervention – the foreigner in the village being kept under surveillance, judged harmless, then cared for though the caring involved breaking a law which the CDR was formed to ensure was not broken. A fascinating paradox, with its nice balance between the letter and the spirit … The Revolution genuinely fostered humanitarianism and it’s reassuring to know that in places like San Antonio de Baja bureaucracy does not Rule OK.
Alicia assumed my destination to be Villa Santo Domingo, a small tourist centre deep in the Sierra Maestra, at the end of the road. From there groups are guided, at a price, to Turquino’s summit and/or Conandancia de la Plata, Fidel’s Rebel headquarters. I didn’t reveal my plan to get off the road long before reaching Santo Domingo and coming to officialdom’s attention. It irritated me to have to skulk when I only wanted to be alone in the mountains for a few days, possibly finding
my way down to the coastal road where I had trekked with Rachel and the Trio, possibly emerging somewhere else. Exactly where didn’t matter.
Next morning I lost the cool hours, so determined was my hostess to strengthen me with an omelette and so long did it take to find eggs ‘laid wild’. By the time we said ‘Adios’, at 8.45, I should have been out of cane-land at the beginning of the climb to coolness.
The sugar mill’s survival explains Bartolomé Maso’s air of well-being. It is what I incoherently think of as ‘a big little town’, a place with a friendly intimate feel though its long streets of single-storey tiled houses, in untidy sub-tropical gardens, cover a wide area.
Here came another delay. Tinned rations were essential for the days ahead but the tienda (a metal shipping-container) functioned only from 1.00 to 3.00. When the restaurant opened at noon I ‘did a camel’ and in this large, dingy, welcoming establishment ate well for NP37: a mountain of rice and beans, at least half a pound of tender lean roast pork, a hill of sweet potatoes and a mega-salad of tomatoes and crisp lettuce. (That last was a rare treat; Cubans are not keen on their greens despite the urgings of generations of health educators.)
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