POSTURA REPORT: CUBA TRIP 07-14-00 7750 words

To understand this journey, first you must understand what immediately preceded it. During
our sabbatical stay in Granada, I began to reopen my décima research via Internet and read
several new texts that expanded my knowledge of the poety form in Cuba, in the
Alpujarras of Almería, and in the Canary Islands. I also discovered that an annual décima
festival and academic conference was held in Cuba in late June, and I arranged to
participate and read my paper there.

Décima (also known as espinela) is a Spanish poetic form consisting of 10 eight-syllable

lines and a peculiar palindromic abbaaccddc rhyme structure which was as popular in 17th
century Spain as, say, the sonnet was in England. But while the sonnet remained a resource
for academic poets only and is now practically extinct, décima became widespread among
popular poets and campesinos all over Latin America who improvise and sing in the form.
While the tradition hangs on in places like Spain’s Canary Islands, Argentina, Perú, Puerto
Rico, and Mexico, it is particularly vital and successful in Cuba, where it is more than a form
of popular and literary culture, it is a sort of competetive sport. Just to give an idea, in the
1950s a “controversia” or two-poet face-off drew over 10,000 spectators. Today’s Cuban
décima fans can tune in to prime-time TV and radio shows, and books of décimas sell
briskly.

Our 10-month stay in Spain came to an abrupt and devastating end with the unexpected
death of my father-in-law. Marilyn had returned home immediately on learning of his final
crisis, while I flew back on June 16 with the girls and a cache of luggage worthy of an awful
Tarzan movie. I had no train of sweating bearers, however; it was me and two little girls.
We were not able to check our bags through to San Francisco, so we had to pick ‘em up in
Madrid and then take everything to the pension where we spent the night, and then before
dawn back to the airport (it took 30 minutes just to get the bags from the room to the street,
using the phone-booth sized elevator). Even with the checked luggage off our hands, we
had seven extremely heavy carry-ons to contend with. In all, an exhausting trip physically
and emotionally.

I spent two days in Saunamento, then Marilyn drove me to San Francisco, where we
visited a few people before Marilyn drove back. I took care of my chores and attended a
rumba on Wednesday night that Galo had thoughtfully called in my honor. It was wonderful
to see my musical buddies again, especially those who have been in touch with me over
the past year. I was appalled. however, to see just how rusty I was after 10 months
without a rumba, and I was worried about making a fool of myself in Cuba, where I was
planning to sing.

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The next day I spent some time out in the Sunset, and later walked along Haight Street. I
found San Francisco, the city I love so well, disappointingly shabby and tacky; the first sign
that my reintegration into this society might be more stressful than I anticipated. That
evening I made my way to the airport and had my first travel shock when the zipper pull of
my brand-new Spanish convertable travel pack broke clean off and I had to improvise a fix.
I recount all this just to establish that I began the voyage already jet-lagged, bag-sore,
home-sick, overly-hyphenated, and generally out-of-it.

The red-eye flight to Cancún, with irritating deplaning stops in Guadalajara and Mexico DF,
was OK, but my pack failed to arrive when I reached Cancún. It came on a later flight,
minutes before my Cubana flight boarded. The Cubana de Aviación experience was the
same as the one I survived in 1995: first, suffocating heat as the plane sits on the tarmac,
then the sinister appearance of roiling clouds of thick white vapor, supposedly from the air
conditioning, that give one the sensation of being fumigated while helplessly wedged in the
wobbly, narrow seats.

Immigration formalities in Havana were slow; apparently I no longer resemble the

superannuated preppie grinning vacuously in my passport picture, made just a few years
ago. But the sullen migra lady smiled when I told her I was headed to the décima
conference in Victoria de las Tunas, Cuba’s poorest province, and one seldom visited by
foreigners. She waved me through, I found my ride into town, spent an hour negotiating
with my unresponsive travel agency Paradiso, and finally checked into the Hotel St. John, in
Vedado a few blocks from the Malecón.

Once unpacked and settled, I went for a walk along that emblematic seafront promenade,
where Cubans can be seen strolling or sitting 24 hours a day. Seeing the rainbow of faces,
hearing the distinctive Cuban Spanish after a year of Andaluz, and especially seeing the
sillouhette of the colonial fortress across the bay, I got all choked up. Yes, I was in Cuba at
last!

Friday I did not have the energy to do much more. After dinner in the hotel, I walked the
Malecón again and at night went up to the hotel’s nightclub, the semi-famous “Rincón del
Filin” where crooners perform “filin” or “feeling”, apparently a genre of sentimental ballads
and boleros. The evening’s first singer was histrionic and out of tune, so I followed my “filin”
and got out of there before the $5.00 door charge was collected and went to bed.

Putting the RUM in RUMBA

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Saturday I missed breakfast, having failed to set my watch forward an hour from Cancun
time. So on just a thimbleful of coffee, I walked into Havana Vieja where I gawked at the
Colonial and Neoclassical buildings and bought some old books on décima in the used
book market near the Cathedral. it turned out that I had scored some very rare texts that
later excited the envy of the Casa de la décima people in Las Tunas. That done, I ate at a
paladar (private restaurant) for the first time, unloaded my books at the hotel, and took a
cocotaxi, an unstable-looking three wheeled sphere that seats two or three intrepid
passengers) to El Gran Palenque, the headquarters of Cuba’s National Folkloric Ensemble,
for their weekly “Sábado de la Rumba” event. I was greeted there by Lourdes, a member
of the troupe, now in an administrative capacity I believe, who I knew casually from her visits
to the Bay Area.

Unfortunately the Conjunto was on tour (in Spain, I think) and the featured group, while
elaborately costumed and well-rehearsed, was not of the high quality I had been hoping for.
They sounded a lot better when they called a friend up from the audience to sing lead. I
was charmed when several elderly ladies seated in the front, who appeared to be relatives
of the performers, got up to dance, and when one lady insisted that I join her in the aisle, I
gamely got up and shuffled about as best as I could.

Only a few people in this world have had the misfortune of seeing me dance, as I am very
selfconscious of my limitations in this area. Indeed, I am equally inept and anxious in all
gross motor activities, from martial arts to ball sports. So you can imagine my horror when,
later in the program, I was obliged to take the stage with this venerable grand dame as my
partner and compete in a rumba dance contest alongside a couple of sleek young Cubans.
I know the basic step, at least, and I tried to copy the moves of my rivals across the stage,
but the whole thing was mortifying in the extreme. When the guaguancó was finally,
mercifully over, the MC asked the crowd to vote for the winning couple, taking into account
the “spirit” of each and generally biasing the public to applaud for us, which they did. We
were awarded a dinner plate trimmed in gold and full of bee’s honey which the dancer
representing the deity Oshún had used in her performance. My erstwhile dance partner
distributed the honey digitallty (that is, with her fingertip) to the spectators, and kept the
plate, or more likely returned it to Oshún.

I returned to the hotel to shower and change (all my clothes were soaked in the sweat of
fear) and then walked to the nearby Las Vegas club to see one of my favorite rumba
groups, Yoruba Andabo. They played an excellent, if too-short, set, and were joined by
the members of Clave y Guaguancó, one of the most popular newer ensembles. I had
finally heard and seen the high-level rumba I enjoy so much. I ate dinner at the hotel (I had a
meal plan included in my fee) and went to bed. No salsa club for me. I was feeling timid

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after my dance trauma, and I didn’t really enjoy my nightclub experience in Havana in1995,
where the fabulous music of Manolín, an MD known as “El médico de la Salsa” was marred
by the clouds of cigar fumes and the swarms of prostitutes outside and inside the club. The
truth is that I am not a terribly intrepid traveler by some standards, certainly by my own
standards of 30 years ago when I was a hippie backpacker hitchhiking across Europe.

Sunday I got another big rumba hit at the “Callejón de Hamell” a back street that for 10
years or so has been a venue for street-corner rumba in the old style. The street is all
decorated with murals and strange sculptures and assemblages, often with afro-cuban
folkloric themes, and the area was crowded with Cuban and foreign fans. Clave y
Guaguancó was the opening act, and a band member who remembered seeing me
grooving in the crowd on Saturday invited me to stand right behind the line of drummers,
where I was in the shade and could see and hear everything perfectly.

Now I know why it’s called Viazul

After 45 minutes the power suddenly went out, a common occurrence in Cuba. Clave y
Guaguancó’s lead singer, a big fat white guy (not a common description for a rumbero)
opportunistically announced that their set was now over and the next group could now
perform, sans amplification of course. I took the opportunity to slip away, return to my hotel,
and pack. A car was dispatched for me, delivered me to the Viazul bus station, where, as I
waited, I watched a long TV interview with Waldo Leiva, a décima heavy and the director of
the festival/conference I was headed for. I soon found myself in a clean modern bus with
video screens that showed a dreadful Stallone movie. The bus was equipped with a
powerful airconditioning system that ran at full blast all the way. I had an extra tee shirt, a little
nylon vest, and a warm hat which saved me, I’m convinced, from arriving blue with cold.

Las Tunas, where parking is never a problem

After an increasingly tedious and frigid 12 hours we finally reached Las Tunas about 2:00
am. A representative of the Décima festival was waiting for me with a taxi; he got me
registered in the hotel and yawned “hasta mañana”. The hotel was a large modern structure
and looked nice from the outside, but my room was a dump. There was no shower head
or toilet seat, for example, and there was a large puddle of water on the floor outside the
bathroom. I killed a cockroach but could not do anything about the mosquitos who attacked
me once I was in bed. In the morning I complained, and they offered me another room
which was no improvement; when I declined, they offered to do what they could to fix up
my room. I spent the morning checking into the festival, reading, and puttering around. In
the afternoon there was a press conference (located in the museum dedicated to Vicente

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Garcia, the hero of Las Tunas in the struggle for independance from Spain) and then a little
cocktail party. When I got back to my room, all the deficiencies I had noted had been
corrected, the room had been fumigated, and so on. What a relief.

The academic event actually began Tuesday. It would be tedious to detail all the papers
presented, and in fact many of the papers were rather tedious or at least dry: analyses of
poetic styles and strategies of improvisation, histories of leading decimistas, presentations
of new books, award ceremonies, and so on. One key presenter, Virgilio López Lemus,
was particularly interesting. He is, after Maria Teresa Linares, the leading academic expert
on décima, and he had written a new book on the topic. His information was fresh and
important, but what really caught my attention was that he spoke without notes, making his
delivery direct and captivating compared to the presenters who droned through their written
papers. This was a timely reminder to me that in this sort of forum, form is as important as
content.

In the evening there was a concert with groups playing lively traditional music (mostly son,
the countrified ancestor of modern salsa), costumed dancers, and poets. Several of the
foreign participants performed, notably a nutty Peruvian who danced Alcatraz and
improvised décimas while shaking his booty, but I kept quiet for once.

Special delivery

On Wednesday I delivered my paper. I had continued to edit my text, finding errors or

infelicitous phasings right up till the last minute, and I had practiced reading and singing my
exemplary songs many times. So I felt confident and prepared. Recalling the speakers
who mumbled and raced through their papers, I read slowly and with careful diction, looking
up frequently to make eye contact with the audience. I sang my samples in a full voice (I
did have one recorded example, from the Muñequitos, so the audience would hear a song
as it should really be) and to my surprise they applauded each example. I could sense
that people were interested and attentive; I saw no chatting, note-passing, or other goofing-
off. I am a school teacher, after all, and I can tell when you are not paying attention. Yes,
YOU, in the back!

Well, what can I say? The paper (on décima in rumba) was a big success. I was
congratulated for the rest of the week by people, including the country’s leading poets and
experts, who called my work “of great impact”, “fascinating”, “surprising”, “original”, and so
on. El Indio Naborí, the undisputed dean of Cuba’s décima community (and the winner of
that long-ago décima contest in front of 10,000 spectators) called it “brilliant” in a book
dedication he signed for me, and others found my presentation (I blush) “charismatic” and

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my ability to sing rumba “unique” for a non-Cuban.

In vain I insisted that in the Bay Area alone there are dozens of very good rumberos who
are not Cuban, not Latin, not even of African descent; in vain I repeated that, while I am
proud of being able to sing rumba a little, I know I don’t measure up to the real artists in the
genre or even to the leaders of the workaday rumba ensembles I’ve seen in Cuba. At the
end of the conference I was invited to sing again, and I stretched out a little with an original
décima that begins with a riff on the classic guaguancó, “Tawiri”. The crowd of poets and
academics clapped out clave (they got it wrong; they used son clave, but what was I going
to say?) and sang the coro for me. These are, for the most part, people who do not know
rumba all that well (which was part of my point; that is, many people, Cuban and otherwise,
ignore or even shun rumba because of its low social status) but they sure liked hearing me
sing it.

Clave anxiety

So you can imagine my satisfaction at this generous reception. As an outsider venturing

into an esoteric cultural tradition, I have always had a certain level of trepidation stepping into
the midst of an artistic manisfestation so far removed from my own origins. Besides, just
before leaving for Spain in August 2000, I had a rumba party in my garage, and someone
videotaped me singing and playing clave. When I saw the tape I was horrified: my clave
playing was off, with the placement of the third note of the pattern coming early, almost as
though I were playing son clave in guaguancó, an offensive gaucherie I would scorn in
another performer. I have written in RMAL that there are only two ways to play clave:
perfect and lousy, and I was NOT playing perfectly. I knew that my clave was not infallible
when I sing, but I had never seen it nor heard it until that video, and I was shocked and
humbled. I’ll get back to rumba later on in this narrative.

Note passing

I had said earlier that when I spoke, I noticed no one passing notes, but when I was in the
audience, or on Thursday, when I has honored by being invited to preside over the
morning session from the president’s table, I saw that there was a lot of note passing going
on. Some notes came up to the table, and I observed they were related to practical
matters, such as the need to request another bus or reschedule a press conference. But
other notes were scribbled by smirking poets and passed up to others who would read the
notes, snicker, and jot down a response. I asked about this activity and was told that these
wise guys were writing and passing scurrilous décimas, often making fun of the speakers or

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the officers of the association; this is a disreputable tradition in these gatherings.

I was dying to see them and finally someboby showed me a relatively tame example.
The poem was about the academic Vigilio Lopez, who, it turned out, was frantic because
he had lost his vitally important national identity card that morning. The two verse décima,
erudite and elegantly snide, compared Virgilio Lopez to the Virgil of Dante’s Inferno,
suggesting that he was going to have to go through hell to get a new card issued, and
implying that maybe he deserved it.

I got to see this playful side of the poets on another, much louder occasion. We were sitting
uncomfortably in a battered old school bus, waiting to return to Las Tunas after a visit to a
farming cooperative, and someone asked me to sing. I sang the yambú Ave Maria
Morena because it starts with a lovely décima, but the choice turned out to be inspired, not
for the décima but for the coro, which apparently is extremely popular. Everybody took it
up with gusto, and when I ran out of inspiration for my rhyming couplets, the real poets took
over, quickly moving from couplets to comic décimas, and then going on to other popular
coros as a tres player, a guitarist and a clave turned the rhythm and the mood from rumba to
son.

When the coro shifted to a line a character named María who liked her piña pelada, I made
an off-color joke using the word papaya, which I knew was a racy term in Cuba (they call it
“fruta bomba” here) and there was laughter, and the coro immediately changed to “Malas
palabras no, caballero” (No bad words, sir). Despite the admonition, the poets began
singing their own dirty verses, traditional or improvised, on sexual or scatological themes.
Imagine riding in a bus with Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams as they shouted
naughty limericks back and forth to each other, and you’ll get an idea.

To get the full flavor of this scene, I should also point out that sharing the bus were four or
five Cuban beauty queens, the “Flores de Dirama” who compete in a national beauty
pageant which is carried out simultaneously with the poetry competition. The contestants,
one from each of Cuban provinces (there are 14, I think) joined us on many of the activities,
always in their short skirts, satin sash, stage make-up, and big hair.

I had one of these young ladies practically in my lap the whole time (well, actually I
eventually got up and let her have the whole seat) and she was gasping and weeping with
laughter as the ditties got wilder. She even asked the jokers to stop, her face and belly
were aching from mirth, but there was no mercy. This compañera, by the way, was Miss
Isla de la Juventud, and was employed as the political officer on an agricultural cooperative
on the famous Cuban island. When she discussed her work at the dinner table, she

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seemed like a major square, but she was letting loose in the bus, I can tell you. She told
me later that she hadn’t even wanted to go to Las Tunas, she was expecting to be bored
stiff and roughing it all the way.

Estoy tan enamorao de la negra Tomasa

The academic part of the event lasted three days, ending on Thursday June 28. There was
another major presentation from Maximiano Trapero, a suave Spanish professor who
spoke of décima in the Canary Islands. El Indio Naborí was presented with yet more
honors, and a video documentary of his life was shown. Decades ago, Naborí and his wife
experienced the death of a son who was just five years old, and this event was depicted
by Naborí reading a heartbreaking elegy to his son (in décima, of course) that had the
whole room shaken, with many of us weeping. From this we transitioned into a jollier mode.
The poets came out and duelled, the foreign talent did what we could, and then we were
treated to the improvisations of Tomasita Quiala, a Black woman who for sheer verbal
ingenuity and musical abilty stands out in a field dominated by white men (although negros
and mulatos, to use the Cuban nomenclature, are not unusual).

Tomasita (who is blind from a very early age) is particularly expert in pie forzado, the
technique in which a poet must improvise a verse on the spot that ENDS with an eight
syllable line previously tossed out from the audience. Since the last line must rhyme with
the sixth and seventh lines, and of course must make sense in the context of the poem, this
is quite a challenge. All the improvisors do this, but Tomasita is known for the literary quality
of her improvised verse; she doesn’t resort to doggerel as some do. She even called on
me for a pie forzado. “Is that American rumbero in here? I don’t see him... but of course I
don’t see anything, ha ha.” I announced my presence and tossed off a pie (“Que se canta
en guaguancó”) which she handled with ease.

Warmed up, she then ventured on something that seems impossible; but I saw it, and I
confirmed with other witnessess that what I saw was true. Check it out: First, Tomasita
asked for four pies from four different people. The lines were shouted out, none having
anything to do with the others, and she repeated them out loud, once. Next, she called for
the musicians to play her D minor melody, the “Tonada Española” and she sang a four
verse décima, each verse ending with one of the lines, and in the same order she received
them, in a piece that, if not of the highest standards of literary verse, was certainly a real
poem with rich language, metaphor, similie, and so on.

So far, so good; excellent, but not unique. But then she did something extraordinary. With
a smile on her face she then sang the whole décima backwards, that is from, bottom to top,

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starting with line 40 and ending with line one, and she had set up the original poem in such a
way that it still made sense! The rhymes scheme still worked, of course, a consequence of
the palindromic structure. I was stunned. People said that Naborí had been able to do this
years ago, but that Tomasita was the outstanding performer in this genre now. Well, I
guess so. And what a finish!

XXXIV Festival Cucalambeana

The end of the academic portion (the ninth annual conference) was the beginning of the 34th
poetry festival in honor of El Cucalambé, the 19th century poet from Las Tunas who turned
décima from a Spanish to a Cuban form. The festival began with a wonderful parade
through the center of Victoria de las Tunas. The parade was led by 20 or so horse-drawn
taxis bearing the Flores de Dirama and other, less pulchritudinous notables. There were
several bands, including a small conga ensemble with funky, homemade bombos de
galleta (big diameter, shallow bass drums) and a brass band.

Along the route there were different kinds of bands playing in yards and roofs, mostly son
sextets and septets (bass fiddle, guitar, tres, maracas, clave, bongos and sometimes a
trumpet, with a lead singer and chorus). At the end of the parade there was a stage with
another son band that also played Punto Cubano, the music usually associated with décima
in Cuba and the Canaries. There I saw another décima prodigy, Alexis Díaz Pimienta,
engage in seguidilla, a form of décima that does not allow the musical interludes that Punto
Cubano does; this means that the improvisor has no space to think about the next line but
must throw them out all at once, verse after verse; and to make it worse, the tempo
increases until the poet is chanting or rapping, allegro furioso. Tough.

¿Quién no goza con mi bambú?

The rest of the festival took place at El Cornito, a rambling venue with a large amphitheatre
and several smaller stages. The property once belonged to El Cucalambé himself, and is
handsomely festooned with palm trees and great stands of bamboo, as well as several
ponds. There were events scheduled from 10:00 a.m. till the wee hours. There were
activities I missed, such as shows of handicrafts, a humor competition, and exhibitions of
painting. I managed to observe some campesino games (such as the old greased pole
competition and a game in which a person on horseback tries to spear a little ring while riding
at full gallop; I had seen the identical game in Otura, Spain) and see a few salsa dances.
But mostly I concentrated on the décima competition. Here I saw pairs of poets, matched
at random, compete for serious cash prizes. Each had to sing six décimas on a topic

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chosen at random, complete two pie forzados, and end with a shared décima. Every
contestant was introduced by name and a colorful nickname; the only nickname I can recall
right now is “The Ace of the Metaphor”.

It was interesting to note that the judges scored the contestants strictly on their texts; no
points were awarded for musical excellence. Indeed, some of the singers had no notion of
pitch and little enough of rhythm. Very few singers would wait for the natural pauses in the
musical phrases where it would be most appropriate and traditional to enter. It is perfectly
acceptable to sing whenever the inspiration strikes; if one waits for the musical phrase, one
may lose one’s thread. The bands, by the way, have tres, guitar, and bass, with the lute
(laúd) the main improvising instrument. Percussion is clave, bongo, and congas, and the
rhythm is in 3/4. The clave pattern is nothing like son or rumba. I transcribed the basic
pattern thus (two bars of eighth notes: xoxxox l xoxoxo).

So I saw lots and LOTS of Punto Cubano and décima. There were breaks in the
competition when people came up to recite special verses or Tomasita came up to dazzle
everybody. I was fascinated to see that the two visitors from the Canary Islands sang
Punto Cubano exactly like the Cubans and were able to compete as equals. An Argentine
payador in a gaucho outfit also performed, but his style (Milonga) was sompletely different
from the Punto Cubano singers. I heard all these guys on stage, but they also gathered in
the hotel lobby to sing Punto as well as boleros and other musical styles.

My only disappointment, musically speaking, was that there was little variation in the
tonadas or melodies; Punto Cubano has various tonadas, and there are other kinds of
Punto, not to mention the characteristric styles of Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and other
countries who were not represented this year. I did score a rare CD, recorded at a décima
conference three years ago in the Canary Islands, that had examples from many regions,
so I now have a better idea of the musical breadth of décima in the Spanish-speaking
world.

At night there were big events (espectáculos or galas) in the amphitheatre. There were
elaborate production numbers with large folkloric ensembles performing all kinds of country
dances with names like Nengón and Caballo a Trote, and there was plenty of son and
changüí. The first night was dedicated to the Flores de Dirama, the second night to children,
the third recreated a guateque or campesino party that features décima, and the last night
was a tribute to El Indio Naborí, who was helped to his feet to declaim a few verses to the
poets who had serenaded him. I should mention that one of the poets that night was Dimitri
Tamayo, who just happens to be the tall skinny young campesino who engages in a
controversia with an older man in Routes of Rhythm, that excellent documentary on

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Afrocuban music narrated by Harry Belafonte (directed by Howard Dratch and Eugene
Rosow, Cinema Guild, 1990).

The last day of the festival was Sunday July 1, El Cucalambé’s birthday. Our first activity
was an awards ceremony. Some prizes were announced, but the big news was that the
Cuclambé prize for written décimas was not going to be awarded this year because none
of the works submitted was of suffcient quality. The man who read the jury’s letter was very
prim and judgemental, and when he felt that the poets in attendance were not paying
attention, he irritated everyone by starting all over again. There were more poetry readings,
and music, and finally we were done. We boarded busses into town (El Cornito is at least
30 minutes outside of Las Tunas) and ended up outside an office where another son band
was playing.

I was charmed to see that, as the bongos were missing for some reason, the bongocero
played his patterns on the side of the bass fiddle. Playing on improvised instuments is
common on Cuba, it would seem. In 1995 I saw rumba played on the door of a house,
and later on a car; the trunk was the quinto, the hood the tres/dos, and the roof the
tumbadora.

But back to 2001. We were divided into groups for the next activity. I tagged along with
Alexis Díaz Pimienta, who is married to a Spanish woman, Natalia Padilla, from Almería. I
knew they worked with children and I wanted to know more about their approach. On the
bus, I finally got to talk to them, and made arrangements to see them in Havana. The bus
took us to an agricultural cooperative called El Manatí for a guateque, a big party with music,
food, naive art, and of course, plenty of décima in punto cubano. There were little music
ensembles scattered around, best of all a little changüí group of battered farmers that was
authentic in the extreme. It was fun to see a real guateque after the Disney version we saw
saw at the Gala a few nights before at El Cornito. But it was very very hot, and it was a
relief to leave and head off to... well, I had no idea anymore, I just went.

It turned out to be a little resort area on the top of a local peak, and on the very summit
some men were just finishing roasting a pig on a gigantic steel spit. We watched the
dismembering of the wretched creature and enjoyed the view until dinner was called. Our
return was the night of singing and off-color humor I described above, followed by the final
Gala dedicated to Naborí.

Santiago matamanos

The next morning I had to rise at 5:00 to make my Viazul bus to Santiago. This time I was

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prepared, wearning a long sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt as well as my vest, and even so I
was barely warm enough. I had made a reservation at a private home for my Santiago
stay, but the bike taxi guy insisted on taking me to his own choice before I got to where I
was headed. On my arrival I learned that they had ignored my reservation and rented my
room, but they referred me to a lady down the street who was a few bucks cheaper
($15.00 a night) and where I stayed for four nights.

The wonderful surpise was that it turned out that Santiago was having its annual Caribbean
music festival, and there was music everywhere. The problem was there were no
programs available, so my first priority was to find one, and eventually I did, after running all
over town. The program turned out to be of little use, since there were unannounced
changes all the time, but at least I had a general idea of the next few days’ activities.

As I mentioned about 5,000 words ago, I lost my notebook, so I can’t be too detailed
about Santiago. Basically all I did was hear music, make music, and try to avoid being
hustled too badly. I did a little tourism, hitting some museums and touring some
neighborhoods, and I went to a good concert at the Teatro Heredia, but mostly I was after
rumba, and I found it. I had bought a white Kangol cap in Granada, and it turned out to be
like a little sign saying “I’m a rumba wannabee”. A similarly capped man, a percussionist
named Albeni Castellano, was the first to spot me, and he became my guide, helping me
find my way. I treated him to lunch everyday, gave him a few gifts, including a cheap watch
(when I saw he didn’t have one) and a few dollars when I left. So he made out, but he
helped me a lot, and and I was glad for his company most of the time. With his help I met
the house rumba group at the Casa de Cultura, and when they heard me sing they invted
me to perform with them several times.

Albeni also arranged an invitation to play with another ensemble, Rumbatá, from
Guantánamo, who took me to their base in a poor neighborhood. We set up and I sang
with them very happily until the leader called me over and asked me for money. I gave her
some, suddenly understanding that the whole event had been arranged for my benefit with
the hope of getting some cash off me. The other eye opener was when one of the
dancers carressed my arm in the peculiarly seductive way Cuban women do, and asked
me if I enjoyed being with her. “Of yes”, I responded brightly, “I enjoy being with all of
you”.

“No, no”, she said, don’t you want me to “accompany” you?”

I showed her my wedding ring. “Look at this. I am always accompanied.”

I left soon after. At lunch I discussed these events with Albeni, not sure if I’d read them

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correctly. Unfortunately, I had.

There was another event, too depressing and yet too trivial to relate, in which another guy
deceived me just to get me to buy him a cheap bottle of booze, with the result that I lost a
chance to perform with another rumba group on the main stage of the festival. No real
damage was done; I was out a few bucks, and I missed a chance to parade my vanity. The
worst part was the knowledge that I’d been suckered. I had been warned that Santiago
was rife with these sorts of petty hustlers, and such was my experience.

The other thing that happened in Santiago was that I talked to a lot of people about the
state of affairs in Cuba. I got all sorts of opinions, and not much consensus; the only thing
that people agreed with was that the economy, while better than 1995, was still rough, and
that it was hard to make ends meet. One person told me bitterly that the whole revolution
was a lie, while another said that while the revolution had good and bad aspects, the final
balance was positive in terms of social services and the end of racism. One person said
Fidel was actually crazy and that his wild ideas were wrecking the country, citing the 10
million ton sugar harvest crusade and the soybean craze, while another said that he and his
friends admired Fidel but not the system, and that when Fidel died the whole thing would fall
apart. People were always asking me about how the US media skewed its coverage, but
readily admitted that the Cuban media were tightly controlled by the government.

Later, in Havana, I asked one guy I trusted about all these contradictory opinions; he
laughed and said that Cubans don’t understand their own country, it’s impossible for a
foreigner to do so. So I don’t pretend to have any sort of handle on Cuba. At least things
appear to be less extreme than they were in 1995, when the widespread desperation and
cynicism depressed me mightily. I saw poverty (a teacher’s house where they have to get
water from a filthy river) but no rampant misery like I saw in post-revolutionary Nicaragua, for
example, or on Haight Street for that matter. I saw government propaganda of the crudest
kind, fear of expressing one’s mind, and disturbing hints of a cult of personality; yet people
maintain a critical consciousness and speak their mind with conviction, albeit with caution.

The general level of culture seems very high; people certainly are literate and read all kinds
of material, consuming poetry ravenously. Criticism of Fidel is the one absolutely forbidden
topic, I was told, but the print media at least seems to be opening up. I didn’t read much
other than décima books, but a history article in a literary magazine I picked up was
surprisingly tough on the Soviet Union.

There is a very strange economy in place, with dollars and pesos circulating at the same
time, which means that everything is available to people who have dollars. That

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priviledged group includes all who work off the tourist industry, in legitimate, semi-legit, or
illegal activities, and the many Cubans who receive money from relatives overseas.
Ranking Party members and their children live well, I heard from several sources, and
apparently many campesinos are doing well also, but salaried workers with no scam on the
side are in trouble; salaries run from a minimun of six dollars a month to highs of about 35
dollars for a top level professional with seniority. Services (phone, light, water) and some
goods (especially books) are cheap, but the monthly food ration lasts only 10 days or so,
and they gotta eat, not to mention buy a pair of shoes once in a while. And somehow,
people looked pretty sharp, even in Las Tunas. So, as I said, I don’t get it.

Havana Gila

It was all fun, but I was starting to get stressed by the constant hassling, the hustling, the
heat, a bad belly, and lonliness (I began to miss my family more and more). There were
some good events coming up in Santiago, but I went down to the Cubana office and used
my Spanish Mastercard to buy a plane ticket to Havana. I had another freezing flight and
reached Havana near sundown. As arranged, I went to the home of a woman I’d made
friends with in Las Tunas. She had found me a room rental nearby and took me there.

I spent my last four days in Havana, sleeping at this rented room and eating dinner with this
lady and her family (clever husband and two darling teenage children). I welcomed this
family environment which went a long way to soothing my blues. The woman works for the
ministry of culture and was well connected. She took me to the Hemingway
museum/house, insisting we take the camello bus so I’d get an idea the way Cubans travel,
and arranged for me to have two interviews with El Indio Naborí. I also arranged three
interesting visits on my own. I visited the Gran Palenque to observe a singing class, visited
the Callejón de Hamell again (where I saw my buddy Sue Matthews), and I went out to the
Instituto Superior de Arte to see Alexis Díaz Pimienta conduct a demonstration class in
teaching children the art of repentismo, or décima improvisation.

This last class gave me the opportunity to sing one more time, and as the circumstances
were unusual, I will try your patience with one more self-serving anecdote. The thing was
that the class was held in a windowless basement room, and the electricity failed four times
during the class, plunging the class into pitch darkness and cutting off power to the television
crew who was there to tape the class for national TV. After the second blackout I jotted
down a little décima about the darkness in my notebook, and when the third apagón hit, I
was thinking of busting it out. But then the little band (lute, guitar, and clave) started playing
the Tonada Española, the minor-key Punto Cubano melody that is reminiscent of
Flamenco. I had heard Tomasita sing it several times and it seemed a lot more practical for

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me to sing than the more common but elusive Tonada Vueltabajera.

So, when the spot came around where I could sing, I took a deep breath and jumped in
with the first two lines of my décima, protected by the impenetrable gloom. Nobody told
me to shut up and the band continued to play, so I finished the song, getting it as close as I
could to the real melody. Later I asked Alexis if I had been too forward in venturing the
décima, and he turned to me, puzzled. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“You know, the song I sang in the dark.”

“That was YOU?” He was astonished. “I thought it was one of the TV guys.” For once my
accent did not betray me.

Alexis and Natalia took me out for a beer, where we discussed a range of topics. When
we left I pulled Alexis’ new book on décima improv. for a dedication, and it was then that I
discovered my notebook was gone. Alexis and Natalia generously drove me back across
town to look for the book, but it did not turn up. Ni modo. I had my last meal with my
friends,chatted our last chat, exchanged our last gifts. I walked home, 15 minutes through
Centro Havana, packed up my suitcase, and got to bed.

In the morninng I had to walk with my heavy case to the Habana Libre hotel, where my ride
would pick me up. The backpack straps really came in handy this time. The trip home was
without incidents worth reporting (although once again the Cuban immigration officer studied
my my passport picture suspiciously for the longest time; I told her ‘It’s me all right; the
years have been cruel.”), and I had no problems with US immigration regarding my Cuba
stay. Marilyn was there to greet me. We spent the night in San Francisco and drove up to
Sacramento the next day. I was back, even if still not “home” exactly. We’ll be in
Sacramento another ten days before we can start to move in to our house, and we will be
travelling again on August first to visit the Long Island cousins and prepare Joe García’s
East Coast memorial service.

In the meantime I will be helping out around here; my first task will be clearing out Joe’s
monumental garage, getting rid of old Chiltons manuals, defunct appliances that only Joe
could ever have fixed, and cans of paint and lubricants. As I schlepp I will ponder the
emotions and events of this last whirlwind of a month, and try to get my head screwed on
straight for the return to real life, that is, the beginning of the school year.

Long-windedly,
Philip “Felipe” Pasmanick, the king of the 10-liner

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