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PROLOGUE
The nicest sketches drawn in our school tablets always
lead us to death.
And courage? What is it without a machine gun?
-Heberto Padilla, State of Siege
One
autumn day in Washington in 1997, when communism seemed to have
prolapsed forever and the world looked in danger of becoming eternally
boring, my friend Art Silverman said: "Would you like to go
to Cuba?" Art is a senior producer at National Public Radio,
and he firmly believes in stimulating my pseudo-journalistic persona.
In 1989, he had contrived to send me to Romania with an NPR team
to witness the momentous and violent finale of the last red domino
in Europe. I filed back a series of emotional reports from my homeland,
reports that gained me an undeserved reputation for reportorial
acuity. In fact, I had been overcome by sentiment returning to Romania
after more than a quarter century in exile, and I had invested my
observations with poetic feeling. The hard-boiled journalists fled
Romania in droves when it became apparent, shortly after the execution
of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and of his wife Elena, that the
shooting had (nearly) stopped. Your hard-boiled journalist, seasoned
in Lebanon, Somalia, and Iraq had little use for a revolutionary
operetta that produced only a paltry harvest of bodies. For the
most part, the collapse of Eastern European communism had been a
bloodless, velvety affair, and that sort of thing, after decades
of unrelenting cold war and arms races, was bound to be disappointing
to the purveyors of frontline Hemingwayesque prose. That aftermath
was better left to eggheads and poets, which accounted for my success
as a 'journalist.'
What happened in 1989 in Romania and elsewhere in the fearsome 'red
empire' is still a mystery. The nuclear-tipped red menace on the
basis of which the West had built the mightiest war-machine on earth,
turned out to be some kind of sheep exhausted by having to wear
its weighty wolf skin. I returned to Romania several times after
'the revolution,' and understood less and less of what happened
in 1989. The only thing I did understand was that the people we'd
called communists hadn't gone anywhere and were still pretty much
the same, though they had changed some of their vocabulary for the
sake of the times. It was now de rigueur to say 'mister' instead
of 'comrade,' but it was a new habit and the older folks kept slipping
and saying 'com-mister,' or the native equivalent.
The mess that followed the execution of the Ceausescus, the so-called
'post-communist era,' continued -- and continues -- to exhibit this
split personality and has made it nearly impossible to gain any
kind of 'normality.' The Romanians of the post-Ceausescu age still
have a long time to go before they can trust each other and go about
their business without fear. The situation is compounded by the
fact that the elite of the Communist party and the secret police
have adapted with great speed to the new conditions. In 'post-communism'
different gangs are battling for power and money, using whatever
it takes to sway the frightened populace, including fascist sloganeering,
kitschy nationalism, gobs of nostalgia for paternal authoritarianism,
and, of course, the perennial best-seller: anti-Semitism. (Without
Jews). Democracy and capitalism, fearful words at first, are now
tossed about quite as casually as all the other words, because they
are, after all, just words. What is actually going on is too feudal
for Westerners to understand, but it is a legacy of what went on
before, namely so-called 'socialism.'
 Perhaps
an explanation for the quick collapse and the subsequent mess might
be found in Cuba. Here is one of the last socialist countries in
the world, a place nearing the end of its 'great experiment,' as
Milan Kundera called it, a place where the communist ideology continues
side by side with an encroaching and inevitable capitalism. Cuba
is a laboratory of pre-post-communism and an ideal environment to
study the dying beast while it is still (barely) breathing. Perhaps
the nasty decomposition now taking place in Eastern Europe can be
studied in Cuba because it is not yet total.
"Cuba?" I said. "Great idea."
I had only a vague idea why it was a great idea, but I knew why
it was a great idea for Art. Winter was coming to Washington. Cuba
is in the Caribbean. Weirdly enough, I don't have much interest
in tropical paradises. Jamaica, Bahamas, Tahiti -- you can have
them. There are certain parts of the world I simply don't care for.
I am immensely attracted to Central and South America, the Mediterranean,
the east coast of Africa. If I were an imperial writer like Somerset
Maugham or D.H. Lawrence, for instance, two men who at a certain
point in the mid-century, divided the world between them to produce
vast literary properties, I would leave the tropics to the competition.
I have always loved the story of Maugham checking into the Mexican
hotel in Oaxaca where Lawrence was staying and trying to invite
Lawrence for breakfast, lunch, or dinner or just coffee and conversation.
After a month or so of being snubbed, Maugham gave up. He understood
that Lawrence was laying claim to Mexico and telling Maugham to
stick to the Indian sub-continent. I can barely imagine that sort
of grandeur: Mexico is mine! Of course, when the sun set on the
British Empire, only the writers were left to cover its missing
limbs. But I have never felt ownership of any place, not even Romania,
though I wish that those writers who keep insisting on writing about
it would take some elementary course in the language.
The more I thought about Cuba the more it made sense. In addition
to explaining the mystery of the demise of communism, Cuba also
held clues to the bewildering behavior of the victorious West. In
the eight years since the collapse of the USSR there has been a
mad scrambling in the U.S. and Europe for a new enemy to justify
the maintenance of huge military machines. Eight years during which
no adversary with the systemic authority of the red Ism arose. The
spectre of Islam, though skillfully painted in the most dreadful
colors, failed to engage the public imagination to the same degree.
Ah, we missed the old commies! Not I personally, but Jesse Helms,
the CIA, the Reagan republicans, the army, the navy, and the airforce.
Ah, but the Ism still twitched in China, Laos, North Vietnam, North
Korea -- and Cuba. Of all these islands of commiedom, only Cuba
engaged the full attention of our quickly thawing cold warriors.
China was too big to mess with because when you messed with China
you messed with AT&T and Coca Cola, which is to say America.
President Clinton, in one of the most astounding turn-about-faces
in American foreign policy, 'decoupled' the issue of human rights
from America’s policy goals. The policy of human rights, which
many commentators considered the winner of the cold war, was simply
unhitched from the wagon of our concerns. The moral authority on
which the West based its claims of superiority over the authoritarian
East was dropped like a hot potato, an act akin to dropping Faith
or Grace from the Catholic canon. Without the bother of human rights,
China could go right on filling its jails with dissidents, selling
the human organs of executed convicts, and producing cheap knockoffs
of Cartier watches with slave labor. With China protected by AT&T,
North Korea on the brink of mass starvation, and other Asian communist
countries too insignificant to bother with, only Cuba remained both
a potent symbol and an unwavering target.
Cuba was in bad shape. After the loss of its Soviet patrons, the
Cuban economy collapsed. But the Castro death-watch was losing steam.
A book called "Castro's Final Hour" was already four years
old. In late August 1997, a Miami television station reported that
Castro died, which caused the Maximum Leader to give one of his
energetic mega-speeches and prove his ill-wishers wrong. "Goodbye
to the imperialists' hopes." he said, "Pass what may pass,
fall who may fall, die who may die." The implication was that
the Revolution would go on even if he died, but that he had no intention
of dying.
The situation in Cuba in 1997 resembled, at least superficially,
from what I read, the situation in Romania in the Eighties when
austerity measures and poverty became unbearable. Facing economic
disaster, Castro resorted to a an unprecedented, out-of character
move that proved just how desperate the situation had become. He
allowed the introduction of a rudimentary market economy, and the
legalization of the dollar, which became quickly the only worthwhile
currency on the island. Before this, owning dollars in Cuba was
a crime. Many people went to prison for holding a small banknote.
Now there are at least eight names for dollars: fula, guano,
guaniquiqui, varo, peso, verde, and, the official term for foreign
exchange: divisas. European, Latin American, and Canadian
companies were now invited to invest in joint ventures in Cuba.
By the end of 1997, there were more than 300 joint ventures in Cuba,
mostly tourists resorts and hotels. Cuban citizens were permitted
to open small private businesses, such as hotels with a limited
number of rooms, and private restaurants with no more than twelve
tables. Some state land was turned over to tightly controlled co-operatives,
and surplus produce was funneled to private markets. Expensive but
previously unavailable goods, such as shoes, perfume, and sunglasses,
became available in stores for dollars only. Since the average monthly
wage in Cuba was $12, these stores were clearly out of the reach
of ordinary Cubans. These timid steps toward capitalism were taken
in the hope of preventing a political collapse a la Romania, but
also because Cuba's newest model for socialism, China, was doing
the same.
There were also reports that Cuban musicians, artists, and writers,
who had been censored, suppressed, and jailed, were being allowed
more liberty. Cuban music, in particular, was becoming a valuable
export and one that, Castro hoped, would not mean the export of
the musicians as well as of the music, as had been the case in the
past. In short, the regime was willing to do anything for hard currency
(dollars) while maintaining some kind of ideological rectitude in
a vacuum.
On January 21st 1998, the Pope was going to visit Cuba. This event
brought the island into the news and precipitated whatever processes
were already taking place. In 1996 Fidel had visited the Pope in
the Vatican and invited him to Cuba, setting off shock-waves among
Cuban catholics who had been harassed and imprisoned throughout
the life of the regime. There were very good reasons for Castro's
pilgrimage to the Pope. After the loss of Soviet support, Cuba needed
help to end the U.S. embargo. There were delicate political maneuvers
that made possible the Pope's visit. The Cuban exiles in Miami were
furious: they saw the papal visit as a Castro trick to shore up
his dying dictatorship.
Conveniently, Castro remembered that he had been raised Catholic,
that his life had been saved by a Jesuit priest who didn't allow
Batista's soldiers to shoot him, that his mother had been a believer.
He had spent a week in the Convent of the Virgen del Caridad de
Cobre (Our Lady of Charity) near Santiago de Cuba in 1958, while
his guerrillas cleared the way for his victorious march into Havana.
While at the convent he had been cared for and fed by a nun. Going
to the Pope was the way, since the middle-ages, to save a flaming
shithouse. Still, this particular Pope must have been especially
egregious to Castro because he had helped bring about the end of
communism, first in Poland, then the rest of Europe. He had been
nearly killed by a KGB-inspired attempt. In this regard, at least,
Castro, who had been the victim of numerous assassination attempts
by the CIA, must have identified with the frail Pontiff. They had
something else in common: the Pope was the authoritarian head of
the Church, an absolute dictator who ruled the Church by edict.
On a personal level, dictators understand one another. During a
visit to Spain the year before, King Juan Carlos had lectured Castro
for an hour about the virtues of democracy and the prosperity of
post-Franco Spain. Castro listened in absolute silence, then said:
"Yes, but Franco had to die first."
The photograph of Castro shaking hands with the Pope at the Vatican
became totemic. It was reproduced on tee-shirts and posters. Putting
an equal sign between the two figures was doubtlessly a propaganda
coup for communist Cuba. This was the same Pope who'd upbraided
the liberation theologists of Nicaragua and had checked some of
the pro-revolutionary priests and nuns of Central America. In other
Central and South American countries, the Catholic Church had close
ties to Cuban-inspired guerilla movements, but in Cuba believers
had been persecuted for years. Open-air masses, a traditional Cuban
way of worship, were forbidden. Catholic schools were -- and still
are -- closed. Believers were discriminated against in workplaces.
For all that, the puritanical attitudes of the Church served Castro
well whenever the urge to call for revolutionary purity seized him.
In the early 1970s the government-campaign against homosexuals and
artists had the approval of the Cuban church. Castro's problem with
religion was not ideological: he simply needed to replace the worship
of God with the worship of Fidel and socialism. The giant gatherings
in Plaza de la Revolution in the better days of the Seventies, where
Castro thundered for hours, were religious revivals, open air masses.
The theology of Castroism was built on a religious model: Fidel
was the Father, Che Guevara the martyred son, the fallen revolutionary
heroes early martyrs of the Church.
Che was the Christ of the Cuban revolution. He had died young and
had been pure in his faith. He was the key to Castro the Father's
religion. The Cuban revolution might not have survived if Che, instead
of being long-haired and intensely romantic, would have been as
ugly as the Cuban Secret Service made him when they sent him to
start another revolution in Guatemala. What if Che had been physically
loathsome? And yet, Che for all his symbolic beauty, was everything
Cubans were not. He was a fanatic who believed, above all, in reason.
Cubans are passionate, musical, and mystical. They would rather
dance than dialectify. In 1960, just after Eisenhower approved the
CIA's raid on Cuba, "most Cuban town dwellers were fanatically
in favour of the regime, thinking Castro had 'the same ideas as
Jesus Christ,' and were longing 'to kiss the beard of Fidel Castro'."
But this was 1996, and the hand proffered to the Pope was, at least
in Castro's view, the acknowledgment of a rival. For the Pope and
everyone else, it was an admission of defeat.
The Pontiff acceptance of Castro's invitation to visit Cuba was
the beginning of a propaganda war that intensified as the date of
the visit neared. The stalwart right-wingers were violently opposed
to a planned cruise organized by the Archbishop of Miami for one
thousand exiles who wanted to see the Pope. The Helms-Burton law,
which had been passed following the downing of two U.S. aircraft
by the Cuban airforce, forbade US citizens to spend any money in
Cuba, but the State Department was willing to relax Helms-Burton
for the duration of the papal visit. In Cuba, the long-repressed
Church was suddenly allowed to hold open-air masses, and the Bishop
of Havana even appeared on television.
There were convulsions. There was an incident reminiscent of the
good old days following the Bay of Pigs. A Salvadoran national,
trained in the US, bombed several tourist hotels and bars in Havana,
including 'La Bodeguita,' Hemingway's favorite haunt. The terrorist,
the regime declared, was put up to it by 'gusanos,' (worms), Castro's
name for Cuban exiles. An Italian businessman was killed in the
blasts, which Cuba said were "terrorist activities...organised,
supplied, and promoted from the United States." In the past,
such incidents led to huge (organized) demonstrations in support
of the regime, which then turned into rum-soaked musical fiestas
that made everyone forget their growling stomachs. But this time,
there was no call for national jubilation. After his arrest, the
Salvadoran disappeared from the news. In the long-ago Seventies,
mass demonstrations had stroked Castro's ego and whipped up patriotism
and 'revolutionary spirit,' but in he late Nineties, the dictator
was suddenly wary of crowds. Even the repatriation of Che Guevarai's
bones to Cuba in 1996 did not, despite the get-out-the masses effort,
draw more than a moderately sized mob. Che Guevara’s remains,
retrieved after thirty years from a secret grave in Bolivia, were
enshrined in a mausoleum in Santa Clara. But the fervent worship
of Che had worn thin after years of official worship. The last crowd
to turn up in massive numbers had not been worshipful. In 1980 more
than one hundred thousand people stormed the Peruvian embassy in
Havana, demanding to leave Cuba. The widespread protest led to the
Mariel boatlift which rid Castro of 137,000 people who hated him,
including political prisoners, but also common criminals, insane
people, and State Security agents sent to infiltrate the exile community
in Miami. And then there was the matter of crowds in Eastern Europe,
which had brought down the dictatorships there, an event barely
reported in the Cuban press. But in 1997, the people of Cuba were
in no mood to either celebrate or get angry. They were too busy
starving.
"The idea," Art said, "is for us to get there before
the Pope."
It made sense. The world's media armies would descend on Cuba with
the Pope, leaving no stone unturned. Going before the Pope gave
us a shot at virgin minds.
Yes, I wanted to go to Cuba badly. Not out of nostalgia for state
socialism, which organized my first 19 years, and certainly not
out of any desire to be 'an undertaker of communism' as one of my
nonfans uncharitably put it. I wanted to go to Cuba because I wanted
to see for myself a decomposing ideology before all its elements
transmuted into the noxious gases that gag Eastern Europe now: the
secret-police-turned-mafia, the ripoff of state property, nationalism,
xenophobia, fascism, savage capitalism, media kitsch, prostitution,
and tragico-hilarious parliamentarism. If all these elements were
already visible in nuce in Cuba, then surely one could see
how and why they so quickly metastized in the ex-commie fiefdom.
Yes, but Cuba is different, everyone told me. Cuba is not a classical
Soviet-style socialist country. Cuba is an American problem.
Meaning, a North American problem. Cuba has been an obsession
for the United States since the War with Spain. Cuba has been both
a cheap and bountiful mistress and 'a dagger in our back.' The intensity
of Cuban-American relations is that of estranged lovers. It has
nothing to do with communism, socialism, or even capitalism. We
are talking about une affaire du coeur. This little island
90 miles off the Florida Coast has been constantly in our thoughts
for over three centuries. Maybe longer. It had certainly been in
my thoughts for at least three decades.
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