HAVANA NOTES

“These charges are totally false, and I deny them categorically”….Adlai E. Stevenson, American Ambassador to the United Nations

At a press conference on April 12, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced that “the United States unequivocally had no intention of intervening in Cuban affairs”. Five days later, the Bay of Pigs invasion began. The Cuban ambassador accused the United States of direct involvement in the invasion. Mr. Stevenson appeared before the United Nations General Assembly, and thundered his denials. Within hours, the truth began to emerge. Stevenson was humiliated. His credibility never recovered. He later learned that Kennedy referred to him as ” my official liar”.

I was reminded of this particularly unsuccessful example of American interventionism 10 days ago when my wife Cathy and I were walking along the road from the Casablanca ferry dock on the eastern side  Havana’s harbor to the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, the old Spanish fort that guards the harbor entrance. It was a bit of a hike, perhaps a mile and a half. About midway along the road, we passed the Plaza de Armas, a public display of Cuban military armament. Several mobile cannons were parked on either side of an old Mig 21 jet fighter, and miscellaneous other big guns. Just a few yards further along there was a separate display, the wreckage of an “imperialist” airplane, including most of one wing bearing USAF lettering. It wasn’t clear if this was a permanent display, or if the government had set it up to mark the 56th anniversary of the invasion. When we first visited Cuba two years ago, we went to the Bahia de Cochinas museum. The museum contained a small theater where a continuous film loop played the old newsreel tape of Stevenson’s performance before the United Nations. It was a singularly disconcerting experience to sit there as a guest in a country whose government our government tried its damndest to overthrow and watch our ambassador lie through his teeth.

We left Key West bound for Havana on the morning of April 4th with our friends Pat and Hannah aboard their beloved ” Rita T”. After an easy over night sail, we arrived off the Cuban coast at dawn. An hour or so later we tied up to the customs dock, and were promptly greeted by various officials, including a nurse who took our temperatures with an electronic thermometer. If you had a fever, you were not going to be allowed to enter the country. Once the paperwork was processed, we motored to our assigned berth. A few minutes later, just as I was popping the top of my end- of- voyage cervaza, we were boarded by two agriculture inspectors. They gave the boat a cursory inspection, noting the presence of several apparently banned substances like meat and vegetables. A 10 dollar contribution to the agriculture inspector’s benevolent fund alleviated their concerns, and they went happily on to the next boat.

Such requests for ” presents” were common, but never made in a threatening manner, and if politely refused no harm was done. These requests illustrated a basic fact of Cuban life. The citizenry cannot survive on the monthly allowance the government provides, so everyone must develop strategies to earn extra income. For the inspectors and other marina employees, those strategies include asking for “presents”. Another common strategy involves currency exchange. The Cuban financial system has basically two different currencies, the CUC and the CUP. The CUC is the currency used mostly by tourists. I CUC is roughly equivalent to 1 dollar. The official exchange rate is 87%, meaning that when you present 100 dollars to the clerk at the official exchange office you get 87 CUCs. Virtually everyone you meet offers to exchange dollars for CUCs at 90%, every such transaction being completely illegal but universally expected.

Old Havana is like Bourbon street…there is music everywhere. The entire city seems to shimmy with syncopation, a delicious rhythmic soup, part Latin, part African, part jazz, part everything.  The taxis don’t roll down the streets, they rhumba.  We spent our last day in the old city walking around listening to music.  Almost every restaurant featured a guitar playing trio.  In one hotel lobby, a man who had to be 80 if he was a day tickled the ivories.  Cathy ended up playing the maracas with a trio in a little paladar.  (I have that on tape and can’t wait to play it for her daughters.)  The music pours out through the windows and doors.  It seems to seep up from the storm drains.  Every Sunday, in the Calejon de Hamel, a narrow alley about 150 yards long, a party starts around noon.  Havana has about 2 million inhabitants, and it seems like every one of them is jammed into the Calejon, squished together  passengers in a Japanese subway.  The setting is spectacular.  The alley is enclosed on either side by apartment buildings.  Murals painted on the building walls rise from the street level 4 or 5 stories to the rooftops.   People and laundry hang from the balconies.  The conga drummers start drumming and the whole mass of humanity starts to wiggle  back and forth.  The dancers take turns revving the crowd higher and higher.    Orishas, Santeria dieties, are everywhere.  Languages from the world over mix in a kind of frenetic babel . . . and then the party starts!

Havana has a serious problem, however, a problem that our friend Mr. Pruitt, the new head of the EPA, ought to go see firsthand.  The problem is air pollution.  There are no emission controls on the thousands of old cars and buses that daily belch clouds of exhaust fumes into the municipal atmosphere.  By our fourth day there many of the folks that sailed over with us were complaining of scratchy throats, burning sinuses and bloodshot eyes.  The architecture is beautiful, but the beauty is dulled by a thin film of soot that covers the walls of the old colonial buildings.  Havana is blessed by the northeast trade winds that blow most of the pollution on toward Mexico.  When the winds go light however all that exhaust stays right down on the street.  One can’t help  but think that any big city in the USA would be just like Havana, if it weren’t for the EPA.  And even though I really tried not to think about the current political situation here at home, I  just couldn’t help feeling a growing frustration with every breath I took.  Trump’s environmental vision of the future is 90 miles south of Key West, where the fumes are slowly  choking a city to death.