Word: havanas
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Damaris was one of the dancers who used to perform with our band--more than 40 years after the Mafia quit Havana, some Cubans still like their music accompanied by girls in slinky sequined outfits with tail feathers. Damaris and the drummer, Piri, wound up having a daughter together but eventually divorced. He moved to Mexico, found a new wife and had another child. So Damaris is raising their child alone in a small apartment in the shadow of the capitol...
...result of a supply chain gone insane. Chinese influence is everywhere here--from the ubiquitous Yutong buses to the new renovations financed by the Chinese at Lenin Park on the outskirts of town and the three channels of Chinese state-run television that play in Havana hotel rooms. But unlike in the U.S., China hasn't flooded the island with cheap consumer goods--at least not cheap enough...
However Cuba changes, there will be difficult times with its neighbor to the north. Even before the murderous enticement of Washington's wet-foot, dry-foot policy that rewards Cubans who survive the trip across the waters with citizenship (while denying many visa requests made through proper channels in Havana)--even before Fidel Castro--relationships have been uneasy between Cuba and the U.S., which essentially colonized the island after Spain left in 1898. There was the U.S. administrator who in the early 1900s announced plans to "whiten" the population. And the 1901 Platt Amendment, which helped carve the U.S. Naval...
...getting back into it now, despite the constant anxiety over money. He plays for tourists in Old Havana but earns just a few dollars a night. The strings for his instrument are made out of recycled telephone wire; he cuts his guitar picks from shampoo bottles. He is still restless, eager for an upgrade in life...
...whole island feels on a similar knife's edge. Should Raúl Castro weaken, there are still a dozen aging Ahmed Chalabis waiting in Miami to return from exile and divide the spoils among themselves. Should there be rebellion in the streets in Havana, there's still a state militancy that could bring blood to the Malecón. But the new generation of Cubans both here and abroad are of a milder bent, with gentler aspirations. A cabdriver I met launched into a familiar refrain: most of his family fled to Tampa when Fidel Castro stole their lands...