Our LAN in Havana: Networking with People and Computers in Cuba

Copyright Steve Cisler 1994

This report may be posted on educational, government, non-profit, and
hobby BBSes, servers, gophers, and FTP sites but not on those of such
services as America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, GEnie, or in the
CD-ROMs compiled from material available on the Internet.
Commercial publishers and ventures such as the aforementioned
should contact the author at sac@apple.com.

Abstract:  This is a report on one person's impressions of Cuba before
and after visiting the island during August 18-28, 1994. The purpose of
the trip was to give a presentation on Internet navigation tools at a
workshop of librarians from Cuba, Latin America, and other countries
which was held during the 60th annual conference for the International
Federation of Library Associations. This was a time when the departure
of thousands of emigres by raft and boat captured the headlines, and
tensions between Cuba and the United States rose once again. 

A multimedia version of the report will be available on ftp.apple.com
in the alug/travel directory, along with this text version.

The Report

"...no one understood his English palaver and, furthermore, in those
latitudes, words, even the word of God, were lost in the jabbering of the
birds."

"The Proper Respect" by Isabel Allende in _The Stories of Eva Luna_


What do most of us know of Cuba?
My first memories of Cuba date from the late 1950's when Fidel Castro
was fighting in the Sierra Maestre (and many other groups were
opposing  Batista in the cities). A San Francisco disc jockey named Red
Blanchard reported on the movie star, Errol Flynn, who had gone to
Cuba to fight in the revolution. Each evening after this initial report,
Blanchard began imagining he was at the center of a similar struggle for
freedom and independence but for towns in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Callers would report on fictitious battles in Berkeley, Emeryville, and
San Mateo (where I lived), and somehow I thought we were linked to
the real action in Cuba.

It was 1962 before I gave any further thought to Cuba. I had dropped out
of college and was working in a defense plant assembling tubes for a
radar jamming apparatus. The Cuban missile crisis began to escalate,
and we gathered around the radio at the factory, and the production line
stopped. Most of us were sure the Soviets had a missile aimed at what
was to be Silicon Valley, but we did not speak about our fears. If the
Soviets did not back down in the face of  Kennedy's blockade, there was
a good chance of war beginning. Oddly, Cuba was not consulted in the
negotiations between the two superpowers, but the USSR did win a
secret concession that the US would not invade Cuba, if the missiles
were removed.

In 1968 I had returned from two years teaching in West Africa with the
Peace Corps. The federal government decided I should serve even
more, so I found myself in Port Security and Search and Rescue in the
U.S. Coast Guard in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  The captain who ran the
base was never going to become admiral, so the Guard gave him San
Juan as his last command. It was, as they say, "good duty" and he lived
in a home overlooking San Juan Bay, built for the Spanish governor in
the 19th century. The war with Spain resulted in the U.S. grabbing a
number of colonies from the Spanish, and this included Puerto Rico
and, in some sense, Cuba. Although Cuba was nominally independent,
the U.S. dominated the economy and influenced the governments.
Puerto Rico is a "commonwealth" with some benefits of statehood
(welfare assistance and other aid from Washington) but no
representation in Congress, and little awareness on the part of other
Americans that the place even existed (unless you were heading for a
beach or perhaps an abortion).  Most of the Puerto Ricans favored the
status quo, but many in businesses wanted  statehood, and a very small
group wanted independence.  The Independentistas had support from
Cuba, and from time to time they would try to bomb a military
establishment or provoke the island authorities.

I have memories of 1970, attending the movie about the war for
Algerian independence, Battle of Algiers, in San Juan where most of the
audience were radical Puerto Ricans who saw a great deal of similarity
between their status and those of the Algerians trying to kick the French
out just years before.  Castro had sent aid to the FLN in Algeria, and
now he was aiding the fledgling Puerto Rican movement. Partly
because of Castro's role, the Puerto Ricans in the audience identified
with the Algerians battling for independence.

Many of the wealthy Cubans who fled after Cuba began nationalizing
industries and businesses ended up, of course, in Miami, Florida. Others
came to San Juan. The Episcopal school where my ex-wife taught had
many students whose parents were Cuban Jews, including some whose
parents had left Germany in the 30's during Hitler's consolidation of
power. Because the Cubans who left early on were some of the most
ambitious and well-educated, some Puerto Ricans tended to resent
them. The Cubans, through their hard work, intelligence, and drive,
regained positions of influence in Puerto Rico.

My own work in search and rescue involved looking for missing
planes, boats, resolving shipboard mutinies, fires, and even some drug
smuggling, though this was before there was the present day level of
drug running. One of the busiest we ever were was after the Spanish
passenger-cargo ship sailed from San Juan (a couple of hours late) and
then radioed that a bomb had exploded and that they were taking on
water. Luckily, they were not as far from port as they would have been
had they left on time, and we were able to tow them in to a repair
facility. At the dock, about fifty FBI agents met the ship and began
searching for evidence of the bomb. It turned out that a Cuban exile
group took credit for this action (because the Spanish recognized Cuba
and traded with them), but I don't believe they caught the commandos
who used a special re-breathing apparatus with their scuba gear, thus
eliminating any bubbles floating to the surface as they attached the
bomb to the hull.

I still knew very little about Cuba. My Spanish was awful. It was more
than twenty years before I thought much again about Cuba.

In 1993, I got to know a Cuban-American woman whose parents had left
Cuba in the late 1960's while she was a little girl. The father had suffered
under Castro and had very interesting tales to tell. I began to see more
and more articles about Cuba, and began reading more electronic
postings from supporters and detractors of  the present Cuban regime.
Their views were polarized, and one has to wade through a lot of
messages to extract much information, but sometimes interesting
reports or articles were posted on one of the Latin American or
"progressive" discussion groups on the Internet. soc.culture.cuba and
soc.culture.latin-america are two Usenet groups worth sampling. In
the cuba newsgroup, the postings are weighted against the current
Cuban government.

In the Spring of 1994 my boss invited me to attend a library conference
in Havana and give a talk on Internet navigation tools. Cuba only has
UUCP connections (as I write), so the demonstrations would have to be
canned before I left California. Technically, I was not allowed to carry a
Macintosh with me to Cuba, but a friend in Washington gave me the
numbers at the Dept. of the Treasury that is concerned with "trading
with the Enemy" so I could request permission to use my Macintosh in
Havana.  I decided to use a Sony Camcorder and a Hi-8 video of the
Internet tools rather than a computer demonstration, so I did not take
the Macintosh after all.

August Disturbances

The events of August 5 are described differently depending on the press
coverage you read. Probably the most neutral term is The Disturbance
(el disturbio), but it does not convey the significance of what happened.
"Riots", "Uprising", "Provocation", "Battle" have been used in different
accounts. Each has a much different connotation, but everyone admits
that it was a major, violent event that had not been seen since various
rebels fought the Castro government in the early 60's.  It was not
unexpected, either by observers in the U.S. (see _Storm Warnings For
Cuba_ by Edward Gonzalez and David Ronfeldt, MR-452-OSD, RAND,
1994, 159 pp. ) or by the Cuban rulers.

The Cuban government has experienced pollsters who, in early July,
went into each municipality on the island and asked this question:  Do
you believe the current government can solve the country's social and
economic problems? About 62% answered in the negative--and these
were people knowingly expressing a view to a government information
gatherer. Some speculate that the number would have been even
higher, if more people had answered honestly.  The results were not
publicized for obvious reasons, but it shows that the hardliners (los
"duros"), the centrists, and the reformers in the government were
aware of the level of discontent, but they did not know what form it
would take.

The eye witnesses I spoke with had varying accounts: that there were a
few hundred protesters, and that there were thousands in the crowd
with the outbreaks erupting in different parts of the Malecon area,
without any plan or plot. Had there been housewives banging with pots
and pans, that might have been a giveaway of a CIA sponsored event,
but the photographs in _Bohemia_ for August 5 show both the
protesters and the members of the rapid response brigades and the
supporters trucked in from the countryside.  The rock throwers look
very much like the young Palestinian kids in the streets of Gaza, but the
magazines describe these Cubans as social detritus and lumpen. Very
little analysis of why they were there making a short violent stand.  The
emigres in Miami seemed to think the counter revolution had begun,
but it's too soon to draw any conclusion about what else may happen.

Our party arrived about two weeks after these initial events, at a time
when the first tide of new emigres was leaving without interdiction by
Cuban authorities. The whole country thrives on rumors and gossip,
and we heard that Castro was going to address our group, that our
return charter flight was canceled, that the government was selling
truck inner tubes for $30 to prospective raft builders, and that
Colombian author Gabriel Garcia-Marquez was such a good friend of
Castro that he could go in his house and eat Castro's ice cream any time
he wanted!

What you read here is a combination of what I observed and what I
heard; most of the time there was no way of getting a second source to
verify what another person had told me, so you can discount anything
you wish. I prefer not to use people's real names, but I appreciate the
time they spent explaining Cuba to me. Without their insight and
knowledge, this would just have been an exotic trip to a tropical
country, and I would understand far less than I do now about this
interesting country.

--
Scene: Stop sign at a cross-roads near the airport. Young boys are vying
to wash windows and beg, standing in the shadow of the United Colors
of Benneton advertisement (yes, there are a few billboards).
---

August 19:   The streets are filled with strange vehicles: pre-1959
American cars and Jeeps; Russian Ladas (Fiats) and Moskvas, a few
Czech cars, and a lot of Russian motorcycles with sidecars, a few Czech
Jawas, and numerous Chinese one speed bicycles that were very
uncommon a few years ago. Now, there are even cycle busses with a
couple of seats and a ramp to load your bike for the long trip to the
suburbs (or back). In many cases you see whole families on the bicycle,
and some people carry a small padded seat so they can ride on the
luggage rack in back.  "Ponchera" stands are the most evident sign of
small private enterprise; it is in these shops that punctures are fixed,
and other light repairs are made.

We check in a the Hotel Comodoro, a former social club in West
Havana, about a $9 cab ride from old Havana. I have a nice,
air-conditioned room with double bed, small refrigerator that chills beer
to about 50 degrees F. private bath, toilet (no seat), bidet, radio, and color
television. The satellite dish on the hotel room brings in CNN, ESPN,
TNT, HBO, Cinemax, a home shopping channel, and a couple of Cuban
channels that are only on during the afternoon and early evening.
Because I only had a couple of hours sleep the night before I napped for
several hours and awoke at 4 p.m., ready to head out and see Havana
and to walk down to the area where the rafts were pushing off for the
Straits of Florida (or Straits of Death, as Radio Marti started calling
them).  The boat departures was the big story in Miami and here,
though the reporting was a bit different, as you can imagine.

About 20 years ago the English edition of _Camp of the Saints_ by Jean
Raspail (Scribner 1975) came out. The French author describes what
happens when a mass emigration of poor Indians swarm into southern
France by beaching rusty freighters on the Riviera. It was hailed as a
brilliant satire and damned as a racist rant by a white writer who feared
the onslaught of dark foreigners. Since that time mass migrations have
become more and more frequent. European nations are buffered from
masses of Kurds, Rwandans, or Guatemalans who flee their homeland,
and the U.S. has mainly faced  movements from the Asia and Latin
America. The country remains an attractive place to live, work, study,
and to take refuge for political or economic reasons. The reasons for the
recent Cuban movement are complex. Conservative Cuban Americans
would tell you that the counter revolution has begin, and that more
people are just unwilling to tolerate the day-to-day hardships and want
to join relatives in the U.S. The Cuban government claims that Radio
Marti and the federal government were wooing dissident Cubans
though their own propaganda broadcasts.


I always like to walk around a town at first, so I head along 5th Avenue,
parallel to the shoreline. I pass by a large diplotienda, dollar store for
tourists, diplomats, and any Cuban with dollars; the parking lot is
jammed. Someone has set up a bicycle parking lot nearby. It looks like a
Price Club store, but I don't enter today.

I see a sign for "K Marx" and wonder if this is a sign of what Ronfeldt
and Gonzalez call "Market-Leninism", the blending of capitalism
under the guiding hand of a socialist state. No, it's the Teatro Karl Marx
(Karl Marx Theater), and I keep strolling. Not much trash in the street,
partly because paper is rare; there are no fast food places to generate the
trash, and East German garbage bins are found at many corners. I saw
garbage men collecting these once during my stay.

It was about 6 p.m. when I reached the Almenderas River, under which
two main streets pass, and over which a pedestrian bridge allows
rubber-neckers, tourists, and others to watch the boat and raft
launchings. Hundreds of people quietly gathered all along the
shoreline, the bridge, and talked. A couple of rafts set out. At one end of
the bridge officials from the Min-Int (Ministry of Interior) and the FAR
(Cuban Armed Forces) watched with as much interest as the civilians
did. One fellow in Army green looked about Castro's age; he, too, had a
grey beard, and I figured that he must have fought in the Sierra Maestre
with Fidel, but somehow he screwed up and was placed in Havana
guarding this tiny foot bridge at the end of his Army career.

Young men and women offered various services to me, primarily to be
my guide and protect me from the "bad Cubans" they knew to be
waiting for naive tourists. I talked with them as we walked, but I made
it clear they would not be paid, and after a few minutes, they dropped
back.  I saw no other tourists during this part of my walk, and I was
reluctant to take many pictures or videotape a raft launching, but I did
manage to get a few shots of rafts that had just left.

---
Scene:  The Malecon. A young man is sitting by the ocean, guarding a
large truck inner tube.  I approach just a two men on bikes zoom by:
"Five dollars for your inner tube!" one yells, without slowing down.
The passive vendor shakes his head and waits for a better offer.
---


By the time I reach the Hotel Deauville in old Havana, there are
hundreds of people lining the Malecon, waiting for other rafters. It's a
quiet carnival atmosphere. Nothing is being sold in the way of food or
drink, but the phenomenon of people leaving Cuba as they wish is still
very unusual, and the number of departures had not peaked at this
time.  The Deauville's windows had been broken on August 5, but they
were quickly repaired. It certainly was not at all like Los Angeles where
the evidence of the riots still remains. There was some police presence. I
saw a lone cop guarding a raft on the rocky shore below the highway.
Since this was the first day, I decided to just watch and not ask questions
in my broken Spanish.  I moved away from him, quietly took out my
video camera and was preparing to shoot when a couple of cyclists came
by, saw it, and begged me to take their pictures.  The cop noticed this,
and I put the camera away and moved on.

I walked back as the sun was setting, and I stopped by Fidel's favorite
hotel, the Havana Libre (the old Hilton), atop which sits the television
satellite dishes and repeaters that feed other tourist hotels.  Electronic
wizards in Havana have been constructing cheap settop boxes and small
parabolic dishes that are aimed at the Havana Libre hotel. For about
$150 your television can pick up Peter Arnett as he broadcasts to the
world from Havana, or Haiti, or you might just prefer to catch the
Randolph Scott series on TNT.  American films are extremely popular
here, so there was sadness in the city when the government began
re-encoding the satellite signal in May 1994, so that the pirate boxes
would not work any more.  Even the lower level Communist party
members were extremely upset at having this source of entertainment
cut off. It seems the ones who decided to scramble the signal were much
more concerned about what was NOT being watched (Cuban
government programming) than with the content of the American
channels.  They saw it as Gresham's law of television, and decided to
stop it.  However,  I talked with one of the makers of the pirate boxes,
and he said colleagues were working on a hack to overcome the
government encryption scheme.

It was 8 p.m. by the time the sun went down in the Miramar district. I
noticed the huge number of well-dressed young women attempting to
cross the wide boulevard all along my route home. Many offered me
any sort of assistance I might need. It is a sad fact that prostitution has
increased, just as the number of tourists has increased and the dollar
was decriminalized.  While there are no sex tours as the Japanese are so
fond of in Thailand, it is a major change for this socialist country. In
Carlos Franqui's book about the early years with Fidel, he is surprised to
find Czech whores during his visit to Prague. When he confronts
Ernesto Guevara, Che refuses to believe that this model socialst state
would have any prostitutes. A few years later he sees for himself and
tells Franqui he was wrong to disbelieve.

Scene
-----
The first telephone call I received in my room was from a young man.
Translated, the conversation went like this:
Hello?
-Hola! Who's this?
Who are you calling?
-You. What's your name?
Steve, what's yours?
-Miguel. What are you doing?
(I explain I'm at a conference, etc, and Miguel asks:)
-Are you alone?
Yes?
-Want to come to my house and play?
I'm surprised to receive such a blatant proposition, but it turns out
people troll the phone lines regularly, in hopes of meeting up with
someone with dollars.  I hang up, and Miguel does not call back.
----

By the time I reach the hotel, a full moon is up, and a crowd of Cubans
stands about a block away from the Comodoro. A few people are
admitted on foot and in cars, but most of the young people don't get in.
I walk past the guard and up to my room, put on my swim suit, and
head for a salt water pool where a salsa band has begun to play. I float on
my back in the warm Havana night, listen to the music, watch the full
moon overhead, and my burning feet cool off after the five hour
"walk". A great way to start the trip.

August 20

One of our guides is an attractive young woman, just out of U. of
Havana. Her English is quite good; she loves the phrase, "No problem!"
and uses it whenever she detects any visitor's anxiety level rising.  This
is her first tour group, and she now has the flu. Her hours off the job
during the conference are from two a.m. to six a.m.  A company car
drops the guides off at their homes all around Havana and then picks
them up early in the morning. This leaves her only four hours of sleep
a night during the week we are there. She hustles us into a new Spanish
bus and over the the Palacio de las Convenciones, about twenty
minutes away. On the way I see a storage facility, full of old American
cars including two 1956 Ford Thunderbirds, dusty but in good shape.  It
turns out government is exporting these for sale to collectors, and this is
a holding area.

The Palacio is the main convention center. In 1994 there were 32 events
scheduled besides our library conference: 2nd International Yoruba
Meeting; Informatics '94; Pan-American Congress on Pediatric Surgery;
Spanish Federation of Travel Agencies; and various quasi-political
meetings such as the meeting for the solidarity, sovereignty,
self-determination and life of Caribbean peoples. It is set up for
simultaneous translations in several of the largest rooms, and there are
restaurants, gift shops, and even a guy rolling cigars in the open hall as
you climb the steps from the bus staging area.  Everything worked quite
well, but the conference exhibits were at an expo hall about ten minutes
away. You had to make a special trip to visit the exhibits, and they had a
shuttle running a couple of times an hour.  After we registered,
received about 5 kg. of paper and carrying bags, we headed back to the
hotel.

Electronic Networking in Cuba

Because I had been corresponding with various Cubans on the Internet,
I was able to set up a few meetings to find out more about what they are
doing with computer networks in Cuba. First of all, there seems to be a
strong sense of the importance of networking and the Internet, in
particular. The central network seems to be CENIAI, Centro de
Intercambio Automatizdo de Informacion (Automated Information
Exchange Center) which bills itself as the electronic academic messaging
and information network. One can get an account on their system,
connect a DOS machine for message and Usenet feeds via UUCP, or use
UUCP or TCP/IP protocols to connect your Unix machine to CENIAI.
Beside email, Usenet, they have a bulletin board, and advertise
electronic publications. International email is quite expensive: 30 cents
per kilobyte (inbound or outbound). A mailing list with light traffic
could cost several dollars a day which is the equivalent to a month
salary at the unofficial exchange rate for pesos.

There are people in the U.S. and Cuba who are trying to get a full
dedicated Internet connection, but progress on the Cuban side was slow,
even before the events of August 5 and the resulting tension between
the U.S. and Cuba.  Because information flow is a strategy endorsed by
both the U.S. and Cuba, let's hope that a good connection can be
established, even though both sides may sometimes differ what sort of
information should flow across the Internet connection. The George
Soros foundation funded the attendance of two Cuban networkers at
the Internet Society in Prague in June 1994, and the strong attendance at
the library workshop on the Internet, is evidence that the Cubans will
make good use of a 56 kb line whenever it is made available.

For more details on Cuban networks see Larry Press' article in the
_Matrix News_ for June 1992.  See the matrix_news.src WAIS database
on the Internet for the full text. Because of this article I had heard about
TinoRed (TinoNet).  Tino is the robot mascot of the Joven Club de
Computacion (Youth Computer Club) run by the Communist Youth
Union. The clubs are established in 112 towns around the country, and
they provide a place for people to learn on DOS/Windows machines
the basics of computing, telecommunications, and desktop publishing.
The also have a satellite feed in the main computer center in Havana,
so young hackers who tire of the keyboard can watch international
television programs.

I met one of the directors from the main office, and he invited me to
stop by for a visit and a tour of some of the centers in Havana.
However, he had to work in the exhibition hall, and we were unable to
make the tour.  I did drop in to one of the clubs in downtown Havana
on La Reina street. It was located in what seemed to be a large, old
department store. A rear screen projector was running, and the staff said
they were closed, that it would be best if I could come back tomorrow
when a technician would be there. Behind the woman were about ten
PCs, all turned off. I did not speculate why there was so little activity in
this main branch, but power outages and lack of parts may have been
part of the reason for the idle machines.

TinoRed is a BBS network, and members can send email to pen pals
overseas, but I was not clear who paid for the messages.  I also asked if
you had to be a young Communist to use the facilities, and the staff said,
no, that anyone young or old, Party member or not, could use the
computers. One young man I met expressed a strong interest in
computers, but he said you had to know someone in the Youth Club in
order to get in. It sounded like you had to be a prospective candidate for
membership and not just someone whose interests were only
computers.

There was one incident I had heard about. A anti-government diatribe
was sent by email from abajofidel@aol.com to all the TinoRed
addresses. Not only was the content unwelcome (abajofidel means
Down with Fidel), but the charges for that many messages were
substantial. Spamming the Cuban networks (or any site where
incoming messages are expensive) is a bad way of promoting
international connectivity.

Before our trip to Cuba, the head of library automation at the Biblioteca
Nacional, Luis Mourelos, ran a listserv for library delegates and
provided us with a lists of tourist information, conference activities,
and some discussions. He was about the only name in Cuba that most
people recognized when they arrived (other than Fidel), and he became
an instant celebrity and lost his voice talking on the first night.  I
brought him an Apple Library T-shirt, some office supplies, and after
my talk, left the transparencies and the videotape of Internet tools I had
made. Luis and his crew also set up several machines for email from
the conference center, and my colleagues were able to send and receive
mail several times during the stay. I chose only to send a few messages:
to Clinton, a Cuban-American friend, and another library colleague.  My
message to Clinton was that I was in Cuba, trying to extend the Global
Information Infrastructure (that Gore was beginning to push), and that I
hoped that he would help facilitate that.

My presentation on Internet tools was part of an all day workshop
organized by a team of librarians including Monica Ertel (Apple), Sallie
McCallum (Library of Congress), Paula Tallim  and Leigh
Swain(National Library of Canada) with a supporting cast from Cuba,
Venezuela, Dominican Republic, the UK, and the USA. Normally,
about fifty are admitted to workshops, but we had room and materials
for 150, and we filled the room. My challenge was to show different
tools and explain what might prevent attendees from using them. I
explained that many of the more popular tools were designed by people
with good connections with costs hidden from them, fast workstations,
large monitors, and a lot of peer support on the Internet.  I showed
Anarchie, Blue-Skies, NewsWatcher, MacWeb, TurboGopher, as well as
Lynx and VT100 interfaces to Gopher.  My talk followed a more basic
one on telnet, ftp, and email. What impressed me were the
simultaneous translators sitting in a glass booth watching the
overheads and trying to keep up with the speaker throwing out terms
like UUCP, Z39.50, WAIS, and TCP/IP. I tried to speak slowly, so the
light on the wall that said "Slowly" never came on during my talk. The
whole workshop was a big success, and there was talk of doing another
in South America in 1995.

Outside of the main sessions there were poster sessions where each
presenter had a one meter by two meter board to display information
about the topic. Some of these can be gold mines of unusual
information. I found three wonderful ones as I strolled through the
display area.

1. Venezuelan Amazon floating library service. The Venezuelan Library
is a very innovative system; the director gave a guest lecture, but I was
never able to catch up and talk with her about the services she alluded
to.  Just seeing the pictures of a river boat out of "Heart of Darkness"
stocked with good reading matter and adventuresome librarians made
me want to get a ticket for Caracas, head up country, and find the wharf
where the boat was docked.

2. Library Services and Cultural Promotion in the Granma province,
Cuba.  Granma is the historic boat used by Fidel's supporters to come
from Mexico. It's enshrined at the Museum of the Revolution, and the
name was also given to the newspaper of the Communist Party in Cuba
and to a remote province near the city of Santiago, "the moral capital of
the revolution." Most of the Sierra Maestre mountains are in this
province, and the library services that have been established are a good
example of the focus Castro's government has made on providing
services to rural areas. A lot of Castro's original supporters were
campesinos, so rural problems got more of a hearing from Castro.In
spite of the terrible economic problems facing the country, it is evident
that the rural dwellers did have, and perhaps still have, more resources
in relation to some towns than other areas in South America have. The
evidence is that there is no massive sprawl of poor rural dwellers
surrounding Havana as you see in Rio, Quito, Mexico City, and other
cities.  the Granma library program included three city libraries, four
branches, 128 min-libraries (no explanation of what these are), ten
reading rooms, a mobile library, and traveling artistic groups in each
part of the province.

The sad thing is that the paper shortage has meant that fewer books are
printed, and fewer imported, so the shelves of many libraries are
growing bare. What's worse is that the populace is reading less. I guess
you'd say they are becoming non-literate, something that is hard to
admit, considering Cuba's reputation for such a successful literacy
campaign in the early 1960's. It's difficult to find even the current
edition of _Granma_, and the paper used for the main literary journal,
_Bohemia_, is so brown and spotted with ink, that it seems the whole
enterprise will grind to a halt unless fresh paper, ink, and better presses
are made available. For our conference a European supplier donated one
million sheets of paper for the proceedings to be printed.  In our
workshop we handed out some paper, but most of the information was
contained on a compressed text file with the equivalent of 2 megabytes
of ASCII text. I suppose they will have to browse in on screen, given the
shortage of computer paper.

3.The third poster session was for Perla Red (Network) in Cienfuegos,
the large port city and navy base on the South Coast of Cuba. I had
corresponded with Jesus Aneiros Sosa before coming to Cuba, and by
chance his co-sysop, Alina Espinosa Roca was running the session,
spotted my name tag, and we had a good visit. They are running with
one line between 8 and 4:30 Monday to Friday using a 2400 bps modem
with Waffle 1.65 BBS software. They have a UUCP connection to
CENIAI in Havana. In May 1994 they sent out 229 messages and
received 968; in June: 244 sent, 1392 received. They have email,
moderated lists, a medical electronic newsletter (SALUD-H), and a file
server. Everyone talked about the bad phone lines, even in the main
cities, so the perseverance of these network pioneers is admirable,
considering the constraints they have.

A Visit to Average Habaneros

While it was exciting to meet library and networking colleagues at the
conference, I was very curious about the average lives of Cubans who
did not have access to tourist dollars or high level jobs in ministries or
universities. A friend had written letters of introduction to his relatives
in Havana and in a farming area a couple of hours away. I dropped by
the apartment building in downtown Havana, next to a government
store that was dark and with only a few items on the shelves. Teresa, I'll
call her, met me, only slightly surprised. A visitor had brought a note
from her uncle in Miami, saying I'd arrive about five days earlier, so my
presence was expected. The apartment was on a main, narrow street.
The entrance was opened to anyone yelling to any occupant inside. Each
apartment seemed to be a small dining area, living room, small narrow
kitchen, a pantry, and a bedroom and attached bathroom with shower,
toilet, and sink. The temperature was not too bad, but Teresa brought
out a fan, and we began to chat. First came the uncle's pictures that had
been taken in May, then the letters of introduction, telling her I'd eat
anything and to speak slowly to me! I was willing to forge ahead with
broken Spanish like a reckless skier with one ski heading on a brutal
downhill run, but I had a very hard time understanding more than a
third of what was said to me.  I spent a good five minutes trying to
translate a family joke into Spanish and finally succeeded, and it
seemed they appreciated the effort.  Teresa's brother came by and we
took a walk in old Havana.  Because we were surrounded by dollar
stores full of tourist items, I decided not to buy anything, since it would
seem so expensive and frivolous to my new friends who were
accompanying me. I promised to return in a couple of days for a meal
and a visit with Teresa's husband.

That evening was one of many receptions for the library delegates. Great
music and food were a part of each. While we foreigners really enjoyed
both, this was an extremely rare treat for the Cubans whose food rations
are not enough for sustained good health. Consequently, the buffets
were swept clean in half an hour, and I felt guilty competing for any of
the offerings. I kept thinking that the resources to feed 1500 delegates
was costing the government a lot of hard currency, but it was another
example of the hospitality shown visitors, attendees at any
international conference.  Some American writers have called this
"apartheid tourism" which has unpleasant connotations, but there is
resentment by Cubans about the resources devoted to tourists who
account for so much of the hard currency coming into Cuba now that
the country has not Soviet crude oil to refine and re-sell.

---
Scene: Hot summer evening. A tree-line boulevard in Miramar, a
residential area where many of the foreign embassies are located. A 1955
silver, Pontiac convertible is cruising with the top down along the
street. The driver, a man in his 50's, steers with one hand, the other
across the red leather seatback, resting lightly on his companion's
shoulders. The relationship that Cubans have with pre-revolution
American cars and appliances touches more than my sense of nostalgia
for the automobiles of my youth, before I had a driver's license. These
are vehicles and appliances that are needed and admired, and even
though factory parts are not available, Cubans tell me that new ones are
fabricated in workshops and machine shops in order to keep things
running.
---

I returned to Teresa's apartment two days later. Her husband had
returned from a trip to his town in the country. He was hoping to get a
visa to visit his sick father in Miami, and things were going slowly with
the Cuban officials, but he was sure he would receive it soon. Ricardo, a
black man, had married into a family of  Cubans of Spanish ancestry,
and this was not acceptable to the grandfather. However, he was a good
husband and everyone seemed to accept him now. We talked about the
Orisha, the religious traditions of the Yoruba of Nigeria that were the
basis of some of the Afro-Cuban religions, and he brought out a book to
show me some of the artifacts used in the ceremonies. I told him about
the persistence of some African traditions in the United States and in
Haiti. After a wonderful meal of rice and chicken and fresh avocado, I
was pleased to find that they knew I liked to ride bicycles and they had
borrowed a bike so we could tour old Havana. Teresa rode behind her
brother, and her husband was on his bike, while I was on a third. This
turned out to be the best way for me to see the city. When I walked
everyone knew very quickly that I was a tourist, just as was evident if I
gazed out of a new Nissan or Mercedes taxi or shiny Spanish tour bus,
but on a worn Chinese one-speed bike, I could fit into the commuter
landscape a bit longer before people's gaze lingered on me.

I was pedaling very slowly, and the traffic patterns were hard to discern.
Consequently, I had several close calls, even at low speed. Since I bicycle
to work each day in California, I was somewhat aware of potential
hazards from cars more than from other bikes or motorcycles. My
Cuban friends insisted on carrying the camcorder bag so I would not be a
target for thieves. This late afternoon ride allowed me to see
neighborhood activity (and inactivity) such as kids making scooters out
of roller skates, conversations, people studying, returning from work, or
just sitting on a shadowy doorstep to escape the heat of a sweltering
apartment.

We ended up at the Biblioteca Nacional across the plaza from a huge
monument to the revolution. I said goodbye to them until Friday, our
trip to the farm, and they left me in a group of Cuban librarians who
were waiting for the evening reception to begin. The conference
organizers had the nicest bus fleet for the visiting foreigners; we were
never allowed to stand in the aisles, but the Cubans traveled on older
Czech and Hungarian vehicles, packed in the seats and the aisles. After
an hour, a huge crowd had assembled, and the evening sun was beating
down. The doors finally opened, but the pass control worked so slowly
it took about half an hour for the crowd to be admitted. A dance troupe
had assembled in the atrium, and no refreshments were passed out
until they finished their performance. Soon the thirsty crowd began
urging the caterers to pass out the drinks, but they held back until the
applause for the dancers had died down. A quiet rush ensued, but the
staff handled it as best they could. Others headed for the tables of food,
and I went downstairs to the crafts exhibits (papier-mache, jewelry,
wooden items, prints, T-shirts, and books). This was a very big event for
the library, the hosts for the whole conference, and it went fairly well,
given the space limitations of the reading rooms and the thirst of the
1500 delegates.

It was strange to return to the hotel room and watch Fidel Castro on
CNN and on the Cuban station. The English translation gave a different
flavor of the speech, and even though I could not understand much of
what Castro said, his intonation and emphasis on certain phrases was
important to understanding more than the words out of his mouth.  He
sat in the studio and read a long chronology of the emigration issues
with the U.S.  There were a number of head-bobbing correspondents
sitting in the studio with him, but they said nothing. Nobody took the
Yes-man role of Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson "You are right, Sir!!"  It
reminded me more of the long-winded discourses by the Reverend
Gene Scott (who controls his own television station in California), but
Castro's explanations were peppered with citations from American
periodicals and newspaper editorials.  He made a big deal out of the way
the U.S. distorted reports of Cubans being prevented from leaving Cuba
or from going to Guantanamo Naval Base. The only real agitation came
when he spoke of Mas Canosa and his "mafia fascist" organization.
>From talking with other Cubans, it seems that Mas Canosa only's
influence in Cuba would be his money and not his standing in the
emigre community of Miami. Of course, money talks so he could buy
support in post-Castro Cuba that might not come through other means.

It is unclear to everyone who or what might have power in a
post-Castro Cuba: exile groups? the young technocrats born since
Castro took power? the military (under Raul Castro)?

Politics, economics, and rations

Meanwhile, the rafts were still leaving from the north coast. The
Department of Defense and Justice were warning Cubans that they
would be taken to Guantanamo and not to Miami for release to family
members. Even "Granma" printed the American warning for would-be
rafters, but many people refused to believe that they would be held
indefinitely at the Naval Base.  A few librarians from the West Indies
were incensed with their governments for giving in to U.S. pressures to
accept Cuban refugees. For instance, the payment to the tiny country of
Turk and Caicos (near the Bahamas) was  little more than a bribe to the
legislature to receive a few thousand Cubans for a limited time.
Everyone noticed that none of the larger countries had agreed to take
the refugees (Venezuela, Mexico, Colombia), but that Panama and a
couple of others would take a little pressure off of Clinton's domestic
issue: immigrants. Still, one gets a sense of how the U.S. considers the
Caribbean (and even South America) its back yard.

I certainly don't pretend to be an instant expert, nor do I have a good
understanding of economics, but the most disruptive split in Cuba is
not between those who support the revolution and those who demand
the ouster of Fidel, Raul, and the Communist bureaucracy. It's the split
caused by two currencies. The peso is almost without value on the open
(black) market, and the U.S. dollar is prized by everyone: the
government, professionals, guides, and even little kids in the street
who know enough English to cry, "Give me one dollar, Mister!"  The
value placed on the dollar is like a vote of confidence in a system of
exchange and reckoning where the Cuban peso (and economic model) is
held to be irrelevant. There is a system of rationing that has gone on for
many years, but now many rationed goods are unavailable, and the
amounts that are allotted are pitifully small. However, the government
knows that most Cubans are going to supplement this ratio by other
means: by meals the employer must give workers (though these are less
frequent), by purchases outside of the ration system but at higher prices,
and by barter. Wherever you go, there are signs saying "No--to the
Blockade" and the government certainly blames a lot of their problems
on the U.S. blockade of the country. Cubans in Miami tell me that the
Cubans back home _want_ the blockade, and some Cubans I met had a
different viewpoint: that there is no blockade: the availability of most
products in dollar stores shows them that it's not really working.
Another group says that Castro wants to blockade to hide the
deficiencies of his government's messed up economy.  

Another, and I agree with them, believes that the end of the blockade
would be the most subversive thing the U.S. could do. It would open up
Cuba to investment, to more American influence, and would force
more changes on the Cuban regime than they could assimilate without
changing their own governing structure.  Even more importantly,
dropping the threat of invasion or subversion by the U.S. would make
the support for the Fidelistas lessen.  Much of their internal support is
based on a siege mentality, and if you listen to Radio Marti, to the talk
shows from Miami where callers speak of mass killings and burning of
Castro supporters, it seems easy for the government to raise the  anxiety
level about U.S. (and Cuban emigre) intentions with regards to
post-Castro Cuba.

There is some evidence that the U.S. National Security Council and the
Dept of Defense would like to change our Cuba policy, but hard-liners
with grudges against Castro who work in the State Department are not
about to change. The human rights abuses cited by the State Department
are real, but they are far less compared to those of many countries we
count as our allies, and as journalists have asked, why deal with China,
Vietnam, and North Korea and not Cuba.  Because Cuba is a domestic
issue, not an international one. And, of course, Clinton's relative in
Miami (daughter of the owner of Cuba's largest department store at the
time of Batista) has his ear, at least for now.

In some ways the Castro government seems intransigent, but one
Cuban told me that Cuba has very special feelings for America and
Americans. However, Cubans very independent, she said, and can be
very contrary when advice is given, even if the advice is correct, they
may go the opposite direction.  There are most likely a group of hard
line Communists centered around Raul Castro, and these older men
and women may see  no way of making the necessary changes in the
government to have it survive in some modified form.

And yet, there are changes.  The Foreign Minister, Roberto Robaina, is
about 36, and came from nowhere (actually, head of the Young
Communists).  While I was there, the disliked head of the CDR
(Committees for the Defense of the Revolution), an old general named
Sixto Batista, was replaced by a 29 year old. The CDR's main function
nowadays is sort of institutionalized gossip and snooping on neighbors,
but they also helped mount 'voluntary' work details in neighborhoods.
This is an obvious attempt to win back some of the disaffected youth,
none of whom were born before the revolution.  Some Cubans feel that
these changes are totally ignored by the Americans or are declared
insubstantial, but for this rigid government, they are big changes.

The last rumor I heard was that the farmers' markets would be
instituted again, with the hopes that food distribution would be
improved through incentives to small growers and people like the
farmers I was going to visit on Friday.  The problem in my mind is that
the goods will flow to the best markets, and right now those are dollar
markets. What happens to the people who don't have access to dollars?
Can the government ration plan keep them fed and happy? Probably
not, judging from what I saw of the ration book and the actual supplies
for an individual: a pack of cigarettes and matches a month; six pounds
of rice, about a cup of cooking oil, no toothpaste, dark, coarse soap, a
little sugar, corn meal, and perhaps a piece of fish plus some health
items, electricity, gas, and gasoline for your car, if you are one of the
lucky ones to be able to use 20 liters of gas a month. More goods are
available at higher peso prices and for dollars, so people seem to spend a
lot of time shopping around when they are not trying to earn money,
especially dollars.  It just does not seem that there will ever be enough
dollars to go around, and if there are, the economy will be out of the
control of the government. This the rulers must find unacceptable, and
perhaps the team of Spanish economists attached to the Ministry of
Finance can help them sort out the mixed economy  that is rapidly
emerging.

A visit to the countryside

On Friday I returned to my friends' apartment, and a neighbor drove us
out to a country town, two hours from Havana, where many of the
other relatives lived. I had brought a video message from their relatives
in Miami, but the  hookup to the Russian television did not work.
Instead, each person watched the message through the viewfinder on
the Camcorder and used headphones for audio. The people in Miami
were very concerned that the folks in Cuba would leave by raft, and they
begged them to stay put.  Consequently, all the Cuban relatives sent back
a video message to the people in Miami, saying they were not leaving
by raft, that things were okay, and not to worry. The whole visit to the
country relatives was more than okay; it was the high point of my trip.

It was quite  a gathering: farmers, a nurse, retired folks, a few children,
teachers, and a software engineer. I was struck by their good spirits, by
their ability to have a good time together, and by their tolerance of my
many questions, my bad Spanish, and the little time I actually spent
with each of them. As soon as I walked in, an aunt asked if I would like
to try some homemade cheese and guava marmalade. I said, sure, and
soon a big bowl of marmalade was put in front of me. Next to it a plate
of fresh cheese slices. I took a piece, dipped it in the sauce and nibbled it.
My friends from the city dumped the whole plate of cheese in the sauce
and ate it like a thick soup. My stomach was a little upset from a ceviche
cocktail the night before, and I only sampled a few pieces.
 
I had brought several six packs of cold Venezuelan beer and a two liter
bottle of orange soda, purchased at the dollar store in the hotel.  From a
favorite store in San Jose (Trader Joe's) I had brought a one pound bar of
chocolate.  Food and drink was passed around, and there was no set
meal, just continuous visiting and eating and drinking.

Soon after we took a walk from the town to the farm, only half a
kilometer away. They had owned a number of hectares of land, perhaps
ten or so, but the authorities had whittled this down to a very small
piece, perhaps two (five acres) hectares on which they planted yams,
peanuts, citrus, guava, and raised a lot of animals. Pigs seemed to be the
most popular meat producer, and I think they earned a fair amount of
dollars by selling ham to city dwellers.  They also had milk cows, oxen,
fighting cocks, and goats. The young farmer and his wife were big strong
people; they seemed to be thriving. I remembered seeing his picture in a
photograph where he picked up my Miami friends at the Havana
airport in a 1953 Chevrolet. His eyes lit up when I mentioned the
Chevy, and he insisted that I drive the car while Teresa's brother
videotape the whole event.  He siphoned gas out, primed the
carburetor, and got the sedan cranked up.  I pulled away, headed down
the dirt road, and then was unable to get the car into reverse gear.
Luckily, I found a turn around, and headed back, stopped to ask the
cameraman directions to Cienfuegos, and then stopped back by the
garage. What a weird experience to be driving a pre-revolution
American sedan down a country road in Cuba!

We headed back into town and over to another relative's house for
more visits, food, and video. First they brought out a coconut for me to
drink, and then a wonderful yam and chicken stew. People ate while
others made video messages for me to carry back to Miami, and in the
late afternoon, we headed back to the Convention Hall for the closing
session.  I had to jump quickly out of the car near the hall, and it was
hard to make an appropriate goodbye, especially after all I had
experienced with them. It was hard to show how grateful I was for their
adding such a human dimension to my whole trip. I have not stopped
thinking about them since I returned more than a week ago.

Saturday was our final full day in country, and some of us had chosen
an all day excursion to Vinales in the western most part of the island,
about three hours from Havana.  On the way we stopped in Pinar del
Rio at a cigar factory. It was very colorful, smelled great, and seemed to
be unchanged for decades except for the electric time clock in the
entrance.  I spoke to one old man who was puffing on a long cigar, and
he said that he made about 250 cigars a day, depending on the type. He
smoked five or six (for free) and had been doing it for 43 years. A couple
of women asked us for soap, since they had none in the factory. A few
people gave them coins instead, but most headed for the cigar store to
buy souvenirs for the trip home.

Vinales is one of those beautiful areas you want to visit on your own
and spend more time. This valley is a karst region with sugar loaf hills
jutting out of the flatland. A small hotel with pool is situated next to
the main overlook, and several of us began imagining eco-tours, hikes,
and bicycle cruises using the hotel as a staging area. Lunch was at an
outdoor restaurant near a mural showing the prehistory of the Vinales
area. It was about the best and biggest meal we had during the whole
trip.  The roast pork was exquisite, and I found the barbeque master in
back to let him know what I thought of his dish.  There were too many
of us to take a boat trip in the cave river, and the rum factory was closed,
so the bus headed back to Havana and arrived in the late afternoon.
Along the freeway you would see large crowds of people waiting for
state vehicles which were required to pick people up, if they had room.
A common sight was an open dump truck, with ten or twelve people
hanging on inside. Because of the light traffic, the main roads were in
very good shape. If you can afford a rental car, that would be a great way
to see the island. Taking the bus or train is discouraged because you
have to pay in pesos.

Sunday was our departure day, and we had to arrive so many hours
early at the airport that people spent most of the idle time in the tourist
stores buying coffee, rum, cigars, Che Guevara memorabilia.  The flight,
a Lloyd Boliviano charter,  left for Miami on time, and soon we got our
luggage and cleared customs with absolutely no hassles over books,
cigars, or rum purchases in Cuba. My first trip to Cuba was over.

Unless an American traveling abroad hibernates in a Holiday Inn or
airport waiting room, he or she will return to the U.S. with a slightly
different view of the world. Coming back from Cuba was a major
change for me, in some ways like returning from teaching in West
Africa many years ago. I look at my own life, creature comforts, and use
of technology in a much different way than I did a few weeks ago. This
article/journal was part of an attempt to sort out some of my
experiences and thoughts.



Cuba Books

Cuba: The Revolution in Peril, by Janette Habel. (Verso, 1991) Verso
might be termed a left-wing scholarly press. This work by a French
scholar of Latin American history and economics is exhaustive and
critical. However, she has been a constant supporter of the Cuban
revolution since the 1960's, so her words may carry more weight with
some readers and anger others current supporters of the Cuban
government. The long introduction by Francois Maspero points out
that Cuba has made gains no other developing country has, and yet
Castro has not been able to consolidate them.  Habel criticizes Castro for
being the source of all pronouncements about Cuba and taking
responsibility for its direction but only some of its problems. As one
Cuban-American economist says, "the Cuban system distributed well
but produced badly" and now it is not distributing well either. She ends
with a chapter on the trial and execution of General Ochoa and says,
"The Cuban model, the myth of Fidel, have been shattered for a whole
generation of activists. Part of our lives and hopes have been buried."
Because it focuses so much on economics, the reader will be educated
about the problems developing countries face in a world dominated by
the G7.


Driving Through Cuba: Rare Encounters of Sugar Cane and
Revolution, by Carlo Gebler (Simon & Schuster 1988)

Gebler, an Irish writer, takes his family, rents a Lada (Soviet Fiat) and
roams the countryside, interspersing everyday events with chunks of
Cuban history. His goal is to find El Dorado, a pre-1960 Cadillac El
Dorado, that is, so every old American car receives some mention. Even
in 1988, goods seem in short supply, but the kindness of many of the
Cubans makes one want to overlook the lack of gasoline, choice of
restaurants, and explore the island in the same manner.

Family Portrait with Fidel, by Carlos Franqui (Random House, 1984).
During the fight against Batista, Franqui, a Communist journalist with
a very strong sense of independence, became the archivist for the
Fidelistas. After their victory, he became editor of _Revolucion_, one of
Cuba's most important newspapers. This memoir, written in exile in
Italy, is a frank appraisal of the strengths, weaknesses, and aloofness of
Fidel Castro as well as an account of the loss of intellectual freedom and
the growth of the Soviet-style security apparatus in the new socialist
state.

Cuba: A Journey, by Jacobo Timerman.  This was originally published in
The New Yorker by the dissident Argentine journalist who was jailed
by the Argentine junta. Before the trip he had been a supporter of Cuba,
and had spoken and written in its support on the International political
scene. Though he is not a Communist, it was evident that the Cubans
valued the credibility he had, so this work must have stung the
leadership, especially Fidel Castro, whom Timerman avoided as he
drove around the country in a rented car. His focus is on average
citizens, the artists and writers and human rights activists, and the
mundane encounters during journey.

For an interesting account of an American Poet at a revolutionary
holiday, see Leroi Jones "Cuba Libre" in Evergreen Review,  Nov-Dec.
1960.

"A Look at Cuban Networks," by Larry Press and Joel Snyder, _Matrix
News_, June 1992.

_Bohemia_, August 5, 1994.  This Cuban literary magazine includes
several articles on the disturbances of August 5 including photographs
of Castro, rock-throwing youth, pro-government marchers, arrests being
made, and the repair  brigades.

As for travel books, there are several. The only one I recomend is:
Travelers Survival Kit: Cuba by Simon Calder and Emily Hatchwell.
Vacation Work: Oxford, England.  1993   ISBN 1 85458 091 4

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