I found a B/W photo of us from 1963 taken at a protest march in front of a federal building you’re wearing sunglasses slacks a jacket your hair is pulled back a la Lena Horne you’re clasping your hands in front of you like a nun serious your face nearly obscured by my sign that says Shame Jack! You Know Where Liars Go! I have on a dark plaid dress with gathered skirt white Peter Pan collar and sweater walking in front of you someone carries a sign that says, Americans Ask for Non-intervention in Cuba
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
fast forward a decade+ amidst my medical residency the demise of my year-long marriage plunges me into a deep funk the therapist labels my obsessive thoughts of self-destruction ‘fantasies’ you prescribe a trip to Cuba
Yo soy un hombre sincero de donde crece la palma
I am a truthful man from the land of the palm tree
you are worldly from you I learn the art of fearless female traveling we tag onto an island bus tour for Canadian octogenarians that begins in Havana but at the first resort
we glean the stale / sedentary nature of this tour you tell the driver my legs are bad they’re swelling NO CAN DO the Canadians agree that we’ll meet in Havana at week’s end we scurry to pack our bags track down a local bus head back to the capital we discover that if we say nothing (because surprise! Cubans are black) everyone thinks we’re Cuban
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
old world crumbly colonial facades peeling paint exposed wires Spanish baroque grafted onto French + art deco a mishmash of elegance married with decay
ice-cream-coloured cars from the 1950s a pink chevy impala an orange olds98 a sky-blue ford fairlane want to drag race down the Malecon? lick sea spray off my face?
Y antes de morir yo quiero echar mis versos del alma
And before I die, I want to share these verses of my soul
You make up? Spanish words or say English words with a Spanish accent who does that? this annoys me, with my high school / college Spanish, to no end but you do not stop we walk and walk and walk at night in Coppelia Park for ice cream again we forget and speak in English the crowd parts like the sea everyone waving us forward because we are guests in Cuba we are ashamed thinking this never would happen in the US we meet friends of friends of yours we meet and make new friends we visit the school of public health because of your connections and marvel at the post-revolution health accomplishments of the Cubans their infant mortality rate is lower than ours
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera— everywhere, always —Cuba’s national anthem lyrics by revolutionary poet Jose Marti Pete Seeger one of your favourite singers, sang it too as well as many others Wyclef Jean Los Lobos the Fugees Celia Cruz We don’t know it yet but I will return to Cuba in a year with an international worker and youth delegation we will sing this same song several times a day for a week always this song always brings me to tears because of you and me in Cuba
Y para el cruel que me arranca el corazón con que vivo
And for the cruel one who would tear out this heart with which I live
we visit Plaza de la Revolucion and buy books about Castro and Che in Spanish
strangers ask on repeat que hora es? each time I glance at my watch and English slips out before I can stop it astonishment blossoms into delight: Americanas!! a Cuban couple shows us around La Habana then invites us to their home later that week a delegation of neighbours and a band and paella the wife took a day trip to the country to obtain a chicken and loads of gifts because we are guests in Cuba
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
how was this trip for you? traveling with your eldest daughter? neither one of us could know that in less than a decade you’d be gone
leaving me wanting more memories we planned to travel more
years later I will tell my own adult daughter how it was traveling with you
the grandmother she never met to see you as a person for the first time not just a parent my daughter claims not to get it or doesn’t want to she has no children of her own she is your namesake
With the poor people of this earth, I want to share my lot
Con los pobres de la tierra, quiero yo mi suerte echar
remember our dancing? to those infectious conga drums? music that made our feet come alive? yes we saw the show at the Tropicana but the real fun was in the streets salsa and mambo flirting with laughing strangers ah los hombres guapos! despite the US embargo yes we carried toilet paper in our purses
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
when we finally met up with the Canadian tour group at the Havana airport as we’d agreed 20 of our new Cuban friends crowded onto the tarmac to wave to shout adios and sing to us the national song Guantanamera because we were guests in Cuba
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera guajira Guantanamera
I returned to Cuba after 40 years slipped in and out before the global pandemic lockdown no one asked the time anymore everyone had a watch there was still no TP
Thanks to the U. S. there were rolling blackouts food and fuel insecurity Havana looked more like a dreary post-rebellion Detroit than a small city with old world charm a Cuban activist told me police target dark-skinned Cubans the people were still warm but no one approached me on the street there was a burgeoning private sector you would have hated so there were two currency systems economic inequality prevailed U.S. bankers / developers / politicians are salivating in anticipation of the island’s collapse no one sings Guantanamera anymore
Mama I looked for you everywhere
