I'll go to Santiago

Leonid Velekhov

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The Cuban province is poor, almost impoverished, colorful and charming

Cuba is a dark Madonna, Lorca called her. A series of essays by Leonid Velekhov is about this country, about its people who never lose heart, about its cities, many of which are real masterpieces. For continuation, see the beginning in “Results” No. 27 , No. 29

Santiago de Cuba is the “second capital” of the country, the most Caribbean, as they say, of its cities. Not only its atmosphere, but also its architecture is completely different from other Cuban cities. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )

Cuba is Havana, residents of the capital like to say, “the rest is landscape.” This is, of course, not true. In addition to Havana, there are cities of remarkable beauty and originality with their own great history. Another thing is that poor Cuban life drives people from the periphery to the capital, where only they can earn money, get an education, and make a career. And the province, left to its own devices, withers and becomes empty. This, in fact, happens in every poor country: we know this well from ourselves.

The Cuban province, with the exception of those few places through which tourist routes pass, is a sad sight. Poor houses, gray, dusty streets, pavements that have not been repaired for a long time, empty grocery stores where you can “shop” only with food cards, and the meager set of products due on these cards - sugar, rice, cigarettes, coffee - are sometimes not delivered by several months.

Those few economic changes that I wrote about in the first essay and which changed the face of Havana almost did not affect the province. Of course, theoretically, here, in some Madruga - a town with several tens of thousands of inhabitants, 60 km from Havana - you can open your own restaurant under the draconian conditions that the state sets for private owners. But who will go to it here?

To survive, you have to resort to tricks other than in the capital. My friend in the same Madruga, a certified pediatrician, breeds rabbits. True, he is obliged to hand them over to the state, but rabbits, as you know, multiply rapidly, and even the omnipresent Cuban state is not able to take into account the entire offspring. Another is raising a piglet in the tiny courtyard of his house. The pig is adjacent to the kitchen, during lunch its smells clearly dominate the aromatic spirit of the black bean stew, but what can you do? Someone is selling washing powder, buying it “in bulk” in Havana, in a foreign exchange store, and then reselling it to fellow countrymen in small portions. And all provincial life was “structured” in this manner. There is nothing in the stores, but everyone knows that for powder, when you need it, you need to go to Eudymia, for kerosene - to Luisito, a piece of pork for Christmas can be bought from Luis - he cuts his pig exactly at this time, and for Easter - at Papo's

In general, people live. And the Cuban province, although poor, is full of its own color and charm.

I always hold Cuba in my teeth
Pinar del Rio is the westernmost province of Cuba. And the climate here is not as swelteringly hot and humid as on the rest of the island, and nowhere else in Cuba will you find such picturesque landscapes: mountains covered with giant wild orchids, valleys, palm trees interspersed with pine trees.

Dozens of plantations replace one another - sugar cane, citrus fruits, mangoes, tobacco, coffee. Here is the most fertile land on the entire island, but the main wealth of Pinar del Rio is, of course, tobacco. For him, God laid special soil here: red soil with an ideal mixture of sand for this culture. It is here that the best varieties of black cigar tobacco are grown, which is used to make the most expensive cigars - “Cohiba”, as well as “Montecristo”, “Romeo and Juliet - Churchill”, “Vegueros”.

A connoisseur of Cuban cigars, Winston Churchill liked to say: “I always hold a Cuba in my teeth” - as is known, he never let a cigar out of his mouth. After Churchill's death, Cuba, perhaps wanting to get even for this ambiguous joke, gave the brand that Churchill loved, Romeo and Juliet, his name as a second, additional name. Kind of like Churchill's Romeo and Juliet. It turned out that Churchill can now be held in his teeth."

But Cohiba is still considered the best cigar in the world. Each tobacco leaf is dried and processed for two years. The cost of one cigar – especially if it is a “piece” version, like those that Comandante smokes and sends as gifts to his friends – can reach several hundred dollars.

In general, the cigar is surrounded by a whole cloud of legends that can be told endlessly. It’s like the fact that in the old days, after cutting a tobacco leaf, they would certainly roll it out on the thigh of a mulatto woman so that it would absorb, so to speak, her vital juices. Or that plantation workers went to harvest in snow-white linen guyaberas - traditional national shirts - and the best pickers remained perfectly clean even after work (and we must take into account that the tobacco leaf reaches two and a half meters in height, and the picker wanders between these plants like Thumbelina). But these are all myths. It is worth visiting a modern tobacco factory in Pinar del Rio to see how far from reality they are.

No, the technological process at the famous Francisco Donatien tobacco factory in Pinar, with a two-hundred-year history, is apparently guarded sacredly: cigars are a source of currency for Cuba. But the people who roll these cigars and bring millions of dollars of income to the country: what snow-white clothes are there!

I end up at the factory with a group of foreign tourists. We walk between rows of tables that look like school desks, at which cigars are rolled, and from all sides hands reach out to us and a pleading whisper sounds: “Una moneda! Una moneda, por favor!” For some, the coin lies glittering on the edge of the table - as if as a hint. Some of the tourists, the most prudent ones, brought with them bags of caramel, cookies, and chewing gum. All this is instantly snatched from your hands - just like hungry animals cannot wait until they put a piece in a bowl, and they grab it, almost pulling your fingers. One of the workers timidly asks: “Didn’t they bring soap?”

What is this? Some kind of workhouse from a Dickens novel. However, none of our escorts are embarrassed by this picture. They are just busily instructing us on how to distribute this impromptu humanitarian aid. And last week, the guide says, a crowd of sufferers almost overturned a tourist bus.


Outwardly, life in a Cuban village looks even poorer than the city. It is worth driving a little away from Trinidad to see peasant dwellings like those in the photo on the right - not even shacks, but strange nests clinging to the rocky mountain slopes. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )

Slave Niña
The amazing town lies four hundred kilometers east of Havana on the Caribbean coast, as if pressed to the water's edge by the Escambray mountains, which surrounded it on three sides. This is Trinidad, once one of the main, richest and most prosperous cities in Cuba. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the main sugar cane plantations and dozens of central plants - factories for processing cane into sugar - were concentrated here.

But in the 30s of the last century, a railway was built in Cuba - the first, by the way, in all of Latin America and the seventh in the world - and it was brought to neighboring Cienfuegos, but did not reach Trinidad. And the city quickly began to lose ground. “The rich and energetic moved to Cienfuegos, but the poor and lazy remained in Trinidad,” a fifth-generation Trinidadian, as he calls himself, a veterinarian by profession, Dr. Lara, laughingly tells me the history of the city.

The development of Trinidad has stopped, as if its appearance as a colonial town at the beginning of the last century had been preserved. “Trinidadians were so lazy that they didn’t even renovate or repaint the facades of their houses. So when the city began to be restored, it was very easy to restore the original colors and murals,” says Lara.

Trinidad was lucky: in 1988, UNESCO declared it a world cultural heritage. And since the city, unlike Havana (also a world cultural heritage), is small - a total of 35 thousand inhabitants live here today - there was enough money and effort to restore it.

Walking around Trinidad, sometimes it seems that you are in a large film pavilion, where they are filming based on some novel by Mine Reed. And it’s not just about the architecture, the pastel colors of the facades and the surviving wall paintings in the spirit of some kind of colonial rococo. The fact is that life here essentially seems to have stopped at the “19th century” mark. People never seem to be in a hurry - they are always strolling. They take birds in cages for a walk: songbird competitions are a favorite pastime of Trinidadians, and they believe that they should be taken for walks regularly, several times a day, then the birds will sing better. Here they remain faithful to age-old crafts: they weave bags, hats, shoes, and even underwear from guana, a local reed. Everyone, young and old, goes to the store and to the market with green guana string bags, but they don’t want to know about plastic bags.

Dr. Lara lives in the house built by his great-great-great-great-grandfather, a colonist originally from La Rioja, from which the Cuban branch of the old Spanish family De Lara Del Valle De Cerquera began. The house is a perfect museum of the colonial era. With a huge patio - a courtyard where banana palm trees grow, producing several hundred kilograms of fruit a year, and there are alhibes dug into the ground - huge clay vats for storing fresh water. In the kitchen, equipped in the recess of this patio, a kind of grotto, the main place is occupied by an ancient tiled hearth.

What a patio and fireplace! Here is the 70-year-old cook Ninya, who has lived in this kitchen all her life and who, in turn, inherited this shift from her mother, is truly an exhibit from the 19th century. A kind of black Chekhovian Firs in a skirt, a devoted slave, living only in the interests of her masters and having no other life of her own. Her childhood nickname (“niña” means “baby”) became her name, and she remained “baby” for the rest of her life. When we talk to her, it still seems to me that she will address me as “mass,” as black slaves called white people both here in the South and in the North of the American continent. But no, it doesn’t reach the “masses”, Ninya is quite familiar with modern realities, however, she cannot pronounce my name, which is unusual for her ears, and suggests calling me “Che”, since, in her opinion, I look like Che Guevara. Well, if this wonderful old woman is still a “baby,” then why shouldn’t I be Che, although I don’t look like him at all?


Santiago is a city with a rich culture. There are perhaps even too many bookstores here for a city of 300,000 people. And the one in the photo on the left is perhaps the most famous. The Staircase bookstore, owned by Eddie Tamayo, has been serving as a kind of club for local artists, writers, and musicians for many years. (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )

With red-haired Fonseco
Santiago de Cuba occupies a unique place among Cuban cities and provinces. I would like to compare it with our St. Petersburg, despite all the external differences between the most tropical of Cuban cities and cold, foggy St. Petersburg. The same fate of the “eternally second”, “capital city with a provincial destiny”, who considers it a fatal injustice that the main city of the country is not it. Even in historical fate there are similarities. Santiago also had its own “Aurora salvo”: Comandante came from these parts, the Moncada barracks, with the storming of which in July 1953, undertaken by a hundred youths, his political biography began - here, in the center of the city.

But God bless them, “Aurora” and Moncada. This is truly a special city: sophisticated, romantic, which, in addition to the traditional Spanish and African for Cuba, has also experienced a strong French influence. At the beginning of the last century, when a revolution took place nearby, in Haiti, thousands of French colonists and their slaves who fled from there settled in Santiago. They brought here innovative technology for processing coffee and sugar plantations, a number of other achievements of progress, but most importantly, with them a special spirit penetrated into Santiago - esprit, as the French say. This “esprit” is noticeable in everything: in the architecture of Santiago, in the music, and finally in the very type of local residents. Santiagers are considered the most beautiful women in Cuba. The green-eyed mulatto from Santiago is a kind of standard of beauty and sex appeal for a Cuban woman. Indeed, green eyes, inherited from some ancestors - natives of Normandy or Brittany, and dark skin color combine effectively.

A unique atmosphere reigns in Santiago - slightly relaxed, but not colonially lazy, as in Trinidad, but intoxicating, spicy, rich in sensuality. In Havana, everything is for sale, including love, but here everything is from the heart. Even when for sale.

The Santiagers speak differently than the Havanese. Havana is always in a hurry, afraid of missing out, speaks quickly, swallowing syllables and words. Santiago speaks in a sing-song voice, as if casting a spell, bewitching.

Santiago adored Lorca, who visited here only once, passing from New York in 1930, and always dreamed of returning again. One of his best poems is about this - “The Dream of Cuban Negroes”:

If the night is moonlit,
I'll go to Santiago de Cuba,
I'll go to Santiago.
I will harness the black breakers
and I'll go to Santiago

While studying Lorca at one time, I wondered about the lines from this verse:

I'll go to Santiago
with red-haired Fonseca.
I'll go to Santiago.
To Romeo, Juliet and roses

Who is this red-haired Fonseca? A random local acquaintance, a close friend? Lorca, as we know, was a man of unconventional inclinations. But what does Romeo and Juliet have to do with it then? Some unrelated set of beauties." And then one day I discovered Fonseca. From the lid of an antique cigar box, brought to me as a gift by a green-eyed friend, a handsome red-haired, red-bearded man in a snow-white shirtfront and bow tie looked at me. On top of his red curls was embossed in a semicircle: "Fonseca ", and below the portrait was framed by many prints of gold medals received by this brand of cigars at international exhibitions.

Intoxicated by the air of Santiago, Lorca apparently developed a tender feeling for this handsome man from the cigar box and animated him. "Romeo and Juliet" too - either "cigar" or real, Shakespearean. There were still “roses”, a trace of which I could not find for a long time, but quite recently I discovered that such a brand – La Rosa Aromatica – existed in the 30s, but now it no longer exists.

Santiago is ambitious and wants to be first in everything. So Comandante, along with his revolution, apparently, was born here not by chance: this is the land of local Napoleons, heroes of many wars of liberation, although, of course, the rest of the natives of Santiago are far from Comandante in terms of ambition.

In Santiago, indeed, they do many things better than anywhere else in Cuba. Before the revolution, Santiago's carnivals were the best in the entire American continent. The revolution, however, put an end to them. This is where the best rum in the world is made. "Havana Club", "Bacardi" from Miami - for a true connoisseur, all these are not competitors of Santiago brands like "Canea", "Matusalena" and "Pati Cruzado". Actually, rum from Santiago is the real “Bacardi”: Facundo Bacardi founded production here back in 1862. Forced due to well-known historical circumstances to leave Cuba and move his production from Santiago to Florida, his descendant more than once said with bitterness that the true Bacardi remained in Santiago. Water, land, sugar cane, climate - all this is more important than any of the most modern equipment and technology. Rum is like your homeland: you can’t carry it away on the soles of your shoes.

Santiago is devout like no other city in Cuba. Cuban religiosity is peculiar, as someone once told me, the Catholic Church here does not have a monopoly on God. Catholic rituals in the perception of the majority of Cuban believers are intricately intertwined with the pagan cult of Santeria, brought to the island centuries ago by black slaves.

One of the main attractions of Santiago, the Temple of the Virgin of Caridad Del Cobre, patroness of Cuba, is the most important shrine for all Cuban believers. Like all Catholic saints, the Virgin of Caridad has a Santeria counterpart of sorts. This is Ochun, a dark-skinned deity who personifies love and femininity. One must see how on September 8, the day of the Holy Virgin of Caridad, thousands of believers from all over the island, from Miami, from Latin American countries flock to the temple located in the outskirts of Santiago. Fulfilling the vow given to the Virgin, some make the journey on their knees from the city to the temple - this is one and a half dozen kilometers. The less zealous ones climb on their knees up the long staircase leading to the entrance to the temple.

An amazing sight is the altar filled with offerings to the Virgin Caridad. There is so much to see here: gold medallions sit next to a stuffed dog, a straw hat, a license plate, a pair of worn peasant trousers, a baseball, and a cut off girl’s braid. With all the extravagance of this offering, it is not difficult to guess why the woman who left a clean sanitary pad at the altar thanked the saint. Someone, in gratitude for a similar miracle, laid a marble tablet on the altar, on which is engraved: “Thank you, Virgin Caridad, for , that you helped me to be born!" A saxophone hangs next to the crucifix. A bicycle and a wheelchair stand against the wall.

Faith is capable of reconciling everyone, albeit within the walls of the temple. The glazed stands display side by side the shoulder straps of the partisans of Fidel Castro's Rebel Army and the soldiers of Batista's government army, who fought among themselves in 1956 - 1959. In a prominent place at the altar is an appeal to the Virgin Caridad with a request to intercede for all Cuban political prisoners. It is signed by Maritza Lugo and other prominent Cuban human rights activists. Known, however, mainly in the West: in Cuba their names are banned; people learn about the activities of human rights activists, as we did in Soviet times, from programs of “enemy voices”. But, however, it is difficult to imagine an appeal signed by Academician Sakharov in any Orthodox church of the Soviet era. The Cuban Church will be bolder"

Who knows, maybe it’s from here, from Santiago, which has given his country so many impulses of renewal, that another one will come someday? Let's just hope that there won't be a new "assault on Moncada."


And finally, about one more thing, albeit a small one, in which Santiago also has no equal. I have never eaten such delicious fruits as in Cuba anywhere in the world. And there are no such delicious mangoes as in Santiago anywhere else in Cuba. Only here is a variety grown called “biscocho” - “biscuit”. They flattered, I must say, the biscuit. Until recently, even fruit had to be bought from peasants under the counter. Now small trade has been allowed, and along the humpbacked streets of Santiago peasants deliver their harvest, filling the surrounding area with shrill cries: “Mango bizcocho! Mas dulce que miel! Cinco a tres peso!” - “Mango biscuits, sweet as honey! Five pieces for three pesos!” (Photo: Leonid Velekhov )