American don’t usually find the Republic of Cuba on their travel itineraries; long-standing restrictions imposed by the United States dictate that we Americans rarely visit the island just 93 miles south of the tip of Florida.
But in June, 2013, I had the opportunity to fly from Tampa to Havana on a charter flight under the auspices of two U.S. organizations with “people to people” licenses: the Center for Democracy in the Americas and Cuba Educational Travel. The people to people tours, licensed by the U.S. Department of Treasury, are the only kind of visit permitted for travelers with American passports or green cards. The rules require that travel to, from and within Cuba must be related to “educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba.” In other words, a visit cannot consist of strictly tourist activities.
The flight was filled to capacity with Cubans of all ages -- elderly grandparents accompanying small children, younger parents, twenty-something Cuban Americans who were perhaps going to the ancestral homeland for the first time -- and our own group. For some middle-aged passengers the trip seemed to be their first by air. The environment was quiet and expectant.
Our descent into the Jose Marti International Airport -- named for a Cuban national hero and poet (1853-1895) -- revealed a lush green country adjacent to the blue green Caribbean Sea. My first impression was the absence of tall buildings, and scattered farm plots amid palm trees. Only a few airliners were parked next to the aging terminal building, although 25 air carriers serve 4 million passengers a year. As we touched down, the Cuban-American passengers filled the plane with cheers, tears, clapping and murmurs of “Gracias a Dios.” The three-minute walk from the aircraft to the immigration terminal was full of energy, and many passengers were overcome by unbridled emotion. It occurred to me that I had landed on “The Little Island that Could.”
Processing by the Cuban immigration authorities was efficient and orderly. We emerged into the arrival hall as the luggage carousel disgorged hundreds of white plastic-wrapped consumer gift packages brought to relatives. Car tires, boxed gazebos, television sets, bicycles, crated heavy appliances and all manner of items unavailable in Cuba, which returning Cubans and Cuban Americans could bring to their relatives, illustrated recently relaxed restrictions. A young Cuban woman attracted attention by tenderly cradling what appeared to be an infant, but upon closer inspection was revealed to be the gift of a baby doll for an eager young recipient.
A Pastiche of Color
The thirty-minute ride into Havana presented views of impressive yet deteriorating buildings in a host of once-brilliant tones, along wide and surprisingly clean roads.
The city of Havana and the towns we visited are an architect’s dream in a palette of pastel colors: lemon yellows, blues, turquoise, soft pinks, hearty oranges, limes. The colors of the towns are as varied as the many-hued, diverse Cuban people. Picture these buildings and people as the backdrop of the Malecón (officially Avenida de Maceo), a broad esplanade, roadway, and seawall that stretches for four miles from the mouth of Havana Harbor in Old Havana, through Central Havana, and ends in the upscale Vedado neighborhood. Today the seawall is a spot for young men diving and fishing and for romantic couples, an image recognizable throughout the country, and ironic considering that the wall was constructed in 1901 during temporary U.S. military rule.
In many ways, Old Havana resembles other major Spanish colonial cities built in the 16th and 17th centuries: beautifully restored Old San Juan in Puerto Rico, Colombia’s Cartagena, or the Old City in Panama (now also undergoing restoration). The difference is that its central location and closeness to the U.S. made Havana particularly important to Spain. Thus, while the old colonial areas of San Juan or a Panama are today surrounded by a forest of skyscrapers, the 16th and 17th century Havana lies in the middle of a splendid urban environment built on European models from the 18th and 19th centuries. That such a magnificent place was built on sugar wealth, and thus on the blood, sweat and suffering of the hundreds of thousands of African plantation slaves, gives one pause, but does not detract from its physical beauty.
Havana is one of the most lovely and architecturally distinct cities in the world. Unfortunately, half a century of neglected maintenance, combined with concrete damaged by exposure to salt air, has caused much of the city to be in a state of disrepair. Some buildings are circled by scaffolding, signaling renovation, and others are practically reduced to mounds of rubble. Most feature cracks and falling mortar, and are adorned with lines of drying laundry belonging to families residing there.
But there is an expectant and hopeful air during this period of transition. The affinity for American culture and styles is evident, with stylishly dressed young Cuban women along the streets of Havana and other towns looking as if they would be at home in the metropolitan areas of western countries, and the rage for heavy false eyelashes as pronounced as in New York or Chicago.
Some Highlights in Havana
The five-star Hotel Parque Central is close to the Capitol building, the Great Theater and the famous pedestrian-only Obispo Street, and was a pleasant surprise. It has recently been renovated and its amenities rivaled anything I have encountered in western capitals, including large, well-appointed rooms and a sumptuous breakfast buffet.
Steps away from the hotel is the Bar Asturias restaurant, housed in a beautiful 19th century mansion (abandoned by fleeing anti-revolution Cubans), where we enjoyed a musical performance by Frank Delgado, a renowned singer and songwriter, about the nueva trova movement in Cuban music.
We also savored nightly dinners at paladars (private restaurants newly authorized by the Cuban government), including Dona Eutimia, named as one of Newsweek magazine’s top 100 restaurants in the world, and San Cristobal, where we dined on traditional Cuban dishes like ropa vieja, arroz y frijoles, paella, and other local specialties. (I must say, however, that I preferred the Cuban food in Miami and Los Angeles to that found in today’s Cuba – communism and cuisine do not mix very well).
We appreciated daily meetings and seminars with a variety of key policy and economic experts. We met, for instance, with the chief economist from the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy, who discussed policy and recent economic reforms; foreign correspondents, including from the New York Times; a renowned architectural historian, Dr. Miguel Coyula, who discussed modern architecture in Havana; Rafael M. Hernandez, author and editor of Temas, a Cuban quarterly in the fields of social sciences and humanities; Orlando Marquez, spokesman for Havana’s Catholic Archdiocese, who discussed the changing role of the Catholic Church in Cuban society and its intermediary role between the dissident groups and the government; and we visited the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), directed by Mariela Castro Espin, daughter of the current President Raul Castro, which campaigns against homophobia and for LGBT rights.
Our visit also featured a garden lunch at the famous Hotel Nacional (former haunt of notorious organized crime figure Meyer Lansky and his associates), which celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2010. We took a walking tour of Old Havana, where we visited the 16th century Plaza Vieja, the oldest plaza in Havana, and the Plaza de San Francisco, dating from 1719, which includes the baroque Iglesia and Convento de San Francisco. We were able to make an extended visit to a neighborhood health clinic, and took part in a discussion of the health care system. But what struck our group the most was that there was music, music, music everywhere.
High Points Outside the Capital City
In addition to the capital, our group visited Cienfuegos, a city on the southern coast with a population of 150,000. Cienfuegos is known as La Perla del Sur and is cited by UNESCO as the best example of 19th-century early Spanish Enlightenment urban planning. It features a gorgeous central square and a main pedestrian boulevard with friendly vibes.
Along the Caribbean coast, we toured the city of Trinidad, declared a UNESCO world heritage site in 1988. The city was founded in 1514 as a Spanish colonial settlement, and from the 1600s to the 1800s was a major center for the sugar and slave trade. The buildings around the main square are a visual delight.
Playa Girón, a beach and village on the east bank of the Bahía de Chochinos (“Bay of Pigs”) in the province of Matanzas, was the main landing site of the unsuccessful April 1961 invasion by about 1,500 Cuban exiles in the CIA-sponsored attempt to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro. Today, the Museo Girón is a small museum dedicated to the historical event, but the place is otherwise a sleepy and pleasant tourist area.
Perhaps the most striking visual feature of today’s Cuba is the estimated 60,000 pre-1960 American cars driving the streets -- some serving as tourist limousines and taxis, but most still chugging along as family cars with rebuilt Toyota engines (the photo accompanying this account is of the author in a vintage car). About 150,000 existed at the time of the 1959 revolution, after which American manufacturers stopped exporting cars or spare parts to Cuba. Hollywood productions such as the Buena Vista Social Club have turned the jalopies into objects of nostalgia by panning lovingly over a wheel-less 1957 Chevy Impala here or a 1958 Plymouth stalled in traffic there. For a car enthusiast, a visit to Cuba is like travel in time. I have no doubt that an end to the U.S. embargo would soon erase these beautiful old machines from the landscape; some would be bought by American collectors, and most would be junked in favor of compact cars – less attractive but a lot more efficient and comfortable.
The Road To Normalization?
The U.S.-imposed economic, financial and commercial embargo against Cuba has been in place for more than half a century. It has stood through several presidencies and the fundamental changes in the power and reach of the former Soviet Union.
Within the last five years, President Raul Castro has introduced significant economic reforms, including the introduction of convertible pesos and a variety of cautious but significant liberalization measures affecting retail trade, transport, hotels and restaurants. Most importantly, Cubans are now free to travel abroad and to return without any restriction. They do so in large numbers, and send remittances to family members. Cuban-Americans, too, are free to travel to Cuba and return back to the U.S. – producing a flow of almost 400,000 visitors to Cuba each year.
As reform proceeds and relations between Cuba and the United States evolve, questions remain as to how those changes will affect all of the island nation’s citizens. One thing is certain: “The Little Island that Could” will remain a memorable and captivating destination for years to come.