Perros y pajaros
“Aqui, decimos que son los mismos perros, con collares diferentes.”
He laughs. I suppose it’s as good a way as any to remember the difference, although it doesn’t tell you which one’s which; you still have to remember that bit. But then again, one has coconuts and one doesn’t, so it's not that difficult. At any rate, walking through tropical forest looking for birds isn’t a bad way to spend a morning, though I wish I’d eaten breakfast, and maybe gone to the toilet. The cup of thick, strong, home-grown coffee we had as the sun came up was delicious, but it’s caused something of a stirring in my bowel. Fortunately, the surroundings are interesting enough to take my mind off it. It’s not long after dawn, and we’re hiking along an unmarked trail in the Parque Nacional de Viñales, partly because I struggle to know when it’s okay not to say anything. Hence, me idly mentioning my interest in birds to our host yesterday became us going up a mountain to watch the sunrise before I’d even had the chance to mumble something apologetically into my navel about how it was nice to be out of Havana because of the traffic, or something. I’m exaggerating, obviously. There’s not that much traffic in Havana. Most Cubans don’t have cars. Also, they're not really mountains, they’re mogotes, and pretty much all the trails are unmarked, so it’s not like we were being especially daring, and at any rate we had a guide. But I did need to go to the toilet.
The internet tells me that it’s two and a half years since I wrote anything. The internet obviously doesn’t know about my work as one half of the best English-language folk duo in the Castellón metropolitan area, despite the presence of Natives on at least one well-known social media platform, and all the times I’ve listened to our own songs on Soundcloud. I did get part-way through a piece comparing the inhabitants of Castellón to the 18th century whaling community of Nantucket, but it was so tenuous and boring that I never finished it. It also took me so long to write that in the meantime the book it was based on got made into a film whose audience, I imagine, was a little larger than that of this blog. Also, just because two things are happening in your life at the same time doesn’t mean they have anything to do with each other. I just liked the book. You should read it. It’s called In the Heart of the Sea. I lent it to a friend of mine who hated it so much he gave it back after three days. Anyway they made a film out of it. The two things weren’t related. Various things took me back to England for a while. Eventually I got a new watch. I left it in England. That was a shame, because it told the time in different time zones around the world.
Our guide, who is called - somewhat implausibly - Boris, has paused to explain the difference between the palma de coco and the palma real, the national tree of Cuba. Next to him is a sprouted coconut which he has tugged from the red earth and plans to give to his grandparents as a present. He puts it down at intervals to explain something, or to go off the path into the trees, following a call, a slight movement in the leaves, a flash of colour from a tail or wing tip. All around, turkey vultures climb the morning thermals out of the valley. Dawn, when it came, was misty and chill, so the vultures have risen late. They circle upwards to the top of the forested limestone hills that jut out, sheer and sudden, from the fertile plains of fruit and tobacco. The sun burns away the mist and the vultures begin to circle in groups. I found one of their feathers on the street one day coming back from Loma del Capiro. It was from these hills on the eastern edge of Santa Clara that Che Guevara led his invasion of that city during the Revolution. We’d gone up there to watch the sun go down.The feather was like a crow’s, only larger, with greyish white on the trailing edge.
There are two main differences between the palma real and the palma de coco. Firstly, the coco has a ridged trunk, whereas the real does not. Secondly, unlike the hairy ruff of the coco, the real has a smooth green section of about a metre or so between the trunk and base of the leaves. Same dogs, different collars. The tree has various uses and many are linked inextricably to tobacco, the best of which is grown in this region. The trunk is used to make boards for building the secadoras - the barns where the tobacco leaves are hung and dried, once they are doused with a mixture of water, rum, aguardiente, honey, and possibly some other things I can’t remember. The leaves of the palm make the rooves of these structures, and the green collar is used to make the cases and boxes in which the cigars are stored. All this is explained to us by Boris’ friend at the tobacco farm, an old man whose chest beneath his open shirt is the same colour as the earth. He tells us the names of the different parts of the cigar, the only one of which I can remember is la tripa: the guts, the insides, made from leaves rolled and twisted together. He explains how removing the central vein of the tobacco leaf takes out 90% of the nicotine, how nothing chemical is added, and how there’s little difference between different brands of cigar available. Unbranded cigars, like those he makes, are called puros. While he talks he rolls one in his hands, naming the different parts as it comes together. He smokes intermittently, putting the puro down to roll the new one, or to expand on a point. He uses a half-moon shaped blade to cut the leaves and trim the ends. It has a wooden handle, darkened with the grime and use of years. At the weekend, he and Boris go cockfighting. They don’t bet much on the fights, they mainly just hang around and drink with their friends. The gallos fight anyway, but spurs are attached to their feet so that each fight is to the death. The birds for fighting are not the birds for eating. In the evening, before he bathes, the old man sits out on his porch with a glass of rum and a cigar. He dips the cigar in the rum before he smokes it, and sometimes he puts a little honey on the end. The government buys 90% of his crop. The stars come out above the mogotes, and the valley is cool and green.
I try to remember the names of the birds as Boris points them out. Some are easy, other less so, some I’m not sure I ever heard properly in the first place, and some I have to research later by sifting through poorly-worded Google image search results. The easier ones tend to give a description of the bird’s appearance or behaviour. A carpintero is a woodpecker - in this case a carpintero jabado - and a negrito is a little black bird, the cuban blackfinch. They sing well, and because of this are sometimes captured and caged. I saw several hanging in doorways above the cobbled streets of Trinidad, singing, hopping, half mad. Below them, lizards scuttle back into their nooks and crevices, driven by falling feet from their morning bask. Their tails are curly and spiral up when they run, revealing yellow undersides. The judío (smooth billed ani) is a black cuckoo with a powerful beak. This is easy to remember because the word also means jew, though I can’t tell if in making this observation I am highlighting the prejudices of others or simply revealing my own. The ruiseñor (nightingale) is easy because the word is almost the same in French, and tiñosa (turkey vulture) is easy simply because there are so many of them. On the other hand, it takes me several goes to get pitirre (loggerhead kingbird), likewise arriero (another cuckoo - the Cuban lizard cuckoo) and zorzal gato (grey catbird), partly because I keep getting it confused with another kind of bird, the zorzal cubano (red-legged thrush). They look very different; a catbird isn’t even a thrush, though it’s called zorzal. Why call it a thrush. Although I suppose it’s not a cat either. There’s also the cartacuba - which looks and moves a bit like a hummingbird but isn’t, the cuban emerald hummingbird - which actually is a hummingbird - and what turns out to be the cuban grassquit, as well as lots of others. Many are endemic and probably have faciniating names, appearances and behaviours, but I can’t remember them and like I said I needed the toilet and breakfast. Probably in the other order.
Stray dogs, not being owned or influenced by humans, show them no animosity. There are stray dogs everywhere in Cuba. Every town and city is home to hundreds, maybe thousands of stray dogs. For the most part, they seem to regard their human compatriots with interest, affection, mild trepidation and, it’s fair to say, hunger. They want the humans’ food; they don’t want to eat the humans. They are inquisitive, amiable and, as far as I’m concerned, endlessly entertaining. After a day or two you get to recognise certain ones. There was one in Viñales who lived at the end of our street. He was black, a little shaggy, medium sized, with white on his neck and feet and a tan patch on his head. He’d trot about like he owned the place. I saw him one morning in the doorway of a bar, rolled on his back, eyes closed, blissfull, in a way that reminded me of our beloved spaniel Gus. There was a power cut that morning, so I suppose he wasn’t in anyone’s way. In Cienfuegos there was a group of 5 who went around together. On the whole the dogs here end up a uniform size - not too big, not too small - but these guys were all over the place. The one at the front was tan and stocky, like a large jack russell; there was a big brown one with a white-tipped tail; one was patchy and a little on the long side; one had large, keen ears. At the back was a large, lumbering, labrador-sized one. He was dark grey, with white feet. On the beach in Playa Larga there was a litter of puppies. They plodded around and fell on top of each other in a tumbling, slumbering heap.
Out of all the birds he wants to see, there is one that Boris particularly wants to show us: the tocororo, the national bird of Cuba. It’s endemic to the island, and is the same colours as the flag: red, white and blue. It’s proving hard to spot, despite Boris’ attempts to call to it which, as far as I’m concerned anyway, are bang on. If the bird were as ubiquitous as the flag, then this would be easier, if a bit boring. The flag is flown and displayed prominently almost everywhere, which serves as one of the uncomfortable reminders that anti-imperialist, broadly left wing independence movements are often steeped in nationalism. This much is also evident from the slogans that are splashed across walls, the billboards that line roads, the messages on bridges and buildings quoting Fidel, or Che, or Marti, or swearing fealty to them, or promising to never give up on this or that, to continue the struggle, to defend, to keep fighting for something - the Revolution, July 26th Martyrs, the Spirit of 5th September, the ideals of socialism, anti-imperialism, el pueblo, el comandante, la victoria. I had a lecturer at university who said that when a government honours something, remembering it loudly and publicly, what they want is in fact for us to forget it, apart from a few characters, details, or messages. In this way the memory is controlled and modified and - if the government and its cheerleaders cheer loudly enough - the collective memory of the thing becomes the thing itself, and the only version of it that ever existed, or at least the only one that matters. It becomes common knowledge, even common sense, and reality becomes malleable. We’ve always said that. We never said that. Everyone knows that.
Speaking of re-working history, a few of things struck me on our visit to the Museo de la Revolución in Havana. The first is that it’s a lousy way to learn about the Revolution, but a good way to learn the difference between information and propaganda. The second is the age of the revolutionaries. In 1956 when theGranma yacht carrying exiled Cuban revolutionaries from Mexico landed in the south-western region that now bears the boat’s name, Castro was 30, Guevara 28, and Cienfuegos just 24. The third is the odds that these men faced. Batista had the Cuban military and security forces at his disposal - some 37,000 men - and the backing of the USA; Castro had 81 poorly-equipped soldiers and a leaky boat that was built to carry 12 people. Phrased in these terms, you begin to wonder if, in fact, it was Batista who lost the Revolution, rather than Castro who won it. In my position as a bloke who has visited a museum, watched some documentaries and owns a laptop, I’m not really qualified to say, but there is something about the story which is enticing. There’s the youth and charisma of the revolutionaries: Fidel, the young lawyer with his beard, cigar, aquiline nose and thick-rimmed glasses who, even in his early 30s, gives the impression of an elder statesman; Cienfuegos: rakish, affable, his wild hair perpetually topped with a broad-brimmed cowboy hat; and Che: dark, brooding, leonine, doctor, soldier, fiercely intelligent, impossibly handsome. Up against them is Batista, Mafia and US backed, an almost cartoon-like combination of cruelty and cowardice who, when he finally lost the Revolution, fled the country with around three hundred million dollars. You can almost hear him saying, “and I woulda gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for those meddlin’ kids”. His soldiers barely put up a fight. Add to this the underdog story, the romance of the locations - the decaying grandeur of colonial cities, the mystery and wildness of tropical forest - and it’s not hard to see why the revolution captured, and continues to capture, the imaginations of so many.
It’s one of the things that attracts people here, I think, along with the fact that this seems to be a country stuck in or maybe even outside of time - some weird fusion of ‘50s America, soviet Russia and Pirates of the Caribbean. To an extent this is true. It is beautiful, and riding around in an old American car is fun. There are contrasts here which it’s hard to imagine anywhere else.
The national sport is baseball. There are pictures of Fidel on billboards outside stadiums, dressed in baseball shirt and cap, looking for all the world like a guy in a movie who leads a team of misfits and no-hopers to small-town glory and self-worth. All the while people continue with their lives against the odds, Buicks, Chervolets and Plymouths roll by, the size of front rooms (in amongst the Ladas and Peugots the size of bathtubs), and the stars and stripes - or star and stripes - flutters in the breeze. The whole thing could be sountracked by Bruce Springsteen. This is the American Dream, built by the Iron Curtain, but it feels distant and distinct from either of them. There’s also a notable lack of Americans, like Chinese people in Havana’s Chinatown. US citizens can still come here for the minute, until The Donald gets his way. Apparently Obama’s decision to relax travel and other restrictions led to larger than usual numbers of Europeans visiting Cuba, for fear that it would soon be lost forever to the waves of Starbucks, Walmart et al, an Atlantis for the post-modern age. As to how Cubans themselves reacted - and how they’ve reacted to Trump’s actions subsequently - I´m not sure I can say. The handful of conversations we had about it hinted at a desire for change, the prospect of which was dangled by Obama before being snatched away by Trump and his return to sanctions, blockade and familiar animosities. This was combined with a defiance, and an assertion that Cuba would not fall under the thrall of el capitalismo. But to extrapolate from the opinion of a few individuals the opinion of a nation in general, or even a significant section of it, would be unfounded.
Although they jarr initially, maybe these contrasts make perfect sense. Like its birdlife, Cuba’s cultural life displays high levels of endemism. Endemism tends to occur on islands because the animals there become cut off from the rest of the world, and - free from large predators for example - develop differently to similar animals elsewhere. Birds may become flightless, develop extensive and ungainly plumage, or become highly specialised feeders of a particular kind of fruit. Perhaps something similar can be said of island peoples and cultures. Ordinarily, you would expect two neighbouring countries to have some cultural cross-pollination and, until the Revolution, this was the case with the US and Cuba. At least, the former pollinated the latter. The US helped to liberate Cuba from the Spanish, and had an enormous influence here until the Revolution, after which the relationship became toxic and, crucially, cut-off. Despite this, trappings and traces of the US remained and became, in time, Cuban. Hence the baseball and the cars with massive, inefficient engines. Although it was not designed by an American, the Cuban flag, or at least the star on it, expressed an aspiration to become part of the US, even to become a state. It’s not, at least in conception, the star of communism. It has become so, of course; a single pure star on a blood red hoist, pointing forward to the struggle ahead. Patria o muerte, like Fidel said: Homeland or death. I go on a bit about flags, but there is something pleasing (perhaps it’s ironic, though I’m sure that word is constantly misused) about the way that Cuba has taken an American symbol and turned it into something that seems to represent so much of what America - or at least certain of its leaders - hates and fears, and has become iconic in its own right. There’s also something amusing - let’s go with that - about the fact that a common fixture on the roads in a socialist country should be cars from the golden age of American capitalism, many of them done up in garish colours - candy floss pinks and lurid greens - their chrome bumpers and hubcaps glinting in the sun. It’s almost like they’re taking the piss. Likewise, who would have guessed, back in ‘59, that one of the most recognisable faces in the western hemisphere would belong to a man who was committed, if not to its downfall, then at least to its demolition, reimagining, and rebuilding from the ground up. Like the Confederate flag, the Rolling Stones lips, or those fucking Keep Calm and Carry on posters, the face of Che Guevara has become a symbol devoid of context and divorced from its original meaning. Most people who wear a t-shirt with Che on are probably not communists or socialists, just like most people who have the Confederate flag stuck on their cars are probably not white supremacists (though I reckon the ratio is a bit higher in this case), just like if you were transported back to Blitz Britain, you’d be very unlikely to come across one of those posters anywhere. Most were pulped in 1940. But then again, memory is malleable, and islanders are funny people.
There are dogs you remember for other reasons. You see them in doorways and half fallen-down buildings, flea bitten and shivering, bare patches of skin exposed and dusty. In England there would be homeless people in their place. I saw one of them on the malecon in Cienfuegos, in the harsh light of of a fast food joint. A large male, tan, scratching. He wore a large pink welt on the end of his penis and from his inner thighs clusters of angry boils hung, the size of small apricots. There was a female who hung around in the wifi park on San Rafael in Havana. Because internet access is restricted, you have to go to certain areas to use it. You buy a card which entitles you to a certain amount of time online. When you buy the card, it is linked to your ID number. If you’re a tourist or traveller (I’m unsure what the distinction is; maybe none at all) it can be hard to research and organise the next stage of your trip. If you’re Cuban, I imagine it’s hard to organise other things. I’m sure the authorities won’t have missed the role of social media in anti-establishment movements, both real and self-styled, of the last decade or so. It’s hard to imagine the Green Wave or, at the other end of the spectrum, Trump, without instant messaging and encrypted communication. The dog’s ribs were well defined beneath the tautness of her skin, and she shifted uncomfortably from one place to the next, never quite settling. At intervals her hind left leg would go dead, and she would have to drag herself along on her belly, her macerated nipples scraping along the dusty tarmac.
Just because the government sticks up signs all over the place saying how good it is doesn’t necessarily mean people believe it. I wonder, looking at the walls proclaiming and championing various ideals, values, principles and promises, how much they mean to young people who have no memory of the Revolution, and who think it might be nice to not have to go to sit on a park bench every time you want to use WhatsApp.
One of the few observations I made which I feel relatively comfortable about is that Cubans don’t fit the mould - or at least my preconception - of people living in a totalitarian state. They’re not, for example, boring, or devoid of opinions (notwithstanding my previous comment). They’ve got decent - free - educations. They’re enterprising. Everyone seems to do at least two different jobs and they’re engaging, but not abrasive, salespeople. They listen to stupidly loud reggaeton music. What sounded like a lively bar down our street in Havana turned out to be a seventh birthday party. There’s also loads of live music, and it’s mostly pretty good. People dance. No town seems to be without its cohort of local artists who, to my untrained eye at any rate, are a fair bit more creative than the old watercolour of a harbour/making shit out of shells/sticking shells on other shit that you get on the east coast of England. They drink. Rum is always available, and is delicious. They drive ridiculous cars. They go skateboarding and look effortlessly cool. Basically they’re just people. You get free healthcare and education. You haven't got a mortgage. And there are government billboards up around the place declaring to women ‘Eres más que obedecer’. Then you go into a shop and all it has are the same 10 items, hundreds of times over. Excessive state control fuels a lively cash-in-hand market, and you work two jobs because money is hard to come by. None of the various manifestations of the state seem to talk to each other, so it’s hard to get things done. You queue for everything. Your access to the internet is restricted. What a tourist pays for a night in a casa might be your wages for the month, which you earn in a different currency, keeping the two economies separate. For every chromed-up classic Chevy, there are many more knackered, tiny cars from countries that no longer exist. Put it in H! Despite the high-minded ideals on the billboard, the music industry produces depressingly familiar videos where grown men wearing big jewellery and an inappropriate number of layers twat around in front of big cars/houses/boats/fountains while a succession of apparently mute women wearing very little gyrate around them, or roll around thinking about them (presumably). Rum’s great, but it’s hard to get fresh fruit and veg because hurricane Irma destroyed a lot of the crop. Stuff’s expensive because it can’t just be imported from the country next door. If you don’t like the government there’s not a lot you can do about it. Baseball is really boring.
Maybe you notice the dogs and the birds because it’s easy. You can tick a bird off your list, find out its common and latin name, where it winters and breeds. You can imbue a stray dog with whatever character you like. The people are too complicated.
We find the tocororo. In fact, we find two. Boris calls to them, hands cupped around his mouth to make a sort of low warbling sound. It is a strikingly handsome bird. White chest, bright red belly, blue head, scalloped tail feathers, and elegantly black-and-white speckled and striped wings. Its back seems to change colour. At times it looks a rich, glossy blue, but at others it is the turquoise of clear, shallow sea, or green like the flame of copper. It shimmers, and the light seems to slide from it. People ask what Cuba’s like. I haven’t got a clue.
xx
