Place de la Révolution is deserted. During his visit in 2015, Pope Francis said mass at this location, under the eye of Che Guevara, whose portrait adorns an official building, in front of an enthusiastic crowd. If the largest square in the world is still used for large gatherings, the echo of Fidel Castro’s words seems distant. The place is especially the meeting point for old cars from Cuba. Chevrolet, Plymouth, Mercury and other Oldsmobiles, these American cars imported before Castro came to power in 1959, give the impression of living in a 1950s film. Tourists love them. Yes, but now, tourists are rare. Especially since the authorities announced to the airlines that they could no longer guarantee them a full supply of kerosene for their return, due to a general lack of fuel on the island.
In the city’s municipal cemetery, some rather unusual deaths have recently been buried. In the Christopher Columbus necropolis lie the Cuban soldiers who guarded Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Its capture by Donald Trump threw the large island of the central Caribbean into disarray, bringing back the ghosts of the fight that made Cuba an island of resistance to the Americans for almost seventy years. In Cuba, everything still recalls the glorious revolution and its beloved sons, Castro and Guevara. If Castro is rarely seen in town, it is because, in his will, he did not wish for a statue to be erected to him. On the other hand, Ernesto Guevara did not have time to give instructions. He was murdered in Bolivia in 1967.
Che, however, has lost his splendor. You just have to talk to young Cubans to realize that he is no longer the embodiment of revolutionary romanticism that Alberto Korda’s photography made famous around the world. Young people see him as a homophobic and racist character, because of the remarks made about Africans, at the time when Cuba was fomenting revolutions on the black continent. But in schools, we continue to do everything so that the myth is transmitted to new generations.
Make the island fall “like a ripe fruit”
In Cuba, we don’t joke with icons. Nor do we joke about the war events which contributed to making this place unique in the world. On the heights of Havana is a place where these atomic rockets installed by the Russians and which brought the world to the brink of nuclear apocalypse in 1962 were stored. This episode may explain why the Americans still have a bitter grudge against the regime, to the point of wanting its end. But nothing in Cuba embodies the always stated objective of the United States to bring the island into line more than the Bay of Pigs. Located about a hundred kilometers south of Havana, this is where a thousand Cubans from exile landed in April 1961 to try to unsuccessfully overthrow Castro power. What we still need to realize, when we talk about Cuba and the Americans, is that the latter are already there. As in Greenland, they have a base at Guantanamo, in the southeast of the island, which they have rented from Cuba for a century. It is in this place that they decided to place, after September 11, those they call the “enemy combatants”Taliban and other members of Al-Qaeda captured in Afghanistan then in Iraq.
The Cubans lost the oil that Venezuela sent them
Perhaps more than his predecessors who all broke their teeth there, Donald Trump now thinks about bringing down the island “like a ripe fruit”. He even jokes with his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose family left the island before Castro’s arrival, by telling him that he has a job for him: “Marco, you will be the next president of Cuba. » Not sure the Cubans appreciate it. Because if the icons have lost their luster, the Cubans in exile are not necessarily popular. Many locals describe them as “corrupted” or zealots of a lifestyle which is not that of the frugal but united existence which still exists on the island.
The fact remains that Cuba is in bad shape. Ruins everywhere. Poverty can be seen everywhere in the streets of Havana. At times, the coastline looks like that of Florida. Key West is only about a hundred miles north. Same palm trees, same humidity, but in Cuba, it is the Russian embassy, an imposing Soviet-style monument from the tropics, which guards them. The Russians displayed photos of the meetings which still link the two countries on the fronton. Will they move if Donald shows his streak on this coast?
Still in Havana, Americans still have Ernest Hemingway’s villa, a sort of tropical jewel that the writer left overnight in 1960, leaving his typewriter and his collection of leather boots there. It is in the middle of this pile of palm trees that a certain Donald Trump undoubtedly dreams of seeing luxury hotels and casinos grow. Cubans are rather resistant to this idea. The casino has left among the oldest the memory of the Batista years, the time when Cuba was an Eldorado for entertaining Americans and for the mafia which reigned supreme there.
Throughout the island, the rare commodity is called gasoline. Since January 3, the Cubans have lost the oil that Venezuela had been sending them almost free since Hugo Chavez came to power. The government has issued a card called “Classica” which is similar to a form of rationing. At the moment, the American Navy is cruising, all powerful, in the Caribbean Sea. Since the fall of Maduro, it has only authorized two humanitarian ships from Mexico to reach the port of Havana.
Power outages
But, in Cuba, we know about the shortages. The residents are not afraid of it. The island has been under embargo since Castro came to power. Died in 2016, the dictator will have survived eleven American administrations which had all sworn to his downfall. Cuba even experienced famine after the fall of the USSR… This time was called the “special years”. Its inhabitants remember the “grapefruit peel steaks”THE “flour fritters” or the “banana peel minced steaks”…
What we need to realize is that the Americans are already there
No more gas? Never mind. We relied on the horse and cart to get around. Due to the crisis, the highways have not been completed. Never mind. We let the cows graze on the part where the grass will have grown… The other major problem remains that of electricity, whose cuts sometimes last fifteen hours straight in certain towns. On March 17, the entire network blew up, depriving eleven million Cubans of electrical power. On the roads, it is not uncommon to come across Chinese buses, but there are still quite a few tractors from the Soviet era, in perfect working order. Comrades of yesterday, comrades of today, comrades of always. Unless Trump decides otherwise. He warned that he can do with Cuba what he wants. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel promised him a “indestructible resistance”.
