Cuba mixes authentic beauty and corruption
The uniformed woman’s eyes narrowed as she looked me up and down.
Seconds earlier, she had told me that the currency exchange was one floor up at the Havana airport. Now, after processing my poor Spanish, blond hair and unaccompanied state, her tune quickly changed.
“He will take you,” she offered, in the tone of a command.
Who? What? My questions hung in the air, unanswered.
A uniformed man had me by the arm, leading me not upstairs to the exchange but into a room barely bigger than a cubicle. In it was a small desk and two men sitting with arms folded, staring at me.
The door shut. This was not the Cuban experience I’d seen advertised by tour companies. I’d shunned those.
Instead, looking for a more affordable and authentic experience, I’d planned my own solo people-to-people exchange, taking advantage of the eased sanctions that opened doors to a world on the precipice of change.
Free of tour guides and defined schedules, I encountered a different angle on the postcard view. Beyond the whitesand beaches, colorful old cars and pastel houses was an unscripted beauty on dusty streets, where hope for progress edges up against reality.
In the airport room, the sweat glands on my forehead leapt into action, but I saw no way out.
I handed over my cash. The officials took 13 percent, skimming 3 percent on top of the 10 percent fee I later learned the exchange upstairs charged.
An hour into my time in Cuba, I felt robbed. But soon, the country would steal my heart.
How to be Cuban
Luy looked at me, lifted his espresso and raised an eyebrow.
“If you’re going to hang with me,” he said, “you have to learn how to
be Cuban.”
It was my second day in Cuba. After getting swindled for a $200 taxi ride from the Havana airport to Santa Clara (my new acquaintances later said it should have cost $70, tops), I’d awakened to thick ribbons of tobacco smoke rising from the courtyards below my casa particular, a private room I was renting.
I’d met Luy, a Cuban American, while wandering around the historic city’s modest center on Day One, trying to get my bearings amid a pastel row of buildings. At first glance, they all looked like houses — until I discovered that behind the grated metal doors, barber shears buzzed and people congregated in cafeterias for coffee and rice and beans.
Few of the businesses announced themselves with signs — but many had another message broadcast on their facades: “Gracias Fidel” in hastily constructed lettering, a complicated ode to the former dictator. With Fidel Castro’s death only a couple of weeks previous, drinking had been banned for 10 days. Dancing, meanwhile, was banned for a year.
Luy had pegged my sorry state then. “You look lost,” he said, as I walked. Suddenly, I was adopted.
Now at the cafe, he eyed my short, chewed, natural nails and mulled how un-Cuban I was.
“We’ll have to start with those,” he said and tool me to a small salon. At a small table by the door, a woman painted my nails bright blue as she swatted at flies.
“OK, you’re 15 percent Cuban,” Luy said as we walked out.
Next up was the museum across the street, a coffee shop/ historical treasure duo dubbed the Revolucion and housed in a space even smaller than the salon. The tour guide showed me original photographs, documents and uniforms from the Cuban revolution that hung above the cafe tables. None of it was under glass. The proprietor touched the clothing as she spoke.
At the end, she offered me one of a handful of war medals for $5.
‘I’m not sad’
On another night at El Mejunje, Santa Clara’s popular club set in the bare bones of a brick building, branches spilled through the windows and kept climbing to form a canopy where a roof might have been. Stars pierced through, and the leaves swayed in the warm breeze.
That night had begun as most nights do in Santa Clara: at the beautiful, grass-covered central square.
Boasting the city’s only Wi-Fi and regular cultural events, Parque Vidal draws young and old who come to meet friends, check their phones and listen to the municipal orchestra.
But the night was ending, as do most nights in Santa Clara, at El Mejunje, a vibrant, venue where the edgy vibe serves as a notice to the government’s censorship police.
Once a year, it hosts a beauty pageant for transvestites. On the weekends, El Mejunje transforms into a gay club — Cuba’s only, and a tangible point of pride for many, whatever their sexual orientation.
Luy, who works as a server there, had earlier pulled a tube of mascara from his bag when explaining what his job entailed on Saturdays. “Guys will come and
he said, grinning and mimicking someone patting his bum. He winked. “I just smile and carry the drinks.”
The programming on this night was tame — singer-songwriters, armed with guitars, crooning on the stage as Spanish harmonies filled the indoor courtyard.
Young people, intently listening, gathered on thin metal bleachers. I sat with Yuniel, another new friend, among the trees on a stone balcony.
Later, Cuba Libre cocktails in hand, my adopted crew and I spilled over into the art gallery, which doubles as a tattoo shop, on El Mejunje’s upper level. With Yuniel acting as salsa instructor, we danced, against government wishes, our sandals shuffling to the soft guitar beats below.
“We’re supposed to be sad,” Yuniel had said, nodding at one of the Fidel signs. He grinned. “But I’m not sad.”
‘It has to change’
In the taxi, that first day, I had to repeat myself.
“Yes, Santa Clara,” I said.
The driver muttered. “Not many tourists there,” he said.
That’s why I was going — far away from the Havana airport and its money changers.
“There are two Cubas,” Luy’s friend KK told me. “The government, and the people.
“It’s best to avoid the people in suits,” he added.
Smack in the country’s middle, Santa Clara has no beaches, no cerulean waters. Unlike other cities on Cuba’s handsome coasts, it boasts no ritzy resorts or travel guide lore. Tourists tend to go elsewhere.
But the tide is shifting.
Starting last winter, airlines began adding direct flights from the U.S., including to cities beyond Havana such as Santa Clara. The dollar, even when exploited, goes far. There is no doubt: The surge of tourists is coming.
Will Santa Clara change? Will Cuba change?
“It will change,” Luy said. “It has to change.”