Ultimately, how Americans experience Cuba and what inferences they draw very much depends on what and who brings them to Cuba.
For example, on the chartered plane ride from Tampa I sat next to a white Presbyterian woman whose church group from Georgia was going to spend a week or so painting and making repairs to a sister church in the Cuban countryside. Their delegation was going to room in a seminary, not some fancy hotel.
At the airport on the way back to the U.S., we ran into a group of middle-aged African Americans from the Washington, D.C. area who had spent 10 days exploring Cuban art and religion, notably Santeria, which is steeped in the Yoruba tradition with a Roman Catholic overlay, no doubt tracing back to enslaved Africans who figured out how hold on to their traditional religious beliefs even as missionaries were hell-bent on “Christianizing” them.
And Cuba is different for Cubans, too, as politics and political realities change.
Though still under severe economic stress due to many factors, notably the U.S. embargo, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main benefactor, and, no doubt, missteps by their own government, the Cubans we encountered seemed more relaxed than when I visited in 2000 and 2003.
There’ve been some salary increases for government workers, and as is true of poor people the world over, Cubans have perfected their hustles. Some openly beg on the streets and hotel maids write flowery notes with the not-so-subtle intent of reminding you, ever so gently, to please leave a tip for service because your check-out day is their day off. Vendors hawk food, cheap souvenirs, paintings, jewelry, shoes or purses from inside tiny shops, on side streets or out of numbered stalls in a huge open-air market adjacent to Havana’s waterfront. Some wear costumes, much like in New York City’s Times Square, and expect you to tip them to take photographs of or with them. Musicians play live for tourists and no sooner does the music stop than they pass out CDs for sale. Meanwhile, there are more privately owned and operated family-style restaurants known as paladars.
And no surprise, though it’s against the law, there’s prostitution in Cuba. It doesn’t take a genius to know what the beautiful, slim, young Cuban women wearing heavy makeup, mini-skirts and 5-inch heels are up to when they’re saunter into hotel lobby bars.
Meanwhile, in Old Havana, artisans, veterans and trainees, are slowly restoring once-grand buildings and public spaces, much of it underwritten by European corportions and hoteliers looking to establish a presence in Havana. And whimsical, large art works, including Cuban artist Aries Del Rio’s artificial beach, have been erected along Havana’s legendary Malecon, the miles-long seawall that faces onto Havana Harbor and attracts everyone from fishermen to teenagers to young couples in love to joggers.
According to Granma, the state’s official newspaper, Cuba hosted more than 1.3 million visitors during the first three months of 2015, 140,000 more than the same period in 2014.
With its healthy, curious, well-educated young population and many in the U.S, business
community chomping at the bit to do business there, Cubans seems poised to welcome the additional commerce. While it will be a big boost economically for Cuba to resume trade with the U.S., it would be naïve to think the Cuban people have no say in the outcome of negotiations.
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