CUBA, its tourism officials are only too keen to boast, broke its own records last year with three million visitors; the main tourist spots outside of Havana being Matanzas, Villa Clara, Jardines del Rey and Holguin. People flock to the island typically for the sun and sand, and for the cigars, the salsa and the old colourful cars, but they may well be newcomers to the real consequences of socialism.
How a convenience-driven nation like the USA will tolerate the inoperable is a moot point, especially with the lack of stock in the shops and any signs of modern technology. The bookshop in my hotel stocks nothing but copies of Fidel Castro’s life and works and other versions of communism bibles.
The lack of efficiency can only partly be excused by the Caribbean sun and the attempts at manual work in the midday heat. It’s more that the entire sense of time has been frozen since 1959 when the revolution took hold of the island. While Cubans are clearly highly intelligent there’s simply no initiative on view or enterprise on offer. The state has stripped away any self-reliance or any desire to challenge. Luckily Cuba is a blissful land and food is plentiful for all. I have pineapple with nearly every meal (or else guava, papaya and mango) and the waters are full of the very fish Ernest Hemingway was so keen to catch.
It’s also, I discover, a country brimming with solar power, wind energy and sugarcane biomass. Focusing on the development of renewable energy sources to generate electricity, it strives to protect nature and the environment. Cuba is one of the world’s most sustainable countries, based on its human welfare index (life expectancy, literacy and GDP) and ecological footprint (the amount of land needed to fulfil food and energy needs).
Cuba is also a time lapse – almost cinematic, and routinely scenic. Havana has a strong resemblance to Naples with its laundry lines and systematic chaos, bustle and deprivation. It's steamy, frenzied – very Tennessee Williams, and better at night and sundown than by daylight. It’s then that semi-clad figures emerge from the balconies to express themselves, brandishing food, cigars and drink. It's hard not to prefer the faded and peeling Art Nouveau buildings, with their intricate ironwork, to the recently repainted area backed by a Unesco initiative.
Then there’s the Nacional hotel, wonderfully redolent of bygone glamour with a wall of fame boasting Frank Sinatra, Walt Disney and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. It has an old music hall and a casino, both of which reek of cigars – smoking indoors is legal – and a swimming pool so old-fashioned and in need of repair that it has a cachet of its own.
It is in a salon in the Nacional that I pick up a dictionary of Cuban Spanish only to rejoice in its slang. "Gordo como una buoya" translates into as fat as a buoy while "orracho como una uva" means as drunk as a grape and "flaco como un guin" as thin as a sugarcane flower. Similarly graphic and pertinent in their descriptions are "ponchar", to fail an exam (literally, to get a flat tyre), and "paton", duck feet (describing someone who can’t dance).
More to the point or the national psyche are "resolver" (to resolve or to work out) and "conseguir", to get or to manage. Grasping these concepts is a truly enigmatic process. Our police-car convoy, designed both to ease our way and to keep track of me and my fellow journalists, breaks down and causes untold delay. I try to take a photograph but am told it is illegal to take photographs of the police. Then the internal flight from Santiago back to Havana is itself delayed for half a day with a representative standing on a chair and reading out the names of lucky few who can take the next flight. And yet, all along, there are the welcoming drinks, the guitar ensembles, the iced sculptures. Prepare to be harried but never hurried. Cuba: charm and chaos in equal measure.
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