Slipping through the outskirts of a provincial Cuban city on a tour bus, the country, on first impression, can seem austere, poor, and devoid of color. But what you see in this perennially contradictory archipelago isn't always what you get. Cuba requires patience, clandestine sleuthing, and plenty of scratching beneath the surface. Decipher the local way of life – warts and all – and you will quickly uncover its irrepressible musical energy, a non-stop dance that carries on in spite of everything.
Take a dose of WWII rationing, and a pinch of Soviet-era austerity, add in the family values of South America, the educational virtues of the US, and the loquaciousness of the Irish. Mix with the tropical pace of Jamaica and innate musicality of pastoral Africa before dispersing liberally around the sultry streets of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey and Pinar del Río.
Life in Cuba is an open and interactive brew. Spend time in a local home and you'll quickly start to piece together an archetype. There's the pot of coffee brewing on the stove, and the rusty Chinese bike leaning languidly against the wall of the front room, the faded photo of José Martí above the TV, and the statue of the venerated Virgin of El Cobre lurking in the shadows. Aside from the house-owner and their mother, brother, sister and niece, every Cuban home has a seemingly endless queue of 'visitors' traipsing through. A shirtless neighbor who's come over to borrow a wrench, the local busybody from the CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution), a priest popping by for a glass of rum sin hielo (no ice); plus the cousin, the second cousin, the long-lost friend, the third cousin twice removed… you get the picture. Then there are the sounds: a cock crowing, a saxophonist practicing his scales, dogs barking, car engines exploding, a salsa beat far off, and those all-too-familiar shouts from the street. Dime, hermano! Que pasa, mi amor? Ah, mi vida – no es fácil!
Yes. No es fácil – it ain't easy. Life in Cuba is anything but easy but, defying all logic, it's perennially colorful and rarely dull.
With a literacy rate of 99.8% and a long-standing love of books, it is not surprising that Cuba is producing a growing number of eloquent bloggers, despite the difficulties in gaining internet access. Here are a few of the higher profile sites representing views right across the political spectrum.
Generación Y (Yoani Sánchez; www.desdecuba.com/generaciony) Sánchez is Cuba’s most famous blogger (and dissident) and her gritty blog 'Generación Y' has been testing the mettle of Cuba's censorship police since April 2007. An unapologetic critic of the Cuban government she has attracted a huge international audience (US President Barack Obama once replied to one of her posts) and won numerous awards, including the Ortega & Gasset prize for digital journalism.
Havana Times (www.havanatimes.org) A website and ‘blog cooperative’ started by American writer, Circles Robinson, in 2008 that positions itself as anti-Castro and anti-embargo.
Along the Malecon (Tracy Eaton; www.alongthemalecon.blogspot.com) Former bureau chief for the Dallas Morning News in Havana (2000–05), Eaton is still a regular in-depth reporter in Cuba.
Café Fuerte (www.cafefuerte.com; Spanish only) Blog spot set up by four Cuban writers and journalists with international experience in 2010. It reports independently on Cuban-related news matters both inside and outside Cuba.
Yasmin Portales (http://yasminsilvia.blogspot.ca; Spanish only) Yasmin, who describes herself as a Marxist-feminist, is a strong voice in the Rainbow Project, an initiative for LGBT rights.
Babalú Blog (www.babalublog.com) Based in Miami and unyieldingly pro-US embargo, this blog is edited by Alberto de la Cruz. Carlos Eire, professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University and author of the celebrated memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana, is a contributor.
La Joven Cuba (www.jovencuba.com; Spanish only) Blog set up and maintained by three professors from Matanzas University who style themselves as followers of Antonio Guíteras, a socialist Cuban politician from the 1930s.
Survivors by nature and necessity, Cubans have long displayed an almost inexhaustible ability to bend the rules and 'work things out' when it matters. The two most overused verbs in the national phrasebook are conseguir (to get, manage) and resolver (to resolve, work out), and Cubans are experts at doing both. Their intuitive ability to bend the rules and make something out of nothing is borne out of economic necessity. In a small nation bucking modern sociopolitical realities, where monthly salaries top out at around the equivalent of US$25, survival can often mean getting innovative as a means of supplementing personal income. Cruise the crumbling streets of Centro Habana and you'll see people conseguir-ing and resolver-ing wherever you go. There's the off-duty doctor using his car as a taxi, or the street cartoonist scribbling sketches of unsuspecting tourists in the hope of earning a tip. Other schemes may be ill-gotten or garnered through trickery, such as the compañero (comrade) who pockets the odd blemished cigar from the day job to sell to unsuspecting Canadians. Old Cuba hands know one of the most popular ways to make extra cash is working with (or over) tourists.
In Cuba, hard currency (ie convertible pesos) rules, primarily because it is the only way of procuring the modest luxuries that make living in this austere socialist republic more comfortable. Paradoxically, the post-1993 double economy has reinvigorated the class system the Revolution worked so hard to neutralize, and it's no longer rare to see Cubans with access to convertibles touting designer clothing while others hassle tourists for bars of soap. This stark re-emergence of 'haves' and 'have-nots' is among the most irksome issues facing Cuba today.
Other social traits that have emerged since the Revolution are more altruistic and less divisive. In Cuba sharing is second nature and helping out your compañero with a lift, a square meal or a few convertibles when they're in trouble is considered a national duty. Check the way that strangers interact in queues or at transport intersections and log how in Cuban houses neighbors share everything from tools, to food, to babysitting time without a second thought.
Cubans are informal. The tú form of Spanish address is much more common than the formal usted, and people greet each other with a variety of friendly addresses. Don't be surprised if a complete stranger calls you mi amor (my love) or mi vida (my life), and expect casa particular owners to regularly open the front door shirtless (men), or with their hair in rollers (women). To confuse matters further, Cuban Spanish is rich in colloquialisms, irony, sarcasm and swear words.
From the sombrero-clad guajiros in the tobacco fields of Pinar del Río to the high-end smoking rooms and cigar-pushing hustlers of Havana, cigars are deeply embedded in Cuban culture. Here are some local favorites:
Cohiba The cigar championed by Fidel Castro. Made with Cuba's finest Pinar del Río province tobacco; production allegedly comes from a coveted 10 fields from the princedom of the nation's plantations, the Vuelta Abajo region around San Juan y Martínez.
Vegas Robaina Hard to come by outside Cuba, the brand is named after tobacco-growing legend Alejandro Robaina, famous for the outstanding quality of the tobacco used, which heralds from the Alejandro Robaina Tobacco Plantation outside Pinar del Río.
Partagás One of the best-loved cuban cigars since before the Revolution, known now for its annual ediciones limitada (limited editions).
Puro Cubano An unbranded cigar that Cubans prefer because of its vastly cheaper price, but nevertheless is rolled with some of Pinar del Río province's best leaves.
While Cuban homes sport the basics (fridges, cookers, microwaves), they still lack the expensive trappings of 21st-century consumerism. Car ownership is approximately 38 per 1000, compared to 800 per 1000 in the US; few households sport tumble dryers (spot the flailing lines of drying clothes); and that impressive breakfast laid out by your casa particular owner at 8am probably took three hours of searching and queuing to procure (Cuban supermarkets have nothing like the variety and abundance of goods as their counterparts in the US or Europe). Not that this dents home pride; gathered ornaments and mementos, however old and kitschy, are displayed with love and kept ruthlessly clean. Nonetheless, to most outsiders, the local lifestyle seems old-fashioned and austere. What makes Cuba different from somewhere like Mexico City or Philadelphia though, is the government's heavy subsidies of every facet of life, meaning there are few mortgages, no health-care bills, no college fees and fewer taxes. Expensive nights out cost next to nothing in Cuba where tickets for the theater, the cinema, the ballpark or a music concert are state-subsidized and considered a right of the people.
Fueled by cautious reform, the Cuban way of life has been changing slowly and subtly since Raúl Castro took the reins from his sick brother Fidel in 2008. Though the progress may seem sluggish to insiders, a returning exile who has spent the last six years in Miami or Madrid would have some illuminating epiphanies.
Barely anyone had a cell phone in Cuba in the mid-2000s; today, the devices are almost as ubiquitous as they are in the rest of the world, although lack of decent wi-fi coverage still makes internet connections nigh-on impossible. Other electronic goods legalized in 2008 have also found their way into Cuban households where, these days, it is not unusual to see a DVD-player and a modern flat-screen TV beneath a yellowing picture of José Martí. The ability of Cubans to travel abroad since January 2013 has enabled the lucky few who can afford it to shop overseas. Consequently, some of the more successful casas particulares are now equipped with shiny new consumer goods brought back from other countries such as sandwich-makers and coffee machines.
Cuba’s improved culinary scene is one of the most visible changes for people who remember the hungry 1990s. Notwithstanding, the dilemma of any new private restaurant owner is how to pitch their pricing – at foreigners or Cubans, or a mix of both? Top restaurants in Havana are still generally the preserve of tourists and diplomats, while private restaurants in the smaller provincial towns are patronized primarily by locals and are thus more reasonably priced, often charging in moneda nacional.
Until 2008, Cubans were inexplicably barred from staying in tourist hotels. High prices still keep out many but, these days, some of the more economical resorts (eg Playa Santa Lucía) welcome plenty of Cuban guests during the long hot summer holiday.
A quick drive around the Cuban countryside will induce further surprises. While it’s hardly LA yet, there are noticeably more cars on the road than there were in the early 2000s. That said, the new law permitting Cubans to buy and sell their own vehicles is little more than a political gesture. Precious few people can afford Toyotas and Audis, meaning 'yank tanks' and Ladas remain the cars of necessity. Agriculture has also registered significant improvements. Pre-2008, Cuba’s notoriously emaciated and unproductive cows wandered around pathetically in twos or threes. Now whole fields full of plump healthy-looking livestock populate the farms of Las Tunas and Camagüey provinces.
Markets and shops, though still far from lavish, have fewer empty shelves these days and there has been a surge in shops selling large household items such as fridges and washing machines. In urban centers, private business resonates everywhere, from street-side barbers to sophisticated tour guides with their own business cards and websites. You’ll even see professional street-signs advertising casas particulares or restaurants – something that was unheard of (and prohibited) until recently.
Inevitably these changes, while almost universally welcomed, have accentuated income divisions in a country long accustomed to socialism. People with ready access to convertibles – primarily those working in the tourist sector – have prospered; indeed, some casas particulares in Havana (who were limited to renting just two rooms until 2011) have morphed into mini-hotels in all but name. Meanwhile, the lives of people in the more isolated parts of rural Cuba have changed little. In small towns in the Oriente, the foibles that have haunted Cuba since the Special Period – shortages of bottled water, crumbling public buildings and awful roads – continue to bite.
Considered a right of the masses, professional sport was abolished by the government after the Revolution. Performance-wise it was the best thing the new administration could have done. Since 1959 Cuba's Olympic medal haul has rocketed into the stratosphere. The crowning moment came in 1992 when Cuba – a country of 11 million people languishing low on the world's rich list – brought home 14 gold medals and ended fifth on the overall medals table. It's a testament to Cuba's high sporting standards that their 11th-place finish in Athens in 2004 was considered something of a national failure.
Characteristically, the sporting obsession starts at the top. Fidel Castro was once renowned for his baseball-hitting prowess, but what is lesser known was his personal commitment to the establishment of a widely accessible national sporting curriculum at all levels. In 1961 the National Institute of Sport, Physical Education and Recreation (INDER) founded a system of sport for the masses that eradicated discrimination and integrated children from a young age. By offering paid leisure time to workers and dropping entrance fees to major sports events, the organization caused participation in popular sports to multiply tenfold by the 1970s and the knock-on effect to performance was tangible.
Cuban pelota (baseball) is legendary and the country is riveted during the October–March regular season, turning rabid for the play-offs in April. You'll see passions running high in the main square of provincial capitals, where fans debate minute details of the game with lots of finger-wagging in what is known as a peña deportiva (fan club) or esquina caliente (hot corner).
Cuba is also a giant in amateur boxing, as indicated by champions Teófilo Stevenson, who brought home Olympic gold in 1972, 1976 and 1980, and Félix Savón, another triple medal winner, most recently in 2000. Every sizeable town has an arena called sala polivalente, where big boxing events take place, while training and smaller matches happen at gyms, many of which train Olympic athletes.
A convergence of three different races and numerous nationalities, Cuba is a multicultural society that, despite difficult challenges, has been relatively successful in forging racial equality.
The annihilation of the indigenous Taíno by the Spanish and the brutality of the slave system left a bloody mark in the early years of colonization, but the situation had improved significantly by the second half of the 20th century. The Revolution guaranteed racial freedom by law, though black Cubans are still far more likely to be stopped by the police for questioning, and over 90% of Cuban exiles in the US are of white descent. Black people are also under-represented in politics; of the victorious rebel army officers that took control of the government in 1959 only a handful (Juan Almeida being the most obvious example) were black or mixed race.
According to the most recent census, Cuba's racial breakdown is 24% mulato (mixed race), 65% white, 10% black and 1% Chinese. Aside from the obvious Spanish legacy, many of the so-called 'white' population are the descendants of French immigrants who arrived on the island in various waves during the early part of the 19th century. Indeed, the cities of Guantánamo, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba were all either pioneered or heavily influenced by French émigrés, and much of Cuba's coffee and sugar industries owe their development to French entrepreneurship.
The black population is also an eclectic mix. Numerous Haitians and Jamaicans came to Cuba to work in the sugar fields in the 1920s and they brought many of their customs and traditions with them. Their descendants can be found in Guantánamo and Santiago in the Oriente or places such as Venezuela in Ciego de Ávila province, where Haitian voodoo rituals are still practiced.
Religion is among the most misunderstood and complex aspects of Cuban culture. Before the Revolution, 85% of Cubans were nominal Roman Catholics, though only 10% attended church regularly. Protestants made up most of the remaining church-going public, though a smattering of Jews and Muslims have always practiced in Cuba and still do. When the Revolution triumphed, 140 Catholic priests were expelled for reactionary political activities and another 400 left voluntarily, while the majority of Protestants, who represented society's poorer sector, had less to lose and stayed.
When the government declared itself Marxist-Leninist and therefore atheist, life for creyentes (literally 'believers') took on new difficulties. Though church services were never banned and freedom of religion never revoked, Christians were sent to Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (UMAPs; Military Production Aid Units), where it was hoped hard labor might reform their religious ways; homosexuals and vagrants were also sent to the fields to work. This was a short-lived experiment, however. More trying for believers were the hard-line Soviet days of the '70s and '80s, when they were prohibited from joining the Communist Party and few, if any, believers held political posts. Certain university careers, notably in the humanities, were off-limits as well.
Things have changed dramatically since then, particularly in 1992 when the constitution was revised, removing all references to the Cuban state as Marxist-Leninist and recapturing the laical nature of the government. This led to an aperture in civil and political spheres of society for religious adherents, and to other reforms (eg believers are now eligible for party membership). Since Cuban Catholicism gained the papal seal of approval with Pope John Paul II's visit in 1998, church attendance has surged and was rewarded further with the arrival of his successor Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. It's worth noting that church services have a strong youth presence. There are currently 400,000 Catholics regularly attending Mass and 300,000 Protestants from 54 denominations. Other denominations such as the Seventh Day Adventists and Pentecostals are rapidly growing in popularity.
Of all Cuba's cultural mysteries (and there are many), Santería is the most complex, cloaking an inherent 'African-ness' and leading you down an unmapped road that is at once foggy and fascinating.
A syncretistic religion that hides African roots beneath a symbolic Catholic veneer, Santería is a product of the slave era, but remains deeply embedded in contemporary Cuban culture where it has had a major impact on the evolution of the country's music, dance and rituals. Today, over three million Cubans identify as believers, including numerous writers, artists and politicians.
Santería's misrepresentations start with its name; the word is a historical misnomer first coined by Spanish colonizers to describe the 'saint worship' practiced by 19th-century African slaves. A more accurate moniker is Regla de Ocha (way of the orishas), or Lucumí, named for the original adherents who hailed from the Yoruba ethno-linguistic group in southwestern Nigeria, a prime looting ground for brutal slave traders.
Fully initiated adherents of Santería (called santeros) believe in one God known as Oludomare, the creator of the universe and the source of Ashe (all life forces on earth). Rather than interact with the world directly, Oludomare communicates through a pantheon of orishas, various imperfect deities similar to Catholic saints or Greek gods, who are blessed with different natural (water, weather, metals) and human (love, intellect, virility) qualities. Orishas have their own feast days, demand their own food offerings, and are given numbers and colors to represent their personalities.
Unlike Christianity or Islam, Santería has no equivalent to the Bible or Koran. Instead, religious rites are transmitted orally and, over time, have evolved to fit the realities of modern Cuba. Another departure from popular world religions is the abiding focus on 'life on earth' as opposed to the afterlife, although Santería adherents believe strongly in the powers of dead ancestors, known as egun, whose spirits are invoked during initiation ceremonies.
Santería's syncretism with Catholicism occurred surreptitiously during the colonial era when African animist traditions were banned. In order to hide their faith from the Spanish authorities, African slaves secretly twinned their orishas with Catholic saints. Thus, Changó the male orisha of thunder and lightning was hidden somewhat bizarrely behind the feminine form of Santa Bárbara, while Elegguá, the orisha of travel and roads became St Anthony de Padua. In this way an erstwhile slave praying before a statue of Santa Bárbara was clandestinely offering his/her respects to Changó, while Afro-Cubans ostensibly celebrating the feast day of Our Lady of Regla (September 7) were, in reality, honoring Yemayá. This syncretization, though no longer strictly necessary, is still followed today.