Sunday, November 09, 2003
In Camagűey—Can Cubans and Foreigners Relate As Equals?
Cuba can be exhilerating or frustrating, the frustrations frequently having to do with the walls the regime creates between Cubans and the foreigners who visit their island. It is illegal, for example, for a Cuban to have a houseguest who’s a foreigner, unless the Cuban is licensed to rent rooms and is renting a room to the foreigner or the foreigner is a relative of the Cuban who has obtained a special visa at several times the cost of a tourist visa. More mundanely, foreigners are mostly or even entirely paying their expenses in US dollars, whereas Cubans are entirely or at least mostly paying theirs in Cuban pesos. Cubans and foreigners, in other words, are channeled into different stores, different restaurants, different hotels, different modes of transportation.
So it was exciting, a chance perhaps to relate to Cubans on an equal footing, when Asela said she was going to go to Camagüey to coincide with my stay there, that she had friends there she wanted to visit, Asela being the owner of the casa particular where I was staying for the second time in Santiago de Cuba, and Camagüey, a small city noted for its plazas, being my next destination on my way back to Havana. But complications, the wall between natives and foreigners, quickly arose around the subject of how to get there.
I talk about the Viazul bus, a line created for tourists, air-conditioned buses with bathrooms, charging dollars. Asela’s reaction is, “Why should I pay dollars when I can take the train paying moneda nacional?” (Apparently the service on the ordinary bus line for Cubans is too atrocious for that to be an option.) My initial reaction is “OK, then I can take the train,” until the following day. Asela then says that she is trying to figure out how we can sit together, and it turns out that Cubans go to one place to buy train tickets, paying pesos for their reserved seats, whereas foreigners go to another place to buy theirs, paying the same number of dollars (at 26 pesos to the dollar) as the Cubans pay in pesos. I throw a small fit, talking about freedom of association being a basic human right, which I think leaves Asela totally confused, and I announce that we will meet at 10 a.m. in Camagüey’s plaza principal, which Asela seems to find amusing, but which in the end is exactly what we do. Before the end it occurs to me to offer to buy the Viazul tickets so that we can go together on the bus, pointing out all the money I have been saving in Santiago by eating three meals a day at her house without her charging me (we have become good friends since my first visit, exchanging almost daily e‑mails), but Asela’s refusal is adament.
Then there is the question of where Asela, and possibly Zoila, her 14-year-old daughter, will stay. Possibly Zoila because at the moment she is in the country taking part in a program held at the beginning of the school year for high-school students in which they harvest coffee; I said something snide about cheap labor, but Asela insists that the program follows a pedagogical theory of José Martí. When Asela visited Zoila the previous Sunday, she wanted to come home, which Asela did not permit because Zoila needed to stay another week to obtain credit, but Asela thinks that this Sunday Zoila might be content to stay yet another week because she is now working in the kitchen rather than in the fields.
I already have a reservation in Camagüey in a casa particular, the type of accommodation I am using throughout my trip, and Asela says she is going to investigate the possibility of a casa particular that charges moneda nacional. This is a distinction I hadn’t known existed, but it turns out that there are houses with a red triangle on the door, as opposed to the blue triangle I am familiar with, renting rooms to Cubans and charging pesos. I subsequently have the inspiration that if Zoila doesn’t come, I can call my casa in Camagüey and ask if there is a room with two beds, because the price in a casa is per room, not per person, so that there would be no extra cost for Asela to object to. Asela agrees, but as it turns out Zoila does come and Alfredo, one of Asela’s friends in Camagüey, offers to put them up in his house. (It seems that he is separated and that his mother, who used to occupy the second bedroom, has died.)
We meet in the plaza by the Cathedral, after I have already spent a day in Camagüey because the French train (referring to the physical train, not the company, which was bought second-hand from France) only goes from Santiago to Havana on even-numbered days, and I was going to Camagüey on the 7th. Alfredo, an extremely pleasant person of about 40, turns out to be a valuable guide; aside from knowing the city inside out, he is a municipal employee having something to do with culture and can get us into museums for free. As well as museums and plazas, we walk through the market, a large space totally out of doors but sheltered by a canopy of enormous trees. It turns out that Asela plans to buy groceries and fix almuerzo (the main meal of the day, eaten at around 1) for us. I wonder if there would be a problem if three Cubans and a foreigner walked into a restaurant--and my guidebook describes restaurants in Camagüey that charge Cubans in pesos and charge foreigners the same number of dollars--and eating out would certainly simplify matters, given that Alfredo’s house has no running water because of a project going on in the street, his refrigerator doesn’t work, and instead of a stove he has a one-burner hot plate. There is also the complication of my being a vegetarian, which could be resolved by my ordering rice and beans. But I am too afraid of saying the wrong thing to suggest going to a restaurant.
The first day Alfredo goes off to work after spending the morning with us, Asela and I (after looking fruitlessly for an apron) make a fruit salad of guayabas, bananas, and papaya, while Asela sends Zoila out for pizza. Which leads me to create something of a diplomatic incident, because it turns out that Cuban pizza--at least the Cuban pizza made for Cubans--isn’t. It’s bought at a take-out window, comes only in one variety in a size for one person, and consists of a disk of bread, maybe half an inch thick, topped with a little melted cheese and a little tomato sauce. Asela and Zoila cut theirs into little squares with a knife and fork. I find it absolutely horrible, really inedible. After struggling through a quarter of my pizza, I cut the remainder in half and plop each piece on one of my companion’s plates. “¿Luisa, porque no comes la pizza?” Asela is astonished. “Porque no es pizza,” I respond sheepishly, helping myself to fruit salad. (The following day, which turns out to be a holiday so Alfredo spends the whole day with us, someone at almuerzo says something about Luisa and pizza, which, as often happens because the Cuban accent is so mushy, I don’t understand, so I just blush and cover my face.)
After eating, and after playing a card game called continental, at which Asela does brilliantly and I do badly, Asela says that she would like to window shop in stores charging moneda nacional, and I happen to know, having been there the day before, that there are plenty of shops on Avenida República. So we set out, but we immediatey run into Alfredo, who has apparently been able to get away from work for the rest of the day, and soon resume making the rounds of museums. Being Cuba, it is insufferably hot and humid, my feet are starting to hurt, and I realize that if I had been alone at this stage, I would have been looking for a café, preferably air-conditioned, where I could sit down and order a soda with plenty of ice. (Cuban museums do not offer eating facilities.) But I don’t want to create another diplomatic incident, and it dawns on me that for the Cubans this is not a realistic option--not for legal but for economic reasons, as the soda would be priced in dollars and would cost a dollar and a half or two dollars. At that moment Asela notices a window across the street selling guarapo (sugarcane juice, at 1 peso a glass), suggests that we have some, and we all troop over. There is no place to sit down, and the etiquette of drinking at these take-out windows seems to be that one gulps the drink down as quickly as possible; I‘m not able to finish mine before the others have walked off.
The problem of sore feet is solved by our returning to Alfredo’s house, the adults sitting around the round table in the kitchen, and somehow Alfredo and I get into a conversation--I almost worry about Asela, who came to visit him, being left out--about my doing yoga, being a vegetarian, having decided in 1987 to study Spanish without knowing why, and how convenient it was to speak decent Spanish when I moved to Mexico 13 years later. It comes out that he’s a follower of fung shui, that the round table, the mirror on the wall beside it, the turtle, and the fish tank in the livingroom are all there because of fung shui. I mention that I have photos of Guanajuato and of my house in my suitcase, and it is decided I will bring them the next day and he will give me a fung shui consultation.
I decide that I’m not going to wait and see what folks are doing for cena, that I don’t want to complicate things further and would rather get home before dark, so I announce that I am leaving and we talk about where to meet the next day. We decide on the Plaza Maceo, where my casa particular is located, but when I refer to the plaza as “my plaza,” Alfredo takes offense and said it’s not my plaza, it’s his, which strikes me as surprisingly uncharitable.
The next day involves more walking, this time to a park and to the Plaza de la Revolución, a massive plaza with a massive monument, such as seem to exist in all Cuban cities for the purpose of holding massive rallies. During almuerzo--Asela has prepared meat, corn on the cob, and okra for the three of them, a salad of lettuce, cucumber, and okra for me (the lettuce a probable reason for my getting sick in Havana a few days later)--Alfredo asks if I wouldn’t like to live in Cuba. I supress the temptation to enumerate all the many deprivations, material and political, that living in Cuba would involve and simply say that I am very happy living in Mexico, but that I appreciate the invitation. He gives me my fung shui consultation, which is something of a disappointment, and gives me a book from his extensive collection, the story of a colony of Americans who settled in the province of Camagüey in the early 20th century.
Later I somehow find myself watching a video in the kitchen with Zoila, then seek out Asela in the livingroom, where she is looking at Alfredo’s books on fung shui, have a pleasant conversation with her about a number of subjects, and decide to take my leave. Saying goodbye to Asela is extremely poignant, as I don’t know when I’ll see her again, so I walk back to my casa feeling rather sad. But along the way I remember what traveling in Mexico is like, how I take the same bus as Mexicans, stay in the same hotel as Mexicans, eat in the same restaurants and shop in the same stores, all along spending the same currency, as Mexicans. I never escape the fact of being a foreigner, but that fact carries less weight, isn’t magnified by all those walls that are forever popping up on the Cuban landscape.
November 9, 2003, written as an email mailing, as a substitute for a trip report
So it was exciting, a chance perhaps to relate to Cubans on an equal footing, when Asela said she was going to go to Camagüey to coincide with my stay there, that she had friends there she wanted to visit, Asela being the owner of the casa particular where I was staying for the second time in Santiago de Cuba, and Camagüey, a small city noted for its plazas, being my next destination on my way back to Havana. But complications, the wall between natives and foreigners, quickly arose around the subject of how to get there.
I talk about the Viazul bus, a line created for tourists, air-conditioned buses with bathrooms, charging dollars. Asela’s reaction is, “Why should I pay dollars when I can take the train paying moneda nacional?” (Apparently the service on the ordinary bus line for Cubans is too atrocious for that to be an option.) My initial reaction is “OK, then I can take the train,” until the following day. Asela then says that she is trying to figure out how we can sit together, and it turns out that Cubans go to one place to buy train tickets, paying pesos for their reserved seats, whereas foreigners go to another place to buy theirs, paying the same number of dollars (at 26 pesos to the dollar) as the Cubans pay in pesos. I throw a small fit, talking about freedom of association being a basic human right, which I think leaves Asela totally confused, and I announce that we will meet at 10 a.m. in Camagüey’s plaza principal, which Asela seems to find amusing, but which in the end is exactly what we do. Before the end it occurs to me to offer to buy the Viazul tickets so that we can go together on the bus, pointing out all the money I have been saving in Santiago by eating three meals a day at her house without her charging me (we have become good friends since my first visit, exchanging almost daily e‑mails), but Asela’s refusal is adament.
Then there is the question of where Asela, and possibly Zoila, her 14-year-old daughter, will stay. Possibly Zoila because at the moment she is in the country taking part in a program held at the beginning of the school year for high-school students in which they harvest coffee; I said something snide about cheap labor, but Asela insists that the program follows a pedagogical theory of José Martí. When Asela visited Zoila the previous Sunday, she wanted to come home, which Asela did not permit because Zoila needed to stay another week to obtain credit, but Asela thinks that this Sunday Zoila might be content to stay yet another week because she is now working in the kitchen rather than in the fields.
I already have a reservation in Camagüey in a casa particular, the type of accommodation I am using throughout my trip, and Asela says she is going to investigate the possibility of a casa particular that charges moneda nacional. This is a distinction I hadn’t known existed, but it turns out that there are houses with a red triangle on the door, as opposed to the blue triangle I am familiar with, renting rooms to Cubans and charging pesos. I subsequently have the inspiration that if Zoila doesn’t come, I can call my casa in Camagüey and ask if there is a room with two beds, because the price in a casa is per room, not per person, so that there would be no extra cost for Asela to object to. Asela agrees, but as it turns out Zoila does come and Alfredo, one of Asela’s friends in Camagüey, offers to put them up in his house. (It seems that he is separated and that his mother, who used to occupy the second bedroom, has died.)
We meet in the plaza by the Cathedral, after I have already spent a day in Camagüey because the French train (referring to the physical train, not the company, which was bought second-hand from France) only goes from Santiago to Havana on even-numbered days, and I was going to Camagüey on the 7th. Alfredo, an extremely pleasant person of about 40, turns out to be a valuable guide; aside from knowing the city inside out, he is a municipal employee having something to do with culture and can get us into museums for free. As well as museums and plazas, we walk through the market, a large space totally out of doors but sheltered by a canopy of enormous trees. It turns out that Asela plans to buy groceries and fix almuerzo (the main meal of the day, eaten at around 1) for us. I wonder if there would be a problem if three Cubans and a foreigner walked into a restaurant--and my guidebook describes restaurants in Camagüey that charge Cubans in pesos and charge foreigners the same number of dollars--and eating out would certainly simplify matters, given that Alfredo’s house has no running water because of a project going on in the street, his refrigerator doesn’t work, and instead of a stove he has a one-burner hot plate. There is also the complication of my being a vegetarian, which could be resolved by my ordering rice and beans. But I am too afraid of saying the wrong thing to suggest going to a restaurant.
The first day Alfredo goes off to work after spending the morning with us, Asela and I (after looking fruitlessly for an apron) make a fruit salad of guayabas, bananas, and papaya, while Asela sends Zoila out for pizza. Which leads me to create something of a diplomatic incident, because it turns out that Cuban pizza--at least the Cuban pizza made for Cubans--isn’t. It’s bought at a take-out window, comes only in one variety in a size for one person, and consists of a disk of bread, maybe half an inch thick, topped with a little melted cheese and a little tomato sauce. Asela and Zoila cut theirs into little squares with a knife and fork. I find it absolutely horrible, really inedible. After struggling through a quarter of my pizza, I cut the remainder in half and plop each piece on one of my companion’s plates. “¿Luisa, porque no comes la pizza?” Asela is astonished. “Porque no es pizza,” I respond sheepishly, helping myself to fruit salad. (The following day, which turns out to be a holiday so Alfredo spends the whole day with us, someone at almuerzo says something about Luisa and pizza, which, as often happens because the Cuban accent is so mushy, I don’t understand, so I just blush and cover my face.)
After eating, and after playing a card game called continental, at which Asela does brilliantly and I do badly, Asela says that she would like to window shop in stores charging moneda nacional, and I happen to know, having been there the day before, that there are plenty of shops on Avenida República. So we set out, but we immediatey run into Alfredo, who has apparently been able to get away from work for the rest of the day, and soon resume making the rounds of museums. Being Cuba, it is insufferably hot and humid, my feet are starting to hurt, and I realize that if I had been alone at this stage, I would have been looking for a café, preferably air-conditioned, where I could sit down and order a soda with plenty of ice. (Cuban museums do not offer eating facilities.) But I don’t want to create another diplomatic incident, and it dawns on me that for the Cubans this is not a realistic option--not for legal but for economic reasons, as the soda would be priced in dollars and would cost a dollar and a half or two dollars. At that moment Asela notices a window across the street selling guarapo (sugarcane juice, at 1 peso a glass), suggests that we have some, and we all troop over. There is no place to sit down, and the etiquette of drinking at these take-out windows seems to be that one gulps the drink down as quickly as possible; I‘m not able to finish mine before the others have walked off.
The problem of sore feet is solved by our returning to Alfredo’s house, the adults sitting around the round table in the kitchen, and somehow Alfredo and I get into a conversation--I almost worry about Asela, who came to visit him, being left out--about my doing yoga, being a vegetarian, having decided in 1987 to study Spanish without knowing why, and how convenient it was to speak decent Spanish when I moved to Mexico 13 years later. It comes out that he’s a follower of fung shui, that the round table, the mirror on the wall beside it, the turtle, and the fish tank in the livingroom are all there because of fung shui. I mention that I have photos of Guanajuato and of my house in my suitcase, and it is decided I will bring them the next day and he will give me a fung shui consultation.
I decide that I’m not going to wait and see what folks are doing for cena, that I don’t want to complicate things further and would rather get home before dark, so I announce that I am leaving and we talk about where to meet the next day. We decide on the Plaza Maceo, where my casa particular is located, but when I refer to the plaza as “my plaza,” Alfredo takes offense and said it’s not my plaza, it’s his, which strikes me as surprisingly uncharitable.
The next day involves more walking, this time to a park and to the Plaza de la Revolución, a massive plaza with a massive monument, such as seem to exist in all Cuban cities for the purpose of holding massive rallies. During almuerzo--Asela has prepared meat, corn on the cob, and okra for the three of them, a salad of lettuce, cucumber, and okra for me (the lettuce a probable reason for my getting sick in Havana a few days later)--Alfredo asks if I wouldn’t like to live in Cuba. I supress the temptation to enumerate all the many deprivations, material and political, that living in Cuba would involve and simply say that I am very happy living in Mexico, but that I appreciate the invitation. He gives me my fung shui consultation, which is something of a disappointment, and gives me a book from his extensive collection, the story of a colony of Americans who settled in the province of Camagüey in the early 20th century.
Later I somehow find myself watching a video in the kitchen with Zoila, then seek out Asela in the livingroom, where she is looking at Alfredo’s books on fung shui, have a pleasant conversation with her about a number of subjects, and decide to take my leave. Saying goodbye to Asela is extremely poignant, as I don’t know when I’ll see her again, so I walk back to my casa feeling rather sad. But along the way I remember what traveling in Mexico is like, how I take the same bus as Mexicans, stay in the same hotel as Mexicans, eat in the same restaurants and shop in the same stores, all along spending the same currency, as Mexicans. I never escape the fact of being a foreigner, but that fact carries less weight, isn’t magnified by all those walls that are forever popping up on the Cuban landscape.
November 9, 2003, written as an email mailing, as a substitute for a trip report
