2004-02-01 - 9:58 p.m.
(this is more pieces of my attempt to reflect on and share my recent 3 weeks in Havana, Cuba. it's a telling in process and experience which I will never be able to draw conclusions about, so this is just a peek into some of the thoughts in my head)
Emotionally preparing for leaving was probably the hardest thing. It was a concrete reminder that privilege is not ever something you can talk away. At our going away party I spent a lot of time talking to Ariel, who is a professor of English, but must bake and sell sweets on the street in order to make a living. Here I was, part of a group of twenty American college students, all getting ready to head back to the United States. I was thinking about Maine and New York, one a place many Cubans don’t know exists and another a place that many think about but will never be able to see. When we talk about the mobility privilege (be it class, race, gender, or any other, in any combination) bestows on those who have it I often think about it in terms of abstract movement- social and economic. But here in Cuba (as in the United States, but being in Cuba put it into sharp relief) there is also the ability to move physically. That is, as American college students, we could go there and we could leave. It felt insulting just to think, “When I go back to the US I will…” And yet it was a truth that was unalterable.
Is it only because I see it from the outside, as a tourist, that I see Havana as beautiful? That I can see the daily sufferings, struggles and turmoil that it encompasses as part of its “personality” because I look with the eyes of a foreigner? How does this reflect on the daily struggles and suffering I look upon in NYC, where I am not a local, but I am not a foreigner either. Step off of Calle Obispo in Habana Vieja, onto the streets of either side of it and the restored buildings and cheery facades immediately give away to the everyday life of a very old and very poor city. Laundry hanging out of windows, trash, stray dogs and mud puddles everywhere, bicycles and cars making their way slowly down it, avoiding potholes and small children in their red and white school uniforms.
Because this is a place where our professor tells us that everyone, be they mechanics, clerks, nurses or professors, must do extra work on the side to get their needs met. This is a country of dual currencies, the peso and the dollar where access to the dollar determines your standard of living. And so it is clearly a class based society, but I don’t think that any of us expected that it wasn’t. What I didn’t realize was that the dollar dominates the economy and creates at best, contradictions, and at worst, a kind of apartheid system which strictly enforces separation between Cubans and tourists. This system is enforced in other ways too, for example, it is absolutely forbidden for foreigners to bring Cubans to their hotel rooms. While, on a trip like ours, with a bunch of young women from the United States running around, some of which might not have the best judgment, this makes sense. However, for example, our R.A. Stephanie is dating a Cuban, and he was not allowed to come up to her room, which I imagine put a lot of strain on their relationship. It is a system where Cubans are forbidden to enter certain spaces, such as hotels, some clubs and restaurants by law. From a few of the people I met the expressed an overwhelming sense of frustration, especially because they feel they must suffer and give up so much for their country, to not have access to much of it is a great injustice.
