12/10/12 Montage – Laguna Beach Fall 2012 : Dreams And Delusions

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Dreams And Delusions Robin Hemley Now more accessible than ever in recent history, —a dynamic land of contradictions— calls to visitors to explore its beauty, myths and music.

At José Martí Anti-Imperialist Plaza, thousands of mostly young dance and mill about while onstage a Cuban singer croons, behind him a dozen women line dancing. Between sets, large screens display imperialist music videos from my country, the enemy, the U.S. The world is full of contradictions of course, and that’s one of the pleasures of travel: In observing and noting contradictions, the traveler glimpses past the touristic façade of a place and starts to notice what’s authentic.

Myths and Contradictions

I’m at this New Year’s concert, as are my students, for three reasons. First, I love Cuban music. Second, I can’t resist a party at a venue called “Anti-Imperialist Plaza,” and most importantly, the U.S. government has allowed us to fly Sky King Air from to now that restrictions have relaxed for visitors on educational trips. There’s probably no country that captures the imagination of American travelers more than Cuba. This is partly because of our iconic associations with it: old cars, cigars, song and dance, and daiquiris, and partly (maybe even largely) because for so long, it’s been off limits to us.

Havana does a brisk trade in myths and contradictions, some of them positive, some harmless, some not so. At La bar, Home of the Overpriced Daiquiri (or “Cradle of the Daiquiri” as the bar proclaims), a statue of seems on the verge of ordering another round, while a real-life Cuban band plays to dozens of tourists who, if on a Hemingway pilgrimage, might stop next at La Boguedita. “My in La Bodeguita, my daiquiri in La Floridita,” Hemingway supposedly scrawled on a piece of paper, an inviting sentiment, but one concocted from whole cloth and forged by the owner of La Bodeguita and some friends (initially as a joke, according to Tom Miller in his book “Trading with the Enemy”) after Hemingway’s death to draw tourists.

But what’s a holiday without a little fantasy on both sides of the equation? After Raul and finally go, says conventional wisdom, Americans will buy up all the cars, and a Starbucks will occupy every corner. Perhaps that’s so. The cars are charming to us, but most Cubans would trade in their junkers for a late model Toyota if they could. And they’d welcome Starbucks and 7-11s, too. I, for one, don’t want to get carried away with my desire for an authentic Cuban experience, which might entail living on an average Cuban’s monthly rations: 5 pounds rice, 3 pounds white sugar, 2 pounds brown sugar, a few ounces of cooking oil, two chicken legs with a thigh (or fish), a few ounces of black beans and a ½ pound of soy mixed with beef.

Background Music

“Cubans are like dolphins,” a Cuban friend tells me. “They can be up to their neck in water and they still smile.” As a visitor, it’s hard to tell the truth of that—it’s a good line and it seems true, by and large. Grumpy Cubans can be found, but struggling people often possess finely honed senses of dark humor. When I ask the same friend if there’s a homeless problem in Havana, she smiles and says, “We’re all homeless.” In a country where the state owns all property, she’s absolutely correct.

Maybe the exception to that statement is Che Guevara, who, while long dead, is at home in Havana on billboards, in song and story, in T-shirt glory, and on the three peso bill in the moneda nacional (currency), a favorite with tourists, but nearly worthless compared to the special tourist currency the government forces visitors to use. He’s another contradiction, this Argentine hero of the Cuban revolution, killed in Bolivia trying to foment communist revolution. His likeness is like gold, sold throughout the world, a capitalistic symbol of revolutionary cool. But I like his song, the one that roaming bands of musicians play at the drop of a Cuban convertible peso: “Commandante Che Guevara,” a mournful ballad with a beat. Says one Cuban who has befriended our group: “I hate it. I hear it all the time.”

The only song that comes close to producing such a reaction in our group is “Guantanamera,” ubiquitous in Havana now but once an obscure song from the Cuban countryside. The song was popularized in America and repatriated to Cuba, where it’s like a musical pandemic, spread from one Cuban musician’s mouth to the next. After two weeks in Havana, it’s so unpopular among my students that they turn it into a forbidden verb. “No Guantanamering,” they chide each other, and our tour bus becomes a Guantanamera-free zone.

The Third Religion

In the Philippines, when it rains on a sunny day, they say God is giving a fiesta in heaven. But in Cuba, they say the daughter of the devil is getting married, the embrace, as usual, of contradictory feelings. In religious expression, seemingly opposed concepts freely mingle: the Catholicism the Spanish brought with them to Cuba mixing with the beliefs of slaves from Africa to form Santeria. At La Church, a short ferry ride across Havana Bay, Santerias call to you outside to have your fortune told while inside devotees light candles near a black Mary holding a white baby Jesus while pipedin music fills the church, not hymns or yoruba drums, but Eric Carmen singing ’70s easy listening: “All by Myself.”

The third religion here, after Catholicism and Santeria, is Hemingway. Not only can you drink the drink he never drank at the bar he never visited under the endorsement he never wrote, but you can visit his preserved hotel room in Havana Vieja or make a pilgrimage to Finca Vigia (his hilltop retreat), and file past the Pilar (his yacht), ogle the mounted heads of animals on the wall of his home, climb the steps of trendmag2.trendoffset.com/display_article.php?id=1160311 1/2 12/10/12 Montage – Laguna Beach Fall 2012 : Dreams And Delusions Vigia (his hilltop retreat), and file past the Pilar (his yacht), ogle the mounted heads of animals on the wall of his home, climb the steps of the writing tower his wife built for him (that he never used), catch an insight into his fragile psyche as you note the marks on the walls he made later in life as he obsessively recorded his weight. No doubt, Hemingway is fetishized here, much like that other iconic foreigner, Che, whose image has been granted full citizenship in the Cuba of the popular imagination.

John Lennon, too. At Lennon Park, a cigarchomping 90-something custodian has the job of guarding the eyeglasses of the statue of John Lennon (the glasses have been filched on several occasions over the years). The statue lounges on a bench, and if you sit beside it —as it’s almost impossible to resist—he seems to be looking at you with some befuddlement, as if about to ask what both of you are doing in Havana. Well he might wonder! Over the years, Fidel—and thus all of the Cuban power base—has morphed from a major hater to considering himself a fellow “dreamer” at the statue’s unveiling in 2000.

Dreamland

I suppose in that case we’re all dreamers. At least tourists like me are, who are more likely to see the smiling face above the water rather than the struggling body below.

But it’s an undeniably happy face. You can see it if you take in a baseball game when, after the Havana Universales score, dancing and drumming erupts in the stands, or in a rumba line at a club in Havana Vieja which features the ever-dwindling veterans of the Buena Vista Social Club, or on the smiling faces of the acrobatic dancers at the over-thetop extravaganza of feathers and flash at the .

But as one Cuban told me, “Living in Cuba today is like living in your grandfather’s apartment. If you move the furniture around, he wants you to put it back the way you found it.”

Who can begrudge the Cuban people their capitalist dreams, even if their dreams and ours cancel one another out? Simply keep your eyes open in Havana on any given night and watch your dreams parade by. Stand on the terrace of the Hotel Presidente as I did one night, a breeze coming off the sea, and gaze at the half-dark streets where a group plays dominoes on the battered sidewalks. The ’60s cars rattle by and teens in the park below cuddle near the former statue of Tomás Estrada Palma, the first president of the “Neo- Republic,” whose bronze likeness was stolen some years back, except for his shoes, which remain stubbornly fastened to the statue’s large pedestal. Stroll along the famous seawall, the Malecón, where the people of Havana saunter or sit and gossip or play music, and the local touts, called Jineteros, will offer you what they imagine you want. But turn away instead and look over the skyscraper-less cityscape, nearly absent of neon, except for a few reminders: the Melia Cohiba and the former Mafia haunt, the Riviera. How can you avoid being transported? How can you avoid thinking something as mindless and simple as, “I’m in Havana, I’m in Havana?”

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