I purchased Christopher Baker's Cuba Handbook which was very helpful in preparing for my trip. The book also described Cuba's obsession with their mulattas. Castro may be Cuba's icon but the mulatta is Cuba's national treasure.
On my second day, while riding around in a pedicab, we passed the young lady in the photo. I remarked to the cabby "Aye que linda mulatta." To my surprise the driver stopped and the young lady reversed direction and walked back towards us. Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman came to mind. She jumped into the cab to pose for a photo. Eliudmina was my travel companion and guide for two days in "Habana Vieja."
Forbidden Island
For American citizens the Helms-Burton Act makes it illegal to travel to Cuba at their own expense. The Law imposes civil fines of
I made reservations with a Mexican travel agency on a regular charter flight to Cuba. I was required to leave my passport with the agent who forwarded it to the Cuban Embassy who issued a visa. The Cuban government does not stamp the passport itself, instead it stamps a copy of the passport. When traveling in Cuba you must carry both your passport and the stamped copy at all times.
I left for Cuba aboard a flight from the Tijuana Airport on Sunday morning around 1 am. It made a stop-over in Monterrey arriving at Jose Marti Airport around 2 am, Cuba time, on Monday. As I entered the terminal seeing Cubans for the first time, chills ran up my arms. These were real people living in a communist state. Everything I had learned and everything I had been teaching about socialism would now be experienced in human terms.
I hailed a taxi and asked the driver to take me to a casa particular. We went to a house in the Vedado district. Orquidia, the owner of the house, gave me a very nice room for $25 a day. It was an exhausting sixteen hour trip from my home in Calexico so I unpacked, drew the curtains and went to bed.
Monday Afternoon
I awoke around noon and was anxious to see the sights. Orquidia's brother, who owned a taxi, took me to old Havana and dropped me off in front of the Capitolio, the former Chamber of Representatives and Senators, designed after our own Congress building. It now houses the Academy of Sciences and a collection of Cuban flora and fauna. One of the guides took me to the former Senate chambers where I got to stand at the speakers podium.
From the steps of the Capitolio I saw a huge line in front of the Payret theater across the street. Cubanos are avid movie goers so I wanted to see a movie with them. The movie was in Spanish and it was a Cuban movie about race relations and sex. It was about a family who discovers, to their surprise, that a negro who is courting a young female family member is related to her mother. It took a while to get the irony (that in all Cuban families there is a black) but the audience was breaking up over it and they were typically verbal throughout the entire movie.
After the movie I walked over to the Parque de la Fraternidad and got a pedicab to take me to a Paladar. The Paladares are privately run restaurants. They are shunned by Castro because they enrich the owners but tolerated because they bring in dollars. I invited the cabby to have lunch with me. I had a shrimp Coctel and he had fried chicken. It wasn't as inexpensive as suggested in the book. After lunch I went back to Orquidia's and got an overview of where to go and what to see.
La Rampa
I asked Orquidia where I should go that evening. She said I should walk down to La Rampa the tree lined district where most of the niteclubs and casinos were located before the revolution. The main street, Calle 23 rises steeply from the Malecon to the Havana Libre Hotel and the Parque Coppelia. La Rampa is where the young girls gather hoping to meet tourists who will take them out for a good time.
I found myself walking behind and admiring a couple of girls when a man coming in the opposite direction said out loud “Que cosas.” I said to him “Porque piensas que voy atras de ellas.” The girls turned and said to me “Nos quieres acompanar”? They said they were going for ice cream and I was welcome to come along. I asked where the best place to go and listen to Salsa music. They said they would take me.
They took me first to the Ache, a classy disco next to the Hotel Cohiba. Fortunately for me it was filled to capacity as it was very expensive. Then we went to the Palacio de Salsa in the Hotel Havana Riviera. It too was filled to capacity. We ended up at the Las Vegas Cabaret, a place more to my style and pocket book.
As we walked through the lobby we passed a line of pretty girls and even though I was accompanied by Cristina and Elisa they flirted unabashedly with me - one even pinching my behind. We were seated towards the back of a small and crowded room and we ordered Cuba Libres, of course. The musicians and costumed dancers were spectacular, all the more so because we were so close to the stage. Suddenly all the girls around me including Cristina and Elisa stood up and began dancing. The sight of undulating hips all around me was incredible. I truly believe no one can move their rear ends like Cubanas.
After the show everyone got up and went to the dance floor. While dancing Cristina turned around and bent over completely and backed into me all the while moving her rear. I backed away embarrassed but then noticed that all the girls were doing the same thing. Que viva Cuba. At closing, around 4 am, we left. The girls invited me to go home with them. They lived in a walkup on the third floor of what must have once been an office building. There was no kitchen, the bathroom was separated by a curtain and the kitchen was a table with a pan of water on top. The shower was actually a hose running from a faucet just outside the window. It was my first glimpse of poverty in Cuba and it made me very uncomfortable. Both girls were nurses but could barely get by on what the government paid them. We drank rum and fell asleep talking about life in Cuba. We awoke about 10 am said our goodbyes and I took a taxi back toOrquidia's. I took a shower and went back out to see the sights.