Chiquita” for its revolutionary fervor, Regla transcends time and space when you step from the still-rocking boat. Suddenly, you’re in a small Cuban town in the countryside where pedestrians outnumber cars and many homes are listing wooden structures with signs reading “esta es tu casa, Fidel,” hanging askew on the front door. Regla is also known as a Santería hotspot. As soon as you disembark, you’ll see the spire of the Iglesia de Nuestra Señora de Regla, housing the black Madonna (La Santísima Virgen de Regla). She’s a powerful deity, representing Yemayá, orisha of the sea and heartily worshipped, particularly on her saint day, September 8, when thousands come to this church to pay their respects and the Virgin is carried through the town’s narrow streets. On any given day, you can have your future read via shells by devotees outside the church. Leave some time to wander the narrow streets, where you can drink pru, a spicy concoction with a secret formula famous in Cuba’s eastern provinces. Folks from Regla are extraordinarily friendly—grab a bench in the town’s central park for a little mingling.
FOR ART LOVERS, COLLECTORS, AND CURATORS, Cuba is Paradise. There are museums, galleries, private studios, public art, installations, and performances all across the country, enriched by international events including the Bienal de la Habana (see Chapter 85), Holguín’s Romerías de Mayo, and workshops at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA, see Chapter 25). The last, Cuba’s equivalent to New York’s Julliard (and free for aspiring Cuban artists), is largely responsible for training and educating generations of the island’s top talent.
In fact, there’s a saying here that if you turn over a rock, half a dozen talented artists will run out—and this isn’t simply Cuban hyperbole. While artists can be found in every village, town, and mountain hamlet, certain cities are known for their concentration of fabulous art and artists, such as Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, and of course, Havana. In the Cuban capital, the top places to see art under one roof are the Cuban collection at the Museo de Bellas Artes (see Chapter 21) and the Fábrica de Arte Cubano (see Chapter 30); the best location to buy art for its wide selection from exquisite to kitsch, is the Almacén de San José, a repurposed warehouse with hundreds of different artists and types of art; and the most accessible place to see art being created (and where you can buy what strikes your fancy), is the Taller Experimental de Gráfica.
Founded in 1962, this working lithographic studio in the heart of Habana Vieja is a fun place to visit even if you’re not in the market for original Cuban art. Tucked away at the end of a small, cobblestone alley (shared with Doña Eutimia, voted by Newsweek as one of the world’s top 100 restaurants) in the Plaza de la Catedral, Cuban printmakers create marvels under the languid spin of ceiling fans here every day. The air is thick with the stink of ink and paint, laced with the piquant aroma of uncut Cuban cigarettes, but it’s tolerable thanks to the large open space, high ceilings, and positive energy the workshop radiates. The artists here—some self-taught novices, others formally trained and established—are usually happy to chat about their process and craft and will show you around. There’s a small gallery upstairs and most of the limited-series prints are for sale. Visitors in town for a month or more should inquire about the printmaking workshops here. Offered regularly, they’re affordable and make a great excuse to play with ink and prints while scratching below the surface of Havana and experiencing Cuba more profoundly than most. Participants will take away memories of a lifetime and a dozen prints of their own creation.
WOMEN HAVE PLAYED A PIVOTAL role in the Cuban Revolution from before the final victory in 1959 until right now, as I type this. There’s Vilma Espín, who marshalled resources and organized personnel for the guerrilla war and founded the Cuban Women’s Federation (FMC); Espín’s daughter Mariela Castro, who directs the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and leads the fight against homo- and transphobia; the tens of thousands of women and girls who taught the country to read and write during the Literacy Campaign; and the genius scientists of the country’s biotechnology sector, who developed unique vaccines and therapies unavailable anywhere else in the world. And then there’s Haydeé Santamaría. Her life story is heroic, tragic, epic—and eternal, thanks to her bravery and intellectual acumen.
The Cuban Revolution officially got underway during the 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, launched from the Granjita Siboney (see Chapter 68). Two women took up arms in that seminal event: Melba Hernández and Haydeé Santamaría. One of the masterminds of the attack was Haydeé’s brother, Abel Santamaría, who was captured, tortured (they cut out his eyes), and killed by thugs in the employ of dictator Fulgencio Batista. Meanwhile, Haydeé and other survivors went to prison on the Isle of Pines (now the Isla de la Juventud; a visit to the Presidio Modelo where they were jailed makes for a spooky, solitary experience—see Chapter 100). In another turn of luck for the nascent movement, the prisoners were granted amnesty and released, prompting Fidel Castro to deliver his monumental History Will Absolve Me speech; Melba and Haydeé edited, printed and distributed the tract clandestinely. After their release, the motley crew regrouped, went to Mexico, and formalized the Movimiento 26 de Julio (M-26-7), the revolutionary body responsible for all that ensued following the Moncada attack (you’ll see black and red M-26-7 flags flying on historical dates). Haydeé followed the directorate to Mexico where plans were laid to topple Batista and fought in the Sierra Maestra alongside Fidel, Raúl, Che, and their crew.
History Will Absolve Me, the speech that launched a revolution, is widely available in reprint.
Not long after revolutionary troops entered Havana, hailing triumph, Haydeé established the Casa de las Américas to disseminate and promote Latin American and Caribbean art and literature. One of the hemisphere’s most respected cultural centers, the Casa de las Américas is housed in a beautiful art deco building on Calle G near the Malecón. “Casa,” as its fondly called, hosts free concerts, book launches, and poetry readings, publishes books and magazines, has an art gallery and library, and each year bestows the coveted Casa de las Américas prize for literature. Haydeé headed the Casa de las Américas for two decades during a time when the intellectual and artistic environment in Cuba was turbulent, reactionary, and random. In the early years, censors worked overtime, prohibiting films, closing magazines, and firing intellectuals. The proverbial shit hit the fan when Cuban poet Heberto Padilla won the Casa prize for a collection of poems in 1968; though the book was published in Cuba by the state-run press, not long thereafter, Fidel Castro pronounced “dentro de la Revolución, todo; contra la Revolución, nada” (inside the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing) in a meeting with artists and intellectuals. Padilla’s poems were subsequently deemed “outside the Revolution.” This signaled the death knell for his career and he was sent to jail, released only after issuing a humiliating public apology.
A dark chapter in the history of the Cuban revolution, the “Padilla affair” kicked off what is known as the “quinquenio gris”—the five-year “gray period” when writers and artists were shackled by rules regulating content. Many left Cuba and today folks still reference the quinquenio gris, sometimes opining that it lasted more like ten years. This episode overlapped with
