A Plea to Save Cuba

As Cuba teeters on the brink of an escalating US assault, my thoughts drift back to a trip my wife and I took to Havana and Trinidad (the Cuban city) in 2017. Shelly and I fell madly in love with a place so strangely unique that it wrestles with your intuitive sense of possibility. Everything in Havana screams of paradox, of things that cannot possibly coexist anywhere else. If Trump and his goons destroy Cuba the loss will be immeasurable. At the risk of seeming hyperbolic – when the Cuban revolution dies, the planet will be a shell of itself. For Cuba may be the global leader in the three most precious resources on earth – music, imagination and resilience.

The following is what I wrote at the time.

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The drive to Havana does not portend to usher one into a great and legendary city. Havana is surrounded by…..nothing….a field, a palm tree here and there, a broken down house that may or may not be inhabited and modest roads of a lane or two that hardly seem destined to soon converge into a city of two million – famous for music, culture, history and a political revolution whose iconic leaders (their images, at least) drove the inner moral destiny of every American dreamer who struggled to find hope in the late sixties and early seventies. One does not drive into Havana, it emerges with sudden, relaxed fury – like a surrealistic dream cloaked in the vagueness of motion. Where else can one find a world chauffeured about in brightly colored and repainted US cars from the 1950’s? These cars are not some collector’s fetish, but the backbone of a strange society, a fantasy composed by necessity and the imagination of a people willing to stand up to the world’s most ill-intentioned empire.

Consider this: the ancient US cars, build to embody the expansive material flamboyance of American ego, flaunting tons of steel and flaring tail fins of conquest, built to be driven and discarded, have become immortal tools for a great socialist revolution.

We had come, among other things, to drop off a suitcase of asthma inhalers at Havana’s only synagogue. The place of worship doubles as a pharmacy that distributes free medications to all members of the public. That is how Cuba works, every institution has an additional mission – to circumvent the murderous and eternal US embargo .

The Jewish Community of Havana looks just like…well…Havana – interracial families, Black folks, old folks with Yiddish accents. Cuba has fused all of the contrast and scope of humanity into a mosaic that might exist nowhere else. Our tour guide from the shul, a middle aged Black man who I will call Leonardo, confesses that his Russian wife gave him no choice regarding his conversion, but immediately waxes into a euphoric quest to describe his Judaic/Cuban identity – “only in Cuba, and nowhere else on earth, are Jews completely safe. We don’t even lock our doors at night,” he boasts. With great pride he tells us that both of his sons currently serve in the IDF in Israel. The contradiction stuns me – does Leonardo know that only Israel, among all the nations on earth, has failed to condemn the US embargo on Cuba?

We meet a woman, Rose, a leader at the Havana shul, who points out a number of framed photographs of Fidel Castro taken during a visit to the Havana Jewish community some 20 years ago. “You hear that Fidel hated religion, but that is a lie,” Rose tells us, “He showed us great respect and curiosity. He asked me how many Jews lived in Havana. The actual number is 1,200 but I said 1,500. It sounded so much more impressive.” People who hear Rose’s comment erupt in laughter.”

The streets of Havana offer a vast collection of surprises that fall outside of the range of US experience – first and foremost, the people and the infrastructure have been seemingly decoupled. The buildings have fallen into terminal disrepair with enormous chunks of coral lying in the streets (Cuba is a coral reef, and limestone and coral form the walls of ancient structures). The streets feature vehicle-swallowing potholes, and packs of rather friendly stray dogs wander here and there – we are told that people care for them as a sort of community project. Trash piles up on corners, but people look well dressed, healthy, full of confident energy, and far more fit than a comparable cross-section from the US.

Old people sit on folding chairs in groups. Children play stickball with broom handles and bottle caps. Teenagers blare music and fiddle with cell phones. You feel a sense of ease that does not belong on such broken streets. People in Cuba live remarkably long lives in the midst of poverty – comparable to life spans in affluent nations. We see roadside stands selling burgers and fries, but none of the industrial chains of arterial destruction that have colonized the dietary trade routes of American existence. Cuban poverty does not originate with dysfunctional policy, as it does in the US – poverty has been intentionally imposed via the US blockade.

In 2017 food is plentiful and cheap. A loaf of splendid bread costs one nickel, venders with carts sell the freshest fruits and vegetables. Urban gardening – a method of outsourcing food production to the citizenry – reflects the Cuban genius for harnessing civic imagination. We see gardens everywhere – on balconies, in front of apartments, on every strip of fertile soil.

In Centro Havana where we stay in a room, we note three types of enterprises common to almost every block – bakeries, barbershops and medical clinics. If “man” doesn’t live by bread alone, Cubans get by on bread, style and healthcare. Schools also have been interwoven into local communities. In the US, schools have a notable architectural style – in Centro Havana, it appears that any building might be turned into a school, and streets are closed off while children play stickball and futbol – there is no space for playgrounds. The children wear neat uniforms – Cuba is an admixture of regimentation and improvisation. The latter quality has given rise to the uniquely Cuban art of “street mechanics.”

On every road in Havana we pass by groups of men staring philosophically under raised hoods, into the entrails of ghosts – the Fords, Chevys, Plymouths, Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles that once ferried “I Love Lucy” America across the highways of the American Dream. A “street mechanic” tells me that replacement parts have been unavailable for nearly six decades due to the embargo, and that a belt from a Russian washing machine found a new home in the engine of his 1953 De Soto. A tin can might reinforce a worn tail pipe – every discarded metal contraption must be picked over with the most creative sort of vigilance, for every nut, bolt, spring or gear might be repurposed to keep the world’s most decrepit fleet rolling across El Malecon for another day, a week, a month, a year, a decade.

Years later, I would write that Cuba’s cars, objectively gas guzzling American fossils that pollute with black smoke emerging from grinding levels of mechanical distress, ironically manifest the spirit of degrowth. Cubans have recreated the nexus between people and “stuff.” Many items cease to be commodities, but become almost sacred, resembling living things in their emotional worth. We see a couple in a shop repairing bicycles that Americans would toss into landfill. In a degrowth culture possessions involve long term commitments – neither workers nor the items they make can be disposable. Transportation in Cuba appears to be an informal free-for-all catering to (in 2017) a burgeoning tourist industry that would collapse during the pandemic. People travel in peddle carts, mule drawn wagons, and in vehicles that may have been driven by our grandparents.

In Trinidad we get lost during a 15 mile trek to an elusive beach and a man who introduces himself as Ernesto (proudly, he tells us, after Ernesto “Che” Guevara, whose iconic profile adorns, buildings, restaurants, homes and tourist souvenirs) offers us a ride in his 1958 Chevy Bel Air for the price of 5 Cucs (about 5 bucks). He describes the vehicle in the way that one might talk about a brother or a spouse – how he received it thirty years ago as a gift from his father, how he performed delicate mechanical acts to keep it running, and he tells us that he intends to give it to his son. He stops the car to show us under the hood – an act of intimacy that simply went beyond my limited American sensibility. We struggle to see cars as anything other than commodities to be used up and traded in.

We do not see any women in this niche pursuit of automotive eternity – we don’t even see women driving cars, let alone fiddling with the guts of Ford products from the 1940’s and ‘50’s. But we are told that women comprise a majority of Cuban doctors and healthcare professionals. In Cuba, sexism and racism seldom have the stark and brutal quality that Americans are used to.

In the streets, Afro Cubans seem to comprise a majority, and many people appear to have indigenous heritage. We enjoy dance and musical rituals performed by members of Cuba’s Santeria community – a hybrid religious sect with elements unifying African, Christian and indigenous traditions. But more affluent neighborhoods shade somewhat whiter, if not quite the shade of white that Americans expect. Brown skinned people, however, are everywhere in Cuba – on the beaches adjacent to posh hotels, at The University of Havana, at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (the largest medical school in the world, exclusively training foreign students from almost every country. This is where a large percentage of Palestinian doctors receive training), in the stands where world class baseball is played, and, predictably, on the field. Is Cuba a racist nation? A sexist nation? In Cuba, the answer to every question is yes and no.

We speak with a hotel owner and he tells us that there are no millionaires in Cuba (millionaires, not billionaires). You can own a hotel, but not two hotels, not a hotel and clothing shop – you get one business and that is it, he says. Cuba has a mixed economy with capitalists held tightly on a short leash. Still, Cuba has clearly not succeeded in creating a classless society. We see poor areas and very poor areas, but also neighborhoods – those adjacent to the university – with well-kept lawns and private driveways.

By sheer chance we strike up a conversation with an American couple near the US embassy (at the time the sight of a mysterious illness befalling embassy workers and visitors). The man, we learn, is named Robert Kraft, and although I have not heard of him, he is a musician and composer of world renown, and possibly the preeminent impresario for Cuban music. He tells us that, without any question, Cuba is the most important country on earth for musicians. Many of the ground-breaking trends in the musical world emerge right here in Havana, he says. As a former aspiring guitarist I am well aware that Cuban guitarist Leo Brouwer is often acknowledged as the world’s greatest living composer for my instrument. My former teacher, the late Phillip Roshegar, once asserted that “Brouwer is the only guitarist he’s heard who couldn’t play an unmusical phrase if you put a fucking gun to his head.” Kraft gave us a pair of tickets to the Havana premier of the documentary movie, “Score” that featured an interview he did for the film.

As we stroll aimlessly, a man follows us and strikes up a conversation, he tells us about a nearby dance festival and offers to take us there. I suspect that he will ask for money – we see panhandlers often. He tells us he plays congas in a percussion ensemble, but Shelly has a difficult time understanding him. Shelly tells me that Cuban dialect, with a sprinkling of Haitian Creole can be difficult. She learned to speak Spanish while working in a medical clinic serving Central American refugees. After almost an hour of broken conversation this man leads us to a Santeria festival, and pulls a CD from his pocket and asks if we will buy it. My band, he tells us proudly. At home in Massachusetts we play this disc for our friend, Bob Weiner, formerly a percussionist for Harry Bellefonte, who tells us that this is an amazing performance of traditional Cuban forms. Weiner had co-written one of the most useful instruction books on Afro-Cuban drumming – he knows what he is talking about.

Time moves more slowly in Cuba. Crowds flow with a relaxed, confident air, as if everyone will always be on time. The streets, regardless of the poverty, regardless of broken windows, give reassurance. At all hours, day or night, I feel safer in Cuba than anywhere else. People have argued that the safety in Cuba has come at the expense of extraordinary rates of incarceration, but statistical evidence does not support this. Inner city rates of incarceration in the US are higher than those in Cuba, and yet no one feels safe in US cities. Nor do we see police looming everywhere like you might see in Brooklyn, NY with its endless parade of sirens and flashing lights. I am not suggesting that Cuba’s high rates of incarceration ought to be justified, but this does not explain the safety one feels – even in proximity to striking poverty.

One time, out for a pre-dawn run, I come upon a drunken man collapsed in the street just as a police vehicle arrives. Cop cars in Havana are tiny white compacts – visually unimpressive symbols of authority. Two officers – a man and a woman – wrestle to lift the dead weight of the passed out man into their vehicle. Suddenly a man furiously peddling a bicycle, pulling a large cart, rounds the corner. This man screams at the officers but I speak no Spanish and Shelly is not there to translate. The man and the officers appear to argue – he seems to demand that they leave the inebriated person alone. They cops defer to the man who laboriously lifts the inert form into the cart and tenderly strokes his drooping head. They peddle off with no resistance from the police.

Later I ask the owner of our Air B&B about this incident. She tells me that families in Cuba have a deep sense of obligation. Nobody sleeps in the street, she says. We take care of each other. We bring them to treatment programs and when they get out they go back to drinking. So we do it over and over again. The paradox of Cuba has a relentless, endless quality like Russian nesting dolls. In a city where housing falls apart, no one goes without a roof over their heads. Everything is held together by some unseen magic. I remember that someone said of Cuba’s street mechanics, that “there are no mechanics in Cuba, only sorcerers.”

On our way to Trinidad we stop at a small sanctuary situated in the backyard of an elderly couple who have taken on the task of being curators of a haven for the smallest bird to ever exist – the Bee Hummingbird (Zunzuncito!). The couple tells us that women retire in Cuba at age 60 (men at 65) and that they have been caring for hummingbirds for over a decade. They get a small stipend to do this work, and boast that their small yard has the most densely concentrated collection of this rare species anywhere on the island. The Bee Hummingbird, they inform us, lives only in Cuba. The tiny bluish blur of wings can be seen congregating around feeders. The informality of this project is stunning.The husband says that neither he nor his wife has scientific training, but both have a love for this obscure species. The wife taught elementary school and her husband repaired farm equipment. I ask them why the government selected them to be guardians of this rare species and the woman answers, “we were here, and so were the little birds.”

In Cuba, the line dividing spontaneous whim and bureaucratic design cannot be easily determined. As Christopher Cook noted in 2015, the Cuban agricultural system employed a radical new strategy after the Soviet collapse, involving a switch from factory farming to a coordinated system of small farmers and urban gardens:

“Cuba’s agricultural detox represents “the largest conversion from conventional agriculture to organic and semi-organic farming that the world has ever known,” according to Food First. Across the countryside, a “campesino-a-campesino” (farmer-to-farmer) movement, growing more than 100,000 strong, shared techniques to stimulate production. Among the farmers’ guiding principles: “start slow, and start small;” “limit the introduction of technologies;” and “develop a multiplier effect” of farmer knowledge.

Great concepts, but what about results on the ground? By 2007, ANAP found, Cuba had stabilized and in some areas expanded food production even as farmers dramatically reduced pesticide use. While scaling back pesticides anywhere from 55 to 85 percent across a range of crops, peasant farmers produced 85 percent more tubers, 83 percent more vegetables, and 351 percent more beans.

Cuba’s farming revolution propelled the island from the lowest per capita food producer in Latin America and the Caribbean to its most prolific, says Miguel Altieri, UC Berkeley professor of agroecology. Writing in The Monthly Review, Altieri and Fernando Funes-Monzote, a founding member of the Cuban Organic Agriculture Movement, came to a dramatic conclusion: “No other country in the world has achieved this level of success with a form of agriculture that uses the ecological services of biodiversity and reduces food miles, energy use, and effectively closes local production and consumption cycles.” “

There are hundreds of thousands of small urban farms in Havana and in other Cuban cities. Community gardens in the US are wonderful experiments in community and sustainability, but in Cuba, this sort of melding of private passion and public organization keeps a nation under a brutal US blockade from starving. The elderly folks who preserve the Bee Hummingbird are part of something vast, a rare nexus between the small contributions of ordinary people and a broad government vision.

It is impossible to describe Cuba succinctly after a two-week stay, but the island may represent achievements in hope that exist nowhere else. In the context of numbing poverty Cuba has accomplished universal literacy, the most expansive medical system on earth, greatness in music that resonates globally, a multiracial society with a remarkable blending of peoples and diverse cultures, and most critically, an ability to stand up to the world’s most rapacious bully that has vowed to destroy it.

If Cuba falls to US fascism that might be the symbolic event that dooms us all. With so many terrible things transpiring within the twisted intentions of our fascist nightmare we must never forget about Cuba, the global center of innovation, the place where humanity’s soul is kept alive.

This piece first appeared on Nobody’s Voice.

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