Friends in Cuba

 

                                                                                      

                                                                             

On the steps of the capitolio, Cuba's National Palace

        Juneteenth? President Joe Biden made it a national holiday in 2021. I didn’t think many Americans knew about Juneteenth. I taught a community college course in ethnic literature before I retired in 2016, and I knew nothing about it. Had it been another American secret?

     Lincoln abolished slavery in 1863, when he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but slavery continued. Even after the Civil War, two years later, in 1865, Americans continued the heinous practice of owning other human beings. Imagine, northern armies riding around the South telling slaves they were free. After 200 years of bondage, where did they go? What did they do? What did they even think? You’d think newspapers, telegrams, and messengers could have announced it sooner than men riding around on horseback, or just, maybe, nobody was in a hurry to really end the slave trade in the U.S. Free labor! That’s a big deal in a capitalist country.

     Way out west, Anglo Texans held on to their slaves, even after suffering a massacre at the Alamo in 1836, a battle with Mexico's forces, that was as much about legalizing slavery in the Lone Star Republic as it was about independence, which Texas received in 1848, with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Yet, it still wasn't until months after Congress outlawed slavery with authorization of the 13^th Amendment, Texas, probably, and this is just an educated guess, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, too, had to set their slaves free, on June 19th, two years after Lincoln had outlawed slavery.

     On June 19^th, 1865, the U.S. Army rode into Texas to enforce the law: “No more slavery anywhere in the country. The end of free labor,” but, over the years, where were the celebrations, the music, the fireworks? 

     In Europe, the European Union and NATO celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Day. In the U.S., when the end of slavery rolls around, whether 1863 or 1865... crickets. Here, today, some politicians are trying to get teachers to stop teaching slavery or anything too sensitive, like Jim Crow, Indians on reservations, the U.S. invading Mexico, killing, pillaging, and taking the Southwest by force, or incarcerating Japanese in detention camps, afraid of offending children. 

     So, I thought, as I prepared to write today’s La Bloga post, how does this day, Juneteenth, affect me, or any Americans in 2024? We should be proud, a time to celebrate. The U.S. did the right thing. African Americans hold their own celebrations, usually small community affairs but nothing on a national or state level, as if the holiday is an embarrassment rather than s source of pride.

     With me, I guess, it’s about people, friends I’ve made over the years, of all ethnicities, just people, "everyday people," as Sly Stone sings, friends and neighbors, who share a common history, and a human bond, something beautiful, even if it is, sometimes, uncomfortable. All this reminds me of a trip I wrote about recently in La Bloga, an eye-opener of a trip, in so many ways, not just visiting a foreign country, but getting a sense of our history, making new friends, of all colors and creeds.

     It was August 2001. They told us our trip was the first commercial flight from Los Angeles to Havana since 1961, history-making. Cuba, Hispanola, the first populated island the Spaniards visited in the Americas, way back in the 1500s, and the beginning of the slave trade, first with the Taino Indians then with Africans, today, proud Cubans. 

     Tom, who sat next to me, was co-owner of an African American bookstore in Los Angeles. He said, “Man, I wish I could speak Spanish. I took classes in school but never learned anything.” He said it more to himself than to me. I gave him a few tips, like how to say, “Thank you,” “Hello,” and order coffee, that kind of thing.

      My friend, Benny Blaydes, a beloved counselor among students, where I taught at Santa Monica College, invited me to join him and his friends, all African Americans from Los Angeles, teachers, counselors, and a librarian. I was the sole Mexican. They said, “An honorary soul brother,” and the only one in our group who could speak Spanish.

     As educators traveling to Cuba, we promised the U.S. Treasury Department, which, for some reason, supervised travel to Cuba, to attend all functions Cuba Travel Service placed on our itinerary.

     Once in Havana, settled into our modern hotel, we received an orientation on Cuban culture, mostly question-and-answers, conducted by a young female professor from the University of Havana. After, the professor turned us over to a tour guide who took us through the city and pointed out important sites, walking us through Havana Vieja and ending up at the Museum of the Revolution, where we learned something about Cuba's history, its people, and the ingenious ways the U.S. government tried getting rid of Fidel Castro over the years, even an exploding cigar. The tour guide offered, "Yes, we are poor. The embargo has hurt us, so we live in a state of siege, a state of war, always prepared for an invasion."

     We understood what he meant when we noticed the empty shelves in many stores. Tom and I buddied up. We decided to explore the city together. We didn’t know if we should wait for an official escort or armed guards. We’d been so brainwashed by our media about life on the island. The tour guide told us we were free to roam. I asked, “Any place?” He answered, as if I was joking, “Of course.”

     So, we did, searching each neighborhood, surprised by new ways of seeing Cuba, kids playing with home-made toys, like we did back in the 1950s, making skateboards out of 2x4’s and old skates. Kids playing marbles. Young girls in colorful, frilly dresses, going to some celebration, maybe a birthday party. Men singing and playing guitars on park benches. Others arguing, in groups, debating something or other. Still, it wasn't just the pounding heat but the grinding poverty, the dust, and the decaying buildings that stifled the soul. Yet, the people persisted.

     The two of us, Tom and I, Americans, one black and one Mexican, adjusting, little by little, to the culture shock, especially the big one, the one Cuba-watchers in the states don’t mention, so many African Cubans in Havana, of all shades. For Tom, Cuba was disconcerting, a world of Spanish-speaking Africans.

     I told Tom it reminded me of 1966, when I arrived in Vietnam, a group of Puerto Rican soldiers was walking past, one, an Afro-Rican, said something to his friends in Spanish. A white soldier standing next to me, with a heavy Southern accent, murmured, “I’ll be got-damned, a Spanish-speaking….” You can fill in the blank. Was our America that segregated? Tom said, “Believe it or not. That’s how I feel, sort of out of place.”

     "Weird, man," I said, listening to the sounds of Spanish, and the laughter, Latino laughter, something I recognized. "I feel right at home."

     On the flight over, Tom and I had talked, like old friends, wondering about Cuba, a mystery to Americans, many who thought they knew more about the place than they really did, just like with Vietnam, so many fabricated stories leading to so many unnecessary deaths. In the states, we’d been fed fantastic news stories, Cubans slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Cubans during and after the revolution. Oh, I'm sure it had been ugly, Cuba's retribution on the dictator and his followers, it's lack of tolerance for those loyal to the government who questioned its new socialist policies.

     However, a library search showed Cuba’s executions after the war, though tragic, much less than say, executions in U.S. backed dictatorships, like Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and other revolutions around the world. Though, some might argue, so secretive are governments, no one can know the true numbers.

    Then there was the Elian Gonzalez affair. Who knew what to believe? Was Elian saved from communism by his mother who brought him to the U.S.? Or had Elian been kidnapped from his father who claimed to know nothing of the mother's actions? He wanted Elian back, or was he being manipulated by the government? It didn’t help Elian, when photos emerged in Miami newspaper covers, of him decked out with new flashy gym clothes and gold chains around his neck. 

     On the other side, in Cuba, we heard, Elian was back on the island, happily studying in a private school, surrounded by friends, his father working at his job as a service-worker, in Cuba a better job than even doctors and lawyers. Service workers, we were told, earned tips. What to believe? What was real? What was propaganda?

     Tom knew I taught ethnic and Chicano literature. On the flight over, he wanted to know what I thought about Cuba, like what we’d find, once we arrived, the kind of people we’d meet? I said I thought it would be like Belize, Guatemala, or Venezuela, a mix of Euro-Hispanos, mestizos, mulattos, and Africans.

     Once on the ground, closer than a bird’s eye view, we saw so many more Afro-Cubans than Hispano-Cubans. Tom wondered if Castro had led a racial rebellion rather than a socio-political rebellion. Or did he, like so many other leaders, use Hispano-Africans to help win his cause? 

     Tom saw it as something of a homecoming, so many Africans in one city, except, of course, for the Latino culture, the language, food, music, religion, and just about everything else, which was “Latinized.” We discussed how strange it all was, thinking of Havana as not even a Watts, more like a “black” East L.A in the Caribbean.

     We stopped for mojitoas at different bars along the way, musicians, the Afro-influence clear in the music, welcoming us inside, song and dance everywhere, more than in any other Latin American country I’d visited, or have visited since. On our way to the capitolio, Havana’s capitol, modeled, ironically, after the U.S. capitol in D.C., we walked across a main plaza, Plaza de San Francisco de Asis (1628), where the basilica of St. Francis (1548) is located. The hip, younger generation of Cubans, including a few, not so subtle, ladies of the night, have given the old plaza a modern feel, hip-hop echoing out of tape decks.

     In the corner, I saw a man standing in front of a small newsstand. I wanted a copy of Cuba’s party newspaper Granma. Tom followed me. The man, in his 70s, maybe 80s, ebony skin, a black-Cuban, smiled as we approached.

     I asked the man for a newspaper, and immediately, in a machine gun laden Spanish, he started asking me questions, about myself, where I came from, where I learned Spanish, about Mexico and my Mexican ancestors, about how long I’d be staying, where we’d be visiting, etc. etc.? I confess, I missed some of his words, as he swallowed the last syllables, something like a Spaniard from Andalucia.

     Like an uncle, the man called me, “Hijo,” and the more we talked, he switched to, “Mijo.” Tom got excited. He wanted me to translate. I tried. The old man was respectful of Tom, but he’d made a connection with me. His eyes gleamed as we talked.

     Funny thing, language, and culture. They get to the heart of things. If there was a color between the man and me, it quickly faded. We were two people, sharing a common culture, like a spiritual exchange. He could have been a relative, not Tom’s but mine. The affectionate term rang in my head, his shaky voice, “Ay, si, hijo/”

     He asked me to return another day. He looked sad when I told him I’d try but couldn’t promise anything. As we walked away, Tom said, “Man, that was something. I wish I could understand.”

     “Tom, you’re black, and I’m ‘white,’ Mexican. That old man is black, an African Cuban. It’s weird, right. Which of us do you think has a closer connection to him, you or I?”

     Tom thought about it. “I know what you mean. Man, I’d have to say that you and that old man are closer, like brothers, just something about the way you two talked. I could feel it.”

     “Yeah, that’s what I think, too. Strange, right, in some ways, how skin color doesn’t even matter.”