Maybe 50 years when I left Belfast for Canada and was living in Vancouver, or was it Montreal, Cuba became the winter vacation place for many Canadians and I planned to visit one day. One path led to another, Baffin Island in the Arctic, Danang and Saigon in Vietnam, Cameroon in NW Africa and Washington DC and some other places and I never made it to Havana.
Six months ago I met Aurelia, a Spanish lady whose father and his 5 brothers and sisters were born in Manzanillo in the south of Cuba, oddly not far from Guantanamo. Her grandfather had been assigned there as an officer in the Spanish colonial army. Her grandmother had died in Manzanillo and when her grandfather returned to Spain with his 6 children he remarried but in the family photos there was always an empty chair, front and center, with a bouquet of flowers in memory of the departed grandmother. That was all anyone knew of the lady and no one has a picture of her. Aurelia told me she was determined to return to Manzanillo one day to see what she could discover about her grandmother.
In January President Obama announced the easing of the US embargo against Cuba and we decided it was time to make the trip before a few million Cuban Americans arrived from Florida. We were in Malaga at the time and we tried to book the trip using the two largest Spanish travel agencies but were told the hotels in Havana were fully booked. We tried a small agency and after some research Guillermo found us a tour with Guama, the government tour operator, providing hotels and flights, albeit flying on Air Cubana, from Madrid to Santiago de Cuba and then later an internal flight to Havana and finally back to Madrid.
When we were boarding the plane in Madrid, a Russian Ilyushin 96-300, I suggested Aurelia not look at the rust around the entrance door. The plane like the crew had seen many miles, the former showing years of hard use and the latter mostly portly very long term government employees. For those considering a flight on this aircraft note that the 6 bathrooms, shared by 300 plus passengers, are located in a block at the rear of the plane, which after 5 hours of a 10 hour journey argues in favour of the seats at the front.
We were safely delivered to Santiago and then to our misfortune to the Rex, the small hotel provided by Guama. Some of the outstanding features of the Rex, still fresh in my mind, were a day, 24 hours without water of any kind and staff who communicated with each other by shouting loudly, once the sun was up.
After some negotiation and a furtive illegal exchange of monies, for our 200 km trip from Santiago to Manzanillo we hired a car, a 1952 Chrysler, that to our surprise on the morning of departure came with not only a driver but the owner and his wife. When we broke down on the first leg repairs were quickly accomplished with a pair of pliers and some wire.
The rooms we had rented in the government approved private house in Manzanillo were clean, air-conditioned and owned by a very friendly couple. Like many other travellers I recommend staying in these “casa particular” rather than the government operated hotels. The lady of the house knew the local historian and took us to visit the Archivo Historico. Aurelia had no luck finding information about her grandmother but they did escort us to the local Cathedral and the tiny office of Tito the gentleman responsible for the parish records, detailed in dusty books in two large floor to ceiling cabinets. We gave him what information we had and after an initial search again there was no luck. But after some discussion we agreed to return that afternoon and to Aurelia’s surprise and delight he had located the entries listing the baptism and at 40 years of age the death of her grandmother from puerperal fever subsequent to delivering her sixth child.
When the Plymouth broke down on the return trip it was more serious, Aurelia claims she saw the departing component rolling along the road behind us just before the car started lurching to the left, we were after all in Cuba. She went looking, with no luck for the piece that deserted the Plymouth.
But the local AAA / RAC in the form of a red truck, you stop and help someone today because you will be at the side of the road tomorrow, soon came to our rescue. The Plymouth was jacked up, a wheel was removed, the truck driver had a box of bits and pieces, a replacement bolt was installed and in 28 degree heat everything put back together by the young driver and the two truckers.
Then it was back to the comforts of the Rex Hotel for a couple of nights and after a 3 hour delay a flight from Santiago to Havana. The Guama provided taxi from the Rex to the airport was one of a kind.
We arrived at the hotel Havana Libre after midnight, the former Hilton until liberated and temporarily occupied by Fidel, Che and friends after the revolution, to stand in line and then be told by the one receptionist that there were no more rooms available. We requested, strongly that the manager be summoned and showed him our booking and he proposed putting us in a car and sending us to yet another hotel. At this Aurelia’s Spanish melt down point had been reached and employing strong words and ample gestures she assured the manager we were staying in the hotel even if in his room. They put is a room that they assured us had recently suffered only some minor water damage. The strong smell confirmed this but I hate to think what they would consider severe damage. Aurelia forcefully persuaded them to give us another room next morning.
The twist at the end of Aurelia’s search for information concerning her grandmother was that at first Tito could find nothing in his dusty books but, and he put this to Aurelia very delicately, in the late 1800s the records were classified as Spanish, Mestizos, Pardos and Morenos and that he had chosen to search further in the Pardos / Coloured records and there he had located her grandmother. Aurelia assured him that it concerned her not a whit that her grandmother had been classified as coloured, though it did explain the physical characteristics of a few of her many cousins, and it might provide some explanation and maybe even a handy excuse for the appearance of children not yet conceived of, and that she was delighted and very grateful that Tito had located the records.
We met many warm friendly and welcoming Cubans, including a Boston Red Sox fan, Cubans love baseball, who barely manage to survive, even with government ration cards for a minimum of essential foodstuffs, on for example a salary of €20 a month for a degreed engineer. We never felt fearful or intimidated even walking in old Havana or the length of the Malecon at night.
Cubans evidently love their crippled pets.
Like us they love their grandchildren
And as you know Cubans have great musicians and music and they love to dance.
I do not believe they deserve to endure the grinding daily poverty, brought about by politicians settling political scores way over their heads, of the 50 years of the US embargo.
