Grit, glamour coexist in Cuba

Grit, glamour coexist in Cuba
Sunday, September 6, 2015
By: Kevin Spear, Orlando Sentinel

HAVANA — Cliches about Cuba as frozen in time — with vintage cars,
prestigious cigars and crumbling antiquities — gloss over that Cubans
are educated and ravenous for opportunity.

An urbane nuclear engineer earns a living in Havana renting nicely
appointed rooms in his impeccable, fifth-floor casa particular, or
private home.

A street vendor with a tiny table rehabilitates disposable lighters.
Another rebuilds umbrellas. Yet another performs surgery on cellphones.

And a man with a dirt-floor shop across from a state-owned field of
sugar cane re-engineers classic American autos into international hybrids.

"We find a way, always," promised a Cuban guide, with confidence.

With an easing of Cuba's internal controls and thawing relations with
the United States, the island is stirring with expectation. In July, my
wife made her third trip and I visited for the first time.

The blink of a flight from Tampa, Fla., to Havana takes 52 minutes and
quickly reveals a country rendered otherworldly by isolation from the
U.S. and adherence to socialism.

Shortly after we arrived at Jose Marti airport, an immigration "jefe"
with a radio pulled me aside for an interrogation over travel plans. It
somewhat unsettled my Spanish-speaking wife, who must explain.

Apparently I stand out at 6 feet 4 inches on a plane of Cubans and
Cuban-Americans. Our reception is a Latin version of going into East
Berlin back in the Wall days.

Next were female officers in uniforms of tight skirts and
black-patterned stockings, and X-ray machines scanning bulging bags
brought into the country.

Then we pushed through doors into the steaming outside. A waiting crowd
pressed against barricades. It's clamorous, disorienting, and thus began
the adventure.

A 60-year-old Rambler took 30 minutes to get us to Havana.

The first thing we noticed was mesmerizing and eclectic architecture,
heavy on balconies, arches, iron railing and Spanish persuasions. Much
of it was melting with disrepair.

Trees and shrubs sprouted from cracks in exterior walls above streets,
competing with fluttering laundry. Tangled electric wires cluttered
foyers. Sewage drained to streets.

Yet cocooned within buildings condemnable elsewhere were homes and
restaurants of refinement and elegance. Stairways rose from grimy chaos
to immaculate calm of a casa particular, with rooms costing about $35 a
night.

Unisex bathrooms in La Guarida, royalty among paladares, or private
restaurants, glowed in purple-blue lighting. Food and service, at $60
for starters through dessert for two, were surrealistic.

Existence of such addresses, with hot water, toilets that flush, air
conditioners that cool and artistic portraits of nudes, left me amazed
over the effort and ingenuity they must have required of workers who
often make $1 or $2 a day.

A least one meal should be taken in a government-owned restaurant for
perspective on socialist fare, though some do occupy the most venerable
settings.

But paladares aren't hard to find, and a posh one in the embassy section
of Havana featured an arresting view of ocean and of adjoining resorts
that began disintegrating years ago.

In Cuba, gritty and glamour go hand in hand.

A 1954 Oldsmobile taxi, a gorgeous thing in azure, had its gas-guzzling
V-8 replaced with a 1960s-era British diesel. It also was refitted with
a Hyundai truck transmission and Mercedes disc brakes. It buzzed along
like an agile tractor.

A mechanic converts American classics into Cuban road warriors by
fabricating parts and precisely welding engine compartments into new
configurations.

The aging diesels, however, belch thunderheads of exhaust, a noxious
reminder Havana is urban in its peculiar, developing-nation ways.

Tap water isn't drinkable, Cubans say, and groceries aren't readily
available. Street scamming goes on with cheap rum, cigars and something
involving salsa and sex. Narrow streets in the capital's old section may
suggest, "Ghetto: danger!" It's a false alarm.

Cubans in the city live open lives, lacking air conditioning, and you
can glance into windows and see Mom, Dad and the kids as if you were in
their homes.

Perhaps best of all in Cuba is how easy it is to connect with Cubans,
which was prohibited not many years ago, and hear their take on
U.S.-Cuba relations.

"We loooooove you," an amazed driver of a three-wheeled, bicycle taxi,
or bicitaxi, proclaimed when he realized his passengers are American.
Another bicitaxi labors by, an American flag clipped to its handlebar.

It's startling anybody loves Americans enough to proclaim it so loudly.
Yet many Cubans aren't shy about complaining the U.S. is punishing Cuba
with its embargo.

If you are not drawn to the understandable anger of Cuban-Americans of a
certain age who were terrorized, run out of the country and lost a way
of life, you may want to admire and cheer for Cubans.

Their nation is adrenalized and vibrating in transition between the
Castros and a country anxious to erupt. More affluence. More modernity.
More Americans. More good and more bad.

After it happens, and Marriotts and McDonald's brand an island within
reach of a ferry ride, history surely will ask of the last decades:
"What was that about?"

Source: Grit, glamour coexist in Cuba | Boston Herald -
http://www.bostonherald.com/entertainment/travel/2015/09/grit_glamour_coexist_in_cuba