Un Hombre Libre en Cuba

In April 2013, the story of Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s trip to Cuba was all over the news.  They had received a hard-to-get visa that permitted them to visit our controversial island neighbor (you know, the one with the missile crisis).  President Obama was taking heat for giving them special privileges and maybe the absurdity of this situation contributed to his subsequent decision to restore U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba and try to usher in a milder stance towards our isolated neighbor.  Regardless, I was there first. 

I visited Cuba using a person-to-person exchange visa obtained for me by Washington University.  I was part of a trip led by my friend and mentor, Professor Schraibman (Pepe). Pepe had grown up in Old Havana, where a vibrant Jewish community used to exist.  This community essentially vanished after the Revolution, as Jews had been on the wrong side of too many revolutions and had learned to leave while one could under such circumstances.  Still, Havana was Pepe’s home and he returned each year with supplies and medicine for the people of Havana and a group of lucky, young students in tow.  The people of Havana loved Pepe and their love was returned in this case.

Many in the United States maintain a romantic conception of Havana.  In pictures, we see brightly colored cars and historic Spanish-colonial style buildings.  Perhaps, you are familiar with the vibrant music of the Buena Vista Social Club?  It has a passionate, languorous sound.  Voices, jangling guitars, maracas, drums, and horns interweave into an oceanic ebb and flow.  This music could only have come from Cuba and the unique fusion of cultures that fertilized it.  Yet, such “social clubs” were abolished in the aftermath of the Revolution.  In a famous speech, Fidel Castro spelled out the future of art in Cuba: “The Revolution must have an attitude for…the intellectuals and writers…within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing.” One did not need to crack a book to see that the Revolution had left little in Cuba untouched.  The streets were silent and the war was over but the Revolution lived on and it held its children in a suffocating embrace that left them gasping for air.  The machinations of the Revolution had been sustained by the lives and dreams of its people, which it fed upon in the name of the People. Against the Revolution, nothing.  What remained beyond the Revolution?  The vast and empty sea. A sea that imprisoned a people who had been assigned the motto, “Homeland or Death!”  And beyond that?  Everything.

In Havana, time could have been measured against the crumbling of pre-Revolutionary buildings.  I walked through a city that was falling apart around me.  A city of the condemned living on an island without boats.  The beautiful ocean that encircled Cuba was like a moat that stretched as far as the eye could see and there was not a single boat within sight.  The people of Cuba were overjoyed to find United States citizens on their island.  They had been waiting in vain for recognition from their powerful neighbor.  They were stuck in limbo, living as hostages of a sovereign feud and our arrival was interpreted as a good omen. 

The strong attraction that Cubans felt towards foreigners was, however, a product of their two-currency system.  Cuban citizens were paid in pesos for their government assigned work, a currency that was worth next to nothing and was highly illiquid, analogous to food stamps, perhaps.  Everything other than the bare essentials had to be paid for with CUCs, a currency that was pegged to the dollar at a rate of 1.0 USD to 0.8 CUC. The 20% premium was arbitrarily established by the Cuban government as an off-the-top collection.  For foreigners like myself, this currency was like a token system at an arcade.  There was no changing your money back, while for Cubans, there was no playing without it.  Within the Revolution, everything goes.

Without direct access to dollars or CUCs, the only other means of getting hard-to-find items (what we would consider everyday items) was to be lucky enough to have a kind relative overseas who was willing to send care packages back to Cuba.  The end of the embargo was sought with a religious fervor and many Cubans felt that their problems would be diminished substantially by the return of more Americans.  Accordingly, we were treated like royalty, which made me very uncomfortable.  Once, I saw some bracelets on display and wanted to get one for my wife but there was no attendant.  I stumbled into the home of an unrelated family, yet they wanted me to sit down and showed me the utmost hospitality. 

Most of the buildings in Havana were constructed in a Spanish-colonial style and many were built during the prohibition when Havana was viewed as an island escape for U.S. tourists seeking booze, gambling, and the magic of a truly unique city.  In cities like Rome, I have seen beautiful ruins encircled by new developments and streets filled with modern continental cars. In Cuba, there were only the latter; people lived amongst the ruins of the past─ their homes were literally crumbling around them. The city was very open because there was no privacy.  People lived in close quarters.  Walls had eroded, leaving cracks that allowed families to peer into each other’s living rooms.  I was told that the government had been slowly working on renovating these buildings but it was obvious that they were past salvation.  I wondered how often they collapsed on their inhabitants, crushing the people that they were meant to protect.  I was sure such incidents would not have been published in the Cuban press.  There were no tragedies in Cuba other than those of a counter-revolutionary nature.

Society was so dysfunctional at the macro level that, at the micro level, life had to be held together through relentless collaboration and small acts of kindness and genius. The brightly colored vintage cars that are admired in photographs around the world were perpetually being worked on in the street.  Their continued use did not stem from nostalgia but from necessity, which is the mother of invention and, in Cuba, a culture of MacGyver-like ingenuity. The Cuban populace seemed to entertain few illusions about the quality of the leadership in their country, which presented far more obstacles than solutions; their joy was a product of their overcoming of these obstacles on a daily basis, of their will to live and find meaning in spite of all of the absurdity. 

During my last day in Cuba, I remember walking along the Malecon towards the Hotel Nacional de Cuba where many celebrities and mobsters had gone to enjoy themselves.  As I strolled beside the sea wall, waves crashed against it and broke over the side, rising above and then crashing down on me.  By the time, I arrived at my destination, I was soaked but happy.  I walked in dripping wet and enjoyed a first-class daquiri. This was a world that Cubans did not get to experience.  An island within an island.  It had become clear to me that the Cuban people were exiles within their own country.  Everyone that I spoke to hoped that relations between the U.S. and Cuba would thaw out and return to a more sensible state.  Although I was traveling within a totalitarian state, I had arrived there as a free man, had traveled throughout as such, and would return to a country of unparalleled opportunity and freedom.  What about the people of Cuba?  Had their Revolution served them?  Would it ever end?  They were still waiting…  As Vasilly Grossman wrote, “Man’s innate yearning for freedom can be suppressed but never destroyed. Totalitarianism cannot renounce violence. If it does, it perishes. Eternal, ceaseless violence, overt or covert, is the basis of totalitarianism. Man does not renounce freedom voluntarily. This conclusion holds out hope for our time, hope for the future.”  The many friends that I made in Cuba lived their lives clawing at the walls but with dignity and pride.  They were resilient in spite of everything but, as we drank warm mojitos in the sun, they told me to bring back a message for them.  They said that they were ready for freedom, they wished for renewed friendship with the United States, and they prayed for the day when boats would grace their marinas and planes would arrive on their airfields which they too could board.