The Tiradores on Avenida G

While I was away on my hitchhiking trip, one of the American study abroad students got hit by some flying sperm on Avenida G.

 

In the past few weeks, Cuba had started to lose some of its magical socialist utopia vibe. For the majority of the past three months, I constantly gushed about the wonderful things about this country that were so unexpected and backwards from the rest of the world (for ex. Cuba’s two selling points education and healthcare), and one of them was safety. Every time I walked home alone with my laptop on my back at midnight (clearly a muggable foreigner), I marveled at the low crime rates and public safety. In no other capital city in the world would I feel so safe walking alone at night as in Havana.

 

About three weeks ago, this bubble of safety popped a little. One of the girls in our program was robbed at knifepoint a block away from our house. It was 2:30am, she was alone, and there aren’t really streetlights in our area. She didn’t lose too much of great value (except for a Marx-Engels reader!) and was fine, but we were all a little shaken up by the news, and started being more careful about things like that.

 

Other things started to happen too. Another girl got hit by a car on her way to school. (She was bruised but okay). Two girls got roofied at a club (turns out they had willingly accepted drugs, but hadn’t known they were roofies—they were okay too, no worries). Anyways, the point is, although everyone was mostly fine after all these incidents, they happened pretty close to each other in time-space, and it seemed like for a while that crazy things were just happening to the American study abroad students.

 

And then this poor girl got hit by flying sperm on her way to class.

 

Let me explain. There is a big sprawling avenue that leads to the Art and Letters Faculty of the University of Havana called Avenida de los presidentes, or Avenida G. It’s got a big grassy middle section, and there’s a point right before it gets to the university where there’s a rotunda/oval thing with a monument/statue in the middle, and the cars drive around it. By the sidewalk, there are cliffs with trees and buildings growing off of it, about 20 feet tall. This area—where the road curves so it’s hard to see the oncoming cars (and thus dangerous to walk in the street) and the sidewalk comes right to the edge of the cliffs—is staked out by some men who stand behind trees or bushes and masturbate to the women walking by underneath. Often, passing the area, one hears hisses or whistles, and if one is inexperienced enough to turn her head, she will see one of these sick men, grinning at her and yanking their thing.

 

We had known about them for a while, but until the incident with the American girl we always thought they were just sickos who got off in public. Turns out, they have an even more specific aim—their public masturbation is actually a game of target shooting. We told the story to one of the Cuban women who work in our house. She was unsurprised. Apparently most habaneros know about them and their special spot. They’re called “tiradores” (shooters/throwers) and they pay off the cops so that they can play their yank and shoot game in peace.

 

Although I laughed for a week about this, it’s a real threat. Every time I walk to Spanish class and pass that place, I make sure to walk as far from the cliffs as I possibly can, even if it means walking in the middle of the street. For some reason, the idea of getting hit by a car is much more pleasant than that of being hit by some flying sperm.

Homesick

I am sick again, boo. How I managed to get a cough in this suffocating heat is beyond me; I guess I just have mad abilities.

Anyways, this whole being sick thing has made me miss some things about America. A few days ago, an economist came to talk to us as part of a seminar series, and kept on telling us about how Cuba’s economic problems are not about money, but supply of goods and productivity. I am realizing this more and more with every passing day. Even though I have the money to splurge on goods that I might want (for example, vegetables, fruits, food that isn’t greasy, cough syrup, ginger, honey, tea), these things are either non-existent in the country, or a hassle to find. Last time I went out looking for a specific thing (face towel), it took me about a week to find it. Of course, I wasn’t searching every second of that week, but with the scorching sun and crowded public transport, working up the energy to go out and look is a hurdle in and of itself.

So maybe I could find some mini green peppers or white tomatoes at the agro 5 blocks away, but in my slightly grumpy sick state, I can’t get the ganas to walk over there and look. Furthermore, going to that agro is extra stressful because it is the worst place for catcalling—every time I go there are yells of “China” from all directions, vendors and buyers both, so that I must maneuver the stands ciega, sorda, muda like the Shakira song, which makes me feel both uncomfortable and bitchy. No, the task of leaving the house into the suffocating, whistle-filled streets is a daunting one indeed.

This is what I would like to do: drive to the grocery store, buy some tea, ginger, and a salad, or chicken noodle soup, some robitussin, crawl into bed with a blanket and two or three pillows, and watch Friends on Youtube. I’d like to do this without walking through groups of men who stop their conversations to stare and say things in Japanese to me, without soaking my Tshirt through with sweat, and without worrying about putting SPF 60 sunscreen on the back of my neck.

Anyways, this post has turned into a major bitch-session, which makes everything sound worse than it really is. I still love Cuba, and am very happy to be here. I’m just a little annoyed that I’m sick, and a little bitter that mango season is over, because mangoes were an important source of happiness.

FIDEL BLOCKS SKYPE

And such is life in Cuba. One day, I sign on successfully onto Skype, and email my parents to meet me on Skype the next day at 5. The next day at 5, for half an hour I fail to connect, wasting 3 precious dollars of internet. A week later, I hear through the grapevine that Skype, and all other international internet telecommunication, has been officially blocked by the Cuban government. Now, the only way to hear the voices of my friends and family is to call by phone, which costs $3 a minute (even more ridiculous than internet).  I guess I will just wait 4 months.

Though scarily anticlimactic that quiet Sunday afternoon I first arrived, I have now realized that Cuba is the realization of my anachronistic and naïve childhood utopia—a culturally preserved, insulated island, locked by the soft and terrible waves of la mar and the US embargo, undistorted by the hurtling marathon of technology and telecommunication in the information age. I can’t skype my family, and I have to use a paper Spanish-English dictionary, but I can eat mangos every day, I can walk slowly and be late to everything (except class), I can watch TV without being bombarded by advertisements, I can read Marx leisurely in the sun. I am liberated from internet addiction: from reading about the world’s biggest potato or learning how to spell all the countries of Africa, not because I want to, but because it is better than tearing myself away from the digitally accessible world and facing the much less manageable present reality. I am forced into life—tangible life, flesh and concrete, salt and sun—because it is made so much harder here to hide in images of life without Youtube and Google.

But Cuba is not a utopia, because though Cuban people can live in Cuba and Cuba only, Cuba must live in the world. Mangos are plentiful, but other food is not.  Communicating with the outside world is expensive and difficult. There is a shortage of transportation. There is a shortage of toilet paper. There is a shortage of many other things too. There are multiple springs sticking out of my mattress, my toilet only flushes half of the time, and my bedroom light stopped working. The sun is unbearably hot, my classrooms are unairconditioned and have broken chairs and no chalk, my professors are underpaid and my textbooks are unpublished or impossible to find. Daily life is not convenient—sometimes, it is difficult. Moreover, this is my experience as a rich American. What must Cubans—who have monthly salaries of at most $40—feel about living in their Caribbean socialist utopia?

But all the rum and salsa must have gotten to my head. I am rambling. Here are some pictures, if they load.

9.11.09 (That’s when I wrote it, posting a little late due to awful internet)