Rum Socialism: A Travel Diary of Communist Cuba

[Rum Socialism] gradually builds in drama, laughs, and [builds in] tension until before you know it [you’re] flying across Cuban roads in a police car in the middle of the night hunting criminals.

--Brian Keegan, ForgetTheBox.net

Rum Socialism: A Travel Diary of Communist Cuba

By Kris Romaniuk

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Kris Romaniuk

KrisRomaniuk.com

RumSocialism.com

I have tried to recreate events, locales and conversations from my memories of them. In order to maintain their anonymity, in some instances I have changed the names of individuals and places, and I may have changed some identifying characteristics and details such as physical properties, occupations and places of residence.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Kris Romaniuk.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re- sold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should visit Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Cover art by Vitold Polyak

VitoldPolyak.com

Editing by Kara-Lis Coverdale

klis.coverdale@gmail.com

Table of Contents

Prologue

The Boarding Terminal

Flight CU171

CFG - Jaime González Airport

The Shuttle Bus

Checking In

Boredom & Madness

El Circo

Back at the Bar

The Cave Dance

No Escape

Pedro the Hustler

The Great Machete Hunt

Hooker with a Tooth of Gold

La Policía Nacional Revolucionaria

The Day After The Night

Again On My Own

Back to the Real World

Appendix: The Perfect Mojito

About the Author

Prologue

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I don’t claim to have any expertise on Cuban culture, society, or politics. When I booked this trip, I was looking to escape a failing relationship and a job I hated. But I have a penchant for finding trouble, or maybe trouble has a crush on me or something, and I happened to keep a travel diary while I was away. The pages that follow were built from that.

Everything I say about Cuban law and socio-politics is based on a mix of observation, speculation, and what people told me. I am not a journalist and no fact checking has been done.

I do happen to have a degree in political science, though, and I minored in economics. So I’m pretty comfortable with the opinions that I expressed about what I could decipher from what I saw. I ask that you proceed with no pretentions, an open mind, and a sense of humour. Salud…

The Boarding Terminal

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There are more interesting places to spend an Easter Monday than the boarding terminal at Pierre Elliot Trudeau international airport. I got there around noon, and by the time I’d cleared security, I had more than half an hour to kill before my flight boarded. The terminal was lonely for midday, and most of the gates were empty. There was a bar just one gate over from my own and I decided that drinking alone would be a better waste of time than watching a bunch the antsy French Canadians in flip flops and straw cowboy hats linger by the gate.

The only other customers at the bar were three Latinos, and I wondered if they were heading out on the same flight as me. The bartender had her back to me and was more interested in re-stocking the beer fridge than taking orders. I waited to be served for what seemed an unreasonable amount of time. My flight would board soon and I wanted to consume enough beer that I’d be drunk by the time we hit cruising altitude.

Eventually, one of the Latinos took pity on me and hollered for the barmaid in Spanish. He seemed familiar with her and I wondered whether they were off-duty airport employees or if they’d just gotten friendly waiting for their flight. I thanked him with a nod and ordered a brand of beer that I’d been meaning to try but isn't served in the kind of bars I hang out in. It had been marketed as micro carbonated and tasted creamy and flat. I could see why none of my watering holes served it and made a point to order a pint of something on tap the next time around.

I called Elections Canada and drank quickly while on hold. There was a federal election the day I getting back and I wanted to make sure that I was registered to do my part to stop the Conservative Party from getting a majority government and running my country deeper into some tar sand pit that one of their cronies owned.

A couple of middle-aged English speakers I recognized from the check-in line pulled up stools next to me. I was feeling lonely and wanted to strike up a conversation and thought about warning them away from what I was drinking, but decided against it. Going out of my way like that would make me seem eager, and even a little creepy. Besides, when a younger man who’s all by himself strikes up conversation with older men who are travelling together, there’s always a chance that wires get crossed. They might get the wrong impression about my intentions. Generally, I’m all for awkward misunderstandings – they make the mundane memorable. But it was too early in my trip for ambiguous propositions.

One of them looked just like any other milk-fed forty-something from suburbia who was too old to be wearing sportswear, and the other looked like a balding, overweight bear with the head of a ferret. They were both large men, more than six feet tall, weighing well over two hundred pounds, and I wondered if maybe that’s what a lifetime of eating bovine growth hormone does to you. There was schoolboy enthusiasm in their eyes, and I could tell that they’d been looking forward to this trip for longer than it was going to actually last. They looked harmless enough, but also like the kind of oafs who can turn dangerous after having too much drink and realizing that woman still aren’t interested in them.

I eaves dropped on their conversation for a while, and realized that they actually knew something about Cuba. I hadn’t really done any of my own research beyond making small talk with a few people I knew who’d already been, and by now the beer had diluted my inhibitions enough that I didn’t mind coming off as an over the hill twink cruising the airport for a sugar bear. Besides, I was going into a communist country blind and alone, and it could be days before I had an innocent conversation with a native English speaker again. So I ordered a pint of draft and struck up a conversation with them.

It was the Ferret’s first time going to Cuba but Mr. Lonely had been going every six to eight weeks. I didn’t ask what they did for a living, but six hundred dollars for your flight and all you can eat and drink seemed within reach for a lonely, middle-aged man with no kids or alimony payments to make.

I asked Mr. Lonely innocuous questions and learned things, like how the cups on the resorts were small. Apparently I should’ve brought my own so I wouldn’t have visit the bar for refills so often. He was proud of a novelty travel mug from Tim Horton’s that he’d brought along. It looked like it held a couple liters and that he’d gotten plenty of use out of it. I also learned that simple commodities like pens, paper, and clothing made for better travel tips and more friends than tourist Pesos. My hairdresser had mentioned this, but I hadn’t brought any because I’d been too lazy to go out of my way to pick any up. He also cautioned me to tip my cleaning lady so she wouldn’t go through my things; it could either be ten pesos in advance or a peso a day, it was my choice.

Then Mr. Lonely started telling me about his girlfriend down there, and the Ferret’s eyes began to burn with the same intense kind of hope that you see in children when you tell them that the Tooth Fairy is coming. He was expecting to go down there, meet some beautiful, young thing that’d recognize him for the gentle, caring provider that he’s always meant to be, and finally get that happy ending he’d been promised growing up. This was it for him. It had to be. I could see it in his eyes.

Mr. Lonely’s girl was the reason he visited so often. He always brought her clothes and toiletries – the stuff she couldn’t find easily down there. He explained how you could bring a Cuban on the resort for only 15 dollars a day, and they could eat and drink as much they wanted. He also explained how they were a simple people and that he admired them for it. He could diffuse any argument with his girlfriend by giving her that extra pair of jeans he’d been holding out on. I didn’t know who to feel more sorry for, the poor woman who’d been whoring herself out for a few pounds of denim a year, or the miserable, middle-aged wretch who seemed to believe that he was her one and only. But maybe he didn’t mind that there were probably two or three other Canadians keeping her wardrobe stocked with third-rate apparel. As long as he stayed in the rotation and she held him late into the night. My Ruca…

I still had enough time to sink another pint before the last call for boarding, but talking with Mr. Lonely and his pet Ferret had depressed me enough that I wanted to be alone again. I wished them a safe trip and wandered off to join the queue at the gate. Looking at the line of middle-aged French Canadians ahead of me, I began to worry about the possibility that Mr. Lonely and his pet Ferret were going to be the rule rather than the exception on the resort.

Flight CU171

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Flying Cubana air is what I imagine it was like to fly right after deregulation pulled all the carpet out from under the airline industry, when the airlines hadn’t yet figured out how to compete in a free market. The plane was aging, the food was bad, and the uniforms looked like government issued hand-me-downs (which they were). In the true spirit of the Revolution, though, first class seats weren’t for sale. They were reserved for off-duty airline employees heading home to see their families or take on another shift.

The safety video played only in Spanish and I wished I had a video camera to record it because it looked more like a public service announcement that might’ve played between telenovelas during the 1980s. I could tell it was a VHS that’d been wound round and round those spools too many times, and I wondered how modern and in tact the actual safety features on the plane were. I guess, though, it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Even if we managed to survive the rare event of a water landing, I doubt the Coast Guard would be scrambled to fish a bunch of foreign nationals headed to a restricted country out of the water.

Once we hit cruising altitude, the steward came around with drinks – rum and beer and wine, all from Cuba. It was too early for liquor, so I decided to try a Bucanero. The branding looked modern, the can had a pirate on it, and it tasted a lot like the domestic brew back home. It was also free. I was happy with my choice.

The stewards were another story. They were curt, impersonal, and generally disinterested in having to serve another fucking gringo another fucking drink on another fucking plane full of tourists who make more in a year than most Cubans do in a lifetime. After their preliminary service, they’d retreated to first class and didn’t come back again to check on us until the clock told them to. Which was fine. I got it, I wouldn’t want to have to go the extra mile if I could get away with reclining in a captain’s chair and shirking the clientele. But with these guys, it was a little different. There was something xenophobic in their gait, and I suspected they hated that the only way they could make a decent living and see the outside world was by having to serve people they resented for having so much more than them.

I caught a whiff of something burning and thought that either we’re about to go down or someone is smoking scrap cigar tobacco in the washroom. I tried not to think about it, but when I headed for the washroom just the other side of the curtain, a steward cut me off and told me the only washroom was at the back of the plane. It was bullshit, of course. I’d seen the washroom up front when I’d boarded, but at least I now knew where the smoking section was. It was just too bad I wasn’t on the guest list.

*****

During the second drink service, I saw a stewardess bring a couple beers up to the cockpit. At first I thought she was just taking them to the off-duty staff in first-class, but then she continued on through the second curtain where there was nothing but the cockpit and an exit. It didn’t worry me, though. At thirty thousand feet, it’s not like you have to worry about a head-on collision or skidding off the road. Besides, we were almost there, and I felt confident that was the pilot’s first one.

Now I was inspired, though, and when a steward finally came back through the curtain, I tried to order another beer. No more beer or rum, he said. Only wine. I guess the captain and the co-pilot had just got the last