Where to Go in Cuba

By Veronica Vega

HAVANA TIMES – There’s an exact moment in the day when you feel like going out. The rituals that tie you down have run their course—at least for today—and there’s a pocket of freedom that reminds you of youth.

Back when you could go wherever and come back at any hour. When we were reckless and selfish. Nothing could stop us, and the world seemed like an open portal to an unknown dimension.

When did that change happen? I don’t know. I didn’t notice. Everything shifted stealthily, and in that silent erosion, it took with it everything I could recognize as mine.

The get-togethers with friends, planned or spontaneous. Outings to the movies, preferably the last showing, so we could end the night at Coppelia at that magical time when it was finally semi-empty. Sitting on the Malecon wall, undisturbed by melancholy… just talking and laughing and singing—off-key even, if someone had a guitar. The shared illusion of each generation, like an amplification of each individual’s own dreams, has an unquestionable, almost solid appearance.

Who could have convinced you that this future, hanging at the tip of your tongue, would turn into something bitter or flavorless, swallowed even by accident? When did the state of alert fade, the Carpe Diem, the urgency to miss nothing, inside or out, the torrent of emotions and events? When did glory become routine, and those festive bells, that jubilation, the cheers that still echo in your mind, give way to a procession of repetitive acts?

Then comes this hour of freedom, and it catches you off guard. Where to go? All the social spaces you once chose have vanished.

La Torre de Letras, where you met up with writer and artist friends, gradually shrank into palpable, definitive extinction. I used to think that as long as its host, Reina María Rodriguez, stayed in Cuba, we still had hope. When I learned she’d left, that she was living in Miami, it felt like a personal blow. Like an alarm bell impossible to ignore.

Tania Bruguera’s house, where you felt like you were in a country with freedom of expression, no longer receives anyone concerned about social issues or even dreaming of building a mental future. Tania herself was under something like house arrest, and I don’t know if she’s allowed to return to the country.

And don’t even mention Luis Manuel Otero’s house, in the San Isidro neighborhood of Old Havana, where there were also readings, concerts, and which became the target of police siege. The last time I saw that door, it gave off the desolate energy of an abandoned house. I do the math and conclude: it’s already been four years since Luisma and Maykel Osorbo have been imprisoned…

The Monday Club, those gatherings at the home of the kind Gabriel Calaforra, among young intellectuals and discontented people, disappeared with Gabriel’s passing. He, who could have lived anywhere, even in India, since he spoke so many languages and his spirit acknowledged no borders, chose to stay out of love for this island and its people. When I go to Centro Habana, I avoid passing that beloved street. Some pains upend too many things at once.

The Casa de la Cultura in Alamar, for decades a hotbed of alternative art, now looks dead. No more art salons that used to draw crowds, no more literary workshop—breeding ground of raw, authentic literature—no more Endless Poetry festival… No more wild performances springing up anywhere in the neighborhood, no more poetic scandals… no more rap gatherings… Nothing. Only the peace of the graveyard, interrupted by the noise of basic survival.

Sure, the beaches in the blessed East Havana still remain, and decay hasn’t been able to erase the landscape. The waters, which seem harmless, even though they claimed Renso, an unforgettable figure of our culture, just like Juanka, the poet who hanged himself from his balcony because he was suffocated by this same oppressive silence.

Today’s young people will persist in finding places where they can feel free and fierce—thanks to the relativity of subjective experience. I know it, I understand it. Life carries on with its sly recycling system.

Nature so resembles history, devouring everything, one mirage after another. As for me, I place my hand on this part of my chest where the burden is, the stab of pain, and I wait, I wait…

Then I sit down to write, to help this desire to go out pass, this stubborn and insistent impulse to reconnect with what no longer exists.

Lee más del diario de Veronica Vega aquí.