Our woman in HAVANA
Take a trip back in time to an era of classic cars, The Mob and Castro and Che
ASTATELY steel grey Pontiac with smoky windows pulls up beneath the facades of Old Havana’s once grand colonial buildings, now long fallen on hard times.
Balconies are draped with clothes drying, teenagers idle in doorways, wrinkled grandmothers gossip beside a dilapidated barrow loaded with fruit and vegetables.
Pulsating Samba music floats out from an upper window. I half expect a sinister stranger in a double-breasted pin-striped suit, fedora slouched down over his eyes, to jump out of the vintage automobile which is taking up the width of my narrow street.
There’s nothing unusual about feeling as if you have just stepped on to a film set here in Cuba’s capital, expecting ANYTHING might happen next.
A young man in a designer t-shirt, aviator shades perched on his head, clutching a mobile phone beckons me to join him.
The car’s tan leather upholstery smells of saddle soap and tender loving care.
The driver visibly cringes (as if a Mob hitman’s revolver butt has collided with the chrome ash tray) when my camera bag carelessly knocks off the gleaming door fittings.
‘This car is Richardo’s wife’, explains my guide Maykell Rodriquez, ‘it’s the most important member of his family; Cuban men value their cars more than anything else in their lives, including their women’. Havana, you immediately notice, bursts
with beautifully maintained classic American cars. Their besotted owners can be seen on street corners everywhere buffing up mirrors and paintwork, tinkering under bonnets in back lane garages and posing.
Throwbacks to times when American capitalism ruled supreme in pre-revolutionary Cuba these cars are a vital source of income for their owners. They ooze the glamour of a bygone age whilst guides take visitors through Havana’s character-packed neighbourhoods, stopping on squares and at museums and cruising the famous Malecon promenade which faces the Straits of Florida.
I have signed up with HST, or Havana Super Tour (www.campanario63,com/) to explore Havana’s era as the Las Vegas of the Caribbean under dictator Fulgencio Batista and the Mob. So I’ll get an insight into the fascinating pre-Revolution world of Sinatra and showgirls, mambo and Mafia.
We start in an antiquarian book store and browse through photos and postcards of Hollywood’s glitterati posing with Mafia villains. Press pictures show enraged citizens storming the casinos, demolishing all traces of gambling and decadence.
Only a few were allowed to stay open for a short time, including the Grand Casino, today a museum attached to Havana’s imposing Hotel Nacional whose staff went on strike to keep their jobs.
Mafia bosses Meyer ‘The Brain’ Lansky and his New York sidekick ‘The Brawn’ Lucky Luciano managed to escape with ludicrous wads of cash while Batista had already shored millions of dollars in backhanders away in foreign bank accounts in the nick of time.
We pass Lansky’s mistress Marta’s old home – he returned for her in late 1959 but by then she’d disappeared into the countryside without trace.
We escape the searing heat outside for the cool Moorish-style lobby of historic Hotel Sevilla where Al Capone ran his bootlegging liquor empire.
Another landmark to Mafia rule is the Riviera Hotel on the Malecon promenade on whose 19th floor I sleep, immersed in a time warp of retro cream and dark red furnishings with dodgy electrics. A gigantic casino, modelled on the best Vegas could offer at the time was nearing completion at the end of 1958 just as the Rebels were taking over key regions of the country.
‘Have you noticed the shape of the Riviera’s swimming pool’ Mykail asks, ‘it was a veiled warning from the first owners’.
The Mafia built the Riviera’s pool as an open coffin. I do my own research and discover five or six steps in the foyer going nowhere and ending in a kind of diving board fall for unwary guests!
You could spend a fortnight exploring Cuba’s intriguing capital from Havana Vieja’s spectacular dilapidation to regenerated squares and buildings. Lively bars, some where Ernest Hemingway frequented, cafes, edgy neighbourhoods, interesting museums, street music, and a visit to a cigar factory shop are musts.
Beyond Havana, the largest island in the Caribbean, is the Revolution’s heartland, sleepy colonial-style towns, and some of the most stunning beaches.
Our long bus journey took us to Cayo Santa Maria for a five-night stay at the 4-star Dhawa Cayo Santa Maria. It’s a recently built wonderfully situated allinclusive hotel that attracts sun seekers looking for an affordable chill out, steps from chalk white-fine sand.
We stopped off at Santa Clara where the last battle of the war, led by Che Guevara was waged, marking the end of Batista’s dictatorship. Known as ‘the city of the heroic guerrilla’ this is a sacred place of pilgrimage for Cubans.
They come to revere the soaring bronze statue of the Argentine revolutionary and visit the monument of the derailed train including original wagons and the D6 caterpillar bulldozer used by the guerrillas to immobilize and force the surrender of Batista in 1958.
Under the monument to ‘Che’ is a mausoleum in which his remains which
were returned to Cuba in 1998 are kept together with graves of other guerrilla leaders. Our young guide Robin wipes a tear away. ‘Whenever I visit it’s an emotional experience for me’, he explains. Cubans truly are an emotional people as I discover mingling, drinking (rum, naturally) and even dancing with them in the authentic towns of Sagua La Grande and Remedios.
We also take an open air bus tour to Finca La Cabana, passing villages where farmers still till land with ploughs drawn by oxen. Horse-drawn carts were local taxis and here and there demolished shacks and fallen trees were evidence of Irma’s devastation.
Back in Havana we visit a park dedi- cated to John Lennon, ‘we love him for his egalitarian view of life and support for Cuba’s ideals’ says our guide from The Holiday Place.
We meet an elderly lady, ‘the guardian of the statue’, just one from a 24- hour guard, drawn from willing pensioners, who ensure that he is respected.
The glasses he wears are real and can be removed. Sometimes a Beatles fan just can’t resist the temptation to snatch a souvenir pair, but they are immediately replaced.
Cuba may still be short on consumer trappings but they’ve got their priorities right.
Havana cherishes its classic automobiles and somewhere there’s a crate of replacement old granny glasses to fit that John Lennon statue when the need arises!