Cuba in Transition: Impressions and Reflections

CUBA IN TRANSITION: Impressions and Reflections

Trip Kennedy

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2012 JS Kennedy & Associates, Ltd.; Victoria, British Columbia, Canada; all rights reserved

ISBN: 978.0.9918134.0.7

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CONTENTS

Varadero

Havana

Viñales

Cayo Levisa

Trinidad de Cuba

Holguín

Bayamo

Baracoa

Santiago de Cuba

Camagüey

Cuba

Postscript

Appendix 1 - Preparations

Appendix 2 - Comparative Quality of Life Statistics

Bibliography

Dedication

Acknowledgements

VARADERO

When the Varadero airport appeared suddenly though the haze, the view was both a surprise and no surprise at all. Having come in over the water, there had been nothing to see until we were only about 300 metres (1,000 feet) off the ground, and then the airport was there, looking pretty much as I’d expected: a tarmac strip in the sand bordered by scrub vegetation close in and palms further out. I was pleased to note the absence of a jetway. There is something so disappointing about arriving in a sealed tube, only to be delivered into another sealed tube and then into a sealed building – air travel is supposed to take you far away. When the airport at which you arrive is pretty much the same as the one you left, it violates that principle. Not so with Varadero. Feeling the sun on my face, smelling the warm island air and walking down a stairway and across an airport apron combined to make it clear that we had, in fact, arrived somewhere different.

We entered a slightly older version of the standard, big-barn international airport arrivals area, facing desks staffed by immigration officers. I always find something slightly intimidating about the customs and immigration process – I guess it’s knowing that these officials can, for any of a number of unknown reasons, really screw up my day, and I will have little if any recourse. But I was armed with my passport and customs declaration (declaring the computer parts I was importing for Jorge), so I felt confident and ready.

My sense of preparedness evaporated when I noticed the immigration cattle chutes. While the way up to the official’s desk was open, each station was enclosed by the desk on one side and walls on the other two sides. On the far wall was a door that closed behind the arrivee once he or she had cleared immigration. I could not see what was on the other side of the door, or what happened to people after they passed through. And they did not take people as travelling parties, as they do in Canada and the United States, but rather as individuals, one by one. Once my wife stepped up to the desk, we would not be able to communicate or even see each other until we were both on the far side of that door.

I had not encountered this style of customs and immigration station since Helsinki, a number of years earlier, and it was more than a little unsettling. But I knew that a display of nerves would be a big mistake, so I was steadfast as my wife passed easily through and the door closed behind her. The immigration official looked at my passport and asked how long I had lived in Canada, to which I answered, 42 years. I answered in English, but then tried my best to translate into Spanish, the lack of conviction undoubtedly clear in my voice. That may have been my mistake. She thought for a moment and then, calling over her supervisor, waved me out of the line.

He had other things to do, so I stood there trying hard to look relaxed as I waited about 10 minutes for him. I could only imagine my wife’s anxiety as other people came through the door behind her, but not me. Then the senior official arrived – with four uniformed men in tow. ‘Oh, great’, I thought, ‘I get to be this morning’s training session!’.

The supervisor took my passport from the official at the desk, examined it, and asked me the same question. He talked with the other officials for about 30 seconds – although it seemed more like 30 minutes – and then looked at me again. Maybe he’s a man who appreciates a good pun as much as I do. It very much seemed like he was translating back and forth between Spanish and English in his mind, as I had tried earlier, disastrously, to do. Then he smiled, then laughed, then handed me my passport and waved me through with a Welcome to Cuba. As nearly as I could figure, when I told the person on the desk that I had lived in Canada for 42 years, she probably heard for two years and, noting my U.S. birthplace, thought she’d caught a CIA spy.

But what made the lasting impression was that the immigration supervisor seemed to be genuinely pleased to be able to clear up the confusion. I live in a tourist town in a country mocked for its excessive politeness. Canada is considerate, if nothing else, and Victoria, B.C. positively aches with the desire to make visitors feel welcome. So I’m accustomed to people – whether in the grocery store, or the restaurant, or the hotel, or on the street – going out of their way to make me feel comfortable.

It’s hard to describe the behaviour that takes service from good to exceptional. The basic ingredients of the two are the same. A smile, absolutely, and a smile that includes not only the lips, but the eyes and the nose and the ears, and that can be heard in the voice without even seeing it. And a slight nod, while maintaining eye contact. And a good sense of personal space; a lean in for intimacy without actually entering someone else’s space. And all of this goes with enough self-confidence that the service person does not seem to be grovelling, while they still communicate interest.

So that’s what I experience almost every day when I buy my morning coffee, or a newspaper, or postage stamps, or if I can’t find something at the grocery or hardware store, or I come to a four-way stop or a pedestrian crosswalk. Deference and the desire to accommodate are in the air I breathe. However, they are not so much a part of my life that I take them for granted; I recognize them when I encounter them.

In my experience, customs and immigration officials are rarely exemplars of warmth. Canadian officials are generally polite, but brusque. Many U.S. officials are positively surly. So now we come to Cuba. I’ve heard from everyone I’ve ever talked to about it that the people in Cuba are warm and welcoming, open and friendly. And now I think I know what they mean. What I experienced, both at the Varadero airport and on our arrival at the hotel cannot, I think, be trained. In must come in your mother’s milk.

Our travel plans landed us in Varadero a day before the choir and, as chance would have it, we ended up at the wrong building. Language challenges notwithstanding, the desk clerk was only too happy to find us the correct one and arrange transportation for us. The bellhop who took us to our room thought it was a great good joke when the key wouldn’t work in the door of what turned out to be the wrong room. His infectious good humour turned what could have been an annoyance into an amusing interlude. The woman who checked us into the hotel (and whom I later asked about 110 AC to charge my cellphone), seemed actually pleased to be able take my phone into the office – the only place in the hotel where they had 110 – to charge it for me. Both good humour and a well-developed sense of humour seemed to permeate the place. And maybe that’s the untrainable, indescribable element. People just seemed to be having fun doing what they were doing.

Every Cuban I encountered on that first day communicated to me that they were genuinely pleased to welcome me to their country.

Sol Sirenas all-inclusive resort and Caribbean Sea

The Sol Sirenas, our Varadero all-inclusive resort, consisted of two large buildings and several smaller, motel-style structures, bungalows, and miscellaneous pavilions. For the most part, the buildings were rambling, beige-stucco, two- or three-storey affairs with red tile roofs and bright pastel-blue balconies. The balconies, the swimming pools and the Atlantic Ocean at the adjoining beach were all the same bright pastel-blue as the sky.

Grounds of the Sol Sirenas

The grounds were landscaped with curving walkways through palms and tropical flowering shrubs. There were numerous thatched sunshades on the beach, as well as a beach-side bar. The eastern half of the beach seemed to be favoured by topless sunbathers, while those on the more westerly portion remained fully clothed.

The campus was a bit like a gated community with controlled access, but that seemed to have more to do with the open bars than, as I had read, with keeping Cubans out. The perimeter of the campus was fairly porous, and there were so many Cubans there that keeping track of who was entitled to access and who was not would have required a significant effort; there was no obvious security presence.

Walking from our building over to the breakfast buffet, I couldn’t help but notice the grounds crews busily at work. Legions of groundskeepers were out clipping and weeding and raking and sweeping. There were no leaves in the pools and no litter on the grounds, and even the sand at the beach was raked free of debris every day.

I’d never visited an all-inclusive resort, so I didn’t have much with which to compare our experience, but I was struck by the number of maintenance and service personnel on the campus. Standards of cleanliness were very high. Public areas were spotlessly clean. I couldn’t put down an empty glass or coffee cup for more than about 30 seconds before someone took it away.

This cleaning activity was all labour-intensive; there were, for instance (and mercifully), no leaf blowers! Neither were there any floor-cleaning machines, which is part of what I found interesting. Maybe all-inclusive resorts everywhere are both spotlessly clean and labour-intensive. But the extent to which that characterized Sol Sirenas was, nonetheless, striking. If there was a manual way to get a job done, that’s how it was done. Our hotel’s reservation system was automated, but reception clerks worked with pencils on printouts, not on computer screens. Other, similar examples abounded. Groundskeepers worked with rakes, machetes and clippers, not gas or electric hedge trimmers. Brooms and mops kept floors clean. Unlike what one heard about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during the Communist era, I did not see people standing around. The work ethic seemed alive and well at Sol Sirenas.

I encountered several different explanations