Submitted by James Williams on the 2017 winter session program in Cuba sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures…
The narrative of the United States when describing Cuba is one of a repressive, poor, generally miserable backwater, the victim of poor domestic policies. As the story goes, a totalitarian government dictates the lives of the peasantry, lives marked by poverty and irrational hatred of freedom and democracy. This depiction of the island is deeply flawed.
On arriving to Havana, we flew into Jose Marti International Airport, a modest airport by United States standards. The walls were plain, painted in simple colors, with no stores and advertisements like those which marked my departure from the United States. This is the first major shock I experienced: a total lack of advertisement for products in public spaces. We are so accustomed to the visual cues of consumerism that their absence and subsequent lack of societal collapse, leads one to question the social utility of such messages. The beauty of the countryside is certainly enhanced without golden arches. But these symbols are replaced by revolutionary artwork throughout the country. Billboards in reverence to the revolution and its main actors and the accomplishments of the Cuban state replace our consumerist messages, and appear in roughly the same frequency. These billboards do breed a certain cynicism – why must the people be reminded of the revolution and of Fidel’s brilliance so frequently – but what struck me most was the quality of the art in which the messages are conveyed: Imagine every single McDonald’s billboard in the United States being unique and produced by a local artist. Regardless of one’s political beliefs, there is much to be envious of in their system of advertisement.
After a short drive, we arrived at Havana. The city is a completely different world from the typical United States city. The rusty buildings, painted over in vibrant colors, display the architectural genius of the Cuban people. No two buildings are alike, especially in close proximity to one another. It is truly a vibrant city, full of color. The northern frontier of the city along the sea is fortified by a short, maybe 4 foot tall sea wall, the malecon. In certain locations, though, the malecon is unable to protect the city from the mighty waves of the Atlantic, leading to waves periodically crashing onto a major road.
To our U.S. sensibilities, this would inspire terror, or at least agitation, but the Cuban people feel no such anxiety towards the quality of their infrastructure. The sidewalks are cracked, in some places to the point of compromising their functionality. Most buildings have chipped paint or other blemishes. There is constant construction throughout the city. A shopping mall I visited had in some closed-off sections, a dirt floor.
Yet, the people live voraciously in spite of these deficiencies. There is poverty in Cuba, greater in absolute terms than in our country, but poverty is not concentrated in a few individuals. I have met one beggar in my eight days in the country. Nobody, not even the most wretched peasant, goes hungry. Homelessness is nowhere to be found. There are children playing soccer in the yard of a nearby school every time I walk past it. Every adult I have met can dance better than ten United States citizens combined, and dancing is a near-nightly activity.
In general, this is a country suffering from less alienation from life than the United States. Even in their poverty, the people laugh and play with a vigor I have not seen in the United States. El Hombre Nuevo, the concept of a new way of life based on moral incentive and passion thought of by Che Guevara, appears to have permeated throughout society, as arguably the most successful element of the revolution. The island, still an economic dependency of world powers, gained it’s first taste of pride in 1959, a pride that has not faded.
To conclude this entry, I want to address the supposed totalitarian nature of the Cuban State. In my view, it is certainly more repressive than our country, but not by much. People do not criticize their government as openly as we are allowed to. Lectures and presentations I’ve attended have emphasized outside sources of pain, in particular the blockade and the millions of dollars we spend sponsoring subversive elements, in their current state of affairs. But compared to the U.S. experience, they have merely acted slightly more on an attitude existing in all state societies. No civics class I had criticized the Constitution, even though it is clearly a flawed document. Contemporary issues in our society are not attributed to our system of governance, or other fundamental elements of our society. In short, what the Cuban people are prohibited from saying legally, we are prohibited from saying culturally.
This entry came out more politically than I intended, and I will describe my experiences in the country in the next two entries, but it is simply impossible to proceed without addressing this ideological divide between our countries.