Sunday, July 26, 2009

Everybody has their own thing about Cuba. When I read stuff some other American has written about it, I think, that's not the way it is -- I was there!

I recently read a travel writer's glowing report of Cuba's potential for U.S. tourism and was outraged. He portrayed Havana as this type of upscale French Quarter, just a sweet little hamlet wide-open with beauty and love awaiting the embargo's end and his travel company's business.

That's not what it's like! I said to myself, and maybe aloud. I know -- I was there.

I'm not sure where this competition started, but I know it didn't start with me. I've heard it from other Cuba-goers, and we've even engaged in it together, e.g. "Can you believe that she's been going there for eight years and doesn't know X, Y or Z?? What kind of person goes to a place without experiencing it?"

So I'm just another American jerk who thinks she knows something.

But all of our perceptions are correct -- except for that of the travel writer, who's obviously circumscribed his -- because we all go there for different things, in different states of mind, with different preconceived notions, ideas, expectations, etc.

This I have dubbed the Coors Beer Factor. Do you remember when you could only buy Coors beer in Colorado? I was just a kid, but I remember grown-ups in West Palm who would talk about upcoming ski trips, planning to drive so they could bring back a few cases of the mythical alcoholic ambrosia.

Coors, Coors, Coors, the clear mountain spring water, Mark Harmon in the ads, the new kind of ad with Just Plain Simple Talk. Gotta get some Coors -- Brian and Bunny are going out there next month -- they'll bring some back. Then at the lawyer parties, "Hey, the Flugenbreins got this batch from their April trip," etc. etc. etc.

Then, of course, what happened? Coors started mass production and distribution, Harmon went on to play Ted Bundy in a made-for-TV movie and Coors isn't a big deal anymore.

Well, Cuba right now is Coors before it opened up, and everybody in the United States who goes brings some back to share with the people who can't go.

I think we each make something of it that is mostly about us. Individually.

Because most Americans can't go legally, I expected to find a culture cut off from most American influence, so I did.

But the fact is that 60 percent of Cuba's staple goods are provided by, get this, the United States, according to James Beaver of Miller Exports, an American company allowed to do business with Cuba. And millions of pounds of U.S. goods -- TVs, DVD players, refrigerators, washing machines and muchos mas -- is transported twice daily by big cargo planes to Havana, its conveyers Miami Cubans following on a passenger flight to visit home with American money.

Granma and the other government-run newspapers in Cuba publish something about America -- negative, of course -- nearly every day.

People talk about the United States all the time, they have relatives who emigrated here two, six, 10, 20 years ago ....

But I filtered that out to see what I wanted to see, my favorite non-American elements like no commercials on TV! No annoying bannered car lots! No McDonald's! No crass commercialism!

Well, guess what, the same picture seen through Cuban eyes is, No economy! No goods! No parts, no tools, no money! No good food!

And they want the microwaves, the dryers (lots of second-rate washing machines there, but I've yet to see a dryer), video games, shiny new DVDs and so on.

Some Cuban people who left their country within the past five or 10 years to live in Key West looked at me strangely when I returned and said I liked Cuba. They may make $10 or $15 an hour but they do it at three jobs without complaining, and they wear gold, have spangley-covered iPhones, new tight jeans, white sneakers and fresh Ross shirts and ride around in sparkly SUVs.

Three of them were in the kitchen at The Citizen one day, with one telling his two female co-workers that I liked Cuba. The women, disbelieving, asked me for confirmation.

"Why?" one of them asked. This is not a political question. This is a woman who spent her childhood, teens and 20s in dirty, crumbling buildings, eating monotonous food, with regular power outages, third-rate clothes, plastic shoes and no modern conveniences.

But they looked relieved at my answer.

"I like Cuba," I said, "because I can leave."

srodriguez@keysnews.com