wanted to build a country-wide tourist infrastructure and invest in new areas. It decided to revive traditional handicrafts that were of little practical use but had anthropological value and would generate jobs for local people. Ornaments made of hemp, shells and precious wood were common in Cuba, but in Oriente province there was also an original pottery-making tradition. It no longer made everyday utensils but the INIT wanted to revive it to make ceramic handicrafts. The Mexican girl knew the head of the project. He had asked her to study the possibility of setting up a workshop in Holguín, a town on the north coast of Oriente. The problem was that her already limited anthropological knowledge was theoretical, and she knew nothing at all about making clay pots.
Coincidentally, I had worked with ceramics on two occasions and had gleaned a basic knowledge. A fellow student at Mendoza Art School also attended the university’s School of Ceramics and he used to bring his creations round to my house. I got interested in the technique and ended up going to the workshops with him. I watched him prepare and apply varnish, glaze and various other combinations, depending on the desired degree of plasticity and hardness. Later, in Buenos Aires, I helped a colleague of my wife’s build an elaborate circular pottery kiln, with saggars (refractory containers) and moulds for liquid clay and clay paste, so we could produce whole series of pots by casting.
The Mexican girl thought she had won the lottery. She told me her boss was interested in my know-how. We went to see the project director, a sweaty Swiss weighing 120 kilos, in black suit, shirt and tie, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. I explained I was not a professional technician, that my knowledge was purely empirical. He seemed to have sussed the calibre of the staff he already had, and after a good chat decided that, compared to them, I was a genius. He offered me the job of running the handicrafts workshop in Holguín. This meant leaving Havana and potential contacts, but it also meant getting to know the interior of the island and the real Cuban people: the campesinos, the guajiros. What’s more, Oriente was the cradle of the Revolution. I took the job.
There was a diesel train that took ten hours to do the 700 kilometres between Havana and Holguín, but it was worth it. Going out into the countryside is to begin to know Cuba. The modern world of Havana, luxurious and fickle, disappears as you leave the city limits. The towns and cities of the interior are decidedly colonial, with a marked African influence, not only in the people, as in Havana, but in the streets, the houses, the balconies with washing hanging, the galleries, verandahs, raised pavements, signs, shops, curiosity and noisy brouhaha.
Holguín province seemed a little different, and I soon realized why. It is an agricultural region like most of Cuba, but the land is richer, with meadows, woods, beaches, large sugar mills and a semi-feudal society based on sugar cane. It also has the island’s most important nickel reserves. The city of Holguín is orderly and quiet. The poor – cane cutters and seasonal labourers in the sugar mills, and a whole range of unemployed, underemployed and destitute – have been pushed to the southern outskirts of the city, to a huge shanty town made of yaguas, palm branches and bark precariously tied to poles for the hut roofs and walls, and stones to hold the thatches down.
The first thing I did after arriving at my Holguín hotel was to go out and get my bearings. The city was built round a central tree-filled square, with paved roads stretching for two or three blocks, more built up to the north away from the highway. It seemed very pleasant, but there was not much to see. I went into a café for a coffee, my breakfast in those days. The people who ran the café were my first friends. The second thing I had to do was sort out the so-called infrastructure of my new life.
The solution to everything depended on slotting into the bureaucratic organogram, acquiring full rights and obligations. Apart from the traditional official bodies like the municipality, public works, electricity and water, etc., there were the new ones which called all the shots. Urban reform, agrarian reform, confiscated assets, CDRs (the committees for the defence of the Revolution), militias, literacy brigades, were all part of an entity called Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI) that wielded absolute power. It had been created by merging the organizations that had fought (the guerrillas’ 26th of July Movement and the Student Directory) with those that had dithered (the communists of the PSP). The latter, however, got their cadres in place first.
In Oriente, the ORI-northern region was run by a communist, Rita Díaz, the power behind the throne, and a redhead to boot. She was not very tall, chubby but shapely, and mysteriously fitted into tight olive green fatigues and blue militia shirt. With her hair caught in a sort of loose bun under a green beret, she looked more like a French resistance fighter than a tropical miliciana. She was very temperamental but had a good sense of humour, was both friendly and energetic, and highly expeditious. She put her weight behind the handicrafts workshop from the start and promised to help us find staff among people she trusted. Meanwhile, Claudia and I had to find a house, furnish it, join the militia and, of course, do political work. We would stay in touch with her. ‘That’s great, chico! An Argentine like Che … the most beautiful man in the Revolution!’ she said as she waved goodbye with a ‘come and eat at my house’, but no firm date.
A young lawyer, Evelio Rodríguez, was in charge of Urban Reform in Holguín. For our workshop, he suggested a former fruit farm: an enormous old house with two interior patios and a large piece of land behind. It would be fine. Repairs to the floors and roof were needed, but it was do-able. For Claudia and me, Evelio picked an apartment half a block from the main square, and no more than three blocks from the workshop. It was on the first floor, with stairs straight down to the street where, as if to mitigate our nostalgia, there was a tree, the only one on the block. It was not very big but satisfied our somewhat bourgeois need for comfort, and its excellent bathroom met with immediate approval. Large transparent lizards wandered over the frosted glass, but Evelio said they were the best line of defence against mosquitoes. We went to choose some furniture and the following day the house was just about habitable.
Within a week there was a rhythm to my work. It was hard – seven in the morning to twelve at night on normal days – but absorbing. I was the boss, but also the bricklayer, carpenter and designer: removing roofs to replace woodwork and broken tiles, knocking down walls, making a bathroom, connecting the plumbing, installing electricity (under electric company supervision) or painting white walls. Cuba was almost totally dependent on imported materials and our work showed how far its commercial sector had deteriorated. As stocks ran out there was no way of replenishing them. There was a shortage of nails, screws, wire, plaster, fuses, files, etc., so finding materials was the first battle.
I joined the militia, training a couple of days a week and doing night guard duty in official buildings or important work places. This general level of vigilance was not only necessary, it was also a way of mobilizing people on a political level. It played havoc with productivity at work, however. I could see how elastic timetables were, and although I used firm rational arguments, it had no effect. To make things worse, after the Bay of Pigs the army produced an emergency plan for defending Holguín in case of attack, not an entirely crazy idea given the city’s strategic position on the north coast. It comprised encircling the town with three or four lines of trenches to be dug by voluntary milicianos, better at digging holes than being soldiers. This pick and spade job was done on (Red) Sundays until five in the afternoon. It flayed your hands but included a free lunch.
All problems to do with the workshop went straight to Rita, that is, to the ORI, the powerhouse of the Revolution. No cement in the building material yards? Go and find Rita. No rivets? Rita will phone someone; ‘What the hell’s happened to those rivets, chico?’ That’s how we did the impossible for the first few months.
The Swiss director, who seemed to live in his huge Lincoln Continental, appeared at least once a month, surrounded by economists and planners from JUCEPLAN, the Central Planning Board, an entity in charge of reorganizing the economy and educating cadres. It meant a wasted day. And not only for us, because these crazy economists applied undigested Soviet models, from an economic system of which they knew neither the internal workings nor the results, as we eventually saw when
