Cuba: Day 4 - Part 2

Bay of Cienfuegos

Benny Moré School of Art music students

If you know anything about Cuban music, you probably have heard of Benny Moré.  He’s from this area, the pride and joy of Cienfuegos, right down to the life-size bronze statue of him on the main street.  Unlike other musicians, he chose to remain in Cuba after the Revolution but died of alcohol abuse at only 44.
       We’re awaited at the Benny Moré School of Art, which provides training for all the arts:  painting, sculpture, music, dance.  We’re greeted by Eduardo, the head of the music school, and ushered into a large room with horrible acoustics and a large metal sculpture of a student-sculpted baby doll by the piano.  A group of students in school uniform performs for us, one after the other, all excellent.  In spite of their young age (most were 14), they already have many years in at the school.  When they graduate, they’re considered professional musicians and can perform and be hired as such.  Of the 250 students, 38 are in the visual arts, 45 in dance and the rest in music.  Talents scouts are sent out to scour all the schools.  What the music students are judged on I don’t know because Eduardo says they prefer children with no prior training in order to decide which instrument is best for them.  Schooling is totally free.
       The dance troupe is touring so we don’t get to enjoy them.  As for the art side of the School, we’re treated to an exhibition of the students’ works, as well as those of their professors.  In fact, they’re available to purchase.  One of the professors even makes an appointment to bring his works to the hotel for one of our bunch.  There’s a whole lot of talent in this school.

Many school walls are covered with artwork by professors and students alike

Back at the hotel, Chris gives us a slide show about Cuban society and culture.  Then, before dinner, I poke around the grounds a bit.  There’s a pocket garden by the sea and I happen upon a man picking dried leaves out of the bushes.  We exchange holas of greeting, followed by the eternal question De donde estas? (Where are you from?). We strike up a conversation of sorts and I tell him my father loved gardening.  All these clipped bushes are his work. He is the hotel’s gardener.  He asks me to follow him and stands me in front of a tree, facing me in a very specific direction.  “Look!” he says.  “What do you see?”  Frankly not much except a strangely clipped tree.  Then he points at a star near the top of the tree.  “Look closely.”  My eyes suddenly make sense of it all.  It’s the head of Che Guevara! Beret, bushy hair (pun intended), eyes, nose, mouth... it’s all there.  And I compliment him.  He looks from the tree to me and back, proud of his handiwork.

       Then it’s time for dinner on the patio of Los Laureles:  a méchoui, a lamb roasted on a spit over an open fire.  There is music - obviously.  A whole ensemble.  And as I can never stand still with that kind of rhythm, I start semi-dancing in place.  Suddenly one of the percussionists comes up and grabs my hand and then we’re out in a clear space, dancing all those steps my ex from Martinique taught me. “You dance just like a Cuban,” he says in Spanish, surprise in his voice and a smile on his face.  Applause from my fellow travellers and a nod from the orchestra at the end.  That was a lot of fun for me, not for the applause but because I love to dance.

      After dinner we set off again, this time to meet with one of those neighborhood committees whose purpose used to be to keep a political eye on people.  Now it’s more of a get-together-and-help-each-other thing.  None of us has the slightest idea of what to expect; maybe they don’t either.  The bus pulls up in the semi-dark and we see lots of people in the street, tables with dominos and game boards set up, food laid out.  A little girl - maybe six years old - stands stiffly to greet us by reciting a poem by Marti.  I crouch down to be at her level.  Her eyes in mine, she finishes her poem and escapes into the crowd. After a stiff welcome speech from a lady who looks like she has her Good Outfit on, we’re invited to visit some of the houses.  One lady walks me through her home, which is small, but not overly.  Proudly she shows me the rooms, polished spick and span, her songbirds, her kitchen.  Baseball is on television, a night game just like in the States, and the man in her family is watching it, in spite of our intrusion.  I manage to communicate in my halting Spanish and she replies in words I can mostly understand.
       Then it’s back out into the street.  One of our group is playing Parcheesi with three locals, and when she wins, everyone cheers. Others are playing dominos, with or without help from the Cuban kibitzers behind them.  There’s music from a boom box and cake is passed around. Everyone is having a good time.  It’s hard to believe the embargo exists, with all the hardships it’s caused.  “That’s the governments.  You and I, we’re just people.” says Ismaël, the bus driver, as we dance.
       The bus returns us to Hotel Jagua, tired but smiling, having verified that people are indeed just people.  It’s been an unforgettable night, an unexpected high point.

Video of Cienfuegos, including a section in the middle on the Benny Moré School of Art:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KMERrWDtSQ

Cuba: Day 4 - Part 1

José Marti's birthday parade for Cuba's youth

A hero of Castro's 1956-59 Revolution?

Up and packed and ready to travel.  While we wait for everyone to gather, I step outside.  And discover thousands of little children, all in costumes, milling about.  Last night our photographer guide Chris recruited people to experience the March of the Torches.  Every year at midnight on Jose Marti’s birthday, university students carrying torches march down from the University to the heart of Havana. This morning’s children are too young for a midnight march so they’re celebrating the same event in the sunlight, minus the torches but with banners.  Eager parents, teachers and elderly chaperones - many with medals on their chests - channel the hundreds of children massing outside the hotel.  Don’t know where they’re headed.  We’re headed to Cienfuegos.

More children coming for the parade

Exiting the A1

As soon as we’re outside of Havana, traffic on this four-lane divided highway - the A1 - becomes sparse at best.
       En route, Alicia (our Cuban guide/interpreter) speaks to us at length of her life.  It’s an inside look at what Cuba has gone through in our lifetime - hers and mine.  I was still in high school during the Cuban Missile Crisis and remember well the tension of that moment in history.  It’s interesting to hear what those years were like from her vantage point.
       Alicia speaks of her mother, a teacher sent to the hinterland to teach the campesinos to read and write.  (To prove their - and her! - success, they were required to write a letter to Fidel.)  And how proud of her Alicia is!  She goes on to describe how state salaries are low, how her father - a medical doctor - earned $20 a month back then.  She relates the relatively easy times of the 80's, when the Soviets bought themselves this forward base only 90 miles from Key West and times were good for Cubans.  Then Gorbachev saw an opening to improve relations with the U.S., but it meant ditching Cuba.  So wham bam thank you ma’am.  Practically overnight, the Soviets left and the good times ended.  No more free oil, no more sales of Cuban sugar far above its market price.  The Special Period had begun.  Electricity, gas, water, food... everything was rationed and even then service was spotty.  That lasted for over a decade.  It wasn’t until Venezuela started providing free oil in return for Cuban doctors that life became easier.

       Then Alicia mentions something that reminds me of the Whites Only lunch counters of the Deep South in the 1960's.  For years, Cubans weren’t allowed in hotels; those were only for foreigners.  But now they can frequent any hotel they want.  And now they can travel.  Perhaps not to the U.S. yet, unless they have a second nationality as well as Cuban.  Alicia says that to travel is her dream.  She tells us quietly how the U.S. Interests Section (acting as a U.S. Embassy) recently refused her a visa because she doesn’t have enough family to ensure she’ll return.  She has a six-year-old child here.  A mother and father.  Listening to this, I’m embarrassed about my country.  “Some day,” she says, wistfully.
       The most moving moment for me, one that has me in tears, is when she says, “When I go to work, I don’t worry someone will come to my son’s school and shoot him.”  It’s a trade-off for the privations of life here.  And it puts a painful finger on something I worry about myself, having two grandchildren of my own.

After about three hours, we make a pit stop somewhere in Matanzas Province.  As on American highways, the rest stop has a restaurant where Chris indulges his Ice Cream Jones and others use the restrooms.  There’s also a separate gift shop with all kinds of T-shirts, postcards and craftsy things at ridiculously low prices, where I buy a few things for presents next Christmas.
       Behind the rest stop is farmland, and some of us, the more curious ones, go to take a peek.  A thin, quiet man in a striped polo shirt offers us bananas that are incredibly sweet.  We give him some CUC (convertible peso) coins, peanuts to us but worth 24 times that in Cuban pesos, the currency he uses every day.  I suddenly realize the bananas came from the trees above us and ask if they’re his.  He smiles and nods.  Happy that I can speak Spanish (kind of), he shows me his field:  tomatoes, sugar cane, beans...  He’s so proud.  And hands me another banana, this time waving away my money.
       Time to get back on the bus.

Yacht Club de Cienfuegos

A short distance later, we leave the A1 and take a winding road into Cienfuegos.  It’s lunchtime and we’re booked into the Yacht Club (shades of Grosse Pointe).  A look into what life must have been like pre-Castro, provided you were one of The Chosen.  It’s located on the hotel peninsula, has a swimming pool and a marina filled with sailboats, even an old two-master, plus a few of what my father called stink-boats (powerboats).  There’s live music with lunch - a reasonable two guitars.  After eating, I’m lured outside by the blue of the Caribbean.  I ask about the two-master and learn it can be hired.  I’d love to do that!
       The Jagua just down the road is a typical beach-front hotel:  tiled floors, terraces with huge windows, a swimming pool, a large bar with a piano.  Unlike the Parque Central in Havana, it was probably built during the Soviet years, but is very modern and attractive. We drop off our luggage in our sunny rooms and head out for our people-to-people of the day.

                                                                                     (to be continued)

Marina of Cinefuegos Yacht Club