Stepping back in time on a trip to Cuba

December 1, 2006
WITNESS - Stepping back in time on a trip to Cuba
By Jeff Franks

HAVANA (Reuters) - As a child of the Cold War, I grew up in the United
States on a steady diet of rhetoric portraying Cuba as the communist
menace just 90 miles off our shores.

Only once did the threat seem real - when the Russians put nuclear
missiles on the island in 1962, prompting a showdown now known as the
Cuban missile crisis.

I was 10 at the time and not worried about much of anything until one
night my grandmother called to urge my father to bring us from our home
in Houston to hers in Austin, Texas, out of harm's way.

Why she thought Russian missiles would come raining down on the Texas
coast instead of Florida I don't know, but her fear got my attention.

I thought of that moment recently on my first trip to Cuba when I stood
on a gun placement on the Havana waterfront, hurriedly constructed
during the crisis to fend off a "yanqui" invasion.

Just as Cuba had been our nearby menace, we had been theirs.

"This thing was pointed right at Texas. I think you owe me an apology,"
I joked with my elderly guide who had begun our walk by declaring
herself a "Fidelista," a follower of Fidel Castro.

"I lived underground in a bunker for two months. You're the one who
should apologize," she replied.

The Cold War came to a close, but friction between the two governments
goes on 44 years after the end of the missile crisis, fed by the
conflicting dreams of an aging generation on both sides of the Florida
Straits.

In the United States, you've got to go to Miami or the White House to
find much evidence of the lingering animosity, but in Cuba the fight
persists, fed by the government-controlled airwaves and in the streets
where anti-American signs are commonplace.

"3:10 TO YUMA"

The propaganda is more interesting than threatening, with a dated
quality like so much of Cuban life.

Whether by design or, as Castro says, because of the long-standing U.S.
trade embargo, or both, Cuba has the sense of a place where time stopped
in 1959 when Fidel and his rebels triumphantly marched into the capital.

The 1950s American cars that rumble through the streets are well-known,
of course, and now a big tourist attraction. "I feel like I'm in the
movie 'Grease,'" one fellow Yank told me.

Fittingly, perhaps, the term Cubans use for the United States - "La
Yuma" - is said to come from the title of a 1957 movie, "3:10 to Yuma",
a western starring Glenn Ford and Van Heflin that was popular on the
island.

And the most modern building in the Havana business district is what was
once known as the Havana Hilton.

A few months after it opened in 1958, Castro and his bearded band
marched in from the hills and took up residence, giving the hotel its
current name - the Havana Libre.

On its walls are photos of gun-toting revolutionaries lounging around
the lobby like they owned the place. Eventually, it turned out they did.

WHERE'S THE UNDERWEAR?

There is, too, an absence of commercialism, reminiscent of an age before
global marketing. No Golden Arches, no Nike Swooshes, no Sony
jumbotrons, no Marlboro men riding the range with a cigarette dangling
from their mouths.

Foreigners living in Cuba complain about poor services, limited food
choices and a lack of consumer goods.

Having arrived in Havana without underwear (don't ask why) I can vouch
for the latter. After three days of searching, I bought the only thing I
could find: a couple of pair of, shall we say, much briefer briefs than
I'm accustomed to.

The difficulties notwithstanding, expatriates say Cuba is a great place
to raise children because of the absence of many of the corrupting
influences of modern life, such as drugs, and a lack of serious crime.

Cubans appreciate these same things but most yearn for more - more
money, more abundance, more modernity.

Whether they will get it anytime soon is the question of the moment.
Castro has been one of the world's most devout keepers of the communist
flame and does not care for capitalist-style consumerism.

Age and illness have caught up with him, but only time, such as it is in
Cuba, will tell whether his vision for society will go with him when his
moment comes.

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