Excerpts

"By the Left" in Pinar del Rio

My husband Phil is a man who follows the rules, even the ones he might not agree with, so when he decided to visit Cuba while I was there, he wouldn’t consider just hopping a plane in Toronto and visiting illegally, as over a hundred thousand United States citizens do each year. Instead, he enrolled in an educational tour sponsored by Global Exchange that promised to teach him about solar energy developments on the island. It was a perfect match for his interests as a high school physics teacher, and the dates fortuitously coincided with his spring vacation. Our plan was for him to join me during the last week of my March stay. I would travel with his group to Pinar del Rio where they would attend a solar energy conference while I would contrive an itinerary in the health arena.

Jeanne in pursuit of the Acuaticos in Pinar del Rio

As you look at a map of Cuba, Pinar del Rio is on the left, about two hundred kilometers southwest of Havana. Cigar aficionados know it is as the capital of the province that produces the finest tobacco in the world. An ornate print on a cigar-box seal that I purchased in Old Havana depicts the verdant leafy fields, red dirt, and guajiros in straw hats bending over the aromatic plants.

Walking in a town of only a hundred and twenty-five thousand and inhaling country air felt delightful after the soot of Havana. The center of Pinar was a web of confusing, narrow streets that dated back to the 1600s, lined with dozens of one-story cottages strung together like railroad cars. Lean horses pulled wagons of passengers squeezed together on wooden benches. Bike taxis flitted by, pedaled by young boys calling out for fares. Here was a makeshift beauty station where you could sit in the street and have your nails painted. Over there was a food stand where busy cooks hawked tomato and cheese pizzas.

Our accommodations the night before had shared none of the appeal of the streets. In a windowless room at a Russian-built hotel we had been repeatedly roused by salsa music booming from the poolside disco. We woke up cranky, and when Phil left to join his group, I set out to find more tranquil accommodations. Although the room was included in his tour package, I had been required to pay an extra twenty dollars a day to stay with him. For that price, I thought, we could both stay in a more pleasant casa particular.

I turned down a narrow street adjacent to the hotel that led into a quiet neighborhood. Pausing at a Círculo de Niños, a state day care center, I watched children playing in a fenced-in yard. Two boys took turns playing doctor. One jumped onto an imaginary sick bed and lay down. The other listened to his playmate’s heart with a plastic stethoscope. Further on, a chorus of twittering and chirps coming from a corner house caught my attention. A man in a ragged T-shirt sat on a wooden chair in the open doorway.

“¿Suyos?” I inquired, gesturing in the direction of the bird sounds.

“Sí,” he responded with obvious pride. “¿Quiere verlos?” Would you like to see them?
I detoured from my self-appointed task to follow him through the entryway to a room filled with cages, floor to ceiling, birds in every one. He pushed seeds into one of the cages with his fingers. Most of his birds were native to Cuba, although several he had purchased from abroad.

“Son muy bonitos,” I offered, wishing that my Spanish could sustain a more nuanced conversation about birds. Before parting, I asked if he knew where I might find a room for rent. He pointed to a nearby casa particular where macramé planters hanging under the eaves next to a stained-glass window brought bell bottoms and flower children to mind. On the wooden door was the triangular sticker that marked this as a home licensed to rent rooms.

A knock brought the señora to the door, a stout woman with silvery auburn hair. She introduced herself as Cheche and said that for twenty dollars a night we could have a private room and bath.

We moved in later that day. Cheche chatted readily and was quick to serve us icy fruit concoctions each time we returned from outside wilted by the heat. After several getting-to-know-you talks about our families and travel, I mentioned my interest in health care and the effects of the embargo. Over lemonade she responded to my curiosity with her story.

For some time, Cheche had suffered from chronic pain in her shoulders and back and shooting pains down her legs. Recently she had traveled to Havana for a diagnostic workup at a top orthopedic hospital. After a detailed examination and tests, the doctor told her that she had bursitis in her shoulders and compressed vertebrae that were causing nerve impingement and the pains in her back and legs. He prescribed vitamins, an anti-inflammatory called Indocin, a muscle relaxant called meprobamate, and a special corset to support her spine. “When I arrived at the pharmacy, there were no vitamins. There was no Indocin. There was no meprobamate. And I was told there wasn't any material in the country to make the corset!” She threw her hands in the air, exasperated. “I had all the expenses of the trip to Havana and I still have to live with pain!”

Whomever and wherever I asked, Cubans described their medical system in similar terms. It was comprehensive and available to all, and their doctors were compassionate and well-trained. But when people spoke of medicines, their enthusiasm evaporated, and they lamented serious shortages and erratic availability of what they and their family members needed.

I had heard of an enclave of families in the province of Pinar del Rio for whom such shortages presented no problem; they placed no value in medicines, instead relying solely on the healing power of water. These acuáticos were the remnants of a cult that began in the 1930s around the purported powers of a curandera named Antoñica Izquerdo who claimed to have cured her lame son with her ministrations and water from the local springs. His recovery and her abilities as a healer received generous attention from the newspapers of the day, and pilgrims from all over Cuba and abroad converged to confer with Antoñica and sample the waters. Sadly, her career came to an abrupt end when she was taken to a lunatic asylum in Havana. Her legacy was a group of families still devoted to water cures and living in the hills of the Viñales Valley, less than an hour's drive from Pinar del Rio.

Cheche’s friend Silvio, a jovial fellow with a paunch and a butch haircut who hung around the house and shared meals, was informed of my interest and offered to take me to meet them. We discussed plans. For twenty dollars he would drive me to a farm where I would meet his friend Orlando who would guide me on horseback into the hills where the acuáticos lived. The trip would consume the day and I would be able to meet and visit with several families.

The evening before our trip, my thoughts were a mix of excited anticipation and memories of my youthful days in the Peace Corps. On a volcanic island in Lake Nicaragua I had commuted to remote villages on horseback to visit women and children in grass houses and talk with them about their health and nutrition. Although my Spanish had been rudimentary and my behavior must have appeared odd in ways I couldn't even imagine, the campesino families had embraced me. Returning home at sunset, I would canter along the beach, passing men pulling in their fishing lines and women folding their laundry bleached and dried by the afternoon sun. Now, thirty years later, my dreams were infused with images of Nicaraguan mothers cradling babies, coffee toasting in clay pots, and laughter shared across boundaries of language. My middle-aged persona dissolved during the night and by morning, waiting for my guide, I imagined myself to be young Margaret Mead on horseback.

Silvio pulled up in a shiny green Lada, relaxed and talkative. Old cars being a perennial topic of conversation, I asked him about his. He beamed, pleased to be asked. Against all odds, his Lada had been propelled over four hundred thousand miles on four successive engines, only lately serving as a word-of-mouth taxi. We wound our way out of town and through low hills and partially cultivated farmland where stands of palm trees punctuated stretches of scrub vegetation. A half-hour passed. As we approached our destination, green protrusions, shaped like the rounded ends of French bread, jutted skyward from the flat valley floor. These were mogotes, the distinctive karst formations for which the region was known, first cousins of the mountains depicted in paintings of southern China.

We pulled up in front of a small homestead nestled between a huge mogote and a pond. An A-frame tobacco barn covered with grey palm fronds was reflected in the placid waters. A skinny young man with a thin brown mustache emerged from the farmhouse and greeted us, casually handing Silvio an armload of yucca “para tu familia.” It was Orlando, my guide. He sketched with his hand the route we would take around the mountain behind us and beyond. His services and the use of the horse would cost twenty dollars.

Silvio departed leaving me in his friend’s care. He would retrieve me at the end of the day. I looked at my horse, lean as Orlando, and felt an all too familiar surge of wishing that I were slim. He led the horse to a low spot next to a bench. As I mounted, I could feel Orlando on the other side, exerting his full weight of his fragile frame to keep the saddle in place.
It had been several years since I had straddled a horse but my feet found the stirrups like old friends. I had taken lessons as a child, but my riding had always been marked more by enthusiasm than skill, and though I’d only been thrown once, several close calls had taught me the value of caution. All the same, I could barely contain the urge to get moving. I was ready to loosen the reins.

Orlando mounted his horse, and with a kick we were off. He was a taciturn fellow and rode ahead, leaving me to enjoy the illusion of solitude as we trotted across farmlands, splashed through streams, and climbed the rugged trails into sandstone hills.

The view from a horse exceeds that of the best sports utility vehicle—three hundred sixty degrees and unencumbered by roof or glass, with no distraction from engine noises or beeping horns. Since horses watch the ground to assure their footing, riders are free to take in the broader and more distant views. From mfy saddle, there was much to survey. It was hot but the air was dry and the sky clear, with stunning views wherever I directed my gaze.
We passed oxen pairs pulling creaky wooden plows that cut through dirt the color of rust. Guajiros shouted melodic commands that the animals but not I could understand. Their voices echoed across the fields as blue and brown butterflies blinked by. Pigs wallowed and squealed in a muddy stream next to a young boy fishing. He held up his silvery catch for us to see. Huge kapok trees spread their branches like fingers against the mogotes and the blue sky. A calf slept luxuriously under a stand of bamboo. Guinea hens and chickens peeped and scurried away as the hooves of our horses disturbed the brush. Each turn in the trail brought new views of the mogotes, mysteriously draped with thick green vegetation and spotted with cave openings and stalactites. In the brilliant sun, the shadows cast by the hills contrasted with the phosphorescent green of rice paddies and tobacco fields.

I slowed to a walk, breathless with the beauty of Cuba, and turned in my saddle, hungry to absorb every speck. From here, international politics felt as remote as the winter snows of Ohio. There were no boundaries of politics or nation, only the ephemeral magnificence of Earth. I was suffused with a sense of the privilege of my life and knew in that moment that whatever purported agenda I thought had drawn me to Cuba was self-deception, cover for more fundamental needs. The freedom to explore and have an adventure alone and of my own choosing, the opportunity to be encircled by the splendor of the Cuban countryside as in the arms of God: these were the gifts I had come searching for.

Before ascending the final stretch to the edge of the community of acuáticos, Orlando gestured for me to wait. An inspector frequented the area, and he needed to go on alone to make sure the inspector was not around. Riding on these trails was forbidden, he explained, because they could be treacherous to the horses. Orlando gave his mount a swift kick and I watched his magenta cap bob toward the horizon. My horse cooled in the shade while I rested. I thought his explanation a bit odd and wondered what would happen if we were caught trespassing.

An hour passed before I heard the clopping of Orlando’s horse galloping down the trail toward me. Orlando waved.“¡Adelante!” he called. Coast clear.

The final approach was rocky and steep. The sun was high. Green and fertile fields spread below us, shadowed by mogotes and tobacco barns the color of cigars. We arrived at a modest wooden home, still under construction and situated to take advantage of the view. Orlando called and a woman in a black T-shirt emerged and gestured for us to dismount. She was young and nondescript, probably in her twenties. We followed her into the sparsely furnished house where we sat on slatted wooden chairs on a bare slab floor. She was quiet and passive, neither interested in talking nor interesting to talk with.

“Do you use medicines?” I asked.

“No, just water.”

“Special water?”

“No, just water.”

“Any water?” I pushed.

“Yes. Any water. The water in the faucet will do.”

“Are you aware of shortages of medicine in Cuba?”

“No,” she replied, looking bored. She shifted her weight back in her rocking chair. Not even my best attempts to engage her drew out more than a monosyllabic response. I wished I had constructed a formal interview, something to move us from the pedestrian to the substantive. Margaret Mead would have elicited richer responses but I could not. After ten minutes or so, I stopped trying. The woman rose and briefly disappeared into another room. When she returned, she handed me a halved green fruit that I didn’t recognize and a cup of rice wine, then sat back down and lapsed into talking with Orlando. I ate the mushy fruit in silence, feeling disappointed both in her and in myself—I couldn’t tell the difference. This wasn’t what I had hoped for.

My hands were sticky with the sugary juice. I interrupted her conversation with Orlando to ask if I could wash my hands. She directed me to an outside spigot where I scrubbed and splashed my face with the water. Just in case the acuáticos were right, I took a few sips.
Wet.

Orlando said it was time to leave. I offered the woman a dollar in recognition of her obvious need and the business-like manner in which she had proffered hospitality. She matter-of-factly accepted it as if this happened every day, and I realized that maybe this cross-cultural encounter did occur in this home every day. Without thinking, I had unwittingly assumed the role of Tourist, making a pilgrimage to find the elusive exotic and willing to pay my way with American dollars. She played her part too, assuming the role of Other for a tip that would help her buy food.

I was in the midst of such musings when Orlando announced that it was too late to go higher into the hills. We had been delayed too long by the need to avoid the inspector and besides, he explained, a meal was being prepared for me back in the valley. I felt another wave of disappointment. This very ordinary woman would be the only acuático I would meet.

Having no choice, I remounted for the descent. It wasn’t long before the grey clouds of unmet expectation were cleared by the sensual pleasure of being on horseback again—the pungent equine scent and the familiar squeaks, swooshes and clops of jeans meeting leather meeting horse meeting ground.

We emerged from the hills into a scattering of farms. At a white clapboard house with a thatched roof, we dismounted and Orlando introduced me to a slender young woman named Rosa and her 11-year-old daughter Lucita, then left, reminding me that Silvio would come for me later. Rosa invited me inside. Lucita followed closely, looking shyly at me with deep-set eyes just like her mother’s, the color of dark chocolate and the shape of almonds. Their home was pristine; the wood, inside and out, freshly painted the color of milk.

Rosa smiled and I noticed that she was gap-toothed. Unlike her daughter, she had dark shadows under her eyes and carried herself with a weariness not entirely hidden by her hospitality. She invited me to sit at a table made festive with a flowered tablecloth, and served me fried malanga chips, boiled potatoes, a potage of black beans, rice, a fricassee made with a chicken she had raised, and sweet coffee. From where I sat, an open window framed two emerald mogotes jutting at right angles out of chartreuse fields. Chickens scurried by, and a pig briefly entered the doorway, oinked, and charged out again.

As Rosa cleared the table, I asked her what I owed her for the meal. “Lo que quiera,” she replied, whatever you want. She had been hired to feed me by the man who owned the horses. She would give him whatever I paid, and he would keep “lo que quiera”—whatever he wanted—and let her keep the change. I put a five dollar bill on the table and asked her what she would use her portion for.

“Zapatos,” she said, showing me the shredded black sneakers on her feet, “y jabón.” Good soap, the kind you can only buy with dollars. Usually she had no choice but to do her laundry with the soap made from beef tallow and lye that she purchased in pesos for the equivalent of forty cents. She left the room briefly and returned with a large white cube which she placed on the table beside me.

“This soap is very, very harsh,” she explained, her voice heavy with resignation. She grasped the waxy block in her hand. “When I don’t have dollars to buy good soap, I have to choose between wearing dirty clothes or washing them, knowing the soap will open up tiny holes in the fabric, and this peso soap is too strong for bathing so sometimes I don’t.” She held out her hands. Her fingernails were dirty from the ash of her wood-burning stove and edged with webs of slivery cuts from doing the family laundry.

We continued to talk. She said that her home was without electricity even though a state tourist facility a half mile away was supplied. The school that her children attended had a solar panel which provided enough energy for one light, one television, and one computer for the schoolchildren.

Rosa looked at her daughter, lovingly. “I want her to become a teacher or a doctor, to have a better life than mine.” She paused. “The people in your country struggle and work hard and you get this,” she said, pointing to the bill I had left on the table. “We just struggle and work hard.” I sensed no anger in her words. She was just stating what was.

She sat down and pulled her daughter into her lap. Lucita, content in her mother’s embrace, listened as we talked on. Rosa had never been to Havana; the largest city she had visited was Pinar del Rio where she had given birth to her four children in the hospital. Her husband worked the land and supplied much of the food for the household. He only occasionally earned cash, almost always in pesos. Life was difficult for them but she was proud of how her family shared and how Cubans helped one another.

It was time to leave. I thought about how hard life was for Rosa’s family without regular access to either tourist dollars or relatives in the States and how easy my life was, with money, time for discretionary travel, and nothing approaching soap worries. When she wasn't looking, I tucked an extra two dollars under the tablecloth for her to discover later. I took pictures of Rosa and Lucita with their arms around each other. As Rosa and I parted, we kissed each other on both cheeks. “You have a house in Cuba. Come back. I feed you. You pay nothing.”

I climbed into Silvio’s taxi in slow motion: my legs were horse-weary. The seat felt luxurious after bumping along in the saddle and sitting on wooden chairs. I nestled in, spent. In contrast, Silvio appeared as fresh and energetic as when he had picked me up in the morning. As we made our way back to Pinar del Rio, I asked him to explain the financial and legal logistics of our day’s excursion.

Silvio said he was driving me around illegally and was regularly fined by the policía for consorting with tourists. “But,” he explained, “the greater the risk, the better the economics.” Paying occasional fines, equivalent to what I paid him for the day, was routine. The man who rented his horses did so illegally since only the state was permitted to do so. Orlando had been paid illegally by the horse owner since it was illegal for any one person to hire another. According to Silvio, if caught, both the guide and the owner would have been fined and the horses confiscated. No wonder Orlando was worried about being seen by an inspector; his claim that horses were forbidden was a decoy for his real concern.

“Did you get a commission for bringing them my business?” I asked.

“No,” he responded, “but Orlando gave me a bag of yucca because we are friends.”

There was more. Rosa’s lunch was an illegal transaction since she was hired by the horse owner. Silvio assured me—although I wasn’t convinced—that these activities put Cubans at risk but not the foreigners whom they were assisting. Everything, he said, had been done illegally, por la izquierda. To use the expression “by the left” to refer to clandestine and forbidden activities struck me as perversely funny in a country already leaning so far left as to topple over.

I asked Silvio if he ever bribed the police officers. No, he said, that might happen in Havana, but in Pinar it would only get you into more trouble. As we spoke, he saw a police car stopped by the side of the road ahead of us. “No se preocupe,” he said. Don’t worry. With eyes glued to the road ahead, we sped by, and the policía became a mere speck in the rearview mirror.

Phil arrived back at Cheche’s about the same time I did. Quiet by nature, he was more talkative than usual about the day he had spent with his group. He had toured the school attended by Rosa’s children and seen state-of-the-art solar panels providing energy for basic school equipment—a television, a computer, and lights. We had each enjoyed our separate excursions, his within the guidelines of the tour group, mine in collusion with Silvio the rule bender. Memories of the day reverberated inside me: the thrill of riding horseback among the mogotes, the lovely openness of Rosa and her family, a myriad of transcendent moments amidst a landscape of unforgettable splendor. Clearly, life outside the rules—por la izquierda—had its rewards.

The next morning, as Cheche served us coffee, eggs, and fresh pineapple, she said there was something she needed to discuss with us. She looked worried. The evening before, she had overheard the tail end of my discussion with Silvio about the financial and legal aspects of our excursion. She was concerned about what might come up in further conversation. Silvio would be stopping by later, she said, her voice low, and—just in case he asked—could we tell him that we were only paying her ten dollars a night instead of twenty and that we had arrived on Tuesday instead of Monday? Yes, he was a friend, she emphasized, but he was also the inspector for her rental and what she had to pay him depended on her income. Cheche cooked the books.