A long stay and experiencing life?
As of May 2024, and of you are not staying in hotels or place where they you have a power generator, pack in your bag:
a power bank
a rechargeable lamp
An electric fan
Cash and credit card
Mosquitoes repellents if the host is not providing them.
If you want to take advantage of that backdrop of the nearby mountains, then Parque El Nicho is a great place to visit. A short hike up through some lush green mountain scape, and you’ll find sets of swimming holes, natural pools and a stunning waterfall. It has a reputation as the most beautiful of Cuba's numerous waterfalls. Laguna de Guanaroca is a lake that has been set up as a nature reserve. Bird spotting is popular here, and if you’re lucky you might come across an elusive Cuban Tody, a Florida cormorant and pink flamingos.
An Account
Viazul bus passes by Giron and Playa Larga. The sea is on the left hand side. There are a few houses and hostels. However, staying a long stay there would be difficult because of the shortage or quality of food. There is a 20-minute stop break half to Havana and vice-versa. The Viazul Yutong bus is Chinese made, comfortable, with good space for the legs. On the motorway it covers 1km in 40 seconds on 93/94 speed. Music clips on a screen might be on. The bus doing Cientfuegos Havana might pass by the airport before it continues to the main station in Havana.
Cienfuegos’ population is about 180, 000 (2023).
Cienfuegos is called La Perla del Sur (The Pearl of the South). The description reminds me of the city of Sousse, Tunisia. It too is given the same nickname. However, in many aspects the gulf between the two is wide.
I had a barbecue chicken near the pier. I almost left before I was served when I saw the brown oil used in the mix to brush the meat with. Probably worse was that she used her apron to wipe a plate. The same apron she had used to wipe her hands with. The piece of chicken came with what hardly could be called a side: very few and thin slices of tomato and cucumber. The only thing I enjoyed then was the string breeze and the view.
Calle 37 has a few restaurants, but the price of fish and chicken dishes, for instance, is double or more than that of what I paid for in Vedado, Havana.
The streets
The streets is very safe here. I felt safer than in London. When I found myself outside the in the neighbourhoods walking net to a girl/woman she did run away it it happened to me in London.
The city is generally friendly.
Like in a few other countries though, when crossing the road do not expect that a driver or a motorcyclist would give you priority.
Unlike in Tunisia though motorcyclists and their companions wear helmets and unlike in Tunisia too child labour is almost non-existent.
Whether it is on El Prado or off the main streets, most doors have an additional iron door. Shops are undistinguishable from houses, for shops are part of the dwelling. One has to look right and left all the time because not all of them display a sign or a board with a list of stuff they sell. Street vendors sit on the pavement or walk around trying to sell two or three items. Some sell plastic bags. Others tour the barrios on their bikes selling ice-cream and pizza. When you hear one whistling he is likely a pizza man. Other vendors sell fruits and vegetables on their carretas (horse-drawn carts).
One morning I passed by a woman selling one bottle of cooking oil, a man walking with a bunch of pens and an old man sitting on the pavement of El Prado with two bars of soap next to him. Then I saw a man wearing a T-shirt with the American flag. Before I reached my destination, I saw a baby in a pushchair wearing clothes in red and blue and the stars and stripes of the American flag.
Cienfuegos centre, with the exception of the tourist area, monuments and the Boulevard San Fernando/Calle56, and the surrounding areas are dirty, a lot of dogs’ waste (worse than in London because there are many stray dogs in Cienfuegos), and occasionally a human would relieve themselves on the pavement, strong smell of sewage is common – a risk of malaria. In my 14-year stay in Camden Town, London I also but occasionally saw human waste on the street. There has been years of neglect to infrastructure in the city. Uncovered sewers in the city, the strong smell and faeces will really deter me from returning to city one day. But that is a personal aversion.
I had mosquitos bites and persistent itching. There are many stray dogs and cats in the city. A disgusting incident – and something I couldn’t understand – was someone sitting in front of a shop and a bid human dump just no more than two meter in front of him. The man though was busy using his phone as normal. It was probably the most disgusting thing I have ever seen in my travels.
Almost everybody throws rubbish on the street and pavement. There are hardly any rubbish bins except on El Prado. The most noticeable bins are on José Martí Parque and St Fernando street. You may not notice this if you are a tourist for a couple of days knowing only El Prado, St Fernando, José Martí Parque and Punta Gorda. Even along the Malecón you walk for 1 km and you do not see a rubbish bin.
Occasionally, you see a box put on the pavement by people to be used as a bin. I saw once how a man insisted that his daughter puts an empty can in such a box. However, a lot of people just throw rubbish in their hands on the street: the open the door any fling anything in their hand or even from a balcony without even looking down in case someone is passing by.
In the barrio where Calle 42 is there are no big bins of each street or a few households like what exists in el barrioo Cerro in Havana, for example. People leave the rubbish in front of their houses and the rubbish is collected in late afternoon. It is the lack of investment in hygiene. Providing big bins for each street and penalising those who break the rules is how to keep the street clean and the inhabitants safe. Clearing the streets of stray dogs is another measure that should be taken.
In a walk along the Malecón and near Punta Gorda on a Sunday afternoon, A. recounted to me how the streets used to be cleaner in Cienfuegos, pointing out to a pile of rubbish laying next to a full rubbish bin or how Saturday night street rave left a lot of rubbish and bottles smashed on a square. Where was the council/municipality and the cleaners Sunday morning?
You hear neighbours and people on the street talk all day long, and usually loudly. The dire living conditions and type of jobs they do as well the availability of free time for a lot of the people, allow them to sit for hours outside doing nothing. You see hardworking people such as the ones I saw at ETECSA, but actually the lack of technology or the uneven development of it in the country, burden them with tasks could be automated. Restaurants that provide only a digital menu versus three people at ETECSA, whose job is to organise a queue and direct customers to the right window. Building a gigantic hotel in Havana while sewage blows up from time to time in Cerro, Havana, and in Cienfuegos.
Three minutes walk from Parque José Martí through Calle de Santa Isabel and around Avenida 68, I saw what was probably the poorest area in the city. the crumbling houses, the hazardous pavements, the stench, the piles of rubbish, etc. make one think that it is a miracle that Cubans have one of the best healthcare and one of highest life expectancy in the world.
The Internet
If you have a smart phone or a tablets with phone, you can have a Cuban phone line and wifi. If not, you have only one option: scratch cards from ETESCA, each card gives you one hour access to the Internet. In Havana there is G5. In all other parts of Cuba, there is only G2. The cards (tarjetas de wifi) are available at ETECSA offices and at Hotel La Unión, and probably in other hotels. However, they can be used only in very limited places. In the centre at Parque José Martí. There is a good connection in and around El Rapido at the beginning of Punta Gorda.
The Internet is limited for Cubans although most the sites I browsed from UK are accessible from Cuba. Netflix, for example, is not available for Cubans except for those who could pay more or in hotels.
A man explained to me how he had two accounts of Internet. In one of them he pays around 3 cents per hour / 12.5 CUP.
I once needed to by cards for wifi access. In the first, ETECSA they said they did not have them. And you if I wanted a Cuban phone line, only dollars are accepted. I went to another ETECSA. There were people waiting, sitting outside the office. At first, a man said there did not have cards. The woman at the door persisted and asked another employee. She said they had them. Then I had to wait ten minutes at least to buy them from another employee. I was in a big room with only female employees at the desks, each with the old processing unit and a flat monitor screen.
And, as it happened before in the capital, it took the woman processing my purchase more than five minutes to enter my ID details and wait for the data to be processed and accepted. I paid in cash. Ten hours of wifi cost 250 CUP – between €0.50 and €1 depending on the rate of exchange you git for the currency you brought with you. The best and quickest way is to buy them at the reception of Hotel La Unión. They did not even ask me for ID details.
Wifi speed is not that high and you need to be in a wifi point in the city – there are very few ones. Hotels offer their own Internet access. Sending pictures and short videos, visiting international news sites, updating your blog, checking your gmail inbox, Messenger, WhatsApp, etc, is no problem, but updating your iCloud or backing your device up, for example, might take a long time. You should download the offload apps you need before entering the country. I was able to access my bank account via the app, but I could not download the google drive one because I had offloaded it before travelling.
Again, this is a major difference between two poor countries/economies: Tunisia and Cuba. The first is an open capitalist economy, where wifi is open or available for foreigners upon request, in cafés, restaurants and hotels, without even a need for a Sim card, whereas in the latter it is not the case for foreigners.
After 6 weeks in Cuba I realised that not having wifi all the time is healthy. If you do not need the Internet for work, stay away from it and used only occasionally – an hour a day for the news and updating your device, etc. would be enough. One should read about Cuba and Latin America, connect with the people and the surrounding and know how people really live, not what what you had hearded, practice something, try to learn some Spanish, cook, discover new places, stay away from the tourist sited, but explore what those who generally reside in the US say and do and where they go when they are in Cuba…
Political-economy of uneven and combined development
On TV on 1 May, 8 o’clock news: the American imperialist embargo on Cuba and its role in affecting the state of the economy and as a consequence the well-being of Cubans. Lack of primary materials and what is needed for agriculture. All affects salaries and pensions. “Not a single sector of the Cuban economy has been immune from the American embargo… All has also the capacities of innovation and creativity.” Thousands sung The Internationale.
A lot of coverage was given to the students in Columbia university, who have been protesting in solidarity with the Palestinians. There was a highlight on how the American government treats its own citizens in comparison to the Cuban government solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The phrase ‘the Palestinian cause’ was repeated 6/7 times.
‘Viva el pueblo Cubano’, ‘Viva el socialismo’ were among the slogans raised by the speakers in the celebration of the 1 May. The 1 May is a day of ‘proletarian solidarity’. ‘Patria o muerte, venceremos’. In a song imperialism and the United States is condemned a fews times. Raúl Castro Ruz too is mentioned a few times: ‘Viva Fidel. Viva Raúl. Viva los trabajadores’. It also condemned the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians.
On the news on TV later another example of stark contradictions in Cuba: assembling environmentally sustainable vehicles and shops displaying huge plasma TV sets, a few drive electric motorbike and a few electric motocycles are a means of transport. That is in a country where many still use carts to commute, many live on rations, power cuts, sewage blown up on the street…
Two or three years ago a partnership between China and Cuba to assemble electrical vehicle in Cuba began. The individual acquisition of a motorcycle, for instance, to be used as a taxi depends whether the person can find the money to purchase one. The banks – all state owned – do not provide loans for such purchases. They do provide loans for other reasons such as buying cement to refurbish your house.
A state trying to develop the economy by skipping stages and neglecting basics. The focus on the spheres that generate capital for investment. A significant part of this contradiction goes back to 1989-1993 when an economic catastrophe hit the island with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Thus “Horse-drawn carts and carriages replaced cars and lorries;
half a million bicycles circulated in the streets of Havana, courtesy of the
Chinese; 300,000 oxen replaced 30,000 Soviet tractors.” (Gott 2004)
Hotel La Unión in St Fernando is a reflection of how the state uses tourism as a source of revenues. A very nice hotel, with a swimming pool and appealing patios and fountains. The price of drinks are not that high.
Someone who lived in Cuba for 44 years briefly gave me a summary: “When there was the socialist camp and Castro, Cuba was able to have assistance in infrastructure, including the power grid. Today, it does not have either the technology or the capital to rebuild its ailing power grid.” His wife strongly agreed with me when I said that one country, and especially a poor one, cannot build socialism. None of them jumped to to argue that socialism was against ‘human nature’ as a few, if not most, of Westerners and non-Westerners usually love to do. However, one still has to ask the question: how then is the state able to construct that gigantic hotel in the centre of Havana? Is the problem a problem of capital or the inability to import specific technology?
In sum, the influx of electric motorcycles and vehicles run on electric power has not been matched by investment in an ailing power grid infrastructure to meet consumption. Thus household and small businesses suffer most from power outages. A hotel such Melia San Carlo has a generator that keeps power on 24 hours.
In sum: power outages is “the result of the country's massive financial deficit and lack of money to pay for imports. Dilapidated power plants have shut down and there's not enough fuel to power those still working.”
Furthermore, there is a water problem: lack of pressure means it is hard to het water running from the taps; it a problem to get the water run up to the roof to fill in the tanks. Household have to acquire a device that creates pressure. Those cannot acquire one suffer from power cuts and water not running or not running adequately. Along, the structural deficiency in the sewage system, power and water too fall into the same poor infrastructure.
The F. family has three wells at home and they have just dug a fourth outside the house. I was told that the majority of the households could not afford to get water in that way: they had to rely on the water coming from the mmains and stored in tanks on the roof of the house. In digging the new well, the process took more than three days and the reason was mainly technical. The ‘company’ that dug the well used a very old machine that it should be in a museum (see photo).
Another version of under economic development or blockage is in the following account by a Cuban: “the money gained in tourism is not invested but goes abroad.” He even mentioned generals as the culprits. “Those who have licences to rent a house or a room to foreigners are heavily taxed.” The man also reiterated what others have said: “A minority received money from relatives who live abroad. That minority lives more or less a good life.” Referring to corruption as a cause instead of a symptom is common among people in other countries. In comparison to other countries, Cuba is not ranked high in the corruption index.
“Although influence peddling and illicit enrichment certainly exist in Cuba,” wrote Emily Morris in 2014, “a persistent effort to maintain ethical standards is apparent not only in the formal rules governing officials’ and party members’ conduct, and severe punishments for those found guilty of corruption, but also in the behaviour and appearance of most officials. An exhaustive study which set out to demonstrate the extent of corruption in Cuba ended by doing the opposite and confirming the extent of the efforts to contain it: Sergio Díaz-(Briquets and Jorge Pérez-López, Corruption in Cuba: Castro and Beyond, Austin 2006.) Cuba scores relatively well on both World Bank and Transparency International corruption indices.” Countries like Vietnam, Colombia, Tunisia, India, Thailand Turkey have been ranked higher than Cuba in the corruption index. (wikipedia)
People generally tend to look at the surface without knowledge of historical processes: Cuba had it own trajectory after 1959, but also decades before revolution, that determined its development in a specific conjuncture under specific leaderships with external factors also shaping that trajectory. From the American invasion and control of keys industry and banks, landownership, Mashada’s reign, an experience of social-democracy and dictatorship under Batista, economic development before 1959 that bested the rest of Latin American countries, the role of dependency on a single commodity, sugar (a bless for early capitalism, a curse for Cuba), the attempt to industrialise, American attempt to stifle and even overthrow the revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union’s influence and assistance, to the ongoing American embargo all has to be looked at as an interplay of factors.
Sugar accounted for three-quarters of Cubas foreign currency earnings throughout the 1970s. “The Soviet quota provided Cuba with its bread and butter, while sugar sold elsewhere brought in much-needed dollars.3 Sugar exports to Western markets earned between $200 and $350 million a year during most of the 1970s, but a huge hike in the world price in 1974 and 1975 increased Cubas earnings to around $800 million for 1974 and $1,200 million for 1975 - something of an annus mirabilis.
“The return to sugar remained a subject of much debate. Some economists believed, as Guevara had done, that it was a historic error. Others concluded that the forced redirection of Cuba’s sugar trade from the US to the Soviet Union gave the island an historical reprieve’ by substituting an expanding export market for a shrinking one. Only when the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1991 were the Cubans obliged to rethink their strategy, substituting tourism for sugar production.” (Gott 2004) Today, Cuba imports sugar and tourism represents only 0.38% of the country’s GDP.
The elimination of the small businesses at the end of the 1960s was another factor that came at a cost for the economy. That was one of the economic aspects the Cuban leadership copied from the Soviet Union. A transitional economy, as a few Marxists, argued, should not nationalise everything.
Castro’s dismissal of Prague Spring’s ‘action programme’ declaring that socialism could not be constructed without “an open exchange of views, and democratisation of the entire social and political system” and his subsequent support of the Soviet Invasion. Cuba was to mould itself economically, ideologically and culturally on the Soviet Image. 30 Years later, and as one of the new measures that the Cuban leadership was compelled to after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, small businesses would be allowed to operate.
“With the assistance of the Soviet advisers, the government created solid institutions of economic planning … Over a 10-year period, from 1975 to 1985, the Revolution entered the sunny uplands of economic growth. The annual rate of growth between 1970 and 1988 was 4.1 per cent, with a significant improvement in the early 1980s.
“The Soviet relationship in the days of Brezhnev, who died in 1982, suited Cuba quite well, providing almost unlimited funds and few political shocks, in a manner reminiscent of the old Spanish empire in its better moments. The money went to the armed forces and to the island’s education and health programmes, but it also produced rising living standards and a more general availability of consumer goods.” (Gott 2004)
The Cuban Revolution had remained remarkably peaceful. Yes, it surrendered to the Soviet Union, but compared to other revolutions, ‘it did not devour its children’.
With the war in Ukraine, Russian export of the much needed oil to power the grids in Cuba began to dry. Prior to that, and before the big crisis in Venezuela, Cuba used to get oil at a cheaper price than what is set at the international market.
Discussion with a camarera (waitress) and a man: both agree that ‘the embargo is a justification’ by the Cuban government. ‘No hay una economía’ (there is no economy) is a refrain you hear. The man actually said that there was “an embargo here inside the country.”
What about elements of socialism: healthcare and education? The waitress replied: “But the healthcare is collapsing. We cannot afford to buy what our children need for school. She agrees that there is an economic history to any country, that dependency on commodity does not develop a country, that dependency on the Soviet Union did not develop the country, and as Che Guevara recommended, diversification of the economy was the way. Thus when the USSR collapsed, Cuba found itself in big economic troubles their effects are still alive today. But she added something about ‘the battle of ideas’.
The man said again and again that the problem was a problem of money (dinero). He never thought where the money/capital come from? Is it through foreign loans and FDI? Is it through the exploitation of labour? Is it through both?
A woman told me how they used to have a lot of orange in Cuba. Today you don’t see any.
In 1995 the tourist industry became the island’s chief earner of foreign exchange, overtaking sugar. Almost 30 years on, how has tourism benefited the country? How strong and sustainable the sector is today? Has it become a grinder like sugar was or failed to help economic development and living standard? How vulnerable is tourism to externalities and internal shocks (see the example of Tunisia, a country with no embargo, big tourism infrastructure, proximity to Europe and Russia, politically and economically supported by IFI, and with a similar population, etc. Yet 13 years after the 2011 uprising and the sector has not recovered).
“Ironically, by surrendering to the inevitable and by reintroducing Cubans to the seductions of capitalism very gradually, Castro may have performed his last great revolutionary service to his country. Personally I expect little change in the years ahead, or even when Castro
dies… He has changed his slogan from 'socialism or death’*, suitable for the
violent twentieth century, to a better world is possible, appropriate for the
more pacifistic revolutionaries of a new era. When he dies, there will be little
change in Cuba. While few people have been looking, the change has already taken place.” (Gott 2004).
*In 2024, in both Havana and Cienfuegos, the slogan ‘Patria o Muerte’ is visible.
Social norms
No greetings or thank you among people who interacting in the selling-buying process. Warm greetings and kisses among friends and relatives, and even with friends of friends. One kiss on the cheek is a norm.
Among each others, Cubans use affectionate expressions such as ‘mi corazón’ (my heart), ‘mi amor’ (my love/darling), ‘mi vida’ (my life) and ‘niño/a’ to call upon someone they know although the word means ‘child’.
One kiss on the cheek is common among relatives and friends and friends of friends. When, for example, a cousin of the landlady said good bye to me she kissed me on the cheek although we had met only once.
Sometimes formality is not used at all: Someone enters a café without even saying ‘good afternoon’, but they straight order a coffee. The waiter simply responds with ‘sí’.
If someone taps on your hand, for example, it is part of the social norm. Once a waitress tapped on my knee to say don’t worry, thanks or something of that nature. A make customer briefly held the waitress’s forearm while explaining/insisting on his order.
Smoking is not officially prohibited in cafés and restaurants, but some places have the prohibition sign. Generally, Cubans respect the others and refrain from smoking – they do it outside closed areas. “They respect each other,” as one said. When it comes to making noise, generally, they are not considerate.
The word ‘negro’ is used among those who know each others to mean black. Mulato/a to describe someone of mixed race.
Cafés, restaurants, shopping, etc.
In one of the indoor market off José Martí Parque, I found only four vendors, one of them was selling only pumpkins. The vegetables displayed could hardly be called vegetables: poor quality and 4 varieties. One onion was as big as a mushroom and most of the tomatoes were green.
A woman tried to explain to me the problem: “there are fewer and fewer people work the on the land. The state buys what they grow, but they are not paid immediately, but months later. Thus a few move to the city looking for better jobs.”
A street vendor drew a comparison with Ecuador, saying that “there are four seasons and agriculture is good and the products are cheaper. In Cuba, however, there is also the embargo which affects the sector as a whole.”
Usually, customers call the waiter using ‘compañero/a’ (comrade), or ‘amigo/a’ (friend). You would hear a Cuban on the street calling you ‘amigo/a’ to attract your attention.
You cannot book accommodation through airbnb, for example, once you are in Cuba. For my sins, I had to do the booking the American multinational company. My other option was to enter Cuba with at leat $2000 dollars in cash to cover only my long-stay accommodation. Once in Cuba I would have looked for casas.
Using a VNP allows you to do the booking on airbnb. You would have to download one before entering the country.
The photos of the apartments/houses you see on airbnb may reflect the real room or bathroom, but not necessarily the kitchen. Most of the 6 places I stayed in did not have adequate cooking facilities or even proper pans. Some had very old ones and unhealthy to use.
Get hold of Pesos to purchase fruits, vegetables, meat, and to pay in cafés. Use a credit card to buy imported items such as olive oil, tuna, pasta, rice and other items you find in the supermercado where the prices are in dollars.
Always try to save the Pesos you exchanged informally whenever you can but without withdrawing from an ATM.
In the supermercados such as Panamericana and Eureka some items such as biscuits and tuna are behind the counter. I think the reason is to minimise shoplifting. In some of them you might be asked to leave your bag at the entrance. The food and drinks sold are almost the same. Some of the food is imported from Spain, Italy and Mexico.
In cafés and restaurants, you pay after you consume.
After two weeks, the first time I feel bothered by smokers in a public place: a café in Cienfuegos – Centro Mercantil café. Live music three days a week. No ventilators!
A café in St Fernando high street: a big place, good prices and ETECSA wifi. The wifi is not always available, not necessarily strong. Entering the street from El Prado, it is the first on the left. It has no name on it though and all its façade is in glass. When I returned to the café in the afternoon there was a power outage [no hay corriente]. So, no café and wifi. Thus the ongoing use of both computers and papers and calculators in businesses. I returned to the same café a couple of times, but in my fourth visit again there was a power cut. And this a place where the biggest part of it is planning to open a library soon (see Education section). The space is air-conditioned. One afternoon, a regular customer came in to find the café without power. She said, sarcastically: “Viva la Revolución.”
You notice this tone from time to time. Something that makes you question the-so ‘repressive-regime’ portrayed by the Western regimes and media.
Affordable and average fish dish at Hotel La Unión restaurant. I had salad and beer with it. Another time I had a fruit salad instead of salad. All for 1770 CUP, including a tip. Good service. The waitress was so nice unlike the one at the bar by the swimming pool. Payment in cash, but I was told I could pay by card if there was no problem with Internet connection. An incident: I ordered a mojito. I wrongly handed 260 CUP instead of 350 CUP. Then I wrongly gave 550 CUP. The woman took the notes and said nothing. I realised only later that I paid more than the actual price. The other staff is excellent. The fish and rice served at piscine bar is just fish and rice. The last time I had one the portion of fish got smaller. I did not go back.
There is also the hotel Melía San Carlos on San Carlos street. One of the few air-conditioned places to enjoy a drink. Drinks are served at the reception. The restaurant upstairs serves lunch between 12:00 and 14:00, has a view over the sea and the city, not expensive nice and comfortable space, quick and excellent service when the bar does not run out of something, and comfortable chairs. However, you should pay in cash, as paying in dollars the bill might come three times higher than in Pesos. And It is likely that the connection would not be working to effectuate the transaction.
The hotel has a generator, so you will ‘always’ find something to drink. The chairs at the restaurant are not good. Once the power was off. I asked for the reason and I was told because there was no fuel. On another day, there was no coffee because there was no filtered water. Yes, tap water in Cuba is not safe to drink. Once the restaurant could not provide service for at least three days because of lack of fuel. Once the lack of fuel made the restaurant close for at least 4 days.
A big restaurant on El Prado. The waitress was not patient with me and my Spanish. She could not even bring herself to smile. A few restaurant are designed to look very modern, jumping on the reality of Cuba: scarcity of goods, expensive stuff, very low salaries, bad infrastructure, access to some goods, mostly imported ones, are in Dollars. I was expecting a dish for 800 CUP. I got a small one that looks like a tapas dish with brown fries and brown pieces of meat – I guess because the type of oil they used.
Hotel-restaurants are cheaper than the private (los particulares) ones. Most, if not not all restaurants are almost empty in May and June. Punta Gorda restaurants too are almost empty. There were very few tourists and the local who could afford eating out in such restaurants were also few. Since the pandemic these restaurants have not recovered. Example: A big car parks in front of Bahía restaurant. The people are obviously a among those who have the dollars or a similar source of income. Opposite the restaurant are houses inhabited by people who might have never eaten in such a restaurant.
In some places the staff at hotel or a shop ask you whether you needed something. In other placed, you need to greet and ask as soon as you could. Some staff – although not busy – do not pay you attention.
At the grocer’s : A pineapple, a kilo of carrots and 6 smalls peppers for 1 €. It costs more when you buy from those street vendors. Quality and a limited choice are the main problems – for the locals add the price of course. Once the vendor struggled to find a good pineapple. Go a bit early in the morning – between 9:00 and 10 – and queue. It is worth it. They are two grocer’s facing the water/the pier from the east. Another day I found the two grocers selling only the same things.
For meat – pork (cerdo, pronounced serdo) and chicken (pollo, pronounced poyyo), look for shops in the streets. Have pesos on you.
Cubans pay in cash or through bank transfer using an app. The shopkeeper gives their card number to the customer and the latter enters the number and the amount of money on the app. The shopkeeper receives confirmation of the transaction.
In the supermercados where the items are priced in dollars, the transaction is done in dollars and you get a receipt. There is no contactless method of paying: you need to enter your pin and then you sign on a receipt they keep. Supermercados do not sell fruits and vegetables, bread or eggs. In some of them expect you would be asked to leave your bag at the desk or an allocated area.
The city centre shops start to shut at 2. By 5/6 the centre is almost empty.
Saturday market in Cienfuegos (also called la feria – takes place on a street off Parque Villuendas): packed with people and vendors, heat might put you off. You enter from El Prado. The street lead to the square/parque is full of shops selling clothes. Around the square there a few ironmongers. One Saturday I saw an entertaining show on the square.
The quality of vegetables in the market itself is generally the same you find in the city during the week. Hardly any fruits sold. One Saturday I could find only lots of pineapple vendors and mangos. There was no tomatoes in the whole market. By 10 am there were no carrots left. Onion and garlic are generally sold only in a big quatity, and they are of small/too small size. Meat and cheese are sold, but no health and safety rules and no regulations. A couple of men were selling birds in cages. One might need to queue for a couple of vegetables such as green pepper and cabbage. Very old scales are used in weighing. Sometimes only a full big tin is used, not a scale. Example: A tin of fresh green pepper for 150 CUP or a tin of lime (they call it limón) for 200 CUP.
If you are a visitor accustomed to health and safety in a Western country, do not expect to find it when you shop from those tiendas in the barrios. Handling of uncovered meat with bare hands is common.
Bazar Agricole (part of acopia group) is a good grocer, opens at 14:00. It is three minutes from Cienfuegos hospital. Availability and variety of fruits and vegetables vary from day to day: one day you find a few things, on another there are hardly more than two are three items. If you know some Spanish or are learning it, it is a good place to socialise while you are in the queue.
From El Prado, at the right corner of San Fernando St. there is a fishmonger called Epicient. When I asked when fish would be available to purchase, the vendor did not really know. She said that it depends on the day.
Palacio Le Blanc, a café-bar-gelatería, in the centre off San Fernando, a wide courtyard, a huge screen, loud music in Spanish and English, waitresses in uniforms using ‘tablets’ to take orders and a laptop to print off bills … I felt I was in a Western-style place. I had the most expensive double espresso with milk in Cuba – more than double of what I have paying in cafés in the same area of Cienfuegos. The change of one thousand CUP note was like a bundle. of 46 notes (the equivalent of 1.50 €). It is a place designed for the privileged of Cubans. A family was having a late breakfast: sandwiches, mojito and other drinks.
Bar Café Colonial on El Prado: a small place for drinking. When I went there I found it the noisiest café I had ever been too: very loud music and loud electricity generator emitting a strong smell of gasoline. I drank only half of the cerveza, which was pricy compared to most placed on El Prado.
I took the ferry from Cienfuegos to Rancho Luna then a bus. The Trip lasted around three and a half hours! The man at the boarding station in Cienfuegos charged me 40 times more than what the Cubans pay. I argued a bit then I gave up. Some people said it was not right. The man took 5 CUP from every passenger. No receipts were issued. Who is accountable in this situation? Later at the bus stop I gave a man the money for the bus fare and he paid for both of us. He had told me that had been waiting for the bus for an hour. I reported the incident to an officer at Aduana. He took my ID details then said that the manager of the dock/barco would be notified. Nothing more.
Teatro Terry on José Martí Parque: A spacious place upstairs. Monthly scheduled performances are listed downstairs. Drinks are not expensive and a nice place to run from the heat to.
An open-air drinking place at the beginning of El Malecón direction Punta Gorda. Turn left and walk 150 meters. Mainly drinks are available, including beer, wine and water. It seems that La Fría and Cristal are the most drunk canned beers here. For 90 minutes I did not see another can except La Fría! Coffee or mojito is not served here.
A café in Santa Isabel: had power, but empty although most parts of the centre at the time of my visit was without power. A very you g girl struggled to make a double espresso, spilling half of the coffee in the process. Thus my coffee came weak. A few minutes later, although I was the only one in the café and I was reading, she put music loud. I left shortly afterwards. It is just a reflection of the lack of doing business skills.
Complex ‘Pinitos’: at the beginning of Punta Gorda. A couple of big open air restaurants, nice environment, water around, benches, green and in late afternoon cool breeze. However, it is unfortunate that like in other places the quality of food is mediocre. When you see what Cubans are eating, you don’t fancy any of the food in front of them.
Opposite Pinitos, facing the Malecón is El Rapido. The sun sets on it in the afternoon. It sells drinks, mainly alcohol and canned/concentrated juice to consume on site or to take away, but it is a dollar shop: it accepts Cuban and international credit cards. You cannot pay in cash.
JutaJuta, opposite the Emergencia entrance of Cienfuegos hospital, offers acceptable dishes. The pizza is very basic. Pasta dishes are on the menu too. It is an air-conditioned restaurant upstairs, the chairs are a bit low and a few Cubans who could afford a meal between 1,000 and 1,7000, excluding drinks (bebidas) and dessert (postre). No fish except prawns (camarones). I was there twice, but I did not like the service. I witnessed more than one illustration of ‘the social divisions’ Richard Gott wrote as one of the consequences of introducing market mechanisms in mid-1990s and what Emily Morris analysed after ‘Raul’s reforms’. Four people, two adults and to children, were able to spend at least 4,000 CUP – almost the monthly salary of a doctor. They are part of a social group that can afford to drink in San Carlos and La Unión hotels – both are state-owned.
After 7 weeks in Cienfuegos I saw apples in two of the dollar shops.
Comparing a similar location – Hammamet’s ‘Malecón’ in Tunisia (add link) – Cienfuegos offers very fews options of food and drinks. Alcoholic drinks are prevalent. El Rapido and two other places around had no restrooms. Neither were there public toilets in the area.
The best meal deal – in quality, quantity and price – is the one offered by your host. Ask them what type of food you would like them to cook for you.
Rancho Luna
There are two ways to reach Rancho Luna, but the by ferry and bus is much longer than the one by bus from the city’s bus station. By ferry (barco) from a dock 5 minutes walk from Aduana in Cienfuegos. The journey takes an hour, but you enjoy the view on the way. You stay on the ferry at the last stop and you wait onboard until departure. You get off at the first stop. Up the hill, there is a bus stop on the left. Some ferry’s arrivals are coordinated with the bus’s arrival. If you are lucky, you might not have to wait for long at the stop. There is no indication of the names of the bus stops, but the journey is around 12 minutes or less. You need to ask a fellow passenger for Rancho Luna stop.
Rancho Luna: Nice beach and a lot of shade. The food though was mediocre as someone had told me. I could see, for example, how the chips that came with fish were brownish. The frying oil used is brown and the same oil is reused a few times as a Cuban had told me.
It was mid-May and 99% of the people were Cubans. Some of them were in big groups. This is a lace where you should come for a swim after 4pm. You would enjoy the breeze and view. Nothing more. Apparently, food and drinks available between 8:00 and 14:00 and it is the most popular time. There are showers. A man apparently working there told me that a shower would cost 100 CUP.
The way back to Cienfuegos is 16 km. You need to know the timetable of the bus otherwise you risk a wait of 30 minutes to an hour. It is a 30-minute journey for 5 pesos (0.015 €). You pay cash at the front door. No receipt is provided. There are not many stops for the most part of the route.
I went to this café-restaurant (a club too) in inner Punta Gorda. I ordered a piña colada to enjoy the view, but it came mediocre and it was pricy. The clients looked affluent by Cuban standards – mainly white men and women wearing nice clothes and had left their big shiny cars in a parking. I overheard the word ‘Miami’. They were likely gusanos – the derogatory term given to those economic Cubans living in the US. I could not stay long.
The origin of the dollar shops
“On 6 October 1976 the Cuban fencing team was returning to Havana from a successful contest in Venezuela. Their plane from Caracas stopped at Trinidad and Barbados, and ten minutes after take-off from Barbados, it exploded. A time bomb had been placed in the baggage compartment. This was the first occasion on which a civilian airline had been blown up by terrorists and all 73 people on board were killed.”
Unofficial negotiations began later, without the involvement of the American government, but led by Bernardo Benes who “was a prominent member of the Cuban community in Miami, and who had rejected the dominant exile strategy of trying to isolate Cuba.
“Relaxation of the rules permitting Cubans to travel abroad would be introduced.
One obvious difficulty that lay ahead was the bomb threat associated with the sending of packages. From this problem sprang the idea of establishing dollar shops in Havana where visiting exiles could buy presents for their families.
Benes was already under threat from anti-Castro groups in Miami,
and the memory of the Barbados bombing was still raw for everyone in Cuba.
The visitors and the dollar shops were also a wonderful new source of hard currency for the government.” (Gott 2004) But today they are mostly used by Cubans who receive money from abroad or can afford to shop there. “Studies show that almost 70% of the Cuban population receives remittances in varying forms, according to a 2023 report from the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The dollar stores sell not only food and drinks. Some of them are specialised in the sale of household appliances, including TV sets, air-conditioners, etc.
“Over time, this dual system [a dollar economy for some and a peso one for others] undermined work incentives and social solidarity; it increased pressures for pilfering, absenteeism and corruption that were a drain on the formal economy.” (Morris, NLR, 2014]
The weather (May & June 2024)
In the morning some women were with umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun. In late afternoon it may rain ropes or just a small drizzle! Cienfuegos is hotter than Havana by 3/4 4 degrees at least. In June we often had rain in the mornings. A cyclone in the Gulf oof Mexico drove torrential rain to (the south coast of) Cuba. Temperature remains high though.
After 6pm, by the pier a cool air wards off the heat. A few benches to enjoy the view are available..
Diet
Enchilada is heavily consumed. Long queues of people purchasing such a sandwich are common in the city centre. One enchilada costs around 160 CUP. It is an unhealthy sandwich, in my view. It seems more or less cheap for a few, especially those who work in the centre, and it fills the stomach.
Some Cubans start drinking beer at 11am. They eat a lot of meat, poor sandwiches sold by private restaurants, with no vegetables, but only sauce and cheese or jamón, for example. The quality of the bread is perhaps the worst I have seen in the 15 or so cities I have been in. Sugar, beer, soda, ice-cream, meat but hardly any fruits and vegetables. It is a miracle the Cubans have a life expectancy in par with economically advanced countries. That credit go to the previous investment by the state in healthcare and education.
The best quality chicken is imported frozen breast chicken from Turkey. It is hard to find a corner shop selling it. The kilo costs $7.00 in the dollar stores.
The language factor
After a month, using my elementary Spanish I have managed to engage in different topics not only in the daily interaction in shopping or ordering a drink or a meal. My French helped me a lot.
Living standard/quality of life, society
A ‘landlady’, M, was an architect on 4000 CUP monthly salary. Her husband worked in a bank for 5000 CUP monthly salary. Their ration of eggs, for example, was 5 eggs per person per month. 1 bottle of cooking gas per month. She also get sanitary papers using the card (tarjeta) as part of the list of allocated rations. A 400 gr. loaf of bread a day for two people, which costs 5 CUP/a bit more than 1 cent when a Cuban uses the card. The same loaf costs 100 CUP when bought from a bakery or on street. Thus although a landlord/landlady is running a licensed business, they are still entitled to access state provisions such sanitary papers and bread.
Her husband is now in the US. He got in first by flying to Nicaragua paying a $1000 US for the flight then from Mexico, where waited for 8 months for his immigration application to be acted. In the beginning of May he was given a US national security number. She now lives with her only son, an IT first year student at the university. She thinks that both governments – the Cuban and the Nicaraguan – made the flight ticket so expensive in order to benefit from the operations.
She is hoping to join her husband next year. Meanwhile, her son gets a free education at university. They both, like all Cubans get free healthcare. Yet, because of the unhealthy diet of the poor, too much bread and sugar among others, the number of obese people you see on the street are big. Furthermore, the healthcare is no longer was it used to be.
M says that the government lets people leave Cuba: “If you don’t agree with our policies, you can leave the country.” Although she is not from the poorest strata in society, she says she cannot afford going out and spend money. When she speaks about the economic condition and the standard of living she “wants a solution, an immediate one, not an explanation.” Yet she could not explain the origin of the dollar shops, for example. She was not aware that you need explanation of the problem so that solution could be proposed and found. She also thinks that the current crisis is worse than the 1993-94 one.
Combined development is a pressure and an enticement: M’s neighbour has an Apple watch, a gift from his son in the US, and his friend, like a few Cubans, has an electric motorbike. Like M, the neighbour lives in a street with deficient sewage system, hazard holes, no rubbish bins, rife with mosquitoes, and frequent power cuts. Power cuts include street lightening too, which makes hazards even more possible and the wifi signal off. All are characteristics not unique to Cuba.
I was told that an administrator gets around 1,250 CUP per month. I asked how someone could live on a salary that is the price of a bottle of olive oil or half of 30 eggs. The answer came: “If you don’t have relatives sending you money from abroad or a small business making a profit, you have to find ways here and there.” 70% of the workforce in Cuba is employed by the state.
K told me about her niece who is studying medicine: “When she graduates and starts work her salary will be 3,000 CUP. She will have to work as a waitress in the private sector instead.” 3,000 CUP buys 2 litres of olive oil in Cuba.
I met a doctor, M. M., in José Martí Parque. She told me how half of her salary would buy 30 eggs. So how does she make ends meet with such a salary? K., herself a Cuban, wonders how many people survive. She said that doctors and nurses might get this 10 CUP from one patient and another 20 from another patient. “Many do not live. They merely survive,” said K. A few have to take up two jobs in the private sector.
- The minimum wage is set at 2,100 CUP (Cuban Pesos) per month.
- The average salary in Cuba is around 4,000 CUP per month (see Table 1 below).
- The average salary of health and professionals with higher education is around 6,000 CUP per month.
- The average retirement pension does not exceed 1,528 CUP per month.
According to a study published in 2023 by Columbia Law School “32,000 CUP per month are needed per person to cover basic expenses.”
Others managed to get a licence from the relevant authorities to rent their homes or part of the home to foreigners – visitors or non-Cuban residents. Some live in Canada, the US or Switzerland but a relative takes charge of looking after the rental and whatever responsibilities that might entail. Thus an income might be guaranteed, but things are precarious for a few, as there is no guarantee in the flow of tourists in sufficient numbers. One landlady told me that because of Covid the tax on the place she rents out went down to 20% and has not changed since.
K. rents out part of her house. In fact, it looks like another house. She also opened a small shop from the house in early 2024. She said that the rules for small businesses had been relaxed even more after Covid. She now sells coffee, tapas and soup as well as cooking oil and soft drinks – nothing more. The first three months are taxes free. She has a niece who is in her 7th year medicine. She works at night as a waitress. “When she works as a doctor, she will earn 5,000 CUP maximum,” said K.
A young father with two kids aged 7 and 9 claimed that his wife had left to Mexico 7 months ago. She was now trying to get in the U.S. He said he cried sometimes, having to look after the kids and raise them. If his story is genuine, it very likely that his parents and his wife’s parents were looking after the kids.
Why are there many people queuing at the ATMs/the banks everyday?
Short of liquidity is the main reason. Banks do not have enough money to issue depositors. If a small business wants to withdraw say 100,000 pesos to buy goods, the business owner has to fill in a form citing the items they want to purchase. K., for example, owns a small business. She does not deposit the cash/liquid capital in a bank because she might not be able to withdraw money when she needs it. An example: A state employee might not be able to withdraw their 5,000-pesos monthly salary in one go, but something like 1000 pesos a day. Thus it takes 5 times, i.e. 5 days of joining the queue in the morning, so that they could withdraw the whole salary.
It is a state that cannot collect enough cash from businesses and the workforce. Private business make little or no money. Moreover, the state cannot borrow as much money on the international market like many other countries. Cuba, because of U.S. objection, is not a member of the IMF, for instance. And recently it has fallen behind is repayments of loans it had borrowed from the Paris Club. Pursuing an alternative path to capitalism in world dominated by capitalist relations the global capitalist trading powers has been painful for a country like Cuba.
Here the shortage of eggs seems more acute or their availability is periodic. Sometimes you see loads of eggs in shops, sometimes almost nothing. And they are expensive. On my first day I was lucky that the landlady found some eggs online. I bought 30 eggs for 2750 CUP. For my exchange rate, they are almost as expensive as London class 1 non-organic eggs. I was told that the shortage is due to the lack of the food chickens need to make eggs! Four days later, I saw a state shop overloading a few hundred eggs and a shop selling white eggs (local) for 2800 CUP for a pack of 30 eggs. The imported eggs are the brown ones. That’s double of an administrator salary. What is available are mostly the white eggs – not a good quality in terms of protein.
A televised report from Cienfuegos’s countryside in early June showed no shortage of vegetables or meat!
Approached by three kids of between 8 and 14 years old. Two, white, did not look from a very poor background. One, black, looked poor. Two asked me whether I had soap. I said I had only pens and gave them two. We chatted for a while. One is in the 5th form and he is 11 years old. He said they study English, but do not speak it in class. He couldn’t even say ‘what’s your name in English. The 14-year old stuck with me and we had a longer chat, but he kept hinting that he needs to repair his phone, but didn’t have the 2000 CUP.
Occasionally, you see someone wearing flip flops or shorts with the American flag. In one instance a man wearing a t-shirt with USA in big letters written on it. When he was asked by a young guy to buy two lemonades for his friend and himself, the man gave the money. I really wanted to know about the mentality of the man. (see photo in Cienfuegos)
I passed a man who has just slaughtered a pig and displayed the meat on a stand on the pavement for sale. Nothing was used to cover the meat.
After two weeks in Cuba, for the first time I was ‘offered a chica’. A muchacho condiciendo una carreta con a muchacha a bordo.
El carretero: ¿Quieres una chica?
Yo: ¿Qué?
El carretero: ¿Quieres una chica?
Yo: ¿Vendes chicas? !No bueno, es muy mal!
La muchacha, risueño, a el carretero: vamos, vamos.
An old woman, a pensioner, she worked as a technical assistant with one of the government ministries. Now, from her house on El Prado, she is displaying 7/8 items mainly clothes for sale. She has an old sewing machine too. She was reading the Bible when I stopped at her place. She told me about she could not find enough money for food while the restaurants next door offer dishes for more than 2000 Cuban Pesos. She said that Fidel Castro helped people like her, but the current president is just showing off. If you don’t have a relative abroad who sends you money from time to time, you go hungry as what the state provides is not enough. The woman has also to pay for water and electricity bills. She was very upset and felt she found an opportunity to talk to a foreigner – a Westerner she thought I was. I met the woman for a second time. She used the word ‘humiliation’ to refer to her condition, lamenting how she didn’t have a relative in the US, for example.
Another woman told me that “life under Fidel Castro was better.” School kids were once doing an activity on the street. Some wrote ‘Fidel’ on the tarmac using chalk. Others wrote ‘Live Palestine’ or ‘Cuba’.
Fidel Castro handed power to his brother in 2008 and passed away in 2016. That was before the deep crisis in Venezuela, the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. All three impacted on Cuba in different ways. Apart from the continuing dependency on one or two countries and an exceptional catastrophe, and like many other countries, the totality, however, is about the Cuban economic model.
Those Cubans who get financial help from abroad are ‘better off’: they use the dollar to purchase goods the majority cannot afford. almost 70% of the Cuban population receives remittances in varying forms. However, remittances come in different amounts not only in different forms.
In 2021-2023 some 400,000 Cubans left the country, according to Reuters.
Yet, as M told me, wherever you go you hear music, chatting, even dancing, people playing dominos or chess, here you see a gym and a group of people drinking.
Cubans own the houses they live in – by law each person can own two houses, one on the city and one in the country. A great historical gain, especially when compared to the exorbitant rent many have to pay in other countries. However, most of the Cubans do not have the means to maintain their houses. The derelict character of many dwellings is noticeable to any visitor.
A woman told me that now there were less power cuts in Havana than in Cienfuegos because people in the capital had protested against the frequent outages. “In Cienfuegos, we have been passive,” she said.
I went shopping in the city centre the following day around 12:30. Power cuts all over the main streets: how could cafés and shops work? How could an economy function, let alone develop, with such recurring power cuts.
After a week in the city, the area where I stayed had a power outage. I was told that the outage could last between 4 and 6 hours. Power did eventually return around 10, but when I woke up in the morning there was no electricity. When I returned to cook lunch there was no power and I was told that it had been off for more than 3 hours. Little kids cannot sleep at night and sometimes hear them crying. Some people have a siesta, but others sleep during the day because there a power outage the previous nigh and they could not sleep.
I had a chat with a man, a tourist guide and studied English at university. He could not explain the causes of the frequent outages, citing the fear of expressing his opinion. I sensed that he had only one side to blame, but to evade mentioning any details referred to the embargo. He could not thunk that there might be two or three factors/causes involved – internal and external. His tone and choice of words all reflect a one-dimensional way of thinking. He thought that such a problem is exceptional to Cuba.
When I mentioned last year water cuts in Tunisia, he was not prepared to accept the non-exceptional situation of power cuts in Cuba. I then put the issue in a relative perspective, invoking the destruction of Gaza with the support of the US. I was not sure whether he genuinely agreed with me on the destructive action or pretended to agree. Even when he said “have a nice day in Cienfuegos”, I sensed sarcasm since there was no power. I went to Hotel La Unión where there was no power cut.
Personally, I did not know the causes of such recurring problem, affecting households and the whole economy – although the capital is much less affected I heard. I didn’t know whether the cause was the inability of the state to import the necessary technology or it was part of mismanagement or lack of investment in an ailing infrastructure as I had read somewhere online as well as the lack of capital to invest in power grids, or it was all of that combined.
At the same that, it was the first and the only time in Cuba someone looked at me with resentment or disdain. It was a woman who was with the man and member M’s family. I sensed resentment in her look upon hearing I was from London.
ETECSA wifi on José Martí Parque was down that afternoon. All city centre experienced an outage for the whole afternoon at least. Before 21:00 the light went off again en la casa. No fan and it was hot. I opened the door, but a smell from the sewage filled the air. I fetched the electric fan I brought with me. Power came back in the middle of my sleep.
The power cuts are done by sections and at times ‘randomly’: you see one part of the city centre without power and another part has power. A whole neighbourhood with no power but in the city centre the lights are on. Sections of the economy take turns in experiencing power outages. Imagine power goes off while you are cooking you lunch.
Do they announce there would a power cut? There is no consistence: “when they do announce a coming power cut sometimes they do not cut it off,” M. said. After a two weeks in Cienfuegos I still could not find someone who knew when they cut the power off and they return it. I thought that was disrespectful. For not only the majority has to suffer the power outages, the people affected are not even informed/alerted.
A man told me that cutting the power off was not randomly done. It is a local decision taken by phone and depends on the size of the section of the circuit and the level of consumption. The conclusion: there is a timetable of switching the power off and on, but the timetable is not fixed: it changes according to capacity and consumption.
But there are ‘privileged’ areas. When I later moved to another house – something I had planned before my travel – there was hardly any power cuts for 10 days, i.e. about 95% power as opposed to 50% power in other areas. The main reason? I was now in an area whose power circuit included the hospital. The house is also close to Punta Gorda. The owner of the property said: “We are privileged here.” Why? Because the area is touristic, a few Cubans go out at night for a drink. Yet the area does not escape power cuts. When the hospital is able to use its generator(s), a power cut might take place.
In late October a grid failure caused four days of nationwide blackouts.
Labour is generally underused here in Cienfuegos. You see administrators behind the desks or laying in armchairs doing nothing most of the day.
Living in some neighbourhoods (barrios) means noise of motorcycles and old vehicles, people shouting, cocks responding to each others, dogs barking … might woke you at dawn. Some households, like in Tunisia, keep chicken at home. In the case of Cubans it gives them eggs, a commodity that is very expensive in the market. It also means contrasting people behaviour in one society with another: in one society people pay attention to whether you are comfortable while sitting next to them in café and you have enough room and in another people lax about it; in the first people give way to you on the pavement when they see you walking behind them while in the other you have to find your way through.
Here is my ‘extremist’ view: in one society such as the one I have lived in for more than 20 years politeness, sometimes called ‘civilised behaviour’, goes with voting for the same regime that engages in crimes, exploitation, imperialist domination, hypocrisy, racism, double standard, etc. Thus people’s complicity. In another society, people generally know less, there is more poverty and the welfare system is very weak if it existed at all, and people have their own prejudices too, but the regimes do not engage in global wars, exploitation and domination over other societies.
Some visitors of Cuba feel good when they bring with them some items to give to Cubans. They like ‘helping others’. I ask myself though: do those people back home vote for the same regime that is complicit in the embargo on Cuba – regardless of the degree of impact the embargo has on the population? Do they make a connection? I am sure they have their liberal justification.
A retired Iraqi-Canadian man has lived in Canada for 28 and Cuba on and off for many years. He used to have a relationship with a Cuban he had known in Canada. He says how alienating, boring and unliveable Montreal is for him. He cannot build relationship. He likes the city of Cienfuegos, but here too it is difficult, as most women look at him as source of dinero and serious Cuban women perceive foreign men as men looking for sex only. He likes the city, but he did no venture around the city centre to see how people really live
The man claims he knows the people well. He is prejudiced though, describes those who beg for money as lazy and they should work instead. He claims that Cubans have money, but they just do not show off their money like in other societies. He is not aware of the economic situation in a country whose economy is struggling with providing the basics, a few businesses work half of the time due to frequent power cuts.
He was not aware that there is history to it: a lot of people have become depended on the state or on money/remittances sent by relatives abroad. Others survive by making ends meet in the black market, selling small items and different jobs in the informal market.
One of the good things about our man was that he was aware of the American role in interfering in other countries, including his home country Iraq, and influencing their policies, if not determining future outcomes. “If countries, like Cuba, were left alone,” he emphasised, they would be in a much better situation than today.”
D. a young Cuban who can afford drinks at a hotel in the city centre was excited when I told her I lived in London: “London is very nice, things are good there, London is …, London is …” She was indifferent and did want to hear that London was very expensive, decision that lead crimes and complicity in crimes were taken in London, huge financial corruption and inequality, normalisation of hypocrisy, stress and over work, etc. She wanted to hear only good things and got shocked when I said I didn’t like London. She was young and naive, but like many yearning to more material indulgence. Her family has migrated to the U.S. Her father was a Professor of Physics at university. She is now doing some ‘modelling for hotels and shops’, but “I have my own business too,” she said quietly, wanting to be discreet. She said “life was so expensive and difficult” (!) The same words a poor woman living in El Prado and who could not afford to buy chicken and had not relatives abroad said to me.
Al – a Cuban who studied mechanical engineering in Moscow and had to return in Cuba in 1991 to finish his studies – thinks that the wars and other problems we have in the world are because of the US.
A Cuban musician recounted to me how his son, a qualified engineer, made to Florida and how he could not find an opportunity to work at home. He was told to go and work the land. “But we were not farmers. We knew nothing about farming, etc.” In a discussion about the economic situation in the country, he kept mentioning Fidel Castro in a positive light. “Cubanos are Fidelistas,” he said emphatically. A woman did not think so. She added that today the majority would be happy to see the current leadership gone. “People, especially in the public sector just cannot speak their minds openly.”
The musician does not think that after 30 years of focus on tourism has benefited the country. “The state does not have money. It cannot even procure the raw materials to make things, including basic medicines.” According to him, another problem consists of not allowing big business in the country. I immediately thought of eastern Europe.
A woman sitting next to me on a bench talking to some one she knows: “The situation is very bad … We cannot afford to eat chicken and picadillo.” And suddenly a neighbour of mine passed and interjected with a happy face: “I’m going to have lunch at the church.”
Cynicism and discontent is not new in Cuba. Its existence is acknowledged by the leadership. When asked in 1997 about the general attitude of the population towards the Revolution, General José Ramón Fernández, veteran leader of the battles against the invaders at the Bay of Pigs, replied openly,
“I don't mean ... that there are no discontented people in Cuba, or people who disagree with socialism ... We have shortages, privations, difficulties. We run risks; there are dangers. There are people who are more consumer-oriented, who would like a more comfortable life, without struggles. There are people who perhaps, consciously or unconsciously, place a shirt, a pair of pants, or a car, above the country's sovereignty or above social justice, and these people are clearly not enthusiastic about the Revolution.” (quoted in Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott 2004)
I was at a local grocer the other day. There were very few things to buy, no vegetables at all except pumpkins. After some discussion about availability of vegetables, one customer turned the heat on when she started mentioning salaries. The anger and frustration was palpable. “How could a monthly salary be the price of a whole chicken,” a exclaimed?
‘Negroes’ I was told are ‘racing’ to marry only whites to overtake them since white represent a majority. The drive is the racism the blacks face. Thus, K., concluded, “there is a lot of unfaithful relationships.”
A two-storey house that needs some improvement and refurbishment, 400 or 500 meters from El Malecón, costs around $120,000 US.
That social division and differentiation is illustrated in the access of the ‘growing’ minority to imported goods and a better quality of material life. This differential might set the stage for social conflicts as the majority begin to demand improvement in their living conditions and the minority political rights such as more access to the state apparatus. For now, one of the ways that maintains the relative social peace. State subsidies of basics, cheap public transport and allowing hundreds of thousands of people to leave the country have so far kept the lead on.
In June, Cubans living abroad start to return for visits and, obviously, bring with them some of the ‘luxuries’ Many or most Cuban do not have. At the same time, few Cubans, such as a bartender in a hotel, could manage to go on a holiday in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. The bartender is able to integrate himself in the informal/black economy and engaging in money exchange.
Living in a house with Cubans was a very refreshing experience. Despite the bad infrastructure, the dirty streets, the power outages, etc., I felt I was among a big family from what you share at home to the people who greet you although you never knew them. Thus the morning I left the Fariñas in Cienfuegos, for instance, it was emotional although I stayed with them only a month. I will always remember the moments and the words we shared everyday. It was the complete opposite of the environment I had in my 6/7 months stay in London, where I shared a flat with an English woman and her son. I felt I was a £700-a-month for the landlady. The day I left she did not even come to say a proper good-bye: she said it on the street from afar. So cold!
TV, art, sport and leisure
Art Workshop where different artists produce works of art. A chat with Vladimir Rodriguez, a painter.
I got across a few gyms, a karate club, a chess club… Near where I stayed someone opened a gym from their house. Kids play games on their phones.
Like many other modern humans, Cubans also react with fervour to a football game even when it is not their national team playing.
Channels include Cubavisión, Multivisión, Clave, Caribe, Educativo, national ones plus Telesur and Russia Today. “The government wants us to watch what it wants,” M. commented. She was watching an old film with Clint Eastwood in it. I thought of Sex in the City, Desperate Housewives, Friends and similar productions ‘to bring the Cubans into the modern world of globalised American mediocrity and stupefaction.’ I did not tell her that, but I did tell her to look for alternative cinema. Later, for my sins, when I had a chance to watch TV for a few weeks I found out that it was not as M. claimed. More about this below.
Was it a bad thing that the Cuban TV shows programmes about American state violence at home and abroad? Programmes include George Bush and co. and the destruction they unleashed, police racism and brutality in a series such as the one about the ‘suspicious death’ of the black man Freddie Gray.
M. showed frustration to the fact that her son, a student, refused to read books. She herself wanted to learn English. She once showed me a pile of old text books and scraps. I thought they were at least 50 years old. She didn’t know that quality text books, audios and videos are available free online. I had to show here where they were.
There is access to wikipedia though. The national channels: one is mainly educational, one is of music, one of sport, one of news and current affairs, etc.
One of the drama series are a mediocre American one about a team intervening in minor accidents, and a Turkish drama. Programmes and shows include a report about technical and technological industry in Cuba, Chinese dance (e.g. Riverdance Chinese) gymnastic and musical performances from 2024 CMG – Spring Festival Gala. a French crime and action series, a French crime movie from the French channel TV5 Monde, Christopher Nolan’s Inception as well as The Prestige, an English crime film about a series of crimes that took place in Pembrokeshire, England in the 1980s and 1990s. Changes might occur in Spanish subtitles in order to soften the slang or vulgar language in the original script. Example: “to save our arses” becomes “to save our pellejos.”
Piso 6 show (contrary to the name it is made in the ground floor of Cuba Libre Hotel in Havana) …Football games, a weekly show about Latin American cinema, Nota a Nota programme about music (once was about La Musique Française and featured a commercial singer by the name of Slimane whose love songs are more about performance and lights, a mere reflection of the age of aggression rather than quality and content.
According to art student I met in Cienfuegos, there are what it is called 1st, 2nd and 3rd cinema in Cuba (and Latin America). The First Cinema is the commercial one. The Second Cinema is the independent cinema of contemporary issues, and the Third Cinema is the documentary Cinema – the one that treats the history of Latin American struggle since the colonial era and the yankee imperialism in the region. I was recommended by an art student to watch Lucia by Umberto Solace. The student was familiar with playwrights such as Dario Fo, Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett, but also with the classical Italian cinema. A girl who was with him agreed that the focus on the Cuban TV on Latin American cinema was more of a political decision rather than an artistic one.
Gay relationships are explicit on TV. Example: Juvenile series on Multivisón channel.
You would hear singers such as Michael Jackson, Madonna and George Michael played for an exclusive Cuban crowed at the pier. In Punta Gorda, Barbie song could be heard.
Some sit outside or in a balcony for hours. Some watch TV for hours. The young ones spend a lot of time on the phone. Some walk their dogs in late the afternoon. Occasionally, you see someone, mainly an aged person, reading from a an old/worn out book.
Centro Minerva, two streets off San Fernando: Music and dance performances on first and third Sunday of the month. Free entrance, cheap drinks. Once I attended a spectacle with an exclusively Cuban audience – mostly middle-aged and old men and women. (see video).
In contrast, when I went to the restaurant at San Carlos Hotel, there was ‘Killing Me Softly’ playing and European football on TV.
On the 1st day of June I went to inquire about excursions in Cienfuegos. At an agency on El Prado a woman told me that they did not have any organised excursions due to lack of ‘combustible’ (fuel). I passed by one of the very few cafés that has air-conditioning. It was open and there was power, but the air-conditioner was off – is it broken down or were they saving money?
Another agency in the opposite side of the road told me they did not have any organised excursion, either. I went to the other agency on Boulevard San Fernando, but I found it had closed down a while ago. I returned a week later. One of the agencies – Havanatur – suggested they put my name down and when there were at least 14 people they would go on an excursion. It was hard time for tourism and there were very few customers. They never called me.
Havanatur also organises flights to Miami and Tampa, including one way flights. Prices range from $150 to $315 US.
Punta Gorda
La Plaza has a few pitches, including one Baseball pitch for both children and adults.
Generally, a few of these pitches are not maintained and signs of lack of investment are visible.
Concerts and ‘raves’ are held nearby in a big space. A huge stage is set up, but the real things kicks off only after 11 if not later until dawn. The plaza is surrounded by houses. The music is so loud that it would never be allowed in London, for example.
The monument that is worth a visit is Palacio de Valle. European, Arab and Cuban artisans were involved in its construction. It has the most expensive restaurant in the city. A terrace offers drinks, seats and a nice view.
A man had a long chat with me, stressing the material conditions of people in Cuba, especially the salaries and the prices. He said that the regimes just blame the American embargo all the tine. He thought that both the regime and the embargo are to blame. He highlighted how the prices of good sold by the state are even higher than the prices of good sold in dollars by the small private businesses.
Like in Tunisia, for example, workers/employees my engage in long chats during work or even keep a customer waiting while their are immersed in something unrelated to work. One may even interrupt what you are doing just to salute you or shake your hand – a gesture of welcoming you and showing warm heart.
Queued for chicken. It is unbelievable the amount of meat Cubans in Cienfuegos buy. One of the shops sells only huge frozen and wrapped in plastic pieces of meat and whole chicken. You might wait for an hour until your turn comes. One person weighs the meat and says the weight and price. Another cashes the amount. An electronic scale is used, but what usually takes time is choosing the right weight the customer wants and counting the notes. When I see all that I wonder where do people get the money from since more than 60% of the workers are in the public sector and receive between 1500 CUP and 5000 CUP or a bit more per month. They must be the minority and the same who do their shopping in both PESOS and foreign currency, paying in cash and with a credit card.
Education
It is free at all levels. Some people I met expressed their opinion that the quality of education has declined.
I passed by one primary school off Calle 42. The rooms and the courtyard are full of poster and photos of Che Guevara. One of the classroom had around 35 pupils. M. confirmed to me that like it was in her days the size of the classes today is [too] big.
The café and library at the entrance of San Fernando high street from El Prado: the shelves are now stacked with books, but all the books are in Spanish only. Each is displayed around 10 times on the same shelf. Half of the books are about history, including books about or by Che and Castro. A book about Lula of Brazil, another about illnesses and preventions, a couple about administration. Not a single dictionary. No books for children. In a world that has significantly moved towards the digital, one wonders the reason behind having such a big space with very few books. On the whole, the library is a far cry from the poor library I saw in Vedado, Havana where there were different books, references in Spanish and English. Or, contrast that with a contest on one of the Cuban channel’s where Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Carlos Fuentes, G. G. Marquez and others are mentioned:
It is very, very rare to see or sense that someone is reading a book.
On one Saturday, there was a queue in the café, people waiting for a table. Given the need for a small business to thrive in a condition of power frequent cuts and falling purchasing power, what is the use of 4/5 of the space occupied by shelves of books no one is reading or even looking at?
English is taught at school: about 2.25 hours a week in total. The teaching method does not help learners speak it.
Healthcare
A public clinic of dental treatment on El Prado was full of people waiting. I asked at the reception whether they knew a private dentist in the city. They did not knew any. Prior to that I asked a pharmacist. She shrugged her shoulders without uttering a word! A week before someone had told me that he knew a private dentist, but he left the country. I was told that I should go Punta Gorda to look for a dentist.
Dental treatment for Cubans used to be better. A woman told me that how she had to get bracelets for her son from the US. Then a dentist in Cuba did the fixing. A. told me that many health professionals have left the country and the healthcare service now is drained of skills and resources.
There is big hospital in Cienfuegos, with an unfinished extension. It seems that construction has been brought to halt for some reason.
Modern tourism
At Parque José Martí buses bring tourists in a guided tour. 20 minutes tour and the group is back to the bus. They see next to nothing of Cienfuegos but what the guide/company wanted them to see. Nothing behind El Prado or around the square, the shops, the derelict houses, businesses run from home, the music and the chattering, etc. And given the limited time they have, the maximum they would do is wondering in a couple of streets, they buy souvenirs and take selfies. Only a fraction of visitors (solo travellers or couples) venture beyond the designed sites. I worked as a tourists guide once, but I never went on guided tour or organised trip.
I had a chat with another woman earlier and I mentioned to her what the old woman said. She too could not understand why I am in Cuba for a long stay. The norm is that foreigners are tourists they pass by Cienfuegos or stay for a few days maximum. The younger woman understood better my reasons: being in Cuban or Tunisia makes me feel less complicit in crimes, violence, racism, and hypocrisy than when I am in England or the US.
Bank notes
The 1000 CUP note features the Communist student leader Antonio Julio Mella
Mella described the Cuban dictator Gerardo Machado (1925-1933) in a memorable phrase as a ‘tropical Mussolini’. Mella was one of the Communist Party’s early leaders, “a brilliant student orator shot in 1929 when in exile in Mexico City, assassinated on Machado’s orders. Out walking with Tina Modotd, the Italian photographer, he died in the house of [the famous Mexican painter] Diego Rivera.”
The 500 note features Ignacio Agramonte
Agramonte was one of the leaders in the war of independence against Spain. He played a crucial role in the uprising of Camagüey.
The 200 CUP note features Frank Pais
Frank Pais was the acknowledged leader of the July 26 Movement in Santiago, with wide-ranging responsibilities. “Born into a Christian Baptist family in Santiago in 1930, Pais had once planned to be a schoolteacher, but Batista’s coup in 1952 had turned him into a full-time resistance activist. First with his own group and then, after 1955, as the ‘chief of action and sabotage’ of the Movement in Oriente, he was an inspirational organiser and political fixer. He had met Castro for the first time in Mexico in August 1956 and together they had planned the uprising in Santiago designed to coincide with the Granma landing…” (Gott, 2004)
The 100 CUP note features Carlos Manuel de Cespedes.
Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, a local lawyer and landowner who seized the town of Bayamo in October 1868 in the name of a movement claiming Cubas independence from Spain. He announced that the town was now the provisional capital of the island, and that he was independent Cubas ‘captain-general’, with the legal authority of a colonial governor. His declarations were later recalled by rivals within the independence movement as evidence that he harboured dictatorial ambitions – as he quite possibly did.
The 49-year-old Céspedes had acquired a measure of revolutionary experience during travels in Europe and was a member of a wider political conspiracy seeking independence. Césspedes was chosen as President in 1969, with Manuel de Quesada appointed as military commander. Céspedes had released his own slaves at the start of the war of independence, as had the local landowners who joined him, and their freed slaves formed an important nucleus of the rebel army. Yet no call was made for the abolition of slavery altogether. The ambivalence that lay at the heart of all Cuban reformist movements had not disappeared.
Céspedes’s first manifesto, issued in December 1868, outlined a programme for the country’s future, but referred only to ‘gradual’ abolition and called for slave-owners to be compensated. The sugar plantations were to remain free from attack, and those who made such attacks would be subject to the death penalty. Although the manifesto echoed the American Declaration of Independence (‘We believe that all men were created free and equal’), it quickly qualified its application where slaves were concerned (‘We desire the
gradual, indemnified emancipation of slaves’. (Source: Gott 2004)
The 50 CUP banknote features Calixto Garcia Iniguez
Garcia set up the Cuban Revolutionary Committee of the independence movement in New York. He was appointed as the interim president of the Committee. He was a white general in the rebellion of 1879. He would later become commander of the entire eastern region. “Garcia the rebel commander closest to Santiago – operating from the lower slopes of the Sierra Maestra – was invited by the Americans to supply troops to divert Spanish forces during the US advance on the city. He sent 3,000 of his men, but none were asked to the subsequent victory celebrations.
Cuba was liberated from Spanish control by the American invasion in barely three weeks, yet the Cubans had been fighting for more than three years. They watched bleakly from the sidelines as their victory was taken from them… The position of Calixto García, the commander in Oriente,” continues Gott, “was ambivalent. Long out of touch and out of sympathy with the Cuban exile leadership in the United States, he was barely aware that the Americans were about to land in his area of operations until an American lieutenant arrived secretly at his mountain base in May 1898. He did not know whether to cooperate or not and was forced to make a pragmatic decision on the spot, agreeing to assist the invasion forces… Garcia, like Masó and many others, came to regret the US invasion, but he only lived long enough to see the early months of the occupation.” (Source: Gott 2004)
The 20 bank note features Camilo Cienfuegos
With Che Guevara Cienfuegos was “perceived as the most heroic, charismatic and romantic figure in Castro’s army.”
The 10 bank note features Maximo Gomez.
“Máximo Gómez, the most accomplished rebel general of the independence wars.” (Gott, 2004)
On the 5 CUP banknote is Antonio Maceo.
Maceo was one of the black leaders of the liberation army. He was the most radical of them.
Religion in context: Cuba 1912
The repression was fierce, and some 3,000 blacks were killed. This was a race war, crushed by white Cubans [of Spanish origin].
El Día, the Conservative newspaper, commented favourably on American lynchings as a model for Cuba to keep the black population under control. White militias were organised, martial law was imposed and the general commanding the forces in Oriente organised a special show for journalists of the army’s new machine guns. They were directed towards a peaceful peasant village, killing 150 peasant families in their huts.
The massacre of 1912 remained etched in the memory of Cuban blacks for decades. They almost never took part in politics again, devoting themselves to music and retreating into their own African religions, and participating in white Cuban society in the only institutions to which they had easy access – the lower ranks of the army and the police force.” (Gott 2004)
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Snapshots
Yesterday the power cut lasted from 15:00 to 21:30. Today when I went back home at 13:00 to cook lunch there was another power cut that had already started at 11:00. To salvage the almost 2 kilos of chicken breast (of $14) , the landlady offered to keep them in her other special refrigerator.
I went to a restaurant in state-run hotel. I was directed to the 6th floor: a view over the sea, not expensive nice and comfortable space, and good service. A small bottle of water, fish with rice and mango and flan as dessert for 3.6 €. A month salary of some administrators.
Someone at the till asked me the typical question:
“Where are you from?”
“Vivo in London”
“Ingles?”
“No, vivo in London”
“Escocés?”
“No, vivo in London.”
Looked at me, silently. Puzzled, perhaps.
“Yo, no tengo nación.”
On the way downstairs, the lift stopped half way. You guessed. Yes, a power cut, but luckily the hotel has a generator.
Then I went to the air-conditioned café where I often have a coffee. No corriente! Now I am in the park.
Incidents
Three kids approached me asking for soap and toilet paper. I gave them two pens I had on me. Then a chat ensued: they started asking me question about where I lived and how I would be staying in Cienfuegos, etc. Something I never had in my 24 years in London.
A street vendor giving me a change of 1000 CUP. She gave me 50 notes of 500 CUP! A woman street vendor uses a small scale the size of an egg. The second time I went shopping from her I was cautious and could yet trust her. I had took at the scale myself and figuring out the real cost of the banana.
A man ‘profited’ from a torrential rain by washing his car while he himself being soaked, and at the same time group of teenagers were playing football in José Martí Square/Parque. Another group too were doing the same. It looked like a ‘tradition’ that takes place when such a rain starts the season. In Cienfuegos this year it began on 4 May. There is rain and thunder in May before the summer of July and August.
I was taking photos of villas in Punta Gorda and around the stadium, when an old man accompanied with three others approached me and asked: “Why did you take a photo of my house.” At first I didn’t understand, but when he repeated his question I git the idea. And then everybody understood that I was an extranjero. I told the old man, showing him the photos I had taken, that I was taking pictures of houses in general. One of the man apologised saying ‘sorry’ in English. I was supposed to be the one who should have apologised. It is just one of the instances that reflect how friendly and polite Cubans are.
I went for the a third time to this café facing Parque José Martí. It is a big café and you would be able to connect to ETECSA wifi using a scratch card. As expected the café did not have milk when I ordered a cappuccino. I ordered an Americano instead, but the man behind the bar ignored my order and insisted on me buying pesos from him for dollars or euros. The woman working with him tried to make him drop his digression, but in vain. He offered me the cheapest rate I had ever heard of. Genuine or not, he kept ‘harassing’ me saying he urgently needed to buy a ventilator. He would be able to purchase it only if he had a hard currency. I reiterated my order of the coffee, but he paused and repeated his need of a ciento (100 dollars/euros). At that moment I left looking fir another coffee shop.
I returned to the same café a couple of time and served by a friendly you g girl. However, the third time, I could enjoy the coffee: although there were 6/7 ventilators, none of them was on. No, there was no a power cut, but they were more likely saving money.
A young girl in her mid twenties that was like me regular to a café and was sitting opposite, approached me and kissed me on the cheeks, then requested she borrowed my reading glasses because she had forgotten hers at home! Later, on returning the glasses, she showed me photos of hers in Holguín. That was not the first instance: When, for example, a cousin of the landlady said good bye to me she kissed me on the cheek although we had met only once. Human interactions differ: here they are not corrupted by fear of the Other and staying-in-my-comfort-zone mentality like the one in Western Europe.
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