had mixed feelings about Americans, or Yanquis as they called them. On the one hand, the present situation, with invasions, sabotage, blockade, and other acts of aggression, made them hate the Gringos and support the Revolution. On the other hand, they secretly admired them. All their most popular images, from movies, to Cadillacs, gangsters, cowboys, skyscrapers, millionaires and chewing gum, were American, creating a subliminal belief that the Americans were superior beings. Added to which, even deeper down, a real fear of the Russians kept raising its head, much to the despair of Cucho who had to dispel the myth that communists stole children. Apparently the story of the Spanish ‘war children’ taken to the Soviet Union under an agreement with the Republic, with the idea of saving them from Fascism, was ingrained in the minds of the world’s Catholics. Not only were children stolen, they were pickled and eaten.
No matter what historical event came up, we spent the allotted time discussing it. The meetings were lively, full of avid participants who came religiously on the appointed days, and even started coming prepared with questions, and contradictions. Looking back, I can see I had become a kind of Pope without a script, acting outside the rigorous restrictive canons of a party organization. We had said there would be open debate, and there was. The point was to extract, from the clash of history and reality, a positive take on the Revolution, of the tasks it proposed, of the sacrifices being demanded of them, yes, even of them, the poorest class of all. The revolutionary leadership was setting the example. There was no abuse, no rank, no privilege. The leaders worked day and night, with practically no sleep. The age of miracles had descended on the island, and the miracle was honesty. The weekly discussions – jokingly called ‘the yaguas Forum’ – were noticed, and my political stock shot up in Rita’s eyes. Not as far as ‘President’ Fontana was concerned, however. He gave me a deadline to fix my residence in Cuba (as he had some significant control over me).
The workshop meanwhile, with its spanking new roof and two working kilns, was ready to start production. We had already made crockery prototypes, and were experimenting with moulds for the liquid clay. The burners had already arrived. On my first free Saturday I had been to Moa, a village on the north coast, to talk to the Soviet engineers at the nearby nickel plant. They kept themselves to themselves, wrapped in nostalgia, well provided with musical instruments, books and records, in a nice, although isolated, house on the beach. They had a smattering of Spanish so between them they had managed my questions and answers, greeting my appeal for technical help with the burners enthusiastically. It had taken a whole afternoon to explain exactly what I wanted.
They did not mix much with the other foreign professionals living there, but they did mention an Argentine couple who were doctors. On my second visit, I had been to see this couple who invited me to dinner. We talked into the night, our good spirits fuelled by a few beers. While her husband was making coffee, the young female doctor said something that struck a chord with my latent feeling of unease. ‘I see you’re very excited about the Revolution, Ciro. Your disillusionment will be very painful, I’m afraid. Communists are coming out of the woodwork like mice, taking over everything, to get at the cheese.’ The phrase remained engraved in my memory like a hieroglyphic chiselled in granite. It was only her opinion, of course, but they had been sent by the Argentine Communist Party so this inside-take on things surprised me. Their being suspicious about why I was in Cuba was perhaps part of a general continental-wide policy, to impose ideological control and situate the Cuban Revolution within the Cold War: a policy of the Communist International.
Melchor, our administrator, talked to me about his future during our long nights on guard duty. He wasn’t happy doing office work and, like all those in the shadow of the generation that won the war in the mountains (and the city), he felt none of the jobs available brought him closer to Mount Olympus. He and Xiomara, his skeletal girlfriend, believed, like the youngsters in Russia in 1917, that the Revolution was a time for creativity and giving art free rein. They dreamed that once the state had solved production problems by recuperating their legitimate means, and faced the basic challenges of the new society, like education (which it was doing), housing and health, etc., it would prioritize culture, and this would be a springboard for launching Cuba into the first world, not in the banal GDP sense, but in terms of Art, Cinema and Literature. Melchor wanted to study theatre and had heard that the university in Santiago, on the other side of the Sierra Maestra, was going to open a theatre school at the start of the 1962 school year. He wanted me to help him leave the workshop and register for the preparatory course. But it was nearly the end of the year, and the kilns were working. Not an easy moment.
The first time the big kiln reached 1,100 degrees and was working to capacity, I was overjoyed. I cooled it down slowly overnight and went to bed in the morning, leaving Cucho on guard. I wanted to be there with the whole staff when the oven was finally opened. One refractory box had broken along with some pieces in other boxes, but in the main everything was intact. The colour of the clay was beautiful, albeit a slightly paler red, and the black, blue and grey were very successful despite being imperfectly applied. I tapped the pots with the tips of my fingers, the sound was perfect. We all played tunes on the cups, plates and jars, in a concert of joy and pride. And confidence. What I had promised had come to pass, warts and all.
Rita finally gave Melchor permission to leave for Santiago on condition he returned for a few days each month to do the workshop’s books. We celebrated New Year with our new friends, poor but with the warmest of hearts. For the first few months of the New Year the tension between Fontana and me was mitigated because the workshop was running well. All the same, his deadline was approaching. Then Fidel appeared on TV and made a furious attack on Aníbal Escalante, the most hard-line Stalinist in the old Communist Party, a member of the ORI’s national leadership and the visible face of the sectarianism sweeping through the political and administrative bodies. I felt a great relief at this dismantling, albeit temporarily, of Stalinism.
When the workshop was running smoothly, Melchor introduced a discordant note. The rector of his art school in Santiago wanted me to come and teach art, or art appreciation to be more precise. The students needed to learn about art, its history, its significance and transcendence. I appreciated the offer, but I declined. I barely had time to sleep. I couldn’t even leave the workshop to teach in Holguín, let alone on the other side of the Sierra Maestra. Melchor came back with another proposal. If classes were on Saturday and Sunday, I could travel on Friday night, teach on Saturday and Sunday morning, and return late on Sunday night. I don’t know what possessed me to try it. Perhaps the example set by Melchor’s determination. After all, I had not come to Cuba to be a potter.
The road to Santiago wound through hills and cane fields. The last fifty kilometres were breathtaking. The Sierra Maestra was like a botanical garden, totally green, with palm trees leaning at a variety of angles, elegant dancers in a choreography created by the cyclones that pound the mountains and flatten the forest. The River Cauto crossed the road a couple of times. The city of Santiago appeared below the road and extended out round the bay, following the contours of the mountains. Looking for my hotel, I felt as if I were in New Orleans, seeing the same type of buildings, broad-walks with railings, and wrought-iron balconies, and because most of the lively crowd were black and it was hard to tell if they were walking or dancing. The next morning Melchor took me to the university campus.
The Faculty of Medicine had lent the Theatre School some of its classrooms. The students were different from my political audience in Holguín: they were more interested and dynamic, and focused on the context and tasks of the Revolution seen through the prism of art. But like the workshop, it was my responsibility to mould this pure young clay, not knowing either if I was up to the job or what the results would be. Again I felt as if everything I said was received like desert rain, and it was my duty to make it drinkable, not ideologically or aesthetically contaminated. By general consent, the classes were organized around slides and art books, arranged in periods, schools, countries and cultures. We would have our work cut out. There was also a bit of colour theory, drawing, perspective, volume and some practical exercises.
On my second week in Santiago, I heard there was an Argentine looking for me.
