Ivory Coast RPCV Tony D'Souza visits Havana



A salty friend who sails the strait twice a year from Key West to the Marina Hemingway had these words before my trip to Havana: "You don't need anything down there but greenbacks, your liver and your cock." From long-legged rumba with tall, black jinteras on the rooftop of the Hotel Anglaterra, to giggling over daiquiris with bronzed mulattas on the warm sands of the Playas del Este, to rum-soaked stumbles along the Malecon with a girl on each arm and the Gulf crashing against that historic stone promenade with what seemed like the full force of American antipathy hurled south from Miami, I found this to be true.

Ivory Coast RPCV Tony D'Souza visits Havana

Destination: Havana

Santeria, drinking, baseball and struggle -- glimpse Habanero life with work from G. Cabrera Infante, Ada Ferrer and the late, brave Reinaldo Arenas.

By Tony D'Souza

A salty friend who sails the strait twice a year from Key West to the Marina Hemingway had these words before my trip to Havana: "You don't need anything down there but greenbacks, your liver and your cock." From long-legged rumba with tall, black jinteras on the rooftop of the Hotel Anglaterra, to giggling over daiquiris with bronzed mulattas on the warm sands of the Playas del Este, to rum-soaked stumbles along the Malecon with a girl on each arm and the Gulf crashing against that historic stone promenade with what seemed like the full force of American antipathy hurled south from Miami, I found this to be true.

[Excerpt]

As the days pass and the initial romance of Havana fades into hangover, worry and repetition, one comes to know Cuba in a deeper way, the way that provokes one to ask, "Why do all these girls give it up for money? Who do they really give their hearts to?" It also helps if one of them steals your wallet. Only the most determined foreigner doesn't begin to see that Cuba isn't a party for everyone. The 31 stories in "The Voice of the Turtle" admit this. This is the broad and definitive collection of modern Habanera voices, and G. Cabrera Infante's title story, of a cagauma turtle on its back that's abused by two dimwitted young men, is a metaphor of a troubled country to rival any story of its kind in the world. Featured here are Octavio Armand, Carlos Montenegro, Lourdes Casal and Lydia Cabrera. The quiet frustration of Alfonso Hernández Catá's "I Sent Quinine" is a particular treat.

Ultimately, the great literary art of modern Havana hides in the alleys of that decayed city like the most fearful of dissenters. Contemporary Habanera writers have no safe outlet and their cautious work reflects that. The exiles have long since lost their claim. What we are left with are the echoes, the memories of those humid and wondrous Havana nights, of the women we met and loved, whom we paid and wrote to, and who of course never wrote back.

When this story was posted in June 2006, this was on the front page of PCOL:




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