OK, so I learned that unlike my nerdy ass other people go to Cuba for reasons other than politics, they go for the “culture” (how you can separate the culture from the politics is some mental gymnastics I am incapable of). But you can skip the lengthy political discussion below and just read my more inane thoughts.
· It is very contradictory but although Cuba is completely different from every other place in the world and can be very isolated (see below on communication) it is still just like many of its neighbors. For example, Cuban men can’t quite compete with Dominican men in their battle for who can wear the tightest pants and the pointiest shoes, they still try. Their low-budget attempt to do so is hilarious. Cuban women, on the other hand, insist on owning the most ghetto-fabulous club attire imaginable even though they usually can’t afford to go to the club and don’t own nearly as many clothes. I just can’t believe they were fishnet stockings to work.
· Talking about work clothes, I was amazed at the “official” miniskirts. All the women in state enterprises and even the schoolgirls wear the tiniest of skirts. I asked if the Cuban state simply didn’t have enough money to afford all the cloth necessary for full length skirts, and people replied with some good ol’ machismo. They like their women (and girls) like that.
· Cuban Spanish is unintelligible. I thought that since I already spoke Caribbean Spanish I would be able to understand Cubans; after all I can decipher the most garbled of Dominican mumbling, being able to understand phrases that would leave other Spanish dialect speakers dumbfounded. But Cuban take the cake. It’s like Fidel charges them per syllable therefore they try to get as much across in as few sounds as possible. The cabdrivers were especially bad. They made it seem like they were doing me a favor, and treat their customers with absolutely disdain, barking orders at them in the fastest, most mumbled Spanish imaginable. Motherfucker, I am paying you, the least you can do is act like I am not bothering you when I decide to ride in your car.
· Cubans also take baseball to the next level. Like the plaza where men gather to discuss baseball every afternoon. The guidebook gushed all about it, and I thought it was more guidebook crap, they always exaggerate. But it’s true, if you go any afternoon you really will see old men screaming at each other and questioning each other’s manhood over debates about baseball games that took place in the 1960s. Cause every real man knows that player X was really out as he slid home for the winning run of Game 3 of the 1972 National Series. It was high-larious and kind of scary watching them debate for hours. There are also Cuban men who can give you up-to-the-minute stats for American baseball players. I was cut off from the world I had no idea the Yankees were losing seven straight games at the time, but a nice man told me the scores of each of the seven games, the opponents, and A-Rod’s complete stat line for the season. Who needs ESPN.com when you are in Cuba?
· I was lucky enough to be there when Santiago de Cuba defeated Los Industriales de la Habana (who everyone compared to the Yankees, Industriales fans proudly, Santiaguero fans sounding like Mets and Red Sox fan) in six games in the National Series. The whole country shut down for the games, and everyone was glued to their televisions. It reminded me of being in Cairo when Egypt when the African Cup for soccer in 2006. Everyone was at home watching the games. My thoughts as a Dominican male who has baseball sown into his testicles? Cubans play very fundamentally sound baseball. Their defenses are always set perfectly, but damn their players are mad skinny! No steroid problem in Cuban baseball that’s for sure. The no. 4 hitter for Industriales, their power hitter, looked slightly more built than me. Sammy Sosa could probably eat one of these guys and still have room for his platanos.
· The nightlife in Havana is wack! It’s geared toward tourists and is therefore expensive. All the clubs and bars are in dolares, meaning no Cubans. I went to Club Turf one night and after hearing 50 Cent (he has become an unescapable force of nature like the wind at this point, seriously I was in Cuba, and they play 50 Cent!) and too much techno and 80s American music, I was done with the club scene. I went to La Casa de la Musica de Marianao and waited until 2 AM to see NG La Banda perform. I figured, Cuba is one of the greatest places on Earth for music, surely I could see some amazing live music? Wrong! The performance was expensive, and after having to stay awake through two wack reggaeton groups, the band performed and all I can say is that the bandleader is an egomaniac and that he has some of the most beautiful women in the world as his back-up singers. I was falling in love with one of them until she started singing “I will always love you” by Whitney Houston. What is with people and that song, just let it go!
· Talking about reggaeton, I knew Cuba had failed to create a socialist culture when I heard all of the reggaeton in the streets (sorry for the politics, I can’t help myself). That and all of the American movies and shows on TV are just not good for building socialist values. It’s American media so the vast majority of it implicitly promotes hyper-individualism, crass materialism and consumerism. The Cuban government dropped the ball by exposing their population to so much crap. They also show many Mexican soap operas, which are just awfully sexist, racist, homophobic and classist, and plain bad! Although to be honest the rest of the time most of the TV shows you can watch are educational, basically documentaries which force you to learn. They steal a lot of Discovery channel programs, and they also have their own Cuban produced soap opera which was a lot better than the other Latin American soap operas, i.e. they showed real-looking people in real-world situations, although as a novela en fin, it was ridiculously melodramatic. But oh, the reggaeton. My friend kept trying to convince me how since the government banned reggaeton it was really a form of youth rebellion and expression. But did they have to choose reggaeton? It just drove me crazy to hear Cuban reggaetoneros talk about their women and wealth. I know I sound like an old man, but I don’t see how silly party songs are supposed to be rebellious? What the Cuban state doesn’t let you shake your booty?
· Actually since it’s Cuba, the government does provide some fun for the population. Since it has to reserve the weekend nights for foreigners, the government opens the clubs for Cubans (i.e. it charges pesos, the government does that a lot, use foreigners’ money to subsidize services for Cubans, so that often foreigners will 25 times what a Cuban pays for something e.g. I pay US$3 or 75 pesos for Copelia ice cream and a Cuban pays 3 pesos) for matinees. Therefore you will see crowds of drunk young people roaming the streets of downtown Havana at like 8 pm.
· But mostly from what I could gather Cubans spend most of their leisure time hanging out either in their friends homes or the malecon. The malecon or sea wall was a popular spot. I went there basically every night while I was there. It’s one of the huge hanging out spots on weekends, when it fills with people drinking rum and chilling. It is a very nice alternative to the club in my opinion, although one of my friends definitely complained that Havana was boring and the options limited.
