The Cuba You Don't See (Our Voice)
By Neil Parmar
Sitting in the driver's seat of a horse drawn buggy, Jorge Perez reads a Spanish newspaper as he patiently waits to guide yet another foreigner through Cuba's oldest resort town, Varadero. He has worked in this tourist haven ever since Fidel Castro's opposition group brought down a military regime in a coup d'etat on January 1, 1959. But 45 years later, on New Year's Day 2004, Varadero is far from being a Cuban's paradise.
Jorge welcomes my family into his government-owned buggy complete with tattered faux leather seats and reins his government-owned pony, Guadalupe, to a casual trot. Coconut taxis putter past us until we begin cantering down the narrow peninsula of Varadero, located at the northern tip of Cuba and separating the Atlantic Ocean to the north and the Caribbean to the south. Grand hotels litter the otherwise tropical landscape and white sand beaches prickled with shells span 12km along the coastline. Although most of the beach is reserved for hotel guests only, it's not unusual to see locals peering through the lush thickets behind hotels and coaxing tourists to buy Cuban cigars (illegal, of course). There is a small plot of sand left free for the some 18,000 locals, but that beach area is empty today as townspeople are busy lining up at La Guajara Americana, a pastel-colored concrete shop where government workers are rationing out food.
"For esample," begins Jorge, who has a penchant for saying these two words at the beginning of every sentence, "Once month my family gets from this shop two kilos of rice, some beans, bar of soap for two people (my wife shares soap with me) and few other things. We get also one liter of oil for every three months," he says, noting the food isn't enough to sustain his family considering he gets a salary of only $10US every month.
Passing by the Heladeria Coppelia ice cream parlor, Jorge pulls out a government form from his shirt pocket and shows where he scrawled down today's date, the number of passengers he has driven, how much time he has spent with them and how much he has charged. At the end of each day he must submit both the form and cash to his employer, who then sends it to the government before it is used to buy goods for families throughout the country. Jorge carefully looks around for police officers and quietly explains that any tips he makes from tourists are kept in a special pocket of his shirt, left undocumented and used as his family's main source of income.
Staff members at the Sol Palmeras, a swanky all-inclusive resort in the middle of Varadero, encounter similar struggles in a country where the cost of living comfortably is much higher than the standard $8-10 per month salary (professionals and government officials earn $15-20). Even the American dollar is more widely used than the Cuban peso here, though foreign money cannot be drawn from any U.S. bank because of the embargo.
"My nephew uses pesos as monopoly money!" says Carlos Enrique, a busboy who works at the Sol Palmeras restaurant, La Panchita.
Carlos offers anti-Blair, Bush and Castro jokes to a select table of guests as they feast on escabeche de conejo (rabbit) and the country's traditional New Year's Eve dinner: "solomillo de cerdo a la pimienta negra" (pork sirloin with black pepper) served with white rice and beans cooked together, vegetable salad, casaba and wine. "One more yoke," entertains Carlos with his soft Spanish accent.
"How does Castro fit four communists on a chair? He turns it upside down!" he says.
And how does Carlos pay for his home's sewage, electricity and heat (or food for himself, his wife and his four-year-old son) on only $10 a month? He rolls Cuban cigars after work with his wife and then illegally sells them for $2 each to select hotel guests who promise to keep his secret. If they don't, he says, he would be fired immediately and most likely thrown in jail for concealing supplementary income (although his cigars aren't as smooth as Cohibas-the most popular brand in Cuba-they are a far better deal than the overpriced Romeo Y Julietas).
Maria, a single mother who works at Sol Palmeras as the leader of a kids club, has a much more demanding schedule than her fellow hotel staffers. Constantly chipper and smiling, she wakes up each morning in time to send her 11-year-old daughter to school before traveling two hours from Havana so that she can entertain hotel kids with activities and games from 10am-5pm. After grabbing a quick bite to eat, she baby-sits hotel children until 10pm. Yet, she still earns the same $10 per month salary as every other nonprofessional in Cuba regardless of the hours she puts in. So to earn some extra cash (she's currently saving for a $513 fridge), Maria offers to cornbraid the hair of young girls and their mothers who visit the kids' center-$15 for half a head and $30 for the full deal (the price is still half that of local hair salons). She'll book appointments for when she's baby-sitting in the evening, that way, she can begin beading and braiding once the child she's caring for falls asleep.
But earning supplemental income isn't the only activity that must be kept secret in Cuba. While trotting beside the Santa Elvira Church, an irregularly shaped structure built predominantly from stone, Jorge points to a street full of parked Chevy's (cars dated pre-1959-the year of the revolution-are for locals, models after this year are for government officials or tourist rentals). Moreover, tourists are only allowed to drive cars with dark brown licenses plates (connotes rentals), though Jorge says a few locals have risked having their vehicles confiscated by touring foreigners around the surrounding area in privately owned cars (yellow license plates; blue means state owned, green means military personnel and black means diplomats or embassy personnel).
Carlos wasn't even allowed to show us his home since he lacked a "Casa Particular" blue triangle sticker, a visual permit that allows tourists to rent and stay in Cuban homes. Rumor has it that a few illegal "red triangle casas" can be found in Varadero, but owners risk being thrown in jail or being fined heavily if a foreigner is found staying there by police.
"For esample," Carlos says, nodding his head at a row of vacant concrete huts with shanty tin roofs, "Some houses left empty because when roof is bad government say you not allowed to fix it. Government buys family new house, but not in Varadero-you move to different city so Varadero still look nice to visitors."
He pauses, searching for the right words that will conclude his tour: "For esample, Tourists visit Cuba to see how Cubans live. But tourists leave seeing hotels and nice beaches-they no see my Cuba."
Topic: hmm. I wonder how many people already knew this stuff? (Read 1712 times)