Island that Dared by Dervla Murphy Read Free Book Online

an English possession and forging a Santiago-Jamaica trade link. Spain could do nothing to hinder the brisk ‘informal’ trade in copper, sugar and slaves that soon developed to the mutual benefit of Oriente and Jamaica.
    Thus Santiago evolved as a predominantly creole city, resentful of any peninsulare-directed meddling in its commercial affairs. Oriente men led all Cuba’s nineteenth-century wars of independence and around Santiago battles were frequent. Many Oriente campesiños supported Fidel’s guerrillas as they fought the US- and UK-armed troops of Cuba’s military dictator, the mulatto Fulgencio Batista Zaldivar. With some justification, Santiago proudly describes itself as the ‘the cradle of the Revolution’.
     
    As some of my readers will be aware, I’m not an urban person. Shortly after arriving in a city – any city, however historical, beautiful or politically intriguing – my mind strays towards the exit. So why (I asked myself in the taxi to Viazul) did Havana not have the same effect? Was it because the habaneros behave more like villagers than like urban dwellers? I looked forward to spending longer among them on my solo return.
    The Viazul terminus has an airport taint. Glossy coffee-table volumes of scenic photographs fill the little bookstall, unappealing souvenirs gather dust in display cases, revolving stands show postcards (printed in Italy) of stereotypical Cuban activities. Spaced-out processed passengers sit in mute orderly rows while new arrivals queue to have each item of luggage weighed, labelled and pushed away on trolleys. Another queue ensures a seat number chit so skimpy one has to concentrate hard on not losing it. From corners, impassive anti- jineterismo police watch over all. Our Oriente journeys would, we hoped, be very different – and they were …
    Many of our fellow-passengers being Cuban surprised me; Viazul was initiated for tourists only. Cuba’s sudden dependence on foreigners’ hard currency agitated Fidel, who fantasised about protecting Revolutionary standards behind what came to be derided as ‘tourism apartheid’. No relevant law existed, yet from 1992–97 Cubans seen in conversation with tourists were often reprimanded and occasionally arrested. Then, a fewmonths before the papal visit of January 1998, the official mood abruptly changed and normal relations became possible. Yet the ‘apartheid’ policy hasn’t sunk without trace. Quite a few Cubans, especially in the provinces, remain uncertain about how they should react to unpackaged foreigners.
    Soon after a punctual departure at 6.15 p.m., the Trio were sound asleep and as Rachel studied our map, planning treks, I watched the crimson sun sinking towards a frieze of royal palms and distant factory stacks. Havana’s twentieth-century accretions cover many miles and offer nothing distinctively Cuban, apart from numerous Che Guevara portraits on gable ends and huge wayside hoardings exhorting the citizenry to do their bit to keep the Revolution on course.
    As early as the 1930s Cuba was an exception in Latin America, most Cubans being city-dwellers. When tourism’s possibilities attracted many more to the capital, Fidel began to have nightmares about mushrooming shanty-towns threatening public health yet he dared not put the hungry Cubans on too tight a rein by forbidding ‘change of residence’. April 1997 saw a compromise, a new law restricting job-seekers to one-month absences from their native place: thus, at intervals, all would have a chance to earn a few convertible pesos.
    On Cuba’s Central highway, built in the 1930s and well maintained, the traffic was light. At 10.15 we parked outside an imitation of a US fast-foodery on the edge of an anonymous town. Here most passengers supped and I sauntered to and fro with an earnest young Australian journalist, tanned and long-limbed and puzzled by Cuba. How come so many habaneros were so jolly and welcoming when they were so deprived ? On the bus