In my hotel room, the soft sound of guitars enters from the balcony. In the cobblestone street below, I enjoy a cigar and watch a teenage girl introduce her boyfriend to her parents as they sit on a bench and pass a cigarette back and forth.Everyone moves in slow motion.The area is greener than I imagined, with trees sprouting sideways from oblong squares. Women stand guard in impossibly narrow doorways. Men play handball in the hollowed-out courtyard of one of the citys countless crumbled edifices. Tapas bars fill in the cracks.For a foreigner who isnt coming with predetermined notions of Cuba as global boogeyman or socialist paradise, each alley and avenue, each conversation with a Cuban, complicates the picture. Im nowhere near the first Westerner, American or journalist to visit Havana - and I know it. But I want to make sense of the place.Many more like me could embark on this voyage soon. Although hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans make the trip each year and the intrepid traveler always finds a way in, the U.S. embargo has blocked countless more from visiting a country just 90 miles south of Florida.President Barack Obamas decision last month to improve relations with Cuba and ease trade and travel rules to the island has changed all of that. The U.S. government insists only certain groups of Americans may visit Cuba, but the elimination of a pre-authorization process means just about anyone can come.Some of Cubas contradictions are immediately apparent.In the Plaza Vieja, a Paul & Shark boutique sells sweaters for as much as a doctor here makes in months. The city offers new bars and restaurants. Some of the best, Im told, belong to people with connections to the communist government or access to expatriate cash, or both.Propaganda is pervasive, though tame. The murals are worn and sometimes entirely rubbed out, leaving tones of delicate ochre across building walls where more of Fidel Castros citations and Che Guevaras portraits once stood.In the 16th century Plaza de Armas, an elderly man offers me Associated Press Wirephoto prints from the 1950s along with other relics of Fulgencio Batistas period in power, along with the usual knick-knacks of the revolution. A minute later, a young man approaches and tells me has nice girls for sale.Uneven signs of modernization are everywhere.The main thoroughfares are well paved. State-of-the-art pedestrian signals are installed, providing second-by-second countdowns. They cut through neighborhoods ranging from ramshackle glory to the plain shabby, where buildings strain to stand. At Havanas old port, the halls lie bare and ghostly, a heaping mass of decrepit iron.Iconic yesteryear Fords, Dodges and Chevys parade the boulevards, along with humbler Russian-made cars of the post-revolution era. There are plenty of new cars, too, though you have to wonder where they all come from. The official price of a Peugeot can reach $250,000.Driving around, you see the magical and the mundane of Cubas capital. Along with the grand hotels once frequented by Frank Sinatra and Ernest Hemingway, there are schools, athletic centers and countless public places where people gather.
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 13:05:33 +0000
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