Island that Dared Read online

  Praise for The Island that Dared

  ‘There has always been a raw energy about her work that sets her apart from some of her paler contemporaries … Now in her mid-70s, she has written at least 25 books but, judging by this volume she’s in no danger of mellowing … Fierce, highly moral and uncompromising, this is classic Murphy. In an often anodyne world, she remains an original … she is a refreshingly defiant voice, straight-talking and no-nonsense.’

  Justin Marozzi, The Financial Times

  ‘This most independent of adventurers … writes from the experience of doing Cuba the hard way. She cannot see one of the island’s ubiquitous queues without joining it, whether it’s for bread or a seat in a bone-shaking railway carriage … She has the knack of eliciting confidences and even affection from people who have learnt to be wary. Dervla Murphy’s travelogue is a close as any foreigner is likely to get to the life of Cubans on the brink.’

  Stephen Smith, The Telegraph

  ‘Murphy shows herself to be an acute observer of the political scene as well as displaying the exact physical notation and bloody-mindedness on which she has built her reputation. This should be required reading for all those magnetised by dreams of a holiday in Havana.’

  Giles Foden, Condé Nast Traveller

  ‘The new book is no rough guide to Cuba. It’s a substantial piece of work, with careful research about the Caribbean island’s history, politics and economy, woven with her observations on the ground. She sees the political system there – which allows the population little freedom of expression or freedom of movement – as a viable alternative to capitalism.’

  Kate Butler, The Sunday Times, Ireland

  ‘Intrepid and indefatigable in pursuit of experience … Murphy discovers an island in transition from hard-line socialism to moderate capitalism. The faded charm persist, but so does poverty, which is borne with a patriotic pride that continues to baffle Batista-nostalgic critics.’

  The Times

  ‘Investigating the real, modern nation, rather than the pre-packaged one, with candour, she uncovers many truths along the way.’

  Time Out

  ‘This is writing without artifice or intimacy. As much travel writing becomes boastful, Dervla’s clarity and honesty is admirable. It takes us there, strolls about with us, then brings us safely home …’

  Dea Birkett, The Oldie

  ‘A passionate but by no means uncritical celebration of the Cuban people and their revolution … Murphy has an infectious love for life and an ability to strike up conversation with virtually anyone, enabling her to make contact with ordinary Cubans who’ve achieved some quite extraordinary things.’

  Morning Star

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  PART ONE

  November–December 2005

  PART TWO

  January–March 2006

  PART THREE

  September–October 2007

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  Map

  Dervla with the Trio

  Diving off the Malecón

  Schoolgirls guarding the ballot box

  Copyright

  To all the many Cubans

  who helped me on my way

  Acknowledgements

  Lovine Wilson achieved awesome secretarial feats while swiftly coping with a tedious and incoherent typescript.

  Brendan Barrington kindly read the first draft and was generous with shrewd constructive criticism.

  Jo Murphy-Lawless as usual contributed enormously in both raw material and moral support. Deborah Singmaster, on a sudden inspiration, brought forth the title.

  Stephanie Allen earned my undying gratitude by guiding me towards Eland Publishing. Rose Baring and Barnaby Rogerson provided the sort of encouragement and advice all authors need and a dwindling number receive in the twenty-first century.

  Rachel and Andrew put Cuba on my agenda and the former for months worked overtime in cyberspace on behalf of an uncomputerised mother.

  To all, my heartfelt thanks.

  Introduction

  In times long past (1973–87) I travelled with my daughter Rachel (born 1968) in Asia, Latin America and Africa; pack-animals assisted us on those months-long treks. In 1993 Rachel met Andrew in Mozambique where both were working as UN volunteers during that country’s transition from war to peace.

  Fast forward to the autumn of 2005 when my grand-daughters were soon to be ten (Rose), eight (Clodagh) and six (Zea) – old enough to benefit from some real travelling, instead of merely flying from their home in Italy to visit relatives and friends in Wales, England and Ireland. From Andrew came an exhilarating suggestion, a three-generation November wander through Cuba. The island’s quasi-Western way of life would not, he judged, overtax his darlings’ adaptability and Castroism has brought about a remarkably low crime-rate. But unfortunately this had to be an all-female team; Andrew’s job precluded winter holidays and the university vacation months would be intolerably hot.

  Everything was easily organised. Low-cost Virgin Air fares were on offer and at the Cuban Consulate in London efficient young women took only seven minutes to process our five visas (£15 each) – thus setting a record, in my experience. Tourism has now replaced sugar as Cuba’s main official source of hard currency so it is in the national interest to lower bureaucratic hurdles. Another vitally important source – this one long-established – is the cash-flow, unquantifiable but considerable, from Cuban exiles to their families and friends.

  From the Rough Guide’s list of casas particulares (government-approved B&Bs) Rachel selected Casa de Pedro y Candida in Centro Habana and by e-mail booked two rooms for three nights. Beyond Havana we would muddle through; having closely studied our map and guide books, we knew how to avoid the main tourist zones. And Cuba’s four thousand five hundred-mile coastline promised that the Trio would not be deprived of sea and sand.

  Despite its unique socio-political interest, Cuba was not a country I had ever considered for a solitary trek or cycle tour; always it’s too hot (Siberia in winter is more to my climatic taste) and topographically it is too tame. I visualised, not entirely accurately, an island mostly flat and monochrome (all those canefields!) with only a few low mountain ranges. The Cuban people, I gathered, were the country’s most precious resource, an impression to be confirmed by experience.

  I failed to register the Revolution’s triumph in January 1959 when I was in the midst of a prolonged personal crisis that obliterated world events. However, I do vividly remember the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. By then I was preparing to cycle to India while everyone else was, if you believed the media, preparing for nuclear war. I didn’t believe the media and concentrated on sending spare tyres to strategic points (usually British Council offices) between Istanbul and New Delhi. Meanwhile Nikita Khrushchev and J.F. Kennedy were sorting things out without consulting Fidel, which seemed fair enough since he had had no ambition to host nuclear weapons. Inevitably, however, this ignoring of their leader caused considerable offence in Cuba; it too loudly echoed that Spanish and US ignoring of the courageous Cuban army in 1898, when the Wars of Independence ended. Fidel’s accepting of the missiles was a decision reluctantly taken, as he explained years later. ‘By allowing Cuba to become a Soviet military base the image of the Revolution would be damaged and we were zealous in protecting that image in the rest of Latin America.’ He was referring to the importance of the Revolution’s being recognised as a one hundred per cent homegrown event, brought off by ordinary Cubans without any significant outside assistance – financial, ideological or military. />
  During subsequent decades, Cuba came to my attention only occasionally: in 1967 when Che was executed in Bolivia by CIA-funded militia; in August 1968 when Fidel severely shocked his friends, at home and abroad, by condoning Soviet brutality in Czechoslovakia; in April 1971 when the poet Heberto Padilla, winner of a major international literary prize, was bugged by State Security and subsequently publicly humiliated; in the mid-’70s when Cuban troops in Angola contributed more than their share to the defeat of apartheid South Africa’s US-backed army. During the following decades I was impressed by the publication of internationally acclaimed statistics recording the extraordinary achievement of Castroist health and education campaigns and in the early’90s it distressed me to hear that the end of trade relations with the Eastern Bloc was threatening all such achievements. In Washington that crisis engendered two more anti-Cuba laws and here one recalls the much-quoted comment of a US diplomat, Wayne S. Smith – ‘Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon used to have on werewolves’.

  On 28 September 1990, after all trade with the Eastern Bloc had suddenly collapsed, Fidel announced Cuba’s entry into ‘a special period during peacetime’, an interlude of deprivation comparable to wartime conditions (soon to become generally known a ‘the Special Period’). Seven years later the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean estimated that this ‘interruption of commercial relations with the Eastern Bloc constituted a loss of markets more severe than that brought about by the Great Depression’.

  It could be said that I was starry-eyed (or blinkered?) about the forty-seven-year-old Cuban experiment when our direct flight to Havana took off on 1 November 2005. This family holiday gave me a glimpse of the experiment’s complexities and in January 2006 I returned alone for two months – which journey left me somewhat less starry-eyed, though still a staunch supporter of Castroism as it has been evolving since 1990. My final visit (September/October 2007) coincided with Cuba’s four-yearly elections and I saw for myself what Professor D. L. Raby had recently pointed out:

  Not only do the Cubans recognise that the Left can no longer afford the mistake of trying to copy a fixed model of any kind, but they accept that the peculiar circumstances of the US blockade and their geographical situation on the doorstep of the imperial hegemony have conditioned and limited their own Socialist democracy.

  PART ONE

  November–December 2005

  Chapter 1

  At 11.10 a.m., one hour and forty minutes out of Gatwick, our captain announced, in a bright chatty voice, ‘You’ll have noticed we’ve changed direction’. (I hadn’t noticed.) Then the voice became soothing. We had a defective engine, the defect so trivial it would be absolutely safe to continue to any other destination. The only snag was that Havana’s airport lacked an appropriate maintenance crew.

  Rachel and I exchanged raised eyebrows and feigned nonchalance. For both of us this was a novel experience – how unkind of Fate, on the Trio’s first long-distance flight! Yet they seemed to accept the situation as part of travelling’s rich tapestry and were fascinated by our fuel-jettisoning. Rose, Clodagh and I chanced to be sitting just behind the right wing and for half an hour could see a steady stream of shining kerosene pouring fast from that tank. Clodagh exclaimed, ‘It’s like a silver sword!’ Zea, bred to be frugal, lamented the waste. Rose told her: ‘From Gatwick to Havana is four thousand six hundred and seventy-one miles’ (she’d been studying her TV screen) ‘and all the way we’re over the sea. It’s sensible to waste fuel and go back for repairs!’ At which point I realised that she, too, was feigning nonchalance.

  Our fellow-passengers, mostly British tourists, made no fuss, were tensely silent or spoke in whispers. The cabin staff, no doubt accustomed to coping with such minor crises, strolled to and fro looking calm and cheerful, offering light refreshments.

  Approaching Gatwick, through dense swirling wind-torn clouds, our captain spoke again. We were not to be alarmed by the fire-engines and ambulances lined up to meet us, a standard procedure for an unscheduled landing but of course superfluous in our case. Moments later, as we gained height, that reassuring voice explained, ‘Our landing is being delayed by adverse weather conditions’. For twenty long minutes we circled through turbulence while Rose and Zea quietly and neatly filled their vomit-bags.

  At 1.10 we touched down, very bumpily, and were instructed to leave no possessions on board. When we had ‘deplaned’ (who invents these ugly words?) further information would be available.

  On our release most passengers at once cell-phoned, excitedly reporting the drama as we were herded down the long corridors. Everyone looked happily relieved rather than frustrated. But soon three grumpy security men blocked our way with a nylon rope barrier. Bureaucratic complications arise when hundreds of passengers are not departing, not arriving, not in transit. For almost an hour we were restricted to limbo, a large space with few seats. The Trio sat on the floor absorbed in Sudoku puzzles while their mother and grandmother agreed that the stress of travelling with small children is greatly exaggerated. In general that age-group simply takes life as it comes.

  When a ground-staff team eventually rescued us they looked apologetic: we wouldn’t be taking off before 8.00 p.m., if then. At a kiosk in the main concourse we each received a fifteen-pound gift voucher for sustenance and promptly I abandoned my descendants, making for the nearest bar. The disappointment was cruel; those vouchers could be exchanged only for food and soft drinks. Meanwhile the Trio, having discovered a spacious play-area, were energetically relating to their contemporaries despite having been up at 4.00 a.m. And Rachel was struggling with a public telephone (we are an anti-cell-phone family) because she wanted Andrew, in Italy, to send an e-mail to Candida, in Havana, explaining that we would not be arriving when expected. For some arcane reason, e-mailing Cuba is much easier than telephoning.

  Around the play-area several Havana-bound parents occupied ringside seats. I sat beside Imelda, one of the few Cubans, a slim, olive-skinned woman looking ill at ease in high-altitude garments. She was longing to be home ‘where bodies can feel free’. Her extrovert three-year-old son had found the play-area too limited and was roving widely, charming the general public and being followed at a discreet distance by his English father. A family illness had occasioned this mid-winter visit to Yorkshire. When the couple met in 2001 Ted had already been working in Cuba for years. ‘Doing what?’ I asked – an innocent question, yet Imelda feigned deafness. I was at the beginning of a steep learning curve; beneath their effervescent friendliness, many Cubans maintain a cautious reserve in conversation with unknown foreigners.

  Later, Ted volunteered that he was a tourist industry marketing consultant. In his view, Castroism had long been among Cuba’s most effective tourist magnets. ‘People say, “We must go before it changes”, meaning before Fidel dies. Few realise changes have been happening for a decade. They’re seeing a country still wearing a Castroist fig-leaf while in rapid transition to capitalism.’ I noted Ted’s neutral tone; but one could deduce, from his job, that he approved of the changes.

  Leaving Rose in charge of her siblings, Rachel and I sat in a nearby bar wondering how, within six hours, we could possibly spend seventy-five pounds on food and soft drinks. Given that sum, or less, Rachel could feed a family of five for a week. Then, collecting the Trio, we toured Gatwick’s shopping mall, unsuccessfully seeking wholesome portable foods to sustain us while trekking. In general we boycott the mainstream food industry but this situation called for flexibility; to the Trio’s delighted astonishment they were allowed to eat one voucher’s worth of mini-yoghurts and megaice-creams. (‘All full of chemical flavourings and dyes,’ their mother grimly commented.) Eventually, in desperation, I proposed a meal, with good wine for the adults, at Gatwick’s most expensive restaurant.

  By 7.15 the Havana-bound were easily spotted amidst Gatwick’s multitude. Anxiously we coalesced beneath the Departure screens and Havana’s failure to a
ppear prompted a rising tide of pessimism. Then at 7.50 it did appear (Board Now!) and we all surged towards Gate thirty-two waving our Special Passes – which didn’t spare us the X-ray queue. By this stage Zea was half-asleep, riding on Mummy’s shoulders, and Clodagh was looking pale and sounding querulous while Rose silently wore her ‘I’m a stoic’ expression. At the final security check smiling Virgin Air hostesses handed out letters from the Customer Relations Manager regretting that our flight ‘had suffered a technical problem’ (more delicate wording than ‘engine failure’) and offering us ten thousand Flying Club miles or twenty per cent off our next Economy ticket.

  During that nine and a half hour flight Rose slept quite well, Clodagh slept fitfully and Zea slept so soundly, stretched across her own seat and the maternal lap, that leg cramps kept Rachel awake. To me her avoidance of any movement seemed like excessive solicitude but I reckoned such grandmaternal opinions are best suppressed for the sake of intergenerational harmony. As for Nyanya – I can never sleep in the sitting position though if reclining on a bed of stones (as occasionally happens) slumber comes easily. (Here it should be explained that to the Trio I’m ‘Nyanya’, the Swahili term for Granny, bestowed on me when Rose was a baby living in Eastern Zaire.)

  Peering through the blackness during our descent, it was apparent that Havana is no ordinary twenty-first-century city; instead of the usual energy-wasting glow, dim pinpricks marked Cuba’s capital.

  In the immigration hall we ceremoniously changed our watches from 5.30 to 1.30 a.m. By then Rachel and I had reached that curious stage of exhaustion when one ceases to notice it (mind over matter? Second wind?). Rose and Zea were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, Clodagh less so – until she met another eight-year-old with whom she had bonded in the play-area. The queues were long and slow, each passport and visa requiring computerisation. Rachel had recently convinced me that computers are very useful but I remained aware of their negative effects. The computerisation of everything – libraries, universities, hotels, hospitals, government departments, airports – has noticeably lengthened bureaucratic ordeals while encouraging a profligate attitude towards paper use.