Tell friends you have just been to Cuba, and depending on the circles in which you travel, you may be rewarded with a lot of envy. Cuba is hot, and we're not talking about the tropical weather.
The old cars still on Cuban streets decades after they disappeared into junkyards elsewhere intrigue and delight some. Curiosity about a neighboring country that is the final American Cold War adversary certainly sparks interest.
Forbidden fruit is another factor. Because of restrictions imposed by the U.S. government, Americans are not free to travel to Cuba as they are to nearly any other country in the world. You must fit into narrow categories to legally qualify and receive a Cuba travel license from the U.S. Treasury Department.
The only direct air service between the United States and Cuba involves charter airline flights that whisk you from Miami to Havana in 45 minutes. That is how 26 other Americans and I, our Treasury Department licenses tucked into our hand luggage, recently made the trip on a humanitarian mission.
In as long as it takes to fly from Milwaukee to Chicago, we were on the ground in Havana after an overnight stay in Miami, and quickly thrust into a country and society that confirmed some of our preconceptions and exploded others.
The biggest false myth is that Cuba, the Caribbean's largest island, has been frozen in time since the Castro brothers assumed control of the government on New Year's Day 1959. It's in a time warp, with street life looking like old movies from the 1950s and '60s, a surprising number of writers and travel industry folks will tell you.
Wrong. Just as many of those old cars have Russian diesel or Japanese replacement engines in them, Cuba's quaint vintage look is not much more than skin-deep.
The interiors of two big hotels built in the '50s, the Habana Libre and the Riviera, do appear to be forlornly stuck in time. The Libre opened as the Havana Hilton in 1958, and when dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the island later that year, the Castro-led revolutionaries moved in to make it their headquarters.
Very little appears to have changed in the intervening 50 years. Photos on the lobby walls show the olive green-clad fighters lounging on the furniture, documenting the lack of a decorating update.
The Riviera, built by American mobster Meyer Lansky in '57, epitomized the Mafia influence on the island, and its lobby and adjoining outdoor swimming pool have a retro appearance and feel that is cooler than the Habana Libre's. Lobby wall photos chronicle the old entertainers who once performed at or stayed in the hotel. The casino closed with the arrival of the Castros, and the cabaret space appears to have changed little.
But Havana also boasts new upscale hotels, including a series of beautifully appointed boutique lodgings that are being opened on the narrow streets of the old city.
New cars, including vans and some sport utility vehicles, are on the road, with Hyundai appearing to have captured the largest share of the market. New articulated buses built in China cruise through Havana, providing public transportation.
The old cars are easily divided into two categories. Probably half of them are boxy and tinny Russian-made Ladas, a vestige of the Soviet Union's close relationship with Cuba for more than 30 years. Ugly when they rolled off the assembly line, they are now rolling and rusting eyesores.
But the flip side of the coin is the incredible array of pre-revolution vehicles dating back to World War II that continue to provide transportation on the island. Most are American-made, with a preference for flashy fins, but ancient European cars are also still in use.
The oldies can be seen in all degrees of disrepair and restoration. Some are on the road for purely utilitarian purposes; others are clearly being maintained with car-collector loving care. A brand of taxis exclusively features well-restored old models, many of them convertibles.
Traffic watching on the curb of the Malecon, the busy thoroughfare running along the Havana seawall, provides some of the best entertainment on the island. And picture an Edsel loaded with people flying toward you on a divided four-lane highway in the country. You don't have to be a car buff to be tickled by that.
The U.S. may have a 47-year-old commercial and financial embargo against Cuba, but in today's shrunken world, nobody can impose a cultural embargo. Havana residents are current and fashionable in their appearance, right down to having the right tattoos in the right places. Move them and their wardrobes to any American city with a sizable Latin population, and they would fit in perfectly.
They follow American politics, have detailed knowledge of President Barack Obama and his background and are excited about the prospect of him improving relations with Cuba. Obama campaign buttons and T-shirts are prized possessions that can be openly worn.
Internet access is restricted by the government, but clandestine connections and email accounts are not unusual.
I traveled through the Soviet Union, including stops in some far-flung places, in the '70s, and I was eager to see if parallels existed between the two Communist countries that were close allies before the fall of the Iron Curtain. Political sloganeering on huge public banners and signs is common, as are giant portraits of Communist heroes.
My informal count has Che Guevara slightly ahead of Fidel Castro in Havana iconography. Interestingly, non-communist José Marti, the George Washington of Cuba who died fighting Spain for independence in 1895, also gets a lot of face time on posters, signs and sculpture.
Shortages of essential items, the bane of so many communist and some socialist countries, is a vexing problem in Cuba. Rice and beans are the dietary staples, and meat is a treat. Everyone gets a monthly ration book to parcel out things such as bread and sugar.
Farmers markets that resemble those in Milwaukee supplement the diets of people with the cash to buy bunches of fat carrots, heavy watermelons and red meat hanging from hooks. An entire pig carcass was being pushed in a wheelbarrow toward a market in a residential section of Havana on the Saturday morning we visited.
The Cuban health system, free to all citizens, has so many physicians that the island exports them to other countries. But when your doctor gives you a prescription, the state-owned pharmacy may not be able to fill it. I brought a large suitcase filled with prescription drug samples and disposable syringes for a free pharmacy that the Havana Jewish community opens to the public two days a week.
Foreign newspapers were impossible to find in Havana's international hotels, and although tourists can watch CNN, ESPN and European television channels in their rooms, Cubans don't have that access.
Fidel Castro's high priority on eliminating illiteracy has yielded a well-educated population, but a paradoxical economy does not always reward high skills and abilities. A hotel bellman may be an engineer who has found he can make more money carrying luggage.
Housing is in extremely short supply. Newly married couples must move in with parents, usually the wife's. The divorce rate is alarmingly high.
Cubans sympathetic to the revolution blame the economic problems on the American embargo.
As challenging as everyday life may be, the clenched-jaw grimness on Russian faces during the Soviet era is nowhere to be seen in Cuba. The dull drabness of the Soviet existence is visible only in the monolithic concrete architecture of buildings erected while the Russians were on the island.
Warm smiles, laughter, kids playing stickball in the front yard and music - so much music - fill the streets of Havana. These are not desperate people.
A 30-something woman with a rambunctious 5-year-old son she called "Denny the Menace" explained. "We have hopes, we have dreams, but we know how to be happy with what we have."
By Damien Jaques of the Journal Sentinel
