suburb of Vedado.
When you get to a new country, first impressions are often best. Waking up the following morning, at almost noon due to the musical cacophony in the lobby that went on till two, I began a relationship with a people who have the gift of seducing you for life. The city was a fiesta of joie de vivre, with music everywhere, and multifarious smells: from luxury aromas like cigars and coffee, to the whiff of the port in the background, and the pervasive odour of fried fat from carts selling pork crackling. A cart of oysters with hot sauce, another with oranges peeled round in strips (a local invention), coffee stalls on every corner, making endless cups, a stand with breaded fish fillets here, another with avocadoes and limes there. Flowers, fruit, freshly baked bread, strong cigarettes and cigars, very strong women’s perfumes, and so on. The city is full of aromas, each more tempting than the last.
Nobody dresses formally, Argentine-style, in a suit and tie. It would be crazy here, as well as looking ridiculous. The men wear white guayaberas or unbuttoned shirts outside their trousers. The trousers look like tents, enormously wide but tighter at the ankle. The women, their sinuous carnality exposed to furtive pursuers, painted like Japanese opera stars, part the crowd before them with their very presence. Everyone is armed, at least verbally. Buses, called guaguas, force their way through by blowing horns and screeching breaks. Lottery touts add their voices to vendors of other wares under arches, in galleries, on corners, and in squares. Two types of uniform stand out: olive green with a peaked cap could be either the rebel army or the police; blue grey with a beret is the newly created military police, which had made its debut at the Bay of Pigs. Beards are no longer in evidence since the new shaving law was introduced, with exceptions made for the historic barbudos of the ‘Granma’.
The general climate of enthusiasm was heightened by the May 1st celebrations the following day. Expectations were higher than usual because Fidel was giving his first speech since the Bay of Pigs. On the day itself, you only had to follow the sea of people with placards and kids on their shoulders, straw hats and uniforms, maracas and drums, a huge wave of people headed for the Plaza de la Revolución. The guerrilla leaders led the parade, arms linked at the head of a multitude of happy faces illuminated by patriotic fervour. ‘Cuba sí! Yanqui no!’ The red and black of the 26th of July Movement dominated the sea of banners, challenged only by the Cuban flag. The river of people was unstoppable, moving to the rhythms of guerrilla anthems, rousing songs, and voices shouting ‘Viva …’ and ‘Muerte …’. Reaching the square and getting near the platform seemed impossible. A mass of people converged in front of the (horrendous) statue to the apostle José Martí.
The May 1st celebration was the first mass demonstration I attended in Cuba. A million people, the papers said. In some ways it was like the Peronist demonstrations in the Plaza de Mayo, where I had never felt comfortable. Yet here the atmosphere was visually and psychologically different. Missing was that sense of menace that emanated from Perón’s descamisados, the lepers of Argentine politics as John William Cooke called them, who jumped and waved their headbands and ragged shirts, furiously banging their drums, as if to the scare the wits out of the Argentine bourgeoisie. In the Plaza de la Revolución there were no threatening dispossessed people fresh out of the shadows, smelling power. These were happy musicians, in a joyful parade.
The difference, of course, lay in the struggle to take power, in which the Cuban people had participated (although they didn’t all fight) while the Argentine masses had received it vicariously. The Argentines’ anger was still contained, their class-based rage unexpressed, compared to this pure joy of power achieved by passion and the sacrifice of lives. The only thing I remember of Fidel’s speech, which brought the event to a close, was the formal declaration of the socialist nature of the Revolution. It was, however, the most important bit. It opened a new and decisive phase in the struggle of the American people. A struggle I dreamed of joining.
But first I had to legalize my situation in Cuba. Picking one’s way through the mire of bureaucracy is always a prickly task, difficult anywhere. But in Cuba the bureaucratic machinery had been destroyed: no one knew anything; no one followed any logic or tradition; everything was new and pretty well improvised. Most positions of responsibility had been abandoned by people fleeing the revolutionary tide in panic, and taken over by youngsters with absolutely no experience. Administrators, company directors, heads of state enterprises and bodies vital to a functioning society were replaced by almost illiterate peasants and workers whose willingness and apparent honesty was their only skill. In some cases, they had absolutely no knowledge of the matters they were supposed to be dealing with. In others, one ideology was substituted with another – one caste destroyed and replaced by another diametrically opposed, implying a rapid and experimental reconstruction of a new order. Things now depended more on good will, luck and the energy that new decision makers brought to the job of deciding between the opportune and the opportunist, between the interests of the Revolution and urgent necessities. The chaotic situation was being run via ‘purity of origin’, that is, by ideological red corpuscles. The People’s Socialist Party, i.e. the Cuban communists, only recently incorporated into the triumphant ranks of the Revolution, now occupied the key posts. It filtered and selected personnel, including whole branches of the civil service, and had its eyes firmly set on the mechanisms of power. The rationale was that the PSP had to protect and strengthen the ranks of the Revolution, which had not only been openly attacked at the Bay of Pigs but was also being sabotaged daily both by Miami exiles and directly by the US government, which was diverting its efforts from military action to permanent terrorism.
The word gusano, meaning worm, became part of everyday parlance in describing counter-revolutionaries. In one of his speeches, Fidel talked of exiles being like gusanos in an apple, destroying the fruit of the people’s efforts and sacrifice. Miami was the dung heap where gusanos, who abandoned their country in its hour of need, ended up. Gusano attitudes, behaviour and even thoughts began to be detected, and dealt with like a pest, with ideological, verbal, written and armed pesticides. One method adopted for foreigners was to make them prove their political credentials, not freely and democratically, but in a sectarian and rigorously pro-communist way. Another more general measure was the creation of the Committees for Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), neighbourhood-watch organizations controlling the activities and lifestyles of the inhabitants of an area, block, or even street depending on the density of the population. They started life as a passive vigilante system, with no right to intervene, but morphed into a Hydra’s head, or Big Brother. Nothing escaped the gaze of the CDR. Depending on its make-up, it could help a neighbour with problems, or send him to prison.
Anyway, I needed to legalize my situation, and find a job. I began the exhausting task of running round offices and official bodies. I had no friends or contacts. We ended up in ICAP (the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples of the World). I met the director, my first senior official in the state apparatus, Ramón Calcines, a communist. He was quite young, and very handsome, like the star of a gangster film. He sent me on my way cordially, assuring me they would find something, we would be useful somewhere, all hands were welcome, etc. In these grave times for Cuba, he said, they were grateful to foreign volunteers. ‘But who are you, chico? See that little compañera, she’ll take your details, then we’ll see. Patria o muerte!’ The little compañera, a mulatta poured into clinging olive green, explained that I had to bring credentials from ‘my’ party, to add to my CV. Meanwhile she would find me something. I left wondering how I would get round my lack of credentials. The job the little compañera found me was temporary, but I had to start somewhere. The Cubans were hosting the first industrial exhibition from the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia and they needed designers, decorators, painters, etc. – a field where we could be useful. ‘And your credentials, mi amor?’ I explained that I had sent off for them – which was not exactly true – and that it would take time to get a reply. ‘But chico, without credentials, the Turquino looks tiny next to our problems!’ Turquino is the highest peak in the Sierra Maestra.
On the road to Rancho Boyeros there is an industrial zone with huge exhibition halls where the Czech exhibition
