OUT CUBAN SIBLING PUTS SANTA FE’S WELCOME MAT
ARTISTS, MUSICIANS, DANCERS INVITED
Holguín, Cuba — Officials here consider themselves in a “relationship of solidarity and cooperation” with Santa Fe, rather than being its “sister city.”
But regardless of the difference in terms, Holguín has the welcome mat out for Santa Fe now that it’s easier for Americans to travel to Cuba.
The Eisenhower administration initiated the Sister Cities project in 1956 to encourage “citizen-to-citizen diplomacy” in the aftermath of World War II. Santa Fe has 10 sister cities. It was paired with Holguín in 2001 because of the two cities’ reputations for art. For example, both cities have opera houses.
Holguín, in fact, is known as a place to try out new operas, as well as fresh music or plays.
“Holguín is like a cultural thermometer,” says Liliana Aviles, international specialist for the Casa Iberoamerica in Holguín. “We tell you if we don’t like it.”
I interviewed Aviles in early December toward the end of a three-week trip through eastern Cuba — the poorer, more Afro-Cuban and more isolated end of the island — with my wife, Stacy Brown, an artist and knitter, and our old friend Charles Bennett, a historian and retired museum curator. Stacy and
I went to Havana on our honeymoon in 1994, and Charles visited Havana and Santiago in 1996.
These days, Aviles wants delegations of Santa Fe artists, musicians, dancers and opera performers to visit Holguín for the festivals and other occasions.
In her eight years in the cultural office, Aviles said, no official delegation or big groups from Santa Fe have visited Holguín. That’s partly due to the difficulty in traveling to Cuba in the past.
Now, there may be movement toward sending a group of City Different representatives to Holguín.
Matt Ross, a spokesman for Santa Fe, says a group connected to the city’s Sister Cities Committee is trying to organize a delegation to go to Holguín and has asked Mayor Javier Gonzales if he wants to be part of it or send along a letter of support. The mayor is considering the request, Ross said.
At least a half-dozen Santa Feans have practiced the citizen diplomacy envisioned back in the 1950s, dropping in on Aviles in recent years.
Those include Santa Fe school board member Susan Duncan and husband Cameron Duncan, a labor educator; locally renowned storyteller Joe Hayes, who performed at a Holguín festival; conductor Bernard Rubenstein, a member of Sister Cities Committee who has made several conducting visits to Cuba, including work on Puccini’s “La Boheme” in Holguín; and Carl Moore, a retired Kent State (Ohio) University professor of communications and photographer who has exhibited pictures from Holguín, and who is also an alternate to the committee.
Comparisons
Santa Fe visitors to Holguín can’t help but compare the sister cities.
Holguín’s population is five times Santa Fe’s (345,000 to 70,000) and more densely packed. It’s hotter (90 to 70 degrees in early December, versus 55 to 15 in the City Different) and, of course, much wetter (45 inches versus 15 inches annually, though December is usually dry in Holguín). There are mimosa and palm trees rather than piñon and junipers.
Several streams run year-round through Holguín, but they are so polluted with sewage and refuse that turkey vultures search for carrion on their banks.
Unlike Santa Fe, Holguín has few parking problems. That’s because few people have cars. They walk, avoiding holes in the concrete on narrow sidewalks that end abruptly; ride bicycles and motor scooters (a few of them electric) or take pedicabs, called bici-taxis, horse-drawn carriages (picturesque, but for locals, not tourists) or diesel-belching buses and big trucks with rows of benches in their beds, called colectivos. The taxis, parked in spaces along the plazas to attract tourists, are the cars famous in Cuba: American products from the 1950s and earlier, kept in good repair with handmade and individually machined parts. But there are also Russian Ladas from the 1970s and other automobiles rarely seen in the United States, like new Geely cars from China and the 1957 French-made Simca we took to a restaurant on our last night in town.
Keeping tourists
Like Santa Fe, Holguín is a provincial/state capital with tourism as a major component of the economy. But until recently most of Holguín’s tourists were Canadians who landed at the Holguín airport and headed straight for the big beach resorts on the Atlantic to the north. Now, Holguín is looking for ways to keep tourists in the city.
The Holguín history museum, just off the main plaza, has a mix of Spanish colonial furniture, tools and other artifacts; photos, news clips and weapons from the 1959 revolution; and a stone ax head with the image of a face in it. This Hacha de Holguín, made by the indigenous Taino people, was discovered in 1860 near Guardalavaca, about 30 miles northeast of Holguín.
You can visit a museum there that displays an archaeological dig into a Taino graveyard, exposing dozens of skeletons in a way that would not be tolerated in New Mexico or other places with Native populations. Cuba’s Tainos were largely wiped out by diseases brought by the early Spanish.
Holguín’s oldest structure, the Casa del Teniente Gobernador (house of the lieutenant governor), is believed to date to the middle 1700s. It is made of adobe — a rarity in a wet climate like this. Recent patches of mudand-straw plaster are visible on its exterior.
I was told the old house sometimes is used for exhibits, although it was closed when I dropped by and marked by only a small brass plaque. Many of Holguín’s buildings are Spanish colonial, but that does not mean before 1821, as in New Mexico. In Cuba, “Spanish colonial” means anything before independence from Spain in 1898.
Holguín province has three festivals that Santa Fe’s culturally minded might like:
The April “poor
■ man’s,” or low-budget, international film festival (eligible films must be made for no more than a certain amount) about 25 miles to the north of Holguín city in Gibara. A busy Atlantic port for sugar exports early in the 20th century, Gibara is now a quiet village of narrow streets and low buildings, reminiscent of some New Mexico towns years ago.
Las Remorias de
■
Mayo (the Pilgrimages of May), intertwining Christian traditions with modern cultural ones, focuses on Cerro de Bayado or Loma de la Cruz. People began climbing this hill on the north side of Holguín to pray for rain or miracles in the late 1700s. Now it can be ascended on 465 concrete steps or on a road winding its way up the other side. Pope Francis was there in September 2015.
La Fiesta de la Cultura
■ each October brings a full spectrum of IberoAmerican culture to Holguín, including music, dance and theater. Aviles said next year’s festival will include more visual art, handicrafts and academic endeavors.
Aviles will assist in finding accommodation, transportation and translation services for the festivals or other cultural events. Contact her at cafeciber@baibrama. cult.cu or avilesliliana899@gmail.com.
Moonlighting
The most striking difference between Santa Fe and Holguín — and between the United States and Cuba in general — is income.
Professionals like doctors, teachers and journalists typically make less than $20 a month, about one-hundredth of the per capita income in Santa Fe. Staples like rice, beans and coffee are rationed and doled out at government offices at subsidized prices. Education and health care are free. But the system leaves many Cubans moonlighting for extra income.
Reynaldo Cruz Diaz, a photojournalist and web producer for the Holguín newspaper ¡Ahora!, supplements his $17-a-month salary by using his knowledge of baseball.
He lives with his wife, Yanela, and their 6-month-old daughter, Paola, in two rooms plus a bathroom on the second floor of a midsized house owned by Yanela’s grandparents. Cruz Diaz translated from English to Spanish “Cuban Baseball Legends: Baseball’s Alternative Universe,” edited by Peter C. Bjarkman and Bill Nowlin.
Cruz Diaz recently began publishing an online magazine focusing on baseball in Latin America, the United States and elsewhere, called Universo Beisbol, at universobeisbol. mlblogs.com.
He is looking for advertising sponsors — a new concept in Cuba. Cruz Diaz’s ultimate goal is to develop an international baseball tournament called the “Beer City Tournament,” with the name recognizing Holguín’s breweries of Bucanero and Cristal beer. (The baseball team in Holguín, by the way, is called Sabuesos, or Hounds. Aroldis Chapman, the star relief pitcher who helped the Chicago Cubs win the World Series in November, played for the team.)
Cubans are curious about President-elect Donald Trump but reluctant to offer their own opinions. Trump has tweeted that he wants more concessions from Cuba before further lowering trade restrictions. But the Cubans I told this to simply shrugged. They were equally noncommittal about outgoing President Barack Obama. My impression is that after years of authoritarian rule, Cubans are cynical about political rhetoric. Still, they are open about discussing the deficiencies in their system.
You can see the government-run economy at work wherever long lines form — outside banks and other financial institutions, governmentowned shops like ice cream dispensaries and telecommunications offices.
Airfares from Florida to Holguín can be cheap. And you can use Airbnb to book a bedroom and private bath in Holguín in a remodeled Spanish Colonial residence for about $25 a night.
This often includes a lavish breakfast of fruit (papaya, pineapple and zapote are in season), bread, eggs, cheese, pork, juice and coffee. Your hosts will give you advice on what to do, where to go and what to avoid. They can also find you accommodation in another house in the next town on your itinerary.
A gourmet lunch or dinner at dozens of fine restaurants costs about $5 a person — rarely exceeding $10, even with multiple appetizers, drinks, dessert and a tip. (Tips are not expected in Cuba but are appreciated.) Entrees are typically pork, chicken or seafood, served with platters of fried bananas called tostones, salads of sliced tomatoes, cucumbers and shredded cabbage, rice with black beans, saffron or other flavorings, and desserts of flan or ice cream.
Due to government limits on slaughtering cattle, beef is rarely found on menus, except for the national favorite, a stringy roast called ropa vieja or “old clothes.”
Cubans rarely eat spicy foods, but bottles of Tabasco sauce are available at many restaurants. It’s a mystery to me how the Louisiana product manages to circumvent the trade embargo.