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Looking for Cuba:
Xavier Cortada's journal during his trip to Cuba in April 2000.

 

Miami International Airport Runway
April 1, 2000 –Saturday at 6:25 pm

 

“¿Tú sabes de lo que me estoy acordando? De cuando vinimos. Un polaco que nos decía que lo mismo había pasado en Polonia, y que nunca íbamos a ver a nuestras familias.”

 

["You know what I am recalling?  The departure. A Polish man telling us that same thing had happened in Poland, and that we would never see our families again."]

 

That was thirty-eight years ago, March 15^th, 1962.  At Havana’s Rancho Boyeros Airport, a month and a day from turning 21.  His memory has just been jogged; he didn’t travel alone. A woman turned over two children to him at the airport.  He still remembers what they wore:  The girl’s batica of blue velvet.  The kids had been tricked into boarding the flight with him; thinking their Mom would follow on the next plane.

 

It turns out they were Pedro Pan kids and my Dad would do this stranger the favor of turning them over to Catholic Welfare, their new parents.  Little did my father know then that he had been tricked, too.  That he too would spend a lifetime away from home.  Two-thirds of his life raised in a strange land.

 

We’re still on the runway.  The plane is starting to make its way to take off.  We’re still touching Miami and I’ve begun my journey.  Not just to know more about Cuba, but to know more about my Dad.

 

--Off –

 

His eyes are closed; in prayer, I’m sure.  He crossed himself a few minutes ago.  I’m sure his entire life is running through his mind.  All the people, the moments. The life.  My God, so many have died.  An entire generation is gone.  Only Grandpa remains here, and a lady named Cacha over there.  Children who wrinkled, grayed, fattened is all that remains of those weekend escapades to “La Boca.” That’s what it feels like to me—mainly because my education about [the town of] Nuevitas started fading in the 70s and abruptly ended in 1980, when Abuela died.

 

Here with Dad the education is about to continue.  But in a much more profound way.  It is experiential, actual this time.  Funny, I’ve really not given this trip a lot of thought.  I was simply going to accompany Dad—to support him in what I know needs to be a very difficult time.  To be his therapist even, as he sees what four decades of erosion have done to the place he called home.   (I’m curious to see if he still feels its home—or if it has so eroded that it is Nuevitas that became the strange place.)

 

And it’s that curiosity that I really haven’t allowed myself to explore.  Intellectually, I know that this place is as “hometown” as it gets outside Miami.  That I am going to finally see and feel what Abuela  could only reminisce about in her swing and balance at 7720 NW 2^nd Court.  But it is also a trip that is going to help me come to terms with who I am.  Am I a Nuevitero?

 

God, how bizarre.  I had worked myself into a great disconnect about this trip. It was a place that was going to be void of faxes and phones and TV and email.  It obviously wasn’t going to be about promoting my art, or getting profiled in a newspaper. It wasn’t going to be a tourism thing either.  It was going to be a duality in that it would be a “stress-free” vacation in the most stressful of circumstances.  Nonetheless, there was a great disconnect:  It wasn’t about me.  I was just a bystander.

 

Guess what?  I’m on a plane of people who are just like me.  I’ve traveled four continents on dozens of flights and have yet to be in an airplane completely full of Cubans.  I’ve caught myself staring at people—completely conscious of the nuances of behavior, physical attributes, disposition, language, all.  Naturally, most of them aren’t as polished and bilingual as I am.  Most have actually left the island just a few years back and still have rock solid connections.  Most probably don’t share the kinds of schedules, or daily tasks, bank statements and social activities that I do.  (Those are probably more fitting of the profile of my Washington, DC flight counterparts).  But here, in crossing the Florida Straits, these people have more in common with me than any other assembled flight. Even the 1998 Charter Flight [to hear the Pope's Mass in 1998] wasn't as Cuban. Nor as Miami Cuban, either.  This flight, this journey is going to be like no stress free vacation.  Sure, we’ll hang loose and enjoy evenings with the family.  But for all the hanging loose and reconnections, this journey is going to be an education.  Educating me about my island, my father, my family, and myself.

 

Dad is there by his window, seat 6A—his eyes closed.  I know he’s pondering.  Stopping every moment or so to stare out the window.  Looking for Cuba.  Looking for an education of his own.

 

So, here I am the plane on a downward incline.  People are actually noticing lights on the right side of the plane.  I just saw it myself—it’s 7:15 pm—and now I know what this “2000” journal book I got for Christmas from JC was about.  As much as I resisted doing anything like this, it’s about documenting this process. 

 

A kid to my right in perfect English sings, “I’m in Cuba, I’m in Cuba”   interspersing his chants with words like “¡Abuela, mira!,¡Abuela, mira! “  Could’ve been me in 1972.  His Dad speaking broken English but throwing terms like “Disney World” and “New York City” around.  It hasn’t escaped me how many Elian’s are on this flight.  Children, dozens at the terminal, about six or so  –with intimate connections to people divided by the sea beneath us.  And a host of so many other man-made barriers that I am about to confront.

 

 

When night falls:
I can’t see wreckage around me. Only shapes, colorless – and a sense of what was before.

When night falls:
The sky finally shows the brightest stars. Justifying the rinky-dink lights of this ghostly place.

When night falls:
My eyes lose control of sensory.  Allow my ears and smell to see the sea. And [the] feel of that Northern breeze reminds me of how special this is.

When night falls:
I’m done talking about Fidel. About civil society. About how wonderful it is that Mass was full this morning.

When night falls:
So do the introductions to family I’ve never met. It’s the end of my self-inflicted emotional jars:  The lady who looks like Abuela, hung out with Abuela is asleep now.

When night falls:
I can shed no more light on this place’s meaning, its future: Analysis postponed til dawn— I hope.

When night falls:
I can’t notice the eroded spaces around me. The strewn garbage, the aged-youth. Dilapidated beach homes, or desperate locals—I try not to.

When night falls:
It is simply time to drink my Havana Club In a reused plastic cup. Smoke a black-market Cohiba.  Digest a Paladar meal, and... 

Write about, think about, fret about all the things I am supposed to have forgotten.
When night fell.

 

Ciego de Avila at 4:30 p.m. on April 7, 2000 –
Leaving the bus terminal on a trip from Nuevitas to Havana

 

Seven days ago, I landed in Nuevitas and spent that time catching up on a lifetime.  Every thing from the life lines and family trees Dad and I were just compiling; some of whom finally came to life during this trip—to the wretched poverty in this place, the suffocating regime that rules this place, and even the laughter and joy that can be heard in this place.

 

My God, this place is so fucked up.  There is no other way to describe it:  This morning I went to the hospital to visit my Grand Uncle Daniel for the first time.   And all I could think about was, “My God, even their medical care, the world-renowned care, is a piece of shit.”  What has this revolution done to this country?

 

I can’t see [the] beauty of the land because I can’t get past the misery of the people who decided to stay.  I respect them, I do – for sticking with what they believe.  I just know better.

 

***

 

My Dad and I visited the huts and shacks where his employees/workers lived.  They’re still there!  In as miserable [a] series of conditions.  The workers of the Salina still in bohios.  And in all likelihood, no access to dollars.  It seems romantic and all to live in huts, surrounded by their chickens.  [H]owever miserable the “permutated” homes [are] (lacking paint, upkeep, décor, life, water, and on some evenings, electricity), at least it is safer shelter.  Who the hell did this revolution help?  The poor, the blacks are living in the same places and spaces.  Their lives certainly would’ve been improved in the course of these 41 years.

 

Things like unions would have helped workers.  Zoning and planning and even code enforcement would have built upon all that existed then.  This revolution usurped that infrastructure and architecture, exploiting and wasting it.  All is so obsolete, shameful.

 

But nothing worse than the wasted time.  And I’m not just talking about the collective; that is, Cuba’s 40 years of stagnation while the world advanced.  I speak of the individual—who was kept busy resolviendo by a sadistic regime.   One that would proscribe religion and free expression, while promulgating propaganda.  (Every five minutes I bump into a wall with some ludicrous Fidel quote painted on it –the most ridiculous I photographed a few minutes back –at 5 pm or  so—in Jatibonico: “With open information they will never defeat us.”). 

 

This regime not only makes information impossible to access (by sheer intimidation, restricted travel, and manipulations), it also keeps Cubans so preoccupied they can’t think of things loftier than what they are going to do about putting food on the table.  Or perhaps, how to get out of this forsaken place offering them no future.

 

This place is beautiful, though.  Looking out the window is a sedative—making the reality of those inside the bus easier to swallow.  Not that a single soul inside this bus looks unhappy.  They’re cracking jokes, enjoying the landscape, relaxing —escaping from the real reality.  Back at home.

 

I get to leave though.  They have no choice.  They’re stuck here.

 

But why am I recounting this?  This is known world-wide.  Sierra Leone is much, much worse in every respect, I’m sure.

 

 I guess I seek to vent.  It’s not like I can get up and express what I am feeling right now.  I can’t even say it to the nun at the front of the bus.  Not within the earshot of anyone.  I may be a free man, but right now, I am not free.  Indeed, there is the fear that I may be stopped and that state security will read this (what I am thinking and writing in my diary), and arrest me.

 

“Todas, todas, todas, … todas, todas, todas” is the mantra the girl behind me is chanting in my right ear as she leaps forward to look out the window.  She’s 7, and God knows if she’s counting fence posts speeding by.  But her annoying chant reminds me of things I’ve heard off and on since I’ve arrived:  “Todo es ilegal aqui.”  Everything is illegal here; perhaps, even thinking. 

 

--more to follow