Fidel's World
Symmes, Patrick
Fidel's World Two weeks on an abandoned island. by Patrick Symmes Havana T he first time Fidel Castro died was in the 1950s. "We have the head of Castro," announced the dictator Fulgencio...
...You can't miss it...
...cedes...
...Try The Capitalist's Companion at a special trial rate...
...They disappeared around a corner...
...My cop began to loosen up and returned my passport...
...The reactors were abandoned after great expense and effort because it had been designed as a replica of the Chernobyl plant...
...Tell me this," Pedro said the first time we sat in thelief...
...Castro has been maneuvering at home and abroad to head off the coming crisis...
...I've been up at Varadero, Singing Guantanamera for the tourists...
...the eighties were his last gasp...
...It was Che Guevara...
...H-H-Hello, tourist...
...The government offers propaganda but backs it up with repression...
...It is the most powerful repressive apparatus in the world, relative to our size," Sanchez says...
...Bill me...
...He led me off in the direction of the museum, this time without crushing my arm...
...Later, over dinner, he told me it had broken his heart when he discovered I wasn't actually a compatriot...
...Sanchez recites with weary familiarity the size and extent of Cuba's repressive machine—a massive military and police force, a system of domestic spies extending into every workplace and residential block, pro-government intimidation squads in every city, and more than 100 prisons and prison camps with roughly 100,000 prisoners...
...The flow of tourists is expanding, but not fast enough to save the sinking economy...
...That night on a dark street I passed a yellow-haired man with a round, Slavic face, and I impulsively shot out the only word of Russian I knew: tovarish, comrade...
...He took away his hands and I saw he was crying...
...They had a dialogue in Chile and Poland and Afghanistan...
...22 The American Spectator July 1992 Zero Option The next day my plane floated west toward Mexico at 10,000 feet...
...Incredible," he said, and he suddenly put his hands up and covered his face...
...Cabaret There were fewer police in the provincial towns, and more food and transportation...
...T he streets of Havana are quiet, the buildings unpainted for so long that the skyline is in shades of cement...
...At night he dreamed he was in a Munich beerhall with his father...
...Pedro the Gusano Another crowded but mercifully short bus trip brought me through the Escambray mountains to Santa Clara...
...In the end, it didn't matter...
...Act 43, however, was worth exactly the paper it was printed on...
...We have the head of Castro," announced the dictator Fulgencio Batista, just before Fidel ran him out of town...
...Ramon was nowhere to be found...
...When the tea came we guzzled our glasses and left, and in the street he explained it was unwise to draw attention...
...During the 1950s one of the worst sins of the Batista regime was that it allowed just such privileged enclaves...
...he asked...
...And you'll be getting it the way it ought to be given: clearly...
...I saw some pretty girls up there...
...He didn't laugh...
...Cubans walked onto the resorts only as busboys and prostitutes, and Castro's propagandists made much of the promise that never again would Cubans be shut out of their own country...
...Sanchez has spent eight and a half of the last eleven years in jail, and when I knocked on the oversized door of his house in the neighborhood of La Playa his mother checked carefully before letting me inside...
...I decide I had better get down there quickly...
...If you're not satisfied, we'll send you a pro-rated refund...
...He took a dog-eared newspaper clip out of his wallet...
...When she brought the check I could see there was a lump underneath it, and I tried to palm it discreetly...
...She had a few dollars saved up could I take it to the nearby tourist shop in the morning and buy a pair of shorts for the little girl...
...Jorge Mas Canosa, the self-appointed leader of the exile community, marches around Washington announcing that Cuba is totally shut down...
...The Eastern European bus factory demands hard currency now, so there are no spare parts, and bus service has been cut back 75 percent...
...The spectacular show trial and execution in 1989 of General Arnaldo Ochoa was evidence that Castro is watching the military closely...
...T he streets of Havana are quiet, the buildings unpainted for so long that the skyline is in shades of cement...
...It wasn't exactly a revolution, but for Cuba it was strong stuff...
...Last fall, he hosted a conference on the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis with Kennedy administration veterans...
...Promise me that when you go back to your country you will tell people what is going on here...
...There are slogans everywhere, but socialism is rarely mentioned: nationalism is the message, and foreign domination the threat...
...If you are satisfied, renew for a year...
...After a moment, he spoke slowly and precisely, "I would give ten years of my life to live in a country like that...
...It was about anti-foreigner riots in Germany...
...Keep it," he said, "and make me a promise...
...Penniless republics like Latvia and Khirghizstan will probably not be able to pay, according to sugar traders...
...She held it for a moment, puzzled, and then smelled it...
...He is a delinquent who wanted to rob you...
...now Pedro spent his days in the park, studying German and sipping from a plastic jug of beer...
...Example: when the consensus was predicting a short, sweet recession, the Companion was telling its readers why the recession would last and last...
...The bellhop dashed about with my bag, explaining in English the many "wonderful, marvelous things of this, your Cuban hotel...
...He was shocked...
...They knew exactly what he was singing about, and when he left the stage, people reached out to shake his hand and pat him on the back.1 / n the morning I met Pedro again in the plaza...
...Only dead heroes are useful to Castro...
...The government remains strong, he says, and could last three more years...
...Since the local tourist hotel was full, I was allowed to stay in the peso hotel on the plaza, a friendly dump used by Cubans in town for weddings or official business...
...Black, red, blue, green, whatever you like...
...Only half the crop has been sold this year, but many of those deals are dubious...
...It takes three weeks to get a train or bus ticket out of Havana, and the city bus services are so crowded that ten or twenty men will hang on the outside of the bus, fingers gripping the window frame and feet braced on the wheel wells as the bus rockets across town...
...Two policemen separated us, and before I could speak Ramon was dragged off in one direction as I was taken in the other...
...She took a deep breath and asked if I could do her a favor...
...The poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela received a visit from one of the pro-government mobs...
...Sanchez asked with a smile...
...Now in its fifth decade, the death watch has become a fixture: at first the patient was grave, then graver, then gravisimo...
...My position is, No, I don't agree . . . She is currently serving two years in prison...
...The propaganda campaign rarely mentions socialism...
...The clerks didn't blink an eye, so I stopped worrying about being arrested...
...After a suitably reverent pause, he admitted that he needed some shoes...
...If I stood in the park in your country and said that the President, pardon my language, is a shit, what would happen...
...Many girls, some with almost anything you can imagine...
...Some of the young Cubans I met openly called it tropical apartheid, and it is probably the single least popular policy in the country...
...He was arrested just a few days before taking command of the troops surrounding Havana.2 Castro has also gone to great pains to show he is no longer a threat to the United States...
...he has said repeatedly that the era of international adventures in Africa, Nicaragua, and El Salvador is over, and that Cuba and the United States are no longer enemies...
...He spun round as suddenly as if he had been shot and stared at me, then burst into a rapid monologue in Russian...
...with details...
...The hotel was run by a wiry, silent man known only as Chief and a staff of six women...
...Some of the people in the bar were staring at us, and Ramon grew uncomfortable...
...There was a sort of talent show in a local theater, and about three hundred young people were settled in, hoping for some excitement...
...With little clue of what I was getting into, I said yes...
...You know this fellow...
...he called out hopefully...
...The only work available paid 40 pesos a month, he said, a tiny wage in worthless currency...
...Many big women...
...You can get anything you want in Cuba, if you have dollars," he said...
...It did...
...Still, this is the important year—what happens now determines how it will end...
...There are grand old buildings, a few even restored, but little activity in them...
...No, no, no...
...How long do you think we can live like this...
...I raced back to the hotel and cornered Rosa and Mercedes and pleaded with them to be more specific...
...Diario Latino claims that Fidel and his brother Raul have purchased a tiny island in the Indian Ocean as a getaway spot for their exile...
...We began walking toward then't talk to them...
...Castro has always been smart, but even this problem is beyond him...
...If he was still alive, none of this would be happening...
...Whenever I passed by, Rosa would give me a huge wink...
...This deathbed conversion from local hooligan to good neighbor is a sign of how desperate Castro is...
...I want you to know something," he said, "I am a Chris20 The American Spectator July 1992 tian...
...He was a good man...
...Another face of Cuba emerged—the happy face put on for tourists...
...Castro hopes that the tourists will inject enough hard currency into the country to save him, without spreading any of their dangerous ideas about democracy and freedom...
...There are regular blackouts in the afternoons, when the power stations simply run out of oil, and at night the streets are as dark and quiet as a country village, lit only by the blue glow of an occasional television set...
...The tourist invasion has produced a collision between socialism and hedonism that leaves both sides shaking their heads...
...Her eyes went wide...
...I set off for the store with four lists and four little bundles of dollars and the conviction that I was about to be arrested for black marketeering...
...Castro's enemies have killed him a number of times: he was dead at the Bay of Pigs...
...At breakfast the waitress was named Rosa...
...Anything," said Mer plaza together...
...The situation is going to change, it must change...
...We have the head of Castro," announced the dRussians now supply half that...
...there was a large crack in it, but he was proud that it had not broken...
...There was a swimming pool, a bar, and two The American Spectator July 1992 19 restaurants, and he pointed out the sound of musicians tuning up for el show...
...I begged off, saying it had been a long ride from Havana, and headed into the elevator...
...Hey girls, where are you going...
...In the plaza I met a gusano, a worm...
...Another guitarist came out and tuned up amid the murmuring of the crowd...
...The Soviets had pulled out, saying the construction was so bad it didn't meet even their incredibly low standards for quality control...
...Ochoa's real sin was apparently being too popular with the officer corps...
...Call the toll-free number...
...They simply call him "the comrade," or "this fellow," said with the gesture of stroking a bushy beard, as if saying the name could bring bad luck...
...Their insights will surprise you...
...He handed me the picture...
...Sanchez took me back to the front door...
...it is a rare chance to see the fomenting of a revolution...
...After an awkward silence, he could not contain his curiosity and shyly asked if I was enjoying Cuba...
...Tourists have special taxis, special hotels, special food and drink...
...Why can't we have one here...
...The enormous dome stood out in the morning haze, a looming monument to the failed Soviet-Cuban alliance...
...The factory where Pedro had worked assembling East German medical equipment closed a few months ago...
...He was unemployed, and earned a little money by approaching foreigners, offering to sell cigars under the counter or change dollars at fifteen times what the government offered...
...With pesos it isn't so easy: we waited through a long queue to get into a bar serving iced tea, one of the only things not on ration...
...I had plenty of time to shop, because a woman with an East German passport was buying half the store...
...You know this fellow...
...A friend," he explained...
...Can this really be it...
...When I arrived late in the evening at a gleaming tourist hotel in the south coast city of Cienfuegos the bellhop was so thrilled to see me he began to stutter...
...You shouldThe Great Bearded One is constantly on television, but no one mentions his name...
...I'm staying here" is another slogan, a plaintive admission that not everyone is...
...The fall is "imminent," the regime is "tottering...
...I didn't see any taxis for me But tourist taxis everywhere...
...Dialoguistas and Dissidents Back in Havana I went to see Elizardo Sanchez, former professor of Marxist philosophy, frequent political prisoner, and now informal dean of Cuban dissidents...
...They simply call him "the comrade," or "this fellow," said with the gesture of stroking a bushy beard, as if saying the name could bring bad luck...
...n the morning I sat on my balcony and looked through a telephoto lens at the Cienfuegos nuclear power plant...
...100% Cuban" is stenciled on construction sites, although the Cubans could use some foreign help with their infrastructure...
...He seemed absolutely serious, so I told him that nothing would happen except maybe some polite applause...
...I tried to calm him down, but looking at the clips put him in a funk...
...Without the sale of sugar there is no hard currency, no Ukrainian wheat or Russian oil or Hungarian tractors...
...I hope you can understand me, but I can say no more than this...
...Restaurants are closed for lack of cooking gas, and storefronts are everywhere shut up or deserted...
...He asked the time, the standard excuse for talking to a foreigner, and we fell into conversation...
...She weighed 200 pounds and kept winking at me...
...I do not agree with the established disorder in my country...
...I scratched down as much of the lyric as could fit on a five-peso note, but it doesn't do the song justice: I've been up at Varadero...
...With effusive thanks, she told me that she hadn't been able to wash her daughter for more than two-and-ahalf months...
...No, no, no," he gasped, as if it was the first funny thing he heard in months...
...They broke into her apartment, dragged her outside, tore up one of her books of poems and literally forced her to eat her words...
...He asked you to change money," announced my cop...
...The people of the island can only tighten their belts one or two more notches...
...I cannot agree with unfortunate slogans like "Fidel is our Papa...
...We'll send you five issues for $19...
...Either way, you'll be getting some of the most insightful market commentary around...
...he would never survive the seventies...
...Less than a year, I replied...
...It was easy to see why he was excited...
...Everyone else has gone home...
...I rested for a moment at the foot of Marti's statue, and a thin young man approached...
...You should be careful," he urged me...
...The leading ideological hack of the Communist party recently referred to him as "squalid counterrevolutionary garbage," and in Miami the exiles have tarred him with their worst epithet, dialoguista, someone who favors negotiating with Castro, a charge he denies...
...We have the head of Castro," announced the dictator Fulgencio Batista, just before Fidel ran him out of town...
...I don't even have any shoes," he said, and began to sob...
...Can this really be it...
...To head off complaints, he has loudly warned everyone about the aptly named Zero Option, the worst-case scenario where the island would be without any fuel at all, a pre-industrial nightmare where horses and human muscle would power anything that can still move...
...Or mail us the coupon...
...There are grand old buildings, a few even restored, but little activity in them...
...By the time my arm had stopped smarting, we parted with a handshake and he strolled off, turning back once with a friendly wave...
...snapped the cop...
...The claim was codified in the current constitution, where Act 43 specifically states that no Cuban can be banned from any beach, park, or hotel anywhere on the island...
...He began to laugh...
...Fidel's problems are far closer to home...
...We won't always be right, of course...
...We walked all the way to the museum together, discussing baseball...
...It's tall and pretty, with lots of glass...
...he told them Kennedy was not only a fine man, but that he had promised a pact of nonintervention in Cuba, a pact that Castro nervously insisted is still valid...
...Rosa winked...
...My policeman did not say a word, so I put on a thick gringo accent and explained I had been asking directions to the Museum of the Revolution...
...1The singer told me I could describe the song as long as I did not use his name, and he vowed to send me the exact words in the mail...
...The soles of his shoes were held on with string...
...he asked...
...They were followed by a bad folksinger, a comic who told an apparently hilarious story about a Cuban cow on vacation in India, another bad folksinger, a violin trio, and some dancers wrapped in white sheets...
...The government must constantly build up its enemies, Sanchez says, by claiming that even the mildest criticism is a CIA plot...
...Whatever you think will look good on me," she said, falling into giggles...
...Castro's enemies have killed him a number of times: he was dead at the Bay of Pigs...
...I turned up the voltage on my innocent-tourist act, insisting that I was lost and that the boy had merely been showing me the way to the museum...
...Among the crowds were some of his neighbors—"They had to do it," he says—and men in civilian dress with radios...
...In November and again in January, Sanchez was attacked by mobs in what the government called "spontaneous acts of repudiation...
...he asked...
...the eighties were his last gasp...
...At lunch I had a different waitress, Mercedes, and when she brought the bill I turned it over and read: 1 tennis, 42 1 shirt 1 lipstick, red I left the restaurant as fast as I could...
...The cabaret...
...Music That night in Santa Clara I stumbled upon free speech...
...He says he does want an open national dialogue, because he is convinced that as in Eastern Europe, once a debate has begun, the Communists will be quickly forced out...
...November was a bad month for the dissidents...
...Now in its fifth decade, the death watch has become a fixture: at first the patient was grave, then graver, then gravisimo...
...President: I do not agree...
...You can look but you cannot touch...
...Restaurants are closed for lack of cooking gas, and storefronts are everywhere shut up or deserted...
...I returned to the hotel began shouting "It's dangerous to shoot actors...
...I scooped it into my pocket and Rosa recovered enough to wink again...
...Marvelous...
...I like to look at it from the street...
...A few minutes later there was a knock on my door...
...T he repression of dissidents is not a sideshow of Cuban politics, it is the soul...
...Introducing an exotic new financial language: English...
...The merchandise was all remarkably cheap and ugly, but far better than what was available on the ration...
...the Cuban authorities had cut off Pedro's mail and telephone...
...The sins of the father were visited upon the son...
...I decide I had better get down there quickly...
...He took out a faded picture from the wallet...
...Where possible, the hotels are built on isolated strips of land or in entire beach colonies, like the one at Varadero a hundred miles east of Havana, where the only Cubans are waiters and chambermaids...
...instead Cubans are told that the nation itself is at stake, that Cuba's history and culture will somehow fall into the hands of foreigners if dissent is tolerated...
...If the government closes the non-violent door, there is only one door left—a bloody national tragedy...
...Where the Soviets once supplied 13 million metric tons of oil a year, the Patrick Symmes is a writer living in McLean, Virginia, 18 The American Spectator July 1992 Fidel's World Two weeks on an abandoned island...
...CI 2 See Julia Preston's account in the New York Review of Books, December 7, 1989...
...Jorge Mas Canosa, the self-appointed leader of the exile community, marches around Washington announcing that Cuba is totally shut down...
...Thick columns of white smoke rose up from the fields of sugarcane below, which are burned at harvest time...
...Name I Company LitY Address State Zip The Capitalist's Companion JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE FINANCIAL MARKETS 175 Fifth Avenue Suite 2503 New York, N.Y...
...Che Guevara is the poster boy of the Revolution, his chiseled face on display in shops and homes and on T-shirts...
...I saw a flash of silver down the block and watched the cop slap a pair of handcuffs onto Ramon...
...Delinquents harbor and I asked if the police ever bothered him for speaking to foreigners...
...Shopping The local chief of the bus station bypassed the ten-day waiting list and gave me a ticket for my next destination, Trinidad...
...1-800-966-6567 24 hours a day...
...The fall is "imminent," the regime is "tottering...
...And we'll tell you some things you're not likely to hear from your broker...
...His father had gone to work in East Germany and now was refusing to come home...
...The situation here is comparable only to North Korea...
...they He took out a faded picture from the wallet...
...Ceausescu or Pinochet never had a system of vigilance on every block like this government...
...Not much," he replied, and at that instant we were seized from behind and whipped around...
...The hotel had 160 rooms, of which fewer than ten were occupied...
...He met me in the front room, beneath a large picture of himself shaking hands with Ted Kennedy...
...A conservative friend tells me Castro will soon end his days a Caribbean Ceausescu, hanging from a Havana lamppost...
...I handed over my passport and watched Ramon being interrogated less politely a block away...
...If he was still alive, none of this would be happening...
...They know the economy from the ground up, and they know what moves markets...
...Papers...
...it is a rare chance to see the fomenting of a revolution...
...Having no practice at this, I fumbled and dropped the little wad on the table...
...He was subsisting on a government check for 50 pesos a month, about $2...
...the Miami Herald reports that some exiles have sold their houses in preparation for the trip home...
...We're going to meet some foreign boys...
...It is a thrilling way to ride, but not one I hope to repeat soon...
...I've been up at Varadero...
...the Miami Herald reports that some exiles have sold their houses in preparation for the trip home...
...The Companion's analysts aren't converted magazine writers...
...The Great Bearded One is constantly on television, but no one mentions his name...
...I was more terrified now of buying the wrong thing, wasting the precious dollars of one of the women...
...The shortages had hit her hard—wages from the hotel were low, and the child tore up clothing faster than her ration supplied it...
...He has reason to be nervous, but not about the United States...
...A conservative friend tells me Castro will soon end his days a Caribbean Ceausescu, hanging from a Havana lamppost...
...In place of buses with young men hanging from the windows there was the noisy clip-clop of horses pulling taxi carts...
...Was his father safe...
...He was a good man...
...He wanted to change money," the cop repeated...
...In the last battle of the Cold War, the middle is a dangerous place to be...
...It was Che Guevara...
...A black bootprint was visible beside the crack, testimony to the strength of the man who tried to break it down...
...There are regular blackouts in the afternoons, when the power stations simply run out of oil, and at night the streets are as dark and quiet as a country village, lit only by the blue glow of an occasional television set...
...Mountains of sugar are piling up on Cuba's docks...
...7 days a week ) I'd like a 5-issue trial for $19...
...She took fourteen shirts, six pairs of shoes, underwear, several pairs of bluejeans, lipstick, candy, Spanish olives, hand cream, ballpoint pens, and then paid with five crisp $50 bills...
...A few weeks after returning home I received a note without the lyric: "To my shame, I cannot send you my song in this letter for reasons of personal safety...
...A gentle-looking young man apologized for disturbing me, but squeezed through the door as quickly as possible...
...I am not an optimist...
...Payment enclosed...
...Trinidad, one of the first Spanish settlements in Cuba, was filled with elegant old houses and cobblestone streets...
...Despite the line, the little shop was only half full—the door was kept locked to prevent customers from walking in—and the iced tea was made by an old man with the slow ceremony of a priest celebrating Mass...
...There are no taxis left, except for special tourist taxis accepting only dollars...
...Up to 600 people demonstrated outside his house, chanting, taunting, hurling rocks and bottles, beating on the walls and smashing windows...
...As soon as he rounded a corner, I dashed back to the tea shop...
...Every issue of The Capitalist's Companion comes with the following guarantee: no jargon, no platitudes, and no using "impact" as a verb...
...The grandfather of all the dead heroes is Jose Marti, the liberator of 1895...
...But we'll always be skeptical...
...Where the Soviets once supplied 13 million metric tons of oil a year, the Patrick Symmes is a writer living in McLean, Virginia, 18 The American Spectator July 1992 Fidel's World Two weeks on an abandoned island...
...Many of these youths are delinquents, dangerous criminals...
...I promised, and Pedro sat back on the bench...
...Half the audience sat frozen, trying to catch the words, while the other half exploded in delight and beThe American Spectator July 1992 21 gan clapping and singing along, particularly at the chorus: Only tourist stores and tourist taxis—I wish I could get a bus ticket...
...Fidel is the Papa of all Cubans...
...He was proud of his connections—he vowed he could get me reservations at Fidel Castro's favorite restaurant, or a gram of cocaine, or enough Jamaican "Maria" to blow my mind, even a beautiful chica for the evening...
...TAS7 ( ) I'd like a year (17 issues) for $120...
...They had a dialogue in Nicaragua," he says...
...10010 The American Spectator July 1992 23...
...Chief gave me the best room in the house, with a balcony overlooking the plaza...
...Castro is cornered, and will probably fight...
...He has constructed a kind of tourist apartheid, whereby Italians, Germans, and Canadians arrive by the planeload to sunbathe, drink rum, and dance in conga lines, yet never meet an ordinary Cuban...
...The room cost 12 pesos a night, or less than a dollar with my black-market currency, and when I paid the beautiful girl at the desk I slipped her a bar of soap under my passport...
...It was a tight roll of dollar bills...
...People were passing by, pretending not to look...
...I battled my way on board but didn't get a seat, and bounced for two hours along the coast, passing by half-cut canefields on one side and ocean breakers on the other...
...Pedro was labeled an anti-social delinquent and a gusano, and his application to join his father in Germany was rejected...
...Diario Latino claims that Fidel and his brother Raul have purchased a tiny island in the Indian Ocean as a getaway spot for their exile...
...That sure is a nice hotel we've built there...
...When I opened the menu a scrap of paper dropped out: 1 pants, size 16 2 tennis shoes, 38 or 39 Rosa winked again...
...Her offense was having written a letter to Fidel Castro: Dear Mr...
...I'm the last Russian," he said weepily...
...He is throwing an election in October for the national assembly, a powerless body, but such a cosmetic change may release some pressure on theregime from sympathetic foreign governments...
...I grinned loopily and asked again for directions to the museum...
...He was dying to speak Russian and find out what was happening in Moscow...
...there are few Communist friends left to buy it...
...Soap," she said reverently, as if I had handed her a large emerald...
...How many Cuban civilians have you seen wearing military boots recently...
...There wasn't any water—hot or cold—but it was a nice view...
...What kind of pants did they want, what color shoes, what amount should I spend on which...
...If Sanchez has dubious friends, he certainly has excellent enemies...
...Or from the newsweeklies...
...They come from the research departments and trading floors of Wall Street...
...over and over while marching around the stage and menacing the audience...
...The emcee hobbled out on a broken leg to introduce the show, and the first act came out, four actors dressed all in black...
...He has become a diligent player in the drug war, trumpeting every smuggler captured in Cuban waters and firing off polite telexes to the U.S...
...The current shortages seem almost tolerable when viewed in light of the Zero Option...
...His name was Ramon...
...He brought out his wallet and showed me some little pictures of saints that he carried there...
...They kept that up for a few minutes, and then suddenly left to polite applause and great reloaded down with bags of clothing, and the women were delighted...
...He was 21 and had just finished his military service...
...Rosa seemed about to faint...
...That is Castro's term for people like Pedro, a 29-year-old who was sitting on a bench all morning...
...When he struck the first chords and began to sing, the audience sat up...
...It is a big university town, and there seemed to be something wrong with the place...
...When I ask about the future, Sanchez frowns and plays with the tape recorder...
...he gushed...
...Fifteen years, we can last fifteen years like this," and he threw his head back and laughed some more...
...From six miles away I could see that the huge construction cranes surrounding it were stilled...
...He couldn't tell if it was worse here or there, and he was deeply depressed...
...As before, Cubans enter only as servants to make the beds or as prostitutes to lie in them...
...he would never survive the seventies...
...the crowds were thick and noisy, and twice I saw arguments that turned too easily into fistfights...
...It was Cuban performance art...
...They squirreled away their sneakers and shirts where the Chief wouldn't see them, and giggled all afternoon...
Vol. 25 • July 1992 • No. 7
