Castro's Children: Cuba's Youth Party, Study & Scrounge
Alejandro studies English and German, despite having little hope of ever visiting England or Germany. He lives with his father, his mother, his uncle and his four brothers in the nearby suburb of La Lisa. They lived in Russia for a few years when his father, a military officer, was stationed there. The father is now retired, and Alejandro's mother tutors students for extra cash, a practice that is illegal but common.
Students are paid 30 pesos a month, the equivalent of $1.50, to attend university in Cuba, Ale tells me. He shows me the ration card that entitles him to five cafeteria meals each week. His family gets a separate ration card for groceries. He is handsome, but his body?even his face?is bony, angular, gaunt.
"I agree with the government ration card," he says. "They are trying to give everyone the same, but everyone does not have the same. It is impossible, but it is good that they are trying to solve problems."
Ale empties his backpack, showing me his student identification card, a Metallica tape, a notebook. He asks if I like Cher. Did I know that her full name is Cherilyn LaPierre, and that she was born on May 20, 1945? He got this information, he tells me, from The Encyclopedia of New Groups. I don't argue with him.
"I don't know if you know about this child, Elian Gonzalez," he continues, as though I might have missed the dozens of city billboards depicting the child's face behind bars. "But we don't need to fight to win. We always win, with our ideas."
So you like Cuba, then? I ask him. You're not itching to inner-tube your way across the Florida Straits?
"Well," he answers thoughtfully, "a lot of people go to America because they see all the things that you can have there. They think if they go there, life will be better. But it will not necessarily be better." Still, he understands why they leave. "You have to make it on your own. If I had a good opportunity in another country, I would take advantage. It doesn't have anything to do with politics.
"But if I lived in another place," he continues, "I could not hold my desire to be near the beach. When I lived in Russia, I lived near the river. I was eager to take a swim, but when I saw that the water was not like our beaches, and there were Russians sunbathing and swimming in their underwear, I wanted to come back to Cuba."
He pauses. "Is that how you say it? Beaches?" He is concerned about his accent. "Because I don't want to say 'bitches.'"
?
Making a friend in Cuba is like being adopted. When Alejandro leaves for his race, I am transferred to the care of his amigos. David, a gangly kid with a deep voice, is the school's star athlete; Omar, a shaggy-haired Bob Dylan fan, "used to play" the guitar but cannot get replacements for the strings he broke; Dayron is a graduate student who has studied in Belize. All of them speak English and hope to be assigned jobs?jobs are assigned here, not applied for?as translators once they graduate.
I am also introduced to "a VIP," the president of the Young Communist League. He is a handsome black man with a huge smile and the poise of a leader. He wears a tucked-in t-shirt bearing the word "Beijing" and a picture of a panda bear. The boys say that most of the university students belong to the Young Communist League. Students who criticize the government are not punished, they say, but "people look at them differently." Patriotic members of the League "try to show them that our government is the right way."
But enough of politics; there is a celebration at one of the university's student hangouts.
"We are referred to as 'party animals,'" Dayron says.
"Oh yeah?" I grin. "So what makes a party in Cuba? Alcohol?"
"Yes, alcohol and dancing."
"Drugs?"
"No! We don't have that problem here."
"Food?"
"No. Just rum. And dancing."
"Does the university provide the rum?"
"Of course. You sound surprised."
"Well, in the U.S., we aren't exactly encouraged to get drunk at school."
"Well, my friend," he laughs, "this is a free country."
?
We walk a few blocks to the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios headquarters, which, it turns out, is quite an exclusive establishment. It takes some finagling to get past the ID-checkers at the gate, but the boys herald me as an ambassador of peace, which I am happy to fancy myself. A sweeping staircase leads up to the door of a three-story house, and brightly colored, Warholesque posters of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara adorn the outdoor walls.
The party, though, is on the open-air patio, where a DJ booth looms above a cement dancefloor surrounded by iron tables and chairs. Rum is dispensed from two giant vats and sold for centavos to students who have brought their own empty pint bottles. Dayron was right?there is no food. By now it is 7 p.m., the sun has set, and people haven't eaten since noon, but no one finds this unusual.
The place is packed with young women and men on their way to becoming biologists, psychologists and lawyers. People randomly shout, "I love English!" and invite me to stay at their homes. I dance with several guys, betraying the comparative rigidity of my American hips, and venture up to the DJ booth. The two DJs are happy to let me inspect their collection, which consists not of records, not of CDs, but of cassette tapes. Not just tapes, but copies of tapes. Second- or third-generation mix tapes. The DJs' headphones are broken in half.
?
The next night, I am summoned to a party in a Havana suburb called Alamar. As I move farther from the city center, the crumbling, vintage architecture of the capital is replaced with towering, boxy apartment complexes that look like they'd be condemned in the United States. Cinderblocks are exposed; telephone poles and electric wires are bundled and strung up in haphazard ways. The streets lie empty and dark.
The interiors, though, are different. The apartment I'm visiting has a tiled floor, wicker furniture and 8-by-10 framed Picasso prints on the wall. David plays borrowed CDs on a stereo he has smuggled in for the occasion. We pass around crackers with garlic butter, pork rinds, homemade wine and bottles of rum. I play dominoes for the first time in my life, and my partner, a thin guy who could pass for Jerry Seinfeld, is incredibly congenial about our losing 100-0. He keeps yelling the few English words he knows: "We are the winner!"
Short on mind-altering substances but long on imagination, we play some games reminiscent of those played at middle-school slumber parties. In one, every person writes a compliment or question to another partygoer, anonymously. For example, "Why do you seem quiet tonight?" Or "You are a great volleyball player." The recipient reads the note, writes a reply, scratches off his or her own name and then places the note in a pile to be read aloud. I write to Alejandro, "You are very intelligent." When one of the girls reads through all the notes, I learn his reply: "Obviously, you underestimate me." I tell him, "In America, we call you a smartass."
We play another game in which the boys, as a group, choose a question to ask the girls. While they are conferring, the girls decide which of us will answer truthfully; the rest of us will lie. The boys ask, "Where do you most like to make love?" and "On what part of your body do you most like to be kissed?" Then we each answer, in turn, and the boys guess whose answer was honest.
Sex is one of the few forms of affordable entertainment here, but it's difficult to find a secluded place in which to have it. You can rent rooms in Cuba by the hour, and there's a popular Spanish term that translates as "vertical love." Someone tells me that condoms are the preferred method of birth control, but doesn't mention that Cuba's abortion rate is the highest in the hemisphere. Abortions have been legal since the 1940s and are performed for free at state hospitals. As in the United States, people postpone getting married until they're in their late 20s, and the divorce rate is high. "Ninety-nine percent," someone joked to me. (The actual rate is 3.7 divorces per 1000 people, close to the U.S. rate of 4.3, according to United Nations statistics.)
When a Backstreet Boys song comes on, five of the guys suddenly line up and bust moves that would make the American boy-band weep. Around 4 a.m., I try to call a taxi from the outdoor pay phone. I have no currency smaller than a dollar, which, if it could be inserted into the phone, would buy a hundred calls. But it can't, so Alejandro pays. We have no success with the phone system; it looks like I will be staying until morning.
Twelve of us retire to David's apartment. We move into his bedroom, where we won't disturb the assortment of sleeping relatives. The room is sparse, cold and lit by fluorescent bulbs; pictures of Alicia Silverstone and NBA stars are taped to his wall. Seven people pile on the twin bed; Alejandro and I take the floor. We joke around until a rooster in the yard starts to crow.
At sunrise, there is already a long line for the bus. An official passes out tickets to people in the order that they arrive, because only a limited number of bodies can board at once. We manage to catch the next bus, Dayron paying my fare, even though, with the dollar I'm holding, I could buy a hundred fares. Chivalry lives in Cuba.
?
The city of Santa Clara, where one of the defining battles of the revolution took place, is quite famous for its giant statue of Che Guevara. Batista fled as soon as the rebels took Santa Clara, and a spirit of energy and optimism lingers in its streets. On every block, people are playing: baseball, hopscotch, dominoes. Couples on motorcycles putter by, carrying loaves of bread; a man pushes a tv in a wheelbarrow. People light fires and cook stew in the middle of the street, and 26-year-old Ernesto (named after Ernesto "Che" Guevara) hands me flowers when I walk by. I am adopted again.
Ernesto would like to run a restaurant. And no wonder. He and his friend Tony lead me to a paladar, an incognito restaurant run in someone's home. We sneak up a narrow spiral staircase to a tiny room with covered windows and two small tables. I order food, but the guys insist they want nothing. I order them beers anyway, and tell the owner to bring extra plates. Once the spread arrives?chicken, shrimp, rice, beans, salad and bananas?the two relax, but only a little. The bill comes to almost $30; I have just spent on our dinner a sum it would take a Cuban three months to earn.
Tony is a music technician for bands that play in Santa Clara. "Do you like Metallica?" he asks me. "Guns 'N Roses? Whitesnake? Nirvana? Santa Clara is the capital of rock." When we move on to a bar, he does me what he thinks is a favor, and keeps requesting these bands at the DJ booth.
On the way back to my room that night, I am stopped by a carload of kids hanging around a purple Cadillac preserved from the 1950s. Such old cars are common in Cuba, but it's still weird to see a young person driving one. Ten girls are crammed in the back; the owner and his two friends are obviously proud.
The girls, I find, study pharmacology at the university in Santa Clara, and two of the boys go to school. The one with the car did not finish college, and when I ask if he plans to go back, they all giggle. It's as if I've asked Bill Gates why he doesn't go back to pick up those last credits at Harvard. He has a car! He's already loaded! One of the boys says he knows a guy who went to Miami and managed to buy two cars in six months. This elicits "oohs" from the girls, who look at me to confirm that this could be possible. Such is the stuff of legend.
I'm asked whether I own a car back in the U.S., and I answer yes. Twelve pairs of critical, curious eyes fixate on me, and I feel a little guilty. Trying to deflect the attention, I ask the kids what they do besides go to school.
"We drive around," says the most talkative girl, the leader.
Just drive around?
"And look for food."
?
Not all young people in Havana are fortunate enough to be university students. To get into U of H, students must pass a series of rigorous admissions tests. Once in, students must pass more tests to be admitted to the program of their choice. What about those who don't make it? I ask Dayron. He shrugs. "They do something else."
For some, something else means being a jinetero. The term literally means "jockey," and refers primarily to prostitutes, but is also used to describe young capitalists who hustle tourists for dollars. Jineteros come in both male and female versions, and in Havana they hang out near the Coppelia, which is the place to see and be seen.
One night at the Coppelia I am approached by a smooth 25-year-old girl named Alicia and her young friend, who, it seems, is in training. Eager to please, Alicia asks if I want to go to a party, or to a movie, or to a club. She guides me to a bar called La Red. She says that both she and her friend are salsa teachers, which I later learn is a popular, and vaguely defined, occupation in Cuba.
In this particular club, which is close to many hotels, a tv channel broadcasts American videos with a Latin feel?Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Lopez, Elvis Crespo. The "salsa teachers" give me an impromptu lesson while everyone else at the bar eyes them jealously. They are all learning, together, how to work this economy.
Alicia orders a round of sodas. How generous, I think. It is only later, when we are ready to move on, that I get passed the bill for the four drinks, and am charged eight dollars for entering. Alicia consults with the doorman. I think she just earned her week's pay. I tell her that I am tired, and ready for bed. Am I sure? she asks. Is there anything she can get for me? Alcohol? Drugs? Marijuana?
?
In Cuba, it is frowned upon not to pick up hitchhikers. If you have a car, and even a little bit of free space in it, you're expected to take on passengers. In fact, government workers in yellow jumpsuits, stationed along the roadside, flag down drivers and organize the process.
About 15 miles outside the city of Trinidad, I stop my rented teal Peugeot to pick up Ivan, a 26-year-old swimming teacher. He works two mornings a week at an elementary school several towns away. Because of the haphazard transportation system, he leaves his house at 5 a.m. to make his 8:30 class. But what about the other five days?
He laughs. "The girls think I am loco because all I do is fish." Around 8 a.m., he tells me, he ties a net to his ankle, grabs his harpoon gun and swims five kilometers into the ocean. Alone, he treads water until he has either speared 70 fish or it gets dark. It is illegal to catch lobsters; they are reserved only for export. He sells the fish for five pesos apiece to casas particulares?homes that are run as bed-and-breakfasts for tourists, at a rate of about $15 a night.
Ivan calls himself an "Indio" because of his reddish-brown skin?not that skin color is much of an issue here. Fifty-one percent of the population is mulatto, people of all races work and socialize together and discrimination is barely detectable to the American visitor. Racism, I am told, is a minor problem and most noticeable in the provinces.
Ivan lives with his grandmother, mother and stepfather. He would like to move out, but says it isn't possible. Housing is in such short supply that many married couples cannot get a place of their own; slim chance that a young, single man would be granted his own apartment. He would like to live in the U.S., but only temporarily. "I could open a Cuban restaurant for a few months and make enough money to come back and live like a king."
Later, we walk around the town. The bars are full of Canadians, Italians, French. I ask Ivan if we can visit a bar where the locals hang out, but there really isn't one. A giant cave on the mountainside has been turned into a nightclub. Ivan has only been in it a few times, when he has sold a lot of fish and can afford the seven-dollar cover charge. The town, it seems, does not belong to natives. It belongs to tourists.
At one club, a compact young guy in black pants, a skintight camouflage t-shirt and sunglasses dances flamboyantly. Ivan points to him and says: "Gay." He makes a face of disgust and says that there are many homosexuals in Cuba. "They are a problem!"
?
Two mornings later, I wake up to a loud banging on the door. It's not quite 7 a.m. An immigration officer in green army fatigues orders me to come to his office and meet with his boss. Still bleary-eyed, I follow him to a complex of boxy concrete buildings on a dirt road, where I am ushered into a small office and interrogated by two soldiers.
They're stern but sympathetic. They are just doing their jobs, making sure that all news gets dispensed by the only national daily newspaper, the government-backed tabloid Granma. I am asked to confirm what they have heard about the U.S., and my responses stun them. Yes, college costs $24,000 a year. Yes, kids shoot other kids at school. And yes, we must pay to see the doctor. "¡Dios mío!" they mumble.
I get a talking-to about the difference between a journalist visa and a tourist visa from the higher-ranking of the two men. "Many people do not understand Cuba," he says. "They come here for a few days, and go to their country and write negative things.
"With this visa," he continues, holding it up, "you can go the waterfalls, go to the beach, and take pretty pictures. Stop asking questions."
?
There is a Cuban saying that goes, "Si tu tienes amigos, tienes un central"?if you have friends, you have a factory. Anything can be produced.
I need a place to stay on my last two days in Havana, and through word of mouth find room at the home of a family anchored by Elisa, a woman pushing the upper limit of the Gen-X range. Four generations' worth of Elisa's clan live on the premises; they scurry to rearrange their quarters to make room for me and feed me, and they give me a rare three-peso coin engraved with Che Guevara's image. They shield me from the television every time someone on it raves about the evil Miami Cuban mafia (which is often), and tell me I am "familia."
The hospitality is amazing, but the house is crumbling. The walls and ceilings are pocked with holes, a roach runs through the living room and the bathroom is filthy. Grayish underwear hangs on hooks beside the shower. The toilet flushes only occasionally, and the wiping materials (which aren't necessarily toilet paper) must be put in a trash can because the septic system cannot handle them. To shower, one must stand in a colorful plastic tub inside the bathtub, or else the hundreds of miniature flies that live in and around the drain will come swarming out in a black cloud.
Trying to lighten my load for the return trip home, I filter through my backpack. Elisa accepts all that I offer, including a shirt, shampoo, soap, zit cream and a half-used deodorant. She is especially pleased with film and batteries, and when she admires my shoes, I give those to her as well. Her mom goes nuts over a bottle of nail polish.
Elisa has the air of a powerful woman, so I am not surprised to learn that she used to work in high-level government offices, and at one point with Fidel Castro's brother, Raul. Many Cuba-watchers have speculated that Raul will take Fidel's place when he goes, but Elisa gives me a sidelong glance when I bring that up, and wags her finger.
"No, no, no," she says. Raul has no personality, no leadership skills, the people don't like him. "But don't think for a second that Fidel hasn't thought about this," she says. She taps her forefinger on her temple and says, "He knows. He has been training people... I can't tell you the names, but they are good people." She nods and winks. "Don't worry, good people."
Will Cuba become a democracy then, I ask? Will there be capitalism? She squints and thinks about it. "Small chance," she says pinching her thumb and forefinger. "Very, very small chance."
The next day we cruise around with Elisa's friend Lili. I still don't quite understand the Cuban work ethic. Anyone who's not selling something roams slowly through the streets, or waits for a ride somewhere. A garbage truck passes at midday; three men on the back take turns loading trash while three in the cab sip a bottle of rum. Folks hang lazily out the windows of the cigar factories, watching passersby. We stop to see a group of Elisa's friends who are relaxing in their living room.
Elisa says she's between jobs. Lili, a jai-alai teacher, says she works Monday through Saturday, but it is Friday, at noon, and she's cruising around Havana in my rental car ("Fidel's rental car," they correct me), blasting Elvis Crespo tapes and going to drink beers at Ernest Hemingway's house. "It's okay," she says, laughing.
That night, I meet the university students back at the pool to celebrate the end of the Caribe Games. About 1500 people, including the DJs with their mix tapes, surround the makeshift stage beside the pool, below the banana-tree-covered hill. A guy named Miguel ("Like Michael Jordan!" he declares. "I like Mike!"), who, in an Hawaiian print shirt and khakis, looks like LL Cool J modeling for the J. Crew catalog, offers me some rum.
"I love English," says the 27-year-old, over the music. "But I could never live in America. America is too fast. Here it is paradise." He beams, sweeping one arm through the air, gesturing at the night sky. "I love my country, I love my government and I very much love my family."
Everyone shakes, the two DJs stand on a chair and pump their fists, and some people fall into the pool. I am trying to salsa with the soccer coach when the music cuts off, people start shrieking and 1500 bodies spit away from the dancefloor. A fight has broken out.
Joel, an acquaintance of mine, grabs me and leads me through the hysterical crowd as people file out of the gate. The party has ended. Sadness looms.
"This really pisses me off," says Joel, in English. One guy walks by, shirtless, blood dripping down the side of his face. Our friends huddle, disappointed.
"This never happens," they say urgently, like they must convince me of this.
"It's okay," I say. "Fights happen everywhere."
"They don't usually happen in Cuba, and never at the university," says Joel.
Military police have come to investigate, and we leave. As we move across the dark soccer field, a hefty woman in a long white nightgown, with flocculent gray hair and spectacles, comes across the field, yelling, "Miguel!" My friend Michael Jordan runs up to her, kisses her head and walks off with his arm around her?his mom.
?
Just when I thought I might leave Cuba without meeting someone who wants to defect, Joel tells me he wants to go to Miami. Seriously. Within the next year.
"Here there are so many problems. It is difficult to get soap. They give you a house, but the house is falling apart. They give you food, but the food that is supposed to be for a month is really only for seven days. I have little brothers, and my parents, and I want to go the U.S. and send them money."
Doesn't the government block you from leaving?
"No! If you want to go, fine. Bye. Leave."
The problem is getting a U.S. visa?"For every visa given, 20 people apply," Joel tells me?and then finding a way to get to the States. Joel knows a girl who won one of the U.S. visas in the Cuban lottery; she's agreed to marry him so that he might leave as well.
"I have a friend who went to Miami on a boat," he tells me. "He said that he had so much fear, to be at sea for a few days, in the black night. He said if he had known what it was going to be like, he would never have gone. But I must go now. I am young, and I am like a ram. Always fighting."
To finance his trip, Joel has brokered a black-market deal on a laptop computer. With the $50 he made, he bought a rewritable CD-ROM drive that he can use on a friend's computer. He plans to download music from the Internet, record CDs and sell them for profit. In light of the fact that few Cubans have ever sent an e-mail, much less downloaded something, Joel's entrepreneurial skills are striking.
His naivete about the States soon becomes evident, though. "I think the U.S. government gives every Cuban who arrives the money to live for a year," he says.
I tell him to think of a backup plan. His dream job, he says, would be to manage a computer store. He adds that he can fix computer hardware, and that he knows Microsoft Access and Microsoft Excel. It occurs to me that, with these skills, and given that he's bilingual, Joel is possibly more employable than I am.
?
The next night, my last in Cuba, I invite all the people I have met in Havana to a picnic at a park overlooking the bay, just under the statue of El Cristo, Jesus Christ. I shop at a modern grocery store that only rich Cubans and tourists can afford. Hair dye and toothpaste are displayed in a locked glass case, and a security guard patrols the aisles. At the closely guarded deli counter, I buy 45 slices of ham for 20 American dollars. Rum costs three dollars a bottle.
Seven friends make it to the picnic, where I introduce the concept of the footlong sub and try to describe McDonald's.
"You mean you don't even have to get out of the car?" Alejandro asks.
They teach me some Spanish slang. "Nadar a la pelota," they explain, means to go skinny dipping, which none of them have ever done, and they give me a "Salvemos a Elian" t-shirt that they got at one of the rallies. We sing "Hotel California" and some Bon Jovi songs.
I tell them that I want to send a package when I return to the U.S., and they warn me that it may be pilfered if I send it through the mail. I promise to write them at their university e-mail addresses, but we know that could be unreliable. They tell me I should hurry back, and I am flattered; but when I suggest that they come visit me, I can tell from their faces that it is as though I have made a cruel joke.