Back in the Trenches

"Trincheras de ideas valen mas que trincheras de piedra / Trenches filled with ideas have more value than trenches filled with stones." --Jose Marti, Cuban Poet and National Hero

It's always fascinating to travel with Cubans; I watched them drag hundreds of pounds of check-in bags to the counter in the Bahamas, grumbling loudly as they wrapped their belongings in blue plastic to protect them. Those who want to take more than the legal 44 lb limit imposed by the Cuban government (to control people bringing in too much) just take the back door and don't bother with the legal red tape in the U.S. Taking the back door means being able to take home DVD players, televisions... I even saw a huge box that held a backyard pool. They're charged high tariffs for everything they bring in, but doing it this way still means being able to bring in what their families need. I stuck to the weight limits, made my face as innocent as I can get it, and smiled at every question. In the rickety plane, seats torn and the whole thing rattling like it was held together by rubber bands and duct tape, the Cubans surrounding me chatted loudly and enthusiastically, ignoring all safety instructions and shouting to each other from one end of the plane to another. Only here and in Israel have I seen people applaud so loudly as the plane touches the ground, and amid shouts about their "madre patria" I clapped as well. Minutes later inside Jose Marti airport, those same Cubans were grumbling their way through customs searches as I breezed by to a pleasant "Welcome to Cuba" after a few questions about my research here. It must be hard to love your country so much and hate it so much at the same time, and I feel mildly guilty that it's so easy for me to pass through; that must be what Carolyn Forche meant when she said we Americans never really leave our country at all when we travel.

My friend Ana told me she hasn't seen beef in three years, as she prepared yet another dish of scrambled eggs for me this morning. Last night we ate cow hearts, the closest you can get to beef here. Anything she can find is worth trying; sometimes it's fish taken straight out of the Havana bay, a filthy, industrial mess. Cubans line the famous Malecon, the Havana seawall, to fish from it at night when no one's controlling the area. One can only imagine the long-range impact of polluted fish as a primary source of protein. The only thing I can always count on here is coffee, sweetened until it tastes more like candy than coffee. Sugar is cheaper than water, and in every home I'm welcomed with strong coffee so sweet it makes my teeth ache.

I visited one of my favorite couples yesterday, artist and history/philosophy professor Caridad Regina and her intellectual husband Alberto. Her painting of Chango, the saint/orisha who governs happiness, hangs over my desk in Denver. All Alberto ever wants to do is talk politics, and of course George W. was the first order of business. Totally incredulous, they asked me again and again how he could have won a second time, that time NOT by mistake, and I shook my head and said I'd answer it if I could. But I can't. At least Cubans understand when I say that few of us agree with Bush; having lived their whole lives under a system that rarely takes their needs into consideration, they've come to understand the difference between citizens and the monster that governs them. "El pueblo norteamericano" isn't the problem, just like Cubans themselves aren't the problem here, either. And again I find myself marvelling: how can Cubans be so accepting of North Americans when our government has done so much to hurt them? And how is it that we haven't learned to do the same in return? Alberto pounded the table--"You need another Carter," he told me, and Cari chimed in--"No one will take any of you seriously until you find a president who actually cares about humans."

Ana took me to see my new goddaughter, who they call a "bon bon de chocolate" with her lovely brown skin and plump arms. Getting into the taxi, Ana lifted a silencing finger to her lips: this means don't speak, not a word. Common taxis are much cheaper than official ones; most are old cars driven as full as they can be packed, and the drivers can lose both car and license for taking foreigners. Even with my fluency, the accent gives me away. I've played many roles to be able to ride in these taxis, always someone's aunt or cousin or neice, here visiting from Miami or something so the accent seems reasonable; once I was even asked to duck down low when we passed a control spot in Santiago de Cuba in 2000. All of this comes from Castro's initial laws governing tourism; after several tourists were killed on a highway by counter-revolutionaries in the 1980s, he changed the system to keep tourists as isolated as possible from Cubans. The intention was obviously to protect tourists and make Cuba a safe travel destination in the eyes of the world, but the effect is that Ana can't even enter my rented room without the permission of the landlady, not always easy to come by. She can't go beyond the lobby in any of the big hotels, and when one of my students visited here in December, Ana's younger son was constantly harassed when he was walking with her. My only advantage is how well my coloring lets me blend, but even so it really takes cheating the system to be able to mix with Cubans. And transportation remains a mess; people wait for hours to shove themselves into packed "wa-was," buses that are also nicknamed "camellos" because they have a high section in the middle that looks like a camel's back. There's no such thing as being on time for anything here, and it can take Cubans days to reach destinations I can reach in hours on tourist buses.

But none of this matters as we enter the home of my new goddaughter, Ana's first grandchild. Baby in arms, her father Micha shows her off proudly, and Veronica wails at me in welcome. Everyone is smiling, and no one seems to care that it's so hot and stifling and that none of us will eat meat for dinner. Vero tries to focus her grey, undeveloped eyes on me and grabs at my finger. Nothing else matters. Even in the worst of moments, a beautiful new child unites any community, any family in the world.