Palmira—Cienfuegos
A dozen stars persevere in the cloudless cobalt blue sky. Asley and Yorgani, waited below as I clanged and bounced my way down the spiral staircase at six a.m. I recognize Yorgani from the welcome as the one they call “El Enano.” – “the midget.”
“So, you know the way, Enano.”
He laughs. I don’t think strangers usually call him by his nickname. Our flashlights lead the way down the street.
“Never been all the way to Cienfuegos por dentro but we can figure it out. Put your backpack on this bike. We’ll take turns pushing it.”
I hoist it on top of the bicycle seat and take first push.
“Ok,” I ask, “so what’s the plan?”
The plan is to work our way through the cane fields and back roads for about twelve kilometers until we hit the main road into Cienfuegos at Canta Rana. There, my buddy, Orlando, waits and I would become the responsibility of the Cienfuegos city contingent. Whether I would go back into the bush to enter the city or walk in down the main drag was yet to be determined. All that I know was that I will walk into Cienfuegos today. The final push.
“Si dios quiere,” as my mother would say. No mule cart on this last leg. No helpful Cultura car offering to get me off my feet.
We head west out of town, over the train lines and into the unlit dirt road beyond.
“We could risk it and walk the line,” says Asley. “They go straight into Cienfuegos. But it is an active line. It would be tense and uncomfortable.”
We cross the tracks, turn right, south, along a parallel dirt road designed for tractors until a left turn put us on a wider red clay path that El Enano called El Callejon de Alvarez, named after a landowner in the area who neither of my guides can verify actually existed back in the day. High-tension electrical wires run high on our left. We weave under them, from left to right to left, all the way to Canta Rana.
Neither one of my guides knows the route to Cienfuegos “por dentro” but they have good internal compasses. We cut through cane fields and fallow land. Every so often one of them stops and peer into the cane as if he has seen something move. He pulls a machete from the frame of the bicycle disappears into the stalks. Eventually the cane hunter catches up, offering a shaved cane stalk to chew on. I hold one end of the stalk and the machete and whack it in half. If you have never chewed on a fresh cane stalk, I strongly recommend the experience. Chew the stalk, suck the cool, sweet juice so it coats the tongue, and let it take over your mouth, which will water like Pavlov’s dog in response, diluting the thick cane juice with saliva. Breathe through your mouth and let the warm air move around the liquid as it slides to the back of your throat. Then you will swallow the sweet coolness and feel the nectar work its way down the sleeve of your throat. The energy will last for miles.
“How do you know which ones to cut?” I ask after the third or fourth run into the cane.
“You just see them. They look ready. Not too thin. The right green. You just know.”
We chew on sugarcane for hours. I’m thinking “here go my teeth.” Enough of this sugar duty and they’ll end up looking like the rocks at the entrance to Esteban’s cave. After each chew and squeezing out of the juice, I’d drink and rinse my mouth with water. The voice of my dental hygienist implores me.
To the west, the outlines of the Escambray mountains fade. We passed a guardarraya on our right with a Jeep parked a few feet into it. The man behind the wheel has his eyes closed, head tilted back. He appears to be sleeping, for a split second at least, until a woman’s head pops up, her eyes peeking through the arch of the steering wheel. The three of us resist stopping in our tracks and staring. We laugh instead and moved on quickly.
“You’ll see. They’ll pass us in minute,” says Yorgani.
Not long after, we hear an engine behind us. We move into the cane to let the Jeep pass and resist the urge to make some appropriate/inappropriate gesture.
“Sí. It was a woman,” said El Enano. We laugh.
Our dirt road spills into the asphalt of the main highway into Cienfuegos just north of where Orlando and his driver wait for us. They stand next to a store under the shade of a wonderfully welcoming tree. Long morning shadows cover the ground but the heat from the asphalt already oscillates the air.
“Bienvenidos a Cienfuegos,” Orlando hugs me.
“Not yet,” I say.
“We’re close,” he says.
“How close?” I ask.
“Down the road there,” he gestures, “less than five kilometers to the UNEAC.”
“We couldn’t have stayed in the cane longer?” I ask.
“Yes, you could have. Going wide. Ending up at the airport. But this is what we agreed on.”
“Ok. I’m walking in.” I say. I try to sound super determined so as not to be even offered the possibility of riding into the last town of a three-hundred-kilometer-plus walk.
“No problem,” he says. “I’m not your babysitter. Want me to take your bag in the car?”
“I’d appreciate that,” I say. “Yeah.” And I sling it into the trunk. “And I appreciate you not folding me into the Lada too. What kind of Cuban are you, letting me take care of myself?” We both laugh.
Entering the city calmly and alone, even if through the main artery, is a good way to end the walk. After two weeks in the cane fields, a walk-through urban Cuba is like walking into a pavilion at Disneyland. The buildings that in most other cities of the western world would be considered tiny, seem immense. They tower over me, hiding the horizon that has surrounded me for days. The colors on the buildings, signs, cars, even if faded, impress because of their variety. Ciefuegos lets me in and drapes around me.
I ask at a fork in the road which way to the center. The young man says either, but the left is more direct.
“In political terms too?” I joke. He looked at me like I have two noses.
A giant image of a young rebel Fidel, carved out of wood, I think, welcomes me at the start of El Paseo del Prado, the longest urban promenade in Cuba. Fidel is in his green fatigues, facing towards the mountains of Oriente. Immovable.
I walk into the urban core of Cienfuegos. The streets vibrate with cars and bikes. Walkers take their time, always with a place to go. Lined with benches and shade trees, the Prado is the place to visit if you want to take a stroll, sit and talk with your friends, or just people-watch while sitting, letting time pass as slowly as it needs. Buildings line the street tracing the history of the city, from its French roots in the 19th Century, through its Art Deco period, to the present. The imposing Methodist Church, with its mixture of 19th Century French and Spanish colonial architecture, guards the route like a fortress. El Prado leads on, to the famous statue of Benny Moré, Laja’s son adopted by all Cubans but usurped by Cienfuegos. It must drive the Lajas folks crazy to see their favorite son walking his stylish, sexy walk through El Prado for all eternity every time they visit the city. Tourists swarmed around the statue now as I walk to him. Swedes I think. Moré sits at the corner of El Prado and the pedestrian street leading to El Parque Martí. This is my turn, down the pedestrian street to the offices of the UNEAC, and the end of my walk.
The pedestrian boulevard leading to the Parque Marti churns like an ant farm. Tourist, locals, scurrying in and out of stores; walking leisurely some, others in an inexplicable hurry. I feel invisible, with my dirty pants and boots, straw hat. I am not dressed like a tourist but clearly, I am not a guajiro coming to town from my cow farm looking for tractor parts either. Good for the city to have these tourists here, I think. With its deep-water port, Cienfuegos is one of the favorite towns for European and Caribbean Cruises. Soon U.S. cruises will float into the picturesque bay. The locals hope to milk the cruises like aquatic cows. We will see how it all turns out. [We know now how it turns out and it is not a pretty sight.]
The streets dance with music and voices; with Cubans trying to hustle the visitors even while the visitors think they are the ones doing the hustling. Hey, amigo. Where you from? Walking next to me is a short, wiry haired guy with no shirt. “Italia?”
“Cubano,” I say.
“Eres Cubano?” he stops. “Coño,” he said looking me over.
“Mira. Go to this restaurant,” he says handing me a card showing directions to a nearby paladar. “I get a commission. Tell them Tanga sent you.”
He turns around and pulls his underwear out of his pants, giving himself a wedgie. “Tanga. You can’t forget it.”
“Maybe not but I can try,” I say.
He will get a few pennies as a commission, but it is worth his time. He rushes away to hand a couple of cards to a tall blond Nordic looking couple.
***
After the War, Esteban returned to city living, experiencing Havana and Cienfuegos when Americans and victorious patriots intermingled in the streets. Esteban had his encounters with Americans behaving badly while here in Cienfuegos. He recalled how in 1899 he, along with a group of Mambíses “had to wave our machetes in the air at a few American soldiers, scoundrels who wanted to have all the criollas like they were meat in a market” (167). The behavior of the Americans made his blood boil.
One day, in a street near the docks, he saw a group of American sailors pushing themselves on a group of women, assaulting them with the phrase “Fucky fucky Margarita,” squeezing their asses and laughing. They were drunk, as usual, Esteban remembered. He felt the fury rise to his head. “I never got so hot under the collar during the war as on that day,” he told Miguel.
We fell on them with bare machetes and chased them out of there. Some took off for the docks where their ship was to hide. Some shot up into the hills of Escambray like rockets. They never touched any of the women around there again (167)
Around the same time, at the end of Santa Clara Street, near the docks where Esteban had his encounter, an American was detained for causing a commotion in a whore house. A Cuban civilian, Pablo Santa María, was wounded in the crossfire between American soldiers and Cuban police when the former attempted to free the American soldier from police custody. No one died but Barnet reported this as the first recorded armed conflict between Cuban and North American forces. The UNEAC offices where I am heading are located about five blocks away from where this auspicious beginning to US/Cuban relations occurred.
Esteban did not have good memories of the Americans after the war, but he was also critical of many of the rebel leaders, particularly Gomez who he considered corrupt and unscrupulous. He deeply respected Antonio Maceo as a man of the people. He noted that in Havana, where statues arose to commemorate the lives of the rebel fighters, Gomez and Maceo are mounted on similar noble horses. “The difference was that Gomez faced the north and Maceo the town and the people....Everyone should pay attention to that. It’s all there.” (169)
He criticized the injustices he found in the newly independent Cuba. The discrimination, the fear of black participation in politics and civil society, all made him question the reasons that he and many of his brothers in slavery had sacrificed their lives to help give birth to the new republic. His participation in the 1912 uprising reflected his disillusionment with the leadership of the new nation. Many of the revolutionaries betrayed the purpose of the revolution, he felt. But their white privilege provided them access to important positions in the government while shunning him and other black Mambíses.
His recollections underscore the racism that persisted well after the abolition of slavery. The white leaders of the new republic turned their backs on the black Cubans, denying them their due as freedom fighters and patriots. He blamed some of this on the Americans, who poisoned Cuba with their particularly virulent form of racism. But he was equally critical of white Cubans:
When the war ended, the talk started about whether the blacks had fought or not. I know that ninety-five percent of the blacks fought in the war. Then the Americans began to say it was only seventy-five percent. Well, no one criticized those statements. The blacks ended up out in the street as a result. Brave men thrown like savages into the streets. That was wrong, but that’s what happened....
Later everyone said the Americans were the most rotten of all. And I agree, they were the rottenest. But you have to remember that the white Cubans were just as much to blame as the Americans, because they let themselves be orders around in their own country. All of them from the colonels to the janitors. (164-165)
***
The pedestrian street leads to the resplendent El Parque Marti. It really does glow in the sun, surrounded by the town cathedral, the Teatro Terry, named for the colonial landowner who carved up the province into cane production units, and the offices of the UNEAC. The museum Benny More is there as well as some superb restaurants and artisans selling their ware on the side streets.
“Y que?” I ask rhetorically.
So this is how it ends. Not with a bang, but with an “Y que?”
“You made it.” He smiles. “Now, welcome to Cienfuegos.” He hugs me again. “You have to wait a bit for your room.”
“Where am I staying?”
“Here, at the UNEAC. Upstairs we have rooms. Your mochila is already there.” He leads me across the street through the arching gates of the UNEAC.
“Let’s get a coffee.”
The cozy courtyard of the Cienfuego UNEAC offices vibrates with music and art every day and every night of the year. The walls are decorated with the work of local artists and a permanent, memorable sculpted mural of the muses casting their spell on all who behold them, sculptures under a bougainvillea covered pergola. We lean on the counter of the small kiosk that sell drinks to the visitors.
“But no electricity,” says the young woman doing the serving.
“Bueno,” said Orlando. “No coffee.”
We drink Ciego Montero soft drinks at a small table. Men and women approached to say hello to Orlando and he quickly introduces me to each, “This is the modern Cimarron. Just walked in from Sagua. Casi nada! (Almost nothing.)”
I must shake twenty hands before it is time to follow him to my room for the night. Second floor window facing the courtyard. No sleeping tonight, I think. At least not before 11 when the music stops.
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