Slow Train to Guantanamo, page 11
I take his point; 80 pesos is about £3 (US$5). ‘Without the Libreta,’ Santiago fumes, ‘they would starve. Sometimes they do anyway.’ The Libreta is the Cuban ration card, introduced in 1962, which is intended to ensure everyone gets subsistence rations. It guarantees an almost free supply of rice, black beans, sugar and potatoes. If you have a child under seven years of age you also get milk. This is what 90 per cent of Cubans live on. Anything else is literally a luxury.
What annoys Santiago most is not communist ruthlessness, but an impractical romanticism: ‘The heroes of the revolution think jungle, savannah is more beautiful than farmland, more authentic. But you can’t eat that.’
‘Pah!’ he says pointing to the propaganda signs every few kilometres. One declares boldly: ‘The young are rich with new ideas.’ In his early forties, Santiago is young – by the standards of the octogenarians in power in Havana anybody under pensionable age is young – and he has ideas. I just don’t think the men in Havana are going to like them.
He complains that the price of fuel no longer makes such a sought-after job as driving a taxi as profitable as it was, even if things are much better than they were in the early 90s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Thanks to the ‘revolutionary friendship’ between the Castros and Hugo Chavez, the late Marxist president of oil-rich Venezuela, Cuba has had an adequate supply of fuel. Cuba trains Venezuelan doctors and dentists and gets oil in exchange. It was only later, after leaving the country, that I discovered Chavez had been in Cuba at the same time as I was, at a top government hospital in Havana receiving treatment for cancer that prolonged his life even if in the end it couldn’t save it.
Under Chavez Cuba and Venezuela have had what is widely referred to – in a phrase that has a certain irony to British ears – as a ‘special relationship’. But that does not mean that ordinary Cubans get cheap fuel: ‘Petrol is 1.30 CUC a litre and diesel 1.10,’ Santiago complains. You simply can’t buy it for ‘national’ pesos. It sounds unimaginable to our ears, but then owning a car is unimaginable to the vast majority of Cubans. Those few who have access to a vehicle as part of their job get a free fuel ration, as do farmers and factories. Selling fuel to private individuals is effectively a supertax on people like Santiago effectively running private – theoretically illegal – taxi services. It is unlikely to earn him much sympathy from the masses to whom owning a car is the equivalent of being an investment banker.
‘What about sugar?’ I ask naïvely, looking for some successful branch of the Cuban economy and vaguely aware that the price has risen on world markets of late.
‘Hah! We gave the Russians all the sugar they wanted,’ he snorts. ‘Everything was devoted to sugar. We produced millions of tonnes. Millions more than we needed. When the Soviet Union collapsed it was all we had to eat. So what did they do? They got rid of all the sugar plantations and refineries. And what did they replace them with?’ He points at the scrub landscape. ‘Nothing. Maybe a few goats.’
To make the point he swings by what was once a flourishing sugar refinery and is now – poignantly – a museum of the sugar industry. ‘Come,’ he says, ‘I will show you.’
We pull through a wide gateway and the woman in the gatehouse beams when she sees Santiago. This is clearly not the first time he has brought her a customer. I realize I am being strung along a bit here, but in a way that’s what I’ve paid for. I hand over my entrance fee (in CUC) for my guided tour of the demise of Cuba’s sugar industry.
Still unable to wipe the smile off her face, the gate lady beckons us over to what looks like an ancient industrial mangle over a water tank. She takes a thick piece of sugar cane about two foot long and feeds it between the rollers squeezing it to produce a greenish-grey juice. It takes three canes before there is enough to fill a glass and I sip it gingerly. Unsurprisingly it is sweet. Very. And a bit warm. Not really my cup of tea.
By now the guide has been summoned, a bright-eyed pale-skinned woman with green eyes, who could almost be Irish, who is thrilled to have a customer, if a little uncertain about her English. I tell her I can manage a decent bit of Spanish, but she is desperate for the practice. Monica is thirty-five years old and not only has she – understandably – never been abroad, she has never been to Havana; in fact she’s never been further than Caibarién, the coastal town at the end of the road.
She’s one of the few people to be still working at what was once the province’s major industry. The sugar mill here closed more than a decade ago, which she says also proved a kiss of death to Caibarién, which used to be a major seaport.
She shows me into a little room converted into a makeshift cinema while she pushes a button marked ‘Inglés’ and disappears outside for a smoke. For the next 10 minutes I sit through a dull little documentary on the rise and fall of the sugar industry from its slave trade origins to today’s ‘modern revitalization’, which has little in common with the rusting relics outside.
Then Monica takes me on a tour of various bits of machinery, some of which are obvious antiques brought in to display but most are just left as they were when the mill ceased functioning. It’s not so much a working museum as an industrial ghost town. Or perhaps I should say ghost train: she tells me there is normally a little steam train that runs to Remedios. Only not today. When was the last one? She’s not too sure about that either.
One day, she says as we leave, she’d like to go to England. Or the United States. She seems a little hazy about the difference. But not today. And not tomorrow either.
Remedios is only a few minutes drive away. One of the oldest little towns in Cuba, it was founded some time between 1513 and 1524. The 1524 date is the first known because that is when a captain in the army of Spanish conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar (the conqueror of Cuba and no known relation to the later painter of the same name), married the daughter of a local Taino Indian chief. Allegedly he went on to father 200 children. Presumably not all by her.
With the rain still pouring down, there is little incentive to admire its faded colonial architecture other than from the car window. But the church is another matter. In fact, there are two of them, both several hundred years old, though one is in a serious state of decay, while the other, the Iglesia Mayor (main church) has been expensively maintained. Santiago drops me at the door, and says he’ll go for a smoke while he waits.
Inside the dark church porch a man in civilian clothes pounces on me almost immediately, describing himself as the priest, even though he is in civvies, and offers me a guided tour. Free? ‘Of course, it is the house of the Lord.’ I’m sceptical, but accept.
Dominating the interior is the vast golden High Altar which strikes the eye immediately not least because this floor-to-ceiling baroque wonder is covered with gold leaf. For much of its existence the ordinary parishioners would not have known that, because for most of its history Remedios was plagued by real-life pirates of the Caribbean, who turned up to loot and pillage more times than Johnny Depp has reprised Captain Jack Sparrow. To stop said pirates slicing chunks off the altar, it spent several centuries covered in whitewash.
It was only during a 1944 restoration project, financed by a local millionaire philanthropist (in the days when Cuba had such things) primarily intended to preserve the magnificent seventeenth-century mahogany ceiling that the whitewash was chipped and the gold underneath discovered.
The priest leads me around the church pointing out the other altars and their attendant images. The Iglesia Mayor in Remedios is remarkable because there aren’t just a few of these. Including the High Altar there 13 in total. The priest is at some pains to point out that each has at least two names. These are not just saints in the orthodox Roman Catholic sense, deceased holy human beings who have influence with God. In the exotic landscape of Cuba’s unique contribution to human religions, they are demigods in their own right. Welcome to the wacky world of Santería.
It is a concept I am vaguely familiar with but this is the first time I have heard someone who appears to be a Roman Catholic clergyman discuss it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. An Afro-Caribbean-Latino fusion as exotic, diverse and individual as the music that sprang from the same ethnic roots, Santería is one of the greatest examples of laissez-faire pragmatism in religious history.
Basically the slaves imported to Cuba, mostly from the Yoruba tribe of what is now Nigeria, did not want to give up their old gods, but were forced by the Spanish to convert to Christianity. The lucky thing for them was that it was not the Christianity of the puritanical stern and serious Protestants, but the far more colourful Roman Catholic version, with its plethora of saints often worshipped by the devout in their own right. The Yoruba simply grafted their own gods onto them.
‘This is Saint Francis of Assisi. But some people prefer to call him Orula,’ he says, pointing to a gilt, tonsured figure. In the version I learned at Sunday School, Saint Francis of Assisi was a sort of humble, balding, berobed Doctor Doolittle who could talk to the animals (and favourite of the present pope). In Santería he has a few other things to deal with: for a start, Orula is fond of coconuts and black chickens, his favourite number is sixteen, he is a seeker after knowledge and the patron of all priests (known as babalawos). Is Orula/Francis who knows the future and facilitates communication with the gods. His worshippers wear necklaces of green and white beads.
‘And this,’ the priest (though I am beginning to think I should refer to him as a babalawo) says reverently pointing to a dark figure on one altar, ‘is Babalu-aye’. It is the first time he has not used the Catholic name first. And his other name? ‘Saint Lazarus.’ My knowledge of Catholic saints is scant, but I assume this is the same Lazarus as Christ raised from the dead. It seems more than probable as he explains to me Babalu-aye is seen as the ‘lord of the body’, associated with epidemics, including smallpox and AIDS. Scary.
One statuette particularly interests me. Having written a thriller based on the disputed origins of the cult of the Virgin Mary5 I am fascinated by the little black figure in a gold robe with her own glass-fronted altar and the flag of Cuba behind her. This, the priest tells me, is a representation of the Virgin Mary worshipped as the patron saint of Cuba. But also, he adds as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a practising Roman Catholic to say, as ‘Yemaya, goddess of the sea. Her symbol is the star.’
To my own surprise, I give a nod of understanding. Maybe there is something in these parallels after all. A Catholic church near where I once lived in south-east London was dedicated to ‘Maria, Stella Maris’: the star of the sea. Scholars also believe Yemaya was regarded as the divine incarnation of the river in Nigeria, and may ultimately be linked back to the Egyptian goddess Isis. I could take it even further, but that is literally another book.
The priest is now pointing out yet another Virgin Mary, on a separate altar. Despite the stereotypical snow-white complexion of so many European representations of the ‘Mother of God’, this one is easy to imagine as Yemaya. For a start, instead of sitting solemnly nursing her special baby, this Virgin is dancing. It is easy to see why: she is clearly pregnant. ‘The Immaculate Conception,’ the priest says. Quite.
The interesting thing about Santería, and the one that most Roman Catholics from other parts of the world have the greatest problem with, is that it makes no reference to one of the more relatively important figures in Christianity: Jesus Christ. I ask the priest about this, and he just shrugs and smiles. Back in the cab, Santiago tells me it’s because in African culture they see it as a bit a weakness having a god who gets killed. Just to confuse me further he says the religion has two other names – Lucumi, which sounds exactly like the Turkish word for Turkish delight – and the Regla de Ocha. Just what the differences are I have no idea. He shrugs and says, ‘names’. I tip him a CUC and walk back into the light.
And light there is indeed. The great golden orb has suddenly emerged from behind the swathes of dark clouds. All of a sudden one of the oldest religions of all and appears particularly attractive: sun worship. I may have been sweating and seeking shade on the streets of Havana but I feel like I have spent the last twenty-four hours living under Niagara Falls. And as it turns out there is within close striking distance one of those things most foreign visitors to Cuba come for: a beach.
In fact we are close to some of the finest beaches in the whole of Cuba, the Cayas Santa Maria, a chain of little islands not unlike the Florida Keys (which were originally called cayas), linked by a 48-kilometre long causeway stretching out into the Caribbean and already well on the way to being a second Varadero, if not worse. They are almost totally off-limits to native Cubans. There is a checkpoint at the beginning of the causeway which requires a passport and an entrance free, payable of course only in CUCs.
But Santiago knows what he claims is a nice little beach just outside Caibarién. Within minutes I am stripped to my shorts clutching a cold beer and dabbling my feet in water that actually is the pale pastel blue colour of the tourist brochures. The beach is only 100 metres or so long, with a small hotel for Cubans at one end, with a rickety little shack serving food. Santiago proposes fetching something – we are both hungry by now – and I agree but with little expectation that it will be edible. My mistake. I am about to have the best meal I will have in Cuba.
The best, because it’s the simplest. Over on some rocks at the end of the beach a couple of lads are fishing. Whenever they catch something they bring it over to the shack and a couple of grinning, broad-shouldered lads gut it, whack it the barbecue, sprinkle it liberally with sea salt and black pepper, and serve it up, fresh as could be, straight from the sea, even if you do have to eat it with a tiny reusable wooden fork off a piece of cardboard ripped from a case of beer. Who needs posh cutlery when you’ve got fish this good.
I have no idea what it sort of fish it is – it vaguely resembles a sea bass, but I suspect it is some local variety I wouldn’t know if I was told it. The Cubans don’t seem to know either. ‘Pescado,’ the cook says with a shrug: fish. That’s good enough for me. It’s one of the best fish dishes I’ve eaten anywhere. Ever. And definitely the cheapest. The lads weighed it first and Santiago offers to pay. I let him, knowing he’ll charge me for it later, but it hardly breaks even a Cuban’s piggy bank: 9.60 pesos nacionales, about £0.40 ($0.60). Santiago orders two. I think he’s going to take one back to his wife. But he eats both. There and then. Since the ‘Special Period’ Cubans have a carpe diem attitude towards food: if it’s there, eat it.
By the time we roll back into Santa Clara in late afternoon, however, the black clouds have rolled back too. I settle my account with Santiago who has one last pitch to throw at me: do I want some cigars?
This is a hustle that is omnipresent on the streets of Cuba, particularly in Havana, where street vendors will sidle by going, ‘Psst Meester, you want seegar,’ much in the same way blokes in Brixton with dreadlocks will try to sell you hashish. There is almost inevitably a catch: Cubans cannot afford Cuban cigars. The majority of the population smokes – got a light is one of the most popular pick-up lines, which makes no fumo, I don’t smoke, almost as good a deterrent as answering in Russian – but they do smoke cigarettes. Not bad cigarettes, mind you, in fact probably far better than most of the ‘fine Virginia’ sold in the United States and Europe, but far less acceptable to the dwindling number of ‘first world’ smokers, because they are a lot stronger and unfiltered. In other words they taste like the real thing.
I don’t smoke as a rule, and never have done, except for the odd joint at university – my enjoyment of which was much diminished by the presence of tobacco – and when I was sent by the Sunday Times to report on the drug trade in Amsterdam and had the immense perverse pleasure of submitting an expense claim for a quarter ounce of cannabis and three ready-rolled joints to Rupert Murdoch (paid without demur). But I have been known to enjoy a fine cigar. And they don’t come any finer than Cuban.
Sadly the myth that they are rolled on the thighs of dusky maidens is untrue. I visited the Partagas cigar factory in Havana on my previous visit, and the business is done mostly by middle-aged men – the girls put on the little paper-rings or do the packaging – a sign, even in supposedly egalitarian but really traditionally macho Cuba, that this is serious: ‘man’s work’.
There is a skill in taking the various grades of tobacco – the main grade used for flavour, the thinner shreds which help keep it burning, and the top quality whole leaf outer wrappers – and blending them into a quality cigar. Most westerners can’t easily afford the top quality ones either. A top notch Cohiba, Fidel’s favourite back in the days when he was seldom seen without one, named after a Taino Indian chief, costs around £17 (US$25). Each.
So I have a few doubts when Santiago says he can get me a box of 25 Cohibas for 35 CUC. There is obviously a risk that they are not quite the real McCoy – the cigars sold by street vendors in Havana tend to be knocked up from sweepings from a cigar floor factory, with one half-decent leaf wrapped around them to look good. But it is also an open secret that anybody who is anybody in Cuba has a friend in a cigar factory who can ‘acquire’ the real thing, or near equivalent, as a knockdown price. And Santiago seems to me to be that sort of bloke. In any case, I am not going to smoke more than a few myself, and friends back in England will be delighted, so I agree. He promises to deliver them to my casa later that evening.
Right now I have another matter on my mind: keeping dry. The thunderclouds have opened and torrents of water are pouring off badly-tiled roofs, or down the furrows of the corrugated iron, the cobbled streets of the old town centre are awash. Santiago has left me at the corner of a street known simply as Boulevard. This is Santa Clara’s equivalent of Bond Street, the pavements made of polished granite with a smart-looking bar called the Europa on one corner and a well-kept national peso shop on the other.
