When Reiko and Zulema landed in Havana, they realized that their luggage hadn’t made the trip with them. While it must have been a shame not to have any clothing, toiletries or other personal belongings, the true loss was the non-Cuban food they were carrying with them. Between the embargo and economic crisis in Cuba, the food here is rich in rice, beans, sugar and little else. True flavor has become an abstraction. Though this reality contributes to our experience in its own way, knowing that the lost luggage held bags filled with chocolate covered açai berries, granola and toasted almonds forces one to question whether there is a god.
Despite the rocky start, the rest of our break was smooth sailing. The twelve of us took a week long trip to the far eastern end of the island by Guantanamo Bay. We flew from la Habana to Santiago de Cuba on the military-owned domestic airline, riding in the back of a Soviet-era rear loading bi-prop airplane that shook a little bit each time the pilot chose to turn. In Santiago, we paid homage to the national cemetery where José Martí and the Bacardi family are buried and escaped the bustling city to hike up to a mountain-top monument of an escaped slave, or cimarron, that overlooks a gorgeous retired copper mine filled with electric blue-green water. On our last night there we went to a Haitian-Cuban societal organization where we watched a thunderous drum and dance performance.
We also visited the Moncada military barracks that Fidel Castro attacked with a band of other armed revolutionaries when he was in his early thirties. The attack was a miserable failure and everyone besides him, his brother and another friend (who all came from elite families that had political leverage) were brutally tortured and killed. After the failed assault, Fulgencio Batista ordered the damage plastered over and the entire building repainted. The message was clear: Fidel couldn’t even scratch the regime.
At his trial, Fidel gave a longwinded speech called “History Will Absolve Me”. When Batista left the island for the U.S. Fidel took over in a peaceful (and drawn out) transition. Once he was firmly seated in power he had all the old bullet holes dug back out of the barracks, and repurposed the barracks as both a museum on torture under Battista and a beautiful public primary school. Despite many other shortcomings, the man is a master politician – what a wild way to rewrite the national memory. The pinnacle of my experience in Santiago was either coming to terms with this absurd military stronghold to museum-school metamorphosis or the formidable old fortress that was built by the Spanish to defend Santiago’s ports. Despite the different time periods they were each built to defend, they both hold astounding places in contemporary Cuban history and culture.
After leaving Santiago, we took a bus through rolling mountains to a small beach town called Baracoa. Here we had a seafood feast of monstrous proportions and spent the afternoon exploring different museums and art galleries before returning to the public beach late at night only to realize that their were rows upon rows of sharp hidden rocks under the water. After accepting that our toes simply couldn’t bare smashing into these boulders any longer, we left the beach and found the best street churros that this island has to offer. The absolute of Baracoa was leaving the small town to hike to the top of a thickly forested plateau with a panoramic view of the ocean coast for miles. What a break, what a blast. Hasta la próxima.