Thursday, June 17, 2004
Report from Santiago de Cuba 2004
Santiago is the third destination of six on this my third trip to Cuba, so I thought it would be a good time write a bulletin of my travels to date, especially since here I have the opportunity to use the computer of my friend Asela, who has email (rare in Cuba) but sadly not Internet access (almost nonexistent outside of cybercafes for foreign tourists), but at least I can write the report and copy it into an email to myself and then into an email to my mailing list, and save the 5 or 6 dollars an hour charged by Cuban cybercafes, which mostly feature glacial connections.
Havana, to which I flew from Mexico City on the 4th of June, is still one of my very favorite places, mostly due to the restoration of what we who live in Mexico would call the centro histórico, there known as La Habana Vieja. The best part for me are the four large plazas, which range from lovely to exquisite, although it pains me that only in the Plaza de Armas are there comfortable places to sit other than by taking a seat in a café and spending US dollars. Which I find it essential to do a few times a day for coping with the brutal Cuban heat, not to mention the humidity; my coping strategy is to order a lemonade or a soda with ice and before I have finished it ask for a glass of ice, por favor, which I dump in my drink—if I worried about the ice I would never survive the heat. While sitting in a café one can frequently hear absolutely terrific live music, any time of day, free of charge. Whatever plaza one is in, Havana Bay is always nearby, which gives one a lovely sense of openness. Now that I've been here a couple of times I don't feel the need to do the museums—I went into the Museo de Arte Colonial because its balconies overlook the Plaza de la Catedral and I remain hugely unsatisfied with the photos I have taken of the plazas on my previous trips. (Other than the balconies it houses colonial furniture and accessories rather than art.) This time I find myself deciding that Havana is one of those places (like Antigua) where one can just be, one doesn't have to do things (although with my camera I'm at least looking for things photogenic that I don't already have several photos of). It should be said that the one drawback of restored Havana Vieja is the wrenching contrast because its classy beauty and the wretched poverty one can see a few blocks to the south or west.
The way Cuban colonial architecture was designed for coping with the heat by maximizing the circulation of air is interesting. Ceilings are very high, at least 15 feet, and windows start at the floor and go almost to the ceiling. They never contain glass but rather rejas (bars), which were wood in the 18th century and became iron in the 19th. A piece of cloth, sort of a simplified café curtain, is sometimes hung for privacy. Behind the rejas are shutters (usually open) with persianas (slats, like built-in Venetian blinds). The more elegant colonial buildings have semicircles of stained-glass above the windows. As in Mexico, there are patios, with rooms opening onto the patio. I'm not sure if rocking in a rocking chair makes one feel cooler, but the rocking chair has been an essential piece of furniture in Cuba since colonial times.
When traveling in Cuba I don’t stay in hotels but in casas particulares, private homes licensed by the government (and highly taxed) to rent rooms, which aside from the lower (but not low—I pay USD 25 for my room in Havana and 260 pesos, hardly more, for my three-star hotel with cable TV in Mexico City) price offer the possibility of breakfast and cena (supper) fixed to one?s specifications, a great advantage when one is a vegetarian traveling in a very meat-oriented country. I ask for fruit, bread, and juice (usually something like mango, zapote, or tamarind rather than orange) for breakfast, supplying my own tea bags of green tea, and soup and a salad (which tends to be tomatoes and string beans or maybe cucumber) for cena. In Havana I have discovered an easy way of coping with almuerzo (comida in Mexico, the main meal, eaten in Cuba around 1) because the Hotel Florida, a luxury hotel on Havana Vieja's main street, has a vegetarian page on its multipage menu, not to mention offerings on other pages like black-bean soup and fried bananas (of which I am extremely fond). It also, delightfully, serves iced tea, which though not green is for me an essential coolant with the meal (with the extra glass of ice of course). I am delighted that at my first meal after ordering the food the waiter finishes the order for me, this being the third trip on which I have been an almost-daily customer. The off day I go to the Barrio Chino, an infinitesimal Chinatown to the west of Havana Vieja with one short street with nothing but restaurants, where when I explain that I need a meatless meal, preferably picante (an enormous frustration for me being that the Chinese immigrants in Latin America apparently all came from the province of Canton and Cantonese food is much too bland), the waitress comes up with a soup very close to hot-and-sour soup and a dish of noodles and veggies that is quite good.
What is new and improved about this stay in Havana turns out to be the opportunity to go to two performances, thanks to my flukishly having bought Juventud Rebelde, one of the two propaganda sheets (the other of course being Granma) that pass for newspapers in Cuba, which has cultural listings. (I should mention that there is no such thing as a newsstand in Cuba; these papers are sold on the street by little old men and there is no fixed price, you have to bargain every time.) At the Basilica de San Francisco, which defines the Plaza de San Francisco and which is no longer a church but a concert hall and museum of religious art, there is a performance of a group called the Camerata Romeu, which puts the Camerata Juvenil of Guanajuato to shame. (I am told the morning of the performance, when I learn of it, that seats are sold out but that they will sell standing room at the hour of the performance. I get there half an hour before to wait in a long line and end up sitting on the fifth row because apparently a number of people bought tickets but didn't show up.) There are nine string players, all young except the bass player and all women except the first violinist, with a percussionist playing the güiro for the last two pieces. It is all modern music by Cuban composers, surprisingly accessible, and it is all brilliantly played, especially since neither the musicians nor the conductor are using music. The audience is as enthusiastic as Guanajuato audiences, which of course gets us an encore.
The next night I go to the Gran Teatro, whose baroque façade features four towers each topped by an angel reaching upward, for the Ballet Español de Cuba doing flamenco with shades of ballet and modern dance. There is one female star, maybe 35, a younger semi-star, 8 other muchachas and 4 muchachos, plus a middle-aged man who dances a little and is apparently the director. The dancing is absolutely breathtaking, really spectacular (faintly reminiscent of the programmatic flamenco at the Cervantino last year), as are the guitarists and percussionists, and the audience goes wild.
This trip I am taking the bus to cross the island to Santiago, almost at the eastern end, having decided last time that the 40-year-old Soviet propeller craft used by the two domestic airlines are too uncomfortable and too anxious-making. Cuba offers a bus line for tourists, Viazul, with air-conditioning and a bathroom. My first stop going east, on the 8th of June, is Trinidad, a delightful colonial city whose centro histórico is nothing if not photogenic with its pastel-colored houses, tile roofs, and horse carts—the last not to be picturesque but to transport people without using gasoline. Its Casa de la Trova is a place to sip something cool and hear an array of musicians for the price of the beverage. Its Museo de la Lucha contra Bandidos in a former church offers a tower with spectacular views. Its mercado de artesanía specializes in exquisite embroidered goods, mostly white on white with much deshilado (threads removed, I don’t know the English); I buy a dresser scarf for the guest room, telling the muchacha that I would prefer a descuentito to a regalito, and am quite satisfied.
On the 11th I settle in for a 12-hour bus ride from Trinidad to Santiago. I have previously said that five hours was my limit for bus rides, but I find the length of the trip to be surprisingly bearable. The countryside, despite what people are calling a drought, is quite green, I guess due to the always-high humidity, with mostly sugarcane, occasionally corn. In the settlements we pass there are a few houses with thatched roofs and a lot of houses that look quite poor, although most have a portal in front; all have persianas in the windows. What is most striking though is the total absence of cars anywhere in the vicinity of the houses. And we pass very few cars—there are some trucks, including trucks outfitted to transport people, some horsecarts, some also outfitted to transport people (a couple of oxcarts appear to the side of the road), a fair number of bicycles, some motorcycles, but almost no cars.
The first time I came to Santiago, a year ago, I had a reservation in a house carefully chosen from information on the Internet, and when I arrived to discover that there had been a “complication,” that the room was occupied, and that I was being shuttled to another house around the corner, I was extremely annoyed—until, that is, I met Asela, the owner of the house around the corner, who turned out to be charming, gracious, and eager to be helpful, enabling my dream of making my beloved moon tea with my green-tea bags in a pitcher in the little refrigerator that went with my room. And also becoming an instant conversation companion over hour-and-a-half chats at the kitchen table after breakfast and cena. Asela flukishly had email and after my departure became a constant correspondent. By this my third visit to Santiago I am finding that almost the only attraction of the city is the opportunity to see my friend. At first blush, Santiago, the second-largest city in Cuba, should be pretty, with the mountains in the background, the bay, and the tile roofs. But then one notices the industrial ugliness surrounding the bay and the iron lamina substituting for many tile roofs, and that almost everything is shabby and dirty. And that the jineteros are extremely aggressive.
Let me end with a word about jineteros and neediness, because the jinetero phenomenon, it seems to me, is but one manifestation of pervasive Cuban neediness. I encounter other, more benign manifestations in requests I get to bring things. I know that Asela will want the drops for purifying water and vegetables, which are hard for her to get, but then I receive a request from Mercedes, the owner of my house in Havana, for three types of medicine to treat her arthritis and the ulcers her arthritis medicine has caused, which it will be hard for her to get. She clearly feels a little uneasy in her email about asking me such a favor, so she includes a sentence about how she is asking me because she thinks of me as a sister. Alfredo, in Camagüey, with whom I am in touch because I met him last trip (he is a good friend of Asela) and will be returning to Camagüey when I leave Santiago, asks for copal (a type of incense), blank CDs, and a case to store them in. He includes a sentence saying he hopes I do not find his request offensive but that if I do, I am under no obligation to him. (These requests of course I fulfill.) The next step closer to being a jinetero is the middle-aged man in Havana of whom I ask directions to the Malecón, who starts talking to me about how he hates Fidel and then turns out to want me to buy asthma medication only available at an international pharmacy. I turn him down and then of course feel guilty. The more obnoxious jineteros want to be your guide or your dancing partner (the feminine of the word means prostitute) or if female may tell you they need money for milk for their baby when you know that milk for babies is free in Cuba. In most places, the come-on is to ask where you’re from, but in Trinidad I found myself inundated by cries of “Amiga, amiga,” found myself highly irritated by being called a friend by someone who didn’t know me, and at one point found myself saying to an adolescent girl, No soy su amiga, which got rid of her effectively but of course made me feel faintly guilty.
On Saturday I leave Santiago and then have a rather cramped itinerary of three destinations on the way to Havana for another few days, after which I hope to write a second installment.
Written June 17, 2004 as an email mailing
Havana, to which I flew from Mexico City on the 4th of June, is still one of my very favorite places, mostly due to the restoration of what we who live in Mexico would call the centro histórico, there known as La Habana Vieja. The best part for me are the four large plazas, which range from lovely to exquisite, although it pains me that only in the Plaza de Armas are there comfortable places to sit other than by taking a seat in a café and spending US dollars. Which I find it essential to do a few times a day for coping with the brutal Cuban heat, not to mention the humidity; my coping strategy is to order a lemonade or a soda with ice and before I have finished it ask for a glass of ice, por favor, which I dump in my drink—if I worried about the ice I would never survive the heat. While sitting in a café one can frequently hear absolutely terrific live music, any time of day, free of charge. Whatever plaza one is in, Havana Bay is always nearby, which gives one a lovely sense of openness. Now that I've been here a couple of times I don't feel the need to do the museums—I went into the Museo de Arte Colonial because its balconies overlook the Plaza de la Catedral and I remain hugely unsatisfied with the photos I have taken of the plazas on my previous trips. (Other than the balconies it houses colonial furniture and accessories rather than art.) This time I find myself deciding that Havana is one of those places (like Antigua) where one can just be, one doesn't have to do things (although with my camera I'm at least looking for things photogenic that I don't already have several photos of). It should be said that the one drawback of restored Havana Vieja is the wrenching contrast because its classy beauty and the wretched poverty one can see a few blocks to the south or west.
The way Cuban colonial architecture was designed for coping with the heat by maximizing the circulation of air is interesting. Ceilings are very high, at least 15 feet, and windows start at the floor and go almost to the ceiling. They never contain glass but rather rejas (bars), which were wood in the 18th century and became iron in the 19th. A piece of cloth, sort of a simplified café curtain, is sometimes hung for privacy. Behind the rejas are shutters (usually open) with persianas (slats, like built-in Venetian blinds). The more elegant colonial buildings have semicircles of stained-glass above the windows. As in Mexico, there are patios, with rooms opening onto the patio. I'm not sure if rocking in a rocking chair makes one feel cooler, but the rocking chair has been an essential piece of furniture in Cuba since colonial times.
When traveling in Cuba I don’t stay in hotels but in casas particulares, private homes licensed by the government (and highly taxed) to rent rooms, which aside from the lower (but not low—I pay USD 25 for my room in Havana and 260 pesos, hardly more, for my three-star hotel with cable TV in Mexico City) price offer the possibility of breakfast and cena (supper) fixed to one?s specifications, a great advantage when one is a vegetarian traveling in a very meat-oriented country. I ask for fruit, bread, and juice (usually something like mango, zapote, or tamarind rather than orange) for breakfast, supplying my own tea bags of green tea, and soup and a salad (which tends to be tomatoes and string beans or maybe cucumber) for cena. In Havana I have discovered an easy way of coping with almuerzo (comida in Mexico, the main meal, eaten in Cuba around 1) because the Hotel Florida, a luxury hotel on Havana Vieja's main street, has a vegetarian page on its multipage menu, not to mention offerings on other pages like black-bean soup and fried bananas (of which I am extremely fond). It also, delightfully, serves iced tea, which though not green is for me an essential coolant with the meal (with the extra glass of ice of course). I am delighted that at my first meal after ordering the food the waiter finishes the order for me, this being the third trip on which I have been an almost-daily customer. The off day I go to the Barrio Chino, an infinitesimal Chinatown to the west of Havana Vieja with one short street with nothing but restaurants, where when I explain that I need a meatless meal, preferably picante (an enormous frustration for me being that the Chinese immigrants in Latin America apparently all came from the province of Canton and Cantonese food is much too bland), the waitress comes up with a soup very close to hot-and-sour soup and a dish of noodles and veggies that is quite good.
What is new and improved about this stay in Havana turns out to be the opportunity to go to two performances, thanks to my flukishly having bought Juventud Rebelde, one of the two propaganda sheets (the other of course being Granma) that pass for newspapers in Cuba, which has cultural listings. (I should mention that there is no such thing as a newsstand in Cuba; these papers are sold on the street by little old men and there is no fixed price, you have to bargain every time.) At the Basilica de San Francisco, which defines the Plaza de San Francisco and which is no longer a church but a concert hall and museum of religious art, there is a performance of a group called the Camerata Romeu, which puts the Camerata Juvenil of Guanajuato to shame. (I am told the morning of the performance, when I learn of it, that seats are sold out but that they will sell standing room at the hour of the performance. I get there half an hour before to wait in a long line and end up sitting on the fifth row because apparently a number of people bought tickets but didn't show up.) There are nine string players, all young except the bass player and all women except the first violinist, with a percussionist playing the güiro for the last two pieces. It is all modern music by Cuban composers, surprisingly accessible, and it is all brilliantly played, especially since neither the musicians nor the conductor are using music. The audience is as enthusiastic as Guanajuato audiences, which of course gets us an encore.
The next night I go to the Gran Teatro, whose baroque façade features four towers each topped by an angel reaching upward, for the Ballet Español de Cuba doing flamenco with shades of ballet and modern dance. There is one female star, maybe 35, a younger semi-star, 8 other muchachas and 4 muchachos, plus a middle-aged man who dances a little and is apparently the director. The dancing is absolutely breathtaking, really spectacular (faintly reminiscent of the programmatic flamenco at the Cervantino last year), as are the guitarists and percussionists, and the audience goes wild.
This trip I am taking the bus to cross the island to Santiago, almost at the eastern end, having decided last time that the 40-year-old Soviet propeller craft used by the two domestic airlines are too uncomfortable and too anxious-making. Cuba offers a bus line for tourists, Viazul, with air-conditioning and a bathroom. My first stop going east, on the 8th of June, is Trinidad, a delightful colonial city whose centro histórico is nothing if not photogenic with its pastel-colored houses, tile roofs, and horse carts—the last not to be picturesque but to transport people without using gasoline. Its Casa de la Trova is a place to sip something cool and hear an array of musicians for the price of the beverage. Its Museo de la Lucha contra Bandidos in a former church offers a tower with spectacular views. Its mercado de artesanía specializes in exquisite embroidered goods, mostly white on white with much deshilado (threads removed, I don’t know the English); I buy a dresser scarf for the guest room, telling the muchacha that I would prefer a descuentito to a regalito, and am quite satisfied.
On the 11th I settle in for a 12-hour bus ride from Trinidad to Santiago. I have previously said that five hours was my limit for bus rides, but I find the length of the trip to be surprisingly bearable. The countryside, despite what people are calling a drought, is quite green, I guess due to the always-high humidity, with mostly sugarcane, occasionally corn. In the settlements we pass there are a few houses with thatched roofs and a lot of houses that look quite poor, although most have a portal in front; all have persianas in the windows. What is most striking though is the total absence of cars anywhere in the vicinity of the houses. And we pass very few cars—there are some trucks, including trucks outfitted to transport people, some horsecarts, some also outfitted to transport people (a couple of oxcarts appear to the side of the road), a fair number of bicycles, some motorcycles, but almost no cars.
The first time I came to Santiago, a year ago, I had a reservation in a house carefully chosen from information on the Internet, and when I arrived to discover that there had been a “complication,” that the room was occupied, and that I was being shuttled to another house around the corner, I was extremely annoyed—until, that is, I met Asela, the owner of the house around the corner, who turned out to be charming, gracious, and eager to be helpful, enabling my dream of making my beloved moon tea with my green-tea bags in a pitcher in the little refrigerator that went with my room. And also becoming an instant conversation companion over hour-and-a-half chats at the kitchen table after breakfast and cena. Asela flukishly had email and after my departure became a constant correspondent. By this my third visit to Santiago I am finding that almost the only attraction of the city is the opportunity to see my friend. At first blush, Santiago, the second-largest city in Cuba, should be pretty, with the mountains in the background, the bay, and the tile roofs. But then one notices the industrial ugliness surrounding the bay and the iron lamina substituting for many tile roofs, and that almost everything is shabby and dirty. And that the jineteros are extremely aggressive.
Let me end with a word about jineteros and neediness, because the jinetero phenomenon, it seems to me, is but one manifestation of pervasive Cuban neediness. I encounter other, more benign manifestations in requests I get to bring things. I know that Asela will want the drops for purifying water and vegetables, which are hard for her to get, but then I receive a request from Mercedes, the owner of my house in Havana, for three types of medicine to treat her arthritis and the ulcers her arthritis medicine has caused, which it will be hard for her to get. She clearly feels a little uneasy in her email about asking me such a favor, so she includes a sentence about how she is asking me because she thinks of me as a sister. Alfredo, in Camagüey, with whom I am in touch because I met him last trip (he is a good friend of Asela) and will be returning to Camagüey when I leave Santiago, asks for copal (a type of incense), blank CDs, and a case to store them in. He includes a sentence saying he hopes I do not find his request offensive but that if I do, I am under no obligation to him. (These requests of course I fulfill.) The next step closer to being a jinetero is the middle-aged man in Havana of whom I ask directions to the Malecón, who starts talking to me about how he hates Fidel and then turns out to want me to buy asthma medication only available at an international pharmacy. I turn him down and then of course feel guilty. The more obnoxious jineteros want to be your guide or your dancing partner (the feminine of the word means prostitute) or if female may tell you they need money for milk for their baby when you know that milk for babies is free in Cuba. In most places, the come-on is to ask where you’re from, but in Trinidad I found myself inundated by cries of “Amiga, amiga,” found myself highly irritated by being called a friend by someone who didn’t know me, and at one point found myself saying to an adolescent girl, No soy su amiga, which got rid of her effectively but of course made me feel faintly guilty.
On Saturday I leave Santiago and then have a rather cramped itinerary of three destinations on the way to Havana for another few days, after which I hope to write a second installment.
Written June 17, 2004 as an email mailing
