Island that Dared E-Book

Dervla Murphy

• Herausgeber: Eland Publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Take a three-generation family holiday in Cuba in the company of Dervla Murphy, her daughter and three young granddaughters and you have a Swallows-and-Amazons-like adventure in the Caribbean as they trek into the hills and along the coast as a family, camping out on empty beaches beneath the stars and relishing the ubiquitous Cuban hospitality. But this is no more than the joyful start of a fully-fledged quest to understand the unique society created by the Cuban Revolution. For Dervla returns alone to explore the mountains, coastal swamps and decaying cities, investigating the experience of modern Cuba with her particular, candid curiosity. Through her own research and through conversations with Fidelistas and their critics alike, The Island That Dared builds a complex picture of a people struggling to retain their identity in the face of the insistent hostility of the government of the United States.

Leseprobe

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 appear 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.

Next we trudged through an enormous concourse, past shuttered shops and restaurants. From high roof struts hung the flags of every nation, symbolising Cuba’s non-aligned stance on the world stage. The Stars and Stripes and the Keys of St Peter were inconspicuously placed.

While the others waited for our rucksacks I gently prodded the sleeping young woman in the queueless Cambio cubicle and received 1.04 convertible peso (CP) to the euro, the standard rate throughout Cuba. At any time I could convert these for use in ordinary Cuban shops at a rate of one CP for twenty-six national pesos (NP). US dollars lost ten per cent in the exchange; other currencies were commission-free.

We emerged unchecked through Customs though in several Caribbean countries granny-figures are quite often loaded with drugs. In another vast space our packaged fellow-passengers were trailing towards their coaches. ‘They all look too tired!’ commiserated Zea. Soon we were on our own in this dreary pillared hallway, vaguely resembling an unfinished Romanesque cathedral and furnished only with a dozen small metal chairs. Through a glass wall taxis were visible but 3.15 seemed an inhumane hour to set out for our casa particular. Rose sought a loo but quickly returned looking non-stoical; it was too awful to pee in … For this unfortunate introduction to Cuba’s normally hygienic public lavatories Hurricane Wilma was responsible; the local water supply had been wrecked a week previously. When Rachel and Rose hastily took off for the great outdoors Zea went into a sulk because she hadn’t been invited to accompany them and Clodagh complained of (psychosomatic?) dehydration. This prompted me to explore and discover a small bar in a far corner where two Customs officers and four Immigrations officers were grumbling about our delayed flight which had required them to do overtime. Havana airport’s average daily intake of 5,000 passengers normally arrives by daylight.

Leaving Rachel to counter Zea’s sulk I took my first steps into Cuba with Rose by my side. An airport carpark – even one surrounded by royal palms and aromatic shrubs – does not provide an enthralling first impression but we agreed that the smells were excitingly unfamiliar and the sky magical, its stars lustrous on black velvet. The warm stirring of the air was a mere zephyr and only a rooster duet broke the silence. Rose deduced, ‘Here they must have loads of free-range eggs.’

Back in the hallway we found the juniors restored to cheerfulness by some maternal alchemy and now several other seats were occupied. Two angry elderly women and a young man (bound for Caracas, said his luggage labels) were arguing loudly, the traveller seeming both cowed and defensive. A young Dutch couple had been self-driving around the island and injudiciously exposing themselves to the sun; tenderly they applied Savlon to each other’s blistered backs. Closer to us, a middle-aged corpulent mulatto was showing an amused interest in the Trio’s acrobatics – the mere sight of all that open space seemed to have recharged their batteries. When we got into conversation I learned that Senor Malagon was awaiting a delegation of Canadian agronomists. In a disarming way he boasted about Cuba’s efficient management of Wilma which for six days, towards the end of October, had flooded eleven of the island’s fourteen provinces. In preparation, 600,000 had been evacuated with their livestock and no lives were lost.

At 5.30 we approached the taxi rank. All night three vehicles had been waiting (the sort of veteran cars that send some men into inexplicable ecstasies) yet there was no competition, no haggling. The first in line was entitled to us and CP25 was the standard night fare to Central Havana (to be known henceforth as Centro). Rachel sat in front, practising her Spanish, while the Trio and I wriggled uncomfortably on the back seat’s broken springs. During that half-hour ride all was predictable: pot-holed roads, ramshackle factories, Soviet-style blocks of prefab flats hastily erected in the 1960s.

Shoals of cyclists pedalling to work without lights scandalised the Trio. ‘They’ll be dead!’ said Zea. ‘The police will get them!’ said Clodagh. ‘No,’ said Rose, rapidly adjusting to local realities. ‘It’s just they’ve no money for lamps.’

Centro’s bumpy narrow streets, running between tall, dilapidated nineteenth-century residences, are off the main tourist track; twice we had to stop at junctions to seek guidance. The dawn greyness was turning faintly pink when we found 403 San Rafael – our driver looking triumphant, as though he had brought off some orienteering coup. We were piling rucksacks on the pavement when Zea exclaimed, ‘Look! Our taxi has a swan, with big wings!’ The driver chuckled and tipped her under the chin. ‘Yes, my taxi very old Chevrolet, that very famous swan.’

A high, narrow door swung open, an outer gate was unlocked and it seemed we had arrived among old friends. Candida and Pedro, still in their nightwear, warmly embraced us while volubly registering relief at our safe arrival. The street door led directly into the parlour end of a narrow, sparsely furnished room separated from the kitchen-cum-dining-room by a long, low cupboard supporting bushy house-plants. The front bedroom opened off the parlour; two other windowless rooms opened off a corridor beyond the kitchen. To reach the small communal bathroom one crossed a square hallway at the foot of steep stairs; here more greenery surrounded an antique wrought-iron garden table with chairs to match, all painted white. As our rooms lacked writing space, this was to become my study.

While Rachel was arguing with her daughters about who was to sleep where, Candida poured hot milk from a giant thermos, sliced bread (with apologies for its being yesterday’s loaf) and offered mango jam – the Trio’s favourite. Then the younger generations tottered off to bed but after three cups of potent coffee I had revived enough to take advantage of Havana’s brief morning coolness. An Irish proverb recommends ‘the old dog (or bitch) for the hard road’.

Outside No. 403 the olfactory tapestry was complex: defective drains, sub-tropical vegetation, dog shit, cigar smoke, inferior petrol, seaweed, ripe garbage in overflowing skips. Each street corner had its skip to which householders on their way to work contributed bulging plastic bags and empty bottles. Cats crouched on the skip rims, cleverly reaching down to extract fish spines and other delicacies. Two dead rats in gutters proved that some cats had been busy overnight. Dogs swarmed, having been set free at dawn to do what we all do once a day, so one had to watch one’s step on the broken pavements. A jolly young woman was selling tiny cups of strong sweet coffee from her living-room window; later, she would do a brisk trade in takeaway homemade pizzas which became popular with the Trio. Further down the street, an older woman was selling ham rolls and over-sweet buns from a plank laid on two chairs in her doorway. She and a neighbour were talking money, the neighbour a grey-haired, ebony-skinned housewife hunkered beside her doorstep, cleaning piles of rice on sheets of Granma (Cuba’s only national daily, also the Communist Party newspaper).

In the late nineteenth century a sugar-rich bourgeoisie strove to replicate the imposing seventeenth- and eighteenth-century mansions of Old Havana and their residences spread fast beyond the city walls. (These were demolished in 1963 to make way for new housing; only a fragment survives, near the railway station.) San Rafael is one of Centro’s almost carfree grid of long, straight streets, every downward slope leading to the Malecón; from their intersections the Straits of Florida beckon – usually a blue sparkle, occasionally a grey-green turbulence. Most buildings are three- or four-storey (a few rise to five or six) and their external dilapidation is extreme. Post-Revolution, this district was taken over by working-class families and what might tentatively be described as the petite bourgeoisie. Since then no restoration has been done; Havana was allowed to decay when Fidel took over, his mind set on improving living conditions for the rest of Cuba, hitherto neglected. Much social history is revealed by Centro’s wealth of neo-baroque flourishes around wide-arched entrances or cracked stained-glass balcony windows, and by the strong iron bars protecting both doors and street level unglazed windows; Havana didn’t enjoy its recent low crime rate during the centuries when it hogged most of the national wealth. Vivid expanses of Moorish tiles decorate a few façades and, from corners beneath high eaves, ambiguous carved figures lean out: they might represent Christian saints, classical heroes, Spanish conquistadors, Congolese deities or deceased grandparents. Along certain streets most balconies display strangely dressed dolls atop high stools, or little flags mysteriously patterned, or huge sooty kettles filled with coloured sticks – all components of Santería rituals. And long laundry lines of fluttering garments relieve the background drabness; Cubans are obsessive about personal cleanliness and partial to strong, bold colours.

On every street stereotypes appeared with almost ridiculous frequency. Grandads were relishing the day’s first cigar, settled in cane rocking-chairs behind wrought-iron balconies high above the pavement. Ebullient schoolchildren in immaculate uniforms – each white shirt or blouse meticulously ironed – converged on their schools before 8.00 a.m. Young men rode bicycles held together with strips of tin, many wearing musical instruments over their shoulders. Older men were already playing dominoes, sitting at card-tables – usually improvised – outside their homes. Neighbours sat on doorsteps or window ledges, arguing, laughing, discussing, complaining, gossiping. Fruit-sellers pushed their homemade handcarts from group to group; when the recycled pram wheels had lost their rubber the rims grated loudly on the cobbles.

Superficially I was back in the Third World, aka the Majority World. But only superficially: no one looked hungry, ragged, dirty or obviously diseased, no one was homeless or neglected in old age. The contemporary Cubans, urban and rural, immediately impress as a self-confident people. Although Castroism has stumbled from one economic disaster to another, for a tangle of reasons, the Revolutionary ideal of equality bred two generations who never felt inferior because they lacked the Minority World’s goodies. They appreciated their own goodies, including first-class medical care for all and a range of educational, cultural and sporting opportunities not available to the majority in such free-market democracies as India, South Africa – or the US. As for the third generation, now coming to maturity – I was to find that question marks surround them.

Chapter 2

Since its completion in 1950 (construction was begun in 1901) the habaneros have endowed their Malecón with a personality of its own; one can’t imagine the city without these four curving miles of promenade, the shimmering sea so close that boys leap over the low wall, diving straight in. Yet the prospect along the shore does not entirely please. A colony of gawky skyscrapers, Havana’s tallest buildings, crowd the western end in contrast to the dignified battlements of Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro (commonly known as El Morro) on the eastern promontory. In 1589, when King Phillip II realised how important Havana was for the expansion of his empire, he ordered these mighty fortifications to be built – a forty-year task, employing thousands of engineers, craftsmen and peons.

Havana assumed this importance because the treasure fleets, returning from Mexico and Peru, could anchor in this safe, spacious harbour while awaiting naval protection for crossing the Atlantic. By the end of the sixteenth century the fleet usually numbered more than 100 vessels laden with silver, gold and emeralds, cargoes much coveted by pirates. The return voyage normally started in June or July, before the hurricane season, and often the earliest arrivals were moored for months. In 1622 a late start proved disastrous; within a day of sailing from Havana in September, twenty-seven ships were mauled by the season’s first hurricane which claimed three treasure galleons and five of their naval escort. Over five hundred men were lost. The fleet’s assembling was again delayed in 1623 and a sensible decision to ‘winter’ in Havana caused panic back home; the Spanish treasury now had to face a second year with a grievously depleted income.

The fleets’ crews, recruited from all over the Habsburg territories, put their genetic imprint on Havana’s rapidly growing population, as is evident to this day. A number were highly skilled craftsmen, employed on shiprepairs, and many settled in Cuba when the island’s vast hardwood forests led to ships being built in Havana for the whole Spanish navy, a major industry until the empire shrank in the early nineteenth century.

The Malecón is a slow ten-minute walk from No.403 and when the younger generations bounced back at noon we set off to swim and picnic. My wailing about the debilitating heat gained no sympathy. ‘It’s perfecto!’ said Rose. ‘It’s why people come to Cuba in November,’ said Rachel. ‘Nyanya’s like an ice-cream!’ Clodagh chuckled sadistically. ‘She won’t last long in the sun!’

The Trio were fascinated by cigar-smoking men with ample bellies sitting on their thresholds wearing only underpants, and by youths practicing baseball catches with a homemade ball and glove, and by an independent trader bargaining with a woman on a fourth-floor balcony who then let down her roped basket to take delivery of four eggs. The fascination was mutual. This fair-haired, blue-eyed trio brought appreciative, affectionate smiles to every face (even the teenagers’) and prompted the wrong guess – ‘alemana?’ As this situation would regularly recur Rachel and I agreed to identify ourselves, en masse, as ‘irlandesa’ – easier than explaining that the Trio are half-Irish, quarter-Welsh, quarter-English.

At the Malecón’s El Morro end, broken concrete steps lead down to sea-level, to what is euphemistically known as ‘the people’s beach’, a long strip of rough pitted rock, painful to walk on in bare feet and uncomfortable to sit on. This shoreline has one odd feature; at intervals of thirty or forty yards oblong chunks have been carved out of the rock, providing safe bathing pools for children. These are explained in Richard Henry Dana’s To Cuba and Back, a guide-book (I think the first in English) published in Boston in 1859:

The Banos de Mar are boxes, each about twelve feet square and six or … eight feet deep, cut directly into the rock which here forms the sea-line which the waves of this tideless shore wash in and out … The flow and reflow make these boxes very agreeable, and the water, which is that of the Gulf Stream, is at a temperature of seventy-two degrees. The baths are roofed over, but open for a view towards the sea; and as you bathe you see the big ships floating up the Gulf Stream, that great highway of the equinoctial world … These baths are made at the public expense, and are free. Some are marked for women, some for men, and some ‘por la gente de color’.

Soon the happily splashing Trio had bonded with a group of contemporaries. We were the only foreigners around; Havana-based tourists swim off the smooth sands of ‘developed’ playas many miles away. The Trio couldn’t understand my not joining them in the warm Atlantic; during summer visits to Ireland they are coaxed into the less warm Blackwater River at least once a day. I tried to explain that to me warm water is what you wash in: a swim should be invigorating. Point not taken …

We watched two freighters appearing as smudges on the horizon, coming from opposite directions and traversing the bay until they were so close we could discern their rustiness. Havana’s port is still important though no longer as crowded as in Dana’s day; then vessels had to manoeuvre for space, before unloading hundreds of passengers and valuable cargoes from Europe and the Americas. Now only a few freighters arrive daily, those from Panama carrying (mainly) Asian-made luxury goods for sale in government dollar-stores to Cuba’s nouveau riche. Cheap food for everyone comes from Argentina and Brazil; supplies for tourist hotels, including soap and loo paper, come from the EU.

At sunset the Trio’s quintet of friends accompanied us part of the way home, all eight girls trotting in single file along the Malecón’s wide wall. Children can vault language barriers with enviable ease. Observing this octet, I was reminded of Rachel, aged five, communicating for hours on end with her Coorgi playmates in a South Indian jungle village.

We were led to Parque Antonio Maceo, a dusty expanse presided over by a famous mulatto general, among the most revered heroes of the nineteenth-century wars of independence. Rachel and I made polite admiring noises. Zea bluntly declared, ‘It’s boring here, why don’t they plant grass?’ Rose glared at her little sister and said, ‘But that man looks interesting.’ The octet agreed to meet again next afternoon.

Returning to No. 403 by a different route we passed a few puestos (state-run groceries) which the Trio didn’t recognise as shops despite their counters and scales. These dismal places – most shelves bare – come to life only when supplies arrive. Then orderly queues stretch away down the pavement, each citizen equipped with much-used plastic bags and a blue libreta (ration book, about the size of an EU passport). The basic rations of rice, beans and eggs may be augmented by pasta, cooking-oil and margarine. But always there is a daily litre of milk for children – now up to the age of seven, pre-Special Period, up to fourteen. Those with spare national pesos may buy meat, fowl, vegetables and fruits at farmers’ markets regulated by municipalities.

To Fidel’s critics, permanent food-rationing proves how hopelessly Castroism has failed. In fact, feeding all Cubans adequately (except during the worst years of the Special Period) has been one of its most remarkable achievements. In 1950 a World Bank medical team estimated that sixty per cent of Cuba’s rural dwellers and forty per cent of urban folk were malnourished. No dependent territory is encouraged to be self-sufficient and Cuba was then importing, mainly from the US, sixty per cent of its grain needs, thirty-seven per cent of vegetables, eighty-four per cent of fats, eighty per cent of tinned fruit, sixty-nine per cent of tinned meat, eighty-three per cent of biscuits and sweets. Hunger greatly strengthened popular support for the Revolution. The US embargo, established in response to the revolution, caused dire food shortages until the rationing system, established on 12 March 1962, ensured that no family would go hungry. In Julio Garcia Luis’s words, ‘Fidel was determined not to allow the law of money and of supply and demand to be imposed, but to ensure justice’.

When my body clock woke me at 2.00 a.m. I read Fidel’s My Early Years, then at 6.45 strolled alone to the Malecón.

Below El Morro a freighter was emerging from the port, huge and clumsy-looking, vandalising the dusky blue of the dawn as its funnel trailed thick blackness. Already fishermen were sitting at appropriate intervals along the wall, singly or in pairs, watching their bobbing baits. They used only reels; rods are luxury items. As the sun rose through a shoal of rosy cloudlets the sea swiftly changed from a pellucid green to silver-blue. But why so few birds? I associate Atlantic coasts with ornithological abundance. That afternoon, in a Malecón bar, I was told, ‘We ate them all, in the early’90s – so they know to keep away from us!’ Perhaps a Tale for Tourists? Or perhaps not: that Period was very Special …

Back at No. 403 the Trio were breakfasting off multiple fresh fruits, Candida’s fluffy omelettes, crusty golden bread warm from the neighbourhood baker, imported butter, lashings of mango jam made by Pedro and large glasses of hot honeyed milk with a dash of coffee. Casas particulares serve much better food, in both quantity and quality, than even the fivestar hotels. But such meals are comparatively expensive so Rachel and I opted for national-pesos breakfasts, eaten in the nearby Fe del Valle Park. Havana’s largest department store, El Encanto, once stood on this site. The park is named in memory of a woman who died here when CIA saboteurs set fire to the store two days before the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961.

Clodagh, my room-mate, complained after breakfast – holding her nose – about Nyanya’s smelly trainers. I assured her that I meant to replace them, ASAP, with strong open sandals. But first I must change euros.

Candida escorted me to the nearest Cambio, warning me on the way about jineterismo, an unsurprising phenomenon of which she plainly felt ashamed. Jineteras and jineteros cultivate tourists met in the street, the former offering bodies, the latter offering half-price cigars (some stolen, some counterfeit) or cheap rooms to rent. (Some householders employ touts because by not registering as casas particulares they avoid tax). Jineterismo evolves wherever tourists congregate in the Majority World but Castroism sees it as a betrayal of the Revolution, and for Cubans – though not for their foreign friends – the penalties tend to be unduly harsh. My enquiries about specific cases met with evasions or contradictory responses.

The Cambio lurked in one corner of a dusty, twilit emporium to which national-peso-priced clothing and footwear were irregularly delivered. By the door stood a security guard, uniformed but apparently unarmed, who closely observed every currency exchange. (On later occasions, when I was alone, he insisted that before leaving the premises I must tuck my new wad of convertible pesos somewhere inaccessible.) Candida advised me to convert some convertible pesos to national pesos as foreigners were now allowed to use both, though hard currencies could not directly buy national pesos. Confining tourists to the convertible-peso economy had proved too complicated and not really worth the effort, since few tourists are tempted by what national pesos can buy.

Shopping in Cuba – even in Havana – has to be a hit or miss affair given the erratic supply of all goods. Three meagrely stocked shoe-shops on Centro’s main business streets offered only fragile high-heeled sandals (gold or pink), made in China. ‘You’ll have to go barefoot,’ threatened Clodagh. But it was fourth time lucky: the manager of a small shop was unpacking a consignment of sturdy brown leather sandals made in Brazil, price CP21. ‘Now you can give your trainers to some poor person,’ said Clodagh. But in Cuba there are no people poor enough to make such a malodorous donation acceptable. Moreover, those trainers had both monetary and sentimental value: I had bought them for US$60 in Severobaiskal, my favourite Siberian town. Granted, they were distressingly unsuited to a hot humid climate but I reckoned they might well outlive me and should be left with our winter garments in No. 403 for collection on the way home.

A quest for fruits and peanuts took us to Vedado. (Rachel is a fruit and nut case and has passed that condition on to her children.) Walking the length of commercial Neptuno, we noted that each dollar-store employed two or three unsmiling security men with ‘SECSA’ emblazoned on their brown uniforms – SECSA being a newish organisation set up to guard banks, Cambios, dollar-stores and other repositories of wealth. In Russia, super- and hyper-markets employ their equivalents, bearing side-arms and looking even less smiley as they peer into the shopping-bags of all departing customers. It seems consumerism has become so febrile citizens may no longer be trusted to acquire only what they can pay for.

In a covered market crowds jostled around trestle tables piled with fruit and vegetables – the produce of Cuba’s celebrated organoponicos, of which more anon. A recent drought had limited the variety available in November; greens were scarce and the Trio lamented mangoes being out of season. Through piped rumbas one could hear the clattering of weights in antique scales and the good-humoured banter of buyers and sellers, the former scornfully identifying defects, the latter denying or justifying them. Two juicy pineapples cost NP30, a large lush papaya NP15 and very many short fat bananas NP1 apiece. Cleft sticks held squares of cardboard on which all prices were clearly chalked and nobody attempted to overcharge us, here or elsewhere. Instead, the girls each received a gift banana.

By chance we found ourselves in one of Vedado’s most attractive quarters, near the university. Here, at the turn of the twentieth century, many prominent families built new homes in a ferment of architectural eclecticism and planted magnificent trees – some eminently climbable, irresistible to the Trio. While watching them ascend to giddy heights Rachel and I sat on the pavement scoffing bananas. (From amidst the foliage an invisible Rose shouted ‘Don’t eat them all!’) Behind us loomed a neo-classical mansion, its stucco flakey, cardboard patching its stainedglass window, squat big-belly palms – less common than the royal palm – lining its garden path. Across the street small children were making merry in their kindergarten, the deep verandah and wide lawn of a recently restored Gaudiesque villa. Studying them, we agreed that Cuba’s variety of skin shades, and countless combinations and permutations of racial features, make official statistics seem absurd. Who came up with the ‘fact’ that in 2000 the population was fifty-one per cent Mulatto, thirty-seven per cent White, eleven per cent Black? And what about the missing one per cent? Are they the unrecorded descendents of Cuba’s indigenous inhabitants? Or those Chinese who have resisted miscegenation ever since their a hundred and twenty-five thousand or so ancestors arrived as indentured labourers between 1852 and 1874? We also agreed that, aesthetically, the dominant Iberian/African mix has been a sensational success.

Clearing my eyes of sweat, I looked at my watch: 10.50, beer-time for those who rise before dawn – and Rachel, succumbing to Havana’s aura, rather fancied a daiquiri. The Trio grumbled slightly on being brought down to earth but were cheered by the mention of Coppelia where they could gorge on ice-creams after we had attended to our alcohol levels. During the descent to La Rampa I recalled that the name Vedado (‘prohibited’) dates back to the sixteenth century when all construction was forbidden on this slope overlooking the Straits of Florida. Platoons of sentinels were permanently on duty and needed to see the frequently approaching pirates as soon as possible.

In an al fresco bar a dilatory waiter took our order and when the Trio began to roam restlessly Mummy registered guilt about their delayed gratification while Nyanya spoke up for Adult Rights.

It seems socialism brings out the worst in architects – witness the Coppelia emporium, designed by Mario Girona and built in 1966 in the middle of a park that must, until then, have been a blessed antidote to Nuevo Vedado’s brash skyscrapers. Constructed mainly of reinforced concrete, it is topped by a single monstrous slab supporting a truncated cone. The six colossal circular ice-cream parlours on the upper floor are subdivided by naked concrete girders – grey and gloomy, seeming to belong beneath a motorway – and by pointlessly placed partitions of tinted glass. The habaneros are very proud of this excrescence, the first (and most bizarre) of a chain of Coppelias; all are open twelve hours a day, six days a week, serving affordable ice-cream of the finest gelato quality to the general public. In Havana a daily average of thirty-thousand addicts queue happily for hours, without shade. Latterly, however, the Coppelia ideal, like many others, has been tarnished; near the main entrance a small queue-free annex caters for convertible-peso users.

During our fifty-minute wait the naval officer standing behind me (home on a week’s leave) spoke of his favourite ports, Murmansk not among them. That led on to the Cuban/Russian relationship when thousands of Soviet troops were stationed on the island for more than twenty-five years. Dryly Nestor said that there had been no relationship; the Soviets kept to themselves, importing their own food and entertainment (if any) and apparently remaining immune to Cuba’s charms. I wondered if they were obeying orders or simply found Cubans uncongenial? The latter, Nestor thought – because occasionally groups of Central Asians did venture out to their local Casa de la Trovo. Privately I reflected that the average Russian’s deep-seated racism, impervious for seventy years to Marxist egalitarianism, must have inhibited social (if not sexual) intercourse. This suspicion was confirmed later by visits to areas where the Soviets had had bases and left bad memories.

Military precision marks the organising of Coppelia’s hordes. Neatly uniformed stewardesses/sergeant-majors stand at strategic points, counting the departing customers, then beckon an equal number to replace them. Should five leave together, and the first five in the queue include only one member of a group of friends, that group must either separate or give way to those behind them. No one seemed to object to this regimentation. But I (otherwise conditioned) felt exasperated when a security guard forbade me to sit on the ledge of nearby railings. Momentarily I was tempted to pull up my trouser leg to show him what long queues in hot weather can do to varicose veins.

Once admitted to the high globe we were directed to a table and Rachel had to join two other queues – to pay for the docket listing our order, then to hand it to a server from whom a waitress soon after took our tray. The Trio pronounced that these gargantuan ice-creams were very good indeed, well worth waiting for – and they, being residents of Italy, are connoisseurs.

Not far from Coppelia we noticed a plaque identifying the site where Fidel first labelled the Revolution ‘Socialist’ – on 16 April 1961, the eve of the US-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion.

Surprisingly, the Cubans have no regular siesta-time but that afternoon the younger generations rested briefly while I refuelled in what was to become my favourite Malecón café. Small and shabby, approached by a shaky wooden step-ladder, it was dual-currency; Cubans paid for drinks and one-course meals in national pesos, convertible pesos were expected from foreigners.

Miguel, the manager-cum-barman, kept Hatuey beer, brewed for the national-peso market, under the counter and filled the fridge with Buccanero and Kristal, favoured by tourists. The price difference was slight – NP18 and CP1 – yet my wish to sample Hatuey worried Miguel; he would get into trouble should a snooper from the local Committee for the Defence of the Revolution (CDR) chance to notice a tourist drinking Hatuey on the premises. I could however have lots of Hatuey to take away, concealed in my knapsack. Thus I discovered that this brew is less palatable than the tourists’, though equally potent.

On my first visit, the previous day, Miguel had been discussing Wilma with a hurricane-damage inspector. The café, raised above the street, had escaped flooding though it lost one side of its roof – quickly replaced by the municipality. Now his three-roomed home, behind the café at pavement-level, was the problem: a waist-deep torrent had swept through, ruining all the family’s possessions. He had a pregnant wife and three-year-old twins yet the authorities were being slow to act. When the inspector had left Miguel glanced around at the only other customers – two young couples in far corners – then confided, sotto voce, ‘For the government this place makes tax money, a little home doesn’t. In times before – before ’92 – all little homes soon got fixed.’

In January I was to hear about Miguel’s uncle-sponsored migration to Florida; otherwise I wouldn’t feel free to record that conversation.

In some quarters the CDR (Committees for the Defence of the Revolution) have a bad reputation as groups of spies and bullies, ever ready to punish those who fail to uphold Revolutionary standards. While this may not be a baseless slander, it is certainly a wild over-simplification. When Fidel invented the system in 1960 he meant it to affect everyone’s daily life as an important instrument of civil defence and socialist reform. The president (unpaid) of each CDR is responsible for three hundred or so citizens (a barrio) and it is his or her duty to find out how people earn their money, what they spend it on, who does or does not march in demos, who is absent from home, where they have gone and why and for how long. We instantly recoil from such a system. Yet whether people are for or against Fidel it seems to be generally agreed that Castroism could not have been so quickly and firmly established, and made to work so well, without the CDR’s energetic observing, organising and persuading (or bullying) of their barrios.

Nowadays, out of some eleven million Cubans, at least three million are CDR members, an influential percentage of the adult population. As the state’s most significant mass organisation, the CDR is involved in all Public Health campaigns, in school enrollment and attendance, in the National Bank’s saving campaign, in arranging barrio study seminars, in checking the quality of services in local shops and reporting defects to the managers, and as crucial links between municipalities and barrios. (That last function helps to sustain Cuba’s vibrant version of participatory democracy.)

CDR presidents collaborate closely with the police and can in certain circumstances protect barrio members from over-zealous policing – or, conversely, expose them to it. A minority of presidents are themselves ‘counter-revolutionary’ and break laws while using their power to silence any who might report them. Much (too much) hinges on the individual president’s character. A minority are so dreaded that their barrios feel permanently at war with them. Others are so well-liked and trusted that people go to them with their troubles, emotional or economic. Most are genuinely public-spirited, do their snooping as discreetly as possible and are accepted as an integral part of Castroism.

Early next morning, on our way to ‘do’ Old Havana, we paused in Fe del Valle Park to watch ti’ chi enthusiasts (including our host Pedro) being put through their paces by a stern mulatto whose Chinese genes were obvious. Havana has many action-packed corners. On the park’s far side primary schoolchildren were having a martial arts lesson, to the Trio’s envy.

Pre-Revolution, guide-books described San Rafael’s short (pedestrians only) business end as ‘elegant’. Now it was being spruced up to include it in the tourist zone, and a central row of unhappy-looking potted shrubs decorated its newly paved length. Formerly fashionable emporiums were being restored by workmen balancing on wobbly scaffolding or demolishing interior walls with sledge-hammers – and without any of the protective gear mandatory in our wimpish world. Two stores had been reopened, on Cuba’s emergence from the Special Period, as government-run dollarshops selling a narrow though gradually widening range of expensive (for Cubans) but usually shoddy imported goods. Others remained boarded up or displayed only a few items of unappealing national-peso-priced stock in fly-blown windows.

For me, Old Havana was a mixed experience. One can agree with UNESCO’s 1982 declaration that, as the largest and architecturally richest colonial centre in Latin America, it is part of ‘the cultural heritage of humanity’. But most such declarations have dire side-effects. La Habana Vieja is now among the Tourist Board’s main assets, second only to the ‘developed’ beaches, and it grieved me to see young black women in flouncy colonial costumes offering to read fortunes while elderly women, similarly attired, posed beneath porticoed arcades, smoking giant cigars, their placards saying – ‘Foto CP1’. A laughing boy, aged perhaps five, was nimbly dancing in a doorway on Calle Obispo, his father on guard against the tourist police but grateful for whatever the child might earn. A pair of slender adolescent girls, wearing bikini tops and leaning over the photogenic balcony of their semi-derelict mansion, shouted and waved at us and suggested ‘Camera?’ The bands playing near open-air cafés, then passing a sombrero around, were as skilled as Cuban musicians are expected to be but performances aimed at tourists tend to have a sad unspontaneous quality. Prostitution comes in different forms. When ‘being Cuban’ becomes in itself a tourist attraction, what happens to the Cuban psyche? Cuzco, Bali, Khatmandu, Ladakh and too many other places know the answer.

We made the most of our national pesos, buying from pavement entrepreneurs shots of hot strong sweet coffee, glasses of cold freshly squeezed fruit juices and ice-cream cones for NP1 each. Ham and/or cheese rolls, warm from the baker and generously filled, cost NP5 and substantial homemade pizzas (but the queues were long) NP10 to NP15. Outside tourist restaurants we studied menus and calculated that the most meagre meal for one, minus drinks, would cost NP260 – CP10.

Throughout much of Old Havana motor vehicles are forbidden or restricted and generally Cuba’s acute oil shortage (now being eased by Venezuela) has had a benign effect. In 1992 half a million bicycles were imported from China, just as that country was foolishly planning to replace two wheels with four. Then bicycle rickshaws (‘bicitaxis’) were introduced and at once became popular. Another novelty, for the benefit of tourists who are not supposed to use bicitaxis (though some do) is peculiar to Havana: a small fleet of canary-yellow three-seater covered scooters (‘cocotaxis’). Ciclobuses, too, are an innovation, copied from Miami; these can carry several bicycles in metal containers, fore and aft. In contrast are the famous camellos, comically humped mega-buses serving distant suburbs; these carry 300 passengers in theory and more than four hundred in practice – including adherents to the outside.

Away from the sea, the Trio showed little interest in Havana, being too young to be excited by its architectural glories, its web of historical associations or its proliferating political question marks. They had long been looking forward to stamina-testing expeditions so now it seemed only fair to move on to the undeveloped (so far) Oriente coast.

Candida and Pedro were adamant that a train journey, our preferred option, would involve cruelty to children. We must do it the tourist way, in a comfortable overnight Viazul coach to Santiago de Cuba. Like most casas particulares hostesses, Candida repeatedly exerted herself for her guests beyond the call of duty. Having rung the Viazul office to book our seats, she organised a cut-price taxi to the terminus and arranged for us to lodge in Santiago with her old friend Irma.

Chapter 3

Capital cities and ‘the next biggest’ tend not to love one another: London and Birmingham, Rome and Milan, Dublin and Cork, Havana and Santiago. Doubtless social anthropologists (maybe psychologists too?) have secured lavish grants to study this phenomenon but in the Cuban case one needs only to know a little history. Santiago was founded as the capital of Spain’s new island colony – a very long time ago, but Santiago hasn’t forgotten.

When Diego Velazquez de Cuellar came upon a desirable natural port at the foot of gold- and copper-bearing mountains, conveniently close to Jamaica and Hispaniola, he at once set up a central trading station, named it after Spain’s patron saint and gave it ‘capital’ status. That was in 1515. A few decades later when Spain had extracted eighty-four thousand ounces of gold, failing seams put Santiago’s importance at risk. So did increasingly audacious pirates – and Nature. After a series of devastating earthquakes Cuba’s Governor, Gonzalo Perez de Angulo, moved his headquarters to Havana, just in time to miss the 1554 sacking and capture of Santiago by French privateers. Their mini-fleet had been able to take the town so easily because of peninsular/creole tensions, already common throughout Spanish America. Santiago’s governor, Pedro de Morales, distrusted the local creole militia and, while he dithered about deploying them, his small Spanish-born garrison was overwhelmed. All governors, administrators and regular troops had to be peninsulares, most of whom saw creoles as a lesser breed. This uneasy relationship was to colour Cuba’s history, often with blood-stains, until Spain handed the island over to the US in 1898.

In 1620 Cuba’s total population was less than 7,000, in 1650 it hardly exceeded 30,000. The island attracted few settlers while Spain’s continental conquests promised bigger bucks faster. Until the 1760s not many slaves were imported: an annual average of 240 between 1511 and 1762, if we can depend on El Escorial’s figures.

The multinational swarms of pirates and privateers who threatened shipping routes for so long resembled modern ‘terrorists’ in one respect – they occupied a grey area. One monarch’s pirate might be another’s privateer. To Phillip II, Francis Drake was unquestionably a pirate. Yet in 1570, before his first voyage to the Caribbean, Elizabeth I gave him ‘a regular privateering commission’. All privateers were licensed by their governments who appreciated, when war broke out, having privately owned and provisioned ships to reinforce the national navy. (Never mind that those owners invariably ran extensive smuggling operations, usually detrimental to their government’s trading. In that respect they were analogous to such twenty-first-century mercenary armies as Blackwater.)

The Governor of Cuba’s first duty was to protect the empire’s loot from both foreign pirates and creole freelance traders (aka smugglers). Therefore it was decreed, in 1558, that all commerce must go through Havana’s port and Santiago dwindled to thirty households. But a generation later its revival began when Cuba was bisected. In military matters the Governor of Havana retained control over the whole island, otherwise the province of Oriente was to enjoy virtual independence under Santiago’s jurisdiction. Oriente then incorporated the modern provinces of Guantanamo, Holguin, Las Tunas, Granma and Santiago.

When the defence of Havana became Spain’s priority, Cuba’s unguarded coastline, fretted with countless small natural harbours, developed into a buccaneers’ paradise. Throughout the Hispano-English war (1585–1603) creole cattle ranches and sugar mills were regularly raided. Also, barter flourished; disloyal creoles living hundreds of roadless miles from Havana were delighted to form cordial trading relationships with the empire’s foes, exchanging meat and hides for European luxury goods and African slaves.