Cuba looked like it had lost a war. And it had—the cold war. But Albania had lost the cold war, too, and Tirana, as I’d see a year later, was a colorful, noisy place this time of day: Cafés were full, cars collided, street vendors shouted their wares. Havana was silent.
I watched enormous breakers tumbling against the seawall of the Malecon, Havana’s oceanfront boulevard. Thousands of gallons of gray brine sloshed over the holes and chunks in its concrete pavement. Torrents of dingy sea foam flushed against the Malecon’s paintless old town houses. Very few tuberos, those brave souls who try to escape from Cuba aboard tied-together inner tubes, would be out today. They’d be washed right back into somebody’s living room. And a very crummy living room, to judge by what I could see.
I was feeling pretty crummy myself. I’d arrived the previous midnight and gone straight to the Nacional’s bar and started drinking mojitos. This was Cuba-fan Ernest Hemingway’s second favorite drink, after the wake-up slug out of a hidden gin bottle. A mojito is made by mixing too much sugar with too much rum in not enough soda water and adding crushed mint leaves and lime juice. It sounds disgusting, and believe me, the next morning it is.
The walls of the bar were decorated with black-and-white photographs of celebrities visiting the Nacional, all of them, except a couple second-string European intellectuals, before the Castro era. Bad rumba music boomed from the girlie show in the hotel nightclub.
After five or eight mojitos I went to the john. If you were designing a socialist system—a nation in which everyone had the same social status—wouldn’t eliminating rest-room attendants be the first thing you’d do? And if I were designing a socialist system (what a hobby), I’d at least let the masses visit the hotel that they all supposedly own in common. But ordinary Cubans can’t enter the Nacional or its several acres of seaside gardens unless they are, for instance, rest-room attendants.
A few Cubans manage to sneak in. When I went upstairs at 3 A.M., there was a North American–type fellow in the elevator with a young woman, a girl, really, maybe sixteen years old. She was clean and clean-cut, soberly dressed, without jewelry or makeup, wholesome of manner and apparently a prostitute. At least the elevator operator thought so. He ordered her out. She was not a hard-looking girl, but a hard look crossed her face as she left.
I rented a car for an exorbitant amount of money. The car-rental company’s manager spoke at length about Cuban-American friendship and how the citizens of both countries desired peace and mutual cooperation, “except for a few fascists such as Barry Goldwater and that Oklahoma bomber.” The manager seemed to have done pretty well in the revolution. “According to my Rolex…,” he said, noting the time on my rental contract. And I got to hear about how he liked women with large bottoms.
He gave me the keys to a dirty and dented Japanese sedan. It had a Toyota nameplate, but, looking at the fit and finish, I’d say it was manufactured by that Studebaker corporation our government is going to buy stock in if we reform the investment industry.
I drove through Habana Centro. In 1991, Fidel Castro told Mexican journalist Beatriz Pages, “The other Latin-American countries have tens of millions of beggars; Cuba has none. In other Latin-American countries, you see children cleaning car windshields, running among the cars to do that.” I stopped at a red light. Children ran among the cars, cleaning windshields.
Not that there were many windshields to clean. Traffic in Havana was mostly a matter of bicycles and pedestrians who had grown so used to empty streets that someone who looked both ways before crossing was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. People dawdled along, peddling at four miles an hour in the passing lanes and pushing baby strollers down highway exit ramps. Old ladies stood in the middle of the avenue puzzled that there should be someone who wanted to get by.
There were, however, still traffic police, hundreds of them, one on almost every corner doing God knows what all day. And traffic rules were completely in force, though stoplights were burned out and street signs were illegible with corrosion. It was, for instance, almost impossible to make a legal left turn in Havana, and all the streets in the city seemed to go one way to the left. These streets are numbered odd east-west and even north-south. I was inclined to give up mojitos when I found myself at the corner of Tenth and Eleventh streets.
Habana Centro looked like 1960 Cleveland after a thirty-seven-year strike by painters and cleaning ladies. But the old city, La Habana Vieja, was beautiful. Cuba’s Spanish-colonial architecture is classical and restrained, less Taco Bell influenced than Mexico’s. And unlike the rest of the Caribbean, Cuba’s old buildings are made of stone. The island has, during its history, suffered various periods of neglect, such as the present one. Maybe the Cubans were trying to design things that would look good as moldering ruins.
The tourist areas of the old town had been cleaned up, and somewhat more cleanup was in progress. A number of museums and government-owned restaurants were open and were, as Fodor’s Cuba guidebook says of one such, “decorated with antique furniture recovered from the great mansions of the local bourgeoisie.” Tactfully put. Outside of the tourist areas, however, there was a fair danger of experiencing some freelance socialism; you might find that you were the local bourgeoisie from which something got recovered.
Later in the morning, Havana’s streets grew crowded, but not with a madding crowd. Nobody was doing much of anything or going anywhere in particular. Thousands of people were just hanging around in the middle of a weekday in a country where, by law, there’s no unemployment. Some people were walking dogs. All the dogs were old and small, the kind kept by rich women for purposes of baby talk. Maybe the dogs had been left behind when the rich women fled the revolution—thirty-seven-year-old miniature schnauzers forced to pawn their costume-jewelry collars and have their fur clipped at barber colleges.
The dogs didn’t look happy. The kind of meat that goes into dog food would be eaten by people in Cuba if there were any of it to be had. The people didn’t look happy, either. There was an edge and an attitude among the idling mobs in Havana. They gave out lots of hard looks, grabbed their testicles, and made those Latin sounds—hisses and sucky lip noises—especially at foreign women.
But when I actually met the Cubans—and I met a lot of them at a gas station after I drove the Toyota into a big hole, causing a front wheel to fold like a paper plate with too much potato salad on it—they were swell. They were pleasant, helpful, cheery, polite. They all had relatives in Union City, New Jersey. And an American woman told me that when she went out alone, the noises ceased. Or nearly ceased. The men grabbed their testicles in a formal and courtly manner.
The gas station was one of the few visible instances of anybody doing anything for a living. The Cuban government has not only eliminated the concept of unemployment, it’s eliminated the concept of jobs, if you don’t count begging or pestering strangers to buy “genuine Cohiba cigars” that “a good friend of mine sneaks out of the factory.” Either the fellow who sneaks Cohibas out of the factory has an unusual number of good friends, or Cohiba-sneaking is Cuba’s largest industry.
There was even less honest economic activity on the streets of Havana than on the streets of Stockholm—no roving food vendors or knickknack merchants, and only occasional kiosks selling cigarettes and newspapers, which they were mostly out of.
At a few prescribed spots in the city, there were arts-and-crafts markets. The arts and the crafts looked like they were made by accountants, lawyers, university professors, and other famously unhandy types who’d been out on the patio with dull tools trying to turn pieces of scrap wood into Che Guevara wall plaques and cigarette boxes with CUBA IS BEAUTIFUL carved on the lids in a desperate attempt to get U.S. dollars.
The dollars were provided by a few tourists watched over by more than a few tourist police. Membership in this august branch of the constabulary being proclaimed, in English, on the breast pockets of their uniforms. The tourist police did not, however, enforce fashion law. The tourists wor
e NBA balloon shoes on noodle legs, pie-wagon-sized jogging shorts, and idiot logo T-shirts.
The Cubans, poor as they were, looked much better. Not that their clothing was good. It seemed to be from American relatives who had gone to Price Club and put together large boxes of practical duds. But the Cubans wore that clothing well—tight where tight flattered, artfully draped where artful draping was to the purpose, and when all else failed, the clothes were simply absent. There were bare midriffs, wide skirt slits, buttons undone to the navel.
Cubans are stylish. Cubans are even glamorous, especially the women. And some of the women were entirely too glamorous for the middle of the day. Because there was one kind of economic activity on the streets of Havana, and lots of it. Flocks of women stood along major roads plying the trade just as it’s plied in L.A. “Why is that girl hitchhiking in her prom dress?” I heard a tourist ask.
The whores were budding in Cuba, and everything else was old, withered, blown, used up. Even the Young Pioneers, solemn kids in red kerchiefs doing calisthenics in the park, seemed to be obsolete children, products of some musty, disproven ideas about social hygiene. Tired, stupid slogans—SOCIALISM OR DEATH—were painted everyplace. The paint on the signs was peeling. All the paint in Cuba was peeling. Half an hour in Havana was enough to cure a taste for that distressed look popular in Crate & Barrel stores. Crumbling and rot abounded.
Of course, there was a good neighborhood in Havana. There always is in these places. Miramar is on the beach to the west of downtown. The streets were lined with royal palms and also with new BMWs. The cheerful mansions had been built in the style that’s called Spanish if you live in Pasadena. These were perfectly maintained and lavishly gardened, and every one of them was owned by a Cuban government institution, a foreign corporation, or an embassy, and so were the cars. In between the cheerful mansions were mansions of little cheer. The Castro government “recovered” these and turned them into housing for “the people.” It was part of the liberty, equality, and fraternity espoused by the Cuban revolution. The fraternity in question must have been the one portrayed in National Lampoon’s Animal House. Much of Miramar looked like the Deltas had been living in it for the past seventy-four semesters. They’d all gotten crabby and gray. And they’d run out of beer.
Nighttime was better in Havana. The city had so few lights that after dark, I hardly noticed the electrical blackouts. It looked like nobody lived there. Since hardly anybody wants to, it was a fitting look.
There were some privately owned restaurants. The food was good, and I could get a meal for five dollars. However, it did have to be dollars. No one in Cuba was interested in pesos. Even beggars checked to see if the coin being offered was American. The private restaurants were allowed no more than twelve seats, and only family members could be employed. This was as far as the Cuban government had been willing to go with capitalism among its own citizens. It will be interesting to see how this model works if it’s applied to other free enterprise undertakings, such as airlines. Mom will begin beverage service as soon as Junior gets the landing gear up.
The big restaurants were nationalized, and in a nation that’s suffering severe food shortages, this meant that only rice and beans were available to foreigners who had dollars. Ha, ha, ha. Hard-currency joke. I could get anything I wanted—lobster, steak, Cohiba cigars actually made by Cohiba, and rum older than the prostitutes sitting at all the other tables with German businessmen. The catch was, not only couldn’t Cubans afford these things, neither could I. In the Floridita, where the daiquiri was invented and where the New York City price of drinks was apparently also invented, cocktails cost five dollars—more, at the black-market exchange rate for dollars, than most Cubans make in a week. I was also in constant danger of being serenaded. Guitar players roam Cuba’s restaurants in packs. They know one song, “Guantanamera.” The complete lyrics are:
“Guantanamera, Guantanamera,
Guan-tan-a-meeeeera, Guantanamera.”
This unofficial national anthem was popularized by noted Cuban patriot Pete Seeger.
Was I missing something? Cuba is famous for its charm. I decided to hire a guide. Maybe he could find me some. Roberto, as I’ll call him, took me to Hemingway’s house in the village of San Francisco de Paula. It’s a white stucco plantation-style manor on a hilltop with twenty-two acres of land, a guest cottage, and a swimming pool. I must remember to write harder. There’s a three-story tower with a den at the top where Hemingway could go and think big thoughts. (“Where is that gin bottle?”) And in the toilet off the main bedroom, there’s a pickled lizard on a shelf. The lizard got into a fight with one of Hemingway’s cats. The cat won, but the reptile fought so bravely that Papa felt the need to immortalize it. The liquid in the container was low. It looked like somebody had taken a few nips out of the lizard jar. And on second thought, I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a major author.
Hemingway’s widow donated the house to the Castro government. And Britain donated Hong Kong to China.
Roberto was chatty, full of official, government-approved information. On the way to San Francisco de Paula, we passed the dirty, bedraggled worker housing that everywhere mars the Cuban landscape. The buildings are nothing but concrete dovecotes: six-story-high, hundred-yard-long stacks of tiny apartment boxes open on one end. They must have staircases, but I couldn’t see any. Maybe the government comes along at night and plucks up people and puts them in their pigeonholes. “The workers made these!” said Roberto. Though, if you think about it, workers make everything. “The government gives them the construction material,” he said. “Then they rent for twelve years. And then they own them!” In other words, you get a free home in Cuba as long as you build it and pay for it.
When we drove into La Habana Vieja, Roberto pointed at a gutted hotel: “These are special worker brigades, doing this construction. They can work sixteen hours a day.” This must have been one of the other eight. Everyone was sitting around smoking cigarettes. “They get extra rations,” said Roberto, “a big bag with soap, cooking oil, rice, beans…” Roberto sounded as if he was describing the contents of a big bag from, say, Tiffany’s.
“In 1959 there were six-thousand doctors in Cuba,” said Roberto, apropos of nothing. “Three thousand of them left after the revolution. Yet we are training new doctors. By the year 2000 there will be sixty-thousand doctors in Cuba!” But Roberto could only talk government talk so long. He couldn’t stay off the real subject, what was on every Cuban’s mind all the time: the economic mess. “You see these cabdrivers?” he said, pointing to a line of tourist-only taxis. “People need to earn dollars. These drivers may be doctors.”
“In Cuba,” said Roberto, “anything you want is available—for dollars.” But people are paid in pesos, even if they work for foreign companies, which Roberto, in fact, does. The national tourist service isn’t owned by the nation anymore. It’s been sold to overseas investors. These people pay $300 a month for Roberto’s services. But they don’t pay Roberto. They pay the Cuban government. The Cuban government then pays Roberto 150 a month, in pesos.
Figuring out what the Cuban peso is worth is a complex economic calculation. To put it in layman’s terms, a pretty close approximation is nothing. Pesos are of use almost exclusively for buying rationed goods. The Cuban rationing system is simple: They’re out of everything. Although you can get a really vile pack of cigarettes for ten pesos. Think of Roberto’s salary as a carton and a half of smokes.
Roberto was able, however, to earn dollars through tips. Cadging these being, of course, the subtext to his economic discourse. He used to be a teacher but couldn’t live on the pay. His wife is a chemical engineer, but her chemical plant shut down three years ago. While we were walking around the old town, Roberto met another engineer, now working as a carpenter for dollars—building the table under which he’d get paid.
“Just to feed ourselves,” said Roberto, “we have to go to four markets. The ration store for, maybe, rice. Then the gov
ernment dollar store—this is very expensive. Then the dollar market where farmers can sell what they grow if they grow more than the government quota. And then the black market.”
We drove down Avenida Bolivar, through what had been Havana’s shopping district. Hundreds of stores stood closed and empty, the way they’ve been since 1968, when the last small businesses were nationalized. “That is where the Sears store was,” said Roberto, pointing to the largest empty building. “But now we have nothing to sell.”
Every so often Roberto would snap out of it and resume the official patter: “Over there is a memorial to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Perhaps you have a monument to them in North America?” I said I didn’t think so. But mostly, Roberto wanted to talk about free enterprise. He and his wife were sleeping on the mattress his mother bought when she got married: “It has been repaired over and over. We get the TV sometimes from Miami—oh, the ‘Beatty Rest’ mattresses! And what good prices!”
Roberto was optimistic. He kept showing me new family owned restaurants. “Look, there’s one!” He pointed to a pizza parlor. “There’s more!” He pointed to several pizza parlors. In Cuba, capitalism’s thin edge of the wedge comes plain or with pepperoni.
Roberto thought small private retail shops would be opening soon. He thought the government’s new “convertible peso,” which is pegged 1:1 to the dollar, would become the national currency. He was even enthusiastic about the fees the Cuban authorities were beginning to charge, such as highway tolls. “Maybe we will get better service,” he said. Roberto told me that the economy had “come back since the low point of ’94, a little,” and that this was due to the private businesses. “The only thing the government controls now is the taxes,” said Roberto.
He was wrong. Fidel Castro, in his 1996 year-end speech to the Cuban National Assembly, described the economic reforms thus: “We legalized robbery.” Castro then did, indeed, announce an income tax on the self-employed. But worse is probably to come. Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, addressed the Communist Party Central Committee, ranting at economic changes, foreign influences, and petty entrepreneurs trying to get rich. The Communist Party newspaper, reporting on the committee meeting, said, “La sicologia del productor privado…tiende al individualismo y no es fuente de conciencia socialista.” However that’s translated, it doesn’t sound good for business. (The Party paper, by the way, is named for the yacht aboard which Castro sneaked into Cuba in 1956. The yacht was bought from an American who had christened it after a beloved relative. Castro didn’t get it. This is why the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party is called Granma.)