JUL 07 2015 BY JULIA 

The Cuba We Are All Waiting to Experience continues…

Good for the Cubans. Their written history, started by Christopher Columbus staking the island for Spain, has been wrought with claims of conquest from the Spanish to the French to the English and back to the Spanish. The United States even tried to buy Cuba twice in the mid 1800s, but our $300 million was turned down. What is it about this lush island in the Caribbean that everyone has wanted since its discovery by Columbus in 1492? Is it the natural resources including mineral deposits of gold, marble, cobalt, chromite and oil? Is it Havana which was the Paris and New York of the 1700 and 1800s? Is it the island’s geographic location? Or is it simply the attitude: “I want it and you can’t have it”?

Standing where Fidel Castro Once Stood To Admire Old Havana and Beyond

Even after our month-long exploration of the country and many dialogues with its people and much reading of local literature, I have not located a decisive theory. What I have discovered is that the Cuban history we are taught in school or read about on the Internet with the help of Google is not succinct with the history that the Cubans have lived. In fact there’s so much discrepancy I’ve come to appreciate that I know less than I even realized about this country. Timelines don’t correspond and neither do many maps. It’s as though the country has been blurred on purpose so no one knows or can remember actual events, Peoples and places. All that is defined are the political slogan billboards of the current ruling party and that head busts of Jose Marti, the country’s intellectual hero, should be kept pristine white.

The Tree of American Brotherhood, Havana, Cuba by XplorMor

Our taxi-van passes through many city districts, including Buenavista, Miramar, Vedado, Centro and finally the narrowing cobble streets of Vieja, also known as Habana Vieja or in English, Old Havana. On a map, the old town looks orderly with grid-like streets culminating to the north and east with the Canal, and to the west at the Paseo de Marti, the National Capitol Building and The Tree of American Brotherhood, and in the south by the Central Railway Station. Yet, stepping into this mélange of centuries old buildings seems anything but orderly. There’s something for every sense from thrumming island music and a cacophony of wildly varying car and bicycle horns to salty sea breezes and stinking rotten trash cans to wobbly uneven pavement and road works to gritty dirt-coated doors and bold colorful freshly painted balconies.

Old Havana Prior To Rehabilitation Reminds Passers of Cuba’s Hardship

The people and their clothing offer a similar tousled potpourri. Today’s Cubans are an extraordinary mix of European, Island, African and South American races, with varying appearance from pale skin, blond hair and green eyes to dark complexions and beaded corn rows, and every beautiful mixture in between. The English and French soldiers definitely left marks during their respective occupations. I was told that the Cuban women loved their English champions as they were treated well and money was abundant so they did not want, except when it came time for their cultured and refined men to return home. Hard to say if centuries’ old hearsay is accurate, regardless the conquests of Europeans remain evident in the population and the architecture of the city.

Cuba’s National Flag Flying in Havana, Cuba

Good for the Cubans. Continue reading the next excerpt from The Cuba We Are All Waiting to Experience…