Steven’s Cuba Blog

Faces of Cuba - footage and interviews from The Island

I’ve been doing some video work at home for an unrelated project, and came across some footage that I shot just over a year ago in Cuba. I wanted to use it as the beginning of a documentary about Cuba, a sort of question and answer session with everyday Cubans I’d met. It was an effort to document Cuba from the perspective of the people who live there.

As these things tend to do, it got buried behind other projects and work that I later focused on. Instead of letting the video collect dust, though, I’ve decided to put it all up here. The three posts below contain most of the footage, lightly edited.

The questions were very straightforward and apolitical - jobs, activities, plans. Dreams. The footage is mostly shot while traveling or walking around a city.

Lastly - and most importantly - I’ve decided to release all of the footage into the public domain. You can take the video, remix it, edit it, use it for your own purposes, etc. It belongs to the Public Domain. It would be cool if you could drop me an email or a comment if you do decide to use it for your own work, though - just to satisfy my curiosity.

You can download the entire clip (ignore most of the captions; they’re no longer valid) here at the Internet Archive.

Faces Of Cuba 1 - Havana, Cuba

This is the Havana chapter of the footage from “Faces of Cuba I”, a documentary which I decided not to release.

Instead, I’m putting the raw footage up into the public domain. Hopefully someone will find it useful and / or interesting.

Faces Of Cuba 2 - Trinidad de Cuba

This is the second chunk of lightly edited footage from the Faces of Cuba I reel. It is from Trinidad de Cuba and the surrounding area, just over a year ago.

It is in the public domain.

Faces Of Cuba 3 - Villa Clara

The third and last piece of footage from Faces of Cuba I. This was filmed in Villa Clara (mostly Santa Clara). It’s released into the Public Domain.

Turning the page.

Not having posted anything here in over a month - and not having posted anything of substance in longer than that - I’ve been feeling ambivalent as to how to continue writing about Cuba, which is ironic because I’ve never been short of words in the past.

I’ve already said that I love Cuba, and nearly everything about it and its people. It’s the closest place on Earth to home that I can find, yet it’s also maddening that there is so much that seems to be left undone. But I am not Cuban. I don’t live in Cuba, with all its beauty, its problems, its dreams, its hopes, and most of all, its people. Some of the most sincere, no-bullshit, and fun people I’ve ever met are in Cuba. I, however, won’t ever know what it’s like to wake up in the morning knowing that the Playas del Este are only a short bike ride from my house. I won’t know the frustrations of being a working professional, trying to improve the lot of my society… yet struggling to make ends meet, while the bartender who serves me drinks is dressed in the latest fashions. I’ll never understand the joys of being a student in a Cuban grade school, or the indignity of being stopped and having my ID checked when I’m taking my girlfriend out for the night. I won’t know how difficult it is to try to acquire a car in Santiago de Cuba, or how easy it is to just live off the land and be at peace with oneself off the coast of la Isla de la Juventud.

When I started this blog, I took an oath with myself to try and stay as non-partisan as I could. I talked about my trips, the things I’d seen and how they affected me, personally. I talked about current events, trying to keep my own feelings and opinions, and the way things appeared as filtered through the prism of my own eyes. Most of all, I wasn’t ever trying to tell Cuba’s story, but only my own, as I passed through the valleys and towns that dot the island’s landscape. Despite all this, I was treated as someone with a political agenda, on both - as if there were only two - sides of the political arena. Those on the left called me a selfish liar, a sellout and a profiteer when I’d mention things like how I had to wait in lines longer when I was mistaken for a local Cuban. I received my very first death threats - two, to be exact - shortly after returning from my first Cuban trip, a two-month bicycle odyssey that changed my life and was the reason for this blog’s existence. Both of those threats were via emails that can be tracerouted back to Miami, Florida; seems I’m not very popular on Calle Ocho.

Now, it’s been almost exactly one year to the day that I haven’t returned to Cuba. I’ve lost touch with many of the friends and colleagues I’d met - though not all - and haven’t followed Cuban developments as well as I had in the past. I do, however, have a will to continue writing and refocus my attention on Cuba and Cuban affairs. I avoided doing this over the past few months because I had something of an apprehension to writing something that seem too partisan or biased, on either side of the fence. Now that I’ve distanced myself a little from the subject matter, though, that fear has dissolved into a drive to say what I feel is right, as seen from my own eyes. Rightists will call me a communist and Leftists will call me a fascist, and you know what?

That’s just fine with me.

I think it’s amazing that a well-known writer in the Cuban exile community can make a thinly veiled suggestion that Havana should be hit with Nuclear Weapons, and not have anyone else in the media even make a mention of it. It’s also ridiculous that I cannot even invite friends in Cuba to visit me without going through a wholly unreasonable ’screening process’.

A bunch of cranky, greedy old men with bad memories and their suburb SoBe grandkids who have never even been to Cuba basically control a huge swath of the political spectrum in the most powerful country in the world. If you are are a presidential candidate in the US, you pretty much cannot win without Florida, and that means that you cannot win on an agenda that doesn’t include the continued aggression and punishment against Cuba and its people, at the behest of the aforementioned bloodthirsty villagers with torches and pitchforks. In a very real sense, as someone of Iraqi descent, I feel that Cuban-Americans share a huge deal of the responsibility for the invasion of Iraq, and the slaughter of countless innocents.

On the other hand, things inside Cuba aren’t that much better. When I was in Eastern Europe a few days ago, I felt an eerie deja vu of 80s communist or ex-communist party members dining at fine restaurants with a beautiful girl 1/3 of their age hanging off their shoulders (actually, Budapest still felt like that a little) while the real ‘proletariat’ didn’t see very much improvement in their lives during a revolution which was supposedly intended to make everybody equal. Cuba is in a very real danger of being overrun by corruption, and even if it wins that fight, the sheer amount of bureaucracy required to get the simplest permit or license is enough to put most people off from ever achieving what they set out to do in the first place.

So, we are where we are. Now what? No one knows, least of all me, but the least I can do is to continue speaking my mind and writing about Cuba - a topic that everyone seems to be an expert on and no one wants to compromise on.

Cubans treat man who killed Che

BBC NEWS | Americas | Cubans treat man who killed Che

Cuban doctors working in Bolivia have saved the sight of the man who executed revolutionary leader Che Guevara in 1967, Cuban official media report.

Mario Teran, a Bolivian army sergeant, shot dead Che Guevara after he was captured in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands.

Cuban media reported news of the surgery ahead of the 40th anniversary of Che’s death on 9 October.

Mr Teran had cataracts removed under a Cuban programme to offer free eye treatment across Latin America.

Arabs in Cuba

Being of Iraqi-Assyrian descent, it’s understandable that I was caught by surprise walking down the Prado in Havana and seeing arabic script on some signs, or noticing the moorish influences on so many of the buildings.

But the arab influence in Cuba goes beyond merely architecture; indeed, Arabs had a part to play in many chapters of Cuba’s history.

While Havana’s Arab community is not large by any standard, they have their own “union” and community centers, museum, mosque for those who practice Islam, and even an Arabic restaurant (which I haven’t tried yet). You can even easily take Arabic lessons - for free, something that I can’t do almost anywhere else.

Violence drives Palestinians from homes - to Cuba
Arabs in Cuba - from the earliest times
The Arabs of Havana

technorati tags:cuba, havana, arabs

Do Cubans sweat?

This title is a bit of a joke - but there’s some truth to it.

I was standing in line outside a Cadeca (Casa de Cambio - Currency Exchange) in Santa Clara the other day, with about 100 Cubans waiting to get inside to change some money. It was about 10am, and the heat was already starting to get to everyone.

I fit in perfectly with everyone else - jeans, clean running shoes, white “New Balance” tee. At first we were in the sun, but then the line snaked around under part of the building so after about 20 minutes I was in the shade.

But one thing gave me away: as we were just standing in line, not doing anything, all the Cubans looked perfectly normal, and dry as a desert, as if playing a part in some anti-perspirant TV ad. I, however, was literally dripping sweat. My shirt was drenched, and my forehead and cheeks had little streaks going down them. I didn’t have a towel handy, so every now and then I’d wipe my face with my shirt - not the best way to impress the beautiful girls standing in line with me.

After I got in and changed my money, I walked back home, took my 2nd shower in as many hours, and changed my clothes - then headed out the door again.

Request for donations from the Cuba Aids Project:

A $2 REQUEST FROM YOU: We have a special project that needs funding.

ALL HIV/AIDS patients are equally important to us, but we have 2 that need special attention. Both are woman who were infected through no fault of their own under special circumstances. One has three young children who need clothes, updated household amenities and other special needs. The other is a very young woman whose family also has very similar needs.

We’d like to target $3,000 to help both of these families but we just don’t have the money. We have 1,600 people who are receiving this email. If everyone can donate just a couple of bucks, we can see this project through very quickly. 100% of it will go to purchasing the necessary items for them.

Please, if you can, find a way to help. If you can donate, here’s where you can find the info to do so >> http://www.cubaaidsproject.com/donate.php. We will keep a running tab on our website.