Day 11 (cont.): Palmira

Palmira

The square of Palmira is a spacious, gleaming public space. It has few trees so it is not a place to go for shade but its soft pastel color in the bright blue day made the heat bearable.  We skirted the plaza heading past the bici taxis and the cafes and bars and restaurants and kiosks and line of consumers waiting their turn, down to the first Cabildo, la Sociedad de Cristo Babalu Aye/San Lazaro, a long, freshly painted pink stucco building at the end of the street with red and white wooden posts supporting the equally long front porch.  The director knocks on the white door. I stand a few feet back.  Felipe Capote Sevilla, the president of the sociedad answer.  The museum director warned me that he was not the most sociable of men, taciturn and serious looking but not to let that bother me. 

“He’s that way with everybody,” she said.

Day 11: Palmira. Where Orishas live

Day 11: Palmira. Where Orishas Live.

The car stops in front of the museum, a beautiful 19^th Century building with a cozy and verdant central courtyard. The director comes out through one of the doors, big smile on her tall dark frame.  After the perfunctory peck on the cheek, she gives me a tour, explaining the exhibits, while an assistant hovers nearby in case she needed support. 

The museum contains exhibit of the cruel hardware that deformed the bodies and identity of the slaves during the 19^th Century.  Manacles, cruel collars with spikes, unforgiving shackles for the ankles.  These are the torture tools which awaited Esteban after his apprehension the first time he escaped. 

Day 11: Ciego Montero to Palmira

Ciego Montero—Palmira

 

The next morning the young woman who signed me in the night before is still on duty. 

“You live here, or what?” I say, putting my backpack down by the front desk. The entire front of the building is made of glass so I can see down the long driveway all the way to the road. No sign of my ride; no lights slicing through the darkness yet and it is almost 6 a.m. A stray dog sleeps curled up right outside the glass doors. 

“Seems that way,” she says. “Going home today. Twenty-four-hour shifts. Want some coffee?” 

“Always,” I say. She disappears into the dark hallway and returns with some delicious black morning gold. 

Carbajal and the driver arrive before I started my predictable, introspective pissed-off rant about Cubans always being late. 

“Just in time,” I smile, when they roll up parallel to the curb. I throw my backpack into the trunk and we are off. 

Six members of the original welcoming committee wait to see me off from the Casona. Carbajal’s mother consumes me in a bear-like hug.

 “You have your house here. Whenever you want.” she says. “Don’t forget us.” 

Ciego Montero-Part 2

Ciego Montero-Part 2: Talking Shit to the People

The theatre, next door to La Casona, is also one of the most popular public spaces in town.  The director, introducing himself at the door, explained how every day some event takes place within these walls, be it a film or a poetry reading, a dance or a musical performance. Always free and open to the public.  This afternoon the theatre had one of its rare closings because of a presentation in my honor. The Grupo Folklorico, a group of dancers and musicians consisting of practitioners of Afro-Cuban religion who live in town, were scheduled to perform for me and my friends.  He leads me inside.

The theatre reminded me of the small movie house in Gainesville, Georgia where I would escape to see the lives of others. It was a good place to be by oneself without feeling alone. There I saw Romeo and Juliet and fell in love with Oliva Hussey and found out that I could cry to Shakespeare as the soundtrack by Henry Mancini made me feel the very loneliness I was trying to escape. Memories of those times seem to teleport randomly to wherever I am and stand in front of me, waiting to be bumped into.

The ticket booth out front is flanked by two doors which open to the semi-circle walkway that lead to the right and left of the large sitting area in the middle.  The seats, hard and folding tight against the back, welcome about one hundred rear ends. My welcoming committee members and the regional assistant director of Cultura from Cienfuegos, the thin black man who I had met in Potrerillo, sit in the first two rows. A few invited visitors are scattered behind.  Carbajal stands in front of the elevated stage and introduces the “young artists” who have come from Oriente, eastern Cuba and have overcome much to be here today.  

“The show is a tribute to their religious traditions,” he says. “I’ll let them show you what they have.” 

Day 10 (continued): Ciego Montero

Ciego Montero

The smooth terraplén screams to be walked on. One huge guardarraya between walls of cane, broken only by brightly colored wooden houses and their simple yards. Garlic grows in this region as well, and dozens of houses are overrun by battalions of the brown tufts.   

In Ciego, the mule stops at the edge of town, near a park that had the air, by its clean statue of Jose Marti and well-trimmed bushes, of being an important part of town.  My handler walks with me half a block to a wooden house with a sign flat on the wall next to the door announcing it as La Casona, a private home that served as the town art gallery and community center. 

Fotografía de Julio Larramendi

I have always associated the town with the spring which produced the most popular bottled water and soft drinks on the island, the Ciego Montero brand.  And this is the only reason why most Cubans would ever know about this small town which geographically is tied at the hip with the adjacent town of Arriete.  Arriete-Ciengo Montero has approximately four and a half thousand residents.  Ten of them welcome me to the town.