By Efren Mencia, Program Officer, LASPAU
During the summer of 2001, I was invited to host an excursion to the island of Cuba planned by the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) for January 2002. The theme of the trip was “Cuba: Image and Reality.” The HAA is committed to providing its members with first-hand experience of diverse cultures in order to contribute to a deeper understanding of the world. This was its third visit to Cuba. The 35 participants in the tour were Harvard alumni and spouses from various schools and classes. Among them were educators who had taught in Cuba prior to the revolution and who were returning to experience the changes that had occurred since their departures. One traveler was there to reminisce about a trip to the island taken with her mother in 1919. My own anticipation was based on my Cuban-American background and interest in experiencing my cultural roots.
The invitation set off a flood of conflicting emotions. I was excited by the possibility of travelling to a country that was out of bounds for most Americans. It would add to the list of Latin American and Caribbean countries that I had visited in my role as a LASPAU program officer. It was also an opportunity to further explore the viability of educational exchange activities in Cuba for LASPAU. However, my excitement was tempered by thoughts of how my family would react to my participation in the trip. Since the day my parents left Havana in 1961, they have been steadfast in maintaining their status as exiles. With these dueling emotions, I agreed to host the HAA tour, wondering what the reality of Cuba would be in comparison to the image of the island that I had inherited from my parents.
As the trip approached, I could sense the rising tension from my family. But I could not suppress my growing excitement, especially after I flew over the island on a return trip from El Salvador. There below my airplane window was Cuba: the land where my parents were born, where they grew up, where they met, where my grandfathers are buried, where my aunts, uncles, and cousins live, and where I would have grown up had my parents not left. It was so close and yet alien. As the plane veered north, I caught reflections from the setting sun off the windows of the buildings of Havana near the horizon. From a distance, these reflections beckoned as the darkness of night enveloped the plane.
Before leaving for the tour, I visited my parents in Miami. I managed to get them excited about my trip by opening a map of Havana and asking where they had lived and worked. As they started to talk about their experiences, a flood of memories overtook them and their excitement about my trip grew. Family and friends stopped by to drop off letters and packages of medicine and toiletries for delivery. I was given telephone numbers and addresses of relatives and asked to take photos of everything I could. I was also warned to be careful of the authorities and of what I said to people I might meet.
Once in the air with my HAA companions, I saw the outline of my hometown recede in the distance. I felt a tinge of melancholy as I imagined what it must have been like for my parents to see the outline of their city recede from view as their flight took them north to an unknown land. Our flight took us south over the Florida Keys. Finally, midpoint over the Straits, there it was: Cuba! I was struck by the fact that I could see both Florida and Cuba at the same time.  How close they were to each other, and yet in my imagination they had seemed so far apart.
As the plane touched down in Cuba, I was filled with questions and expectations. Would the city be as beautiful as my parents had described? Would the people be like the Cubans I knew in Miami? Would the streets be full of armed police and militant revolutionaries? Would people speak to me if they knew I was from the “Community,” a term applied to those Cubans who live abroad? Would I see evidence that the promises of the Revolution had come to pass? Likewise, my traveling companions had differing expectations. Many were excited to see a place that had been off-limits to Americans. Others wondered how the island had changed since they were last there. We tried to set aside our preconceived notions in order to experience the island and its people as they are today.
One of the first things I discovered is that the royal palms are as majestic as my parents had described. A true symbol of the island, they are prominently displayed on the country’s official seal. Beyond the beauty of its palms, Cuba presents a face that is at the same time similar to and different from its Latin American neighbors. This can be sensed almost immediately, even on the road from the airport to Havana. Although everything looked poor, there were no slums as can be found in other cities. Also, although roads leading to airports are typically avenues of industry and commercial activity, in Cuba this is not the case. The consumer is not catered to. In Havana and elsewhere on the island, you won’t find large shopping centers, supermarkets, or ubiquitous fast-food restaurants. Finally, there is very little traffic. Most everyone travels on foot, by bicycle, or on a contraption called a camello, a tractor-trailer attached to a modified rig in the shape of a camel. Cars are hard to come by, and, when you see them, they are usually American cars from the 1950’s. Between the vintage cars and the fabric of a city that has experienced very little in the way of new construction, we had the sense that we had stepped back in time.
As our bus entered the city, we saw one of the symbols of Havana, a tall tower with a statue of the nation’s hero, José Martí. Opposite the tower was a large building whose façade bore the wrought iron outline of the face of Ernesto Guevera (el Ché). This was the Plaza of the Revolution, from which Fidel Castro delivered his speeches to the populace. We headed away from this center of political power toward another plaza, the Parque Central de la Habana, where the Capitol building of the old republic stands. I could easily recognize all of the buildings in the plaza, having seen them countless times in pictures hanging on the walls of small Cuban cafeterias and restaurants in Miami. Radiating from the plaza are broad avenues that resemble those of Paris. One of these, the Paseo del Prado, leads to the harbor and the starting point of another famous boulevard, the Malecón, which borders the sea for six miles. Yet another avenue took us into the heart of the old colonial city, with its tight alleyways and tenement buildings dating from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
Havana’s location at the mouth of a natural harbor and its boulevards and baroque and neo-classical architecture make it a beautiful city. Even in its sad state of repair, it is easy to imagine what it was like in its heyday. Those in our party who had spent time in Cuba before the revolution remarked on the decrepit buildings but were pleasantly surprised to find much of the city unaltered. Many in our group worried that if the political situation on the island changed, much of the graceful architecture would be demolished to make way for more modern buildings.
Walking the streets on an afternoon away from the tour, I was captured by Havana’s less hurried pace. I could imagine my parents strolling down the avenue towards the Malecón to catch the evening breezes off the ocean. The lack of the automobiles and blaring horns typical of most cities allows you to notice the voices on the street. I was impressed by how easily people stopped to talk to one another. Cubans are full of life and irreverent wit, and I found it impossible to keep from joining in on conversations. Apparently, Cuba is the only place in Latin America where I do not have an accent when speaking Spanish. However, inevitably some Anglicism would surface, and I would be asked if I were from the United States.
Once people learned I was from the “Community,” they were quite candid in letting me know what was “really” going on. This surprised me: I expected to find a populace fearful of the secret police and the neighborhood watch committees known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution. Instead, I found that most people were comfortable discussing their troubles, political points of view, and aspirations with the same amount of passion as Cubans in Miami. Cubans in both Miami and Havana want to see things improve on the island, but the desired means and pace of this change are very different. In both cities, you hear the past tense a lot. The words “esto era” or “eso era” (this was) are often heard. It is as though people do not want to forget the way things used to be.
One evening, I made the requisite phone calls to my relatives in Cuba. Due to their opposing political beliefs, my mother and her sister have not spoken to each other in forty years. I called my aunt’s daughter, who is my age, and learned that both of us longed to mend the rupture in the family. We decided to meet that night. Even though we had never seen each other in person, my cousin and I recognized each other in the midst of the busy hotel lobby. To my great surprise, my aunt had come along. We embraced and spoke for a good while. My final night in Havana was spent at my aunt’s house, which I had heard much about in my childhood. On the walls were images of my uncle with el Ché and, taken just two months prior to my arrival, with the Comandante himself, Fidel Castro. I could not help juxtaposing this scene with the one in my mother’s house, where you can find images of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.
While my trip to Cuba was a cultural excursion to enrich a group of Harvard alumni, it was also a journey of personal discovery. The images conveyed to me by my parents were to a great extent confirmed. Cuba’s natural beauty and the warmth of its people were a delight. During the course of my conversations, I had the opportunity to clear up misconceptions about politics and life in the United States. I realized that speaking one-on-one with people in the streets did much more to bridge the gap between the communities than I could ever have accomplished otherwise, proving the value of person-to-person exchanges. It validated my commitment to the educational and cultural exchanges that are at the core of LASPAU’s mission. Many in our group echoed my thoughts. We all found that on a personal level the Cuban people were eager to know and befriend Americans. We came away from the trip with new perspectives on the situation in Cuba and were encouraged by prospects for an improved relationship between the people of the two countries.
After seeing the gracious architecture of Cuba’s cities and the beautiful vistas of its countryside, I could understand more fully the strong emotions that my parents feel at having had to leave it all behind. Still, I could not shake the feeling that I had come home, that time had come full circle and that the endpoints of the arch would somehow be rejoined and become whole again. I think that Cubans, too, sense that changes are coming soon to their island nation and that the rifts in the social fabric will be mended. They look for a peaceful rapprochement with their brethren overseas. My cousin and I will certainly work hard to mend the breach between our mothers. Perhaps through continued cooperation and exchanges such as the HAA tour, the two countries will become reconciled. Hopefully, this is not too far in the future.
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