I'm currently in Cuba. It's a unique place for a number of reasons. For starters, it is really old. It is the first place in the Americas that was discovered - by Christopher Columbus - and colonised. It even pre-dates Cortez. It was from here, already a settled colony, that Cortez set off to conquer Mexico and Central America. In the town I'm staying in, Trinidad, there's even Cortez's original - pre-glory - house. In a church in another town (Baracoa) I visited is actually the cross that Columbus first planted on American soil in 1492 - an amazing relic really.
Havana itself is potentially the world's most impressive city. On a grand scale, full of wide boulevards, with every house an antique. I say potentially, because the houses remain unpainted, with many slowly crumbling. A fading beauty as someone called her.
It's hard to know the exact reason for this. Certainly, until recently, people did not own their own homes and could not buy and sell them - only swap - so perhaps the motivation to care and repair was not there. Equally though, there seems a shortage of many things here. The shops seem to sell an assortment of little things - a doorknob, a couple of showerheads and maybe a packet of pens - bits and pieces really. Particularly acute seems to be transport here, which is a mish-mash of bicycles and mo-peds, old Russian box cars (which look like Ford Cortinas circa 1960) and those huge pre-revolution Cadillacs and Chevis for which Cuba is so famous. These are owned by a small minority and public transport is virtually non-existant (such a change from Mexico where buses of all description seem always ready to shoot you off to your next destination). Here it is not uncommon to see ten or twenty people on a street corner, trying to hitch a lift to work. Or another twenty crammed into the back of a pick'up truck. It must be very frustrating.
Still, from the people I've talked to, there seems to be strong support for the Government and for the principles of the Revolution. People still talk of "the Revolution" as if it was yesterday. There seems to be a fear that were the Government to change, there would be a return to the divide between the very rich and very poor that jump-started the revolution in the first place. Ironically the on-set of tourism, badly needed to spur the economy on, is partly contributing to this. In Cuba, there are two currencies. There´s the ´Cuba Convertibles´ used by the tourists. These can be exchanged for US currency (dollar for dollar). Then there´s the domestic currency which looks very similar to Cuba Convertibles but can not be exchanged for foreign currency. The real ecomony which lies beneath the tourist´s reach exchanges the local currency for CCs at a rate of 24 to 1. This means that the CCs are extremely valuable and those with access to the tourist dollar - restaurants, hotels and homestays (where families open a room in their house for tourists to stay - strictly regulated) are likely to become the new financial elite as tourism continues to expand.
Also, in a country with no advertising, political manifestos take the place of billboards. Here the image of Che Guevara is everywhere and not simply on tourist T-shirts. He remains the hero of the revolution - as Castro put it, he was the "new (ie post revolutionary) man", one who put the interests of his country and the world before himself. Of course, its always easy to create the ideal man of someone who died so early in life. It would be interesting to see what Che, if he had reached a ripe old age, would make of the Cuban revolution today.
Nonetheless, the Cubans are a proud people, and there is definitely a different demeanour here from Mexico. They hold temselves upright and proud and see see themselves, probably rightly, as the mouse that roared - the tiny island that has defied the world's greatest power for sixty years while the rest of Latin America has been exploited and politically compromised. The people also look different - the racial mix is black and white rather than the Indian-white mix you see in the most of Central America. There is also a liberal attitude to sex, with much of the female population dressed like 70s porn stars - tiny shorts, jeans spray painted on and revealing tops - and these aren't small women either!
Economically poor, Cuba is culturally rich - artists and writers (of the right ilk of course) are supported by the State and the rythmn of salsa and "son" are everywhere. Its as if Soviet-style politics has been transplanted on a Carribean island in the middle of Latin America, and, hey, that's exactly what's happened! A strange place indeed.
