Stories from inside Cuba
The following stories are told by three people met in Cuba in April 2018, during the change of president and the end of the Castro period. Though their names and some identifying details have been changed to protect their identities, the stories are their own.
Jose, Havana
“I remember the day I went with my father to buy this car. I was 11,” Jose said, inserting the key into the ignition and turning the engine over. We had just slid into the big, wide, comfortable seats void of seat belts and full of history. He slipped gloves onto his hands in 30-degree heat and smiled a broad smile, his eyes twinkling.
“It was in 1959, just before the triumph of the revolution. Just before everything was nationalised and we were not allowed to buy cars anymore,” he caressed the dashboard as the car let out a gentle hum.
“It’s a 1959 Opel, yes, an Opel. My father passed it down to me when he died. It was our car, and now it’s my car. I’ve kept it running all these years. It hasn’t been easy finding parts for it — it’ll be 60 years old next year. When you find parts, you buy all you can and hold onto them. You just don’t know when you’ll need the parts or if you’ll be able to find them again,” he explained. “Have you ridden around a lot yet in these cars? Have you noticed the black smoke?”
“Yes, we took a taxi from the airport and noticed the smoke pouring out of the cars. Why is that?” I asked, watching the road, the palms and the sea gliding by on my right.
“Well, in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Cuba started to go through a hard time. Life got tough here. We couldn’t get a lot of things, and one of them was gasoline. It was too hard to find, and when we did find it, it was too expensive. Really expensive. So we replaced the gas engines with diesel engines when we could find them. That’s why you see the black smoke.”
“Let’s go take a look at Miramar,” he turned the car right. “Here you’ll find a number of embassies and nice homes. When some people left after the revolution, their homes became the property of the state. A lot of the houses here became embassies. Look around. Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Houses are assigned by the government here. The government gives you a home, and you stay in it. You can’t buy a new house — well you can, but only if you have a lot of money, and here, well people don’t earn enough to buy a house. So you stay in your house, even if it is crumbling. You can’t leave it until the government agency comes to give you permission to leave. When it crumbles, you are sent to a shelter where you must wait 10–15 years to be assigned to a new home.”
Silence drifted in on the wind, and none of us spoke.
“Jose, what did you do before you became a guide?” curious, I couldn’t wait any longer to learn more about his past.
“I worked for the government. I was an English teacher.”
“Really? What grade level?”
“Middle school, high school, and then I taught English in a medical school,” he answered, “Fidel believed English should be taught in schools and especially in medical schools. Medical technical language is in English. When students go abroad to extend their learning, the courses are in English. In fact, English is one of the primary courses for medical students in Cuba. They spend more hours on English than many other subjects. In theory, any English-speaking patient can be treated by a doctor in Cuba. Did you know that? Did you also know that we have more doctors here than in any other country?”
“I’d read something like that, yes. Incredible.”
“Yes, with Fidel and the triumph of the revolution, many things got better: racism, discrimination. We have free education and free healthcare. But if you left, you lost everything. Now you can leave with 5000 CUCs, no more.”
“Yes, I’d read that, too. We also have free public education and healthcare in France. Tell me, Jose, what made you leave teaching?”
“Well, like I said, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, life grew very difficult in Cuba. Government workers earn between 25 and 30 CUCs, or Cuban pesos, a month — or the equivalent, because we have another currency, the convertible peso. So 25–30 CUCs is about 25–30 dollars. The economy wasn’t doing too well. The Soviet Union was no longer sending help, they weren’t buying our sugar at top prices. We couldn’t buy gas. Food was more expensive and hard to find, and our 25–30 CUCs didn’t go very far with inflated prices. The Cuban population lost one-third of its body weight…” he paused.
“So I had this car, and I thought maybe I could work as a guide on the side. To be able to drive my clients around, I’d need a taxi license. That’s how it is in Cuba. If you want to drive people around, you have to have a legal taxi license.”
He reached down under the dash and pulled out a TAXI sign which he placed in view. “I forgot to put this out. Here we go. So, I got my taxi license and did some research. I taught myself so that I could be a good guide for my clients. I had a few clients and was able to earn more. Then eventually, I had to stop teaching. I just wasn’t making enough. I decided to go full time working as a guide in 1998.”
Our four-hour tour today of three people was bringing him 60 CUCs or two months’ government pay.
“My father was Chinese. We lived in east Habana near the beach. I remember seeing the US planes flying low over our garden during the Missile Crisis. It was a very scary time. We didn’t know if the Americans were going to kill us. Both sides had missiles pointed at each other. If one had fired, the world would not be what it is today.”
We were leaving the area where replicas of the missiles were on display.
“My husband wants to know why you are wearing a glove, Jose. Is it to protect your hand from the sun or to help you signal better or … ?”
“Oh, yes,” he said as he pulled off his glove when we had parked. He held out his hand to show us a skin graft that covered the majority of the back of his left hand. “All those years in the sun, all those years without sun protection, before we knew we needed protection. Well, I got skin cancer. See? This is a graft. They took the skin from under my arm here. I look like a shark attacked me!” he laughed.
“So I’m not allowed to have it in the sun anymore. It’s hot here, as you see, and the glove is uncomfortable, but it’s what I have to do.”
Alexis, Vinales
“I am your friend for the next 3 hours. Whatever you need, I will give it to you. If you need water, we will get some. If you need to stop to rest, we will stop to rest. I am your friend in Cuba, today,” Alexis looked each of us in the eyes, and then turned to lead the way through the lush fields, cradled in the mountains on all sides.
This was the first of two 3-hour guided tours with Alexis. We were his only clients for those visits and could spend hour upon hour walking with him, listening both to the silence and to his thoughts.
“I used to be a newspaper journalist. Now I am in radio; I prefer it. When I used to write my articles, my editor checked everything. He’d strike this line then that one, then that one, then that one. At the end, there was nothing left,” he shook his head, “That’s not reporting.”
“In radio, I am freer. Not free, but freer. I know some journalists who are critical of the government, but that’s dangerous. The candidate for president (there’s only one, and only one party) is hand-picked. There will be no change for Cuba. Not from the government. The change will have to come from the people. We will suffer at first. But then it will be better.” Alexis lowered his head and then fixed his gaze in the distance. “Cuba has to change.”
I asked him about the bloggers who were criticising the government, the ones we were warned not to read while in the country. The ones we could read if we changed our IP address.
“That is so dangerous. I told my friend in the Czech Republic to be careful. Sometimes he sends me the posts, but it’s dangerous.”
We were walking the next day at sunrise, returning from a trek in the dark of night. The roosters had stopped crowing an hour ago, as soon as the sun kissed the mountaintops. Their work seemed done before any of ours had begun.
“I told my friend just a little while ago. He lives in the Czech Republic. He has to stop waiting. He has to live his life. We’ve been waiting for 18 months. But he can’t wait anymore. He must to live his life. He must to love.”
“Life is short. You must be happy when you can, live for the good moments. As few and as short as they can sometimes be in Cuba, you have to live them. With family. You have to live them as much as you can,” Alexis gazed ahead at the mountains, speaking more to them than to himself or to me.
Alexis went on, “I am very close to my family. I am Cuban. I cannot leave them. My life is here. My life, my life would be nothing without them.”
We walked in silence for a very long time.
“Do you think things will change in Cuba, Alexis?”
“Not now. But they have to and so maybe one day, they will. Maybe in a few years. Not now. I think maybe in about 3 years. The Internet is changing things. And visitors are changing things. People are beginning to realise things aren’t the same in other countries. Things are different in other places. Our government tells us that things are terrible in America, and maybe they are. But maybe they aren’t.”
“Some things are terrible in America, Alexis,” I confirmed. “We have a problem with guns — with people killing each other, with children killing people by accident and on purpose. In Europe we have terrorism. Guns and terrorism — those are not problems you have here. Or drug wars.”
“No, we don’t have those problems.”
“But there are other things you need here.”
“Yes, here, we cannot make a lot of money. We can’t own cars unless we’re rich, or buy houses, unless we’re rich. It is impossible to travel; it is too expensive. With such low salaries and increasing prices, we cannot travel. Many Cubans have never seen other parts of Cuba outside their own towns. We just can’t. I’ve been waiting 18 months to see my friend in the Czech Republic.”
“We cannot vote for our president. We cannot say what we think.”
He continued, “Do you know, when I was in journalism school, my professor asked us where we were from. I was so happy to be able to talk about this beautiful area I am from, this paradise. I am so lucky to come from here. I said I came from ‘Jurassic Park’. The professor got very angry. ‘Do you not support the revolution, your commander, your leader?’ he asked, angrily, accusingly. ‘Yes, I do.’ ‘Then never ever refer to Cuba in American terms. Not ever!’”
“In 2 to 3 years, I don’t know,” Alexis continued, “We may see a revolution. It is bubbling slowly. It is opening with the Internet and with more and more people coming to Cuba. We’ll see. Cuba has to change, but I don’t know when it will.”
Luis, Trinidad
Horse whisperer, AirBnB owner, photographer, guide, self-made entrepreneur, Luis is a man of many talents. When President Obama visited Cuba in 2016, Luis was one of the lucky entrepreneurs invited to meet him.
“Ah, yes. That was a moment. I was one among many, and, did you know, he brought American entrepreneurs with him, from big companies like Airbnb and others? Wow. We were all gathered in the same room, and we exchanged experiences. He is very clever, Mr Obama. He got us all talking together. I think he knew. He knew that if we could stimulate the entrepreneurial class, change would come to Cuba.”
Luis looked long and deeply into my 12-year-old son’s eyes, “If you want to understand Cuba, you need to understand that your country [France] is about economy and having a functioning economy; Cuba, on the other hand, is about maintaining a political party.”
“I am Cuban,” he adds resolutely, “I may not agree with some things here, but I am not a traitor.”
Though he had known measured success in Cuba, with articles written and TV shows made about him, Luis explained that every day was a choice in Cuba. Every day was a day you woke up, and you figured out how to do something. It didn’t work any other way. I wondered then, as I do now, if that was what created such resilience and ingenuity in the Cubans I met.
“How are you managing, Luis? Would people say you are one of the ones who has succeeded?”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. Renting 4 rooms is not enough to support my growing family,” he gestures to the large paintings of his grown daughters on the wall, and to the back, where I know his daughter and her family live with him. “There is the electricity, heaters (for hot showers), taxes, paying employees to cook and clean. I have a project to open a restaurant, but 10 months ago the government said no more new businesses.[1] So I have a location, and I’m remodelling it, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to open it.”
“Let me tell you something. You probably noticed a lot of Cubans at the airport when you arrived. They had a lot of merchandise with them, right? Once a year, Cubans can import 150 kgs or $1000 worth in value. We pay a tax of course, but you probably saw people bringing in TVs when you arrived, right? That’s how I got the air conditioner in your room — the one that doesn’t make noise. We do what we have to do, to attract tourists, make our livings. What’s easy for you isn’t always easy for us.”
“Have you ever considered leaving Cuba, Luis?”
“I have Cuban family in the United States — from a couple of very rich family members to mostly normal people, who have little. Some are doing very well, of course. And others, not so much. It’s the same everywhere. You have people who are willing to work and make a living. And you have others who don’t want to work or don’t know how to.”
“My grandfather was a doctor. He did well. After the revolution, we lost 2 houses and a farm. We just recently took my mother back to the farm for the first time since she was little. She cried. It was in ruins,” Luis took his time, letting that settle.
“With the revolution, as you know, everything was nationalised — became part of the government. Property and businesses were redistributed — in an effort to make everything ‘fair’. But everywhere, in every culture, you have people who work and those who don’t. We also had the problem of people just not having the skills. You take a farm away from one family and give it to a non-farming family. They don’t take care of it. They don’t know how to take care of it. Crops die. Animals die. The farm falls to ruins.”
Silence comes rushing in like fire.
“It’s too late for me now. I am getting older. I have health concerns. My parents are older. I cannot leave them. No, not now.”
To the unasked question hanging in the air, Luis shakes his head.
“I don’t know if Cuba will change now. We missed our chance with Obama. Things were relaxing, getting better. But now we’re going backwards. Business is getting hard again. We may have missed our chance.”
[1] This was in April, 2018. According to this article, the ban will be lifted at the end of 2018. But Luis will potentially face other problems, as under the new regulations, entrepreneurs are only allowed to run one business.
