Strolling Havana’s quiet streets, I saw the first signs of a new age for Cuba

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/20/havana-cuba-raul-castro-barack-obama-us-relations

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On Wednesday evening, after the US announced its plans to normalise relations with Cuba, I went for a stroll along Havana’s famed coastal esplanade, the Malecón. Although it was dusk, it was still a bit early for the usual revellers who line the seafront to be out, but there was a lone trumpet player sitting along the mostly empty wall. A few motorcycles flew past, with the riders beeping their horns and waving Cuban flags.

The trumpeter, like everyone else in the island by this point, had heard the news and was happy about the plans for better relations with the US. He has family in Miami and was optimistic about Cuba’s future. There had been a spontaneous march by students nearby earlier in the day, but the streets were now dark and quiet. At first I was puzzled by the calm: shouldn’t people be out celebrating? But then I realised that Cubans had been talking and texting on their mobiles more than usual – both are expensive to do here – and others were indoors using landlines to speak to friends and relatives as the news coverage blared in the background. The party was at home.

There was a lot to discuss. It had been a momentous day, and one that started for me when I was at the country’s national archives. I had received a text alerting me to the speeches of Raúl Castro and Barack Obama just as people were scurrying out of the quiet sanctuary of the reading room. A TV had magically appeared in the lobby, and archivists in white smocks came up from the basement to watch the news with researchers and other staff and there was clapping and cheering throughout both speeches. History is a serious business in Cuba. Cubans know their history well. It was no surprise to hear a woman, during a television interview that evening, quote José Martí, a 19th-century revolutionary hero whose image is everywhere on the island.

The US announcement and the reaction are potent reminders that there has never simply been one Cuba: there are three. There is present-day Cuba, where people received the news with jubilation. There is 1960s Cuba, whose memory is perpetuated by the exile community in Miami, whose older members decried the new measures. And there is the Cuba for the rest of us, which lies somewhere in the middle.

The Cuba created by the exiles is not exactly a post-Cuban revolution phenomenon, but part of a longer process that reaches back almost two centuries. To understand Cuba, it’s important to understand the diaspora. Cubans are, like many other peoples in the Americas, a blend of European, African, Middle Eastern, and even Chinese descent, and this flow of immigration came in the aftermath of the initial arrival of Spanish travellers in the 16th century, and the deaths of the indigenous population of the island. In the 19th century this migration began to move in the other direction. Many Cubans wanted to be rid of Spanish colonial rule, and those who spoke loudly about it found they had to leave. They went to New York, Mexico and beyond. During the “10 years’ war” (1868-78), and during the war of independence (1895-98), Cubans abroad formed patriotic organisations, raised money and bought arms to further the cause of a free Cuba.

The cycle began again under Fulgencio Batista, and Cubans made their way to Miami and elsewhere. As the modern revolution progressed in the 1950s, there were differences among the exiles about the best course of action. Fidel Castro was able to unite their purpose to topple Batista – but this was followed by the dramatic fragmentation that has been long associated with the Miami Cubans in the aftermath of the events of 1959.

But time has passed in Miami, too. The wealthy who fled, and whose elegant Havana mansions were appropriated by the state, have children and grandchildren who have never been to the island, and may not even speak Spanish. Watching the reaction in Miami, it seems like a family rift that has yet to be resolved between those who left and those who stayed. In Havana, the negative comments made by Florida senator Marco Rubio were often repeated during the continual news coverage on Cuban TV.

Somewhere between Cuba as it is now and as it was, there is the imagined Cuba of those of us who don’t live there and who are not Cuban. This is the world in which a shiny ’57 Chevy ferries tourists around. This is the Cuba of sugar barons, and nostalgia for an age of great wealth. This is the Cuba that the United States thought it should own and tried to buy time and again. Then there was Cuba, the cold war enemy, persisting in the US imagination well after the fall of communism. Included in that was the Cuba of poverty, of deprivation, of the Special Period after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet Cuba is also the tropical paradise those of us who live in cold climates long for during the winter.

In his speech, Obama spoke about continuing to “shine a light of freedom”. This is one of the overarching images of the island: that there is no freedom here, and to a large degree that’s true – there is only one political party and little freedom of expression. However, there are other freedoms: people have homes, a modest food ration, healthcare, education and reasonable public transport, though these things do not cancel each other out.

Cubans have struggled with the meaning of freedom for a long time. At first it was in the form of runaway slaves and slave rebellions. By the 19th century it was against Spain, and later in that century these strands merged and freedom meant independence and abolition. In the 20th century, freedom was defined as defending the island from the might of the United States.

What will 21st-century freedom mean for Cubans? Friends here have told me – and this has been a refrain over the many years I have been coming to the island – that all they want is to live the life they want and to have more choices, but not necessarily to dismantle the state. Castro has been wise to not hold back the tide of change. Cubans, as their complex history has shown, are willing to fight.

Maybe it was the man with the shiny gold tooth, blue smartphone in his pocket, and large pair of black headphones round his neck who clarified the events of that day for me, after my walk along the seafront. Clutching a small box of rum while standing in a queue for a pizza slice, he declared on Wednesday evening: “People used to be afraid to speak out. Now, I’m not afraid.”

After an open and animated chat, I returned to my casa particular, where the host family had broken out the vintage port they normally reserve for the new year in order to celebrate this new age. They, too, were forthcoming with their opinions, and we raised our glasses many times that evening. Right now, this is the real Cuba, the one that is not afraid of the changes to come. The question is: when it comes to Cuba’s future, are the rest of us still living in the past?

Carrie Gibson’s history of the Caribbean, Empire’s Crossroads, is published by Pan Macmillan.