Socialist slump, church, cemetery, and explosions

 

Yesterday I went through what we call jokingly in the house a “socialist slump.” For the first time in my time here, I’ve had to do real, serious work that stresses me out—I’m writing an essay for my Marxist-Leninist philosophy class, for a professor I respect a lot, who I’ve been meeting with outside of class, who I really want to impress. Also, maybe this essay will end up being the prologue to my thesis or something (translated to English, of course). The point of all this is that I’m a little academically stressed for the first time, and suddenly long hypocritically for the comforts and convenience of capitalism. Just two days ago I was yelling at a friend about how sick and disgusting the dual economy was, and how sick sick sick it was for tourists to come to Cuba and only use the expensive goods that are completely inaccessible to most Cubans. But yesterday all I wanted to do was dish out some CUC for some salad, or even better, to walk a block to a 24 hour CVS and buy some chocolate, cheese crackers, and beef jerky with my debit card, and then go to a library and spread my shit out on a wooden table and nibble on processed, exploited-labor food while writing my essay on overthrowing capitalism.

 

Today I am mostly over that, but filled with tons of other explosive, irrational emotions. The weather has been strange, it’s been chilly (I’m wearing pants!) but not rainy, and I feel very unable to express or understand myself. This morning I went to a church service at the crazy Methodist church that I had gone to where I saw people speaking in tongues, but this was a normal service. I had written down some things last weekend in Santiago that I wanted to remind myself to do or think, and I tried to read them over but they didn’t make any sense to me anymore. Anyways, one of them was to go to church, and since that was one of the only really concrete ones I decided to do it, and hoped that in the middle of the action I would remember why I wrote it down in that frenzy of self-whatever. The service was pretty good, in a cultural experience sort of way, because there was a lot of music and singing and dancing, and it was Cuban music (you know, salsa-like stuff, Son-based), people spilling out into the steps and standing room only, and it was just a big party in Church, people were shouting “Cristo! Cristo!” and punching their arms into the air. And then the singing stopped and they brought some American pastors/missionaries up, apparently they had been in Cuba before the revolution, preaching to the yanquis who were living in Vedado at that time until Fidel kicked them out, and now had somehow managed to come back. They started talking in English, with drawls, and there was a lady translating (poorly, and her voice was unpleasant) and they were saying nothing—literally NOTHING, and then they started to speak in broken awful gringo Spanish (he forgot the word for Tuesday) and told a silly joke about Chinese tourists, and I couldn’t stand it anymore and left.

 

Then I watched some American TV show (Madmen), and I’ve also been reading the New Yorker because my roommate’s mother came illegally and brought thousands of New Yorkers, and we’ve all been craving reading things in English /hearing about the world outside of Cuba for a while. Then I went to a really spooky cemetery nearby with famous people buried in it with my boy and it was very spooky because it seemed like a graveyard of a graveyard. All the stones and mausoleums were so beautiful, with wonderfully crafted sculptures and reliefs that impressed me (that is, they moved me), but everything was more or less falling apart, the tops of the gravestones were falling apart, lots of the doors to the mausoleums were broken, and some of the graves too, so that you could see inside of them. We found one where there were tons of bones and some dentures inside, and I talked the boy out of stealing a bone. Also, in each grave they put entire families, stacking them one on top of another, and we saw a hearse come in and then some people took off the top of a grave and lowered a coffin in and put the top back on. Around the entire graveyard there was a yellow wall and then the city, which means some crumbling buildings with ghostlike clothes hanging out on the balcony. Like I said, it seemed like a graveyard of a graveyard, like we were walking through some type of ruin or movie set. And then we played around and did our homework under a tree and then went home. Listen, it was all very strange, and I can’t really express it. I think the wind’s blowing in something weird. At dinner I thought I would explode. Now I am watching Madmen with a friend, succumbing to capitalism and the world I know how to maneuver, and can succeed in overwhelming by only knowing how to maneuver it, without actually understanding it.

 

Conclusion: I feel a little like Satan’s got me.

Santiago and Paris … Rant about my love/hate relationship with Cuba

This weekend two things happened that forced me to de- and re-construct life in Cuba:

 

1. I took a trip to Santiago de Cuba (the eastern tip of the island, opposite extreme of La Habana) with the Harvard University Cuba program, funded by Mr. H.

 

2. One of my American friends also studying here came back to Cuba, after leaving to go to Paris for two weeks.

 

Santiago –

 

Fantastic! Lovely city, lovely itinerary, lovely to get out of Havana for a while and be a legitimate tourist. Our schedule was pretty packed, but my favorite parts of the trip were when we visited the house of a former propaganda poster artist Goire and then the house of a Santeria priest in El Cobre. At the poster artist’s house we got to look through his entire collection of posters, from the 70s to the present, including some that were going to be exhibited in the coming December. The historical ones were very cool, and I purchased two from the 70s Zafra for a pretty good price (American capitalism speaking). The Santeria priest’s house was painted on all walls inside and out with images from his dreams, mostly with saints doing weird things and runaway slaves (it was called the “casa del Cimarrón” or house of the runaway slave) and stuff, and there were also figures and little sculpture things around the walls integrated into the paintings of Cuban Orishas, and other weird stuff hanging from the wall. We also saw his altar, where he communicates with the dead, which was pretty cool too, I guess.

 

Although all the different things we saw were very interesting, what struck me most emotionally about the trip was the amount of guilt I felt partaking in all the activities, and more than anything, in eating the meals. The trip was Harvard funded, which basically meant that we did everything the touristy way—using goods and services in the CUC economy and staying away from the Cuban peso ones (which are usually about 20 fold cheaper and also much lower quality).  The Cuban double economy, for the past two months, had been an unfortunate situation that I could avoid if I wished by going to mostly Cuban places, succumbing to use CUC (the US dollar equivalent) only for necessities like internet, dance classes and entrance into clubs, and the occasional treat ($2 earrings or this delicious boxed mango juice). Mostly, however, being the cheap Chinese person I am, I tried to use government-subsidized goods as much as I could. I used the guaguas (big public buses), whichs cost only 40 cents Cuban pesos (about 2 cents USD), I ate street pizza and 1 peso ice cream and shopped at the cheap agros. Even though I had the funds to use tourist taxis or eat good food, it felt a little snobby to do so and live in this country, especially because so many of those things are completely inaccessible to most Cubans.

 

Anyways, while I was in Santiago, I thought about the last time I had participated in a Harvard funded activity, which was orientation week. Obviously, back then, I knew nothing about Cuba, and didn’t really understand that I was participating in very touristy, inaccessible-to-most-Cubans activities. I remember thinking that the $5 meals we were getting were so cheap for the amount and quality of food we got, that all the rumors I had heard about food shortages in Cuba were completely unfounded because look—there I was, eating a huge plate of shrimp and vegetables and tropical fruit, all for less than $10! Based on the laws of supply and demand, there couldn’t be a food shortage.

 

I had forgotten, then, of course, that the laws of supply and demand don’t really hold if you’re dealing with a socialist economy. After two months of eating rice, beans, street pizza, canned vegetables, and guava almost every day, after thinking that microwaved tomatoes with leftover rice and beans was the most delicious thing in the world (tomatoes!), after rejoicing at the appearance of lettuce at the agro markets, I learned that my first week here was spent as a tourist passing through Cuba, not as a student living here. Even as a student, my life is significantly better than that of a Cuban. I live in a decent house with a bed and running lukewarm (sometimes hot) water, I always have breakfast and lunch provided, I have bastante dinero. $5 for a plate of food seems cheap, but for a Cuban who makes less than $40 a month, it’s quite a lot. Luckily, there’s a whole other economy for Cubans, one in which you can buy a large plate of food for 50 cents (it will be rice, beans, and pork, but its still food), where you pay next to nothing for healthcare and medicine, where you are guaranteed housing even if it means living with 3 generations under the same roof.

 

Our first meal out in Santiago, we ate at the top of a fancy hotel. I shared a plate of shrimp with a friend (I hadn’t eaten any type of meat but chicken and pork for two months) and we each had a salad and mango juice, for about $10 each. Even though I knew Harvard was paying for it, I was overwhelmed by an enormous sense of guilt. I could buy 20 pizzas (20 lunches!) for the same amount of money. I looked over at the next table where three foreigners (European-looking) were having lunch. On their table were three plates of lobster, one plate of shrimp, and two plates of tomatoes. I remembered from the menu that the lobster was $25. I felt a little sick. Lobster is prohibited in Cuba, it is illegal to have lobster, except in government approved places like the one we were at. Even if it weren’t, that meal for three cost more than two months salary of an economics professor (one of the higher paid jobs in Cuba). No, normal people in this country will stick to 1 peso (about 5 cents) fritura sandwiches (a piece of fried dough inside a bun) or 10 peso hot dogs for their daily calories.

 

Anyhow, the point of all this is that my trip to Santiago this weekend, funded by Mr. H, made me really disgusted at the Cuban double economy system, its separation of the country into a world of foreign privilege and internal resolviendo (making things work), and the pretty lie that it creates for tourists passing through the country. It also made me very frustrated in my own position here as a student, stuck uncomfortably in between these two worlds, trying at once to immerse myself in the real Cuba but being forced to straddle two types of snobbiness (because isn’t it snobby too to insist in subsidized prices when you have the funds to contribute to the other?) in my semi-residency.

 

I’m sorry this has all been very long and not too organized and coherent, I will now move onto Paris.

 

Paris—

 

My friend had been in Cuba for about 2 months, like me, and then went to Paris for two weeks. He got back last night. He could not stop talking about the delicious food. He has a tummy ache now from the tap water and street pan con croqueta. He said that the first thing he noticed about Paris was how everything, everyone, just screamed money, the chase for money and the objects that money can buy.

Compared to Paris, Cuba seems suddenly insanely poor, as in poverty. Of course, this is also Cuba as-is, not Cuba with all the novelty of discovery, that overshadows some things when you first arrive. Funnily enough, one doesn’t really notice it just living here. There isn’t very much variety in food, but we get our nutrients and calories. Our room might be small and a little worn down, but its totally livable. The sidewalks might have more cracks and holes than uncracks and unholes, but they’re walkable.

 

This is what I felt after talking to my Paris-vacation friend: I’m scared that when I leave this country, I will forget what it is like to be here. I am scared that I will forget that I don’t need thousands of different foods available readily, that I don’t need fancy clothes or flat sidewalks, hot water, shower heads, or functional doors, that I lived happily with much less consumption (but much more sunshine). I’m also scared that I will forget when I go to the super market and buy fish and beef and peppers and broccoli in my functional car with my credit card, that my consumption, comfort, and convenience is based heavily on the exploitation and suffering of people I can’t see. I am also scared to go back to a culture where people avoid looking at other people on the streets, and don’t dance! I know I have 6 weeks left in this country, but thinking about the outside world, so different, is making me miss it a lot already. Cuba, ya te extraño!

 

*Disclaimer 1: Most of the things I have written here are based on my experience in La Habana, the most capitalist and wealthy part of Cuba. The economic situation in the countryside is much worse.

 

**Disclaimer 2: Many Cubans in Havana and some other places have additional income (in CUC) through things like black market negotiations, jineaterismo, work in the tourist industry, and relatives in Miami.

Villa El Salvador

Villa El Salvador is a district in the outskirts of Lima, not too far from the center but very different. It is a super-organized, super-planned city (unlike much of the rest of Lima), it is a socialist/communist oasis in the middle of a very market-oriented country, and it is much poorer than other parts of Lima, like the place I am living, Miraflores–a prime example of the socioeconomic disparities in Peru. But it is also much better off than some of its neighbors, because of, according to residents, the strong ideology of community, and strong central planning. Really, to me, it seemed like a place full of promise, with bustling business–perhaps more “developed” than my abuelita’s pueblo in China. The biggest problem seems to be the dry climate–most of the land is very dry, almost beach-like, so that the whole place is dusty, and agriculture is difficult. But really, it cannot be written off simply as a place brimming with poverty, or as a place that is truly developing and getting richer. Just as the difference between Lima Lima and Villa El Salvador is drastic and extremely tangible, the difference between the bustling mercado of Villa El Salvador–including the industrial zone, where some very high-end furniture is produced and sold–and the outskirts, where houses are half-built and look abandoned (though they are apparently not) is also very drastic. This picture above is of the graveyard of Villa El Salvador, overlooking the city itself. Near the graveyard, many families from the selva or sierra (which are areas that are economically much worse off) have moved in and set up camp in very floppy shacks made out of a cheap, thin material made from bamboo, because no one will tell them to leave in the graveyard. The picture below is of “El Pintor”, the man families go to to paint the graves of their loved ones, painting a new grave.

el pintor