Havana — Editor's note: Bradley Klapper, who covered this
week's US-Cuba talks on re-establishing diplomatic relations for the
Associated Press, offers a first-person perspective about visiting
Havana for the first time.
Everyone warns you Old Havana is a facade, but it's impossible not to be taken by its charms.
In
my hotel room, the soft sound of guitars enters from the balcony. In
the cobblestone street below, I enjoy a cigar and watch a teenage girl
introduce her boyfriend to her parents as they sit on a bench and pass a
cigarette back and forth.
The area is greener than I imagined, with
trees sprouting sideways from oblong squares. Women stand guard in
impossibly narrow doorways. Men play handball in the hollowed-out
courtyard of one of the city's countless crumbled edifices. Tapas bars
fill in the cracks.
For a foreigner who isn't coming with
predetermined notions of Cuba as global boogeyman or socialist paradise,
each alley and avenue, each conversation with a Cuban, complicates the
picture. I'm nowhere near the first Westerner, American or journalist to
visit Havana — and I know it. But I want to make sense of the place.
Many
more like me could embark on this voyage soon. Although hundreds of
thousands of Cuban-Americans make the trip each year and the intrepid
traveler always finds a way in, the U.S. embargo has blocked countless
more from visiting a country just 90 miles south of Florida.
President
Barack Obama's decision last month to improve relations with Cuba and
ease trade and travel rules to the island has changed all of that. The
U.S. government insists only certain groups of Americans may visit Cuba,
but the elimination of a pre-authorization process means just about
anyone can come.
Some of Cuba's contradictions are immediately apparent.
In
the Plaza Vieja, a Paul & Shark boutique sells sweaters for as much
as a doctor here makes in months. The city offers new bars and
restaurants. Some of the best, I'm told, belong to people with
connections to the communist government or access to expatriate cash, or
both.
Propaganda is pervasive, though tame. The murals are worn
and sometimes entirely rubbed out, leaving tones of delicate ochre
across building walls where more of Fidel Castro's citations and Che
Guevara's portraits once stood.
In the 16th century Plaza de
Armas, an elderly man offers me Associated Press Wirephoto prints from
the 1950s along with other relics of Fulgencio Batista's period in
power, along with the usual knick-knacks of the revolution. A minute
later, a young man approaches and tells me has "nice girls" for sale.
Uneven signs of modernization are everywhere.
The
main thoroughfares are well paved. State-of-the-art pedestrian signals
are installed, providing second-by-second countdowns. They cut through
neighborhoods ranging from ramshackle glory to the plain shabby, where
buildings strain to stand. At Havana's old port, the halls lie bare and
ghostly, a heaping mass of decrepit iron.
Iconic yesteryear Fords,
Dodges and Chevys parade the boulevards, along with humbler
Russian-made cars of the post-revolution era. There are plenty of new
cars, too, though you have to wonder where they all come from. The
official price of a Peugeot can reach $250,000.
Driving around,
you see the magical and the mundane of Cuba's capital. Along with the
grand hotels once frequented by Frank Sinatra and Ernest Hemingway,
there are schools, athletic centers and countless public places where
people gather.
If my French sounds like a Spanish cow, I speak
Spanish like a French donkey — that is to say, enough to get by but
hardly enough to impress. My driver only speaks Spanish. He guides me to
the right word when I dip into French or Italian. Many younger folks
speak English.
Everyone speaks of family in Florida and New York, or even Oregon.
There
is no sense of "us" and "them." My driver's daughter and granddaughter
live in Miami. At Santy's, a swanky fish joint, an ascot-wearing
guitarist talks of his son who reached the United States by raft. He
says his son is Ojani Noa, the first husband of American singer Jennifer
Lopez.
The U.S. government often hails the entrepreneurial spirit
of Cubans. It doesn't come naturally to all of them. A taxi driver
takes me to the upscale Vedado neighborhood one evening and can't break
the equivalent of a $20 bill. In fact, he has no money on him
whatsoever. The customer, he says, should have exact change.
If
you ask about politics, the response often starts with a deep breath or
shrug. Cubans are mostly interested in economic improvement, one
invariably hears, and an intangible "normal" in their lives.
Along the seaside promenade, the Malecon, groups of teenagers enjoy the evening air. Lovers embrace. The police are everywhere.
No comments:
Post a Comment