Cuba is the past in the present. Whether you are in 1959 or in 2010, life is the same, and it’s not that bad. The Socialist Republic of Cuba is a Marxist dream turned bittersweet in paradise. Its revolution disposed of Batista, the vile CIA sponsored dictator, and replaced him with a highly charismatic band of brothers: Fidel and Raul, side-kicked by Che Guevara. To the incessant cries of patria o muerte! (fatherland or death!) they pulled the country away from capitalism and into authoritarian socialism. It is true that they have inherited all the ills of centrally planned economies – no freedom of expression or information, catastrophically low productivity, a decaying infrastructure, dull tower blocs, no great diversity of food or material goods, and brain numbing propaganda. But there comes a time when you have to take your nose out of your World Development Report and go somewhere different to see that Cuba has an excellent health care system (they live as long as we do) and a 98% literate, cheerful population.
Over the years, Cubans have nurtured their gift for joy. Cuba is music, colour, and laughter. If you’re walking down the crowded streets of La Habana, or riding an ox-cart through the rural village of Vinales, every house will be playing music that is outrageously loud by European standards. Inhabitants will be wearing something colourful with canary yellow being a striking favourite and will, at some point in the day, have fun. Sounds banal? Open your eyes: how many people around you are wearing black, listening to their iPods with earphones and how many of your friends have told you they’re having a miserable day?
How could anything be banal in Cuba, when the islanders possess ingenuity as a second gift? Years of revolutionary deprivation have ensured that the Cubans are masters of improvisation. What could beat organising a major event on facebook over your blackberry? Perhaps making a 55 year old american Chevy run on homemade spare parts and bits of engines from at least 10 other cars. Or making a hot-water shower out of a small goblet of plastic attached to live power cables. Amidst the deprivation underproduction has brought to the island, Cubans have gone day by day with homemade solutions to most of their problems. Do not be fooled; the exterior facades of the old colonial mansions in Habana or Cienfuegos may be decaying in the tropical heat and humidity, but inside a cave of preserved or handmade wonders ensures most Cubans live in comfort. And if you don’t mind chicken, pork and rice at every meal, life is not so bad.
True enough though, it isn’t always rum and Rumba over there. Despite feeling deeply attached to Fidel Castro and his brother, the Cubans are growing somewhat impatient for change. They deplore their lack of basic freedoms, they want to travel, to see what they have been hidden from these 51 years. They do not really care if they have cars that are older than their parents; they have not yet been corrupted by Western materialism. They simply long to do, see and say what they want. This is what they will unreservedly tell you over a Cuba Libre at the local bar, but in your language, not theirs. Los Comités de Defensa de la Revolucion are working hard in the background to make sure another revolution doesn’t supplant them.
One day freedom will come and with it, dollars will plant sky-scraping hotels on the postcard beaches, replacing the birds of the valleys with noisy buses. Cuba has sites of outstanding natural beauty which no camera in the world could ever do justice to, sights that take your breath away and only give it back when you close your eyes at night. Fortunately, the UNESCO has tried to pre-empt the forthcoming tragedy and classed many of Cuba’s treasures as World Heritage Sites: central Havana and its decadent colonial charm; the French 18th century pomp that lines the streets of Cienfuegos, the waterfalls and underground caves of Topes de Collantes, places where Indiana Jones would dream of being stranded in; the underwater coral forests of the Bay of Pigs; and the valley of Vinales, a valley of ancient and luxuriant mounds and pillars, untouched by time and man since the Jurassic, a landscape of the worlds’ younger days. These are but a few amongst many treasures that authoritarian socialism, for all its ills, has saved from the steaming destructive rampage of mass tourism.
As for the spirit of Cuba, it may live on. For years to come we may still be able to swerve between the potholes of its motorways, overtaking ox-drawn carts in the fast lane, while picking up hitch-hikers tired of the buses that never come. Old women, dressed in white with weather worn faces, may still ask for a peso or two to take a picture with them and their foot-long cigar. Markets may outlast supermarkets for a while, even as tourist attractions, because who would want to do away with a life of colours such as this? All this may endure a little longer, until money finally usurps charm and standardises beauty into banality.
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