Island that Dared

Praise for
The Island that Dared

‘There has always been a raw energy about her work that sets her apart from some of her paler contemporaries … Now in her mid-70s, she has written at least 25 books but, judging by this volume she’s in no danger of mellowing … Fierce, highly moral and uncompromising, this is classic Murphy. In an often anodyne world, she remains an original … she is a refreshingly defiant voice, straight-talking and no-nonsense.’

Justin Marozzi,
The Financial Times

‘This most independent of adventurers … writes from the experience of doing Cuba the hard way. She cannot see one of the island’s ubiquitous queues without joining it, whether it’s for bread or a seat in a bone-shaking railway carriage … She has the knack of eliciting confidences and even affection from people who have learnt to be wary. Dervla Murphy’s travelogue is a close as any foreigner is likely to get to the life of Cubans on the brink.’

Stephen Smith,
The Telegraph

‘Murphy shows herself to be an acute observer of the political scene as well as displaying the exact physical notation and bloody-mindedness on which she has built her reputation. This should be required reading for all those magnetised by dreams of a holiday in Havana.’

Giles Foden,
Condé Nast Traveller

‘The new book is no rough guide to Cuba. It’s a substantial piece of work, with careful research about the Caribbean island’s history, politics and economy, woven with her observations on the ground. She sees the political system there – which allows the population little freedom of expression or freedom of movement – as a viable alternative to capitalism.’

Kate Butler,
The Sunday Times
, Ireland

‘Intrepid and indefatigable in pursuit of experience … Murphy discovers an island in transition from hard-line socialism to moderate capitalism. The faded charm persist, but so does poverty, which is borne with a patriotic pride that continues to baffle Batista-nostalgic critics.’

The Times

‘Investigating the real, modern nation, rather than the pre-packaged one, with candour, she uncovers many truths along the way.’

Time Out

‘This is writing without artifice or intimacy. As much travel writing becomes boastful, Dervla’s clarity and honesty is admirable. It takes us there, strolls about with us, then brings us safely home …’

Dea Birkett,
The Oldie

‘A passionate but by no means uncritical celebration of the Cuban people and their revolution … Murphy has an infectious love for life and an ability to strike up conversation with virtually anyone, enabling her to make contact with ordinary Cubans who’ve achieved some quite extraordinary things.’

Morning Star

Lovine Wilson achieved awesome secretarial feats while swiftly coping with a tedious and incoherent typescript.

Brendan Barrington kindly read the first draft and was generous with shrewd constructive criticism.

Jo Murphy-Lawless as usual contributed enormously in both raw material and moral support. Deborah Singmaster, on a sudden inspiration, brought forth the title.

Stephanie Allen earned my undying gratitude by guiding me towards Eland Publishing. Rose Baring and Barnaby Rogerson provided the sort of encouragement and advice all authors need and a dwindling number receive in the twenty-first century.

Rachel and Andrew put Cuba on my agenda and the former for months worked overtime in cyberspace on behalf of an uncomputerised mother.

To all, my heartfelt thanks.

In times long past (1973–87) I travelled with my daughter Rachel (born 1968) in Asia, Latin America and Africa; pack-animals assisted us on those months-long treks. In 1993 Rachel met Andrew in Mozambique where both were working as UN volunteers during that country’s transition from war to peace.

Fast forward to the autumn of 2005 when my grand-daughters were soon to be ten (Rose), eight (Clodagh) and six (Zea) – old enough to benefit from some real travelling, instead of merely flying from their home in Italy to visit relatives and friends in Wales, England and Ireland. From Andrew came an exhilarating suggestion, a three-generation November wander through Cuba. The island’s quasi-Western way of life would not, he judged, overtax his darlings’ adaptability and Castroism has brought about a remarkably low crime-rate. But unfortunately this had to be an
all-female
team; Andrew’s job precluded winter holidays and the university vacation months would be intolerably hot.

Everything was easily organised. Low-cost Virgin Air fares were on offer and at the Cuban Consulate in London efficient young women took only seven minutes to process our five visas (£15 each) – thus setting a record, in my experience. Tourism has now replaced sugar as Cuba’s main official source of hard currency so it is in the national interest to lower bureaucratic hurdles. Another vitally important source – this one long-established – is the cash-flow, unquantifiable but considerable, from Cuban exiles to their families and friends.

From the
Rough Guide’s
list of
casas particulares
(government-approved B&Bs) Rachel selected Casa de Pedro y Candida in Centro Habana and by e-mail booked two rooms for three nights. Beyond Havana we would muddle through; having closely studied our map and guide books, we knew how to avoid the main tourist zones. And Cuba’s four thousand five hundred-mile coastline promised that the Trio would not be deprived of sea and sand.

Despite its unique socio-political interest, Cuba was not a country I had
ever considered for a solitary trek or cycle tour; always it’s too hot (Siberia in winter is more to my climatic taste) and topographically it is too tame. I visualised, not entirely accurately, an island mostly flat and monochrome (all those canefields!) with only a few low mountain ranges. The Cuban people, I gathered, were the country’s most precious resource, an
impression
to be confirmed by experience.  

I failed to register the Revolution’s triumph in January 1959 when I was in the midst of a prolonged personal crisis that obliterated world events. However, I do vividly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. By then I was preparing to cycle to India while everyone else was, if you believed the media, preparing for nuclear war. I didn’t believe the media and concentrated on sending spare tyres to strategic points (usually British Council offices) between Istanbul and New Delhi. Meanwhile Nikita Khrushchev and J.F. Kennedy were sorting things out without consulting Fidel, which seemed fair enough since he had had no ambition to host nuclear weapons. Inevitably, however, this ignoring of their leader caused considerable offence in Cuba; it too loudly echoed that Spanish and US ignoring of the courageous Cuban army in 1898, when the Wars of Independence ended. Fidel’s accepting of the missiles was a decision reluctantly taken, as he explained years later. ‘By allowing Cuba to become a Soviet military base the image of the Revolution would be damaged and we were zealous in protecting that image in the rest of Latin America.’ He was referring to the importance of the Revolution’s being recognised as a one hundred per cent homegrown event, brought off by ordinary Cubans without any significant outside assistance – financial, ideological or military.

During subsequent decades, Cuba came to my attention only occasionally: in 1967 when Che was executed in Bolivia by CIA-funded militia; in August 1968 when Fidel severely shocked his friends, at home and abroad, by condoning Soviet brutality in Czechoslovakia; in April 1971 when the poet Heberto Padilla, winner of a major international literary prize, was bugged by State Security and subsequently publicly humiliated; in the mid-’70s when Cuban troops in Angola contributed more than their share to the defeat of apartheid South Africa’s US-backed army. During the following decades I was impressed by the publication of internationally acclaimed statistics recording the extraordinary achievement of Castroist health and education campaigns and in the early’90s it distressed me to hear that the end of trade relations with the Eastern Bloc was threatening all such achievements. In Washington that crisis engendered two more anti-Cuba
laws and here one recalls the much-quoted comment of a US diplomat, Wayne S. Smith – ‘Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon used to have on werewolves’.

On 28 September 1990, after all trade with the Eastern Bloc had suddenly collapsed, Fidel announced Cuba’s entry into ‘a special period during peacetime’, an interlude of deprivation comparable to wartime conditions (soon to become generally known a ‘the Special Period’). Seven years later the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean estimated that this ‘interruption of commercial relations with the Eastern Bloc constituted a loss of markets more severe than that brought about by the Great Depression’.

It could be said that I was starry-eyed (or blinkered?) about the
forty-seven-year-old
Cuban experiment when our direct flight to Havana took off on 1 November 2005. This family holiday gave me a glimpse of the experiment’s complexities and in January 2006 I returned alone for two months – which journey left me somewhat less starry-eyed, though still a staunch supporter of Castroism as it has been evolving since 1990. My final visit (September/October 2007) coincided with Cuba’s four-yearly elections and I saw for myself what Professor D. L. Raby had recently pointed out: