Fidel (and Cuba)--Then and Now

Photo by Tito Alvarez

 from Havana Times, April 9, 2013

 I had the good fortune to host two photo historians from Havana as visiting faculty at our university 7-8 years ago. One who is the archivist at the Fotateca in Havana brought a large number of negatives of Tito Alvarez who was active as a photographer in Cuba during the 1950s and 1960s. I scanned them and cleaned them up as well as I could, negatives do not fare well in the humidity and dirt of Havana especially over fifty years. The portrait of Castro on the left was during an early radio address to the country. The one on the right was in the Havana Times this past Sunday. It is fascinating to see the extended forefinger of the left hand as Fidel makes his point, see the intensity of his facial expression and to notice how carefully the journalist is listening. The point of this post is not to take sides on the Castro-anti-Castro debate but to show he is still alive and seems quite  alert. That makes him a rather amazing person no matter what your political leaning. I have heard several of my older friends (my age) say, "Communista, No! Fidelista, Si!" Many of the older middle class-lower classes  do love him. Change is coming though, and it is definitely overdue.

Writer of Article on Racism Loses His Job

This past Sunday I wrote about my black Cuban friend Roberto. I referenced an article published in the NYTimes. In this morning's times there is a  follow-up article detailing the circumstances of how the journalist who wrote that article lost his job. According to the Times this AM, "The author, Roberto Zurbano, in an article published March 23, described a long history of racial discrimination against blacks on the island and said 'racial exclusion continued after Cuba became independent in 1902, and a half century of revolution since 1959 has been unable to overcome it'.” He was subsequently removed from his position as editor at the Casa de Las Americas Cultural Center.

Mr. Zurbano states that the NYTimes editorial staff changed the title of his article from "For Blacks in Cuba, the Revolution Has Not Yet Finished" to “For Blacks in Cuba, the Revolution Hasn’t Begun.”  According to Mr Zurbano this change was made without his approval and makes as considerable difference in the intent and weight of the article. The Times defends its translation and says it is sorry for Mr. Zurbano's troubles, but it feels that it did nothing wrong.  That stance is not substantiated by the fall out on the Cuban side of the issue.

Zurbano's statement seems to be the truth as demonstrated by a follow-up article in Havana Times by Esteban Morales, a leading thinker, writer, and scholar in Cuba. Morales, considered one of the   go-to authorities on matters of race relations, opens his discussion with the article's headline. Morales states "Claiming that “For Blacks in Cuba, the Revolution Hasn’t Begun,” his (Zurbano's) argument doesn’t hold up, not even within the complex reality of Cuba today." On the website for UNEAC, the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, there are at least eight essays and opinion pieces regarding the article and almost each one starts with the headline as being to extreme and absolutist.

Certainly there is no intentional harm done by the NYTimes. The point of this post is how carefully words must be chosen when writing about such sensitive topics. It is also the case that not understanding the situation the writer of the article was in can cause it to worsen. Again not an intentional fault, but a common one. Most of the world does not think like the US nor does it share our can do attitudes. I became aware of this latter fact when I took college students on workshops to Cuba. It was always fascinating to talk with them after we had had a meeting with Cuban teachers. students, artists, and photographers.

Roberto

Roberto is one of the best friends I have. I met him in 2000 while at a photography workshop in Havana. He was hanging around the Ambos Mundos Hotel where most of the participants were staying and getting jobs as a guide and translator. We stayed another week after the workshop and secured his services during that week. Turns out he was an officially licensed guide, spoke four languages, was working on his fifth, and was a graduate of the University of Havana. During that first year he was also spending his year of reflection and denial to become a Santeria priest. He wore all white, did not drink alcohol, and prayed frequently.
Over the next few years I depended on him to help with student workshops and other things when visiting Cuba. He was a very capable fixer. He could arrange most anything we wanted to do in the context of education and photography. He had only a few rigidly fixed guidelines; these were: he did not supply or arrange for drugs or women. The first few times that we were walking down the street together and were stopped by the police I wondered what was going on. Roberto would say it was nothing. Then I realized that he was being stopped to check papers and to see if he was a hustler or less savory character trying to exploit some naive tourist. These were sort of like the controversial stop and frisk activities that are presently causing so much consternation in New York City. The issue was that he was black and I was white. I later came to realize that even some of my light skinned Cuban friends did not like him because of his blackness. On the other hand, there were some of them that Roberto did not care for because of their gay-ness. Although I did not agree with much of this, I learned a lot about race relations and social attitudes even in what was supposed to be an idealistic society of equality and acceptance.
I would get this in much larger dose several years later when escorting several Cuban friends around the UNC campus in Chapel Hill in the summer and several college students walked past. The wife of the Cuban couple loudly exclaimed. "Oh, look, they have n*****s here." She was stroking her forearm with two fingers, the Cuban sign of colored skin. Subsequently I have had to deal with Roberto not being able to get a room in houses where we were sleeping, not eating at the same table the rest of us were sharing, being stopped while driving our rental car from its garage to the house where we were lodging, and being treated with disdain by lighter skinned mulatto or white Cubans, mostly Cuban intellectuals or artists. Now that the government is more seriously promoting tourism his independent free lance business has suffered. Most people with a tourist visa have to arrange their tours through the government's tourist agencies that have their own guides. It is not clear what will happen to him but it is of interest that the first effect of capitalism Roberto experienced came from his socialist government.  Roberto is too stubborn and independent to go to work for the government Tourism company. This is just another of the many paradoxes that are Cuba. For those interested, there is a nice article in NYTimes today re: the subject of racism in Cuba..