by DOUGLAS JOHN IMBROGNO | TheStoryIsTheThing.com | april15.2020 | SUBSCRIBE to this site’s email newsletter
It was a lightning quick jaunt. My wife I and I spent just over two days in Havana in February 2019, as part of a musical cruise to Cuba and back with the great American troubadour Susan Werner. Yet the place stuck with me in a way few other places I’ve traveled out of the country have, except for Italy (and that’s partly because my father was born there.)
I claim no grand comprehension of the challenge of life in the one Cuban city I’ve set foot in, and for less than 24 hours total. As Susan Werner and I discuss in my video profile of her and the songs Cuba inspired her to write, the legacy bequeathed Cuba by Che and the Castro brothers — to say nothing of the Dulles brothers, John Foster and Allen — “Es complicado.”
We were fortunate to take tours on separate days led by informed, passionate, well-educated Cuban millennials. One was a Japanese-Cuban fellow, the other a thoughtful Cubana. Both long to visit America. They keep up on world news via recently relaxed restrictions on Internet content available on their cellphones.
Given that I know next-to-nada of the lived reality of Havana, I hesitate to make know-it-all observations from a drive-by visit. I’ll let you draw out any truths — simple or complicado — from your own gaze of what I chose to gaze upon. I hesitate even to qualify what I was looking at, not being a seasoned, culture-hopping, truth-seeking photographer. (Like this guy, a former colleague whose Instagram feed I recommend to you).
Snapshooting people in and about Havana, once I studied my photos back in America, was a constant process of wondering: ‘What exactly am I looking at?’ Is the matchstick-thin man leaned up against a pillar in the Plaza de la Catedral taking a break from selling tourists las baratijas (trinkets)? Or is he bone tired from begging to survive?
Is the sad-looking woman on the stoop a daunting portrait of Earth’s dispossessed, in stark contrast to the Flower Lady coming her way whose outfit looks like it’s electrified? Is that newspaper beside the seemingly sad woman her morning read, before she goes to work? Or is she, too, weary from keeping herself and her family alive, beside a fat newspaper delivered to whomever lives behind those impressive, bolted wooden doors worthy of a castle?
A quick visit to Havana is an opportunity to shoot colorful photos almost every direction you turn. (In a future ‘HavanaGrams‘, I’ll take my turn at snaps of the city’s famous reconditioned classic Chevys, Plymouths and what not. They’re reconditioned — usually with homemade, handmade parts since a far-too-long embargo denies Cuba late-model vehicles, much less anyone being able to afford a radar-equipped Prius or rear view-camera Honda.)
But were you to take an overhead shot of almost any of the thousands of photos on Instagram of candy-colored cars, gorgeous Cubanas, and super-saturated streetshots, you would see what lies behind the shooter. It might be what appears to be a Soviet-era, chock-a-block apartment building like this below from Havana.
To the back of that shooter, snapping a scene with colors they’ve saturated far beyond Nature’s own palette, there may be a scene just as colorful — yet in a different way. Is this shot (below) of three balcony dwellers a scene of Third World poverty? Or is it a shot of … just life?
Who am I to judge the calibre of daily living in the rooms to which these people retire when the weather turns sour? Maybe some of these balcony folk lead happy, rich lives, in spite of the warped wood panels where half-moon glass used to be above their birds-eye view of Havana. I would need to spend far more time than two days to know a fuller story. I hope they are well, though. I hope the two guys chatting on side-by-side balconies in the warmth of the setting sun are buddies. And that the guy in the red ballcap knows by name the little girl with the head bun one balcony over. And that their kids play together.
| feb2019
Bernie Sanders’ 2020 U.S. presidential campaign hit choppy waters for daring to say it is “unfair to simply say everything is bad” in the Cuba that Fidel and Che birthed. “When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program,” Sanders said in a “60 Minutes” interview. “Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?” The interviewer then noted the many dissidents who’ve suffered in Cuba’s jails, presaging the firestorm that would come Sanders’s way after the show rolled credits. Sanders responded, “That’s right, and we condemn that.”
The add-on wasn’t enough. The comment dogged him in debates and primaries to come. Cuba remains a minefield, at least for American politicians. The stiffening of America’s embargo—yet another Trump finger-to-the-eye of an Obama achievement, yet another instance of his cruelty—is one more reason to long for that man-child to be swept into history’s dustbin.
But questions linger for even the brief visitor to Cuba. Long after the last Sanders presidential yard sign comes down, his remark lingers.
Is that a bad thing? It’s a good question.
Cuba presents North American visitors with many questions. The answers will take more than one visit, at least for this quick-shot tourist.
P.S.
TAKE A DEEPER DIVE into the lively streets of Havana with the video (below) mentioned in the photo-essay. It includes an interview with Susan Werner about her fascination with Cuba, and an excerpt from her evocative and powerful song, “Cuba Is.”
CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I wish to note the editing help I get on TheStoryIsTheThing essays by Rich Erlich, who in another life was an English Department instructor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, who brought some form to my malleable brain. Check out his blog and published work.
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2 comments
Excellent work, Doug. Thoughtful and engaging. Thanks.
Thank you very much, Kit. As someone such as yourself, who has a deep engagement with another country and with a people and culture south of the American border and this country’s hegemonic ways and patronizing of cultures not its own, that means a lot.