“Sanctions Produce Heartbreak”

Hello from Havana, where regular people can’t afford rice or sugar or eggs, gas lines are half-a-work-day long (“lucky” for us – in the provinces they’re three-workdays long, piggy-backing on eight-hour blackouts), and real-feel temperatures are breaking records regularly. Three summers running, we’re still on the brink.

You don’t need me to tell you things are bad all over – inflation, war, sedition, scarcity, an intractable climate catastrophe, plus powerful cadres who want to keep us misinformed, consuming and fearful, less we wake up to stand up. But the global malaise is one thing. The longest, strongest US sanctions are something altogether. The two together? Cuba, Summer, 2023.

_____

Imagine you live in a gated or rural community with a single road in and out. One day, you decide to make changes to your property, implementing a new landscape design, including lawn art. Your closest neighbor does not approve. They are, in fact, quite horrified at what you’ve chosen to do. Although you’ve lived side-by-side for decades, they raise a ruckus. Rather than invite you over for coffee and a conversation, said neighbor goes to the mat, blocking the one-way-in, one-way-out road, holding you captive, demanding you remove those endemic plants and hideous (to them) kinetic sculptures.

By this time, they’ve got their panties in a full twist and enlist other neighbors, threatening to shut off their means of entry and egress unless—and until—they fall in line. They, of course, accede – sooner or later, often against their principles. Roadside signs begin popping up: ‘Only lawns!’ and ‘No yard art!’ are popular. People stop sharing food and gossip and laughter with you. Social feeds from the next community over add fuel to the fire: ‘It’s your property! No one can tell you what to do with it!’ is a common sentiment. ‘They are punishing you for your plant preference? Are we still living in the Land of the Free?!’ opines Farmer Marj. ‘Down with lawn art!’ counters a Karen. ‘Not in our backyard!’ someone seconds.  

They dig in. You dig in.

Sounds outlandish, exaggerated, absurd.

And yet, in this metaphor, Cuba is that neighbor – all endemic plants and funky sculptures. And the United States does not like the looks of it. Since 1960, billions of dollars (including your tax dollars) have been spent, and political careers forged/consolidated, on the issue of our southern neighbor’s choices. For a country built on individualism about which it boasts and markets itself worldwide, the USA’s actions belie its rhetoric. If you do a deep dive, it becomes apparent that my birth country doesn’t genuinely welcome independent, outside-the-box thinking. A little might be ok, good even, for the optics, but color outside US-designed lines and You. Will. Pay.    

For over 60 years and counting, Cubans have been paying.

_____

Most of you probably don’t know (or care) that I have a Master’s degree in political science. It’s more a toxic hobby nowadays, but the ineffective and counterproductive nature of sanctions is Global Diplomacy 101. Read the balanced, sourced analyses below and you’ll see, sanctions only work in a few, very specific contexts. Cuba is not one of them.

“…a review of all U.S. sanctions since 1970 shows that targeted countries altered their behavior in a way that the U.S. hoped they would just 13 percent of the time.”

“…sanctions often fail to sufficiently or efficiently squeeze regimes, whether the goal is to end a war, stop genocide, limit the bomb, or undermine oppression…Years of sanctions failed in North Korea, Venezuela, and Iraq. Cuba has faced layers of U.S. trade and arms embargoes since 1960. The Communist regime is still in power…Sanctions also produce heartbreak.”

Can you hear all those hearts breaking?

Probably not. For over 60 years, people who have never stepped foot on the island, who couldn’t pick Randy Alonso out of a line up, who’ve never enjoyed a cold drink coupled with a hot kiss on the Malecón, have been telling the world how they are going to break Cuba. They always fail to mention, however, the heartbreak of a mother dying alone, lovers separated, siblings estranged.

Meanwhile, this is our daily bread. Heartbreak. Hunger. Punishment. Take this. Take that. Suffer.

If after 60 years your neighbor hasn’t installed a lawn and taken down questionable art, isn’t it time to try a new strategy? Obama got it.

Obviously, my metaphor is reductive and Cuba needs to own its share of the blame for the current situation (corruption; internal blockade; lack of transparency; power/paranoia dynamic; disastrous/delusional accounting systems; and horrible marketing of their message, among them). Nevertheless, it illustrates my premise: subjecting a neighbor or country or neighboring country to violence and torture because you don’t agree with how they’re conducting their lives – even if you had an historical hand in constructing that life – is an egregious violation of rights: basic rights, human rights, sovereign rights.  

Did you say violence and torture? Yes, in fact, I did: when your child has a rare form of curable cancer and treatment is only available in the United States, but you can’t access that care because your child is Cuban (even with all the money in the world), that is violent. That is torture. That is familial and generational trauma in the making. That is inhumane and that is criminal. And that Cuban child with cancer? She needs treatment, as you read this. But the US won’t give her and many others like her a temporary visa to get the care she needs. Tightening sanctions during the pandemic? Violence. Torture.   

_____

People write me all the time: ‘I’m reading that Cubans are starving. I don’t want to take food from peoples’ mouths. Is it ethical for me to travel there?’ First, Cubans may be hungry, but not starving. Second, this is not a zero-sum game where the yuca on your plate could be on a Cuban’s. Third, the rules of the Cuban game are so complex and mine-riddled, you’ll likely be all kinds of unethical without even realizing it. But don’t worry: Cubans are master ducks, letting most everything slide right off their backs.

In fact, the opposite might be argued, that staying away is unethical.

Every dollar, euro, pound or yen that enters the country helps feed some people, somehow, in today’s Cuba. Each day at the beach, horseback ride, dinner at a restaurant, dancing at a club, coffee by the roadside or beer on the Malecón, is helping feed a Cuban. Donate to good causes while you’re at it – many projects inside and outside the country have reliable, experienced donations programs helping Cubans survive. Spend freely, tip your guides, hosts, servers and entertainers. Draw your own conclusions. Come help us laugh and make music, make merry and forge new friendships.

While you’re at it (or if you aren’t up for traveling), lobby your politicians for a change in policy – especially if you live in New Jersey or Florida. Need a good argument? For 30 straight years, the world community has condemned these sanctions, most recently voting 185-2 (US and Israel against) at the UN General Assembly to lift the blockade. The 2023 vote is coming up. Hopefully we’ve reached a tipping point where the United States is dethroned as Global Bully once and for all.  

P’alante Conner, P’alante Cuba

I am good at some things: camping and roughing it; making deadlines; making conversation; not holding a grudge; eavesdropping. With some other things, I’m getting better: regular tai chi practice; checking my tongue when pissed; curbing my tendency to micro-manage; interacting with small children.

But there are still other things at which I’m terrible: handling stress with grace; confronting bureaucracy with grace; gardening; interacting with big children. Except for stress and bureaucracy (synonymous and perpetual here), none of this has significant impact on my daily life or prospects.

Still, there is one thing at which I am truly awful. Something that is detrimental to my financial health, trajectory and opportunities, growth and confidence: I cannot sell, promote or push any of my own projects or work. I was taught that ‘tooting one’s own horn’ is egotistical and base. I was taught that it’s unbecoming and narcissistic and probably unwarranted: who hasn’t done greater things, with more impact, more finesse? As you can see, I was raised on a diet of self-doubt by a loving, yet reluctant and perfectionist mother who instilled the desire and drive to be the best me I can be, with the tacit condition that I not let anyone know about it.

All in all it’s not a bad approach, unless you’re a freelance writer or founder of an organization. In this case, it’s an absolute disaster. And I am both: I write and I founded Cuba Libro. I have lived half a century without ‘tooting my own horn.’ That ends now.

I woke today and did tai chi (check!), held my tongue when my husband drank the last of the coffee (check!), and even let the cheese plate leave the Cuba Libro kitchen with a mint garnish in lieu of the standard basil sprig – without uttering one micro-managed word (check!).

So here I am, advocating for me, my work and my achievements. Sorry, Mom, but this can’t be bad, especially since my work—my good, hard work—pays off not only for me, but my family, friends, community and co-workers. After all, with more than two decades of good, hard work in Cuba under my belt, I have a lot of fertile ground for horn tooting. And I’m tilling this ground for you so that on your next adventure here—actual, armchair, virtual or astral—you can plug into our crazy Cuban context immediately, ethically, purposefully and positively.

_____

Some of you know me. Some of you think you know me. But unless you know Cuba Libro, you’ve only a partial picture. Over ten years ago now, as Cuba toe-dipped into the first phases of an historic economic restructuring (ongoing, complex and confounding), I saw an opportunity to create a unique kind of space in Havana; an opportunity to help mend the fraying social safety net; an opportunity to connect people, debunk myths about Cuba and disseminate ideas; an opportunity to share skills and (all-important) profits with some of my favorite young Cubans. Here was an opportunity to build something new and altogether different.

A decade on, I often think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. Several times I’ve threatened to give up. But I’m coming to realize that starting a community development project, alone, from scratch, was a way to channel the frenetic, heartbroken energy that consumed me after my long-time Cuban husband called our marriage quits. My friends counseled me as they would a Cuban: Dumped? Heartbroken? Go find another. So like Cubans do, I found another. To be precise, I created another partner that would lift up not only me and my family, but the neighborhood, our ommunity and beyond. Cuba Libro was born.

And it worked. As the world implodes beyond our garden gate and Cuba gets improbably more difficult, Cuba Libro has turned a corner. We survived COVID. We survived the emigration of beloved team members and café regulars. Blood, sweat and tears were spilt. Money was spent. A professional accountant joined the team. Yoan, Yeney, Migue, Alive and Emily joined the team. Different and more demanding responsibilities were added and delegated. Exciting new drinks (Johnny Sins! M&M Smoothie!) and edible treats (El Delicioso! La Tabla!) were invented. New community outreach initiatives were launched, along with healthy, educational and hyper popular trivia, dart and chess competitions. As a result, we’re now bursting at the seams and growing beyond our brick-and-mortar oasis.

Most importantly, after months of paperwork and meetings, and an intense licensing process that I navigated alone, Cuba Libro is officially a Local Development Project. More on that in a later post, but essentially, it means we are now able to support and grow our community in new and more targeted ways. Some we’ve already pilot-tested, like Cuba Libro Móvil, where we bring our 100% Cuban coffee drinks to local festivals, ferías and events. Others are dreams I’ve had percolating and which the team is motivating me to realize, like our forthcoming multi-lingual Little Free Library.

We are excited. We are energized and we are special. Drop by when you’re in town to experience it first-hand or wait for my forthcoming book about thriving and surviving 20 years in Cuba, wherein the best tales, foibles and follies will be revealed!  

_____

Friends tell me I’m a “bad ass.” I’m not a bad ass. In my world, the true bad asses are the Cuban doctors, nurses, epidemiologists, scientists and other health professionals and researchers who worked day and night, during lockdown, during blackouts, during civil unrest (and the rest), to deliver three safe, effective COVID vaccines in record time. Also, a hat tip to all the Cuban health personnel serving overseas—especially the Henry Reeve Brigade— who continue to deliver free healthcare in over 60 countries.

In 20 years as a health reporter for MEDICC Review, I’ve interviewed hundreds, if not thousands, of these ‘white coat warriors.’ In post-quake Pakistan and Haiti, I lived in tents side-by-side with the Henry Reeve Brigade reporting on their work, even getting pressed into action in the operating room, during vaccine campaigns and as a translator. Being a Cuba-based health reporter has been a game changer for me and I bet some of you reading this didn’t even know I wear this hat. Proudly.

MEDICC (Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba) is one of those game-changing organizations—not only for individuals like me, the ELAM graduates we support, and people living in vulnerable US communities where we work, but also in the much bigger picture. MEDICC has helped broker Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) between US universities and Cuba’s National School of Public Health. MEDICC delivered a white paper to President Obama that led to bi-lateral cooperation commitments to improve the health and well-being of people on both sides of the Straits (unfortunately, the six-year Trump-Biden debacle derailed most of this forward progress). MEDICC was responsible for bringing an expert, international vaccine delegation to Cuba to observe results and exchange with Cuban colleagues responsible for developing, testing and deploying Cuba’s COVID vaccines.

Although US-Cuba collaboration has suffered since the halcyon days of normalization, MEDICC is a fighting organization. In the face of stricter sanctions, that incompetent 45th US president, global recession and restricted funding, blackouts, connection failures and mind-boggling bureaucracy, MEDICC fights and prevails. As I write this, we’ve rolled up our sleeves to scale up our premium program: bringing US health leaders, scientists, policy makers and students to Cuba to forge collaborative projects in health. MEDICC is the only US organization with this capacity. Biotech, genetics, clinical trials, social epidemiology, medical education, chronic disease, primary health care, nutrition, international medical cooperation and more: we tailor each program for each group, visit the institutions in which they’re interested and host exchanges with Cuban colleagues to hammer out concrete collaborations between US and Cuban health experts.

This is not at all easy. The logistics are complicated and the paperwork diabolical. Mainstream media reporting about Cuba presents a constant uphill battle. But we struggle on for our collective health, our collective future, and it’s working. MEDICC has already hosted three groups of health professionals this year and we have another half-a-dozen on deck for this year. Any scientists, health professionals, policy wonks, professors, deans or students interested in seeing Cuba’s health system first hand with a goal of future collaborations, please get in touch.

_____

Between founding and directing Cuba Libro, health reporting and keeping my family fed, clothed and housed, I wrote a new book. I don’t have much luck with my books. This is largely due to my lack of a knack for marketing. My poetry and prose collection TWATC is awesome. Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage selling it on Amazon from Cuba and the few copies I brought in my luggage are now with Cuban friends. The coffee table book I wrote on Cuba’s classic Harley-Davidson’s, with photography by Max Cucchi, is one-of-a-kind gorgeous and beautifully written if I do say so myself, but had no marketing or distribution budget. To boot, it was printed in Germany so few copies reached US and Canadian shores where its natural market lives. We have higher hopes for the second edition, now in progress, but still lack a publisher. Please drop a line if this is you!

I was more optimistic with 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go. I was approached and courted by a major travel book publisher. I was given all the creative freedom I wanted. When I asked: why only women?, I was assured that this is just a marketing niche and tactic. The publisher encouraged me to promote my passions while exploring the state of Cuban women, their contributions to and struggles within contemporary society. This was to be the travelogue of my dreams, chock full of solo travel, family travel, remote travel and secret spots. The publisher was supportive. The advance was decent. I was in. I was excited.

The research process was packed with natural wonders, wonderful people and electrifying road trips on a 1949 Harley. My admiration for my ‘media naranja’ (travel partner and co-conspirator)deepened. I discovered off-the-beaten track pockets and learned something new every day. I’ve been out of the travel guide writing game for a while, but this was no ordinary guide and I exalted in writing it.

Editing was a breeze and I was pleased with the cover choice (rarely the case and not just me: on your next outing with writer friends, ask about cover selection—it’s a tricky and sometimes nasty business). I hired a publicist. I wrote marketing copy. I contacted reviewers and press and mailed them copies at my own expense. I took to social media. I was energized. I was hopeful.

Then Trump happened, flogging Cuba with stricter sanctions thanks to his quid pro quo with those wacko Floridians. Under Trump, US folks could no longer travel “legally” to Cuba. The media added fuel to the fire. US visits to Cuba plummeted. Then the global pandemic happened and international travel ground to a halt in a way we’ve never before seen.

Perfect timing: my book had just been published. Now it molders. Too few copies have sold to even pay back the advance so in essence, this book has landed me in debt. I love this book. Many people have written me telling me they love this book. Writing 100 Places was another transformative experience that will forever live in my memory. But you can’t eat memories. You can’t pay electric bills or the phone company or rent with memories. 

The whole thing makes me sad and wary. Sad because I truly believe in this book and it’s not reaching enough people. Wary because I’m embarking on a new, bigger, scarier book: a memoir (of sorts) about learning to be Cuban. For this one, I promise to be better at tooting my own horn. 

Toxic Masculinity: “This is Normal in Cuba”

‘I don’t want to go that place,’ the guy says to his friends over beers in the park. ‘That’s where the fags hang out.’

‘Hey ladies! I’m single…my wife is the married one!’ reads the oversized bumper sticker on the 1956 Buick I’m following on the Puente Almendares.

‘They were asking for it. And it’s suspicious that another 10 women suddenly appeared after the first five denounced him,’ a friend said when I mentioned the recent sexual abuse charges leveled against mediocre-at-best musician Fernando Becquer.

I’ve written about Cuba’s machismo problem previously. I also wrote about the Me Too Movement (known as YoSíTeCreo) several years ago, examining our experience here in Cuba and how it squares with the paradigm of power, oppression, and control exercised by most men everywhere. I’ve also weighed in on Cuban catcalling, understanding strident foreigner women who reject it, but also appreciating the sometimes funny/intellectual deftness with which Cuban men wield it (albeit ubiquitous and too often gross or inappropriate).  

Here in Havana, I’ve witnessed marginalization and minimization of brilliant female professionals, as well as filthy old men getting handsy with young college co-eds. At Cuba Libro, I had to let a worker go for (among other things) his leering, lecherous behavior towards certain female customers which no amount of naming the behavior or sensitivity training succeeded in correcting.

Mansplaining, manspreading, homophobic slurs and asides (directed at my dog even!) and nauseatingly strict gender roles: it’s all in the Cuban mix.

I’m the youngest daughter of a proto-feminist whose prize refrigerator magnet read ‘a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle;’ it remained the centerpiece of her fridge until the day she died. I’m also the youngest sister of a fabulously flamboyant gay man who liked to brag about his lovers of the cloth (he had a thing for priests and otherwise closeted/confused guys) until the day he died. As you may imagine, the toxic masculinity permeating Cuba is a bit problematic for me.

When a friend of mine who lived here for many years remarked upon leaving for good, “there’s entirely too much testosterone on this island,” I laughed. But I might have cried: Cuban men, women, children and society at large have toxic masculinity so embedded in their collective amygdala, so normalized, that it paralyzes progress.

Obviously, there are many factors paralyzing progress here but no policy change is going to magically transform boys into men who can cry, cook, share their feelings, face their traumas and be real societal allies. Nor will any government mandate raise girls into women who reject all forms of sexual harassment, who demand the same liberties, rights and respect as their male counterparts, and who require an equitable division of duties at home.

Achieving such lofty goals will take a massive cultural overhaul that frankly, many of the cis white powerbrokers in Cuba (and most everywhere else, sadly), are staunchly against. Despite ongoing education campaigns by CENESEX, Evolución, UNICEF, OXFAM and others around gender parity, physical, emotional and financial violence against women, and the ills wrought by machismo, toxic masculinity is killing the country by a thousand cuts. And though national and international media consistently cover the issue, it’s going to take decades to reverse the course—just like it has taken decades to witness a perceptible shift (microscopic as it may be) on the homo/trans/biphobia front.

I was shocked and awed when my husband and I reached loggerheads on the home duties front. Shocked, because I learned that he reached his 55th birthday without ever having cooked a meal. I mean, the man didn’t know how to make rice! Awed, because it meant that his past four wives, to say nothing of his grandmother, mother, sister and nieces permitted—nay, enabled—this dependent, gender-based behavior. After returning from the market for the third time with soft, damaged tomatoes, I learned that in 55 years, he had never shopped for produce either. And this is not a coddled man. His single mom worked her entire life, is a decorated party member, and raised a fine, loving, well-rounded, and hard-working son…who landed in my life just a little machista.

He doesn’t question when someone calls a Polski a ‘women’s car.’ He doesn’t wince at the offhand homophobic comment made by a biker buddy (let alone call him out for such bias). He doesn’t get tears in his eyes when Claudia, the most heroic first responder after the Saratoga tragedy, is profiled on TV— a true super hero at just 21 years old and not even five feet tall. Nor does he understand the beautiful, buxom 25-year-old who dresses in baggy pants and rock t-shirts to hide her curves and head off unwanted advances. Between lessons on cooking rice and choosing tomatoes, we talk a lot about gender in my house. And LGBTQI issues. And machismo. And how toxic it all is.

At the annual Harley Rally in Varadero this year, I decided to take the pulse of our friends, asking what they thought about September’s referendum on Cuba’s family code. This codifies everything from what legally constitutes a family, to the rights of children within the home, inheritance rights and more; it has not been updated since 1975. Among the most divisive elements of Family Code 2022 is the right to same-sex unions.  

“What do you guys think of the proposed family code?” I asked one night as a group of us sat around knocking back beers. People were not shy to respond.

“The government can’t tell me how to raise my kids,” said one leather-clad biker, echoing a sentiment I heard from neighbors during the ‘popular consultation,’ our block’s meeting with legal experts and government officials leading up to the referendum. Concerns about how to explain same-sex love and marriage to children; around the clause that children’s opinions should be considered in decisions affecting the entire household; and the prohibition of corporal punishment in the home, were all voiced at my meeting in Playa.

Meanwhile, adoption rights for gay parents; gender-inclusive puberty and health education; and a diabolically twisted understanding (not to mention dead wrong) of ‘progressive autonomy’ for children, has Cuban evangelicals raging. RAGING. They call the code dangerous, denouncing the same sections of the new code as my neighbors, as well as rejecting artificial insemination and surrogate motherhood. Their arguments are laughable, absurd and often contradictory. Have a read and ask yourself: how can people swallow such shoddy logic?! By the way: evangelical Cubans have also started lurking in hospital halls and handing out murdered fetus pamphlets to unsuspecting women in an effort to convince Cubans that abortions free and on demand are wrong. Sounds all too familiar, frankly.

But back to the bikers…

“I’m not homophobic but….” another, better friend starts to tell me. As I write in my 2018 book TWATC, this sentence never ends well. “…but this isn’t our culture. Maybe in other countries men can marry, adopt kids, and the rest, but Cuban culture is different.”

I like this friend. I really do. So how do I tell him (in the nicest way possible), that this is precisely the problem? That Cuban culture and traditional gender roles are antiquated, behind the curve, anti-human rights, and hurting progress? How do I communicate that a “no” vote on the referendum is going to expose Cubans as out-of-touch, backward, misogynist and homophobic? Maybe if I point out that he’s making the same exact argument as those Cuban evangelicals, who say: “we see that the authorities in Cuba have wanted to move towards a modernity of values that is contrary to what is now.” Maybe then he’ll mull it over?  Modernity, what a curse, right?

Knowing me well, my friend tries to smooth over his implication. “I’m from the campo. We think differently out in the country—men marrying men is just not something we can wrap our heads around.”  We’re having too much fun to go down that rabbit hole, so I hold my tongue for a later date when I will tell him that a) if you’re not contemplating entering into a gay marriage, there’s nothing to wrap your head around and b) ya’ll in the campo regularly get jiggy with farm animals as sexually-curious boys but you have a problem wrapping your head around two consenting humans engaging in sex? That shit is whack, man.

Girls don’t ride bicycles. Men don’t cook. Women can’t be steel workers. Boys don’t play with dolls. It’s positively Jurassic over here at times.

The good is news is that the tide may be turning. I say this because of what I witness day in, day out at Cuba Libro, a safe, inclusive space for everyone (though the evangelicals handing out prayer cards in the garden the other day tested my mettle). We are very active in the LGBTQI community, host cultural and health events designed to empower, and have distributed over 18,000 condoms since opening in 2013, among many other inclusive, community-building initiatives.

Cuba Libro is an oasis for all the frikis, queers, artists, dreamers and doers we can pack in. For obvious reasons, the average age is about half mine—most CL regulars are between 25 and 30. These kids are having none of it. They understand love transcends gender, they don’t give a hoot who you screw, and are gloriously fluid in their expression of self and choice of partners. They are also adamant about the need for full rights for everyone, criminalizing gender violence and hate crimes, and re-calibrating the male/female dynamic and balance in Cuban society.

Young Cuban women of all types are hacking off their hair (when I moved here, short hair on a cubana meant they were old or gay or both); many young men wear extravagant dangly earrings, make up even, and Alfredo—dear Alfredo—runs the café in a free-flowing peasant skirt on the hottest summer days. Two guys on a first date, a FTM hottie sipping a cappuccino with his sister, a couple of friends stealing kisses behind the fiction stacks, cute gay boys in matching “King” t-shirts, girls in boots, boys in dresses and a man in our kitchen—this is what the café looks like on a typical day. Our biased neighbors are beside themselves.

All of this is to say: I’m in a completely different universe from my biker friends, my in-laws, and Cubans from the campo. My past is rooted in feminism, Gay Pride, and equal rights. These kids who work and hang out at Cuba Libro? They are, literally, the future of the country. They’re what I want my future to look like. I hope each and every one of them (who don’t immigrate in the interim), votes in September’s referendum.

When my mind and heart grow dark, thinking about Cuba’s toxic masculinity as an intractable problem, I remember that conversation between those guys having beers in the park.

“I’m not going to that place. That’s where the fags hang out.”

As I rise from the bench, I’m prepared to intercede with an explanation about hate speech when his friend replies: “Yeah, well. Deep down we’re all fags, aren’t we?”

Maybe all is not lost.   

_____

This video from 2018 entitled “Acoso a mujeres en Cuba,” with English subtitles, interviews Cubans of all stripes on the streets of Havana; I didn’t see it until after I wrote this, but some of the outlooks are considerably more alarming than what I present here (“if you don’t want to be catcalled, don’t go out on the street;” and “why do you do your hair and makeup if you don’t want me to complement you when you walk by? Why don’t you just go out ugly?”). Nevertheless, it gave me hope to hear empowered women rejecting the paradigm and to see a cross-section of evolved Cuban kids. It also provided the title for this post.    

Laugh, Shrug, Cry, Struggle: Cuba, Spring 2022

Yesterday some friends and I were talking about banking in Cuba; the (in)famous “ordenamiento” of the economy and “re-ordenamiento of the ordenamiento” (I can’t make this stuff up); and the general business climate on the island. What business folks find here, sadly, is 500% inflation, Titón-esque bureaucracy, scarcity, a fierce blockade, and a deep-seeded, decades-in-the-making model that is impractical at best.   

Me: That company pulled out when the bank made them convert their $200,000 hard currency deposits into pesos cubanos.

Andrés: Of course! They get fed up with the uncertainty, bureaucracy and bullshit and take their business elsewhere.

Me: Right. What’s to keep them around? A market of 11 million Cubans?

Diana: 8 million. A market of 8 million Cubans.

We laughed. We shrugged. We sipped our espresso.

Unless you’re intimate with island doings 2020-2022, you might not get the joke. Or the one about shutting off the Morro’s light.

We joke, we laugh and shrug, but it’s no laughing matter and still, after 20 years in residence (this month; I’m a glutton for punishment), I can’t shrug it off. Or shake this discomfiting feeling, the sadness and sense of abandonment (Daddy trauma runs deep) that pierces me with each ‘¿sabes quién brincó?’

_____

A few days will go by without seeing or hearing from someone. Have they contracted COVID? Slipped into a hot new love affair? Stolen away for a long weekend at Varadero or Canasí? As I consider writing them to check in, my phone pings with a WhatsApp message. The unrecognizable number begins with a +.

“Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. I was running around crazy those last days…”

Every single goddamn week. Oftentimes more than once, someone—a dear friend, ex-lover, work colleague, loyal customer, neighbor—writes to say they’ve left the country. That they’re not going to be the last one out, charged with extinguishing the Morro’s light.

The fleeing are now a flood, with legal and illegal emigration reaching record highs not seen since the Mariel boatlift. We are no longer 11 million on the island and while Diana was exaggerating with her 8 million joke, she’s probably not far off. Cuba is hemorrhaging people, few on the island are having babies, and one of the world’s grayest populations continues to die apace, leaving what? Your tired. Your poor. Your huddled masses. Your wretched refuse. And me. Conflicted, frustrated, stubborn old me.

In the past year alone, we’ve lost (and yes: when Cubans leave, you lose them, physically, spiritually):

Jessica

Marcel

Ivan

Omar

Lazarito

Yenlis

El Chino

María Teresa & Olivia

Asol

Cristiano & Connie

Dario

Vázquez & Marlen

Thais & Claudia

Denis

I always wish them well and offer my support. I tell them, like my mom told me: ‘follow your dreams.’ But oh, the irony! Following my dreams landed me in Cuba, while my sorely-needed-now-more-than-ever support network follows their dreams of ‘anywhere but here.’

I try remaining positive. I struggle to maintain perspective, but some leave-takings cut deep, years of friendship truncated, obliterated, our connection thinning with each well-meaning text, awkward call, and ghosted video chat I just can’t rally to answer.

I’m writing this raw because I´ve failed to find a way to deal with my conflicting emotions. Of course I want my tribe to live life to its fullest, dive into different cultures, experience new places and have great adventures, to grow, learn, and earn. But is that all there is? What about years of working and laughing and loving together shoulder to shoulder? What about our memories, your debt, our future plans and unfinished chapters?

It saddens me so profoundly, I hold back tears writing this, hoping my neighbor who just stopped by won’t notice.

I study Cubans to see how they deal with it. To a one, they roll with the leave-taking, extend well wishes, and accept the loss in stride, view it as a fait accompli.

‘Of course they left. What’s worth sticking around for?’ is a common refrain.

This defeatism is new – that there really is no good reason to stick it out here, especially when all of your friends have come to the same conclusion. New too, are the elderly emigrating: 80-year olds casting their fate with coyotes to reach the US-Mexican border; retirees being pulled out by adult children who can better care for them in Miami or Madrid; emotionally blackmailing grandparents, coercing them to emigrate for the future of their grandkids.

Other new twists in the age-old Cuban emigration problem include gay couples who are still (absurdly, cruelly) prohibited from marrying here but who are granted fiancé visas by countries where same sex unions are legal, and farewell gatherings at Cuba Libro—the last stop for their last hurrah.

New, also, is my reaction: I’m shutting down to avert new hurt. If I was wary of admitting people into my inner circle before, now I’m more skittish than a goat in a gauntlet of horny campesinos. What’s the point of making new friends if they’re just going to split? Planning their departure as I type this?

Keeping my distance only becomes tricky when a special person crosses my path. No matter where you live, under whatever circumstances, this is rare—as rare as a horny campesino who hasn’t had their way with a goat. It’s the exception rather than the rule.

I think we only get a certain allotment of special people crossing our path in this life. And we have to honor that—dive in and swim, even when those waters are deep and about to be tested by those same special people following their dreams. No wonder I fight, and fail, to remain distant.

To whit: I have to stop here to try and track down Josue—a new friend I haven’t heard from in a while. I hope it’s because he’s fallen in love or is writing verses for the ages, or is on a camping odyssey, but fear it’s because he has left us. Nothing much I can do but wait for that message from an unrecognizable number beginning with +.  

The Toby Saga: Venting on Vets in Cuba

Some call him Tobito. Tobilongo. Tobikins. Others call him Jineperro, El Mimao or Señor Tobes. On any given day, we might call him The Cutie Patootie, Coo-Coo-Coo-Choo (since The Stones played Havana), What You Say?, Labios Negros or, when we’re feeling regal: Don José Juan Quinconio Sedonio de la Mancha, often shorted to Juan Quin Quin.  

Many of these nicknames won’t make sense if you’re new to Cuba and having a dozen monikers for a mutt definitely doesn’t make sense if you don’t have a dog. Believe me: it just happens.

It’s a tad embarrassing how dog crazy I‘ve become since rescuing Toby. I’m a cat person by nature and childless by choice (I’m anti-dependents), but when this mongrel wandered into my life over seven years ago, he won my heart.  He’s tough and scrappy, a hardy mix of some kind of terrier and what Cubans call ‘perro chino.’ That’s just our assumption by looking at him—doggie DNA testing isn’t a thing in Cuba…yet.

Perro Chino

Except for the occasional asthma attack, he’s never been sick. (Dog asthma. Who knew?!)

So when his entire back erupted in open, oozing sores, accompanied by violent scratching and a stink so pungent we considered moving his bed out of our room, I kind of freaked out. Although he was eating and pooping well and exhibited the same happy, manic energy for which he’s famous, itchy, bloody sores and the nasty smell, combined with sleep deprivation sent me to a pretty dark place.

In my defense, Toby’s ill health was the ‘tapa de pomo’ (straw that broke the camel’s back). The past year, for those who haven’t been paying attention, was a complete shit show—everywhere, I’m aware, but especially in Cuba. Severe shortages of everything; four-hour (if you’re lucky) lines to buy cooking oil, soap, coffee or toothpaste; triple/quadruple/quintuple inflation; all beaches and pools closed for the second consecutive year; no remittances or visas and few family visits; protests; MLC stores; such expensive rum and cigarettes people are forced to go cold turkey…The physical and psychic toll this is taking on the populace is hard to overstate. It’s an incredibly fragile situation.

We tried all the home/natural remedies for which Cubans are known and admired. Pino macho, añil cimarron, silver sulphate. None of it worked and Toby was only getting worse. Several Cubans—including Toby’s dad—swore by burnt motor oil. But we’d already lost a lot of time. I put my foot down and insisted on better living through chemistry.

Because I’m a foreigner and have some savings (AKA privileged like few are here), I took mom’s advice and threw money at the problem, rolling up at the ‘Cira García for pets’; this is generally considered the top pet hospital in town.  After three hours waiting alongside skittish purebreds (ratty Pekingese mostly, with a couple of cute pittbulls), we were seen by the vet.

Without asking his name, about his diet, clinical history, living conditions or anything else, she wrote down an address. ‘Go here at 7:30 tomorrow morning for a skin sample and lab tests. Come back next week. That will be 100 pesos. NEXT!’

I was disappointed. I’ve had better vet visits here, but most of the top animal docs have left the country or discontinued practicing for lack of meds and materials. Still, I was ecstatic that we had movement and an actual lab would analyze his results. Tobikins was on his way to health! Or so I thought…

_____

The next morning, we bundled up Señor Tobes before jumping on the motorcycle for the nerve-wracking trip across town. Oh, did I not mention our transportation is a 1946 Harley Davidson? Toby adores riding with us, two back paws on dad’s legs, two on the handle bars, doing a lively four step to keep his balance as we cruise along. He barks and wags with joy, a huge grin on his labios negros, softening even the most curmudgeonly Cuban. That day crossing chaotic, pothole-pocked Marianao during morning rush hour with sick Toby at the wheel, barking madly? Cue 19^th nervous breakdown.

We arrived at Dorca’s house as workers sipped espresso hurriedly at the cafeteria next door. Dorca and her partner, dressed in lab coats and gloves, were doing a brisk urine/blood/skin sample business for dogs and cats. I now understood the early appointment time: they worked in a hospital lab somewhere and saw four-legged patients before their day job started; this was their side hustle. Everyone has one—has to have one—and while some are seriously sketchy, Dorca’s hustle is 100% Conner endorsed.

They pet and cooed at Toby, called him by name and spent more time with him than the vet. The full lab screening and tender care cost 250 pesos.  

Fast forward a week. Lab results in hand (dipylidium caninum; staphylococcus; streptococcus) we were back at the top vet hospital a full hour before they opened to mark our place in line. Already waiting were a ‘salchicha,’ a grumpy old cat in a stroller, a mini-pinscher and a mutt named Mollie. We were fourth in line! I wouldn’t arrive too late at Cuba Libro, I figured. And I was right: the vet never showed up.

Another few days passed, Toby and my state of mind continued to worsen and we were scrambling to find food for us and him (kibble is for Cuba’s 1%, the rest of us cook for our dogs, something that has become very difficult, leading to many dogs being put on the street—or worse). We returned to the vet bright and early and marked our place in line. A neighbor I ran into while waiting gave me the name of his vet. She was far across town and I already had over six or more vet contacts in my phone but another couldn’t hurt.

My anxiety was off the charts at this point. We still had no proper diagnosis or treatment and it was going to be very difficult and expensive to get the medications once prescribed. My last nerve held on to the fact that we were closing in on a professional opinion with a plan of action. And we were almost there, just a few pets in front of us. Next thing I knew, a fashion victim of the type you see often in Cuba (a kind of Kardashian-Mustang Ranch mash up) stepped from a car with a venomous corgie of questionable pedigree who went straight for Toby. She yanked her dog back on his fake Gucci leash, but too late. Mr Tobes lunged so forcefully towards the corgi, his harness broke in two. Chaos ensued, but tragedy avoided since I’m famous for inserting myself into a full-on dog fight when Toby might be in danger.

Having successfully separated the two machos, I smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. And waited. Over the next two hours, the doctor only saw a sick Husky, prioritizing instead all the later-arriving pets there for travel documents. After four full hours had passed, she had attended only two sick pets, while whipping through a dozen animals emigrating abroad. I get it. Emigrating, and with a pet, is fraught. And stressful. And time sensitive. But. We were here at 8am marking our place in line. Where were you? If taking your pet abroad is a priority, act like it.  

And the “Doctor.” Her side hustle is certifying animals for travel. It pays well and is low hanging fruit so she opted to see those animals—all of which arrived after us—before the sick ones. The lack of ethics and her bald-faced ‘sucks to be you with your sick pet’ manner got my panties all up in a bunch and I said something. I called her out. Others grumbled ascent. She looked a little panicked and told me to see the vet upstairs.

When he came out of his exam room, he explained that he is a surgeon; I have to wait downstairs for the vet (his card clearly states that he is a surgeon and clinician). ‘She’s the one who sent me up here,’ I said, further explaining what was going on downstairs. I cited the lack of ethics. I asked if we could make a proper appointment to avoid all this, making it easier for us and them in the process. ‘It’s first come, first served,’ he told me. ‘In theory, you mean,’ I responded. He finally agreed to see Toby, lifted him on to the exam table, glanced at the lab results and prescribed a 10-day cycle of cipro accompanied by topical treatment with ozone oil (smells like ass—not the good kind. Keeps the sores clean and helps healing). I’m not sure if it was me pointing up the questionable ethics or that he didn’t want his practice vilified on the socials, but he didn’t charge us for the visit.

I breathed easier. Toby was diagnosed and undergoing treatment. A friend gave us the ozone oil and we procured the antibiotics, by tactfully not mentioning they were for a dog. My relief didn’t last long: we followed the doctor’s orders to the letter, never missed a dose, but Toby wasn’t improving. The three of us weren’t sleeping well, he still gave off that rank odor and was scratching just as badly as before. The sores continued to ooze.

By now it was Christmas. Even in good years, the two weeks between Christmas, New Year’s and the recovery period are lost here, nothing gets done, work is an idea, not a reality. Every Cuban knows you don’t get sick during this time if you can help it because none of the good doctors are seeing patients. We called every vet I had registered in my phone. Over the next few days, only one answered, feigning that he wasn’t a vet (dude, you’re lying like a rug!) once he learned that Toby was a mutt rescue and saw the photos of his sores. As a last resort, I called the vet my friend recommended while I was standing on line that day. 

_____

Dr G, agreed to see us that afternoon. The trip was difficult and long. The motorcycle was giving us trouble, it was cold, and people were still in full revel, weaving in the street. Toby was antsy and shaking. My partner was uncharacteristically curt. We rode the elevator to the 9th floor in silence, making sure El Juan Quinquín didn’t pee in the corner, leaving his macho mark.

The elevator opened right into Dr. G’s home, as they do in Havana floor-through apartments. We were asked to wait on the balcony while she finished up with a Shih Tzu mix. Her elderly father was parked in front of the TV and we heard beans under pressure on the stove. We killed time looking at the family photos: a daughter in El Norte posed beside her car, graduation, the obligatory quince portrait, larger-than-life, that anchors every Cuban living room. In-home vet services like this one are the norm here. Kitchens second as surgical theaters, balconies and maid quarters are converted into exam rooms, and your pet is attended while the family talks about the price of bananas or Cuca’s bunyons. You get used to it.

Dr G. called us into her office crammed with papers, animal pictures like you might see at a child psychologist’s and old-fashioned metal boxes for the meds and needles. She asked to see Toby’s lab results and clinical history. She called him by name as my partner lifted him onto the stainless steel examination table, quizzing us about his diet, previous treatment and past ailments. She warned that these types of skin infections are notoriously difficult to cure. He didn’t flinch during the triple injection of antibiotics, vitamins and anti-parasites. But when she sprayed a neon pink substance on his sores, he whelped and cringed. ‘This burns,’ she said, expertly spritzing the remaining sores before he could wiggle away. ‘At home, you should apply mercurochrome once a day.’

She filled a vial with 6 antibiotic doses and gave us the syringes with which to administer them (almost all Cubans can give an injection—to pets and people). ‘You’ll need to get 10 tablets of prednisone to control the itching. I’d like to see him for follow up after he finishes treatment.’ We paid her 400 pesos and prepared for the long ride home, more relaxed and relieved than when we set out.

Thanks (again) to friends and family, we procured the mercurochrome and prednisone within a day and buckled down to nurse Labios Negros back to health. We changed his feeding schedule as Dr G suggested and my partner injected him every night at 6pm (even after 20 years here, I don’t give injections and I can’t make a decent congris). We went for the follow up last week and I’m happy to report that aside from the hot pink stains left by the doc’s topical and daily doses of mercurochrome, Toby is his old self again and ready to reclaim his garden territory at Cuba Libro.   

The Cutie Patootie, healthy at last

Morals of the story:

1. Always get a second opinion;
2. Always keep several vet contacts and gather more, even if you think it’s overkill;
3. Never underestimate the solidarity of friends and family during a health crisis;
4. Everyone should know how to properly and safely give an injection;
5. Work hard not to have health issues over the holidays (especially in Cuba);
6. Home/natural remedies are worth a try, but modern medicine should always have a place in your health toolbox; and
7. If your pet falls ill during one of Cuba’s inevitable crises, it’s OK to not come clean that the medication you need is for your fur baby.

PS – Thanks to everyone who has come to Cuba Libro, called and written to ask after Toby’s health. If you’re interested in supporting organizations working to rescue and heal Cuba’s street animals, check out the following (medicine, materials and financial support accepted):

BACuba

BAC-Habana

Spanky Project

A.B.A Manzanillo

Huellas Callejeras de Cuba

EPA (Equipo de Protección Animal)

Your Live Donkey, Reporting from Havana

Remember the good ole days of the ‘coronacoaster,’ riding the ups and downs of 2020-2021 and looking forward to better times ahead? That was some aspirational thinking. Delusional even. Now, rather than breathing a little easier, it feels like we’re hanging on for dear life, hoping the coaster correctly banks that terrorizing turn. If it doesn’t? We’ll soon be careening off the rails, flying into the abyss.   

Ringing in 2021, we had vaccines rolling out (or rather, some of us did—vaccine inequity is genocidal, but that’s another story). We reunited with our loved ones (or rather, some of us did). We had some hope, false hope, but still: false hope is better than no hope I’ve come to realize.

Last year we talked about “after the pandemic.” How foolish. How grammatically incorrect. That whole time we were using the wrong preposition. There is no life “after” the pandemic, only life with the pandemic. And just when you think it can’t get any worse, hang on baby because it certainly can.

Enter Omicron. Por díos. Redact “false hope” for “no hope.” Too cynical? Perhaps. Too dramatic? I am known to skew cynical and dramatic (ahem), but these past two years have been stranger than fiction…

Here’s a quick list (quick because each entry warrants its own post), of what is adding fodder to the dumpster fire. These are arranged in no particular order save for progressing from the collective to the personal,.

For all of you hoping for good news from Havana, you’ve come to the right place at the wrong time. I promise to share all kinds of uplifting (and exclusive) information related to my passion project, but that will have to wait. The silver linings, the Cuban vaccines, the possibility (finally) of the country legalizing gay marriage—all of this will have to wait because the past two years have been especially shitty in Cuba. And not just due to SARS-CoV-2.

Reordering of the Cuban economy: File under: Disaster, Possibly Fatal.  Official reports from end-of-year analysis show 70% inflation in the formal market, and more than triple that in the informal (AKA black) market. It’s a total shit show.

N27, J11, N15 and any other letter/number combination I may have missed: I’ve written about ‘the troubles’ (to borrow the Irish euphemism) here previously and I don’t feel the need (nor the desire, frankly) to re-visit at the moment. But trust me: we haven’t heard the end of this.

Me Too: Not yet a movement, but thanks to 5 very courageous women who went public in December about a known, repeat sex offender, the long-overdue reckoning about sexual harassment, violence and abuse in Cuba is (nearly) upon us. Heads will—and damn well should—roll. Can’t happen soon enough.

Death, hunger and disillusionment: It’s pretty well generalized no matter where you live, but the combination of COVID and Biden with his sanctions against the island (see descarado/comemierda/hijo de puta in the dictionary of Cuban slang) is inhumane. Not to mention insane: the idea that the blockade hurts the government and not the people is demonstrably false. I tire of such idiocy.

Now for the personal part…

Death, hunger and disillusionment: In the latter half of December 2019, my mother died suddenly, unexpectedly. We suspect COVID, not yet detected in the USA, but late 2019, in NYC, in a woman who regularly attended the movies, live theater and ate out? Entirely possible. Regardless, her death ripped my family asunder. Anyone who has lost a parent, child or loved one suddenly knows the lingering sadness and loss of true north this signifies. To all of you: my deepest, most sincere condolences.

I’m an infamously hangry person—it goes back to food insecurity suffered as a child. And while I’m seriously privileged compared to others in the food department, that’s not saying much these days here.  Food insecurity suffered in one’s formative years is similar to profound grief in that it lingers and ghosts; anyone who survived the Special Period can relate.

Disillusionment is new for me and many people here, too. Cuba is in terribly deep waters—economically, socially, spiritually. Créeme: we are feeling it. I’m feeling it. If I can muster the motivation and rally the energy, I might write more about collective/personal disillusionment. But don’t hold your breath.

Keeping Cuba Libro afloat: The only people who can truly understand the frustrating, infuriating and constant struggle it takes to keep a small business alive during the triumvirate of Trump/Biden sanctions, COVID and the reordenamiento, are other Cuban small business owners and workers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve considered closing shop over the past two years. But the Team can. My partner can. Without them, and without the support (financial, spiritual) from our friends abroad, we would already be history. And we aren’t out of the woods yet.

Toby is sick and isn’t getting better: Although childless by choice, when we rescued Tobito in 2014, he became the hijo I never had. In October, he started breaking out in nasty, bloody pustules. We went to the vet (this is another disastrous dirty secret here, often unethical too, about which I will rant later), did the labs, procured the medicine through sheer solidarity, applied the method religiously…and he continues to worsen. Getting a second opinion has proven impossible. I’m distraught and desperate and don’t want to talk about it.  Until (and unless) the story has a happy ending.

Job insecurity: Thankfully I still have my day job as a health reporter and editor for MEDICC Review, but that too is a double-edged sword: every day I wake to an inbox full of COVID-related news—local, regional, national and global. My livelihood depends on keeping up-to-date and writing about the pandemic. Given these circumstances, it’s hard to shield myself from the hard realities. And it’s part of the reason I haven’t written anything else in nearly two years. I tried to pitch. I’ve tried to write, but my muse is dead or on life support. I’ve considered issuing a DNR, considered giving it up altogether. It’s not a good scenario.

I could go on. I could tell you about the anxiety of living here amongst overly socialized Cubans without having a COVID booster or the dear friends who’ve left the country, leaving gaping holes in my support system. I’ll spare you the details of a friend who died in a tragic motorcycle accident one month ago today and the marital discordance 2020/2021 has engendered. The health issues. The shortages. The short fuses. It’s all a tinder box.

I feel my bravery waning and my defenses grow weak. My resiliency went the way of the 10 peso pizza. I’m reminded of Ernest Shackleton who said it’s better to be a live donkey than a dead lion. I would be lying if I told you it hasn’t crossed my mind to pack up and leave, to embark on a new adventure, in different latitudes. If things continue to deteriorate, I just might, preferring to be that donkey than that lion.   

Cuba August, 2021: It’s Not Funny

This post was slated to be a synthesis of a game I call ‘Dodge the Russian.’ It’s what I’ve been playing since I began my re-entry quarantine, in a Varadero hotel teeming (to my COVID-19-traumatized mind) with hundreds of vacationing Russians, including children. Meanwhile, the deadly Delta variant spreads a pululu, making 2020 look like a dress rehearsal gone pear-shaped and an epidemiological harbinger for the tragedy we’re now living.   

Only half-a-dozen guests are wearing facemasks; four of those are a Cuban family returning from overseas. Hotel staff, are, like me, double masked or masked with face shields indoors, and at least single masked outdoors. Surfaces are constantly disinfected and guests cannot touch communal serving implements or food. Every staff person I’ve spoken to (I think they’re sick of my questions!) is of the same mindset: we are trying to keep ourselves and our family healthy and not lose our jobs.

You’ve seen it where you live, I’ve seen it where I live: staff doing everything humanely possible to observe sanitary measures, while customers flaunt and evade those measures. As someone who knows a little about the service industry in Havana during COVID, I am intimately acquainted with the phenomenon of cautious, meticulous staff facing non-compliant—sometimes defiant—clientele. No es fácil.

I’m a bit down on the Russians here, truth be told. I cannot get sick. My body, with the help of the Pfizer vaccine and Cuban medical care (as hobbled as it is), would not succumb to the virus (ie, I wouldn’t die), I’m quite sure. My mind, however, is a different story. It’s so frayed, it’s squeaking. I live in fear of a proverbial last straw, like the actual straws sullying the beach in front of the hotel; I fear human behavior—never especially admirable when taken as a whole—will send me over the edge. I just want to get home. After five months, I just want to reunite with my family. Know what I’m sayin?

So while this post was designed to be a send up of Russians’ bad Botox, worse fashion sense, wince-inducing table manners and the off-putting odors of bodily fluids on the beach each morning, I will soon be far from them. Hopefully. After a second negative test, I’ll return to my real life, that lucha interminable in all its gore and glory. For this reason, I prefer to dedicate time, energy and words to the reason why I continue to cast my lot with this island: Cubans.

_____

I recently read an analysis of 18^th and 19^th century travel writing. The take away was that the best of the genre is always prescient in some fundamental way. While Here is Havana isn’t strictly or traditional travel writing, it’s informed by decades of guidebook and article authorship (plus, old habits die hard). Watching Vale la Pena last night I felt vindicated by how prescient I can sometimes be: the entire show was dedicated to Cuba’s heat index, how it affects us psychologically, and how it can push anyone over that fine line between irritated and violent.

Something I was talking about weeks ago, in relation to the events of July 11.

It came up again speaking with a friend who bore witness to the 1994 protests known as the Maleconazo—which happened 27 years ago almost to the day as I write this coincidentally. Apropos of nothing we were talking about, she brought up heat-fueled frustration and several largely forgotten factors that sent Habaneros over the edge and into the street in spontaneous, unprecedented public protests. One factor was daily, massive rolling blackouts—so common at the time, Cubans didn’t refer to blackouts (apagones), but rather to rarer light ups (alumbrones). I remember attending parties in the streets of Marianao in 1993 where bonfires provided the only light and chispa de tren provided fuel for the revelers. Another factor was the confiscation of illegal satellite dishes that beamed all the Miami and US channels into Centro Habana homes. It was comical (and not very effective) the lengths people would go to landscape around the giant discs. Maleconazo Lesson #1: hot people without television get cranky, fast.

The response nearly 30 decades ago, for those who don’t remember, was quick, direct and effective: Fidel Castro, along with a heavy police presence (as any president wading into a frustrated mob would have), went to the Malecón to speak with—and listen to—the protesters. Maleconazo Lesson #2: when Cubans take to the streets in frustration, leaders better listen. And act.  

I’d wager my meager earnings that if you gave each Cuban household an AC, soap opera/sports/movie marathons and paid their summer energy bills, it would be a swift chirrin chirran que ya se acabó with any sort of protests. I don’t mean to minimize the very real struggle families and individuals, regular people (not the government pinchos the USA has such a boner for; these folks have AC, canales, food and shampoo, you Yuma dolts!) are facing day in, day out. I just want to help shed some light on the situation.

And the Fidel vs Díaz-Canel compare and contrast is a non-starter: we’re in a different context, a different time, with different challenges. And for those with no historical memory (a global and lethal phenomenon we really need to talk about), the current Cuban president has faced some gnarly, back-to-back challenges since day one: a tragic plane crash in Havana, with only one surviving the sold-out flight; a devastating tornado which levelled a swath of some of Havana’s most vulnerable neighborhoods; Trump’s 243 additional sanctions against the island and the accusation that Cuba mounted “sonic attacks” against US diplomats; trying to right the country’s economic ship after decades of “creative” accounting and financing; and of course, COVID-19.

I don’t mean here to minimize the mistakes—the biggest in my mind: government officials have been out of touch with what life is like for regular Cubans for way too long and that leads to festering resentment and alienation. For years I’ve advocated for obligating every government official with a car to take the bus once a week. In August. At rush hour after a downpour. A real treat for the senses, let me tell you. Buy onions from a cartillero (250 MN a ristra at the current rate in Playa!); fix your broken toilet “resolving” the parts, tools and labor yourself (something my significant other has been doing the better part of a week—shitting in a bucket is how we roll); procure some children’s cough syrup, antibiotics, or adult diapers for your mom without resorting to socios or palancas.

Going on Day 4 with no working toilet. At least we have a seat!

The point is: if you don’t live it, you don’t know it. Not really. I understand competing priorities. I understand juggling simultaneous crises. I understand doing all this with severe economic limitations (this is how I spent the majority of my childhood, watching my mom struggle to keep us housed, clothed and fed). What I don’t understand is being so far removed from your constituents’ reality—this goes for all of those in power, not just here. You need to keep your ear to the ground. Particularly among the young, disenfranchised and disaffected.

Which circles us back to prescience. Some time ago, years now, I wrote about Cuban jokes and humor. This is a very funny people, people. In my opinion, everyone should learn Cuban Spanish for the jokes alone: inside jokes, practical jokes, fart jokes, puns, double entendres, satire, black humor, self-effacing and off-color humor: you name it, Cubans do it, love it and laugh the whole way. Obviously, Cubans’ comic capacity is a survival skill and escape valve. For maximum enjoyment of this confounding place, I recommend visitors lean into and learn this skill.

Full disclosure: I am not what is considered a jodedora (a great compliment). I wish I could achieve jodedora status where I poke good fun at myself, laughing at me along with everyone else. I wish people burst out laughing at my jokes. In English it happens often. I’ve brought laughter tears to many an eye. I envy all my Cuban jodedor friends. While I’m not a jodedora, at least I’m not una pesada (a slight in the Cuban canon). I can hear Alfredo and Douglas and Salgado now: um, yeah, Conner, you can be pesada. All I can say is: I’m working on it?

Although I’m still not great about making jokes in Cuban (but when I get off a good one? Elation!), I can appreciate them. And when they are noticeably absent, I worry. Just like I worried during the dry spell between the Obama/Rolling Stone delirium and Fidel’s death. Just like I worry now. There are no new jokes in the calle. I’m taking my own advice and keeping my ear to the ground, but…crickets. If you’ve heard of any good ones lately, let me know!

I’m in quarantine, so this is just a very partial report. And various factors contribute to why folks aren’t in a particularly joking mood at the moment. Instead, most everyone I talked to is in a head-down, plow-through-the-day, stay-healthy, stay-employed kind of mood.  

Still, I worry. It will only get hotter through August. And I’m not seeing many escape valves for all the pent-up frustration bred by COVID and other difficulties. And a hot, humorless Cuba is not healthy for any of us.

Unpacking the Protests in Cuba

Recent events compel me to post sooner than I otherwise might. First, I’ve received so many questions, including in my professional capacity as a journalist, about what’s happening in Cuba that for efficiency’s sake, it’s easier to condense my thoughts here. Part I is What You Need to Know.

Second, just as many people or more, have contacted me asking how they can help. And while some may be abashed to say it, I’m not: Cubans need help. So for everyone wishing to act in solidarity with Cuba and the more than 11 million people on the island, I’ve put together Part II: What You Can Do. If anyone has other (serious, verifiable) leads for donation, support, lobbying, etc., please feel free to drop me a line or comment.

By way of preface, transparency, and cred: I have built this blog and my not-altogether-smooth writing reputation through a golden rule of only reporting what I’ve seen or experienced first-hand. As a (distant second, seldom-used) alternative, I’ll report what close friends and clear-eyed colleagues have experienced. What follows employs both these mechanisms.

I’m not there now, but I was in Cuba for the November 27 sit/sing-in at the Ministry of Culture and ensuing events through March 2021. Different from what’s happening now, but useful as a baseline for how different things can look when you’re on the ground actually living it, from when you’re watching from afar, observing virtually. I’ve also been in constant, expensive and difficult contact with my friends and loved ones, young and old, in Havana and the countryside.

Obviously, there’s much more to be understood and written about these events, but this is what I’ve got for you right now.  I’ve used numbered, bold sections for ease of reading.  

What You Need to Know

1. Anything on the internet should be considered suspect, false, or doctored until proven otherwise. Cuba and COVID-19 have a lot in common: a perfect storm of historic and novel circumstances converge, fueled by an infodemic and all hell breaks loose. In Cuba’s case, we have 60 years of brewing animosity and policies—on both sides—exacerbated by a pandemic lockdown and four, going on five, years of Trump sanctions. Throw in a rabid, militarized diaspora with some internet savvy (and coaching, I’m sure) and the shit is bound to hit the fan. Oh! Plus the weather.

First time someone has mentioned the weather in relation to recent events? No surprise there. Unless you’ve lived it, weather severity of the type we have in Cuba and how it affects people has probably never occurred to you. But it’s real: two consecutive summers without a beach or pool for cooling off (they were closed both this and last year) , combined with no air conditioning  when there’s a blackout (most Cubans can’t afford it anyway), plus the shortages, plus the lines, plus the economic crisis, plus the MLC stores—of course it’s driving some to extreme lengths.

Conclusion: If it weren’t for COVID-19, we would not be seeing protests in Cuba.  

2. The US and their shills in the exile community are complicit in fueling the violence (and goddamn it: would all of you just stop? You are destroying people and families). We know violence begets violence in a vicious cycle where there are no winners. Think US involvement is some wacky leftist conspiracy theory? This is old hat for Uncle Sam. Just follow the money—to whom it’s distributed and how it’s spent. These are US tax dollars paying for this, which should nauseate you as it does me.

Conclusion: Cuba’s right to sovereignty and self-determination is violated by US sanctions. Obviously, events in Cuba cannot be laid entirely at the door of foreign intervention, but without the money and cage rattling by the US government and exile groups (to mention nothing of the media’s role), I wouldn’t be writing this post.  

3. Too many of us have too short a historic memory and we, as a human race, suffer greatly for it.  Several factors at play today put me specifically in mind of the violent act of war at Girón. Remember Girón? To recap: President Kennedy authorized a military invasion of Cuba by CIA-trained and equipped Cuban exiles, promising air cover once they reached the beachhead. That cover never came and many people died as a result. A tactical oopsie daisy from which I would have hoped policymakers had learned. Wishful thinking. Whatever policy analysis is being done in the US continues to underestimate the will of the Cuban majority to defend their right to sovereignty while overestimating the power and sway of people of Cuban descent off-island.

Conclusion: US Cuba policy continues to depend on counsel from partisan factions and people who are too far removed from what is happening on the ground to make an accurate assessment. This has had fatal consequences like the Bay of Pigs, Brothers to the Rescue and others still classified.                  

4. Pay no mind to the man behind the curtain as he works furiously to distract us from the fact that since the 19^th century to right this second, Cuba is a US domestic issue, rather than a foreign policy concern. We need only look at last week: Haiti sinks deeper into chaos and violence, openly requesting US assistance to stabilize the situation and all we’re hearing about is Cuba. Why? And why has President Biden, despite having a ringside seat during the normalization process, despite Dr Jill Biden’s visit to the island, despite his campaign pledges, despite urgent calls to lift sanctions from BLM, Oxfam, the UN and others, refused to change Trump’s policy towards Cuba? Because congresspeople in New Jersey and Florida have his ass over a barrel, posing a threat to his power and the Democrats’ future in mid-term elections. Haiti? Who cares. Cubans? Expendable. Cuba? Capitulate to elected bullies to consolidate power in the Beltway—using florid and moving language, evoking democracy, freedom, and human rights. But only when it fits US interests and narrative.

Conclusion: US policy towards Cuba is about the US, not Cuba or Cubans on the island. As a friend put it recently: the US is ready to sacrifice 11 million Cubans at the Bob Menéndez altar.

5. Too many, including Cuban policy makers, continue to meter todo el mundo en el mismo saco (lump everyone together, ignoring nuance and circumstance). All societies are an organism—a living, breathing, often amorphous and contradictory conglomeration of personalities, individual situations, philosophy, and history. Just like every New Yorker is not a rushed neurotic mess in a perpetual rat race, not every Cuban who has been to the United States is against their own government. Just like not every Floridian is a gin and tonic swilling fogie, not every young Cuban wants to emigrate. Not every Cuban on an overseas scholarship is under the thumb of a foreign government and not every child of Operation Peter Pan is working to destabilize their birth home.

Conclusion: Beware of anything you read that says ‘the Cuban people are doing or feeling X’; such generalizations can’t be applied to any nation and is a blatant tip off that your source is biased. Instead, look for nuance and breaking down of stereotypes—something sorely needed to move us closer to mutual understanding.

6. The limits of Cuban resiliency and creativity are being tested in ways heretofore unseen. Sure, for certain generations and to a certain extent, the Special Period and Bush aggressions were a test. But younger Cubans didn’t live that, they don’t want to live like that and they shouldn’t have to. Their resiliency and creativity are being forged now, during COVID-19. While the pandemic shares some commonalities with the shortages and exposed inequities that typified the 1990s, Cuban youth can’t be expected to channel the same flavor of resilience their parents and grandparents did. They have different sources of resiliency and are as creative, in their own way, but they need a real seat the table and need to be heard—and not only members of the UJC, señores.   

I’ve been writing and talking about waning resiliency for a while. Most Cubans I know are tired, hungry, hot and let me underscore: sad. Everyone I’ve talked to in these past few days—Cubans on the island and off—are crying themselves to sleep at night (when they can sleep) and bone/soul depressed about what is happening. They aren’t in the streets or trolling hate on the internet; they are desperately trying to maintain communication with their loved ones, find food, and keep their mental health from further fraying.

Conclusion: Anyone against violence, anyone wishing to see a peaceful, long-term and sovereign solution, anyone who cares about the health and well being of Cubans and their families, wherever they choose to live, should be promoting resiliency and creativity. How do we avert violence while promulgating respectful, sane dialogue even though we disagree? How do we engage disaffected, disenfranchised or apathetic youth? In some cases is doing nothing better than doing something? Just some preliminary questions that can help inform the road map out of this morass.

7. COVID. COVID. COVID. As a public health journalist, as someone who has lived the pandemic in Cuba and now for the past four months in the United States, the A #1 priority right now is controlling the spread of COVID-19 and treating those that have it.

Conclusion: What is killing Cubans is COVID-19. Not the Cuban armed forces. Not the police. Not the lack of internet or freedom of speech. Not even the hunger, kept at bay via the ration card, as threadbare as it is. It’s the SARS-CoV-2 virus and anything that keeps jabs from people’s arms, medicines from their reach, and food from their table is complicit.

***NOTE: I was not aware when I wrote this that 36-year old Diubis Laurencio Tejeda died during the protests. I regret the omission.***

What You Can Do

1. Promote non-violence. If not, the current shit show could erupt into a blood bath.

2. Don’t be a dot com dolt. Do not share, like or otherwise promote posts, tweets, videos or photos without first verifying the source, date, author and veracity of claims made therein. And see What You Can Do #1 before hitting send.

3. Recharge the phones of your loved ones. This allows you to keep in touch and know they’re safe. Also, phone saldo is used as an ersatz currency that can be sold and traded. I’ve used ding and Fonoma, but there are many others.

4. Encourage critical thinking. Pay attention and actively listen. Dig deeper. Be conscious of subtext including hidden agendas, axe-grinding and hypocrisy. Look for nuance.in

5. Don’t fight on the internet. This is akin to pissing in the wind or fucking drunk: useless, frustrating and messy. Your energy and time are better spent hounding your elected officials for a humanitarian Cuban policy during this traumatic pandemic.  

6. Send money to loved ones. This is more difficult than ever since Trump shut down Western Union to the island but I’ve successfully used Duales which has the option of depositing into a bank account or delivering the money straight to the recipient’s door.  

7. Send food to your loved ones. There has been an explosion of services delivering fresh, canned and prepared food door-to-door in Cuba (side benefit of COVID-19). The ones I’ve used with no problem whatsoever are MallHabana and Katapulk. Not cheap, but assured.

8. Send medicines and syringes to Cuba. Already there are several global campaigns to send urgently needed supplies to Cuba to help control COVID-19, including 30 million syringes so every Cuban can be vaccinated. They have the vaccines because they produced them but they don’t have the syringes. Other options for sending essential medicines and supplies are through the Cuban embassy in your country (except the USA, natch) and now, in your suitcase.

That’s it for now folks. I will update as necessary. Thanks for reading and a huge, grateful hug  to everyone who has reached out with emotional, financial and moral support.

Party in the U.S.A.?

Eight-hour blackouts roll through Havana, a bottle of cooking oil costs $12 on the black market, and everything from salt and cigarettes to laundry detergent and sugar is becoming more difficult to procure. And as I type this, a tropical storm is gathering steam and heading towards my family.

Meanwhile, I’m stuck in El Norte, with no real notion of when—or how—I’ll return. I’ve been here now or over three months when an unplanned odyssey dumped me back in the United States. Even after 20 years of straddling the divide, with family aquí y allá, the separation is unsettling—a discomfiting heartbreak by degrees. I’m guessing most of us with ties to both places share similar feelings.

‘Leaning into it’ helps keep the rage and frustration at bay, if only temporarily. Leaning in has never been my strong suit, and it’s getting harder, not easier, being stuck here—the longest I’ve been off-island ever. The double downward spiral created by the pandemic and economic recession continues to suck us dry like a tick burrowing into our communal psyche. Keeping afloat, treading water furiously, is what we do, but it’s exhausting. Emotionally. Financially.

To alleviate my emotional and spiritual fatigue, I try to shift my perspective from ‘stuck in the United States,’ to ‘mercifully unable to return at the moment.’ Like a 12-step mantra you repeat to keep yourself sober and (passably) sane, I tell myself to enjoy the unexpected time with my family. I congratulate myself on my continued weight gain. I work hard envisioning a viable future for Cuba Libro.  Even as I admonish myself to be grateful (goddamn it!) for this time, I beat back feelings of guilt and hopelessness, my survivor syndrome in constant conflict with my goal for practical optimism and self-preservation.

Today my mental and physical health status is: mostly nauseous.

Two things keep me on the right side of the asylum doors and dirt: the unflagging support of my family here and there, and the irrefutable and mounting evidence that Cuba provides a superior quality of life than the United States (cue the trolls).

It began to dawn on me—like so many of my realizations—in a bathroom.

“He’s in jail again, for fuck’s sake,” I heard from the stall adjacent. “I don’t know what to do.”

‘Leave him to rot,’ I thought.

“You need to get out of there,” her friend responded on speaker phone.

I concurred. ‘Now tell her to take you off speaker so the whole women’s room isn’t privy.’

“I know. He’s violent. He’s high. I can’t be there when he gets out, but I can’t get in. He changed the locks.”

Her friend didn’t miss a beat: “get over there, jimmy a window, grab you shit and get out.”

I wiped in a hurry, eager to put a face to the drama. Dyed blond and overly tan, her face was crevassed by the wrinkles and sag typical to sun-soaked drunks and junkies. The contents of her purse were splayed across the bathroom counter. “I can’t do this anymore!” she shouted at her phone, a whistle escaping through broken teeth.

Welcome to Florida.

_____

I was in this southern swamp for my cousin’s wedding. I adore this cousin. I enjoy cavorting with this side of my family that I hadn’t seen in decades—to the extent I was braving Florida for the chance. I vowed to harness that practical optimism, remain open-minded, and practice leaning in, to this first, happy reunion since COVID started raging. I tried to lay aside my Florida bias—as understandable and defensible as it is.  

Just off the plane in Jacksonville, the hot mess of a stranger in the bathroom did nothing to help my resolve.

Nor did the inordinate amount of people violating CDC rules for masking up in airports. Or the stringy-haired, grime-encrusted tweaker trying to rent a car—no credit card, only a couple of teeth—at the next window over.

I dialed back my toxiciciy, tried to check my judgement (hard nut: we’re close to Disney and Daytona after all) and focus on the joyous occasion that brought me here. I counseled myself not to condemn an entire state and nation after a few brief encounters with Darwin’s disadvantaged.

Early the next morning I took a walk on the beach, confident that nature and negative air ions, plus the presence of Yemayá out there, somewhere, would help smooth my bent, twisted feathers. I forcibly shut down my snark watching monster trucks kick up sand within feet of virgin turtle nests, the eggs buried just the night before. Instead, I switched focus to dads making sandcastles with their daughters, the wedding party doing yoga, the grizzlied men fishing from shore. I bid good morning to strangers and passersby.

‘Kill a Commie for Mommy.’

The 12-year old’s t-shirt stopped me in the sand, ‘good morning’ curdling on my lips.

It wasn’t the political statement tripping me up and out (I’m quite sure this tween product of the Florida education system would be seriously hard-pressed to elucidate even one tenet of communism—or democracy for that matter). It was the violence of it. Slot in Christian, QAnon quack or douchebag billionaires for Commie and my reaction would be (almost) the same.

“That’s a pretty aggressive shirt, don’t you think?”

I don’t like to play the shame game but…I will when pressed.  

_____

With just 24 hours in Florida, some rotten realities about the USA started snapping into place.

At any time, any place, you will be subjected to personal, traumatic conversations between strangers.

Apparently, here, folks like my bathroom buddy, think having a cell phone engenders some sort of privacy (do Europeans act like this? Canadians? Or just entitled Amerikans?*). In CVS, the grocery store, the subway—I’ve overheard divorces, mom’s ripping the nanny/gardener/maid a new asshole, and abusive bosses dressing down employees. What’s the empathy rule for when you inadvertently learn of cancer diagnoses or in flagrante affairs? Do I hug the sobbing widower as he crumples beside the reduced-for-quick-sale end cap? Check that. I don’t know you, your help, your cheating husband or aunt with carcinoma. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Real grief is another story (of which I wish I knew little, but alas, at 52, it comes with the territory) and I can understand ‘getting that call’ or being triggered in public, but otherwise? Get a room. Ghost. Use headphones. Whisper. Anything, but stop contaminating the rest of us. Same goes for people who pick their noses in traffic or clip fingernails in the airport lounge. Just stop, ok?   

The USA is a violent, violent country.   

Not everyone, everywhere or always pre-meditated, but the general tenor here is ‘I will fuck you up!’ if we don’t share values, views, skin color or background. You want me to stop clipping my nails in public? Talk to my Glock. Black dad in a community of Karens? Meet my assault rifle. Or maybe I’m just a little more pissed off and alienated than usual today, so I’ll strafe a school. It’s an environment and culture that accepts children wearing t-shirts advocating murder for political-philosophical concepts they don’t understand. No thank you. I ain’t down. And when will Donald Trump be put in jail? He’s not wholly responsible, but does he share blame? Why, yes, he does and we, the people, want a reckoning.

The imperialistic, entitled outlook is deeply, deeply ingrained in the Amerikan psyche.

The average person here truly believes. Lives and breathes the concepts of US superiority, eminent domain, Manifest Destiny and the like.  Of course they do: the average person here may not ever travel beyond their home state in their lifetime. These are the same people who tried to cancel the French by renaming them Freedom Fries (file under: Fucking Idiots, pardon my French. Cross ref: Republican Congress/North Carolina Crackers). While entitlement is a saw used for generations to flog the rest of us (file under: Conner Says Nothing New), now the stakes are just too high. Climate change; science denying, global pandemic (hello?!); income inequality; world exploitation—let’s drop the posturing and politicizing because these crises will brook no bullshit, nor wait for the ignorant or unwoke to get with it. I said as much, in the nicest way possible, when a family member at the wedding suggested we attend the colonial reenactment of the “settling” of St Augustine. Oh, hell no!

And I encourage everyone to Just Say No to states that don’t recycle. Just Say No to politicians advancing an imperialistic agenda against sovereign nations (at the expense of constituents to boot—this means YOU Bob Menéndez, who as this link shows, has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to today’s Cuba, and Marco Rubio, who has been vocal about his goal to hurt Cuban families and starve the nation as indicated in this legislation he co-sponsored). Just Say No to anti-vaxxers and any other manifestation of this misplaced and false sense of US exceptionalism and superiority. The other tactic is to give them enough rope to hang themselves with—maybe too dicey considering the competing global emergencies in which we find ourselves. Or we can just hang on a little longer: given how disappointing the Biden administration is turning out to be, coupled with the pandemic, I predict this exceptionalism bubble is going to pop in 3, 2, 1…

Systemic racism is a killer and not going anywhere, anytime soon.

It, like colonialism and exceptionalism, is so deeply ingrained, I’m glad I’ll be dead in 20 or so years and not have to witness the final countdown. This was rammed home as I sat on the beach watching this beautiful, inspiring union of two people in love unfold. I’m white, my soon-to-be-hitched cousin is white, my family is white and though there were a few Asian, gay and differently-abled folks at the wedding, diversity in my clan tends towards slugging shots of Bushmill’s instead of Jameson for a little variety. Don’t get me wrong: the happy couple is super woke and evolved, as are many of my family members—precisely why I choked on my mocktail when I heard the priest boom: “and just like the Pharaohs were buried with all their worldly possessions they might need in the afterlife—food, clothing, slaves…”

‘Oh, no he didn’t,’ I thought.

But the looks on the faces to my left and right told me: yes, he did. He most certainly did. But it gets better. After the whoopsie daisy with the slaves, he asked us to raise our arms heavenward to receive the blessing of god, whereupon 80 people stood on that beach making what a bystander could only interpret as the heil Hitler sign.

So yeah. There are people and places I love here—I had a tremendous week in LA, eye-opening experiences in Minneapolis and am calmly (kind of) waiting out my return in my beloved Maine woods. But Party in the USA? Not for me, thanks. No matter how potent or pretty the favors

*I spell it this way to distinguish between the dozens of other countries making up the Americas, all of whose inhabitants are also Americans.    

Surviving Cuba with FE*

(*Familia en el Exterior)

I used to tell people when I’d be traveling—give them a head’s up in case they needed something from a fuera. That was when I first got here, green and eager. It took just a few trips hauling back motherboards, tires, cologne and all manner of sordid (vibrators/lube) and sundry (Dremels/extension cords) cargo to learn to keep my travel plans private. The responsibility became a burden, literally and figuratively, my luggage loaded down with encargos.

Everyone wanted something. But not everyone needed something. It took me awhile and hasn’t been easy, but I’ve learned to distinguish between the two.

Some people talk a really good, sweet game. Others take straight up advantage. Often, priorities and similar levels of need compete. Triage is hard—especially in disaster times. The night before I left our tent camp after weeks of living with the Henry Reeve Brigade in post-quake Pakistan, I offered to mule gifts to the doctors’ families back in Cuba. Within a few hours, I had tank tops and underwear, flip flops, dolls, razors, makeup, toy cars and soap—an entire extra bag accompanying me on the long trip home.

As I’m sure/hope you’ve heard, we are squarely in disaster times on the island right now. It’s heartbreaking (Alfredo making chicken foot soup; Elena fashioning her own soap) and there’s blame to lay, but what substantive, long-term good does that do? Not enough, I’m afraid. Does it ease our aching hearts? It does not, I am proof. So this time I’m bringing back as much as my skinny arms, wallet and airline will allow. But I’ve had to set—and stick to—a strict prioritization method.

For me, like most people (most of my people anyway), it’s always family first. I’m talking beyond blood: I’m talking Family, capital F. Cuban-type, capital F type Family, which is broader, more blended, sometimes even including mistresses, bastard children and ex-husbands. Have I been burned? You betcha. Swindled. Double crossed and tricked, by people I thought were family. What a crappy feeling that is, eh? These days I’m studiously careful about whom I consider Family. Because these days, more than most days, all Cubans need FE to survive. And I can’t be a surrogate FE for all these people in need.  

The need is great indeed. Everyone is suffering from the COVID-induced paralysis of disastrous proportions, the reunification of the currency and attendant runaway inflation, plus the US blockade which is right now at its most Draconian since its imposition 60 years ago. So for this (unplanned and bittersweet) trip, I told no one but my Family—this includes my closest neighbors, the Cuba Libro team of course, and my MEDICC Review colleagues. But you know what happens once la bola está en la calle: word starts getting around.

It fast became evident I would need a solidarity hierarchy to complement my regular prioritization mechanism:

• Family: Within this category I prioritize the sick, elderly, children and new moms. Our pets are also Family (there is so much need for veterinary meds and supplies). Among the items I’ll be bringing back: a cane, shoes, razors, wheels for angle grinders, printer cartridges, a couple of cell phones, bras, toothpaste and brushes, shoes and seeds for home gardens…Just last night my sister-in-law fairly begged for seeds and spices. I’ve got her covered.

• Medicine: Certain non-family folks jump to the front due to health problems, like the 3-month old with leukemia who lives next door to an old friend and a colleague’s mom who recently had a cerebral hemorrhage. Medications I’ll be bringing back for them, family and friends: children’s cough syrup, Omega 3, glaucoma eye drops, multi-vitamins, B complex, blood pressure, cholesterol, anti-anxiety and Parkinson’s meds, antihistamines. burn cream and lidocaine patches.  

• Food: You’ve seen how skinny I am? It’s not an eating disorder: that’s stress and food scarcity pure and simple. Smoking doesn’t help and I surely have parasites glomming off my gut, but I love to eat. So much so my Cuban friends dubbed me La Yuma Jamaliche.  But this whole COVID thing combined with the teetering Cuban economy means there ain’t enough to go around. Me and almost everyone else is not getting enough to eat, period. It was annoying enough when every last person was saying how flaca I’d become but it was downright alarming when one of my scientific, vaccine expert colleagues told me the same thing, advising me to eat more (as if it were that easy in Havana, Spring 2021).  I always chow down hard when I’m in the States, aiming to gain 10 pounds, but this trip I’m going for a baker’s dozen (only 2 pounds to go!) by the time I return. And you know I’ll be returning with a valise full of food including: industrial amounts of cumin, cinnamon and garlic powder, nuts and grains of various types, energy bars, rice, pasta, dried fruit, parmesan cheese, tuna and more (RAMEN is my savior!).

• Gifts, fun and ephemera: A well-known food and social justice activist taught me an important lesson: for years, she was rabidly opposed to any cut flowers, arguing that this and all fertile land should be dedicated to food production. Bouquet flowers were frivolous, ephemeral and perishable—and criminal when people were starving. Then one fine day, someone pointed out to her that flowers feed the soul.

And our soul needs feeding. More than ever these days. Soul burn out is real and lethal. This is especially true for those of us fighting the good fight and dedicating ourselves to helping others. And while cut flowers are still kind of iffy in my mind (better to plant your own), the point is, we all need fun, pretty stuff in our lives. This isn’t an easy lesson for me. My epigenetic code yells Suffer! Deny comfort! Work hard! Form follows function! Not a lot of wriggle room for pretty things within my particular neurosis, but I’m learning and this trip I’ll be going back with: scented candles, two of mom’s ceramic bowls from my childhood, a psychedelic spinning thing for my balcony, all kinds of chocolate/cool magnets/earrings for my family and friends, and a bit of makeup for me ‘cuz you know: I’m getting old and burnt out and it’s beginning to show.

As I hunt furiously for a way to return, people continue to write me asking to bring: belt drives, nutritional yeast, cell phone cases, mouse pads, and more. The need never ends. There’s never enough room or money or time. I’m learning to say no when all I want to say is: ‘hell yes!’ Now if only I could get my body and bags on a plane headed to Havana…

NB: The term FE (Familia en el Exterior) was copped from Peter, my brother from another mother.

Also: These travel gymnastics and luggage nightmares would be fewer and far between if Biden would get OFF HIS ASS and restart the normalization process.

And: For those who got all the way to the end of this post and are left wondering…yes. I mule in money for every family, friend or colleague who asks.