Because there are about 14,800 well-trained professional musicians, most of them concentrated in Havana, the city’s restaurants and cafes, hotels and dance halls come alive with the joyful sounds of swinging bands and lilting singers. In my experience, only Vienna (though decidedly more sedate) can match the Cuban capital for its devotion to music in daily life.
TOURISTS MAY GO dancing at a dozen or more notable Havana venues, from the Casa de la Musica in Miramar to the Cafe Cantante Mi Habana, a basement club in the Teatro Nacional, to the Habana Cafe at the Hotel Melia Cohiba in Vedado. But be prepared for really late hours.
Most night life doesn’t start until 10 p.m. at the earliest, and usually much later. This is true even at a mainstream tourist trap like the Copa Club in the Riviera Hotel (once owned by mobster Meyer Lansky and now a ballyhooed example of ’50s architecture).
We went there to hear Bamboleo, a hugely popular band. The first set didn’t begin until 1:30 a.m., and it was still going strong when we left at 3.
A great disadvantage to traveling in a group is the cocoon that inevitably protects you from chance encounters with people on the street and the sort of immersion you feel when traveling on your own.
That is why I took walks by myself whenever I could. Ambling down the tree-lined Prado toward the Malecón and then along the sea wall at dusk, I ran into young couples who wished me well and young men who wanted to practice their English. They filled me in about this or that statue or building, this or that neighborhood. Young women walking with each other met my gaze directly. Sometimes they grinned and whistled, obviously amused. And I always felt safe.
ESCAPING THE COCOON
On our third night in Havana, others in the group also wanted to escape the cocoon. Ten people peeled off to go to a baseball game at the Estadio Latinoamericano in Cerro, a rundown, working-class neighborhood fairly typical of the city. They felt that watching a game at the 55,000-seat ballpark would be an up-close experience of “the real Cuba.” Baseball is something of a Cuban national obsession, and these 10 were mainly baseball-obsessed Seattleites themselves. (The rest of us went to hear music.)
The game was part of the Serie Nacional season that runs from October to May, with more than a dozen pro teams playing about 90 games. This one featured the home team Industriales against Holguin from Santiago de Cuba. (The Industriales, known as Los Azules — The Blues — have been the dominant Cuban team for the last 40 years.)
About 20,000 fans filled the stadium, singing when the Industriales scored, jeering the pitching coaches and passing around bottles of rum. They regaled the Norteamericanos in their midst with baseball stories. They pointed out their favorite players, booed their least favorite, ate ham sandwiches and exchanged gifts (“They bought us popcorn, we gave them our hats”). The Industriales won, 9-4.
But as the group left the stadium, the experience suddenly turned horrific. No sooner were they outside in the dimly lighted streets than 30 to 40 young boys attacked them. “They were like a pack of dogs,” one of the victims told me. “They surrounded each of us, snatching jewelry, grabbing our bags, pushing at us. When we screamed or yelled, they backed off and came at us again. They were very clever at breaking us up.”
The Cuban crowds that had flooded into the street ignored the attack or simply watched. Nobody came to the group’s aid. One of the victims, a 77-year-old man, stubbornly hung onto his camera bag and was knocked to the ground. He saved his camera but paid for it with a head injury that made him look like he’d been hit by a truck.
HOSPITAL STAY REQUIRED
The group finally retreated back into the stadium and managed to hail taxis to the Parque Central hotel. The next morning, the man appeared for breakfast. Despite a swollen, purple-black hematoma that almost doubled the size of his face, he said he felt fine. Unfortunately, we believed him.
With the rest of us, he continued on to the resort region of Varadero. But later that day he collapsed and was found unconscious outside his room at our next hotel. Whisked at first to a local clinic, which proved inadequate to deal with a possible stroke, he then was taken by ambulance back to Havana (a five-hour ride on two-lane roads), where he was admitted to the top hospital for foreigners, the Clinica Central Cira Garcia.
After a battery of tests (EKG, Cat-Scan and ultra sound) and a 2-1/2 day stay in the hospital, he was released. The doctors said he had sustained a concussion-like trauma, not a stroke. Two months later, his daughter says, he is still recovering.
“The general consensus of the Cubans who heard about the incident was surprise and shame,” she added. “I think [some] people were not surprised, however. They had heard of this type of thing happening before.”
CUBA’S CONTRADICTIONS
Did the attack and her father’s injuries change her mind about going to Cuba? Not at all.
“I loved the trip and would certainly go back,” she said. “We were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Cuba is full of contradictions:
— An educational system that has produced a relatively high degree of literacy but lacks pencils and paper;
— A two-tiered medical system, one for Cubans that provides free health care but lacks basic medicines and one for foreigners that has the latest technology;
— A history of racial integration but, when it comes to desirable jobs in tourism, a social system that discriminates against blacks;
— Concern for the environment but oil fields being developed along the coastline not far from the new beach resorts;
— A housing shortage (100,000 Cubans are crammed into the high-rise ghetto of Alamar, outside of Havana, where Soviet workers once lived) but only piecemeal construction and renovation, despite the best of intentions.
Yet it is precisely Cuba’s contradictions that make the island such a work in progress. Even a tourist struck by the surreal warp of the island’s stopped time can’t help being touched by its indelible history and the feeling that it’s still being made.Jan Herman is MSNBC.com’s senior editor-producer for Entertainment & Arts.