Before Fidel: The Cuba I Remember

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE I was born twice. Same country—two worlds. The first time I was delivered into a feudal family in a time that no longer was; the second, I was hurled into a revolution in a time that was never to be. I was brought into the first world in 1934 by a white doctor, into the second in 1952 by a black soldier. Eighteen years separated the two births, but in the tropics time moves on its own accord, unrestrained by the unimaginative inflexibility of numerical sequence, so the chronological progression is meaningless , if even discernible, and those years remain suspended in my memory , hazy silhouettes fixed against the cacophony of human frenzy, music and gunfire. Cuba provided a vivid and dizzying introduction to life. Exuberant to stridency, aimlessly intense, hopelessly inchoate, pretentious and jejune, the island floated in a sea of noise, movement and ebullience as if engaged in a mad dash towards some imperceptible but irresistible destination. Speed of thought and action valued above clarity and accuracy in an unceasing feast of sound and color, presided over by a scorching sun, moderated only by the tenderness of the trade winds and scented by the perfumes of the tropical night. My father had no noble title, but he certainly was a feudal lord. Luyanó was the largest industrial neighborhood in Havana, a sprawling continuum of working-class poverty sprinkled with lower-middle-class clean shirts and aspiring hopes. In the midst of all this our house stood out, an early-nineteenth-century structure that had been the country residence of the Count of Villanueva, a Spanish grandee, and our street properly was named after him. It was a large, solid, and spacious construction, converted into a school in the days of Fidel Castro, with windows covered by eighteen feet of wrought iron from floor to ceiling, and a main double 3 door entrance, also eighteen feet, in double mahogany. A garden protected the two sides of the house facing Villanueva and Rodríguez Streets, itself surrounded by an aggressive six-foot black wrought-iron fence with nasty sharp spikes on top and in the middle. One of my earliest childhood memories is that of a little neighborhood boy hanging from one of those spikes, screaming in pain as my father unhooked his hand. Early memories are imprecise visions that emerge out of the foggy recesses of the mind and present themselves in inexact sequence and in response to changing circumstances. My first recollection is usually of my mother, although sometimes it is my uncle Alfonso bending over my crib. My father, grandmother, sisters, uncles and aunts all come in later and in no clear order. I really don’t remember the first time I became aware of most of them; they surfaced as inhabitants of shadowy corners who slowly, almost begrudgingly, took independent shape. Maybe there were so many aunts and uncles that this was inevitable, or perhaps it was I who was remiss to recognize and differentiate them, or that’s how it always is. There was my grandmother, my father’s mother, Doña Consuelo: white hair, blue eyes, always either in the garden tending her flowers and herbs or resting in her large rocking chair. She was the unquestioned señora de la casa; she ran the house. She had had eighteen children, twelve alive, eight of them living at home, and eleven who had supper together every evening. It was much closer to a clan or a tribe than to a family, and it took some time before I realized how out of the ordinary, even by Cuban standards, we were—a throwback to some bygone era that clung to time with unconcerned but unwavering tenacity. My father was the eldest son and, therefore, the man in charge. Things fell nicely into place because he also provided the house, which came with his job. He ran the warehouse and shipping office of Victor G. Mendoza y Cía, a large supplier of machinery and parts for sugar mills. It was a double warehouse with an adjacent yard that served as a baseball field for the neighborhood boys on weekends; the warehouse, yard and living quarters occupying an entire square block—a fenced-in and self-contained castle-fortress that insulated us, at least partially, from our immediate surroundings. We did not rule the neighborhood, but in our castle-fortress we were above it—separate if not independent. It wasn’t...