Mi Experiencia Cubana

2006-12-27T20:39:00.000-05:00

I haven´t started writing anything yet, but the website for my blog while traveling in South America is annainsouthamerica.blogspot.com.

Last Thoughts

2006-12-25T11:36:00.000-05:00

In blogging about my semester in Cuba, I’ve tried to stay as close to the truth the way I see it (as in, my opinion as to what is the truth) as possible. But I have left out some major thoughts on various topics. I want to write about these now that I’ve left the country. I might be acting overly-paranoid, but 100% freedom of speech does not exist in Cuba. One cannot publicly express negative opinions of the government if they want to live peacefully. Or at least, many here are too afraid of possible consequences to talk. So just to be perfectly sure I didn’t get in trouble with the Cuban government while still living in Cuba, I waited until now to express a few of my opinions.
First of all, I think the Cuban government is the most hypocritical ruler I have ever encountered. Exhibit A: Cuba has a communist economy. Cubans are paid more or less the same amount of money whether they work as a doctor, lawyer, or janitor, which is roughly 15 US dollars a month. Everyone has a chance. Except that most don’t feel they can live without cheating the system. The black market is a thriving business and almost everyone is involved it seems. I’m not saying this is anti-communist; it is simply an example of the failure of the “legal” economy in Cuba. It goes deeper than that. The government itself doesn’t believe they can survive in the economy either. The fact is, Cuba relies heavily on tourism from capitalist countries. Tourism is the primary source of revenue for the Cuban economy. In 2004, Cuba earned 2.3 billion USD from tourism, more than 1 billion more than any other revenue source. This is not Cuba’s fault. Tourists love Cuba because it is a tropical paradise that is so completely different from everywhere else in the world. The problem I have with the situation is how Cuba has reacted to their popularity. The Cuban system has begun to value its tourists so much it has assigned them a higher value. Cuban citizens have become second-class people compared to the capitalist tourists. I touched on this a little in a previous entry, when I mentioned the double currency (moneda nacional and CUC). I won’t go into it again, but just as a reminder, way more things can be bought in CUC. A more visual example is the health care system, which everyone says is superb. That’s true for the most part, but health care is significantly better for foreigners (as in, patients who pay). The hospital that specializes in foreigners looks like a state-of-the-art US hospital. In contrast, the hospitals for Cubans are scary-bad. They look like run-down barracks. The attention is still great I hear, and there are plenty of hospitals, but the difference makes it clear how the government treats guests. As another example, most hotels do not let Cubans enter, not even the lobby. Even if they can afford to stay in the hotel, they can’t. This can be explained as a way to keep guests safe from money-hounds, but it ends up discriminating against a whole country of people. I’m not sure that would fly in many places. And all this discrimination of Cubans in favor of foreigners is because tourists are the main source of Cuba’s money. Plus, this money earned seems to go to improvement of things for tourists! Go back to the hospital example for that evidence. To me, tourists are a representation of capitalism, from capitalist countries, spending money earned in a capitalist economy. Therefore, the Cuban government makes it quite obvious that it relies on capitalism, maybe even has an obsession with capitalism. And all at the expense of its people.
The economy and its effect on the people is the biggest hypocrisy of the government, but its manner in governing Cuba in general also strikes me as hypocritical. For instance, government was formed on the basis of freedom back in the late 1950s. Under Batista, there was a serious lack of freedom of all kinds, from speech to just plain living, and the revolutionaries wanted to create a better country for all Cubans. While there seems to be more freedom in Cuba these days, the government still governs in a very limiting way. Cubans can’t speak badly about Fidel or his government, so there isn’t much freedom of speech. Freedom of the press is limited too, or at least it appears limited to me. The government is never criticized in the newspapers. Instead, the front-page stories of the national newspaper are of important people who came to visit Fidel, or meetings that are happening. Privately, people say the only worthwhile use of the newspaper is as toilet paper. This is one way of keeping Cubans uninformed, and the other is the lack of internet. Cubans have intRAnet, which only goes to Cuban sites and Cuban mail, but it is supposedly impossible for the majority of Cubans to access full intERnet. Thus, one cannot reach internet news sites, nor can one research anything online. Another form of control is that the government practices ways of keeping the people mobilized. The biggest example of that right now is the practice of fumigation. This is a huge campaign to minimize Dengue fever by regularly gassing everything to kill mosquitoes. Houses are fumigated weekly, streets and cars regularly, and fumigation planes fly over the cities every now and then. Oddly, no one knows what is in the gas. First of all, this practice is horrible for people. Fumigators never wear masks and are breathing in this toxic gas all day long, every day, plus, residents have to breathe in the fumes once a week. Furthermore, the effect this will have on the environment is sure to be devastating. I’m thinking DDT. I’m not an expert, but I’m don’t believe it is effective in reducing the dengue risk because it doesn’t attack the source. All over the city, there are still tons of still-water pools that are perfect for breeding mosquitoes. I believe that this fumigation campaign is designed to mobilize the people for a random cause that will keep them preoccupied. With everyone worrying about fighting dengue, no one will think about their other problems. I don’t know, this is just my theory. My point in writing about all these lacks of freedom is, the Cuban government keeps their people under strict control by causing fear of voicing opposition and preoccupation with a worthless and harmful campaign.
These beliefs don’t lesson any of the good things I’ve written about in the past. It is only that these aspects of my life in Cuba affected me hugely, and my account of my semester is not complete without them. All in all, I had a fantastic four months. I learned a huge amount from so many different facets and I had lot of fun in the process. And I do love Cuba, even with all its problems. But hey, no one is perfect.

Cultural Education

2006-12-20T14:13:00.000-05:00

As many are probably aware, Communism, or at least Cuba´s version, has its share of problems. And it´s a large helping. But one thing I do love of about Cuba´s communism is the accessibility of cultural activities. In the US, high-quality ballet is often reserved for the upper-class, and it is almost equally as hard to secure cheap sports tickets to important games. But living here, I´ve had the amazing opportunity to see world-class cultural stuff for just a couple cents, or nothing at all. Back in October, I think, Havana hosted the National Festival of Ballet. I went to two ballets (¨Swan Lake¨ and ¨Giselle¨) danced by the National Ballet of Cuba and choreographed/directed by Alicia Alonso. The Cuban ballet is supposed to be one of the best companies in the world, and Alicia Alonso was their most famous ballerina ever. She´s now in charge of the company and even has a perfume named after her. She and the company were so awesome, I can see why people think they are the best. The tickets were about 25 cents and it was the same price for wherever one sat, seating was just determined by how soon you bought your tickets. I like that, it´s so fair. Two nights ago I saw the national ballet again, this time for the inauguration of the FEU (federacion estudiantil universitario) congress. Alicia and co. put on a medly of three ballets for the students and public, totally free. The best part was, it took place in the University stadium. The constructed a wooden stage in the middle of the soccer field and the audience said in the bleachers. Definitely an interesting experience.
Last week, Cuba hosted the International Latin American Film Festival, and the whole city practically dropped everything to watch movies all day long. Every theater in Havana played movies from 10 am to midnight. Most were latin american movies, but they had others too. I saw a really terrible american film. I also saw the worst movie I´ve ever seen in my life. It was a german movie about a guatamalan orphan who sneaks into the US, joins the army to get money for school, and then dies by friendly fire in iraq. It was probably the most ADD film ever made. But the best part of the festival was that my friend gave me an extra ticket to the inauguration of the festival. We saw this great movie called ¨El Laberinto del Fauna (the laberynth of pan)¨. It was very magical-realism, which was perfect because Gabriel Garcia Marquez came!!!!! He is one of my favorite authors ever, and he sat about 20 ft away. He actually has a brother or cousin or son or something that lives in Havana.
Other than dance and movies, I´ve gotten to see a lot of live music. I mentioned earlier that there is music EVERYWHERE, and a lot of it is live. There are also a ton of concerts, many of them free or close-to-free. My favorite group I´ve seen is Interactivo. They are considered fusion, and totally jam-bandy.
Anyway, I´ve really loved having the opportunity to see so much of Cuban culture without having to destroy my bank account. Ít´s also really nice to know that these opportunities are %100 available to cubans as well. Way to go, communism (at least in this case).

P.S., I´m leaving Cuba in 3 days to go travel around. I´m probably going to write one or two more posts on this blog about Cuba after I leave, and then I´ll continue a travel blog on another website. Stay tuned for a link.

Sports and Fights

2006-12-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

I know I haven´t even mentioned it yet, but baseball is fricken huge in Cuba. You all probably know that already. It´s like a religion. But I haven´t said anything about it because there hasn´t been any games until Sunday, which was the first game of the inter-Cuba playoffs. I went, it was super-fun. First of all, tickets are only 1 peso, about 5 cents. And every ticket is for whereever you want to sit, there aren´t more expensive seats or anything. There are nicer seats, but to get those you just have to come early. Some people get to the stadium about 5 hours earlier! But seating is still regulated, because they don´t let you sit in any of the outfield seats until the infield seats are filled. It´s kind of weird, but we are in a socialist country. So when they open these seats, there is a mad dash to get the ¨best¨seats, the ones where you might catch a homerun ball. People are literally sprinting around the stadium. Of course, the game starts about an hour or two late, but it´s worth the wait. I don´t really watch much baseball in the US, but I think comparatively, these guys were really good and the game was really exciting. The game was Havana versus Santiago, the two best teams. Havana started off really strong, but then the pitcher lost his touch, was quickly taken out, and then Santiago got 4 homeruns in one inning. Havana never really regained their cool, and they lost the game 6-3. It was kind of weird because they seemed so seasoned and talented, and then they let a couple of runs shake them up. But my favorite part of all this was that every now and then, a couple fans would get into a heated argument/fight. When this happened, they would stand up to enhance their argument, then the people around them would stand up, and pretty soon the whole section of the stands would be on their feet, trying to see what was happening. It was like meerkats.

The other sporting event I attended this past week was a soccer game between the law school and the history department (my department). The University of Havana has teams and they play other schools occasionally, but it´s not as extensive a system as big universities in the US. But occasionally, they´ll have inter-department games in a couple different sports, like this week. ´The system is a little like intramural games, but with a bit more talent and seriousness. It was a decent game, but the crowd was crazy as usual. No one really cared about the outcome, I think they just like yelling and being belligerent. As a result there was two fights in about 15 minutes! In the first, my friend Feliz had literally just arrived, but immediately began screaming insults about the law school team. I don´t even know how it happened, but all of a sudden Felix grabbed a shoe and started trying to hit this law student in the stands. It was broken up immediately, but they still kept trying to go after each other. Very exciting. Then the game actually ended in a HUGE brawl on the field. I didn´t see how it started, but I´m guessing it was because this guy Armando was being a jackass. He plays for the law school, and he has a habit of telling everyone what to do. So this kid started pummeling him. And pretty soon, more people started fighting, I don´t know why. It was crazy. So this lasted for maybe 10 minutes and obviously, there was no more game, even though the score was 1 to 1.

Dancing and it´s many joys

2006-11-29T22:08:00.000-05:00

I know I already talked about dancing, but I want to say more because it really is one of my favorite parts about life in Cuba, and most likely what I´ll miss most back in the states. It´s just that dancing is such an integral part of ¨fun¨, from the day one´s legs start working until the day they stop. One explanation is that dancing is always fun and requires no money, perfect for Cuba. Almost every party I´ve been to has involved some sort of impromtu dance party, usually with a mixture of salsa and reggaeton. Everyone can dance to both because they´ve learned practically at birth. Also, were as in the US it can be seen as ¨uncool¨ to dance (especially for men), there is an utter lack of embarrassment. For instance, some of these dance parties have involved only 2 people starting to dance while everyone else watches, and many have not involved much alcohol. It´s a beautiful thing to see. I mean, to me dancing is the perfect expression of freedom and a surefire road to temporary happiness, so I hate it when people feel they can´t dance, and therefore shouldn´t. It´s like denying part of one´s inner human nature. I also love salsa because it is structural and traditional while at the same time innovative and surprising. Plus, there are all sorts of games you can do with salsa. For instance, there´s a dance called a ¨rueda¨. A group of partners stand in a circle, boy girl boy girl, and they are all dancing salsa with the same foot, same rhythm. As you know, the male is normally the leader while dancing salsa, so during a ronda, a male leader will call out different directions and the men will follow them, doing a particular dance with his partner or with someone else. It´s kindof like a latin version of square dancing, but way more fun (in my opinion), and way more popular with the youth in general. Also, there is a red-light, green-light version of salsa. In this one, there´s a group of dancers and one odd man out. The leftover person can call green, red, or yellow. Green means continue dancing, red means stop immediately, and yellow means switch partners. Since there´s an odd person, switching partners can get a little violent. What´s amazing to me, concerning this game, is that a pair can stop in the middle of a turn or something, and then naturally continue it whenever. It´s not easy, trust me. I´m actually not 100% sure this is a typical game, because I´ve only played it once, so don´t take my word for it.

Completely unrelated, I discovered a really excellent version of ¨telephone¨. It´s the same as usual except with every person you change the language. For instance, tonight we played it so that we switched English and Spanish for every other person. But you could do what ever language I suppose. Miss-translations happen way more frequently, let me tell you. Once we started out with ¨If you have a cold, eat a box of matches and rub your butt on the wall¨ and ended with ¨If you have the flu, put your ass on the toilet.¨

More Nerdy Bio Stuff

2006-11-21T11:39:00.000-05:00

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Before I get into the real entry, I want to write a quick disclaimer. Though this is probably obvious to everyone, the majority of the info I write in this blog is my opinion. It may be right, but it is still opinion and should not be taken as fact.
Now on to my weekend...

This weekend I went on another one of those ecology excursions, but this time we went as part of a group of Cuban biology students plus three professors. Half of them were in the same boat as us, earlier in their education and there to learn about butterflies and moths. The other half were in their last year of university and came to continue experiments for their respective theses. All in all, it was quite an experience, but only in a really great way. The experiment site was outside a town called Canasí, on the north coast about 45 minutes east of Habana. But we traveled by train, so it took us 2 ½ hours. The train is horrible, because it’s ancient and shakes you like bananas in a batido, but I had a great time. Trains let you see a different part of the countryside, the backside, and it was gorgeous. The strange thing is, the landscape is unnatural. Less than 100 years ago, Cuba was almost completely covered in forests, but during the reign of Batista (the president turned dictator whose last rule was interrupted by the Revolution), deforestation knocked out all but a few pieces. So this beautiful grassland is really a result of devastating destruction. Funny, because I keep on saying the countryside looks Jurassic, ie, completely untouched. To keep ourselves busy we taught each other kids’ songs from our youths. Our Cuban professors got a real kick out of “the song that never ends” and “the ants go marching” especially. They also taught us this great song that is kind of like the vowels song about apples and bananas that we have. This one is even better though, and it’s about a skeleton: “Estaba la cadavera / sentaba en una butaca / vino la muerte le dijo / porqué te has puesto tan flaca?” That’s the original, then you change it for each vowel, ie: “Estebe le cedevere / sentebe en ene beteque…” It sounds hysterical. I’ll teach it to anyone who asks when I get back! So then we got to the town and had to hike for about 45 minutes to get to our campsite. The best part of this was we had to cross a big river that went up to our chests, carrying our packs on our heads. Our campsite was just a break in the forest on a cliff that was right next to the ocean. A lot of the coastline in Cuba is rocky, and so was this one. It was really beautiful, I’ll try to add some photos of it. So once we got there, our two main missions were to run an experiment of moth id and to collect eggs, larvae, and food for butterfly experiments. We were going to also go butterfly hunting, but the weather was cold (actually, only like 70 degrees at the lowest, but we had goosebumps…yikes) and rainy, so there weren’t any butterflies out. The moth experiment was at night, and basically we just sat watching a hanging white sheet in front of a light to identify moth species and quantities. Cuba has an incredible number of species of almost everything, and a lot of endemics, so this experiment was a little more exciting then it sounds. Every now and then, a moth would appear that no one had seen before, so there was a fairly good possibility that we had discovered a new species. This happened probably 5 times in one night. Now how often does that happen in the US? One of the professors actually has a species named after him, and he’s probably no older than 35. During the day, I helped one of the older students work on his experiment. His specialty is a butterfly called “skipper” that have split off from the butterfly family. The adults are fairly well-known, but not much information exists about the eggs or larvae, which is his area of study. We just hiked around in the woods looking for the plant that skippers lay their eggs on, while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. I might have Dengue. Just as a side note, did you know that there is a plant in Cuba that can kill you? Seriously, it is that poisonous.
Well that’s about all I have to say about camping and studying bugs. It was probably the most fun trip I’ve had here, despite the bad weather. I just really liked the company, in general they were more my style than the history/philosophy students as a whole, though I love my friends in that department too.

Slightly Boring Entry About Music

2006-11-21T11:35:00.000-05:00

Although I’ve only barely mentioned it, music is a humongous part of life here. It can be heard anywhere you go, from every direction. There are a couple very different types of music here that are really popular. First, there’s salsa. Though I’ve heard the style originated in the Puerto Rican communities in NYC, a lot of Cubans say they are the only one’s who do it right. Within this genre, there are a couple of different forms. My personal favorite is called “son”, which was made famous all over the world because of the Buena Vista Social Club. It is a really traditional, even ancient, form of salsa. Actually, most if not all of the songs from Buena Vista were written long before those men played them. You can hear this kind of music all over the country, especially from live bands in restaurants and such, because it is played with acoustic instruments. Usually, a son band consists of a guitar, a smaller three string guitar called a “tres”, claves, bongos, and singers. I’m not sure if this guy is considered son, but one of my favorite musicians here is Polo Montañez. In any case, both he and son are way more popular with older Cubans. Among the youth, Reggaeton rules. You’ve probably heard a little reggaeton before, from people like Daddy Yankee who sings “Gasolina”. It’s sort of a Latin American version of hip hop, with Reggae and Salsa influence, and a persistent heavy beat. At first, it all sounds the same, but then it kind of grows on you. I’ll bring some of the better examples back with me. My favorite so far is this song called “Caperosita,” which is “little red riding hood”, by Clan 537, a Cuban pop group. Anyway, people love to dance to this music. I would say Salsa and Reggaeton are the two most popular forms of music, but a lot of people are interested in Techno, Rock, and Hip Hop, especially the more underground variety in the US like Kweli, Common, etc. Basically, music is a huge pastime because all you need for fun is a couple records and a few people and you’ve got a dance party!

Fall Break in Cuba

2006-11-05T09:58:00.000-05:00

This past week I went on vacation, Cuban style. Most of the hotels don’t allow Cubans to rent a room, but there are vacation spots called “campismos” that are almost exclusively for Cuban guests. They are all over the countryside and consist of a bunch of little cabanas with 2 bunk beds and a small bathroom, a pool with no water, a cafeteria, and a TV room. Unfortunately we went to the shittiest campismo possible because the pool didn’t work (though I have yet to see a Cuban pool with water in it) and the beach was about 40 minutes away, but the other option was taken by the “batalla de ideas (battle of ideas)” group. I’m not sure what they do because when I asked a Cuban, he said they have parties and eat shit. Probably not a totally accurate description. Anyway, this vacation was probably the least relaxing vacation I’ve ever taken, a real test of tolerance. First of all, the cabanas were totally infested with ants, they got EVERYWHERE: in the bed, in our food, in our bags, in our clothes…and I hate ants more than a lot of things. Also, as you can see from the photo, the cabana is a pretty tight squeeze, especially since we slept 5 people in our room. And it smelled horrible. I can’t even describe how bad it smelled, it was like shit, b.o., and stale-building smell all rolled into one. Luckily, you kind of forgot the smell after staying in the building for more than 10 minutes. On top of that, the food was terrible. The cafeteria basically sells bread with eggs for breakfast and rice with something for dinner and lunch, so we would buy a bunch of rice and then we got canned meat, about the same quality as cat food. It was disgusting. This one night our rice was made with “pork” which was actually pig skin that still had bristly hair on it. I hope you can imagine how gross that is. But despite of all that, we had a pretty good time. The water was lovely, and there was this spot with huge rocks that we could jump off (pictured above). Also, about 19 of us went, so it was kind of like a big party with a bunch of our friends for 3 days. The campismo plays music all night and we brought plenty of rum. We also played a huge amount of dominos, which is really popular here. I’m planning on bringing back in style in the U.S., it’s really fun. Also, it was a really eye opening experience. I mean, how many of you would choose the campismo for your vacation? I certainly wouldn’t if I hadn’t any other option, but that’s the point. There isn’t another option for vacation here. If you can’t stay in a hotel, even if you had the money, what are you going to do? Already, I’ve been to more cities in Cuba than most Cubans have in their whole life. To me, this is totally unfair. As a Cuban, you don’t have access to outside information, you can’t travel to other countries, and you can hardly even travel in your own country. The campismo is it. So what I just said in this description, I would never say to any of the Cubans we were with. And despite all the negative things I said, I really did have fun and I’m glad I went. After all, it’s the company you’re with that is important, not where you are.

I'm not 100% sure that the pictures are going to appear on the blog for this entry, so if they aren't there stay tuned.

My Classes

2006-10-29T09:46:00.000-05:00

One of the opportunities I am most thankful for is the chance to take all my classes in the University, with regular Cuban students. All of the classes, with the exception of the Ecology class previously described, are in the department of History, Philosophy, and Sociology. As you may already know, education from preschool to post-grad is entirely free for Cubans. The down side, in my opinion, is that this comes with a decrease in free will. In order to achieve the highest degree of efficiency, university students only take classes dictated to them, in their “carrera,” or major. For instance, as a 1st semester 3rd year history major, I would take Cuban History 5, Contemporary History, Patrimony, English, Jose Marti, and Cuban Immigration. With this system, students complete their undergraduate and graduate degree at the same time, in only 5, sometimes 6, years. This includes doctors and lawyers. To me, it’s not worth the rush because the classes lack personal investment, meaning individual motivation decreases. People skip classes all the time, people read through classes, talk to their friends, and complain about how much they don’t want to go. Sure, this happens in the US too, but it is way more widespread and more justified in Cuba. I’m not necessarily saying we do it better in the US, obviously our educational system is hugely unfair, but I’m just saying that it’s not perfect here either.
Like everything in Cuba, the foreigners with the money have more privileges and freedom in the University than the Cubans do. Though I basically have to take all my classes in one department, I can take whatever class in whatever carrera I want. So my classes are Cuban History from the Revolution until today, Cuban Immigration to the US, Latin American Thought, and Marxist and Leninist Philosophy. The History course is pretty lame. The professor is old and senile and half-blind and half-deaf, so he talks really slowly and jumps from idea to idea rather illogically. Sometimes he just lists names of people and dates without any explanation. It’s pretty amusing though, the entire class pays no attention to him. Most arrive at least 30 minutes late, or not at all. My friend Mikel hasn’t come in about 4 weeks. The ones that do show up blatantly read other books right in front of him or talk openly to their friends. I just keep showing up with the hope that there will be a glimmer of something interesting. The Cuban Immigration class is really good, mainly because the students have really strong opinions about the subject and the professor provokes them, in a good way. This class has been a lesson on Cuban habits too. As far as I can tell, Cubans cannot wait their turn to talk. When someone talks, they get maybe 20 words out and then 5 other people jump in and start talking over them. Basically, the class dissolves in chaos fairly often, but this is both informative and hysterical, so I like it. Latin American Thought is kind of like a history of Latin American philosophy and philosophers. For instance, we’ve lately been talking about this guy named Mariategui, a Marxist Peruvian who started a group of philosophers and wrote a lot of books. It’s pretty interesting, but the professor is almost impossible to understand. Cuban Spanish is REALLY difficult because it is really fast and endings are often dropped, especially s’s, and this guy is a classic example. Luckily, I’ve learned that if I’m staring at his mouth I can usually tell what he means to say even if no sound comes out. My favorite class by far is the Marxist/Leninist class. It’s early and long, and the professor is a hard-ass, but he’s also fantastic. We spend a long time on concepts, but he makes sure we all understand them because he makes us explain it to each other, by prompting us to make the same connections that past philosophers make. It’s like we are following the same trains of thought in this classroom that Hegel and Descartes followed years ago. He also uses really good examples to help us understand. Besides just generally being a good class, I really like it because the challenging part is understanding the concepts, not understanding what he is saying.
Despite a seemingly tough schedule, classes actually take up a pretty minimal chunk of my time. I have about 12 hours of class over 3 days each week and almost zero work. There is very little reading, maybe 1 hour or less each week, and never any homework. By the end of the year we have to write a 20 page paper for each class, but I’m thinking that this might not even be a big deal since I’m pretty sure all the professors think we don’t really speak Spanish. I heard of this Japanese student who really didn’t speak hardly any Spanish and so probably didn’t really write much of a final paper, yet still got full marks for the course. That’s the power of money here, unfortunately. For a socialist country, a huge amount of importance is placed on the dollar. But I won’t get into that now, it’s already a long entry.

¨Murcielago¨ is my favorite word

2006-10-23T14:59:00.000-04:00

Though I have yet to say anything about my classes here, I actually have been doing something relatively productive at the University. I’m still not going to talk about most of them in this entry, but I want to mention the most unique class. I’m auditing this class on the Ecology of Cuba in the Biology department of the University of Havana because it is designed specifically for these three US students from Sarah Lawrence, and they just let me sit in. Every week is a different aspect of the ecology here, such as biodiversity, conservation, insects, mammals, etc, covered by a different professor in the department. They also take us on excursions every now and then, so this weekend we went to a cave to study bats! We went with two bio professors (Emanuel and Ari) who specialize in bats, and use this particular cave fairly frequently. It was about 40 kilometers South-East of the city, in tiny town called “El Mudo” (the mute). We got to stay at a Buffalo farm there because Emanuel and Ari are friends with the family who owns it. This on its own was an interesting experience, because it is a very different way of life than we’ve seen in Havana. It’s a fairly “primitive” farm, with no machinery, meaning the family does all the milking and harvesting and everything with their hands. They have about 40 buffalo on the farm, which is a government owned farm (of course), but they also make a fair amount of money selling the buffalo meat to touristy hotels. Despite extremely hard work and lack of a lot of comforts, for instance assured running water, the standard of living seems to be a little better in the country, or at least on a farm. First of all, there is motivation for work. In the city, a house painter makes the same amount of money if they paint 30 walls a day or half a wall, and the same if they do a perfect job or if it is spotty and ugly, so they have very little motivation to work fast or well. But on the farm, if they don’t milk every buffalo, or harvest their crops, they and their animals will suffer directly. There is more self-interest involved in their work, which makes it mentally easier to complete. Also, they have plenty of food, as much fresh milk as they need, and much less pollution and chaos. The fresh milk is kind of a big deal, because it is close to impossible to get fresh milk unless you have a child under 3, and even powdered milk is expensive.
So on to the bats. Apparently Cuba has one of the highest densities of caves in the world, but someone should check that fact because they love to exaggerate here. This particular cave is interesting to scientists because it is a hot cave. This means, that its bats live in a very tall cavern with a tiny entrance at the very bottom. The every day activity of the bats creates a huge amount of heat that only rises to the top, so the environment stays constant, only varying about 0.5 degrees C in a day. And the temperature stays at 41 degrees, only 1 degree below the temperature at which proteins denature. That’s hot. To get there, we crawled army style on a ground that was only guano (bat poop) and cockroaches, all the time dodging bats that fly right into you, despite their echolocation. I don’t have to tell y’all it was intense. Inside the cavern, it was pitch black, hotter than anything imaginable with 100% humidity, and chaotic. Our mission was to capture a couple different types of bats to bring back for studying, so we took turns waving a net back and forth hoping to grab something. We ended up with about 6 bats, 3 different species, and then we crawled back out. We were absolutely disgusting, covered in cockroach guts, poop, and soaked in sweat, but we couldn’t shower because the farm’s water hadn’t come yet that day. They have to wait until a big truck comes and fills up their containers, then take showers by pouring water over their heads from a cup. So instead we had a lesson on bat identification. It’s pretty straight forward. First you determine whether it is an insect bat or a fruit and pollen bat, which is determined by the presence of an urapatagio (a net in between the bottom feet that catches insects). Then you narrow down the species by wing shape, then look at the face. Usually there are two species that are easily confused, so we looked at comparison charts to be sure of the exact specie. We each got to hold one of the bats while we were iding them, and mine went crazy (or was crazy, I don’t know). It was trying to bite anything it could, and when no part of me was in reach, it chomped down on its own wing. The weird thing was, I couldn’t even get it to let go, even though it was chewing so hard that it drew its own blood. It couldn’t even fly afterwards. It was really creepy, and really shook me up for the rest of the day.
After a break for exploration and dinner, we went back out to the cave to learn about echolocation and scorpions. Apparently, bats make echolocation noises all the time, but also communicate with each other in sounds within the range of human hearing. These sound like bat noises, while the echolocation sounds like wings flapping rapidly. We heard this because we had a frequency transducer that dividing sound wave frequency by 10, meaning the frequency became audible to us. We also had a UV light, so we searched for scorpions with this. There were a bunch on the walls that look neon green in UV light.
So to sum up, it was an awesome weekend and a well-needed break from the city. The only other thing to add is that the Cuban countryside also has the best stars I’ve ever seen in my life, including on mountains in the middle of rural Vermont.

Eco Tourism

2006-10-12T11:55:00.000-04:00

Tuesday, Oct. 10 was a holiday in Cuba, celebrating the declaration of independence from Spain during the first revolution, in the end on the 19th century. I wouldn’t have noticed (except classes were canceled) because there was a complete lack of commercial advertising for things you could buy in honor of the holiday. No “buy this 12 piece grill set for your classic American barbeque this Fourth of July!” Since we didn’t have classes, we went on this trip to a place called las Terrazas (the terraces) in Piñar del Rio. This is a river basin in the middle of a mountain range that has recently been protected from further development. In the early part of the 20th century, Cuba had a huge problem with deforestation because of the outside pressure to produce sugar cane. Thousands of miles of land were destroyed because of this. But during Castro’s rule, a huge reforestation project began all over the country, corresponding to the loss in value of Cuba’s sugar cane crop. Now, a lot of the land has almost been restored to its natural habitat. This created a new type of tourism for Cuba, eco-tourism. Piñar del Rio is one of these sites, though I think it was originally destroyed because of coffee production, but I’m not sure. Anyway, in 1968 the government started to reforest this river basin, and now its original biodiversity is almost completely restored. Besides a small community that lives and works in the reserve, no development can occur in the area. It is entirely devoted to eco-tourism. And it’s gorgeous. Thick, deep green jungle envelops a clear bluish-green river, speckled with smooth rocks and frequently interrupted by waterfalls. In several places there are natural pools that are deep enough to dive into, off the top of the waterfalls. I really liked it because it was totally different than going to the beach (which is closer and easier for us to visit). The water is a lot colder and the sun is not quite as strong. The beach is amazing, but the problem is there isn’t much shade, the sun is really intense, and the water isn’t very cold. Don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out at the beach, but las Terrazas was a nice contrast. As you can see, I finally managed to add pictures! Enjoy.

The Social Life

2006-10-07T12:20:00.000-04:00

The social life here is really interesting, and apparently pretty different than most other countries in Latin America and perhaps the world in general. This is because for the cubans, it all revolves around houseparties and dancing, but minimal drinking and clubbing. The great club scene you hear about in Cuba is mainly reserved for the tourists, because most cubans can´t afford the entry charge. The same goes for bars and other forms of drinking. Alcohol is just too expensive for normal cubans to consume on a frequent basis. The same goes for drugs, there isn´t much using of anything anymore. Earlier, the gov´t had a problem with tourists taking drugs out of the country, so 4 years ago they really cracked down hard on everyone. Now, since the penalties are so high, there aren´t as many people dealing and prices are a lot higher. Weed is about 10 times more expensive that it was 4 years ago. This dichotomy in prices and the exclusion of cubans from alot of normal activities results from the dual economy that exists here. I alluded to this briefly in the last entry, that there are two currencies here, CUC and moneda nacional (pesos). Tourists pay in CUC but cubans recieve wages in moneda nacional. One CUC is equal to about $0.80 usd, or 24 pesos, but judging from prices of commodities bought in pesos, I estimate that 1 peso is like 50 us cents. This means that to a cuban, a 3 CUC cover charge at a club is like paying 36 dollars. That´s a big difference. Thus, the gov´t and tourist industry can separate cubans from tourists by charging in CUC. But on the bright side, you can buy non-namebrand cigars for only 1 peso (5 cents). So instead of clubbing and bar-hopping, there are tons of house parties, parties in the becas (student apartment complexes), and parties on the malecon (the wall bordering the sea). For instance, last week I went to a semi-weekly dance at my friend´s beca. First let me say that these becas are a shitty excuse for student housing. They are really far from theuniversity (at least a 30 minute walk and at most a 30 min. unreliable busride), and really shitty buildings crammed with students. In the size of a small university double, they have 4 students. But if you don´t have relatives living in Habana, you don´t have any other choice. Anyway, between two dormitories is a small social hall with a sound system and space to dance. Even without much alcohol, these kids were tearing up the dance floor. I have never in my life seen people that could dance like this in such a high concentration. I can´t put their skill into words, but i´ll just say it is obvious they´ve been salsa dancing and shaking their hips since they were born. I´ve been learning to salsa here and have gotten to the point where my partners are pleasantly surprised when they dance with me. But that doesn´t say much considering they assume all north americans can´t dance at all. In comparison to the cubans, that is a pretty accurate stereotype. Although these individual or student parties are more fun than a club filled with strangers and extranjeros, the social life can be a bit of a hassle a lot of the time. For the beca party and a friend´s birthday party last night, we waited for a bout 45min for a bus crammed full of people, rode 30 min outside of the city, and then walked for a while. On the way back, we waited another 40 min at about 1.30 am and then had to run down the bus because it stopped at a different stop. But it was fun because to keep ourselves busy we started singing songs. Also, people cannot get enough of my ¨chubby¨ jokes, you know the one where you press your cheeks together and say ¨hi, my name is chubby...¨. I think they love it because of the southern accent, because they also love it when we say ¨life is like a box of chocolates¨ala
Forrest Gump.
Another interesting aspect of the social life here is the sexual life. I´m including sex as social because it kindof is here. It´s more open, and more common. People talk about it way more freely, and PDA is the norm. But then again, there isn´t much of a choice for that. It is really a challenge to have sex in private here. Most people live in houses with extended families, sharing a room or even a bed with at least one other person. So if you want to have sex, you either can risk being heard by a family member or have sex outside, sort of in public. For this reason, sex becomes less secretive and hidden. And amazingly, people have way more partners even with the obstacles. A cuban often loses theirvirginity at about 13 or 14, and by the time they are 21, have had over 30 partners. I´ve also been told several times that cubans are better in bed than any other ethnicity. My professor even said this in class one morning. My friend Adriana told me in complete seriousness that it is because the hot climate make bodies more-limber. I wonder if there is biological evidence to back up that theory.

By the way, I now have free internet at the university, so if any one emails me, i can probably write back somewhat soon. Write me at anna.vanderhorst@gmail.com. Also, i don´t have anyone´s email address, so y´all need to write me first.

Food

2006-09-26T21:12:00.000-04:00

As anyone that knows me already knows, I love food. I love to eat it, cook it, look at it, and especially, talk about it. Thus, it is only logical that sooner or later I need to write an entry about Cuban food. It was a huge transition for me, since my normal diet is kindof rabbit'like. Well, they don´t have any of that stuff here. Basically, I eat meat and eggs with a bit of bread or rice and beans. Quite a change. That said, the food is GREAT. Like every commodity here, food is bought at different levels: in CUC (money for tourists) or moneda nacional (cuban pesos). The majority of sitdown, indoor restaurants are only in CUC, sonormal cubans don´t really eat there. But there are little shops all over the place that sell food for cubans, REALLY cheap. I´m talking 40 cents for a sandwich and drink. So, here are some of my favorite things to eat here:

1) Mojitos: There´s a bar right across the street from our residence that sells 10 peso mojitos, that´s 40 cents. Dangerous.

2) Cerveza: They have pretty good beer and it tastes even better because it is so damn hot all the time.

3) Pork: They make it awesomely here, never thought I´d say that.

4) Croquetas: These are deep fried balls of I don´t know what mushed up. Scary, but delicious.

5) Batidos: Fruit'ice shakes they sell all over in these little stands.

Shit Goes Down

2006-09-20T20:41:00.000-04:00

This past weekend was great, but definitely an eye opener for me. All the bad things about life in Havan decided to rear their ugly heads. One night, we couldn´t find a bus to get home from a party and so walked over 2 hours in the middle of the night to get home. I should´ve been more prepared for this, it can happen all the time because transportation kind of sucks. The buses are all overcrowded, slow, and few and far between. There are also super'expensive taxis that only tourists can afford, and cheaper, slightlly more'sketchy taxis called maquinas. These are just private cars of people that decided to pick you up, but it totally depends on where they´re going as to whether they´ll take you. Anyway, you end up either waiting fora long time or walking a lot. Don´t get me wrong, I love walking, but at 2 in the morning in heels it´s not as pleasant. Then, saturday morning I was reading a book on this wall that borders the sea, called the malecon,. It is such a great place, people are always hanging out there, drinking, playing music, swimming, fishing...it´s beautiful. But this time, a guy was fishing in the sea near me starting masturbating in full view of me!! This weekend was also my first encounter with jineteras, not to be confused with the jineterOs mentioned before. These are young women that are basically prostitutes. The situation is a older, uglier, fatter white man who clearly is not cuban is hanging out with one or two young, beautiful, black or mixed girls, who are all over him. Believe me, I´m all about blind love, but it is a known fact that in Cuba, money is exchanged in this situation. Sunday night at this club and there were tons of jineteras. It was such a creepy thing to watch, ,nowing pretty much exactly what was going on. The worst thing that happened this weekend was I got mugged on Sunday. I was walking in central Havana by this pretty park and all of a sudden, two teenage guys came up behind me and grabbed my purse! Luckily, I managed to hold on immediately . I would´ve thought that after not getting my purse at once, they´d leave, but they put up a really long fight, probably about at minute of tug'of'war. Unfortunately, they weren´t close enough for me to kick them in the balls. In the end, I managed to yank it away from them and they ran off. The good ting about muggings here is they are super'frequent, especially compared to other Latin American countries, and they aren´t very dangerous because no one has weapons more dangerous than fists or feet. Afterwards as I was walking away the people I passed said things like ¨tan fuerte!¨, which means ¨so strong¨. It really shook me up, but more inan exciting, adrenaline kind of way. Anyway, thus ended my crazy weekend.

Cuba has racism too!

2006-09-13T18:15:00.000-04:00

For those who aren´t familiar with the stats of Cuba, the cuban population consists of over 50% mestizo, or racially mixed persons. I kindof assumed, even after arriving here, that this enormous percentage indicated a population where race isn´t a separating factor, where people don´t judge even subconciously based on one´s race. THough it´s true that the population where race isn´t nearly as racially segregated as the US, it turnes out I was wrong about the lack of racism. First of all, Cuba has a fairly large amount of institutionalized racism. If an Afrocuban (a black cuban), or sometimes a mestizo cuban, is walking with a group of white foreigners, a police officr will often stop the group to question the cuban. In fact, I heard of an African American who came on business with white associates and he was OFTEN questioned by police. Granted, the police have reasons to be a little wary of cubans hanging around tourists. Apparently there is a problem with ¨jineteros¨, cubans who try to scam tourists out of their money, and one of the major roles of police here is to protect tourists. Of course, this doesn´t excuse the racial targeting. Last night I was with a couple cuban friends who starting speaking in English with my as we passed a police officer. It was really strange to feel like we need to be carely what we say in public. ANother example of this institutionalized racism is in teh tourist industry. THere are virtually no Afrocubans in the tourism. I don´t know what they are afraid of, or even if it´s a conscious decision, but it happens. On a more individual scale, many cubans have the same prejudices that we have in the US. For instance, it is more unusual for Afrocubans to go to University here. THe ones that can go, and decide to further their education in this way have an unofficioal title , a word that likens them to white people. Yet I´ve heard cubans explain the absence of afrocubans as a lack of motivation (sound familiar). As frustrating as this racism is, what´s worse is that no support network exists for Afrocuban rights. In the US, a fair amount of people are talking about racism and fighting for civil rights, but these groups are virtually nonexistent here. And the ones that do exist (I´ve only heard of one) are considered kind of soft and overly intellectual. I can´t really comprehend this stae in Cuba, when mixing of races is 100% normal, MUCH more so than in the US.

I know I just wrote to really serious and heavy entries, but these are the things that are sticking out in my mind right now. I´ll talk about fun stuff too. For instance, I´m taking an aerobics class a this cuban gym down the street from me and one of the teachers wears a fullbody orange spandex suit. Yowzah

The US in Cuba

2006-09-13T18:01:00.000-04:00

Even though friendly relations between the US and Cuba are practically nonexistant, the US does have a ¨US interest section¨ building in Havana that basically serves as an embassy. We had to go there last week to register with them, and boy was it creepy. While cubans don´t mind people from the US (as far as I can tell), they DON´T like the US government. In fact, they are kindof paranoid about a US invasion, so the US building is one of the most heavily guarded buildings, by cuban police and military. They surround the area and only allow you to enter from a certain direction. We couldn´t figure out these directions, so we had to walk back and forth for a while. Then, they have you wait for a while, I´m not sure why, perhaps they do a background check. Once you´re inside they kindof encourage you to come back. THis visit, they offered us the use of their computer if we returned the next day. But we are encouraged by the program not to return, becuase once some students 3went back and were subjeted to meetings with cuban dissedents (anti castro cubans, like the ones in miami). Also, our neighbors here will probably start to get suspicious if we visit the US building regularly .
Though the cuban opinion of the US and their interest section seems a little overly paranoid, they do have a reason to worry. Every time a new US ¨ambassador¨ to Cuba is elected or appointed (i don´t know how that works), they do something bold to show they´ll have a tough stance against Cuba and Castro. THe newest guy put up a gigantic news ticker, like the ones in Times Square, on top of the US building that flashed some incendiary messages. In response, the cuban government put up 138 flags in front of the building, one for every Cuban who died fighting for the country (I think against the US). Because of the constant breeze caming from the sea, the flags always block the view of the building from the rest of Havana. It´s pretty funny.

Cuban Keyboards are Difficult

2006-09-05T17:19:00.000-04:00

For those who aren´t familiar with the subject of this blog, I am writing it to share my experiences studying in Havana, Cuba for the semester. I came here with SUNY Oswego to enroll as a normal cuban student in the University of Havana, the most¨elite¨ university in Cuba (though ´elite´is never really used as an adjective here). I arrived three days ago and already I´ve learned so much about so many things, my head feels like it´s going to burst! First, let me describe Havana. This is the capital, located on the northwestern part of the island, righ ton the ocean. It´s divided into three parts from west to east= Vedado, Central, and Viejo. I´m living in Havana Vedado, also where the University is located. The whole city is incredibly beautiful. SInce it is a tropical island, it has its fair share of exotic flora, blue skies,, and turquoise sea, but the architecture is also magnificent. Actually, it really remids me of New Orleans, with its brightly colored houses with wooden balconies, coutyards, and collumns. Yet unlike New Orleans, almost all the buildings are like this, though in varying degrees of renovation. That´s another difference= one doesn´t really see abject poverty or extreme wealth here. Everyone lives in grandiose, though old, houses and looks fairly wellfed and fit, but no one has fancy clothes or expensive cars or obese bellies. And one rarely sees a begger or a homeless person. Yet I´ve been told a lot of people don´t have jobs, they just live off the government´s rations. I can´t say yet whether this is a country where communism is ¨working,¨ but it definitely is not the impoverished, decrepit place many americans envision.
One of the aspects I´ve found most intriguing, and most challenging to my preconsieved notions of countries and governments, is the revolutionary spirit that infiltrates everything. The grafiti here reads ¨solidaridad (solidarity)¨and ¨cuba viva libre (cuba live free)!¨, yet these kinds of slogans are in support of the current government, not a form of social protest. Even more revealing is the responsive shouting that often occurs, especially with passionate student orators. The leader with scream ¨patria o muerte (homeland or death)!¨ and the crowd returns ¨venceremos (we will overcome)!¨ This is something that Fidel Castro said in 1960, soon after he successfully led the revolution against American supported dictator, Batista. Another common call and response is ¨viva la revolucion (long live the revolution)!¨ to which the crowd shouts ¨viva!¨ In my experience, this sounds like something dissedents say in protest, not in support, of their government. It seems the people here feel very strongly about their revolutionary spirit, even to this day.
For those who are worried, I´m having a great time so far, learning loads and improving my spanish faster than I imagined. Already I can hold a conversation with a cuban and mostly understand speeches (not to brag).
Hasta luego!