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A Cuba Diary
My trip down the rabbit hole to 1959
Story and Photographs by Brian Ross
Travel into Cuba is extremely restricted. So I jumped when Mike Davison, a consultant for a new tour company, Cuba Cultural Tours, offered me the trip of a lifetime. Our group was allowed into the hidden country for “Professional Research.” We were an eclectic bunch: musicians, writers, professional dancers and, yours truly, the “photographer.”
TYPICAL QUESTIONS; AMAZING ANSWERS
“So, what was it like?” “Was it scary?” “Did they hate you?” “Did you tell them you were Canadian?” “Did you see Fidel?” “Did you get any cigars?” “Do they really still have old 1950s cars rolling around?”
These are the typical questions I get when someone finds out I’ve been to Cuba. Here are the answers: Amazing, No, absolutely not, twice, definitely not, I’ll plead the fifth, and hell, yeah, they do, and they are AMAZING!
I knew very little about Cuba beforehand.
The magic, clearly, turns out to lie in the people. They are resilient, extremely resourceful, horrendously poor, friendly to a fault and part of a communist regime. Communists are supposed to be cold, unfriendly, wear olive green clothes and just be everything we aren’t. If there’s one thing that I learned, it is that you don’t judge the people by the government that rules them.
Havana – or, as it is known, Habana – is an amazing place. Having gone through a building boom in the 1940s and 1950s, it has been deteriorating since. It’s as if a bustling city in 1959 – the year Castro’s Communist revolution expelled most foreigners – were somehow spared a cataclysmic holocaust, only to die a slow death by neglect. You’ll see balconies that have crumbled off of the buildings, walls that have caved in, trees growing out of buildings, and occupied apartments with top floors that have collapsed. Yet you’ll also see children playing baseball in the alley, and you’ll see groups of teenagers gathering along the Malcone doing typical teenager things – minus all the cell phones and iPods, of course.
MAKING THE MOST OF NEXT TO NOTHING 
Walk through Habana at night and you realize that, for a city of 3.2 million people, there is very little light. The power grid was built for a city of 600,000 and hasn’t been upgraded.
Looking into apartment buildings, you see a mass of wires spilling out of junction boxes as the people try to get more out of what little there is to be had. The Cuban people have so little that they are forced to be creative. I saw a man fixing a bicycle on the street with a wire coat hanger. I saw an 80-year-old street performer playing an antique accordion with duct tape on the bellows. I saw a man play the most incredible song on a beer bottle! I saw a Cuban play his horn without a mouthpiece. The typical Cuban could watch a rerun of MacGyver and tell you what he’s doing wrong.
On our first day in Habana we attended a Rumba performance by locals in Hamelin Alley. It was indeed an alley, an alley packed with people. As they were getting ready, one of the performers got up and loudly addressed the crowd: “We have very special guests with us today. We have AMERICANS here today.” He pointed to us as the crowd went wild. “The enemies we LOVE!” he exclaimed. “We love you guys.”
This is the reaction I experienced everywhere. When Cubans find out you are from America, they light up, excited to talk about American baseball or, God help me, politics. Never did I feel any resentment. Instead, there was hope and optimism.
‘OH, NO. I’M NOT IMPORTANT.’
One evening a middle-aged woman in the street stopped me. All Cubans want to talk to tourists. Tourists are one of the only sources of income, and in a country where most people make less than $20 a month, the chance of getting a dollar from a tourist can’t be ignored.
As soon as the woman found out I was from America, she stopped. She looked around, grabbed my shirt and pulled me close. Then she said very quickly, almost fearfully: “It is because of America that we Cubans have what we do. We love capitalism. Since you left we have been starving. Please tell your people.”
She let go and fled into the night.
The last day of our trip found me with no traveling gifts. I headed off for the San Jose flea market in Habana, crammed with artisans and their wares. I made my way to a woman selling paintings. The one that caught my eye was an oil painting of a Chevy Bel Air parked in front of La Bodeguita Del Medio, the restaurant and gathering place made famous by Hemingway. It was only $20, so I snapped it up. I looked over the rest of her paintings.
“Are you the artist?” I asked. “Yes, I paint” she replied. I told her she did fantastic work and she blushed and looked away. Then it hit me. None of these are signed.
“Sign? Me sign?” she asked, looking uncomfortable. “Oh no, I’m not important. Why I sign?” I was at a loss. “But you do beautiful work,” I said. “Don’t you want to be recognized for that?” She replied: “No, I paint. It’s my job. It’s what I do.”
I never got her name. After leaving her booth, I wandered amid the rest of the stalls. Maybe one in 10 artists had signed their paintings.
THE LAND THAT DANCES
Cuba is an absolutely amazing place and I consider myself extremely fortunate for having the opportunity to have visited.
If it is anything, it is a country full of wonderfully vibrant people. One final insight I picked up: In America when a new baby begins walking, the parents grab their cameras and cheer that “little Jessica is walking!”
In Cuba when a new baby begins walking, the parents announce instead: “Little Jessica is dancing!”
It may seem such a small difference, but I tell you what: I wish I had danced as a baby.IB
Brian Ross is the general manager of Ross Publishing Inc., the parent company of Boomer.
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