Island that Dared (51 page)

By 4.30 the clouds had thickened and darkened and an earth-shaking
thunder clap directly overhead made most people jump and/or exclaim. Torrential rain followed a dazzling display of jagged lightning. At 5.15 we were told to ‘confirm’: the bus was on its way. Another ledger demanded everyone’s details before our train tickets could be stamped on the back (twice, by different clerks) for bus use. When the Astro coach arrived at 6.40 the torrent had dwindled to a trickle – just enough to dampen the next queue, by the bus door. On a front seat sat the conductress, a
uniformed
middle-aged mulatta whose task it was to enter all our details in her mini-ledger before admitting us. As I waited, poised on the lowest step, she queried two ID photographs and long arguments ensued. (One beard had disappeared, one shaven head had grown hair). While my details were being inscribed I stowed my rucksack on the overhead rack where it fitted easily. But the conductress insisted it must go in the hold, at which point my adaptability to the Cuban way of travelling was almost over-taxed. I wanted to stamp my feet and shout at this bully. Around the open hold passengers were queuing to have their luggage tagged, a reasonable security precaution. One ancient man had a battered cardboard carton in a plastic sack tied with twine. The tag wouldn’t stick to the plastic and it took his trembling fingers several minutes to undo the knots – during which time the driver refused to tag anyone else. We departed at 7.05 and ten minutes later, at a traffic lights pause, two men boarded, slipped the driver a NP10 note and took empty seats at the back – unregistered and ticketless.

We were allowed a twenty-minute break in Guaimaro where Cuba’s first constitution was devised in April 1869, as a roadside billboard reminded us. This event tends to be over-glorified in the revolutionary history books; in fact it involved certain awkward compromises. The convention voted for annexation, a devisive issue which illustrated the reformist movement’s inner uncertainties. Cespedes was nominated as president of the notional republic. He had already freed his own slaves but was hoping for support from the super-rich Matanzas cane-planters – therefore the constitution, while declaring ‘all inhabitants of the republic absolutely free’, stipulated that emancipated slaves must remain with their masters as paid workers. This dissatisfied everyone, especially the black rebels fighting with Cespedes and led by the twenty-year-old mulatto Antonio Maceo. Of the one hundred
centrales
operating around Camaguey in 1868 only one remained unburnt in 1878. Reluctantly Cespedes
condoned
this strategy – ‘It would be better for Cuba to be free, even if we have to burn every vestige of civilization’. Meanwhile Agramonte’s rebel
followers had gladly abolished slavery throughout their area; ranching is not labour-intensive.

On our way out of Guaimaro an Inspector waved his STOP sign and jumped aboard – a tall young black, handsome and self-important.
Detecting
the two skivers delighted him; at once the driver was ordered out of the bus and his mate (asleep on the seat in front of mine) took over. To my uncharitable satisfaction the conductress was severely reprimanded and given a docket – but afterwards she had many passengers on her side. No doubt Cuba’s compulsive/obsessional recording of travellers’ details has to do with knowing where everybody is on any given date – but can three sets of details really be needed for a three-hour bus journey?

From Holguin railway station – deserted at 10.30 p.m. – a talkative, elderly man, whose bicitaxi rattled and squealed, slowly pedalled me to my
casa particular
on the far side of the city: a spacious H-shaped 1980s bungalow, with 1950s décor, set in a small garden near the base of Loma de la Cruz.

Immigration’s demands on
casas particulares
are inconsistent; in Bayamo and Holguin provinces the register must be shown at once, elsewhere a day or so may be allowed to elapse. When Hector heard that my visa needed renewal he offered me a lift in his 1957 Buick and for twenty minutes we drove along tree-lined colonial streets to a residential area opposite a spacious park. In a bright airy office a cheerful young woman greeted Hector with a kiss, saw to his register, turned to me – and had a problem. My e-mail return ticket was
invalido
; I must produce a
real
airline ticket … With difficulty Hector persuaded her that e-mail tickets have become the norm outside of Cuba. Still looking perplexed, she gave me a chit authorising my purchase of a visa stamp at a specified bank far away in the centre. Poor Hector, who had a heavy cold, refused to desert me; happily there was no bank queue. Back at Immigration he stayed in the car while I endured a Santa Clara rerun. Holguin’s senior Immigration officer, an exceptionally nasty woman, pronounced that visas must be renewed within the forty-eight hours before expiry – confirming my
suspicion
that these ghouls make it up as they go along. Hector and Yamila were furious on my behalf.

The region around Holguin was densely populated when Columbus landed nearby; half a century later Captain Garcia Holguin, one of Mexico’s conquerors, had cleared the land of trees and savages before setting up one of Oriente’s earliest cattle ranches. The town was founded
one hundred and fifty years later, in 1720, on the standard Spanish colonial grid plan. During the nineteenth century it prospered: much sugar production, some fruit growing, limited tobacco estates. The Revolution added factories, engineering plants, Cuba’s biggest brewery and
Soviet-style
apartment blocks which enhance no country but in Cuba look
extra-vile
. Now Holguin is chiefly remarkable for its exceptionally friendly people, an unusual number of red-heads and beautiful city parks.

The enormous main square, Plaza Calixto Garcia, is a marvel of ornamental green and pink marble shaded by many trees and dominated by General Calixto Iniguez Garcia, Commander-in-Chief of the Rebel Army during the Ten Years War. He was born on 4 August 1839, just around the corner from the Plaza, in a comfortable but unexciting house – now a museum of outstanding boredom. In 1872 he defeated the Spaniards and took control of Holguin but soon after was captured and imprisoned in Spain. When the second war of independence started he escaped to New York, then returned to Cuba to lead the rebel army in the battle for Santiago. Later that year he died suddenly during a visit to Washington.

In the very beautiful Plaza de la Maqueta (colonial architecture at its most pleasing) I got into conversation with two young men who gave me bad news. Cuba’s baseball season traditionally opens in October and Juan had been confident that I could see a game in Holguin – but there would be no game. According to the local health authority, to play in such abnormal heat and humidity would be gratuitously risky. This
disappointment
was obliquely consoling, as justification for my being reduced to comparative immobility.

Horse-buses took me to and from Holguin’s homage to Che, a
monumental
three-part sculpture in dark stone, standing alone on an open slope by the suburban Avenida de los Libertadores. The panels show Che approaching in silhouette – arriving forcefully, seeming about to step out on to the grass – then receding in silhouette. Caridad Ramos, one of Cuba’s most renowned sculptors, was in her early twenties when she created this powerful work, austere yet curiously touching. The daughter of poor
campesiños
, she has said, ‘We had to share what little we had. Solidarity was essential. Thanks to the Revolution I had the opportunity to study which my mother never had.’

As the Special Period took hold, ‘community culture’ was used to fortify the threatened Revolution. Ileana Barrera, an historian who helped to found the Bonifacio Byrne Cultural Centre in 1991, explained – ‘Because
material goods were scarce, we thought cultural activities vitally important to offset the shortages and foster intellectual life’. At the time, outsiders scoffed. ‘Cultural activities to offset hunger? More communist craziness!’ But in a non-profit-making environment cultural activities have a value and meaning incomprehensible to such outsiders.

In 1995 Caridad Ramos worked hard to launch the Swallow Project which ran workshops (music, acting, plastic arts, puppetry) for ninety participants of all ages. In defiance of limited resources, the projects had seven art teachers and time was divided between traditional repertoires and daring experiments. This and many similar efforts were forerunners of what came to be known as ‘the Battle of Ideas’, often described as ‘a revolution within the Revolution’ and referred to by Juan in Camaguey as ‘a repair job after the Special Period’.

In 2000, on Fidel’s suggestion, Abel Prieto, Minister of Culture since 1998, established fifteen institutions throughout Cuba to train art
instructors
. (This well-chosen minister is the author of several scholarly works and of a semi-autobiographical novel entitled
The Flight of the Cat
.) Each province now has its Arts School, open to everyone from primary
school-children
to pensioners. But the Battle of Ideas involves much more than art schools; its programmes aim to revitalise all aspects of the national life.

The two young men with whom I had talked in the Plaza de la Maqueta were newly returned from Grenada where they had been leading a
volunteer
team deployed to change the island’s light bulbs from incandescent to fluorescent. (Cuba, they proudly told me, is also donating thousands of fluorescent bulbs to other Caribbean countries.) These brothers, Roberto and Rolando, belonged to the local BUTS – Brigadas Universitas de Trabajo Social (University Social Work Brigades). Their more humdrum tasks included helping old people who live alone and encouraging school drop-outs to engage in community work, the reward a small stipend. They told me about Operation Alvaro Reinoso, which aims further to reduce sugar production by at least fifty per cent. (‘You call it downsizing?’ queried Rolando. Vigorously I shook my head.) In the village around a closed
centrale
BUTS works with SUMS – Sedes Universitarias Municipales (Municipal University Units), another Battle of Ideas creation. University graduates put out of work by Alvano Reinoso, or by other factory closures, are invited to become teachers in retraining programmes which provide a small wage for both teachers and students. The young who have never been able to find work are also given small stipends if they attend Integral Improvement Courses which usually lead on to university-level evening
classes in the humanities, held in school buildings all over the island. Many retired academics, and other pensioners with specialist knowledge, have volunteered to work in these new faculties. On 26 May 2005 one such academic, Maria de la Vega Garcia, editor of the journal
Marx Ahora,
distilled the essence of the Battle of Ideas in a moving speech:

By the end of 2005 sixty-three per cent of TV transmissions were educational and in the Battle’s first six years seven hundred projects were completed including an Oldies’ university, La Universidad del Adulto Mayor. By January 2008 one thousand twelve hundred more were nearing completion, half in the medical sector. This broadening of education will, it is hoped, to some extent inoculate Cuban society against the more deleterious effects of global pop ‘culture’. But in Camaguey Juan had sadly described the Battle as ‘Fidel’s last stand’, an unwinnable battle. Raul’s compromises would, he predicted, undermine the attitudes that make such shoestring campaigns possible – and attractive to people lacking material goods. I remembered his words when I heard the spokesman for some Washington think-tank commenting, ‘Raúl is more tolerant of the social costs of accepting market mechanisms to which his brother would never agree’ (BBC World Service, 18 December 2007).

As one strolls and sits and observes, it’s obvious that Holguin has been
hard hit by the closure of several factories and provincial
centrales
. I saw three ragged old men, pickled in alcohol, wandering unsteadily around the parks (in Cuba a very unusual sight) and a dozen seedy young men lounged on benches sharing bottles of rum before noon. In the city’s main bar – open-air, separated from the pavement by a trellis supporting a creeper laden with fragrant white blossoms – I was tentatively approached by two respectably dressed woman beggars; they reminded me of Siberia’s destitute pensioners in 2002 and 2004, victims of the Soviet Union’s collapse. However, in a capitalist-run city afflicted by Holguin’s recent misfortunes one would see considerably more poverty and distress.

For someone who eats only once a day,
casa particular
breakfasts are made to measure. Example: large jugs of fresh mango and guava juice, three cups of milky coffee, two toasted ham and cheese sandwiches, a two-egg omelette, a pyramid of crisp oven-warm rolls with imported (from Germany) butter and local honey. Thus fuelled, I turned towards Holguin’s tourist challenge, Loma de la Cruz. Its four hundred and fifty-eight steps – wide, concrete, shadeless, heat-reflecting – did not tempt me though the reward is a panoramic view (say the guide-books) and a thatched restaurant. At the bottom of the steps I turned right to follow a rough track through a sprawling village on ledges of mountain overlooking the city. This was a post-Revolution settlement of terraced concrete block housing: one-storey, white- or pink-washed, unglazed windows barred, outside spiral stairways giving access to flat roofs with laundry-lines and herb gardens. Soon the track became a steep boulder-path (a stream bed after heavy rain), climbing between hedges of neatly clipped candelabra cactus and fiery crotons. Beyond the settlement, around a shoulder, a track descended to an invisible motor-road past a colossal obsolete water-storage tank (
obsolete
for lack of pumping fuel). Another path would have taken me past clusters of
bohios
on the opposite slope. More tempting was a barely discernible pathlet zig-zagging upwards through high, thick grass. This was an easy climb, the wet grass cooling and bushy shade available at intervals. Only crowing cocks, grunting pigs and frequent bird calls broke the silence. The last stage was a scramble over smooth boulders, then I was looking directly across a shrub-filled valley to the mini-fort and restaurant on Loma de la Cruz and could enjoy the panoramic view without having toiled up those four hundred and fifty-eight steps.