If Cuba’s long-term problems stem from slavery, their short-term problems are a direct product of the Special Period. I’ve talked about the Special Period before, but it’s impossible to overstate the effect of the Special Period on Cuba. It was a ten-year-long economic recession that resulted in the almost-complete breakdown of Cuba’s infrastructure, and though Fidel formally announced the end of the Special Period in 2000, the country has really only begun to recover.
It was a time of terrific hardship. There were rolling power outages that sometimes left people without electricity for days. Sewage treatment and disposal methods broke down, and clean water was hard to come by. Food was strictly rationed, and the average Cuban lost twenty pounds.
It’s impossible to overstate the effect that the Special Period had on Cuba.
On the corner of 17th and G, in Vedado, there’s a small, wooden food stand. It’s in the residential part of the neighborhood; before the Revolution, the area was second in luxury only to Miramar, which lies a little to the west. Now, though, the area has the same air of decay that the rest of the country does. The houses are slouching, crumbling things, their paint cracking and flaking in the humid air. The streets are rutted and strewn with potholes. And the mighty banyan trees have gone to work on the sidewalks, their roots upending the concrete slabs.
The stand is a popular one, and throughout the day people drift by to drink a cafecito and talk with their neighbors. I went there often; my caffeine addiction had led me to map out similar stands in the neighborhood, but this one was always my favorite. One day, though, I ordered a juice instead.
The woman in the stand handed me the glass, and I noticed that it was an odd shape – skinny and tall. I looked closely and saw that it was imprinted with a Corona label, cut off a bit from the top. I tapped the glass and asked the woman where she got it.
“People made them,” she said. “During the Special Period.”
I thought of asking her more, but there were other customers in line, and I moved aside. A few weeks later, though, I was in my Arts and Culture of Cuba class, and Helmo came in with a large crate. Helmo is the head of the Ludwig Foundation, and a respected member of the Cuban art world; he’s also openly gay, which is no easy thing to be in Cuba. He has lived a difficult life, but an incredibly interesting one for all that, and when he lectured, everybody listened.
He set the crate down on the table and began to take all manner of recycled objects out. More beer-bottle-glasses, yes, like the one I had seen at the stand, but also a wind chime made from cut-up soda cans, a candle holder made from a bent toothpaste tube, a garden gnome with a tin-can for a head. When he finished the table was full, and it was an extraordinary collection: everything thoroughly recycled, but still recognizable for what it once was.
He held up a home-made wine glass. “Why,” he said, “do you think someone would make this?”
We shrugged, but he pressed on. “There was no wine during the Special Period,” he said. “But still, someone made this, and then someone else bought it, even though they could not use it. Why?”
He put the wine glass back down on the table. “Do you know how we got through the Special Period?” he said. “It was because we never lost our dignity.” He leaned toward us, his voice quiet but full of emotion. “We may never have had any wine to drink,” he said. “But we never stopped believing that we deserved the wine.”
A few weeks later I was at the Cementerio de Cristobal Colon. The Cementerio is a truly huge cemetery in the middle of Havana – it has an area of a couple square miles, and some 800,000 graves in it. I was standing somewhat in the middle of the cemetery, so graves stretched almost as far as I could see in each direction. The landscape of tombstones was interrupted only occasionally by a larger crypt, carved and ornamental, that housed somebody who had been a little more rich than the average.
Space is at a premium in the cemetery, though, so the bodies buried there now are in temporary storage more than anything: after three years, the bodies are dug up and cremated. On the day that I was there, the unenviable task of digging up the bodies fell to three middle-aged men in overalls. They seemed pretty used to it, though – they joked and laughed as they transferred the remains (bones, hair, a few scraps of clothing) into a large wheelbarrow.
Later, when the grisly work was finished, the burials started. At about one, the first funeral procession started to make its way slowly through the cemetery.
There were a dozen or so people. The pall-bearers, of course. A young woman in a black dress, not much more than a girl, really. In front of her were two middle-aged couples, arms linked. And leading the procession was an old man with white hair and a slow, shuffling gait. In his arms he was cradling a picture of an old woman and, from the way his eyes were leaking, I think it was his wife.
The procession stopped in front of one of the empty holes. The old man stood very still as the pall-bearers brought the coffin around. His shoulders were straight. He was wearing a suit, a nice one, and it fit him well; when I looked closer, though, I saw that it was dusty and threadbare. The jacket was missing a button. The old man reached down and straightened it, tugging at the bottom and raising his chin.
They never stopped believing they deserved the wine.