A Stroll Through the Streets of Havana

by Jeremy Wolff

Cuba is only a short hop by plane from the Bahamas, Mexico or Jamaica. But it's a world away from the United States-not in distance, but in culture.

It is a place out of the past, the least "Westernized" country in the hemisphere. In the most easily observable sense, Cuba hasn't been overrun with the symbols of the West. Save for a couple of billboards outside the Euro-resort area of Varadero, there are no advertisements for American consumer goods. Coming from New York City, I found Cuba to be a welcome relief from the clutter of capitalism.

Everything there feels like a open book: the people are very approachable, they want to talk, find out about you, and tell you about their lives. They are usually happy to have their picture taken and often thank you when you take it.

So much of the life of Havana is out on the streets. The cars: Grand old American boats of steel painted bright and still somehow rumbling along. The houses: Old decaying mansions line the streets, little dogs and children tearing up the yards. Colorful flags of laundry fly along the once-regal balconies, generations of paint crumbling and scratched away by overgrown trees, bushes and vines. The streets are clogged with bicycles during the day. Blackouts are frequent and roads are so dark at night that when a car appears, its headlights blind you and leave you stumbling. Yet the night streets still whir with brave bicycle riders: couples sharing a ride, families of three perched comfortably on a solid Cuban clunker.

After the first few nights in the Plaza, a classic old colonial hotel in Havana's old center, I moved to the newer richer Vedado neighborhood where I rented a private two-bedroom apartment for $15 per night, plus $1.50 for a big breakfast.

The center of the city is choked with huge hybrid buses called "camels," powerful trucks hauling double-length carriages packed with as many as 400 Habaneros. You see all manner of jerry-rigged vehicles. Tractor-trailer cabs pulling steel containers, their small cutout windows covered by bars of steel, and jammed with suburban passengers like third-world prisons. Painted on the side: "Transporte Popular." Indeed.

Out of town, concrete bridges arch over the freeway every few miles-but just the bridges. They span the highway but there are no roads attached; they connect nothing. "They were building a new highway system," my driver told me, "and then came the Special Period." The Special Period is one of those classic Communist euphemisms. It suggests Cuba's difficulties are unusual and temporary. It's the term everyone uses to describe the economic depression that began with the end of the Soviet Union and the loss of 70 percent of Cuba's foreign aid.
On the freeways are more bicycles than cars, and any truck going anywhere will fill up its bed with companeros; as many extra riders as can fit , with perhaps a bicycle or two hanging on for the ride as well. The bridges haven't entirely gone to waste. They now serve as shelters from the sun and rain for traveling Cubans who gather under the stranded spans waiting for rides.

Travelers also seek shelter from behind the common incongruous propaganda billboards. Some are newly painted, but most are as worn as their sentiments: "They Win Who Fight and Resist," "We Are All One," "We Won't Renounce Our Promises," "I Vote for Sobriety, Independence and Dignity," and my favorite, "To Die for the Country is To Live."

Hitchhiking is a basic form of transportation. Main intersections in Havana are lined with people hoping to get picked up and taken across town. If you have an extra seat in your car or van, you pick up a rider or two. As in China, I witnessed a high level of social cooperation and very little aggression between tight-packed people in difficult circumstances.

Most international tourists to Cuba actually manage to avoid Havana, except perhaps for a day trip in for an overpriced cocktail at Hemingway's favorite bar. It's a cheap vacation for a lot of the Western world. You just take a direct flight to Varadero, the long peninsula of perfect beach 100 miles east of Havana. Thousands of Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Canadians on package tours land at Varadero's international airport, and many see nothing more of the Socialist Republic of Cuba than these seven miles of white sand and blue-green waters.

The beach is patrolled constantly by jineteras ("riders" or "jockeys"), Cuba's version of what you might call prostitutes-although drinks at a nightclub, or a chicken dinner and a Coke, make them happy, even if it's not followed by negotiations for something more. I got used to the warmth and openness there. New York City is the opposite: everyone is closed off and unapproachable, which is my natural state. In Cuba I could be passive, tentative, and still be taken in, brought close to people. It is a place that is about people and intimacy. This is because they have nothing to lose, because they know what can't be taken away. They have been through something together, as a people, one nation under Fidel. There appears to be unity, even if it is only based on a wait-and-see attitude.

Here, patience is mixed with heat-induced laziness: what must be done can be accomplished from a seated position. This attitude expresses itself in the essential ability of all Cubans to hiss as a way to get your attention. We might think hissing is rude, but in Cuba, it is understood that the same pitched sibilant that draws the notice of cats and dogs work on humans as well. It takes some time to realize there is a different cultural aesthetic here.

It's not just men hissing to bother pretty girls. In a fancy restaurant, why attract your waitress with a subtle head tilt or crooked finger when a "Tsss!" will cut through any crowd's clatter? Like laser or sonar, the skillfully directed Cuban hiss can pinpoint and lock onto a target a hundred yards away, catching the attention of the desire person.

Hissing must work on some instinctive level-it's hard not to respond to it. Hawkers, mongers, pimps and other street hustlers in Havana whose livelihood depend on it, assume they can stop passing tourists in their tracks with a well-placed hiss.

All the Habaneros I met could dance salsa, meringue, casino and other complex partner-dances, they could play guitar and sing. It seemed almost genetic. It's there in the blood, in the air. I don't know if it went away with Castro and has recently returned, or if Cuba's decadence and pleasures were always there, and even heightened by restraints on so much of the rest of life. Music, dance, rum, coffee, cigars, and sex: the things Cuba still does best.

"Cuba holds on to its pleasures," one woman told me. "Sex is one thing Castro can't take away."