Preparation

May 1^st is Labor Day in Cuba. To celebrate the occasion, the people of Havana congregate to street Paseo and march down the street in a parade. People divide up by their work-place, carrying posters and signs representing their vocation. People also march with posters of historical Cuban figures, or of course, Fidel Castro.

While the general sentiment of the march may have been similar to the José Martí torch march that I participated on January 28^th that I noted in my blog One week in, I felt a lot different in this Labor Day parade than I did in the torch march. Re-reading my old blog, I realize that I had been extremely naïve about the showcased enthusiasm that I saw at the José Martí march. I had seen it as an expression of socialism enthusiasm, but now I know that there’s a lot more complexity than just complete support; the youth, for one, is generally not very happy about the government.

My host mom told me that in the first decades of the socialist revolution, Labor Day Parades did have a lot of attraction because people wanted to go to the parade and genuinely celebrate the day of the workers. Each small block district used to rally up people to meet up in the morning, and head to the parade together. However, over time, with disillusionments and failures, interest in the parades started to fade. It got to a point that only three people would show up to some district aggregation points to go to the parade, and it got almost embarrassing. Eventually, the government altered the structure of the parade such that people would congregate by their companies and march with them, making the parade more of a custom than an actually self-motivated event.

The parade happens at 7am, for good reason, since it can already be excruciatingly hot here in Cuba at this time of year. However, since it’s so early, many people don’t feel like going. My friend Javier, who works at a biology lab, said that he really didn’t want to go, but he still had to because he didn’t want to get in trouble. Certainly, the parade seemed to showcase unenthused participants. Many people were just walking with their headphones on, without particularly paying attention to the event itself. In one case, a uniformed ministry worker was walking head down with earphones, and a nearby senior worker told him to take his earbuds out. It was somewhat of a strange thought that the parade was a celebration for the workers, but that the workers needed to get up earlier than ever, still get in uniforms and attend the parade with all their co-workers.

Although certainly many many people are still supportive of the socialist system and are thankful for it, there is definitely a good population that is not completely content with it. My program has been largely focused on showing us the official Cuban government perspective, and it took me time to get to know some Cuban youth to actually learn about the complexities of feelings people have for the state. Getting to know people better, I feel like I’ve finally started to understand the tiniest fraction of life here. I finally feel like I’m starting to settle in here.

Unfortunately, tomorrow, I’ll be taking off of this country. Normally, the Cuban semester runs until May 23^rd, but our program director is leaving the country early for her daughter’s graduation (at Pitzer College!) and she did not permit us stay in Cuba without her. So instead of staying here to complete the semester, we depart early.

Ever still, I’m incredibly grateful for the experience I’ve had in Cuba. Even more, I’ve extremely lucky to have been in Havana to be in such a time of transition and see the influx of foreign entities into the country. Obama’s visit, the Rolling Stones concert, the Fast and Furious 8 filming, the Chanel fashion show – these are all unprecedented events in Cuba that had never entered the country. I’ve been in Cuba during a time of confusion and uncertainty, with hopes of the Cuban people towards a more open country on one hand, but also concerns of an imperialist capital invasion on the other. This year is probably the start of the greatest change in Cuba ever since the socialist revolution of 1959.

For now, however, Cuba’s still “frozen in time,” se paró, as my friend Wiliam likes to say. The Fast and Furious 8 filming blocked off giant blocks of main streets and caused a lot of traffic redirection, and for the first time in Cuba I experienced traffic. I had entirely forgotten that traffic was a thing; there just aren’t enough people that can afford cars. At that moment, I also realized that I’ll be shocked to ride in a modern car again on paved roads again. These last three and a half months, I’ve only been riding 60-year old cars on bumpy roads, and I’ve gotten used to just jumping up and down my seat during a máquina ride. The fact that cars can actually run smoothly – it will be something of a surprise to me.

I’m sure in the next few days, I will have so many things that I have become accustomed to here in Cuba that I forgot exists or does not exist out of this country. Some will be obvious, like smartphones or Google, but some will be less obvious, like having reliable electricity and water every day. I’ll be surprised to realize how much I’ve forgotten about an entirely different world.

La doble moneda

I’m not sure how I’ve never talked about the double currency here in Cuba. I think it goes to show how accustomed I’ve become to the absolutely strange system of having two different national currencies here in Cuba.

In Cuba, there is the Convertible Peso (CUC) that is the only currency that can be exchanged with foreign currency, and Peso Cubano (CUP, or more commonly Moneda Nacional, “national currency”) that has historically been the sole Cuban currency before the 90’s. Originally, like every other currency, there was no need for double currency in Cuba, and the Peso Cubano was the Cuban currency just like the U.S. dollar is the currency of the United States. However, after the fall of the Soviet Bloc in 1989-91, Cuba experienced a severe economic crisis during the 90’s, known as the Periodo Especial (Special Period). In order to try and alleviate the problems and invite tourism as a source of revenue, the Cuban government then decided that U.S. dollars would be an acceptable form of payment in the country.

This practice continued until the 2000’s, where this introduction of the dollar together with other economic reforms put the Cuban economy back on its feet. However, with the start of the Bush administration, relations between Cuba and the United States deteriorated rapidly, to the point that the U.S. Interests Section Building (a level lower of diplomacy than an embassy) in Havana installed an electronic billboard and started to show subversive anti-Cuban government messages. This propaganda and its disrespect towards the Cuban state infuriated Fidel Castro, and diplomatic relations crumbled to the level that the Cuban regime decided to expel the U.S. dollar from its economy. However, as the country had already been using the dollar for years, the Cuban government decided to create a new currency, the CUC, in order to dampen the effect of the disappearance of the dollar from the economy. The government took in the dollar for the CUC one for one, replacing the use of the dollar with the CUC.

The CUC was supposed to be a temporary measure to alleviate the effect of removing the U.S. dollar would have on the Cuban economy, but removing the CUC has proved difficult and still Cuba continues with its rare system of having two national currencies. Nowadays, the CUC trades with the U.S. dollar at about 1 CUC for 1.03 dollars, and at a nationally fixed rate of 1 CUC for 24 CUP. The fact that there are two currencies makes life difficult because whenever I need CUP, I need to first exchange U.S. dollars to CUC, then separately exchange CUC to CUP. Since there are no credit cards in Cuba and everything is in cash, sometimes I will need CUC, sometimes I will need CUP, and so exchanging money is a frequent necessity and a hassle that takes hours at times.

The worse part is that Cubans will generally not identify if their prices are in CUC or CUP. At first, this is a source of massive confusion: does the $3 price for the a hamburger mean $3 CUC (~$3 USD) or $3 CUP (~$0.125 USD)? (In this particular case, it turned out to be $3 CUP). Eventually with time and common sense I started to figure out what the prices are without having to ask if the prices are in CUC or CUP, but I still get tripped out sometimes when I can’t figure out if a $1 yogurt would be a small 4-cent small thing of yogurt or a $1 imported and packaged container of yogurt.

The double currency also has macroeconomic ramifications that trouble the Cuban national bank. The Cuban national bank has to print all of the following: 20 cents of a CUP coin (~0.8 USD cents), 1 CUP coin, 1 CUP bill, 3 CUP coin, 3 CUP bill, 5 CUP bill, 10 CUP bill, 20 CUP bill, 50 CUP(~2 USD) bill, 100 CUP bill, 200 CUP bill, 500 CUP bill, 1000 CUP (~41 USD) bill, 5 cent of a CUC coin (~5 cent USD), 10 cent CUC coin, 25 cent CUC coin, 50 cent CUC coin, 1 CUC coin, 1 CUC bill, 3 CUC bill, 5 CUC bill, 10 CUC bill, 20 CUC bill, 50 CUC bill, and finally the 100 CUC bill. So that’s 25 different bills and coins that have to be distributed. Naturally, this makes keeping track of the flow of money much more difficult, and trying to control of inflation and deflation a tough challenge. The fact that the government artificially sets the exchange rate between CUC and the CUP at 24:1 has also caused an unsustainable overvaluation of CUC, which could spell trouble for future Cuban trade.

The double currency also gives rise to social divisions. Tourists will mostly use CUC as their currency because it is much easier to acquire; you only have to exchange it from the foreign currency, and many hotels will have an exchange bureau inside them (that does not serve CUC-CUP exchanges).  On the other hand, the quotidian life of normal Cubans run on CUP, because their salaries are normally payed in CUP, and because if they were to use CUC they would receive an unwieldy salary of 1 CUC per day. This means that the businesses that cater to tourists will have access to CUC, while many other Cubans will not. This creates a natural divide between the people who benefit from tourism and who do not, dependent on who can use CUC and who don’t have access to it.

The Cuban government has been trying to eliminate the CUC, but it has not been easy. Unfortunately, the more time goes on, the CUC will solidify more of a role in the Cuban economy, and it will become increasingly difficult to remove. Even though I’ve gotten used to it, the double currency still has adverse effects to Cuban socioeconomics and I hope that the government can remove it sometime soon.

A different reality

Supermarkets in Cuba are nothing like what you would imagine in a capitalist country. The aisles are filled with same products of a same brand, without commercial competition. For instance, fifteen feet of shelves will be decked with the exact same ketchup from top to bottom, all produced from the same national ketchup company. Same goes for any other product, whether it be soups, ice cream, pasta, tomato juice, oil, or even pots and pans. Other unthinkable features include completely empty aisles without products, a rare and almost impossible sight to see in the closely packed shelves of Target.

Due to the lack of commercial competition, there is no need for commercials or advertisements. Not a single Coca-Cola billboard hangs on the city, and I haven’t seen a single advertisement in Cuba these past three months. Subsequently, when I recently watched a pirated CNN channel, I was shocked. The commercials! I had totally forgotten about them, and now they were so unfamiliar to me. Even when I use the internet, I mostly limit myself to e-mail service, and recently I went on the New York Times, the advertisement on the website just seemed so foreign to me. I had spent the past weeks completely devoid of commercial competition, and now confronting the advertisements seemed almost vile to me.

Technology has also been a striking point of difference to me in Cuba. Just seeing all the computers running on Windows XP or Word 2003 throws me back to memories of an older, forgotten era. As my Cuban demography professor once said, Cuba is a like a living museum, with 70-year old cars and outdated technological equipment.

It’s almost funny that in Cuba that internet is a physical place to go to. Since internet is only offered at hotspots here and there, when you say “I’m going to go use the internet,” it implies that you will physically move to an internet park where many others will sit around you trying to connect to the WiFi. And even this has been a recent addition. It’s actually quite crazy to think that Cubans didn’t have internet access until 2008, and even still it’s restricted, limited, and inconvenient.

As I do seldom have internet, the way I use my computer has entirely changed. Without the inundation of information through the net, I have to make do with I do have. My laptop has now become a word processor, only using it for reading articles or writing articles.

Growing up in the new millennia, I have rarely, if ever, had to write a letter. However, as I started to use e-mail as the main mode of correspondence here, I have for the first time started to understand the formalities of letters taught in grade school. You open letters with Dear XXX because they truly are people dear to you. You close letters with Sincerely because you’ve meant the real talk from the bottom of your heart, or Sincerely Yours because you wholeheartedly feel yourself as their friend. I believe that when you can’t communicate with people effectively, can’t hear their voice, let alone see pictures of them, it brings out a certain sensibility. A correspondence that only happens once a week carries much more weight and emotion in its five pages than would a short and unorganized Facebook chat.

Being in a place without smartphones has also been a big change to me. I had forgotten how to live liberated from technology, being able to focus on the real world instead of a virtual one. I have less distractions from being able to live presently. I have been able worry less about what people think about me on social media, and focus more on myself. Ironically, the lack of smartphones also makes event-planning much easier. Plans become much more definite, and people don’t back out as easily when they have to call a home phone in order to cancel.

Honestly, I am a little afraid to return to the technological and capitalist world that I have been bred in. I have fallen accustomed to the way of things in Cuba, and I have enjoyed the unfeigned style of life here. The peace, the sincerity of the people, the warmth – I’m already missing all these things even before I’ve left.

 

 

 

Santa Clara

This past weekend, I had the chance to go to the Cuban city of Santa Clara, city right in the center of both the North-South and East-West axis of the island. I went with a lot of excitement, because unlike many other study abroad students, I had not travelled much, and this was the only the second city outside of Havana I’d been to.

When I got to Santa Clara, the first thing that struck me was the lack of tourism in the city. I’d only been to Havana and Santiago de Cuba so far, the two biggest cities of Cuba that boast a large tourist population. In contrast, Santa Clara had very few tourists, perhaps because the city didn’t have much to do for foreigners. Sure, there were tourists at Che Guevara’s mausoleum/memorial/museum complex on the west end of the city, but in the city proper, very few foreigners abounded.

Despite being the regional capital of the Villa Clara province and being the 5^th largest city in Cuba, Santa Clara felt a lot smaller than Havana or even Santiago de Cuba, the second largest city in Cuba. Unlike Havana, there were no máquinas to be found; rather, the main mode of transportation in the city were horse-drawn carriages. In the 21^st century, in a city! People bundled in the cart attached to the horse while they paid the horse driver(?) a few pesos for a speed not too much faster than walking. In accordance with the rustic feeling, the price of living in Santa Clara was also much lower than in Havana. I thought I couldn’t get much cheaper meals than the 50 cent pizzas in Havana, but I soon found that I was wrong when I found quality 10 cent hamburgers in Santa Clara.

Santa Clara contains a population of little more than 200,000, and its size is quite tiny for a city. Only 45 minutes by foot from the city center can get you at the end of the city. Subsequently, there seemed to only be one central area in the city, a large park right in the heart of downtown. The fact that there was only one large plaza, along with its centralized location, however created a lovely park culture after sundown that I had never seen in any other city. The citizens of Santa Clara all huddled around the park for nightlife. On one side of the park, a Cuban Trova band played urging people to dance salsa spontaneously on the street, while the other side featured teenagers and university students listening to reggaeton from their speakers and drinking rum. It was such an open culture! Amidst the open music, people were just hanging out in the open space of the park. I had never seen this open park culture anywhere else in the world.

Unfortunately, however, many people seemed to want to leave Santa Clara, perhaps because of its small size and lack of opportunities. So many houses all over town had signs saying se vende, “for sale,” a sign that’s not often seen in Havana. In Santa Clara, one house next to the other was for sale, at a rate such that some houses put up signs saying that they were not selling their house and asking people not to ask them if they were. I was flabbergasted. Why were so many people so intent on selling their houses? Because they were in dire need for money? To move to Havana for better economic opportunity?

The house sales were definitely a sharp contrast to the house I was staying while I was in Santa Clara. The easiest housing for travelers in Cuba is renting a casa particular, an Airbnb-type housing situation where you pay usually about $10-15 per night for a house with breakfast. I was speaking with the host of my house, José, who summarily told me that he had another house for rent as well as his own house in addition to the one I was staying at. He has no other job than renting out apartments, and he spends his vacations in Miami or Mexico for several months at a time. What dichotomy he was from the rest of Santa Clara! While people were eager to sell their houses all around town, José was amassing them. I felt bad. Just to fulfill my selfish travel desires, I was widening the gap between the townspeople and the tourist-catering kingdom.

한국어

한국어

쿠바에 와서 확실히 설움을 겪고 있는 것들 중에 하나는 내 모국어를 할 수 없다는 것이다.  한달에 한 두번 꼴로 마주치는 관광객과 몇 마디 나누기도 하지만은, 대체적으로는 쿠바에서는 한국인이라고는 눈 씻고 찾아봐도 없다. 한국어를 할 대상은 내 자신에게 하는 혼잣말 이외에는 전혀 없다.

미국에 있을 때는 그래도 뉴스도 읽고, 웹툰도 보고, 친구들에게 이메일이나 카톡도 보내고 하면서 한국어를 그래도 매일같이 쓴다. 부모님과 통화도 하고, 심지어는 대학교에 다니는 다른 한인들과 대화도 하면서 말이다. 하지만은 쿠바에서는 인터넷 쓰기가 번거롭고 비싸서 네이버에 들어갈 시간도 별로 없고, 국제전화 값도 쿠바로는 분당 800원에 육박하여서 부모님과 통화도 일주일에 15분이 그만이다. 세계인구의 사분의 일이나 차지하고 쿠바와 같은 공산국가로써 수교가 밀접한 중국인들도 보기가 여간 어려운 것이 아닌데, 오랫동안 6*25 사변으로 반공의식이 강한 대한민국에서 쿠바에 가기는 더하겠는가.

실로 말하기는 창피하지만은 쿠바에 와서 눈물을 흘린적들은 죄다 내 모어를 하지 못함에서 우러났다. 그 누군가에게도 내 감정을 가장 제대로 표현할수 있는 언어로 소통을 할 수 없다는 것에 많이 답답해 한다. 한번은 그렇게 슬퍼하던 중 문뜩 중학교 때 읽었던 김춘수의 “꽃” 이라는 시가 떠올랐다. 갑자기 “내가 그의 이름을 불러 주었을 때 // 그는 나에게로 와서 // 꽃이 되었다” 라는 구절이 생각나서 나도 누군가 내 이름 석자, 최원혁을 불러주면 나도 그에게로 꽃이 될 것 같다는 생각이 들었다.

결국에는 얼마 지나지 않아 시 전체를 찾기로 하였다. 그래서 찾은 시를 여기에 옮겨쓴다.

꽃

김춘수

내가 그의 이름을 불러 주기전에는

그는 다만

하나의 몸짓에 지나지 않았다.

내가 그의 이름을 불러 주었을 때

그는 나에게로 와서

꽃이 되었다.

내가 그의 이름을 불러준 것처럼

나의 이 빛깔과 향기에 알맞는

누가 나의 이름을 불러다오. 그에게로 가서

나도 그의 꽃이 되고 싶다.

우리들은 모두 무엇이 되고 싶다.

너는 나에게 나는 너에게

잊혀지지 않는 하나의 눈짓이 되고 싶다.

중학교 때 이 시를 읽었을 때는 별 감흥없이 읽었던 기억이 난다. 허나 먼 나라에서 이 시를 읽기 시작하자 온 몸에 전율이 퍼지기 시작하였다. 어릴적에는 아무런 생각 없이 읽었던 시를 드디어 이해하게 된 것이다. 시를 낭독하면서 “나의 빛깔과 향기에 알맞는 // 누가 나의 이름을 불러다오” 라는 구절에 다다르자 창피하게 눈물이 볼가 위로 주르륵 흘러내렸다. 나한테도 내 빛깔과 향기에 맞는 이름이 있는데, 그 이름을 누군가 나에게 불러 주었으면 말이다! 하지만 내 곁에는 이 수많은 사람들 중에서 내 심정을 헤아릴 수 있는 사람들이 없다는 점에서 더욱 더 마음이 아려왔다.

하지만 결국에는 눈물은 머금고 살아야했다. 무엇을 하겠는가? 이런 일을 있길 각오하고 쿠바에 온 이상 최대한 여기서만 누릴 수 있는 색다른 경험들을 하면서 살기로 하였다. 다른 미국 교환학생과도 스페인어로 이야기를 하고, 학교 쿠바인 친구들이나 길거리 사람들과도 스페인어로 대화하면서 제 2 외국어 실력이나 쌓기로 하였다.

그리하여서 3월 초에는 다른 몇몇 얘들이랑 쿠바의 저 반대편에 있는 산티아고 데 쿠바라는 도시에 가고 되었다. 버스를 타면은 거의 하루가 다 지나갈 정도로 먼 곳이라서 조그마한 쿠바 국내선 여객기를 타고 산티아고에 갔었다. 닷새 동안이나 묵으면서 옛 구리 광산이나 카페 농장도 가 보고, 여러 박물관도 들러보고, 쿠바에서 널리 믿는 산테리아라는 종교의 신부도 만나서 이야기 하는 등 관광질을 하고 다녔다. 하루는 식중독에서 걸려서 방에서 설사만 하기도 했지만은, 대체적으로 여행을 잘 끝마치고 아바나에 돌아가려고 공항으로 갔다.

공항에는 좀 일찍 도착하게 되었어서 대기실에서 비행기를 기다렸다. 심심풀이로 노래를 듣기 시작했는데, 이 노래 저 노래 듣다가 옥상달빛의 “수고했어 오늘도”라는 노래가 나왔다. 예전에는 별 감흥 없이 들었던 노래였었어서 별 생각 없이 듣기 시작하였다. 허나, 노래를 듣기 시작하면서 “작게 열어둔 문틈 사이로 슬픔보다도 더 큰 외로움이 다가와. 수고했어 오늘도 수고했어 오늘도. 아무도 너의 슬픔에 관심 없데도 나는 너를 응원해. 수고했어 오늘도” 라는 구절을 나오자, 갑자기 울컥하였다. 매일같이 한국어를 못하는 서러움을 이해해주는 사람 없이 지내는데, 그런 나를 보고 응원한다고 하니 노래가 나를 부드럽게 달래는 듯 하였다. 그 후렴으로 메아리처럼 “수고했어 오늘도. 수고했어 오늘도”가 귓가에서 반복하자 결국에는 참지 못하고 그 공항 대기실에서 눈물을 쏟아댔다. 아무도 안 보이게 휴지를 돌돌 말아서 볼가를 닦기 시작하였으나, 결국에는 나를 위로하는 듯한 그 목소리를 듣고 있으니 전부 닦기란 무리였다.
이렇게 쿠바에 있으면서 예전에 다른 나라에 가면 이렇게 사는 거구나 하는 생각이 든다. 처음으로 다른 나라에 이민을 간 사람들은 아무도 자기의 언어를 공유하지 않은 땅에서 가져간 두손만으로 삶을 개척해 나가야 됬다니 얼마나 힘들었을까 싶다. 아무도 자기를 알아주지 않는 곳에서 힘겹게 살아하였다니, 지금은 그들에 대해서 옛보다 더욱 더 많이 존경하게 된다. 쿠바에서 나는 그래도 스페인어도 기본회화는 하고, 영어로 마음껏 소통할 수 있는 사람들도 있고, 물질적으로는 유복하게 사는데 그렇지 않았던 그런 사람들은 얼마나 노고를 겪었을까 싶다.

쿠바에 들어올 때는 이민가방 하나밖에 못 들고 오는지라 책들도 많이 챙겨오지 못했다. 가져온 국사책까지도 이제 마저 읽은지라 요즘은 차들에 붙은 에너지소비 효율등급 딱지나 읽고 다닌다. 어떻게인지는 모르겠지만 쿠바에서는 상상하지 않았던 다량의 한국 차들이 도로 위로 쌩쌩 달린다. 현대, 기아차들은 물론이고 옛날 대우, 심지어는 한국 내에서도 잘 안 팔리는 쌍용차들이 쿠바에 있다. 한국 외에서는 한 번도 본 적이 없는 차종들이 지나가자 너무 친근해서 가까이 보면은 결국에는 백이면 백 실제로 모차를 모는 사람들은 쿠바인들이다. 너무나도 이상한 감정이다. 너무나도 한국적인 차들안에서 너무나도 한국적이지 않은 사람들이 그 차들을 몰고 있다니!

전체적으로 봐서는 쿠바에서는 여러가지 경험을 많이하고 생각도 많이하고 사람으로써 많이 성장하는 나에게는 중요한 시기이지만, 쿠바에서는 절대로 장기간 살 수 없을 것 같다. 여기 사람들의 텁텁함, 도시 내에서도 풍기는 시골의 친근함, 그리고 가난 속에서도 행복과 평화를 잊지 않는 나라는 분명 무척이나 그리워하게 될 것이다. 허나 내 언어로 대화를 나누어 줄 수 있는 사람이 없는 이 나라에서는 결코 정신적으로나 감성적으로 완벽하게 만족할 수 없다는 것을 안다. 약간 실망스럽기도 하지만은 쿠바에 옴으로써 또 다시 나한테 내 문화와 언어가 얼마나 중요한지 또 한번 일깨워주는 좋은 시기인 것 같다.

Access

Access is the name of the game here in Cuba.

As mentioned before, the average wage of a Cuban is a paltry sum of $30/month. While many local items in Cuba are cheap, the prices of internationally industrial items like electronics, gas, or shoes are more or less equivalent to global standards and out of reach for standard Cubans. If you’re making less than $400 a year, when are you going to be able to save up and buy a $600 laptop? Consequently, a lot of economic class differences end up coming from family remittances – those who have family members in Miami sending them money and clothes do much better than those who do not, regardless of their actual occupation in Cuba.

For a country with a population of 11 million, Cuba has a large number of émigrés in the United States, estimated at about an entire million mostly centered in Florida. This causes for a strong remittance culture between the Cuban-Americans and their family members who stayed in Cuba, considering that an hour of minimum wage work in the States is nearly two weeks of salary in Cuba. In 2012, family remittances from the United States to Cuba of $5.1 billion dollars was the highest source of Cuba’s national income, topping the $4.9 billion earned by the top four leading economic sectors of Cuba: tourism, nickel, pharmaceuticals, and sugar. When I flew in from Miami to Havana, the plane was nearly full with Cuban-Americans bringing computers, wide-screen LCD televisions, or even air-conditioning units. Things normally out of the reach of standard Cubans.
Domestically, Cubans enjoy far less economic privilege than foreigners, and often “artsy,” “hipster,” or “fancy” places will cater to foreigners who can afford it. Even the Fábrica del Arte Cubano, an art gallery and bar in one, is often a third full of foreigners from various North American and European countries, since most Cubans can’t pay the entrance fee of $2 often. The only mall I’ve found in Havana was full of tourists, despite being on one of the biggest, most central streets in Havana. They were playing Maroon 5 and trying to enlist of a mood of a US mall, and quickly made itself apparent that it wasn’t a mall intended for Cubans with its $45 shoes.

This small mall actually reminded me of what I’d read previously about the DDR – the Communist East Germany before the fall of the Soviet Bloc. The socialist state often only offered one brand of a product, i.e. shampoo, cereal, cream, etc. and the people had to purchase them equally and humbly under the ideology that required equality. However, the DDR often had “tourist shops” with luxury items such as designer-brand perfumes or imported electronics, realistically only sold to tourists for extra revenue. The people of the DDR themselves could not buy the “luxury goods” offered by the state. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Cuba reminds me a lot of this system of tourist luxury shops in the now defunct DDR. Although nowadays more and more entrepreneurs are appearing across the country, still generally the only people who can purchase high-end rum or cigars are tourists in for a view. The so-called high-end products that Cuba produces are not for itself.

I surely feel a bit strange being in Cuba as a foreigner with such different capital resources. When the professor in my economy class took out a ten-dollar bill for demonstration purposes, the entire class went wild because that wasn’t a sum of money they see. Yet, a ten-dollar bill was sitting right there in my pocket. The fact that many people can’t afford to eat the $0.50 pizzas that are for me are literally pocket change make me almost in some sense guilty. Am I taking advantage of the socialist country with the benefits I have amassed in a capitalist society? Am I wielding my access and privilege as a weapon? Am I increasing the wealth disparity between the people who work in tourism/foreigner-catering industry and those who do not? I hope I am not, but I feel like I know that I am.

Barack

The President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, visited Havana, Cuba as the first head of the U.S. since President Calvin Coolidge visited this nation 88 years ago. Historic moment, if you will. Symbolic moment for a new era of Cuban-United States relations, if you will.

How strange his visit was! He had a meeting with the Cuban head of state Raúl Castro one day, but the next day proceeded to meet with Cuban dissenters who challenge the government and aim to topple the socialist regime in Cuba. To me, that seemed strange – almost disrespectful, in a way. Obama was invited into a country by the state, but then proceeded to meet and encourage people who want to remove the current government?

In spite of Obama’s challenge for Raúl to attend a press conference, and his outspoken critique of the Cuban government during his speech at the Gran Teatro Nacional, Cuba took all measures to paralyze their country in order to protect President Obama. How strange it was to take the entire capital city of Havana out of function in order to protect the head of a country that has been actively trying to invade them for the last 57 years, and still encourages the youth to do away with the Castro’s! A country that still enacts an economic blockade against Cuba and only a month ago fined a French company millions of dollars for trading with Cuba then trying to trade with the United States! How strange it is.

Havana was greatly out of function the three days President Obama visited. Since Obama travelled through the major roads of Havana, the central commercial area that surrounds those big roads suspended their services for the week. If you can’t cross the street, and cars can’t run on the road, who’s going to come to the stores? The bookstores were closed, the pizzerias were closed, and even the street merchants were nowhere to be found. Security surrounded to street refraining people from getting on the road, and mostly the crowd that formed whenever Obama’s cars whizzed by the road were just people who were trying to go about their own lives but could not due to the closed roads.

The University of Havana didn’t have classes all Monday and Tuesday Obama was here! I went to the University only to find the school devoid of students. The teachers for my salsa class also cancelled class, as they couldn’t find reliable ways to get to the dance classroom. Seeing Obama’s cars, even close by, got a little bit tiring after I saw it six times and actually became fairly inconvenient when I actually needed to cross the street. A máquina ride from Old Havana to Vedado, where I live, took twice as long because roads were closed, and the cumulative effect of traffic that was halted for ten minutes caused a jam. The city perimeter shut down as well; throughout the three days Obama was here, no buses could come into Havana. If you went to a beach on Sunday morning, too bad for you, you’re not coming back into the city until Wednesday.

I also have much to say about Obama’s lackluster and disappointing speech he gave in Havana, but perhaps this is not the place.

Máquinas

My main mode of transportation here are máquinas (machines), also known as almendras (almonds), collective taxis that are often sixty, seventy year old Buick or Chrysler American cars. Since buses come infrequently and are always so packed, the people who can afford it will often times take máquinas instead for a more reliable and comfortable mode of transportation. Subsequently, máquina fares are much higher, charging 50 cents per person instead of the 1.5 cents for a bus.

Even though they offer much more pleasant experiences than a bus, the máquinas are far from any luxurious or even standard mode of transportation in the States. Most cars have broken exhaust pipes and spit out black trails of smoke, while shaking profusely even when running on well-paved roads. Often times the cars will have no glass on the windows anymore. Although most drivers will fit six people in one car, on busy days they might cram in one or even two more passengers leaving little space to sit.

There are some kinks that come with these old cars, though. The doors are often falling apart, so you have to close them softly. Many times people will close the doors too soft though, and have to close it again in order for it to actually shut properly. One silly satisfaction is from closing máquina doors properly: closing the door softly but just hard enough to hear the click sound of a proper shut. Too soft and the driver will yell abierta (open), and too hard and the driver will yell suave (smoothly) and a bunch of other tirades about closing the door too hard.

Hailing a máquina is much similar to hailing a cab in the States. Since máquinas only run on fixed routes, you need to go to a big street and try to hail one by raising your arm by 45 degrees whenever you see a 60-year old looking car. When a máquina comes, you ask it if it goes through a certain route or place. For instance, I’ll ask the drivers “Tercera,” asking them if they drive up 3^rd street, or ask “Capitolio” if they pass by the Cuban Capitol building. Since the máquinas have various routes, the drivers have invented hand-signals to notify which route they drive on. On a street nearby, Línea, where I catch most of my máquinas, shaking an open palm back and forth means it’s going straight and merges onto 31^st street, while a fist with a thumb to the right means it’s turning at 10^th street to go up 3^rd street. It’s eventually quite simple but a frustratingly complicated concept at first: when I first got to Cuba and hailed drivers who had already signaled to go straight and asked them if they turn, the drivers just angrily drove away at the fact that I just wasted their time.

Other than the máquinas, I do take the buses sometimes, although mostly only when I’m at the first stop and can actually get a seat on the bus. Trying to get on a bus in the middle of the route, especially during the day, can be excruciating. You have to push though people packed in like sardines just to get in, and do the same to get out. Meanwhile, everybody will be pushing each other to get off or approach the door, and during peak hours many people who board the bus don’t pay because the fare collector just realistically can’t get to them. However, most Cubans can only afford to take these buses, and I always feel incredibly fortunate enough to afford my máquina rides.

Miscellaneous Observations I

Here I list some miscellaneous thoughts that have no home.

 

– I still can’t eat food in my bed, or even my room without feeling like I’m doing something wrong. The ant population in Claremont has really trained me.

– The tap water’s not potable here, so I have to drink boiled water or buy bottled water each time. There’s often also no warm water in the showers, and when there is it’s only there for a few minutes.

– People used to take toilet papers from public bathrooms so much that nowadays there’s no toilet paper within the bathrooms. Instead, a person sits in front of the bathrooms and dispenses toilet paper to people going in the bathroom, and receives tip for the service.

– Winking is a widespread form of greeting here. It can carry a variety of meaning ranging from good morning to catcalling, but is often used to mean hello or welcome. I’ve been winked at by total strangers on the street, all the time by my Cuban friends, and even a couple of times by my history professor.

– Parks are all over in Havana. They’re never quite big, and often just the size of half a football field, but they’re everywhere. You’ll find one every five blocks. Perhaps the frequency of parks shows the impossibility of purchasing land, especially from the government?

– I habitually still try to reach for seat belts when I get on cars, even though I well know by now that there’s no such thing on 60 year-old beat up machines. Seat belts are a true rarity to see, and I’ve only ever seen a single one in my eight weeks here in Cuba.

– How is ice cream so cheap here? Ten scoops of ice cream is cheaper than a single can of soda. Five scoops of ice cream each with different flavors and two cookies cost less than 20 cents. How is that possible? After all, I guess Cuba is the land of sugar.

– Although it has diminished considerably recently, tobacco has also been a main product of Cuba, and it shows. Everybody smokes cigarettes here, and nobody bats an eye on some middle school girls sitting on a curb and passing around a cigarette. Cigarettes are even called habanos here, referring to time when Havana used to the main producer of tobacco.

– Smoking here exclusively refers to tobacco in Cuba, since smoking marijuana can equate to ten years of merciless prison-time. Since it’s an island, smuggling it in is nigh impossible, and I’ve never heard of anybody smoking weed in Cuba. Henceforth, when I go to parties, the familiar weed smell that accompanies the smell of alcohol is replaced with the dense smoke of cigarettes here.

 

Generational Gap, also known as another rant on ideology

I’ve seen difference in ideology between the young and the old in the States as well as the harsh dichotomy between the digital youth and the conservative vanguards in Korea, but never have I seen a generational gap so pronounced as in Cuba. Before the revolution of ’59 and after, heaven and earth’s difference!

I have noticed that every single old person I have met in Cuba has been a champion of the socialist regime, while I still have yet to meet a young (<35) person defend the totalitarian government. This is most evident in my Cuban History class, where the 2^nd year university students debate against the professor who’s been teaching for 45 years. Each class, at least once a student critiques Castro’s revolution and argues against the professor. For instance, a student problematized the government’s identity as “anti-imperialist” when the Cuba stayed silent during the invasions and repression of its communist allies, such as Russia’s expansion into Afghanistan in 1979 or the ongoing suppression of the Tibet by China, and argued that the government should just rather be called “anti-United States.” Another student critiqued Fidel Castro’s speech against the ex-dictator Fulgencio Batista as hypocritical, as Fidel Castro has become what he had condemned before the revolution: the legislative, military, and presidential power concentrated into one man. Usually one student per class challenges the professor’s support for socialism, but sometimes the entire class rises up, as in the heated debate about the government’s ideological indoctrination that I’ve discussed in my prior blog, “The Other Side.”

The barrage of questions against the professor reached a point that last Friday, the professor took time out of the class to ask the students to respect her own opinion as somebody who does respect Fidel Castro. To her, Fidel was a symbol of salvation; she spoke about the radical change that she saw unfold with her own eyes in 1959. She was part of the revolution that made Cuba what it is now; she wanted change against the system of terror that ran through before socialist revolution, and she respected Fidel making that happen. She started to discuss how much it grieved her when she heard the news that Fidel Castro had fallen ill on 2007, because he was the symbol of hope for her. The professor ended her speech by saying that she hoped that the students would at least respect her opinion of Fidel, and for a lack of better words, stop just shitting on him all the time.

I personally can’t quite make out who’s right or who’s wrong; in fact, I think both of them are right. Fidel Castro is an autocrat, but at the same time the students have not experienced capitalism, especially the mafia and militarily run government that preceded the revolution. The Cuban economy is underdeveloped and depends on Venezuela as its 44% commerce partner, but at the same time a third of the population under the military dictator Batista lived in huts. The ideological contradiction in Cuba continues, so evident in each moment from its extremes.

Conversations about ideology between the U.S. study abroad students and the Cuban students actually end up quite ironic. A large majority of the United States studying abroad in Cuba tend to be left-leaning, usually large proponents of Bernie and champions of social programs that benefit the population. On the other hand, many of Cuban youth lean towards capitalism, and support a more open economy that implies more disparity in the standard of living but also more economic freedom. When these Cuban students meet the U.S. study abroad students, they think of the United States as a beacon of capitalism and ask how the system is, but to their dismay only receive replies that are quick to condemn the laissez-faire capitalism by pointing out the gross inequality.

Some Cubans have asked “Are you proud of your country?”, “Are you proud of capitalism?”, but they never receive any satisfactory answers. When a Cuban mulatto student asked Davis, an African-American student on my program, if he was proud of the United States and its system, he responded, “If you want to ask about why capitalism in the States is good, don’t ask a Black person, because it won’t be for them.” Even after these kinds of critiques, however, the Cubans seem to stay unfazed and continue hoping for commercialist change, joking around saying that they wish the U.S. and Cuba exchange presidents when Obama comes to the visit the country in a month.

The bottom line is, perhaps, that the grass is greener on the other side. I feel like I finally understand this idiom, now having had the chance to cross to the other extreme and observe the perspective from Cuba. Ever still, strange mysteries remain. So many people from Cuba want to go to the States, but I’ve never met a US person living outside of Cuba that wants to live in Cuba. However, while some portion of U.S. citizens are ashamed of their history and nor particularly proud of their country, nearly all of the Cubans that I have met express their pride in their country and its revolutionary history.

Being in Cuba has been, and still is, confusing. ¡But perhaps that’s why I chose to be here! I do hope that I don’t just clog up my blogs repetitively talking about the ideological contradictions I see here though.