A dusty view of Cuba's future from a barrio backstreet
HAVANA LETTER: It's 50 years on: Fidel is a frail shadow amid exuberance
and new friendship with China, writes John Moran
IN MUCH the same way as nature abhors a vacuum and Dracula a cross, so
habaneros abhor a silence. Or so it seems from this apartment above
Teatro America on the corner of Galiano and Neptuno in central Havana.
Before the revolution, Galiano was perhaps Havana's premier shopping
street. But that was 50 years ago. Now the paint peels on the street's
crumbling plaster facades and most brickwork could do with a little
pointing, to put it mildly.
The central Havana district begins at Chinatown and ends at the Malecon
seafront. It lies between Old Havana, with all its ancient squares,
museums and the main tourist street of Obisbo to one side, and Vedado's
quieter residential neighbourhoods and its epicentre of life on Calle
23, with all its music and jazz bars, honky tonks and nearby old
Mafia-run hotels.
While Galiano could do with a decent makeover, much of any ugliness here
is, as in other parts of Havana, only skin-deep. Inside the building -
which reminds me of the eclectic interior of the Chelsea Hotel in
Manhattan - the airy apartments are well-maintained and furnished in the
splendid Spanish colonial manner.
My landlady, a retired Ukrainian-born doctor, has spent the last 30
years in Cuba. She lives here with her daughter, a ceramics artist who
works at her kiln out back. She tells me the Russian poet Yevgeny
Yevtushenko, the poet of her youth, is in town.
Beneath the tall shuttered windows, outside on Galiano, motorbikes,
classic cars and other motorised beasts clatter, chug, bellow and whine,
while the irrepressibly boisterous folk of this teeming barrio argue,
laugh and loudly chatter their way towards Chinatown or the Malecon. And
all the while Cuban music blares.
On days when you waken to the sound of the soprano upstairs practising
her art, all seems fine and dandy. And yet some locals say be careful at
night to stay on the main drags. Since central Havana is no longer one
of the main drags, for tourists anyway, gentle souls are advised not to
be abroad at night in its backstreets.
But how could one resist the temptation of the romantic invitation from
the neon lights of Café Américain, a late-night bar just across the
street where salsa is danced nightly - especially after a long night
enjoying Los Van Van and others at the 50th anniversary concert that
took place outside the US Special Interests Section way up the Malecon.
One temptation I could resist again is the aptly-named Three Monkeys bar
up a side street behind the Lincoln Hotel, which is just down the road.
Here a sultry temptress found it hard to take "no" for an answer and the
old guy at the bar whose good counsel I sought told me the area could be
dangerous at night.
It must be said that the only danger this hombre encountered was from
the young lady with the long nails in the Monkeys. She was lying in wait
when I emerged but was easily dismissed after being fixed with a stern
visage and a firm no gracias.
Galiano, however, is immeasurably safer now than it was before the
"Triumph of the Revolution", when the Mafia-friendly dictator Fulgencio
Batista was running the show and you might bump into his vicious police
chief, Capt Ventura, at night.
At midnight on the Malecon seafront on New Year's Eve, the historic
canons of Eo Moro castle began booming out over the city. When they
stopped, a spectacular fireworks display exploded into the night sky -
and ushered in a year that will have significant implications for the
Cuban people and others.
The main event of political significance took place in Cuba's second
city of Santiago de Cuba, where Raul Castro addressed a huge crowd in
Parque Cespedes, under a balcony to which 50 years ago, on January 1st,
Fidel Castro came down from the Sierra Maestro mountains to announce the
success of the revolution.
The ailing Fidel has not been seen since appearing in newspaper
photographs with visiting dignitaries some weeks ago. Perhaps
significantly, given his deteriorating health, among his most recent
callers have been Russia's president Dmitry Medvedev and China's
president Hu Jintao.
Looking further than central Havana, there are three important factors
that will make the year ahead a most intriguing one: first is the US
presidency of Barack Obama; the second, the growing influence of China,
Cuba's new best friend; and, as important as any, the emerging unity
among Latin-American and Caribbean countries.
Considerations such as these will be on the mind of the European Union
and no doubt Ireland's Minister for Foreign Affairs and his team during
his forthcoming official visit next month.
Meanwhile, back in the barrio of central Havana, all these weighty
considerations are put into perspective by my retired Ukrainian
landlady. "Whatever happens, every morning when I wake up the sun is
shining through my window. That's what matters most to me now," she
says, smilingly serenely.
And, for me, it is comforting to know in these turbulent times that the
son of another central Havana family I have stayed with many times over
the past decade has grown into one of the young soldiers firing the
historic canon that resounds over Havana every night at 9pm.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/world/2009/0105/1230936655561.html
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