American Riviera” Constructing the Promise of the Cuban Revolution in the Capital’S Golf Courses
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Fairways, Greens, and Green Space in the “American Riviera” Constructing the Promise of the Cuban Revolution in the Capital’s Golf Courses By Nicholas Stewart, Yale University the Rovers Athletic Club, with its exclusively-British mem- bership.4 Tese greens sculpted thousands of acres of Havana and its suburbs into a realm of manicured Bermuda grass and raked white sand, where tropical fantasies of tourists became the backdrop for holes-in-one. Tey also afrmed the growing U.S.-American mandate in Cuba, which the explosive growth of tourism had incited in the early-twentieth century. From farmland to fairways to parkland, these golf courses underwent yet another transformation upon the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Fidel Castro’s regime immedi- ately nationalized them as a testament to Cuba’s egalitarian future under socialism.5 And yet, authorities neither razed the Biltmore nor let nature reclaim the Almendares; instead, they converted Havana’s golf courses into a web of parks, govern- In 2011, Cuba publicized its plans to partner with ment ofcials’ homes, and the Escuelas Nacionales de Arte. Te foreign developers and construct a series of eighteen-hole golf Revolution therefore had the efect of intentionally preserv- courses. Tese courses were to mark “a fundamental develop- ing these landscapes while making them widely accessible ment in having a more eclectic tourist sector,” as one British to a Cuban audience. It had the efect, too, of ending the fnancier of the undertaking noted—and they would include widespread practice of golf on the island for over ffty years, spas, shopping malls, villas, and apartments at a total cost of until the completion of those under-construction courses, an- $1.5 billion.1 Another developer explained that “Cuba saw nounced in 2011. the normal sun and salsa beach oferings and knew it was With these successive spatial reconfgurations in mind, not going to be sustainable.”2 On its front page that May, the Havana’s golf courses appear as palimpsests where the politi- New York Times summarized: “[Te] Cuban government has cal and socioeconomic forces that shaped Cuba between giv[en] preliminary approval in recent weeks for four large turn-of-the-twentieth-century independence from Spain and luxury golf resorts on the island, the frst in an expected wave the rise of socialism are manifest in the built environment. of more than a dozen.”3 To this end, the latter reconfguration of the golf courses—as But these greens were not, in fact, Cuba’s frst-ever fair- preserved, nationalized landscapes where the U.S.-American ways. Golf arrived on the island in 1911—exactly one hun- fantasy of Havana took root—reveals the initial promise of dred years earlier—with the repurposing of a derelict farm on Castro’s socialism: that everyone (and not only the wealthy the capital’s periphery as the elite Country Club of Havana. and foreign) could indulge in a paradisiacal, leisurely vision Soon, the course boasted a thousand-name membership roster of the island. By extension, then, the Revolution proves not a and a years-long waitlist. Over the decades that followed, radical rejection of Cuba’s past, but instead a response to this a suite of local alternatives satisfed this demand: the Bilt- history that claimed the United States’ fantasy of the capital more Yacht & Country Club, built on “an incomparable site for Cubans themselves. overlooking the Gulf of Mexico,” according to one visitor; the Almendares Country Club, attached to a fve-star resort; and 1 Archibold, Randal, “Revolutionary Cuba Now Lays Sand Traps 4 Woon, Basil, “Te Golfer Discovers Cuba,” Golf Illustrated for the Bourgeoisie,” New York Times (May 24, 2011), A1. (December 1928), 25-56. 2 Ibid. 5 Nahmias, Alysa and Murray, Benjamin, “Unfnished Spaces” 3 Ibid. (New York: PBS), 2013, 0:4:45. 111 A “Matchless Southern Climate”: the United States, Cuba, travel.11 Writing in 1928 for the New York Times, one jour- and Tourism’s Rise nalist synopsized: “A new Cuba is being built as the result of its discovery by the American tourist. He has in increasing Years before Bermuda grass and putting greens reached numbers found that Cuba is only two days from New York, Havana, Cuba broke with its past, pivoting away from its and that it ofers as many attractions in the winter as any Spanish colonial heritage and towards a new trajectory of other spot outside of Southern France. An American Riviera is U.S.-American touristic intervention. In great part, this break growing in the island republic.”12 Cuba thus came to ofer to was predicated on the very foundation of an independent U.S.-Americans the promise of a new world only hours away Cuba, typifed by its new constitution, written in 1901. only hours from the North American mainland. Te adoption of a new constitution was quite explicitly Cruise companies, airlines, and guidebooks sold these a directive of the United States in the wake of its victory in hundreds of thousands of tourists the hyperbolic fantasy of the Spanish-American War. Soon after this victory, the New this “American Riviera.” One Pan American Airways brochure York Times stated: “Te convention that is to assemble in the from 1934 claimed that Cuba “conjure[d]” the names of city of Havana... ‘to frame and adopt’ a Constitution for the “Cap’n Kidd and Bluebeard,” and that it was a place “whose people of Cuba is called and appointed to meet, not by the name[...] we have lived since childhood yet only dreamed of people of Cuba... but by an order issued by the War Depart- ever seeing.”13 Similarly, a junket for the Ward Line touted “an ment of the United States.”6 In particular, the United States entrancing trip of fascinating interest to a gay and scintillating consolidated its hegemony through the Platt Amendment foreign capital. All the bubbling zest of Latin life and laugh- to the Cuban Constitution, which held that “all acts of the ter in a matchless Southern climate.”14 Here, the Ward Line United States in Cuba... are ratifed and validated.”7 U.S. presented Havana as a “matchless” experience to be had— Americans thereby laid the groundwork to “leave the Cubans rendered unique by virtue of its “gay and scintillating” built in vassalage to the United States,” as the Times continued, in environment in conjunction with the “bubbling zest” of Latin the construction of the state itself.8 America. Tese characterizations also imagined Cuba’s capital Te reframing of Cuba in relation to the United States with regard to leisure: Havana was “a winsome and sunlit land manifested in the explosive growth of tourism during the frst of singular and abiding charm where travel is cheap, easy and half of the twentieth century. Tis growth both attested to safe; ...and where the expected pleasures await the traveler,” as Cuba’s “vassalage to the United States” and also reifed it. In one 1926 travel guide claimed.15 Te city accordingly existed 1914, 33,000 tourists visited Cuba. One year later, in 1915, to many of its visitors exclusively in terms of touristic value.16 there were 44,000. In 1920, 56,000 tourists fooded the Tis fantasy became a reality as Havana’s developers island; and in 1930, that number had increased to 100,000.9 made good on the assurances of Pan American and the Ward And although the administration of President Franklin Line. Downtown, old homes made way for casinos, theaters, Roosevelt abrogated the Platt Amendment in 1934 to pursue and luxury resorts, which rapidly rose along the Malecón and instead its Good Neighbor Policy, the groundwork for tour- Paseo del Prado. Of this phenomenon, architectural historian ism’s exponential growth already lay in place: in the years im- James Lynch notes that the city was “inundated by a food of mediately before the Cuban Revolution, over 350,000 tourists luxury hotels, gambling casinos, and brothels,” thus making arrived annually.10 it “the Caribbean terminus of a Las Vegas-Miami-Havana Tese visitors travelled between Key West and Havana by way of ferries, ocean liners cruising the Eastern Seaboard, and—beginning in 1921 with Aeromarine Airways’ daily 11 Ibid. fights from Florida to Cuba—planes. By the end of the 12 Owen, Russell, “Cuba Rebuilds Itself for Winter Tourists,” New decade, fights between Havana’s Camp Columbia Aviation York Times (February 26, 1928). Field and New York or Chicago had made the once-distant 13 Pan American Airways Brochure, “Te Air-Way to Havana, markets of the United States accessible within one day of Nassau, West Indies, Mexico, Central and South America,” 1934, Folder 12, Box 1, Aviation Ephemera Collection, WSU; from Van Vleck, Jenifer, No Distant Places: Aviation and the Global American Century (Ann Arbor: ProQuest Publishing, 6 “Te Constitution of Cuba,” New York Times (August 6, 1900). 2010), 83. 7 “Accept Platt Amendment,” New York Times (May 28, 1901). 14 Ward Line Advertisement, “Havana: “Te Loveliest Land Tat 8 “Te Constitution of Cuba.” Human Eyes Have Every Seen,” http://cruiselinehistory.com/ 9 Pérez Jr., Louis, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, wp-content/uploads/2008/06/wardline.jpg. and Culture (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2008), 167. 15 Terry, Tomas Philip, Terry’s Guide to Cuba: A Handbook for 10 Pérez Jr., 167. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy sought to Travelers (New York: Houghton Mifin, 1926), iii move the United States away from interventionism in Latin 16 Schwartz, Rosalie, Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in America. Cuba (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1999), 7. 112 axis.”17 As Lynch observes, this axis proved transnational—a “Any One with..