Travelling Around Britain and the World

Saturday, 21 March 2020

Cuba (7): Santa Clara and Che Guevara

A Memorial to a Flawed Hero


Breakfast Amusements


Cuba
Cuba’s default breakfast is a big plate of fruit followed by an omelette, toast and jam.

The jam is resistible. It is red, though nothing in the flavour suggests red fruit – or any fruit at all – and is solid enough to be carved. The fresh fruit, though, is excellent, a joy every morning, while the omelette is negotiable.

Breakfast was served by Maydi’s gofer and this morning our Swedish neighbour asked for a boiled egg instead of an omelette. The gofer nodded. ‘Hard boiled,’ our Swedish friend continued, ‘very hard boiled.’ ‘How many?’ asked the gofer. ‘Seven.’ ‘Seven?’ she replied thinking she had misheard. ‘Seven,’ he repeated firmly, holding up seven fingers. She looked surprised, turned and headed downstairs to the kitchen.

I waited a little then ventured ‘Do you really want seven?’ ‘Yes’ he said, I like eggs very hard boiled.’ ‘One egg boiled for seven minutes?’ He looked at me like I was being obtuse. ‘Of course.’ ‘I think,’ I suggested, ‘you have just ordered seven eggs.’ ‘No!’ ‘Yes, that’s why she looked so surprised.’

After a moment's thought he shook his head, pushed back his chair and headed for the kitchen. Minutes later laughter could be heard from below as light dawned. English is the lingua franca of the tourist trade, sometimes as a legacy of the British Empire, more often under the influence of Hollywood. It is convenient for English speakers, though it makes us lazy; we are notoriously poor at learning languages. It can also lead to amusing misunderstandings.

Today we travel from Trinidad on the south coast, north to Santa Clara then northwest to Jibacoa on the coast just west of Matanzas

North to Santa Clara

A driver turned up precisely on time at 9 o’clock. He had a shiny new Hyundai and wore a mask and plastic gloves so as not to catch any nasty diseases from us. Even from our tourist bubble we had seen the world beginning to change; Covid behaviours that would become commonplace were new and, I thought, a touch comical. I was wrong about that.

Our Well Protected Driver

We were headed for a seaside resort on the north coast, an hour from Havana, but with a detour to the mausoleum of Che Guevara in Santa Clara on the way.

Santa Clara is 100 km north of Trinidad, a journey scheduled for 2 hours on the slow and sometimes busy road around the Sierra Escambray. Our first hold-up was in Trinidad as one the queues which are a feature of Cuban life was spilling onto the road. I do not know what they were hoping to buy, but we had heard that soap was currently in short supply. The queues are a consequence of the American ‘bloqueo’ - a subject I will return to next post.

Queue for something in Trinidad

We had expected driving round the Sierra to be scenic, but the mountains were always too far away and usually screened by roadside vegetation.

A Less than thrilling picture of the Sierra Escambray

The road was in good condition, though at times narrow and, to start with, busy with buses and lorries. The countryside looked poor, scrubland with occasionally fields prepared for planting and some sugar cane and manioc.

Ploughed fields north of Trinidad

We overtook one ox-cart, several tractors and many horse-drawn vehicles. There were also cars and vans, and buses apparently converted from army trucks, the windows well above passenger head height.

Driving north from Trinidad

There were a few villages, straggles of poor dwellings….

Village south of Manicaragua

...and a shop without a queue – perhaps they had nothing to sell.

Village shop, south of Manicaragua

An hour and a quarter into the journey we reached Manicaragua, the first small town we had encountered.

Manicaragua

It looked a little more prosperous than the surrounding countryside….

Manicaragua

…as did much of the last part of the journey to Santa Clara.

Santa Clara


Santa Clara
Santa Clara was founded in 1689 by two extended local families and 37 former citizens of San Juan de los Remedios which lies on the coast to the north. Remedios was continually being ravaged by pirates and the 37 wanted a quieter life. Santa Clara outgrew Remedios long ago and is now the fifth biggest city in Cuba with a population of some 250,000.

In 1958 Santa Clara was the scene of the final battle of the Cuban revolution. After preliminary skirmishes two columns led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos advanced on the city on the morning of the 31st of December. The defence was chaotic and brief, government forces capitulating by mid-afternoon. Twelve hours later Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba allowing Fidel Castro to enter Havana and assume the presidency.

We saw almost nothing of the city. Our driver took us west round the efficient circunvalación to the Che Guevara Mausoleum which lies just a just a couple of hundred metres inside the ring-road.

The Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex

The Sculptural Complex is a large concrete plinth, with a statue of the great man on a column, a bas relief of him in action and three stones, two inscribed with Guevara’s credo, and a third with more words than I care to translate.

The Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex, Santa Clara

The statue is described as being 7m high, but I suspect that includes the column. The words underneath are Hasta la victoria siempre (‘Ever onward to victory’ – Spanish word order can sometimes appear eccentric to the anglophone).

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, Santa Clara

The bas relief shows the advance of Guevara’s column on Santa Clara.

Bas relief, Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Park

The inscription in the corner translates as ‘Commander Ernesto Guevara was assigned the mission of leading a column of rebels from the Sierra Maestra to the province of Las Villas.’

Three inscribed blocks are, I feel, too much writing for a ‘sculptural complex’ but then Fidel Castro was famous for his immensely long speeches, so perhaps that is the Cuban way. Below is the middle-sized block…

The medium sized inscription Ernesto Guevara Sculptural Complex, Santa Clara

…which roughly translates as ‘I feel so much a patriot of Latin America, of every Latin American country, that whenever necessary, I would willingly give my life for the liberation of any Latin American country, asking nothing, exempting nothing and exploiting no one.’ 

Che Guevara: A Very Brief Biography

Born in Rosaria, Argentina, in 1928 Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara was from a comfortably-off middle class family with leftist inclinations.

Che as a medical student in 1950
Photo in the Public Domain, sourced from  Wikipedia

In 1948 he entered the University of Buenos Aires as a medical student and played rugby for the Club Universitario de Buenos Aires (prophetically known as CUBA).

During his student years he took two long motorcycle trips through South America. Everywhere he saw poverty, hunger and disease caused by the greed of the powerful, and came to view Latin America as a single entity in need of a continent-wide revolution.

He qualified as a doctor in 1953, and in 1954 went to Guatemala where the democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz’s land reform programme had transferred unused land from the American United Fruit Company to peasant farmers. In May Árbenz was replaced by the vicious authoritarian Castillo Armas in a coup organised for the United Fruit Company by the CIA. Guevara concluded that it was no co-incidence that Allen Dulles, the director of the CIA, was also on the board of the United Fruit Company. Wanting to fight on with the Communist youth militia, Guevara was disappointed when Árbenz bowed to the inevitable and capitulated.

Che in Cuba, 1958
Photo in Public Domain, sourced from Wikipedia

He escaped to Mexico City and was working as a doctor when he was introduced to the Castro brothers. Cuba’s President Batista was another repressive leader controlled by US business interests and Guevara agreed to help the Castros overthrow him. He participated in guerrilla training, intending to be their combat medic.

In the event his charisma, physical strength and courage made him much more than that. After the revolution he became Fidel Castro’s de facto Number 2, travelling widely to present the Cuban case to world leaders.

Guevara was a revolutionary not an administrator, so in early 1965 he left Cuba for the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) with a small Cuban force, offering his experience and expertise to the Marxist Simba movement. By November he had concluded that the rebel leaders were corrupt and the venture a failure. He wrote: ‘we cannot liberate, all by ourselves, a country that does not want to fight’

Che in Bolivia, photo in Public Domain sourced from Wikipedia

A year later he was in Bolivia, hoping to foment a pan-Latin American Marxist Revolution. However, expected support from local dissidents did not materialise and nor did help from the Bolivian Communist Party which Guevara described as "distrustful, disloyal and stupid". His well-equipped guerrilla force of some 50 men scored several early successes but he was unable to recruit from among the local inhabitants, many preferring to become government informants.

On the 8th of October 1967 Bolivian forces surrounded Guevarra’s encampment and in the following action he was wounded and captured. The next day he was murdered – some called it an execution – and later buried in an unmarked grave.

Once dead ‘Che’ was a martyr, and lived on as a poster boy for every student’s wall.

The poster on our spare bedroom wall!

The Che Guevara Mausoleum and Museum

The sculptural complex sits on the top of a low hill. Round the back is the entrance to the Museum and Mausoleum which are beneath the concrete plinth. We were unsure whether it was open to all or if we needed tickets, but when the door opened to admit a waiting group, we tagged on behind.

The mausoleum, to the left is dark and sombre.

In July 1997 after a year’s searching near the Bolivian town of Vallegrande, Cuban geologists and Argentine forensic anthropologists discovered two graves containing seven bodies. Dental records positively identified one body as that of Che Guevara. On 17 October 1997, Guevara's remains, along with those of six of his fellow combatants, were laid to rest with full military honours in this purpose-built mausoleum. Fidel Castro lit the eternal flame.

We stood among the graves in silence for a moment.

To the right is the museum. It tells the story of Guevara's life with many photographs and documents and a sprinkling of objects he used – his water bottle, his pipe, his compass etc. Neither the mausoleum nor the museum permitted photographs.

Over the road from the museum/mausoleum is a neatly tended, tiered graveyard and we walk round reading the names and dates. Most were of those who died during the revolution, but there were more recent burials too as the revolutionary generation passes quietly on. Nobody stopped me taking photographs there, but I have none. Oh, well.

On to Jibacoa

Leaving the complex we returned to the circunvalación and took the link road to the A1 Autopista Nacional which runs for 360 km down the island's spine southeast from Havana. It is nor particularly impressive or well-made as such roads go, but it is more than sufficient for the meagre traffic.

The A1, Autopista Nacional

Our driver stopped for lunch at a service station. He had a sandwich while we waited patiently for the coffee machine to be mended. Our table had a good view of the television where Covid was receiving extensive coverage. After filmed reports from China and Europe a Cuban minister appeared to explain the local measures. Spanish is easy when it is a matter of reading the captions, but when anyone speaks we quickly become lost.

Back on the road we passed the junction where we had turned south to Cienfuegos three days ago, and 30 km later swung north towards Matanzas. We passed through much richer agricultural land than in the morning with fields of sugar cane, maize, oranges and bananas.

We hit the coast at Matanzas, known as the home of the rumba, but more obviously to us the home of tank farms and other oil installations. 35 km further east is Playa de Jibacoa and the Memories Resort where we were originally scheduled to stay three nights, but it would now be two as Covid was shutting down European airlines.

Memories, Jibacoa and Che (again)

The next post will be about the Memories resort – it will be a short one – but our stay gave us time to think about what we had seen. And here are some thoughts.

Lynne meditating beside the sea

The student accommodation of my youth, basic as it usually was, was often adorned with a poster of Che Guevara. I never had one then, but I have one now, so was Che a real hero?

He was certainly a man of great charisma and energy and he was totally sincere in his belief that Marxist revolution was the only way to improve the lot of the common people. But apart from Cuba, revolutionary success eluded him. And maybe he had a death wish. When his Congo venture was failing, he had to be persuaded from sending his Cuban troops home and staying on alone to fight to the death. And fight to the death was what he did in Bolivia.

In Cuba he had turned up with the Castros and a small force and recruited a large one. Did this experience lead him to believe that successful revolutions needed only a charismatic leader and a small force prepared to grow.?

It worked once, but he had been accompanied the Castro brothers, Cubans who knew their country. How did this middle-class Argentinian white boy look to Congolese villagers or Bolivian peasants when he arrived in their midst and announced he was their saviour?

The idle rich in the worker's paradise - but the idle are not that rich and the paradise is less than entirely paradisiacal

He met Juan Perón shortly after leaving the Congo. Perón’s verdict? He was an immature Utopian. Society needs Utopian thinkers, and just possibly maturity is an over-rated quality; my problem with Che Guevara is that he was an immature Utopian with a gun.You don't make people better by shooting them.

So, no hero then, but will I take down my poster? No I won't, Guevara, who died in 1967 symbolises the spirit of 1968. I was an 18-year-old starting University in September 1968. I knew it was a special time, but I did not really appreciate it. Perhaps the poster is a mild reproach to my younger self for not quite getting it, for being genuinely immature but not Utopian enough.

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Location: Santa Clara, Cuba

Friday, 20 March 2020

Cuba (6): Trinidad and the Valle de los Ingenios

A Valley of Sugar Mills and Slavery

Cuba

Before breakfast we harvested the ‘Covid News’ from home: worries that they might actually have the disease from some relatives, concern about working conditions being compromised from other quarters and general irritation at the consequences of unnecessary panic buying. On the other hand, our daughter had been delighted to visit her local supermarket to find that, although they had no bread, brioche was available – I doubt Marie Antoinette would have enjoyed the irony.

We breakfasted on omelettes and fruit in the company of Maidy’s other four guests - the Swedes were fine, the British man who has been ill was apprehensive about today’s clinic visit and was still fretting about having no flight home.

At the time appointed by our itinerary a young man came to the door and introduced himself as Luharki, our guide for the day. We set off on what we soon discovered was a walking tour of Trinidad covering very much the same ground as our self-guided tour yesterday – that was not on the itinerary. A telephone call to the office clarified the situation – Luharki had been misinformed - and very soon we were in a taxi setting out on the short journey to the Valle de los Ingenios, which, along with Trinidad’s old town, makes up the local UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Trinidad is on Cuba's southern (Caribbean) coast

If panic buying was becoming a problem at home, it is endemic in Cuba. The USA will not trade with the island, and uses its economic power to dissuade others. The result is a rolling series of shortages. Soap, we had been told, was a current problem, though I cannot be sure it was the cause of the queue we passed as we left Trinidad.

Queue outside a shop, Trinidad

Valle de los Ingenios

Valle de los Ingenios (Valley of the Sugar Mills) is actually three linked valleys some 10km north of Trinidad. For a 100 years until the late 19th century Cuba was the world’s largest sugar producer and these valleys were a major production area. At the height of the boom they were home to over 50 sugar mills.

Our first stop was a viewpoint overlooking the valley. Luharki was keen that we should have a picture with us marring the view….

Valle de los Ingenios, Trinidad

….but I took several more on a small scale. There is still sugar here, though relatively little, and the valley hardly looks like a hive of activity.

Valle de los Ingenios, Trinidad

San Isidro de los Destiladeros

Leaving the mirador we drove a short distance to the ruins of the San Isidro de los Destiladeros estate.

The Big House

The estate owners lived in some style and comfort…

The house, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

…though the house is in a poor state outside and in.

The remains of stucco decorations, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

The Tower

Bell towers were a feature of many estates and at San Isidro the tower is barely 50m from the house.

The Tower, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

A bell marked the beginning and end of the working day and, if the estate owner was particularly devout, the times of the Angelus. It could be used as an alarm in the case of fire or an escaping slave and the tower provided an excellent perch for the overseers to spy on the slaves at work.

The Trapiche

A trapiche is a mill of three horizontal rollers, originally designed for crushing olives. The Spanish brought them to the Caribbean and adapted them for crushing sugar cane. Originally turned by a donkey, from 1820 the San Isidro trapiche was steam driven.

All that remains of the San Isidro trapiche

Only some brickwork survives, but we will see an intact trapiche later.

The Jamaican Train

The next stage in the process was to remove the water from the juice. In the 19th century, this was done in a ‘Jamaican Train’, a series of kettles each set over its own fire looking, with a bit of imagination, like a row of train carriages.  The juice was partly evaporated in the largest kettle, then transferred to the next smaller kettle and on to progressively smaller kettles (there seem to be 8 at San Isidro) as the volume of liquid decreased. It was a continuous process, all the kettles being used simultaneously, but even so it was slow and inefficient, some juice being lost every time the liquid was poured, by hand, from one pot to the next. It was also extremely dangerous for the workers, but being slaves, they had no control over where they worked.

The Jamaican Train, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

The indigenous Cubans, Luharki told us, were all but wiped out by various common European maladies to which they had no resistance. The survivors were enslaved in the nascent sugar industry but proved too easy to work to death, so the plantation owners looked to Africa as a source of more robust slaves. Luharki has traced his forbears back to the Congo, which accounts for his fore-name and the similar name of his sister – who we had encountered her earlier while walking to the taxi rank. His great-great-grandmother (I think) had been raped by a white overseer and Luharki described himself as a mulatto, a word which has largely gone out of use and I would have otherwise avoided. The slave trade was abolished in the Spanish Empire in 1820, but that did nothing for those already enslaved, the practice continuing in Cuba for another 60 years

Luharki explains his ancestry beside the Jamaican Train

Cuban Demographics

Cuba's multi-ethnic population reflects its history. Intermarriage between different groups was and is widespread, and there are huge discrepancies in reports of the country's racial composition. The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami determined that 62% of Cubans are black, the 2002 Cuban census found that 65% are white. They may both be right, it depends on how you define ‘black’ and ‘white’.

A 2014 study published in Genetics* found that the maternal lineages of Cubans were 39% African, 35% Indigenous Cuban and 26% European, while male lineages were 82% European and 18% African. This is hardly surprising, those who have the power plant their seed widely, whether it is welcomed or not. This makes Luharki’s story fairly typical; by my calculation from the above, European male lineage and African maternal lineage is the background of 32%, Cuba’s largest group, while only 5% have an African paternal and a European maternal lineage. It really is all about power, and does not reflect well on white males.

Some Trees

Many trees stood among the crumbling stonework. Among them, a ceiba (kapok) tree – a Cuba native and the tree beneath which Havana was founded, …

Ceiba Tree, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

…and a Crescentia.

Crescentia Tree, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

The huge round fruit are not good to eat, but have traditionally been turned into cups and bowls, or maracas.

Crescentia Fruit, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

Purge House and Mill and the ‘Barracks’

Beyond the Jamaican Train was the Purge House and the ‘Purge Bar Mill’. I don’t know exactly what happened here – the details of 19th century sugar production required more ferreting than they are worth – but the crystalised concentrate spent some time in the purge house, of which only a small section of wall survives, before being milled. The brick base where a donkey plodded in circles driving the mill can still be seen.

Purging Mill base, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

The Barracones (Barracks), the slaves’ quarters, were as far away from the house as possible. The owners preferred to live by the industrial part of their mill rather than beside the people who worked it. The mill-owner, in his leisure time, and his wife and children at all times could not to see the people they had enslaved, perhaps it made their consciences easier.

Remains of the Barracones, San Isidro de los Destiladeros

In 2016 we visited Bristol. The elegant 18th century residence of John Pinney is now Bristol’s Georgian House Museum. Pinney’s wealth came from 15 years as a sugar planter in the Caribbean. He wrote that when he first arrived, he was uneasy about buying and selling human beings, but reasoned that if God had not intended these people to have been used as slaves then surely he would send a sign. Signs are hard to see when your victims are hidden away, and even harder when you are blinded by the prospect of wealth beyond imagining. And what applies to Pinney, applies in the Valle de los Ingenios.

Manaca Iznaga

A couple of kilometres down the road, Manaca Iznaga is another old sugar estate which offers a more dramatic if less informative visit.

The Tower

The tower here is 47m high – 6 storeys compared to San Isidro’s 3 – the bell has been removed, but the ladders are still in place so it can be climbed.

Tower, Manaca Iznaga

From the top there is a fine view over the valley….

Vale de los Ingenios

…and the village that has grown up around the estate. Part of the original slave quarters are allegedly still occupied, though in poor condition; they do not feature in my photograph. The villagers attempt to make some money by selling handicrafts – embroidered cloths and aprons – to visitors was, today at least, resulting in slim pickings. As the picture shows there are many vendors, but few visitors. We did our bit by making a purchase.

Manaca Iznaga village

There is also a good view of the owner’s house, always grander than San Isidro and now in much better condition – it currently functions as a restaurant.

The 'Big House', Manaca Iznaga

Rum

Descending the stairs and entering the house ...

Inside the house, Manaca Iznaga

…I took the opportunity to buy some rum to take home; shops are not easy to spot in Cuba, and many are not open to foreigners. The three-year-old white rum has no great personality but provides the alcoholic backbone to most of the cocktails that dominate the drinks menu in Cuban bars and restaurants. The seven-year-old is serious and complex with (according to Tesco’s) a palate of honey, vanilla, chocolate, cocoa, sweet tobacco, dry fruits and spicy notes. Fortunately, it is widely available (if rather more expensive) in the UK; the bottle in the picture is from Morrison’s (also available at Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and specialist shops) as the one I bought at Manaca Inzaga swiftly went the way all good bottles go. My attempts at making daquiris have been less successful, so that is still the original bottle of three-year-old.

Havana Rum, back home

Trapiche

Behind the house is a trapiche in good working order, though I am not sure why the chairs are set out as though milling was a spectator sport. We pushed it round a couple of times – a job originally thought suitable for a donkey.

Trapiche, Manaca Iznaga

A Glass of Sugar Cane Juice

As we left, we passed a stall selling the juice from freshly crushed sugar cane – they had a little trapiche. Sugar cane provides a surprisingly refreshing drink on a hot day, and we have often stopped at such stalls in India. Hygiene standards are noticeably higher in Cuba – not that we have ever had a problem from an Indian stall – but the Indians always fold a small lemon into the shattered cane on the second pass. The lack of acidity here made the drink rather cloying. Each glass came with a little stick of sugar cane. You can chew the fibrous cane if you want, but Lynne lobbed hers at a small dog standing expectantly a few feet away and instantly made a friend.

A glass of sugar cane juice, Manaca Iznaga

Back in Trinidad

Our half-day tour included lunch which we had expected to be in the Valle de les Ingenios, but turned out to be back in Trinidad.

Lunch in the Colonial Restaurant

The Colonial Restaurant is, predictably, in a colonial mansion in Trinidad’s old town. With a German tour party and a few others, we sat below stucco decorations in the marble floored dining room while the previous owners looked down their noses at us.

The Colonial Restaurant, Trindad

The food was entirely acceptable, if not particularly exciting, which is par for the course in Cuba. A green salad with a pleasant dressing was followed by a choice of main courses, though we both went for prawns. They came still in their shells, which always makes them taste better, and in a sauce, which made the meal enjoyably messy. Rice and potatoes were the only accompaniment, which was more carbohydrate than we needed. The dessert was an ice-cream, coloured red but of no discernible flavour, perked up with a spoonful of honey. The inevitable band played cheerful Cuban music.

Luharki lingered to ensure our order had been taken and reappeared at the end of the meal to check all was well. We said our goodbyes and wished him well.

The Rest of the Day

After a large lunch we made our way back to the B&B where we met the other British guest. He was delighted to tell us that he had a confirmed flight home for tomorrow, BA/Iberia via Madrid, which sounded much better than Aeroflot via Moscow a week later.

After a rest we made our way out for a walk…

Trinidad, Old Town

…which ended in our favourite café for a late afternoon cocktail. I seemed to have become stuck on daiquiris, but Lynne was more adventurous choosing a canchanchara. Not unrelated to a daiquiri it is made from a rougher distillate related to the Brazilian cachaça, the usual lime juice and honey instead of sugar. Served in a ceramic pot, it has more bite than a regular daiquiri. I resolved to get out of my rut.

A canchanchara and a daiquiri, Jazz Café, Trinidad

We fell into conversation with a young Frenchwoman who had been staying with friends in a more remote, wifi-free region, and was only now trying to organise a flight home before the money ran out. Like us, she had discovered Cuban ATMs did not like her cards and only had the cash she brought with her. We wished her luck, unfortunately it was all we had to offer.

Later we decided we could not a manage a full dinner, so we took another walk …

Trinidad, Old Town

…to have a final look at the charms of Trinidad’s old town before dining on cup-a-soups and peanuts and then sat in out atrium with a book.

Trinidad, Old Town

*Cuba: Exploring the History of Admixture and the Genetic Basis of Pigmentation Using Autosomal and Uniparental Markers, a 2014 paper with many authors published in Genetics (a peer-reviewed academic journal). The figures I quote are rounded off from the mtDNA and Y chromosome analyses section of the report. (Click here for the full report)

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Location: Trinidad, Cuba
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