|
Letters from Cuba
Nick Miroff traveled to Cuba to produce the stories of young
people. These are his letters to Youth Radio.
Monday, January 26, 2004:
Oye Radio Juventud,
 My
Cuba trip started early this morning at six am, in Miami. I stumbled out into
the terminal after an all-night redeye flight from San Francisco, and just like
that, I was back in Cuba. The airline reps, the baggage handlers, the security
guards, and the travelers with their luggage spun tight in plastic wrap- they
were all Cuban. It may have been an American Airlines terminal, but Cuban Spanish
was definitely the idioma official. Dapper Cuban businessmen in suits
stood around drinking sweetened espresso and eating ham-and-cheese sandwiches
for breakfast, and the air was the same muggy, stagnant fog that sticks to your
clothes in Havana.
Check-in wasn’t for a few hours, so I slept in a chair for a while, waking up
from time to time to the announcements of arrival and departure information
for flights from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. At 10 am I got in
line to pick up my ticket from the company that had chartered the flight to
Havana, and received my boarding pass and visa from an older gentleman named
Mack, who seemed to take great pleasure in his outrageous mispronunciations
of the Spanish language. “Pass-a-Por-tee en la Maa-noe, Abb-well-eeta” he said
to an older woman ahead of me in line, amusing himself.
I asked Mack how business had been going since January 1st, when the Bush administration’s
new travel restrictions on U.S. citizens went into effect. Things were slow,
he said. He told me that my flight only had 22 passengers, and with seating
capacity for 60, he needed to sell 33 seats to break even.
But Mack said there was an upside too. Nearly all the flights returning to Miami
from Cuba are full, he told me, then wandered off to check the passport of a
Cuban cowboy in a ten-gallon hat.
It took me a moment to understand the economics behind this peculiar math, but
then I realized what he was talking about. Practically every charter back to
Miami is full because each flight carries new Cubans leaving the island for
life in the U.S.
The real surprise, however, was the plane itself.
Cuban airplanes are notorious for being old, creaky, frightening relics that
look as if they belong in an air museum. So you can imagine how shocked I was
to see that the American Eagle aircraft we were boarding was on an old ATP clunker
with two propellers and interior décor straight from the 1970s. It was the same
plane that Cubana Airlines uses in Cuba for domestic flights.
The plane lurched down the runaway and upward, then flew slowly, at only 11,000
feet, through thick cloud banks and heavy turbulence. Verdant cays with white
beaches and turquoise shallows were visible below, then the wide cobalt expanse
of the Florida Straits.
A young Cuban couple sat next to me, fidgeting with each other’s hands. It had
been six years since they’d left Cuba, and they hadn’t been back. A man seated
in front of me wearing a NY Yankees cap and a large gold wristwatch peered out
the window, eagerly announcing the sight of Cuban land. “Look, the Central Highway”,
he called out, “sugar cane fields.” When the plane landed, everyone applauded.
I don’t know if they were relieved to be safe or excited to be back in Cuba.
I passed smoothly through Cuban customs, and my recording equipment attracted
little attention.
Riding home from the airport, Havana didn’t appear to have changed much. Big
Hungarian buses spewing black smoke, old Packards and Studebakers from the 1950s
rumbling over uneven streets, horse carts, Chinese bicycles, and the occasional
Mercedes.
After dropping my bags off at the house, I took a walk around the neighborhood,
then down to the sea. The shoreline in this part of Havana is a kind of rocky,
exposed coral reef; with the ruined skeletons of old houses and estates perched
upon it, and washed-up trash and debris everywhere. There was a young boy named
Raoul fishing for minnows in a tide pool with a little hook and a makeshift
rod. He said he planned to use the minnows for bait once he caught them.
By then it was after six, and the sun was going down. The wind was picking up
and big storm clouds blocked the sunset. I looked North, back across the Florida
Straits toward Miami, where I had been only a few hours before, and hoped that
this trip would help me understand better the awesome geographic and political
rift between these two Cubas. Raoul still hadn’t hooked any minnows.
Saludos a todos pa’ alla
Nick
-------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday, January 27, 2004:
Of all the folk sayings that are popular here in Cuba, the philosophical adage
no es facil is perhaps the most useful. Roughly translated, it means
“it ain’t easy,” and it’s something that can be said about nearly every aspect
of daily life on the island. It’s used by Cubans of all ages, and is typically
preceded by a sigh of frustrated resignation. You can use it when describing
the struggle to make ends meet, the experience of living with your mother-in-law,
or trying unsuccessfully to board an overcrowded bus home from work. As I hit
a few roadblocks yesterday getting access for some of the projects I’m working
on here, I found myself saying it a lot.
Since I’ve been here I’ve also heard the phrased used repeatedly in reference
to the new restrictions on Internet use, and I think it’s something that reflects
many of the complex intricacies of Cuba’s political system and the social tension
it can create, especially for Cuban youth.
To begin with, all Cuban ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are owned by the
government, just as the rest of the nation’s infrastructure. No Earthlink, no
AOL, no Comcast Cuba. There’s Infocom, Cubacel, Columbus, and a few other state-owned
companies, but the only people in Cuba who are allowed to access the Internet
from their own homes are foreigners and an extremely limited number of Cuban
professionals. Many people have email accounts, and are able to send and receive
email at post offices and other public places, but Internet access is much more
restricted. Certain categories of Cuban professionals do have Internet access
at work—businesspeople, tour operators, academics, journalists working for the
state media, and others. But even if you’ve got the fula (US dollars),
you can’t legally get an Internet account.
So in the last few years, there has been a proliferation of black-market illegal
Internet accounts. Sound strange? Well, it is—unless you live in a place with
a thriving black market economy, like Cuba. Here’s how it’s been operating for
the last few years: the people working at the state-owned ISPs sell passwords
por la izquierda(under the table) to Cubans who can afford the steep
monthly fees, and for $50 or $60/month, a dollar-wielding Cuban can gain access
to the Internet from home. Because it was so expensive, some Cubans would share
the account between multiple users, devising all sorts of elaborate schemes
to determine who can log on and at what time of day.
What were most of these illegal Internet accounts being used for? Organizing
against the government? Pretty unlikely. The vast majority of Cubans using these
Internet accounts were doing the same thing people do on the Internet everywhere
else- read news, magazines, follow sports, fashion, download music, chat with
friends.
It was these unauthorized accounts that the government has decided to crack
down on in the last few weeks. So now only those people with authorized phone
lines can access the Internet. How many people will be affected by the new measures?
Not that many-- the number of illegal Internet users was probably no more than
10,000, if that. But many well-educated young people in Havana who had grown
accustomed to communicating with the outside world are suddenly experiencing
the painful confines of government restrictions with a fresh acuteness.
Defenders of the measure say that the state companies were losing money through
all the illegal activity, and point out that the government is trying to provide
Internet access at an increasing number of public places- libraries, youth centers,
schools. They say the illegal accounts were hoarding limited bandwidth and racking
up costly satellite fees for the country. They say the new measures are mostly
a question of more effectively enforcing existing laws. But most young people
I talk to just see it as another limit on their personal freedom and access
to unfiltered information.
They’re also trying to take the new measures with a grain of salt. They’re optimistic
that new ways to circumvent the restrictions will be discovered once things
blow over, and people will find ways to get back online soon enough.
Hope that clears up any confusion about the Internet thing, though I imagine
it raises a whole new series of questions about the bigger picture here. We’ll
get to that too.
Yesterday afternoon I went to visit a friend of mine, an American journalist
who has been living here for nearly 20 years. He said things have been tranquilito
lately, just the usual stuff. He told me Fidel gave a speech to a group of visiting
Venezuelan students the other day that began at 8pm and lasted until dawn. Ten
hours. Castro is 77 years old.
 Later
I drove down to the part of Havana where many of the new tourist hotels are
going up, along the rocky coastline on the Western side of the city. A German
hotel chain has just completed a massive pyramid-looking edifice called the
Hotel Panorama. Maybe it’d look okay in Las Vegas, but in Havana, it looked
like a NASA mission gone wrong. In the empty lot next door I took pictures of
a boy practicing handstands and a man flying a homemade kite with two boys.
I’m sending some of these pictures with this message.
At dusk I went out to the National Dance School to pick up Gabriela, the 14
year-old student who will be celebrating her 15th birthday soon. The School
is part of the Superior Art Institute; a sprawling campus that was built right
after the Revolution on top of what had been Havana’s most exclusive golf course
and country club. The School’s mission was to give students from humble backgrounds
the chance to study visual arts, theater, dance, and music at the highest level.
But the most revolutionary thing about the campus was the architecture- long
sinuous corridors of red-brick tile, linking domed classrooms and swirling plazas,
all set amidst a lush tropical forest.
The project was never completed (that’s another story too.) But the school opened
anyway, and has since graduated thousands of Cuban artists, dancers, and talented
professionals. It remains in use today, but it’s in a terrible state of disrepair.
When I went to pick up Gabriela there at dusk, I noticed her class was practicing
in the dance studio without any lights. Music came from a battered boom box
on the floor, and the walls were peeling moldy.
Saludos desde la Habana,
Nick
-------------------------------------------------------
Friday, January 30, 2004:
Hey Youth Radio,
I’m going to be doing a lot of field recording over the next few days, so I
wanted to send a few more photos and observations while I still have time to
write.
Three of the four stories I’m working on are going well, and I’ll find out soon
if I can get access to the fourth. I spent most of today meeting with three
U.S. students who are studying at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine.
The program started two years ago, and there are now over seventy U.S. students
here on full scholarships, taking classes alongside thousands of Latin American
and Caribbean students from 24 different countries. It’s a six-year program,
and prior to enrolling, each of the students had to promise they would return
home to serve their communities upon graduation. Some of the U.S. students have
dropped out since the program began three years ago, but the majority have stayed
the course, and are committed to acquiring the preparation they’ll need to pass
the U.S. medical licensing exams.
The three young people I met today were Ayana, from Brooklyn, Tim, from Manhattan,
and LT, from Gary, Indiana. We had a great day together, and they spoke at length
with me about their backgrounds, their decision to come here, and what it’s
been like adjusting to medical school in Cuba. Here’s a picture of them I took
at the park along the Almendares River. I’m really looking forward to bringing
their stories to Youth Radio.
I’m also sending some pictures I took the other day on the Malecon, the long
seawall that rings Havana’s coastline in a somewhat futile attempt to hold back
the ocean. This time of year, and for much of the winter, huge waves come crashing
into the wall and send torrents of water high into the air, dousing the passing
cars along the roadway. It’s a dramatic sight, and one of the most frequently
photographed in Cuba. At night, the Malecon becomes the meeting place for Cubans
of all ages and walks of life - young people, couples, itinerant musicians,
tourists, peanut vendors, drunks - a long treeless park offering the relief
of open space and fresh ocean air. In the summer months, when the city smolders
from terrible heat and chronic blackouts, thousands of people congregate along
the Malecon at all hours of the night.
While there, I had to constantly shoo away the hustlers that badger tourists
with offers of black-market cigars, informal guide services, and other, more
sordid propositions. Because salaries are so low here, many Cubans - especially
young men - prefer to hustle dollars on the streets from tourists than get a
job working in the formal economy. The average wage here is little more than
$ 10/month, though basics like housing, utilities, food, and transportation
are heavily subsidized by the government, and health care and education are
free. But $10/month isn’t enough to make ends meet, especially because many
essential items can only be obtained here in U.S. dollars. So while a high-paid
Cuban professional - a doctor, for instance - might hope to earn 600 pesos a
month (about $30), a bellhop or a chambermaid at a tourist hotel can make ten
times that amount in gratuities. The result: an internal “brain drain” of educated
professionals displaced into the dollar-driven tourist economy, and throngs
of idle young people doing whatever they can to hustle a few dollars from foreigners
on the street. Cuban economists call this distorted economic model “the inverted
pyramid”: high skills, low wages; low skills, high wages.
All of this has happened in the last 12-15 years, as the Cuban economy attempts
to recover from the loss of massive amounts of Soviet aid. The Cuban government
has euphemistically titled this era in Cuban history “the Special Period,” though
it’s gone on for so long now that some Cubans have wryly heralded a new “Extra-Special
Period.”
From the Malecon I walked over to an outdoor market where Cuban vendors are
permitted to sell handcrafts and random knickknacks in U.S. dollars. Old political
books, kitschy oil paintings, handmade jewelry, and lurid woodcarvings of naked
women are some of the market staples. I took a few pictures and turned down
half a dozen or so offers for cigars, then continued snapping pictures around
the neighborhood. A brand-new concrete skyscraper going up over the Malecon.
The ruins of a house in a vacant lot and a bedraggled old man sifting through
the trash and debris there. Classic 1950s cruisers in different states of preservation
all parked in a row.
After leaving the market, I drove past the Cine Yara, the largest movie theater
in the country. It’s a classic single-screen cinema with seating capacity of
thousands of moviegoers, and right now the “League of Extraordinary Gentlemen”
is playing. Surprised that such ideologically subversive Hollywood schlock would
be showing on Cuba’s biggest screen? American movies are just as popular here
as anywhere else, if not more so. Admission is two pesos, less than ten U.S.
cents - a bargain even by Cuban standards. I’ve seen films there many times
on the huge screen, but it’s always best to avoid the late show. Because of
the exceptionally low admission price, the theater often fills with rowdy drunks
and wild teens who yell and scream in the back of the theater throughout the
movie just for kicks.
Speaking of entertainment, a friend of mine here recently got a Direct TV satellite
in his apartment. He pays a modest monthly fee for the pirated signal, and receives
something like 700 channels in return. The dishes are outlawed in Cuba, so he
has to rig it such that it’s imperceptible from the outside or above. La
Antena, as Cubans call it, is a vast improvement from the 3 state-controlled
channels that Cubans receive on their televisions. Cuban TV mostly broadcasts
a range of educational shows, sporting events, soap operas, and always, a heavy
dose of pro-government programming.
Today I’m meeting with the medical students again at a party hosted by a well-known
Cuban artist named Jose Fuster (pronounced Foo-ster.) He’s a talented, eccentric,
if somewhat immodest older man who likes to call himself the “Picasso of the
Caribbean.” The walls of his house are covered by huge mosaics made of colorful
tiles depicting Cuban folk scenes. Every year he invites the students to a party
at his house.
Hope all’s well. Saludos a todos.
More soon…
Nick
-------------------------------------------------------
Monday, February 4, 2004:
Hey Youth Radio,
 The
last few days I spent in Cuba were a blur - a frantic rush to obtain last-minute
interviews and the bits of tape I needed to complete my projects. I had a few
experiences I’d like to highlight here, as I think they might help illuminate
what life is like for Cuban youth.
The Sunday before leaving I drove out to Las Terrazas, an hour west of Havana
in the Sierra del Rosario mountain range. Las Terrazas is a small community
that was built in the late 1960s at the center of a massive reforestation project.
It’s now Cuba’s most important site for eco-tourism, and I wanted to speak with
young people there about what it was like growing up inside a biosphere reserve.
We left Havana early after a night of heavy rain, and the road was slick and
steaming from the morning sun. My driver - a friendly, easy-going Cubano named
Lazaro - was a big fan of Cuban hip-hop, and spent nearly as much time looking
at the road as he did fidgeting with the Sony Discman he’d rigged to the car’s
cassette deck. The highway leading west of Havana toward Pinar del Rio province
was wide and well-maintained, though traffic- usually a good indicator of economic
activity- was scant.
There were, however, plenty of Cuban police along the highway, enforcing the
speed limit and stopping Cuban vehicles for inspection. There were a few passenger
cars, but most of the other vehicles on the road were rickety old sugar cane
lorries, or big, boxy Soviet-era diesel trucks with Cuban travelers standing
in the back. Men and teenage boys rode Chinese bicycles along the shoulder of
the highway past farmers leading teams of oxen. Horse carts shared the roadway
with Russian Ladas, old Buicks, and subcompact Daewoo hatchbacks. As the cliché
about the Cuban countryside goes, it wasn’t easy to tell what century you were
in.
We continued past large man-made reservoirs and sprawling cañaverales - sugar
cane plantations - some of which had been recently cut. A team of rough-looking
men stood in a charred canefield beside the highway, hacking the tall stalks
with their machetes and loading the cane by hand into the back of a truck.
At various intervals along the highway rural entrepreneurs held out squishy
bricks of white cheese on little plates, hoping to entice passing motorists.
Their homemade queso is quite popular among Havana residents, though
the cheese is almost always made with milk pilfered from the Cuban government.
Thus, even the highway cheesemen were wary of the police, always keeping one
eye on the horizon for signs of an approaching patrol.
We arrived at the gates of Las Terrazas at around ten a.m. The biosphere is
open to the public, but the management is careful to only allow a certain number
of tourists inside the reserve each day. During the hot summer months, the swimming
hole on the local San Juan River becomes one of the most popular places in Cuba
to escape the withering heat.
The mountainous area around Las Terrazas was first settled in the early 19th
century by French coffee planters fleeing the Haitian Revolution. The coffee
industry boomed, then went bust, but area peasants continued to farm the rough
terrain and eke out a living by cutting down trees to make wood charcoal. By
the 1950s the area was almost completely deforested.
After the Cuban Revolution, the government designed and implemented the Las
Terrazas project by relocating the local farmers into a central, planned community—offering
free education, health care, and steady jobs working on the project itself.
They planted mahogany, royal palms, and Caribbean pines on the mountainsides
(“Las Terrazas” literally means “The Terraces”) and planted more than six million
trees over the course of the next decade. Today, Cuba is one of only two Latin
American countries that have managed to increase its overall forest cover, according
to UN reports.
In the mid-1980s, Las Terrazas was declared a UNESCO biosphere reserve, and
since then, it has become one of the most important eco-tourism attractions
in all of Cuba. While speaking with young people there I was surprised and somewhat
saddened to hear just how many young people aspire to work as tour guides, the
profession with the best earning potential. But I don’t want to give away too
much of my story in advance—so stay tuned for more on this.
On the second to last day I was in Cuba, Lazaro and I drove east to the small
Cuban town of Hershey to investigate another environment-related Cuban story.
In the past two years, the Cuban government has shut down nearly half of the
island’s sugar mills, as part of a massive downsizing of the island’s sugar
industry, which had relied on government subsidies for years. Now the government
is re-training thousands of ex-sugar industry workers for jobs in other industries
and agricultural sectors. I wanted to speak with young people in some of the
affected towns to find out how they felt about the process.
Hershey is just one of dozens of such towns in rural Cuba. Located about an
hour and a half east of Havana, the town was built by the Hershey Candy company
in the early 20th century around a sugar mill and a network of electric railroads.
One of the first people we met after arriving in Hershey was a young man who
was working to dismantle the town’s mill-- the same factory where his father
and grandfather had worked before him. We had a very interesting conversation,
but later that afternoon the local police put an end to my story, and decided
that I didn’t have the necessary permission to conduct interviews in the area.
But that’s another story…
I left Cuba for Miami the next day, a little disappointed that I didn’t have
more time to see friends or gather more tape. But I was also exhausted after
nine busy days of reporting and a series of frustrating obstacles. My flight
wasn’t scheduled to leave until four p.m., but I had to be at the airport three
and a half hours in advance. This may sound a bit excessive, but anyone who
has been through Havana’s “Jose Marti Terminal 2” can understand the early check-in
time.
 It’s
known simply as “the Miami terminal.” That’s because the majority of travelers
passing through this terminal are Miami-based Cuban Americans returning to visit
their families. The terminal is small, uncomfortable, and always crowded. Many
Cuban American travelers view their relegation to this terminal as further proof
that Castro seeks to punish them even after they’ve emigrated away.
It’s a punishing place indeed. Visiting Cubans rarely leave the country without
an entourage of less than a dozen family members. When I arrived to check-in
for my flight, there were hundreds of people jamming the terminal—taking pictures,
saying goodbye, downing cans of Bucanero beer, smoking Popular-brand
cigarettes. Two wide, shapeless queues mobbed the check-in counters. Cubans
would never just drop off a departing relative at the airport without a proper
goodbye.
I inched my way forward toward the counter. Arguments erupted over baggage weight
and the lack of airline attendants. Government-run kiosks in the terminal were
selling gaudy postcards, cigars, rum, pictures of Che, Spanish translations
of Noam Chomsky, salsa CDs, and golf shirts with “Varadero” embroidered on the
breast.
After paying the $25 departure tax and passing through the immigration booths,
I waited patiently at the gate for the American Eagle plane to arrive from Miami.
I thought about how airplane travel-- with all the sitting and waiting—has a
way of eliciting thoughtful reflection. After days of high-paced reporting and
sound gathering, suddenly I found myself just sitting there with nothing to
do but think and wait.
I studied the other passengers as we boarded the plane. Usually it’s only the
elderly who are able to acquire tourist visas from the U.S. government, with
the assumption being that they’re less likely to immigrate.
Washington rarely grants tourist visas to young Cubans hoping to visit the States.
So if they’re thinking of immigrating to the U.S., there’s no such thing as
a preview. It’s all or nothing-- leave the island or stay behind.
We settled into our seats, and in the row behind me, a young woman was crying.
She sat alone, staring out the window and covering her mouth with her hands.
At first I thought she was watching a relative through the glass, but then I
realized she wasn’t looking at anything in particular. She was leaving Cuba.
Her sobs increased as the propellers sputtered into motion, pulling the plane
along the runway and into the air.
I’d made this trip before, but I still couldn’t get over how short the flight
was. Soon after we were out over the Straits, I could see the Florida Keys below,
little square houses smothering a tiny strip of sand, linked by a floating causeway.
As we began to descend into Miami, I thought about where I had been less than
two hours before, and all the young people I’d met with during the past week
and a half. I couldn’t stop thinking how geographically close they were to this
strange, foreign land—with its McDonalds, snarled freeways, and rootless communities
of identical brand-new houses rising abruptly out of the swamps.
When the plane landed safely on the runway in Miami, the passengers all clapped,
just as they had when we arrived into Havana. The girl in the row behind me
was still crying. But she took her hands away from her mouth, and for a moment,
she clapped too. Clapped and cried, at the same time.
See you soon!
Nick
|
|
