Adventures in the Land of El Maximo

Out of the Frying Pan…

Ramada Inn, Miami Fla. After a sleepless night of racing mind spent walking through the tropical air and faux verdant jungle of a hotel parking lot, following the trajectory of their massive satellite dish's parabola into the stars, our 5:00 a.m. wake-up call cracks through the morning stillness and peace is broken. We hit the floor like soldiers, stretching, doing push-ups, sit-ups, opening up our chests and sleepy brains. In a few minutes we are on the first of many shuttles and in the first of a thousand interminable queues, checking in with a badly organized tour group, trying to score some coffee in the vast, empty airport. Formalities, paperwork, speeches about the embargo and our obligation to support it. We share an airplane with Harry Belafonte and Eli Wallach. 45 minutes later, we careen down onto a runway macheted through the jungle and walk out onto a tarmac past the uniformed representative of the Ministry of the Interior. Bicycles zigzag across the runway. Ancient farm tractors pull baggage carts.

The customs building is old dirty blue and pasted with small murals in the cheap quasi-cartoon art of the 70s we would come to see everywhere. Officials take their time, oblivious to our exhaustion, dividing tasks into parcels, giving everyone a job, stretching time out on its back as if to test our patience and readiness. Counting and recounting our bags, handwriting receipts, tickets and vouchers in tedious triplicate, huddling us into piles, asking questions.

…And Into Havana

Finally, out into hot sunshine to be accosted by young boys pouncing on the possibility of scoring some candy, or precious dollars. “Tiene chicle?,” we are asked again and again. “Do you have any gum?” Pencils, shoes, Certs, just about anything from another country is a valuable prize. Of course your mercy glands are touched immediately. But then, these kids do this all day long, every day, and one quickly realizes that they probably reap bounties daily. In addition, children, unlike adults, are given larger rations of protein. Children are allotted milk and meat to eat every day (provided there is some to give them), and everyone has a roof over their head, no matter how shabby. People are skinny, but not starving — yet. We gave handouts very selectively, only when we had talked with people for a while.

The parking lot, (and in fact all of Cuba) is filled with ancient American cars. The embargo began in 1959, and no American products have entered the country legally since then. Items do enter Cuba commercially via other countries, but any government that does business with Cuba will be excommunicated from doing business with America. Since Cuba lost Soviet support over six years ago, the squeeze on the Cuban economy is almost complete. '55 Plymouths, '49 Studebakers, even Model A's and Model T's fill the streets. They are not cherry — they are broken down rusted busty rattletraps on permanent last legs. There is no hope for replacement parts, or the money to buy them if they could, not to mention the shortage of gasoline. Most of the little gasoline Cuba has access to is reserved for buses and the generation of electricity. Of course, dollars can buy just about anything, including gas, but not everyone has access to dollars. Taxi drivers and black market experts have all they need, but for most Cubans, the small monthly ration of gas does not go very far. Bicycles have become the default mode of transportation. The bikes are mostly heavy Chinese one-speed cruisers with makeshift wooden seats attached for one or two passengers, some of them awkward composites of salvaged parts and bailing wire. Improvisation is the rule, not the exception, and when jury-rigging just won't cut it anymore, there are factories dedicated to fabricating replacement parts for anything. It's the only way. Thus, a respect for the life of a thing becomes natural by necessity. Like a people living close to the land, nothing is wasted and little is garbage.

The general landscape of the city consists of caked and crumbling plaster and concrete, faded, peeling paint in what must once have been an amazing array of yellow, blue, purple, pink, and white houses. Almost nothing has been built for Cubans since the revolution, with the exception of some public housing projects built in 1961, which we heard were constructed shabbily and with none of the aesthetics that makes most of Havana so visually interesting. Sidewalks downtown are often inlaid with peculiar tiles of multicolored granite and brass, depicting symbols and figures in the general style of Miro. Streets are full of potholes (only a little worse than Boston) and bicycles. There are few cars or buses, and almost all of them spew choking clouds of dark brown smoke in their wake. Traffic rules seem to be made up as people drive, though we only saw one accident (a bicycle and a bus collided at an intersection). Despite the run-down condition of the buildings, there is little litter, and walkways and homes are kept swept and as tidy as possible, given the meager resources at their disposal.

The deliciously hot air is thick enough to eat with a spoon, if you have one porous enough. It reminds me of Australia, Fiji, Hawaii, equatorial air that makes me feel more living, as if my own leaves would grow plump and rich if I stuck around in it long enough, feet planted like mud roots in soupy soil, not to wander but to remain and flourish.

The economy is starkly divided between the national currency of pesos and the tourists' dollars. Up until recently, Cubans were not allowed to have or spend dollars. Inevitably, however, dollars ended up in the hands of locals and a teaming black market sprung up. The official exchange rate of one-to-one began to shift gears in the black market, and illegal exchange now fetches 80 pesos to the dollar. Eventually, the underground economy grew so large that it eclipsed the legal economy both in size and in the availability of goods. Fidel legalized the possession of dollars by Cubans, and the rift between haves and have-nots quickly swelled. Cubans in the tourism industry have become rapidly rich (by Cuban standards) and have access to many goods and services that other Cubans could never dream of, ironic considering that social equalization is one goal of socialism. Now, according to many people we spoke to, playing the black market is not just a luxury, but a necessity. If you want to feed your children, you must buy illegal goods. For some who are faithful to the revolution, this is painful, as it further weakens the socialist ideal… but they have no more choice. Defend the revolution or eat — that is your choice.

Knowing all of this, we found it painful to be locked into the tourist side of the raw deal. If we wanted water, food, clothes, sunblock, or just about anything else, we had to buy it in the hotel's many (comparatively) well-stocked stores, as they are he only place these things exist. Cubans have access to small stores with mostly empty shelves (in one case we saw shelves filled with empty gift-wrapped boxes to “fill the eye”) where they are doled out their monthly rations. Without ration coupons, we could not even buy a bag of rice at one of these stores. The only exception we found was a dispensary of sugar cane juice where people lined up with old cans and plastic jugs. We stood in line and bought two 20-cent glasses of sweet, raw nectar that tasted like sugary straw, though we were given a dirty look by the woman at the counter. Cubans are now allowed to spend their dollars in the hotel stores, but must wait in long lines and be parceled in a few at a time. We were ushered past the lines to buy our water and rum, but even in these places of relative sumptuousness, we never saw a loaf of bread or a brick of cheese. Only in the hotel dining room, a harshly lit horn-o-plenty, could we find the nourishment we were accustomed to.

Our room on the 24th floor of the Habana Libre was one of the highest points in the city. A view over the grids of nearly empty streets, the crumbling buildings, thick air blowing through. Light blue and grey, a rattan screen right out of 1961 for the wife to undress behind. We had overly attentive maids who folded our underwear and put our shoes together in neat pairs. We had occasional hot water, a television, a radio, and a bidet for our “special needs.” While it was always a relief to take refuge from the relentless hustle of the city, we were never able to really forget the difference between life inside and outside the world of turismo.

One day we found ourselves in a store which apparently was selling warehoused goods left over from the days of Soviet support. Long rows of glass cases housed the strangest combination of semi-useful items imaginable: plastic bicycle seats without mounting brackets, hunks of scrap metal and hinges, toy guns, records of Soviet opera music, paperboard lampshades, school uniforms, toy pots and pans, bits of string, picture frames. At outdoor tables in random spots around the city, we repeatedly saw the same items: plastic motorcycles, berets, zodiacal paraphernalia, pet rocks with gooogly eyes, plastic soap dishes and funnels. The pricing structures always seemed almost arbitrary. 17 pesos could buy a few plastic flowers, but a pair of pants might cost 10. A hand-crafted and painted paper mache' tray could cost three dollars, but a cheesy “Love is…” picture in Spanish, photocopied and glued to a hunk of cardboard sold for five.

One night, sitting on our balcony just after sunset, we watched as thousands of lights blinked out in unison, several square city blocks suddenly losing power, the closing of the city's eye. We knew there would be power outages in order to save on energy, but we could never quite tell whether outages were random or scheduled. It never happened in the hotel, that's for sure.

Don't Even Think About Buying Popcorn Here

The Festival de Cine Nuevo Latinamericano opened with a screening of “Fresa y Chocolate” at the Karl Marx theater, a massive structure which probably seated around 2,000 people. However, that was nothing compared to the number of combined festival goers and Cubans wanting to see the latest work by their favorite filmmaker, especially given the controversial nature of this latest work. Reports from the previous year said there had been a near riot situation, and the story almost repeated itself this year. Ingrid and I squished into a queue where we were pressed against a cyclone fence which bent and swayed toward the ground, snagging our clothes on the fence and being pressed under surging weight on the other. The fence was threatening to give way in the unruly enthusiasm, and we had just about resigned ourselves to not getting in (Ingrid shouting “It's just a movie!” over and over). With the help of some military guards and our tour guide, we forced ourselves through the mass, into an alley, and into the expansive theater to fight for a seat, our first experience with favoritism.

The film was not translated, so we did our best to piece together the plot, whispering theories and extrapolations from visual context to each other. All in all, we did a pretty good job figuring it out, but didn't catch the subtleties. The film dealt with two topics relatively fresh to Cuban culture: a non-homophobic approach to gay citizens, and the many ways one can validly approach the revolution.

Oddly, when we saw it again later with translation, we got even less out of it. Only one theater in the festival offered a means of translation. The Chaplin Cinema dispensed little electronic receivers with an attached ear cup. One could change channels and hear the film being translated on the fly by interpreters in a booth somewhere. Unfortunately, the English translator was not exactly what you'd call fluent. Lagging generally one or two sentences behind the action, a completely flat monotonal delivery, and a complete inability to keep pace when conversation began to move rapidly (i.e. when the crucial lines were delivered). But the icing on the cake was her tendency to just grow weary and stop altogether, strolling off to get coffee or talk to some friends. On one occasion, I had to go find a manager and explain that no, the device wasn't broken — the translator was on intellectual vacation.

Films from Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Cuba, and just about every Latin-American nation coexisted in theaters whose decor ranged from smooth and tacky to old and funky. Since most of the films were in their original Spanish without subtitles, we ended up simply not going to as many as we had planned. Besides, there was way too much of Havana to see to justify spending all of our time in theaters. Here's Ingrid's righteous account of what we did see:

Socialismo o Muerte?

Contrary to what one might expect, most Cubans hold most Americans in high regard, despite the knowledge of the U.S. government's policy of slow, deliberate strangulation of people born into a world they never made, of an imposed morality, of a lukewarm war against people who want nothing more than to live in an healthy, industrialized nation that values the good of the whole over and above that of the individual, that will allow the individual to take pride in what he or she does or contributes or provides to the state before pride in their own status or prestige. All that Cuba has ever asked is at the least to be left alone, and at the most to be partners in free trade. They have posed no threat to the U.S. of any kind since the Soviet withdrawal. The Cuban Missile Crisis is far behind us, and the possibility of another flare-up is as remote as Jupiter's third moon.

The only threat posed now is ideological, a vestigial legacy from the dark period of America's witch hunts of the McCarthyist era. The Cubans we met wanted one of three things: money or goods, a chance to practice their English, or a chance to make friends and meet someone who could tell them something about the Big Mystery that lies 15 minutes to their north.

It is fine and healthy for governments and people to disagree on what is the best way to manage a people, but to disallow the possibility of this dream's realization by economic force is unconscionable. The U.S. has promised to maintain the embargo until Fidel steps down, and Fidel has sworn to remain in office until the embargo is ended. Checkmate. Fidel is aging, but is physically and mentally fit; he shows no sign of senility or disability. The 31-year old blockade has not touched the conviction of Fidel or the people, who for the most part steadfastly defend the basic socialistic principles of the revolution, if not the realities of poor management and the lack of democratic principles. It seems that many of them would prefer to live in a democratic socialism akin to those found in Northern Europe. Few, however, have a desire to live in a capitalistic country.

According to Amnesty International, Cuba is high on the list of countries guilty of holding prisoners of conscience and incriminating citizens without fair trial or due process. No one we spoke to in our short 12 days there spoke to us of this reality, nor was it mentioned in the best documentary we saw on the current political climate, “Cuba Va.” Whether this is one of those topics “of which we do not speak” or there is a general ignorance of the matter, we could not ascertain. I would imagine the former rather than the latter, but then again there is a limited amount of information available to the people, due both to limited resources (few televisions and little paper to print the news on) and to governmental control of information. The U.S. cannot possibly maintain the position that Cuba still represents a military threat, so the continued maintenance of the embargo must be attributed to an attempt at securing human rights. However, this policy would be radically inconsistent with our dealings with other countries known to violate such rights consistently. China has been returned to Most Favored Nation trading status. Why? Because we can't afford not to do business with China. If Cuba were to strike oil tomorrow, you can bet the embargo would be lifted the next day.

If it is the intention of the U.S. to continue to endanger the health of millions while at the same time lose the opportunity to do business with a potentially lucrative trading partner, not to mention continue to stand in direct opposition to the democratic decisions of the U.N. (in a 1992 vote, only Romania and Israel voted for a continuation of the embargo), then it need do nothing more than what it does now, which is nothing. The full-Nelson headlock is an easy position to maintain, but you look kind of foolish when you hold someone that way for 31 years.

It should be mentioned that it is not just the U.S.'s products which Cuba misses out on; America will discontinue trade with any country which does business with Cuba. Any ship which docks in Cuba must wait six months before touching down in an American port, and tourists from any country cannot visit the U.S. for six months after visiting Cuba. This is why Cuba does not stamp visas in passports — ours were stamped on the backs of our boarding passes, which made it very convenient to “lose” them soon thereafter.

We must recognize that in our attempt to ensure human rights in Cuba, we have made the lives of millions of people (who are innocent of their government's decisions) an economic hell. And yet, the reality of an unembargoed Cuba will not be pretty either. With an influx of dollars will come the inevitable fast food, malls, chain stores, and general tackiness that plagues our own culture. Cuba will become the great local tropical vacation spot, and will be overrun with tourism. The tremendous respect for resources and property the Cubans have learned by necessity will fall away and the negligence that accompanies plenty will take its place. Antique buildings will be torn down and replaced with gleaming glass facades, and the spirit of survival that translates into a spirit of life will be gone. We have two options: continue to play the role of dungeon-keepers to millions of innocent prisoners, or unlock the gates and see what happens. The outcome will probably not be pretty, but it has to look better than what's going on now.

Vamos a Cayo Largo

We had intended to visit the Isle of Youth to do some diving etc., and perhaps track down the chunk of land that my great grandfather had once owned. However, we found that the island's only hotel was booked, and that flights were full too. Instead we settled on a mini-trip to Cayo Largo, a small island to the south of Cuba inhabited only by tourists and Havanians who flew over to work in 40-day stints. We boarded a small Soviet propeller plane which dripped diesel from the wings and sported bald, sagging tires. Entering through a hatch in the butt, we sat down in a hot, claustrophobic sheet-metal-and-rivets powder blue cave. The air conditioner came on once we were airborne, spewing thick white smoke into the cabin (it was probably just steam), and an incongruously Continental-looking flight attendant passed out terrible candy, weak cream soda, and tiny cups of the syrupy coffee we were already growing accustomed to. I settled in to read Fidel's most recent speech on nuns and disco music in Granma, the official socialist newspaper of Cuba named after the boat in which Fidel and Che Guevara and a team of mountain-trained revolutionaries sailed from Mexico to Cuba in to overthrow the Batista dictatorship (the actual boat is encased in glass in downtown Havana; we had passed it just hours earlier en route to the airport.

The island was everything that travel posters promise: fine white sand, clear blue water, thatched huts, rum to sip from coconut shells, and a total freeze-up of time. We drifted into Hotel Pelicano, a hastily assembled and utterly tacky sprawling apartment complex with too many square angles, bad colors, aerobics instructors, and unbelievably ugly yellow and orange bedspreads. It didn't matter though. The hideousness of how it looked and what it meant were all part of the fun. I snapped on the tube, and there was “Lost in Space.” It seemed strangely appropriate, so we watched for a while, then adjourned poolside for our welcoming speech and promised lobster lunch, which proved to be a little cup of oversalted lobster chunks in mayonnaise. We jumped on the wrong shuttle, had an impromptu tour of the industrial zone (where the hotel-building equipment was kept), almost crashed into a truck coming around a corner (the driver of which our driver called “a fag” because of it), and landed at the marina, where we boarded a boat and cruised to a peninsula which served as Paradise Central. From there we boarded the dive boat which took us out a mile or so to a reef. I was administered a regulator with no bits on the mouthpiece which kept falling out of my mouth and a BC with a stuck valve — after hitting the inflate button once, I rocketed to the surface like a cork with a death wish. After conquering the hardware shortcomings, I settled into the dive, which was more like a walk through a convalescent's garden, as they kept us on a frustratingly short leash. Any more than 30 feet away from the leader and we were summoned back with the rapid clackety-clacking of two stones together. We never descended below 25 feet, and we had to stay at the edge of the reef.

All that aside, the dive was muy mas suave. Dozens of varieties of brain and tree corals, some hard, some soft, twisted in surreal tangles and swaths through the warm, clear water. Through 75-foot visibility we came face-to-face with hundreds of species of fish, eels, and other indescribables. Sometimes it was hard to believe they weren't hand painted, or even tie-dyed. From a few millimeters to three feet long, from fluorescent blue to electric yellow and red, swimming in schools of hundreds or loning and roving singly, the fish almost seemed to want to make friends, never dashing away before you were closer than a few inches away. Conch shells both living and dead peppered the sand at the reef's edge, and one could careen silently through small coral caves and tunnels, hold the breath, gaze close-up into the secret and serene world that is always there, usually hidden.

I emerged with a diving migraine, exhausted, dehydrated, sunstroked. Crashed out for hours while Ingrid devoured a thriller novel in enormous gulps.

Elsewhere on the island we sailed a Hobie Cat, Jet-Skied, napped, walked in the phosphorescent midnight surf, played backgammon, swam in the saltwater pool, and attempted to sleep under a thatched hut on the beach, but the surf proved too loud, and we retreated to the tacky glare of El Pelicano. In the morning we skinny dipped in the endless bounty of water, flushing out our grogginess in the clear protoplasmic soup, feeling like we were a million years old, and yet fresh born

In the last few hours of our stay at Cayo Largo, we took an impromptu trip to the Isle of the Iguanas, one among hundreds of tiny outcroppings of lava which erupts violent and craggy out of the sea surrounding Cuba. For reasons we couldn't discover however, this particular one is host to a large tribe of giant lizards which, as Ingrid put it, “have been retooled for the tourist trade,” meaning that they scramble up to you by the dozen to beg for scraps of bread and Graham Crackers. Almost friendly, the little dinosaurs climbed all over each other, sometimes lunging a foot or two through the air with pink mouth gaping wide to snatch a morsel out of our hands. They haven't got much finesse, and occasionally their scratchy little teeth would graze our hands. Apparently, some of them have had it up to the gills with the tourist trade, and prefer to wander around the island alone, basking and chomping grass and bugs like a good iguana should.

El Mantra

My quest to investigate Cuban jazz turned out to be a bust. For starters, the Cuban entertainment scene is largely, though not completely confined to the tourist trade. Tourists want to see bongos and salsa, and that's pretty much what they get. I considered myself very fortunate to have gotten to see the current quartet of pianist/tenorist Orlando Sanchez, “El Mantra,” in the spacious mezzanine bar of the Libre on his last night. After an inspired set of Monk and Parker covers with a few imaginative originals thrown in, I talked with him about his career in Cuba. He had just been informed that he was being ditched from the Libre's schedule because not enough tourists were coming to see him. He was bummed, but not surprised. This had been the story ever since he had started playing, right around the time of the revolution. But his interest and devotion in being a serious musician had never flagged, and he had developed his musical ideas into something, as far as I could gather, somewhat unique in Cuba. His career had peaked in the bands of Gonzalo Rubalcaba and Pablo Milanos, and he was now planning to go try again in Bulgaria, as his wife had citizenship there. I wished him luck, we shook hands, and the next day he called me in my room to deliver a tape he had made for me. Later, I found out that a blank cassette cost about 100 pesos, roughly a third of the average monthly wage. I wished I had had something to give him in return.

Other than Orlando's band, we followed a rumor to see jazz at a club called Maxim's, a set which had apparently already concluded by the time we arrived at 9:30. I asked around wherever I went, and came up empty handed. The rare records I saw for sale were always the same set of about 100 titles, recorded over the past two decades, mostly salsa and traditional Cuban music. However, Havana does host an International Jazz Festival in February of each year, so there must be more awareness than I was able to ferret out.

Con Permisso, Donde Esta el Maximo?

Many plans fell into the whirlpool of rumors, promises, bad directions, poor scheduling, and general misinformation that seems to guide the course of events here. With a shortage of paper, little is printed, and much relies on the contagion of word of mouth. Our quest to track down a controversial video called “Alicia in el pueblo….” (a satire of Cuban life based on Alice in Wonderland, which the censors claimed depicted Fidel as the devil, a claim which the directors deny) involved several people, the Cuban center for film studies, and my being bounced from office to office to telephone to waiting room for a full hour before finally being told definitively, “We know nothing about it,” even though we had been told the previous day that it would be screened. Ingrid had a similar experience trying to see the same film last year. Requisitions depend on affidavits depend on gasoline depends on dollars depends electricity depends on working phones depends on requisitions. We heard that bureaucratic inefficiency is a favorite theme of satire for Cubans.

And everything takes time. Since everyone is guaranteed a job, work that we are accustomed to seeing done by one or two people is divided among six or eight. A hotel restaurant with six tables may employ one person to work the register, one to pour the coffee, one to scoop the ice cream, one to bring it to your table, one to wash the dish, one write up your check in triplicate, and one to chase you down after you've paid the agreed sum and walked away to tell you they made a mistake and that you owe more. All part of the fun.

Friday was the final day of the film festival, and we got a phone call early in the morning alerting us that we should go to the Hotel Nacional to pick up our invitations to the closing ceremonies and the party at “Fidel's House,” the Presidential Palace. As usual, we rode in a huge, modern, gas guzzling tour bus back to the Karl Marx theater. This time we got in without difficulty, and found excellent seats. Awards for films, directors, actors, etc. were chunks of white coral chipped from the reefs that surround the island. The ceremony itself was matter of fact, without the fanfare we associate with the Oscars or Emmies. Acceptance speeches were almost nonexistent, and only a few film clips were seen. Of course, “Fresa y Chocolate” swept the awards in many categories, and the winners spoke of the need for greater acceptance of both homosexuality and new ways of looking at the revolution.

The Presidential Palace was huge and spacious, but humble and tasteful. No chandeliers, no crystal; just tasteful grey marble floors and chiseled concrete columns, giant tropical plants, and an immense expressionist mural of hand-sculpted and painted tiles, perhaps 150 ft. long and 30 ft. high running the length of an entire wall. The best food we had seen in Cuba was laid out for us: roasted chicken and rice, a deliciously spicy corn mash, fried bananas, cold salads, deserts, coffee, and of course the ubiquitous mojitos (rum, lemon, sugar and mint leaves) in abundance.

Conversations rolled, tumbled and tangled across the room and through the swirl of guests. Vigilant non-uniformed guards kept a close eye on things, making sure we didn't wander into the wrong section, stood in relaxed poses in the wings, looking comfortable. Fidel and Grandpa Munster made their appearances at about the same time. “The Man” (also known colloquially as El Maximo, mi amigo Coco, the President, el Hefe, and by his official title, “President Fidel Castro Ruz, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba) was immediately surrounded by guests. Unlike other leaders, he does not hustle through the crowd shaking hands and kissing babies. He has conversations with anyone, picking their brains, remembering everything, asking active and pertinent questions. One person in our group is on a mission to aid Cuba's economy by introducing hemp as a crop for energy, fiber, oil, protein, paper, etc. Bringing this up to an American President would get you ignored fast. Fidel hammered him with questions. How much yield? How much manpower? What crop rotation? What fertilizers are needed? Another in our group brought a message from her grandparents. Fidel assured her that her family had been very important to the revolution, and sent back his regards. The Man stood in one spot for over an hour, physically and mentally intent on meeting everyone he could, with absolutely no interest in superficial politics or social “How do you do's.”

Meanwhile, Al Lewis (aka Grandpa Munster) strutted around looking like the eccentric, egotistic has-been he is, shouting “Not Fidel… me!” Shocks of wiry white hair shot out horizontally from beneath his blue denim cap. A slobbery cigar dangled from his mouth. A bola tie made of deer antler stood out like a big calcified sore from his shirt. He claimed to have 40 of them, all by the same “master craftsman.” He also claimed that Fidel had asked for it as a gift, and that he had refused the request. The presence of two of the greatest minds of our century together in one room at the same time proved too overwhelming for me, and I sat on a leather hassock underneath an elephant's ear and gazed into the tile mural, looking for some hidden meaning to this surreal assemblage of events and elements. I didn't find any, but I did get handed another mojito, which only served to make the tiles swirl, and the bizarre setting seem somehow natural, as if I attended parties like this every week.

My Dinner With Pozo, Hugo, Flaco…

El Malecon is the rickety concrete strip of seawall that runs along the North coast of Havana. To one side run the multicolored pillars and buildings of peoples homes, once great edifices decaying into well-kept but rapidly crumbling apartments. On the other, the warm, clear Caribbean sea surges onto a short outcropping of craggy rock and lava. Because of the steep drop into the depths, even small surf explodes unpredictably over the wall and over the sidewalk. As a result, strollers such as ourselves can be doused in seawater at any moment. The sidewalk is pitted with salt rot and, in places, covered in slippery algae. Don Juans and senoritas perch on the short wall, smooching into the dusk and beyond. A one mile walk along the Malecon takes you from Havana proper to Habana Vieja, Old Havana, where the architecture takes on a more European feel, the streets run in narrower strips, the poverty even more apparent, the stink of urine more frequent, the hard core of Cuban life bolder to the eyes and ears.

Towards the end of our stay, we visited Old Havana more frequently, trying to track down some artist friends that Ingrid had met last year at the Grabado Taller, the engraving and graphic arts studio near an old Cathedral. True to Cuban scheduling style, this proved more difficult than we expected. Promised times didn't match up, letters sent didn't arrive, rumors didn't pan out. But these potentially frustrating episodes always bore hidden fruit in the form of meeting new people, finding other pockets of life not in the meager guide book. In this way we met Pozo and his friends Flaco (Skinny) and Angel, artist friends of Hugo, with whom we were trying to meet. I gave them a WIG! calendar, we asked where we could find Cuban entertainment for our last night. We mentioned that it was Ingrid's birthday. They invited us to come hang out at Pozo's house.

After a sweaty and foot-weary sunset trek back to the Libre, temper and patience tested and tried by the more-or-less continual assault of Cuban youth on our dollars, we crashed out in the afternoon sun, watched reruns of last night's festival awards ceremony on the hotel TV, endured one more hour in the harsh light and tired food of the hotel dining room, and took an underground taxi to Pozo's house. The driver became quickly lost in the tangled bowels of the inner city, asking directions five times from locals, until finally Flaco, who was outside waiting for us, flagged us down and led us through darkness up several flights of stairs which spiraled around the well of an open-air elevator shaft, into the small flat shared by three. We sat in a circle on the cold linoleum floor (they had no chairs to offer us), met four other friends, and dug right into a difficult but rewarding discussion of conceptual art centering around the posters of Pozo's brother Sandy. Soon we were sipping rum, telling stories, and discussing the state of Cuban society and economy, and the relative merits of socialism and capitalism.

Then the surprise: someone had remembered that it was Ingrid's birthday (it happened also to be Sandy's) and produced a small, flat birthday cake. As sugar is just about the only resource in plentiful supply, deserts in Cuba are mostly sugar, and are commonly coated in thick mounds of frosting, as was this cake. Not too tasty to our mouths, but the generosity and kindness showed by them was overwhelming. They sang a Cuban happy birthday song to Ingrid in Spanish, then we sang to Sandy in English. As if they knew Ingrid much better than they did, Pozo produced a hardcover history of crime and criminology (in English) as a second gift, which they all inscribed with love. Behind us, a blank wall was covered in butcher paper (like just about everything, also a precious commodity), and we all took to a collaborative mural effort with poster paints. An hour later, we had a six by six foot souvenir mural to take with us: a spontaneous depiction of the night's conversational themes. There was Fidel on channel 23, a cocktail glass full of politics and Woody Allen, a green elephant and an orange question mark, a blocky dog barking out the question “Chicle?,” abstractions and text, passions and nonsense. Then the guitarras came out.

Tania is paid by the state to write and sing childrens' songs. Her Cuban-Chinese boyfriend Han Sun plays lead acoustic with a perfect intuitive ear, clear, precise, blindingly fast and delicate. Flaco played his own compositions in a more traditional style, heartfelt and endearing. I played what they said they wanted to hear, the blues, singing “Bring it on Home” in my best Muddy Waters throat. This style comes so easily to me, and not to them; I realized for the first time just how much influence I had absorbed indirectly from my culture, and saw how much they had from theirs. Even though by Cuban standards these people were on the fringe, true bohemians, their music could not help but carry the influence of the Spanish ballad any more than mine could help but carry the luggage of the blues. They extolled the lifestyle they called “punk,” which I soon came to realize meant Peter Gabriel and U2.

Without the help of Marina, we would have had much less communication than we did, considering our very limited Spanish and their limited English. Marina was born in the Soviet Union, and came to Cuba during the long period of Soviet support. Her English was quite good, and improved by the minute. We especially enjoyed her recount of a movie she had seen recently, about a man falling in love with a sheep, then losing her to the heart of his psychiatrist.

They walked us all the way back to our hotel that night. Ingrid gave Sandy her two-dollar watch (a Burger King promo), which brought tears to his eyes. I promised to make tapes for many of them, after learning that a single cassette cost them about 120 pesos, nearly two weeks wage. The evening was easily the most emotionally intense and rewarding of our stay, and we wished we had met them sooner, as through them we finally got behind the veil that separates tourism from Cuban life, and felt first-hand, if just for an evening, the energy and spirit that keeps these people going despite the hardships of an era Fidel calls, in a form of doublespeak so similar to the forked tongue half-truths voiced by politicians from all times and places, “The Special Period.” It'll be a lot more special when it's over.