Looking for the real Cuba

Looking for the real Cuba
Forbidden island » When ban ends, nation's soul won't change.
By Matthew D. LaPlante
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 04/30/2009 11:47:19 AM MDT

Havana » It's 3 a.m. and a tropical storm is reportedly on the way. The
police have been through this section of town several times trying to
move people on, to no avail.

The air is thick and sour with the sea. Music from car stereos and
handheld radios mingles with the tenors of teenage troubadours.

The Malecón rumbas on.

Even in a place that is theoretically immune to the influence of
American tourist dollars, Yankee travelers looking for authenticity in
Cuba might find Havana a tough sell. But moments like these, on the
seaside boulevard that snakes around Havana's north shore, are as
faith-sustaining as they are captivating. And for patient travelers,
they always will be.

»»»

I received a flurry of phone calls the week after President Barack Obama
announced easing travel limits for Cuban Americans. Friends who knew I'd
visited Cuba in 2008 wanted to know how soon I thought the prohibition
would be lifted entirely.

But they weren't interested in booking a trip after the ban ended --
they wanted to go before. They wanted to see Havana before it all changed.

It's true, I responded, plenty will be different once the decades-old
ban on American travel in Cuba ends. And end it will -- sooner than
later, I believe. It's hard to find anyone on either side of the 90-mile
stretch of water separating Miami and Havana who remembers what the
sanction was supposed to accomplish in the first place. The rule is so
regularly and brazenly violated that it might as well not exist at all.

But at least for now, the ban imposed on the majority of Yankee yumas
helps ensure this quasi-forbidden island remains less tainted by
American cultural and economic influences.

When the floodgates open, Havana will be a very different place.

»»»

When the ban does break, do not be shocked by how fast
Havana's streets are filled with old American cars -- and references to
the July 26 Movement, which swept Fidel Castro and his rebel
revolutionaries into power, 50 years ago. (Matthew L. LaPlante/The Salt
Lake Tribune)
Cubans cowboy up to American demands for newer hotels and preposterous
meals and cultural cabarets. If you want Ricky Ricardo, he will be
there. Habaneros, in particular, have mastered the art of catering to
tourist needs. From increasingly lavish private apartments ( casas
particulares ) to "spontaneous" parades in Havana Viejo designed to draw
out American cameras -- and wallets -- to the jineteras who stalk hotel
lobbies and downtown bars awaiting American and European sex tourists,
godless communism has not infringed upon godless capitalism.

Already it is easy to get lost in what Cuba sells as opposed to what
Cuba is.

And alas, moments like the one I experienced in the hours before
Tropical Storm Fay's
Tourists ride in classic cars along Havana's Malecon. (AP Photo/Javier
Galeano)
ultimately underwhelming landfall -- moments that cost nothing and yet
give everything -- may be even harder to find once the ban ends.

But they will not go away -- for you cannot put a price on the pulse of
a nation. You cannot package it or sell it. You cannot hang it on a wall
in a gift shop or mark it on a map or put it in a show or visit it on a
tour. If you are looking for Cuba in those places, you will not find it.

But if you simply listen and watch and breathe and be, it will be there.
On the sticky sidewalks along the Malecón, when the night is late enough
and the ocean is angry enough, it will be there. In the crumbling
barrios of Havana Centro, where neighbors pack into living rooms the
size of American bathrooms to make musical meditations on batás , claves
and cajones , it will be there. In the ramshackle farm homes of the
midisland provinces, sipping guarapo sugar water while huddled around a
black-and-white television to watch a baseball game, it will be there.

»»»

In many respects, Cuba can be hard to find in Havana, where hustling is
a full-time job for thousands of Habaneros. So if, in the midst of
spending all those Cuban chavitos , the colorful convertible currency
used mainly by foreigners, you find that you simply cannot listen and
watch and breathe and be, there are only two things to do. Either go
home, or go east.

I recommend the latter.

In el oriente , you will find few discos, few hotels, few places to buy
trinkets bearing Che Guevara's likeness, few bars named after Ernest
Hemingway.

Few Americans made their way east back when Cuba was Uncle Sam's
debaucherous playground, and I suspect that will hold true when the ban
ends, as well.

See the thick jungles of the Sierra Maestra, where Fidel Castro and his
band of guerrillas nurtured their revolution. Visit Santiago de Cuba,
Havana's quieter colonial sibling. See the other Guantánamo, an
industrial city that lies in the shadow of the infamous American naval
base and where nothing ever starts on time yet no one seems to mind.

Ask around in Guantánamo and you may be led to one of the many Cuban
workers who continued to "commute" to the American naval base for
decades after Castro's revolution in an exchange that provided a
too-small window of opportunity for two nations -- both of which profess
to believe in the goodness of mankind -- to see one another as neighbors.

»»»

For obvious reasons, I won't dispense any advice on whether to make
plans for a visit to Cuba before the travel prohibition is lifted.

To be sure, those who visit the island today are privy to a cultural
experience and authenticity that may be less accessible in the future.

But Cuba will not disappear with the stroke of a pen. No island so
vibrant could be desiccated of all those moments that slake a traveler's
soul.

It will be there.

Always was. Through slavery, oppression, exploitation and revolution
after revolution after revolution.

It will be there.

Sí, you may have to work a bit harder at it.

Ah, but that is Cuba, too.

Matthew D. LaPlante is national-security reporter for The Salt Lake
Tribune. He traveled to Cuba in the fall of 2008 to report on life 50
years after the Cuban Revolution. He also writes letters of advice, hope
and anxiety to his toddler daughter on his blog, www.dearspike.com.
Contact him at mlaplante@sltrib.com.

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_12256523