Island that Dared (26 page)

From Topes de Collantes one can hike on approved paths through a national park covering more than a hundred square miles: guides are for hire in a little-used ‘Visitors Facility’. Topes was my first and worst experience of a Cuban tourist zone, a harrowing example of ‘development desecration’. The Kurhotel’s three rivals occupy forested slopes linked by concreted roads, all the gradients so severe that stairways replace footpaths. At 5.30 p.m. one hotel was closed, another only half-built, the third almost full of Germans and Italians newly arrived in five coaches. My large, well-appointed,
motel-type
room, opening directly off a courtyard studded with flower-beds,
seemed like good value for CP37 (buffet breakfast included) until I realised that its insatiable mosquitoes were undeterred by screening.

Next morning I overheard an elderly heavily-bearded German growling that Cubans can make even scrambled eggs unpalatable. His young Italian partner (English their common language) alleged that this was because Cuban hotels use Chinese powdered eggs. While helping myself to a third course I slipped three hard-boiled eggs and three triangles of processed cheese into my shoulder-bag: fuel for the twelve miles to Trinidad.

Repelled by those concrete stairways, I took a forest path to the road and soon a two-inch thorn, strong as steel and sharp as a needle, had penetrated my sandal’s thick sole and my right foot. (Every misfortune strikes my right foot; its companion has survived unscathed throughout seven decades of equally hard wear.) I let the blood flow for a moment, before applying antiseptic ointment and a plaster. Later, at a wayside bar near Trinidad, where I sat with one sole visible, the barman drew my attention to another, shorter thorn. Very observant of him, I thought and typically Cuban to care about the welfare of a passing stranger. I last met this particular hazard in Tanzania where such thorns are the cyclist’s bugbear.

Below the hotels,
bohios
mingle with traces of military occupation; Topes was a Rebel Army base during the Escambray campaign. Since then an Institute of Mountain Agronomy has been built, and its staff live in the scattered holiday villas of the pre-Revolutionary rich.

After a few switchbacking miles I was suddenly overlooking a calm sea glittering under a cloudless sky, two thousand one hundred feet below. Here the Escambray’s wall rises abruptly from a narrow plain – narrow when seen from above, yet wide enough to have abundantly enriched a colony of cane-planters. On their southern slopes these mountains are treeless, having been clear-felled during the nineteenth century to fuel giant sugar mills. Until motor roads were built in the 1950s Trinidad depended mainly on sea-transport, supplemented by mule-trains. The clear air allowed me to see the indented coastline – a pirates’ delight – for many miles to east and west.

During the descent a geological freak fascinated me – many tall, slim outcrops of silver rock, their tops symmetrically serrated as though a giant had bitten off mouthfuls. Isolated cacti flaunted flaming flowers, a yard long, and down on the plain towering stands of bamboo swayed and squeaked in the wind. Here grazed cattle, goats and sheep, on
drought-stricken
pastures with prickly pear hedges. At first I mistook the sheep for goats; they wore short dark brown fleeces and long silky blonde cravats.

Over the last two miles, on the Cienfuegos-Trinidad road, half a dozen vehicles felt like heavy traffic. Crossing the sluggish Rio Guaurabo, I thought of Diego Velasquez sailing upstream in December 1513 to found Cuba’s third settlement. Hereabouts a hideous example of ‘public art’ welcomes visitors to ‘Trinidad a World Treasure’. Then an odd sound intrigued me, a prolonged wheezing, moaning whistle – coming from an 1890’s steam engine, drawing two carriages at five miles per hour and emitting a spectacular column of thick black smoke that half-filled the sky for ten minutes and smelt of my childhood.

Trinidad is over-supplied with
casas particulares
and touts compete on the outskirts. A youth offered to lead me to his mother’s casa – ‘Very near with all comfort!’ Firmly I showed him the address I was seeking and cheerfully he said, ‘I lead you, if no place you come my house’. In the wrong street he rang a doorbell and quickly muttered something to the old woman who hesitantly peered out. ‘She has no room,’ he declared. ‘You come now my casa.’ Angrily pointing to the street name I told him to get lost and went on my way feeling guilty about that anger. Toutish tricks are distasteful but one should make allowances …

I soon found the correct address but Candida’s friend was at a wedding in Cienfuegos. Her neighbour directed me to a nearby alternative where the welcome was warm but the accommodation cramped: a windowless cell, a dim electric bulb, two single beds, no writing space. Camilla, my hostess, was understandably neurotic about payment; she had been twice cheated by back-packers who stayed a few nights – then vanished before dawn. My arrival without convertible pesos made her fidget until I’d been to the
Cambio
.

Camilla was a fortyish creole with an elderly mulatto husband. Their twelve-year-old daughter, Ana, was not on good terms with Mamma but could easily enlist Pappa’s sympathy and support by bursting into tears. Such details were easily observed because I had to write at the
dining-table
. An adult nephew, mildly mentally handicapped and an orphan, occupied the cell beside mine and Camilla was more patient with him than with Ana. He spent hours being happily excited by the two TV sets (both on simultaneously) in the spacious front room and guests were rightly expected to take him in their stride. Within a few days a gossipy neighbour had informed me that he wasn’t really an orphan. His parents had
abandoned
him, as an obviously defective infant, when they joined the Mariel exodus. But his Aunt Camilla chose to conceal that shameful fact.

That evening my fellow-guests were three repulsive young Swedish men,
carrying ludicrous amounts of luggage for a fortnight in Cuba, with bellies flopping over their belts and an unpleasant way of exchanging significant gestures whenever Ana passed by – she pointedly ignoring them.

From my diary:

Those cantankerous instant-reactions were soon forgotten as Trinidad revealed its less obvious charms. Many of the other twenty-four thousand live in a noisy, colourful district no more than ten minutes walk from the quiet colonial splendours. Here the simple brick shacks, each on it own
little plot, look like DIY jobs – government-subsidised, immediately after the Revolution, when Cuba’s housing shortage was, as it had long been, at crisis point. (Even now it’s close to that point.) The humpy, broken laneways – litter entangled in weeds along the verges – would challenge a four by four; after a rainy night the potholes were serving as toddlers’
paddling-pools
and cyclists were wheeling their machines. The residents, mostly black, were jolly and animated and much given to spontaneous
music-making
but rather shy of the ‘lost’ foreigner. Guides do not lead their flocks in this direction. Four youths, riding bareback, recklessly raced young horses, seemingly only half-broken, up and down the wider streets – to the shouted disapproval of their elders.

Further on, towards the coast, I found Raimundo’s Uncle Gustavo in one of several 1970s apartment blocks, built at a respectful distance from the Historic Centre. Like his nephew, Gustavo was very tall, very black, very kind and very articulate. He had been warned that one day ‘a peculiar Irish traveller’ would arrive on his threshold. Removing an indignant dachshund from a cane rocking-chair he invited me to sit and asked with a twinkle, ‘Why are you so peculiar?’ That was a good beginning.

Half an hour later we were discussing a topic still delicate in Cuba. Personally Gustavo was not complaining; he had reached the top of his academic ladder and experienced no difficulties on the way up. But the Special Period’s destabilising effects on race relations bothered him. ‘We’re short of supportive relatives in the US. The
Centro de Antropologia
in Havana reported recently that thirty to forty per cent of whites receive regular remittances but only five to ten per cent of blacks.’ Even worse, Gustavo had observed the foreign investors’ racism reinfecting Cuba’s whites. ‘Look at the tourist coaches, how many guides or even drivers are black? Go to the tourist hotels, how many staff are black?’ When the first foreign investors arrived, agreements were made to safeguard Cuba’s anti-discrimination laws but the foreigners went their own way. Gustavo admitted, ‘I’m naïve, I was shocked, I didn’t know Europeans were still like that. I’ve lived in the US but I’ve never visited Europe. There’s a bit of
déjà vu
around – some of the worst racists are Spanish investors! People tell me it’s getting better since Guitart Hotels S.A. had their contract cancelled. When administering the Habana Libre Hotel – I suppose Cuba’s most famous – they sacked eight hundred black employees! Said their sort of customer would prefer white or light-skinned mixed race. But our
Foreign Investment Act
of 1995 says Cuban laws apply to foreigners’ employees. The Cuban Confederation of Workers took action against Guitart and won. Raúl Castro stayed on
their side, saying any establishment discriminating against blacks must be closed, whether or not it’s a joint venture. The Parque Central Hotel also had to sack all its racist management or have its contract voided. El Commandate has always been an extreme anti-racist. I’m his age, I grew up watching how the Revolution worked for blacks, mulattos and the poorest whites.’

I quoted the comments of a ‘black foreign student’ (Miranda, as we walked in the Hanabanilla woods). ‘My friend believes the Special Period killed the Revolution. The government pretended it was possible to compromise with capitalism, to have “regulated” outside investors. That was dishonest, she argues. Those people can’t really be “regulated”, they come with strings and once they’re in they pull them.’

‘It’s a point of view,’ said Gustavo. ‘But what I’ve just told you partly disproves it. How long is this young man in Cuba?’

‘Actually a young woman – five years in Cuba – and she herself has noticed racism increasing in all sorts of little ways. She arrived uncritical, now she has doubts, thinks maybe the Revolution should have gone more slowly, getting rid of Batista’s gangs at once but letting ordinary
counter-revolutionaries
feel there was space for them.’

Gustavo smiled wryly. ‘It’s the age-group, my grandson talks like that – a clever fellow, starting university. He and his
compañeros
are fiercely anti-Communist, which doesn’t have to mean counter-revolutionary. That might confuse some people but by now you must be used to our paradoxes. Those kids don’t understand how things were in ’59. Aside from Batista’s gangs, nobody was “hunted out”. The Revolution didn’t want to lose the educated class –
needed
them! And the
barbudos
didn’t yet seem like Communists though there were rumours about Raúl and Che. People jeer that Fidel didn’t reform the real Cuba, had to tailor a demographically different country to fit his ideology. That’s a favourite
Yanqui
line. Stuff about expelling all the “intelligent democrats”, clearing the way to bully the morons who couldn’t afford to leave! It’s neurotic, denying that most of us backed the Revolution. Remember Playa Giron? Where were the thousands supposed to rise up all over the island to join the “liberating invaders”? They were in the CIA’s imagination!’

Gustavo broke off to brew another pot of coffee, then continued. ‘I’m sorry your young friend has felt discrimination – could it be more than racism in her case? I suppose she’s at ELAM?’ (Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, opened in 1999.)

I nodded. ‘So she’s lucky,’ said Gustavo. ‘One of thousands trained for
free, only having to promise to work in their own countries among the poor. A Fidel pet project, and some youngsters don’t approve of spending so much on foreigners. I’ve heard about their resentment showing. Cuban racism is still around – Raúl and others admit we should have more mulattos and blacks as Party and government leaders. Legislation can only gradually dilute racism. Think of the time-scale – many of our oldest citizens are the grandchildren of slaves, men and women who were seen as commodities, not human beings. I’m one such. A few decades of legal equality can’t always compensate for centuries of desperate poverty and ignorance. Certain families aren’t able to benefit from equal opportunities – and they don’t come more equal than we have them in Cuba! I’m not talking only about blacks, we’ve mulatto and
campesiño
families in the same sort of trap. When the Revolution threw them a lifeline they couldn’t reach it – which I’m told makes Fidel very sad, in his old age.’