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Viva la evolución

Feb. 24, 2000 | Here is the truth: Before I came to Cuba I loved Fidel Castro. And still do, a little, in the way that you love an ex who once seemed so right for you. It's not a romantic, yearning-in-the-loins love, but an idealistic respect for someone with the gall to think he could change an entire country and the ability to succeed.

It wasn't falling in love with Castro or Cuba that surprised me; I knew before I left Chicago that it would be a place that would speak to me, a place where passion wouldn't be a thing defined only in bedrooms and whispers, but a place where I'd get my color back, make my vision a little sharper. I need that every now and then. Like Samson and his hair, travel's where I get my strength. What did surprise me was how separate Castro came to be when I spoke of Cuba, like understanding that Vietnam is so much more than the setting of America's biggest 20th century blunder.

The latest U.S.-Castro muscling over Elian Gonzalez is a case in point, the best example of what Fidel's done for Cubans. U.S. media shows the 50,000-plus demonstrators in Havana to bring Elian back home. Indeed, billboards and posters with a confused looking Elian punctuate the city declaring Devuelvan a Elian a su Patria -- return Elian to his native country. Thousands of similar T-shirts are passed out. It is government-perpetuated, declares the United States, which is meant to somehow render it devoid of meaning.

Indeed, like many events in Cuba, the Elian protests appear to be, in part, cause for socializing as much as anything. At one of the events I saw, groups of blue-clad security men sat amid the protesters, chatting and eating peanuts from funneled pieces of paper. The speakers evoked rage at the situation, but wandering through the masses felt a lot like a walk through a summer festival -- not because conviction here was less than total, but because this is Cuba.

So begins the new Revolution. Each Cuban with dollars is a budding entrepreneur, an independent capitalist. Throughout our first week here, Ann and I commented on those strange gas fumes emitted from each car we rode in. Then we learned that the employees of state-run gas stations skim off the top and resell the gas on the black market for U.S. dollars, which the car owners, or renters, keep to siphon from small jugs in their trunks. Same with cigars. And soap. And food. And shoes. Anything for sale anywhere -- tools, stereos, cassettes, refrigerators -- nearly all is available on the street to those with dollars. And since rations only cover the average Cuban for two weeks, such grand-scale thievery is tolerated. Franqui, our sputtering Subaru, initiated us into this system.

This is not to suggest Cuba is a rich economy -- there isn't all that much to buy. I searched in Havana for days for a banana and finally gave up. Bottled water, very expensive in Cuba, is more prevalent in remote areas of Tibet and Cambodia. Public transportation is the worst I've seen anywhere. Cars are few and buses fewer.

There is a free farmer's market now, following Castro's reforms in 1994, but it is expensive even for foreigners. Beef is saved for tourists and pregnant women. Each Cuban gets roughly six eggs a month, but omelets are plentiful in hotels. Toilet paper is rare, even in hotels, and most households use newspaper or magazines. Taxis have become the domain of those wealthy enough to own cars. To get a ride, one need only wave an arm and Juan Q. Public will pull over and take you anywhere within the city for a few dollars, offered inside the car while the police look the other way. One man in Cienfuegos even took us on his horse and buggy down a labyrinth of side streets to avoid the police. For $2.

My Cuban friend Leonardo, who spent time in the States, told me that he did not live in so repressive a society as I might think. We were driving to Havana from the new Josi Marti airport, built last year. I did not answer, but sat smugly in the back of his gasoline-smelling car and thought he didn't really know oppression because he'd never really known freedom. But slowly, over the course of my weeks in Cuba, I began to see that it was I who'd been wrong.

It began with Leonardo telling us about when he was a ballot counter during the 1996 elections. (Since 1992, elections have been held every two years for the General Assembly, which includes Castro.) When he saw people write "Down with Fidel" on ballot cards and suffer no consequences, he virtually stopped living in fear -- overnight. There are four daily papers in Cuba, he said, and it is up to journalists to exercise freedom of speech, though what sorts of pressures they may feel he couldn't speculate. But freedom of speech -- like station attendants selling gasoline, farmers owning land and families who turn their living rooms into restaurants and their bedrooms into guest housing -- is the foundation of this new revolution. Tiny steps toward capitalism.

We had decided to avoid Franqui's flat tire until the morning and though the lugnuts gave us quite a challenge, the parking attendant's son and neighbor replaced the old tire with the spare in no time. We gave them a few dollars, thanked them profusely and, at Ann's wise urging, drove back to the Transtur mechanics to have our spare patched up.

Happily, it seemed they had little to do until our arrival with Franqui. While they fixed the spare, we explained about the gas gauge being broken and they took to fixing that, too. Then they fixed a missing part on the door panel. Then they cleaned the windows. And when we asked if Franqui could make it to Santiago they all smiled and said: No problema. Several hours later we were on our way again, this time absolutely confident that we had treated Franqui well and would be duly rewarded with faithful service hereafter.

The loud POP came halfway between Trinidad and Camaguey, amid soft fields of sugar cane with the Escambray mountain range behind us and palm trees punctuating the fields. My heart raced remembering the difficult lug nuts of the morning. This was no mere flat. A 4-inch slice through the tire exposed the metal threads once holding it together.

There wasn't a car in sight. I said a silent prayer, jumped on the tire iron and miraculously the lugnuts budged. We managed to change the tire -- me thanking Ann for forcing us to get that spare fixed -- and drove to a shop in Bayamo at the foot of the Sierra Maestra mountain range to buy a spare. The shop, of course, was a man with four tools and a sign hanging outside his house. When it was determined that no spare could be found in the whole town, nor any surrounding towns, nor probably the whole eastern portion of the island, the man sewed the wrecked tire together with plastic thread, ironing sheets of rubber over the inside and eventually salvaging the unsalvageable. This, as much as anything, symbolizes the unwavering fortitude of four decades with Fidel and cast.

Cuba is no Utopia, certainly, and daily we were reminded of the dichotomies inherent in the country. Money does not hold the power that it does in the United States since it cannot always purchase what you need. One man told me he'd been offered U.S. $40,000 for his house by a Dutch man, but he'd turned it down. "What would I do with that money?" he'd said. "Houses are harder to get than money." He'd seen the wealth in the United States. He'd seen all that money could buy, all that he lives without. But then he'd seen the poverty in Haiti and Jamaica. "They eat garbage," he said. "They live like dogs."

Tourism, of course, is Cuba's main economy. And for the socially conscious traveler, Cuba is one place where your dollars can go directly into the hands of the people and not the government. This happens when tourists avoid large hotels, that are visible at night because they are in the part of town with the most electricity. In fact, if you stand in La Cabana, the old Spanish fortress across the bay from Havana where Che Guevara set up shop after the '59 triumph, you can chart the tourist areas of town -- they are the sections with the most light. The rest of Havana is dark and still.

But this new Revolution is slower in the countryside. In the week we drove Franqui through the island, it took us several days to realize that the posters and billboards with Elian's visage began to disappear, as did many of the Cuban flags hanging from windows, and posters of Camilo Cienfuegos began to replace those of Fidel. Occasionally the old "Socialism or Death" slogans appeared on walls, though they had been virtually erased from Havana, and the hustlers that Havana police strive to keep away from tourists seemed to multiply tenfold in Trinidad and Camaguey.

Halfway through the drive to Santiago I discovered that instead of being fixed, Franqui's gas gauge was now stuck on full. I began counting kilometers.

The equation between what you think you know and what you come to learn in Cuba never evens out. There is always more to discover because the rules are liquid; what you read rarely matches what you see. Property, for example. Cubans are not allowed to own their own houses -- on paper, at least. But if they want to buy, say, the roof from a man in a one-story house, they can build up from there, someday having a roof of their own to sell. One large three-bedroom apartment we visited in Santiago had cost U.S. $7,500 to build with materials all purchased one by one on the black market. This week, a toilet. Next month, maybe a sink. It's the ratio of available capital to available material, and the laws of supply and demand are not applicable in Cuba. Yet.

The man who fixed our tire in Bayamo ordered us to toss the thing immediately upon arriving in Santiago. After three hours at the shop, we were on our way with 74 miles to go. I drove gingerly over potholes and train tracks, white-knuckling the steering wheel and imagining how we'd get Franqui through the mountains and into Santiago if another tire blew.

When we finally drove into the city after sundown, our hearts melted with relief and we fell immediately in love with Santiago's winding streets and hills, which reminded us of San Francisco. We pulled up to a guest house that had been recommended and were greeted enthusiastically in English by a young woman who seemed to come factory-made with a smile. We left the car out front temporarily, with the hazards on. Relaxing for a moment in the open courtyard of her house, Ann and I grinned at each other. We all -- even Franqui -- had made it, had reached a kind of promised land.

"Better not leave Franqui out there," I told Ann, "with the keys inside."

Her face dropped. Turned white. "The keys?" she said.

Indeed. I'd left them in the car. She'd locked it. And there it stood, flashers going like admonishments that we would never be free of Franqui's spirit. The woman in the guest house smiled nervously, telling us perhaps her husband could help if he got home soon. We shook our heads at our misfortune. How could the gods betray us so?

A man in a car happened by and greeted us; our new hostess told him briefly of our plight, asking if he could possibly help. He nodded at the car, studied it for a moment, then plucked his own car keys from his pocket, stuck one in Franqui's single keyhole and voil`, the car was unlocked. "SOY CUBA!" we shouted in unison, I am Cuba! Franqui would not conquer us!

Most Cubans agree that changes are needed for survival -- 1993 was an awful year, with people starving in the streets after the fall of Russia. But things are better now. More goods are being bought and sold and everyone has a home. Indeed, wandering the night streets of Havana, Cienfuegos, Camaguey, Trinidad and Santiago, I came across only one homeless person. Too many changes at once will bring on a collapse like in Russia, many fear. And though Fidel waves these as perpetual banners, free health care and education are banners worth waving.

If there is one thing that unites Cubans, beyond Elian fervor, it is a collective hatred of Miami Cubans. Fidel may be bad, but the Cubans in Miami are worse, everyone says. An infiltration of those in Florida, many fear, would bring tides of crime, drugs and poverty -- all the debauchery Miami is infamous for. The Miami Mafioso, the Cuban population there is called. And Cuba would return to its pre-Castro days with the mob running high-stakes gambling and overpriced sex shows. Only this time things would be worse because those in Miami have more money. Fidel, at least, is a known commodity.

Though their fears are not unfounded, neither set of Cubans bracketing the Florida straits is offered a proper perspective. The stereotypes are pervasive: Miami is gangs, drugs and murder whereas Cuba is only prostitution and petty thievery.

As for the U.S. embargo, Cubans have at least one reason to rejoice: It has probably saved the island from the inevitable death-by-tourism plaguing Bali, Cancun, Jamaica, Bermuda and countless other "tropical paradises." There is a down-home warmth to the place, like the house of a favorite cousin. The police are numerous, but friendly, and greet you as you pass. Talk to a Cuban for more than 10 minutes and you'll be invited home, provided you convince the police that you're not being hustled. It's a place where human noise, which is constant and loud, offers a sense that life is happening all around you. Not machinery, but the voices of community.

Within our first 10 days in Havana we knew our neighbors and the brother of our guest house's owner, and his son's girlfriend, and the father's doctor and the neighbor's friends. Three times I ran into people I'd met, as if Havana was some small town I'd grown up in and not just a place I was visiting. It is the frenzied, frenetic rhythm of a salsa song with pauses long enough to catch your breath and dance again. It is the broken instrument held together just barely, sounding nearly as it always has, a little rough around the edges and painted in pastels, but still playing.

Not unlike Franqui, the little devil that did, in the end, bring us where we wanted to go. Franqui hadn't brought us in the way we expected, and not in the ways we know or could have imagined. But all along the way people had aided his and our survival, given their time, material and skill with a patience that only comes from years of making do with what you're given: eating, as it were, the whole apple. Franqui, his skin bruised but core intact, had made it nonetheless.

-- By Rachel Louise Snyder