Guest Columnist: Margaret Elysia Garcia

 Editor's Note: La Bloga-Tuesday welcomes Guest Columnist Margaret Elysia Garcia with this account of her voyage to Cuba. Margaret will be joining La Bloga as our newest regular columnist. Her column will appear on Saturdays.

A Political Poet in Cuba             

Margaret Elysia Garcia

What do you do for fun? I’m still processing this last week that saw me accompanying political poet Matt Sedillo on a trip to participate in the 32^nd Annual Festival Internacional de Poesia de la Habana. It’s a strange time to be Americans traveling to Cuba. We felt the angst of knowing that there were American aircraft carriers not too far from Cuba’s shoreline. We have the example of the kidnapping of Maduro in Venezuela. 

The American president had already made threats to take out Raul Castro. These factors alone made it an iffy time to come to Cuba. It felt less strange on a full American Airlines flight from Miami to Havana. We’d also heard the American press over the last several weeks speak about shortages, black outs, trash not being picked up—indeed the president had echoed these sentiments claiming that Cuba needed saving from communism and could use America’s help to free it of dictators. We kept an eye out for the American news media’s assertions of the direness of Cuba, of its impending doom.

                  The Cubans seemed chill. No one was worried about the United States bombing or taking out Raul Castro. We saw no police in the streets.

                  We got to our hotel, jet-lagged from the red-eye and plopped down into the aromas of Havana:  sweet fruits, and something meaty frying somewhere and tropical sweat and always the faint smell of cigar/cigarette smoke. If that didn’t sound like a delicious combination, trust me that it did its magic. I felt like I was wilting most of the time in the humidity but at the same time humidity means vibrance. Every flower, every deep green. Everyone I met. Matt seemed both entranced and informed by previous trips there. He noticed things I wouldn’t have known. There were less cars on the streets and less beggars too this time around. He’d last been here in 2022 for the festival and before that 2019. 

                   It was my first time in Cuba, and I was thrilled to be reciting my poems twice a day for five days—never repeated the same poem twice. We read all over El Vedado—the relatively more modern section of the city where energy seemed to be plentiful and blackouts did not occur in the week we were there. We read our poetry to students at a local junior high, at an art studio with a well-known Cuban artist welcoming us and introducing us to his students. We read in parks. We read with men and women poets from across the Americas: Mexican poets, Salvadoran, Honduran, Venezuelan, Ecuadoran, Italian, Kenyan and of course Cuban. We read at cultural centers and theatres. We read at an outdoor bar on our second to last night there.

   It was refreshing to see how interested the Cuban people were in poetry—how celebrated all the arts were, really. As an American, I get too used to disrespect and ambivalence from a mainstream audience and a miniscule reading public. Poetry in Los Angeles is often provincial, and one gets the sense that people are not experimenting with language, themes, or structure or pushing themselves to the next level. We often tend toward confessional but more towards Rupi Kaur and less towards the pinnacle of Anne Sexton. Cuba blew us both away in that respect. So much great poetry that spoke to the world and to the crisis of imperialism. To see so many people come out to hear poetry was nothing short of amazing. We were in awe.

                   It was Matt’s third time in Cuba and second time participating in the festival. He wrote a new piece specifically for Cuba as it once again faces the dire consequences of not succumbing to American imperialism. On the late afternoon of our first day, he recited the poem in a small musty theatre with Cuba’s Minister of Culture in the audience, who took notice of the American poet who proudly proclaimed he was not representing as an American but as a Chicano from Los Angeles. “Let Cuba Live” became the star poem of the festival and on that Saturday, it was recited at our final reading at an outdoor cultural center with TV crews from the local Havana news station covering the event. The Minister of Culture took a liking to Matt Sedillo and had him as a guest of honor for dinner that first night.

                  I, a newbie, and a Chicana who was not passing as Chicana in Cuba due to my poor Spanish skills (I got mistaken for being Chilean once?), who is not an internationally recognized poet to that degree—did not get the invite to eat dinner with the Minister of Culture but instead wrote in my journal and had two of many espressos I had that week. I sat on the terrace overlooking the street and looked down on the garbage below. There was no food in it so there was no smell of rot. I thought about the countries and states I’ve been too that had open sewers or bad plumbing: South Korea. Laos. Indiana. Mississippi. I thought of the trash and debris and homeless encampments in downtown Los Angeles, under bridges in Oakland. I thought about the PGE blackouts in the Sierras—I once endured two weeks’ worth.  We didn’t necessarily see the food shortages. But as we often missed buses that week and had to walk miles a day to our various destinations, I didn’t feel like we’d gotten sheltered from the truth or steered away from it. Many people are thin here. I thought of the hungry people I know in the USA. Those that have no place to live and are always in danger of homelessness. I saw obvious homelessness in Havana. When I met up with Matt for breakfast at the hotel, he concurred what I’d both seen and not seen.

                  On our second day, Matt Sedillo, of the better Spanish than me, arranged last minute for a field trip to Che Guevara’s house and museum. That was a trip. Ever land some place and not think twice about what you will see and see something wild in the back of your head you probably always wanted to see? That would be Matt and I at Che Guevara’s house/museum where we were the only visitors that afternoon. Likewise, the Bay of Pigs cannons nearby. The house was modest, like you’d expect, filled with photos of the famous and infamous who had visited him there including many photos of Che with Salvador Allende.  I loved that his typewriter and camera were there under glass. Tons of photos of his life and reference to his too early death by the hands of CIA operatives in Bolivia. Matt was also recognized on the street a few times as the political poet from the United States—the Chicano from California.

                  Next, we got to visit Casa de las Americas. Casa del as Americas was founded in April 1959 just four months after the Cuban Revolution as a way of developing socio-cultural ties between Cuba, other Caribbean nations, and Latin American countries. It has served as a publishing house, information center, cultural center, library and museum. Matt’s book, Mexican Style, which was released in 2025 by Flower Song Press, is now part of the library catalog along with my poetry chapbook Iconistas which celebrates Mexican Revolutionary women. It was a next level bucket list achievement to know one’s book is in the most important cultural institution on the island. I could sense too that Matt felt the achievement in his book being added to the collection. The excitement and significance of this was palpable.

                  We did experience one black out but that was in Old Havana at one of the old state-run hotels in the tourist district. We were looking for remnants of Ernest Hemingway’s time there and found his now closed watering hole. We found the best Ropa Viejo I’ve had in my life too. Many will say (including my husband) that we only saw the Cuba elected officials meant us to see. And while it’s true there were buses to take us places, it’s also true that 65% of the time, we didn’t make the bus and walked through many places that perhaps we weren’t meant to see. There was poverty. There were beggars. But none of it was beyond what I’d seen in the United States in our cities. And at least in Havana the homeless crisis was not nearly what we see here.

                  And then we were back to the pace of two big readings a day in sweltering tropical humidity. I must confess I was not well-versed in the who’s who of Cuban poetry. Matt Sedillo, on the other hand, like most topics tackled by the autodidact, knew of the entire pantheon of Cuban poetry. Which is why him getting to read his poetry in front of and with living legend Nancy Morejon was the highlight of his trip. Reading with one’s idols is a humbling experience, and Matt took it with the grace of a man both in deference of the elder stateswoman poet and as a poet who had the attention of every poet and Cuban cultural official there. Another highlight was reading at the National Library.

                  Can poetry change the world? Perhaps it can. The camaraderie of a few dozen poets goes a long way in making us feel un-alone in the world of literature and in the geopolitical world of the Americas. We felt changed. Can it call attention to the need for justice in the world? Absolutely. Matt’s poetry met the moment. Now, back in California we both have spoken about the renewed energy going to Havana has given us and given our work. I have the renewed energy of the activist I once was, and I know Matt –and his work which always tends towards chronicling Chicano history—is renewed as well. I know that Cuba is awaiting Matt’s next trip to Havana to celebrate his work that speaks not just to the Chicano experience or Mexican American experience but to the experience of all the Americas as we struggle towards a new solidarity.