Slow Train to Guantanamo (20 page)

It turns out to be a lot closer than I had feared, something I realize when we pass the first building I recognize, the local office of the CDR,
Comités de Defensa de la Revolución
, with its ever-vigilant doorman, dozed off in a shabby armchair. I notice Juanito takes care not to wake him. These offices, one to be found in every district of every town, are the often dozy but nonetheless omnipresent eyes and ears of the party, political patriots, the ones with most to lose if ever the revolution should be reversed.

Juanito leaves me at the door of my little bungalow with a
ciao, compañero, hasta mañana
. We agree to meet at 3 p.m. on the square.

Somehow I just know he isn’t going to show.

6
. Coincidentally the same name was given to the capital city of the neighbouring island, Haïti. When the French captured it in the seventeenth century they changed the spelling to Port au Prince, but couldn’t alter the way the natives’ referred to it, which is why today it is properly pronounced ‘Prince’ after the almost identical English and Spanish fashion rather than the nasal French ‘Pr-AH-ns’.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Cu’a e’ Cu’a

Juanito’s unsolicited saloon bar language tuition has been little short of a miracle. All of sudden I’ve started to understanda bit more, And be a bit more understood. The explanation of the missing ‘s’ is a revelation. When I ask the girl behind the Plexiglas the time of today’s train eastwards, she looks blank for a moment and then says something that sounds like, ‘Ahhh latoona’, I can now nod enthusiastically. Yep, a Las Tunas, that’s where I want to go. The bad news is that it was at 4 a.m. this morning. The worse news is that it was indeed the only one and the next is tomorrow at ‘ochimaya’ – las ocho y media – 8.30, which means of course that I need to be there at 6.30.

This is not good news, but
Cu’a e’ Cu’a
, as they say. There is nothing to do beyond chilling my heels for another eighteen hours and, more immediately pressing, chilling my parched throat and resting my sore feet. This turns out to be surprisingly easy and pleasant, because against all common sense, logic and anticipation, at the other end of the station, abutting the near derelict puce semi-ruins, there is an open-air bar, with high stools, electric fans and cold beer.

I perch myself there with a cold can and, for lack of anything better, a view of the television which is playing that most riveting of programmes, the Cuban review of international news. The big item, probably not playing high on many
other news editors’ agendas right now – except possibly, just possibly, and even then I wouldn’t bet on it, in Caracas – is a meeting of the Cuban–Venezuelan Intergovernmental Commission, which has ‘concluded with the signing of important contracts’.

Just what those ‘contracts’ might be is obviously not mentioned. This is government business. All the average Cuban citizen needs to know, in the eyes of the national news media, is that his government is doing good stuff for him. Precisely what that ‘good stuff’ might be, or who is paying for it, is no business of the common man. That does not mean it is all bullshit. The Cuban–Venezuelan ‘oil for doctors’ deal also happens to fit pretty precisely with the old mantra of communist economics: ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’.

There is also the fact, unknown to me at the time sitting by the bar in Camagüey, that Chavez was just about willing to sign anything in return for treatment by Cuban doctors for a cancer which he at one stage alleged might have been deliberately caused by United States secret services.

That may sound ridiculous – and I am fairly certain it is, but only fairly, because I have to remember that when I lived in Moscow as a British reporter, the US embassy solemnly informed us its intelligence assets had proof the KGB had treated the steering wheels of certain westerners’ vehicles with chemicals that would allow them to trace our movements, and which incidentally happened to be carcinogenic. These were the same guys who had put metal grids on the street-facing windows of their apartments because they believed that the KGB was beaming carcinogenic rays into their kitchens. The same guys who had planted an explosive charge in a cigar in an attempt to kill Castro. The same guys who, after spending a fortune on Soviet workers to build them a new embassy in Moscow, allegedly discovered that
the concrete walls were riddled with electronic listening devices. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you. Like being schizophrenic doesn’t mean there aren’t two sides to every story.

The secondary item on Cuban news on this bright sunny June morning is a meeting of the ‘International Campaign of Solidarity with the Five’. The ‘Cuban Five’ are a big issue in Cuba, and despite the so-called ‘international campaign of solidarity’, pretty much a non-issue anywhere else in the world, not least because of the confused and complex nature of US–Cuban relations. You may not have heard of them, but it is hard to travel anywhere on Cuba without seeing posters dedicated to the five men jailed in Miami in 2001.

Here, for example, from the official posters displayed at Havana airport is a ‘question and answer’ on ‘the five’.

‘Who are the five Cuban heroes jailed in the USA?’

‘Five young professionals who decided to devote their lives away from their homeland, to fight against terrorism in the city of Miami, the hub of most aggressions against Cuba. The five men were put on a manipulated trial in Miami, a completely hostile city dominated by a Cuban-origin mafia, where no fair and impartial trial was possible in keeping with US and international laws.’

On the other hand, here is the version on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Five):

‘The Cuban Five, also known as the Miami Five (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González) are five Cuban intelligence officers convicted in Miami of conspiracy to commit espionage, conspiracy to commit murder, and other illegal activities in the United States. The Five were in the United States to observe and infiltrate the US Southern Command and the Cuban–American groups Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation, and Brothers to the Rescue.’

Wikipedia is of course, the online encyclopaedia anyone can edit and many people do, often to make the ‘facts’ fit their own interpretation. As of January 2012, its editors added the note that ‘The neutrality of this article is disputed’ and redirects the reader to the ‘talk page’, where it becomes obvious that ‘disputed is an understatement. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cuban_Five)

Personally I have no idea of the truth of this case: their appeals against conviction were overturned by a US court in Atlanta in 2005 but a subsequent court decision reinstated them. I hold it up as yet one more proof that what most people consider to be historical truth depends on who wrote the history they read.

René González was released on parole a few months after this on condition that he spend the next three years in the United States, despite claims from his supporters that his life is in danger there from anti-Castro exiles. At the time of writing however (March 2012) he has just been granted permission for a limited two-week visit to his sick brother back home. Watch this space.

Meanwhile back in Camagüey, Ramón somebody or other, another member of the Cuban politburo whom nobody knows, is delivering a lecture to a regional party congress in Las Tunas. One day, maybe soon, he or one another of the relative nonentities chosen by the Castro brothers over the past half century may take over, but until they do, nobody much, even in Cuba, pays much attention to their personalities. My only interest is that this is happening in Las Tunas where I am hoping to put my head down tomorrow night. Even with my Spanish, newly tuned to Cuban rhythm and pronunciation, working on overload attention, I soon start to nod off over my beer, partly of course because my metabolism is still working equally hard on last night’s alcohol intake, but also because there’s only so much party political
Orwellian newspeak gobbledygook anybody can cope with in any language.

The bar staff are clearly immune. I slide off my stool and slope back townwards. Half-way along Calle República, the city’s main drag, I encounter the best reason I could have imagined for another rest stop, the Hotel Colón, named for Christopher Columbus (
Colón
in Spanish) with cool colonnades, pastel-painted pillars and ancient leather furniture, I commit the heresy of wishing I had eschewed my incongruous middle class
casa
bungalow for a bit of communist-preservedold colonial style, even if the air-conditioning isn’t working.

That is getting to be a problem. It’s hot. Very hot. And so am I. Not least because I’m wearing heavy denim jeans, and it’s 35ºC out there with a humidity factor of close on 70 per cent. The sweat – as my Northern Irish father would have said if he ever experienced such temperatures (and he did in India during the Second World War) – is dripping off me. The simple solution is to slip into something more comfortable, except that I haven’t got anything more comfortable; the only pair of long cotton shorts I brought with me didn’t survive being soaked through in Santa Clara and then drying out stuck to my steamy body. So there’s nothing for it but to go shopping. Except that it’s Sunday. And I’m in Cuba.

The former isn’t necessarily a problem, as the shops are all open to midday. The latter is. And one I’m already anticipating, despite the fact that in Camagüey’s meagre couple of shopping streets, there is no apparent shortage of lightweight summer apparel in the window displays. But then I’ve lived in Communist countries before. On a journalistic trip back to Moscow in the late Eighties – a year or two after I left – Virgin Atlantic managed to lose my suitcase, with the result that for two days I had to borrow the
Sunday Times
foreign editor’s underpants, because in the current phase of
whatever five-year plan was then in operation, underpants were ‘off’.

And so it proves. Yep, there are cotton shorts in the window. No, there aren’t any on the rails inside. And no, of course the ones in the window aren’t on sale: ‘They’re in the window’. ‘We have lots of swimming shorts?’ And they do, but lime-green above the knee with a netting gusset wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. The only other choice is the same in purple. Does anybody know where I might find ordinary cotton shorts? Or even lightweight summer trousers? Sorry, sir, this is all there is.

Eventually the doorman at a peso shop on República tells me to try a CUC shop on Maceo, the polished granite paved pedestrian street that is obviously intended to be the showpiece for foreign tourists. Bizarrely it’s called Futurama, although Bender and Leela are reassuringly absent. And yes, they have shorts: 12 pairs. All different. One fits. Which means that if I don’t want to spend the next few days in my sweaty heavy denim jeans (I know, I should pack better) then it’s a pair of heavier than I would like blue knee-length heavy cotton shorts with a disconcerting elasticated waistband. Imported from Italy no less!!! Not exactly the cheap, locally-made cut-offs I had been hoping for. The one consolation, not least in a country where you’re carrying two currencies, as well as ID, phone card, and nigh on useless credit cards, is that they have lots of pockets. They cost me CUC 31.75, just over £20 ($30), which is rather more than I would have paid in Debenhams, but then there isn’t a Debenhams in Camagüey.

Changed and feeling mildly cooler, or at least better ventilated, I head for the main square and my rendezvous with Juanito. But 1 p.m. comes and goes and no Juanito. I wonder if he’s slept in; it wasn’t entirely clear when we parted in the early hours of the morning that he was heading home. There
was more than a touch of the all-night party person to his demeanour. But somehow I know that’s not it either. I find myself unconsciously hoping he’s maybe decided he was a bit too free in his conversation with a foreigner and decided to lie low. I’m hoping it’s that. And not that someone else thought the same, someone else who was listening. Someone who might have done themselves a service by doing the state a service and Juanito a disservice. Part of me doesn’t believe it – not least because none of me wants to – but there is also a part that isn’t sure. Because even as the tourists start to turn up, Juanito doesn’t.

I can’t help having a bad feeling about this. My subconscious is reminding me that Camagüey has a reputation. It has been a pirates’ target and a den of pirates in succession, but more recently – and more relevantly – it was the last place where one of the heroes of the revolution was seen alive. Camilo Cienfuegos was a dashing, bearded revolutionary and one of Castro’s intimates. He came back from exile with him onboard the
Granma
and was a charismatic, extreme left-wing leader whose style and zeal could have made him a rival to both Fidel and Che Guevara. But on the night of October 28, 1959, just 10 months after the revolutionaries’ victory, he boarded a Cessna 310 for Havana and was never seen again.

Despite an intense land-sea search no trace of the Cessna or Cienfuegos’ body was ever found. The revolution had a martyr and Fidel and Che lost a close colleague, who might also have been a close rival. On that basis there have been persistent rumours ever since – largely stoked by anti-Castroexiles in Miami – that Cienfuegos was killed on Castro’s orders. There has never been any proof, nor any real reason other than the joys of conspiracy theory, to believe it. Castro not only tolerated his biggest rival, Guevara, but put him on a pedestal as a national icon. Cienfuegos’ face is on
the 20 peso note, while Che named his own son Camilo after Cienfuegos.

An alternative theory which might go a long way to explaining the hero’s disappearance and the absence of any explanation is that Cienfeugos’ light aircraft was mistaken for a hostile spy plane by the revolutionary Cuban air force, who accidentally shot it down, and the embarrassment then and since was simply too great to admit it. There is of course also the possibility that it really was just lost because of an air accident. But as a firm believer in the cock-up theory of history, I like the second explanation not least because amongst the acts for which the Order of Cienfuegos, a medal institutedin the dead hero’s memory, can be awarded is shooting down an aircraft. There’s a sense of irony about it which I’d like to think was conscious.