I am posting this from the state-run internet office ( but no picture uploading --that will have to wait until I get to Puerto Rico I am afraid) in Santa Clara, site of the famous train derailment on 28 December 1958 which made Che Guevera the star he is. The city is full of gap year Che-admiring backpackers. I am staying in a hideous seven story mint green concrete block monstrosity which is the only tourist hotel. However even it has Che connections (see below).
I have had lots of adventures since I left Havana on Monday--flat tyres, backyard repairshops, mountain passes on dirt roads, wandering pigs and goats on the road, hustlers galore, and lots of hitch-hikers --nine today if you count the 4 week old baby on his way to the clinic in the main town with his parents.
Hitchhiking is a way of life for Cubans. This is understandable when you discover that fuel costs $70 a tank for a small hatchback and the average monthly salary is $25. Aside from hitchhiking, horse and cart or just horse seems to be the favourite mode of transport. Apparently at the beginning of the "special period"when the Soviet Union collapsed and left Cuba to find another sugar daddy, Castro imported bicycles from China. However I get the impression that bicycles are not regarded as manly since you don't see nearly as many as one would expect. People seem to prefer the horse or the hitchhike rather than the bike.
The land is beautiful: lush and fertile. The light in Cuba seems to give a soft golden glow to everything. It is not harsh and does not dazzle as it dos on many Caribbean islands. Although there are ranges of low mountains (about 2500 to 3000 feet is about as high as they get) there are vast expanse of flat or rolling country and wide valleys between the rolling hills, ideal for farming.
Cuba has 11 million people and a quarter of them live in Havana. This means that the countryside is sparsely populated. And Cuba is a very big island. Cuba is primarily a rural and diversified agrarian economy, the like of which you don't see much in the first or second world any more. There does not seem to be a lot of manufacturing, even around Havana, although I have seen a few factories belching smoke near Cienfuegos on the central south coast. The towns outside of Havana are not large--200,000 or so.
You can see that the Cubans are excellent farmers: the fields are expertly ploughed with a brace of oxen and a hand plough and teh rows of crops are neatly planted and flourishing. The soil is bright red in the west in Pinar Del Rio and a rich brown here in central Cuba. The vegetation is subtropical to tropical--sugar cane, pineapple, bananas, mangoes, guava, papaya are all grown as crops. The royal palm, the national tree, is everywhere. Pigs,cows, and goats abound--grazing beside the road or tethered under a tree in the yards, all the picture of health. Pork seems to be ther favourite meat and every little house in the country has a pig or two squealing and snuffling and snorting in the yard--all "organic" of course, not a battery farm to be seen. The oxen are without exception beautiful animals and clearly treasured because without there efforts there would be no ploughing and no crops.
The only animal which does nto seem to be so well cared for are the horses. Horses (and a few mules), whether ridden or used with a buggy or a cart, seem to be the primary means of transport for short distances (longer distances are done by hitchhiking or on the black diesel-belching rural buses), and heavy goods are moved in enormous 1950s vintage trucks. I've only seen one what I would call modern transport truck since I arrived. Some horses are beautifully cared for with shiny coats and brushed manes--especially those ridden by the cowboys. (I am sure that is not what they call themselves but that is exactly what they look like with their leathery tanned skin and cowboy hats.) Other horses however are quite pitiful creatures with matted coats and bony hips and ribs.
Housing in the villages and the countryside is very "basic"--no electricity or running water of course, and many are just wooden shacks. The more well to do have brick or more likely concrete block one story square bungalows (although to call them bungalows is too grand for what they are). Many are thatched with palm fronds, expecially in the west. But most have a front porch set with chairs to sit on and watch the world go by. It is likely that the outsides of these houses is deceiving. In the towns the streets are lined with single story row houses which look very unprepossessing. However when you look in their windows at night or through their open doors you see spacious rooms with antique mahogany furnitues and lace tablecloths--and more often than not a colour TV on at full blast. I also had the interesting experience of visiting a suburban house to have my flat tyre fixed (that is another long story!) and was able to see first hand the extensive back garden behind the modest concrete block house, and the tyre repair workshop on the back patio and the simple but comfortable furnishings.The workshop reminded me of the one my father used to have in our backyard in Canada when I was a child. And that was in the 1950s.
And that says it all. Aside from the televisions it dosn't seem that anything has moved much since 1959. Cuba must be one of the countries with the least penetration of cell phones. I have only seen two since I arrived.electricity is in short supply leading to a very eco-friendly lifestyle--very little street lighting and almost no neon, houses dimly lit with one lamp and a low energy light bulb.
It is all rather a culture shock, even for me. But for me it is a little of deja vue because there are things that I haven't seen since I was a child.
You read that Castro succeeeded in raising the literacy of the population to over 95% in a matter of a few years and instituted a first class health service. Well I think that remains the case. There is a school every few blocks and looking inside the doors and windows of the schools you can see that hey are humming with orderly activity and classrooms full of children listenting attentively. The childrens are neatly uniformed in their burgundy or gold skirts or trousers, white blouses or shirts and their blue or burgundy neck scarves. They seem enthusiastic and keen ---I had the privilege of observing a group of school children with their teachers at a special entertainment. None of your bored blase sneering cynical western children here--they participated with enthusiasm and paid rapt attention,ignoring the goggling tourists. Health clinics also abound in every small town. I observed a couple of young western backpackers one of whom had cut his foot. He was whisked off by a white coated nurse for treatment, no questions asked.
What Cuba does not have is natural resources. The cruel vagaries of tectonic plate shifts which bestowed vast oil riches n Venezuela and in the Texas Gulf have left poor little Cuba with none. And that is its Achilles heel. Without oil it cannot fuel its transport or light its buildings or run its factories and so is destined to remain an agrarian society. Even those countries friendly to Cuba must think twice before sending in supplies--any ship that docks in Cuba is barred from American ports for 6 months.
Back to Santa Clara, the site of the decisive battle in the Revolution when Che Guevera and his small band derailed a government train carrying mercenaries and armaments which were intended to take on Fidel Castro and his band of revolutionaries in the Sierra Maestra near Santiago de Cuba. The day after the derailment Batista fled to the Dominican Republic and the revolutionaries made their triumphant way to Havana. The entire town of Santa Clara, at least from a tourists perspective is a shrine to Che. There is a museum of boxcars on the site of the derailment. On the outskirts of the town is a huge memorial with a mausoleum where Che's remains are, recovered from Bolivia where he was shot in 1967 on CIA orders. Even my ghastly hotel has bullet holes in the walls. At the time of the Revolution it was brand new and the height of 1950s luxury so that is where the military officers stayed.
There is no doubt that Che--and Fidel--must have been tremendously charismatic in their day and they represented --or caught--the mood of the time. But there is nothing on show that postdates 1970. How much longer the Cubans will be prepared to live off past glories remains to be seen. However Fidel has pulled rabbits out of hats before--for example the Pope's visit in 1998 at the worst depths of the "special period" of deprivation after the abandonment by the Soviet Union, was a public relations master stroke and typical of the Castro brothers' sense of good timing. I wouldn't be surprised if Fidel has one more rabbit waiting to be produced with a flourish.
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