scare the wits out of the Argentine bourgeoisie. In the Plaza de la Revolución there were no threatening dispossessed people fresh out of the shadows, smelling power. These were happy musicians, in a joyful parade.
The difference, of course, lay in the struggle to take power, in which the Cuban people had participated (although they didn’t all fight) while the Argentine masses had received it vicariously. The Argentines’ anger was still contained, their class-based rage unexpressed, compared to this pure joy of power achieved by passion and the sacrifice of lives. The only thing I remember of Fidel’s speech, which brought the event to a close, was the formal declaration of the socialist nature of the Revolution. It was, however, the most important bit. It opened a new and decisive phase in the struggle of the American people. A struggle I dreamed of joining.
But first I had to legalize my situation in Cuba. Picking one’s way through the mire of bureaucracy is always a prickly task, difficult anywhere. But in Cuba the bureaucratic machinery had been destroyed: no one knew anything; no one followed any logic or tradition; everything was new and pretty well improvised. Most positions of responsibility had been abandoned by people fleeing the revolutionary tide in panic, and taken over by youngsters with absolutely no experience. Administrators, company directors, heads of state enterprises and bodies vital to a functioning society were replaced by almost illiterate peasants and workers whose willingness and apparent honesty was their only skill. In some cases, they had absolutely no knowledge of the matters they were supposed to be dealing with. In others, one ideology was substituted with another – one caste destroyed and replaced by another diametrically opposed, implying a rapid and experimental reconstruction of a new order. Things now depended more on good will, luck and the energy that new decision makers brought to the job of deciding between the opportune and the opportunist, between the interests of the Revolution and urgent necessities. The chaotic situation was being run via ‘purity of origin’, that is, by ideological red corpuscles. The People’s Socialist Party, i.e. the Cuban communists, only recently incorporated into the triumphant ranks of the Revolution, now occupied the key posts. It filtered and selected personnel, including whole branches of the civil service, and had its eyes firmly set on the mechanisms of power. The rationale was that the PSP had to protect and strengthen the ranks of the Revolution, which had not only been openly attacked at the Bay of Pigs but was also being sabotaged daily both by Miami exiles and directly by the US government, which was diverting its efforts from military action to permanent terrorism.
The word gusano, meaning worm, became part of everyday parlance in describing counter-revolutionaries. In one of his speeches, Fidel talked of exiles being like gusanos in an apple, destroying the fruit of the people’s efforts and sacrifice. Miami was the dung heap where gusanos, who abandoned their country in its hour of need, ended up. Gusano attitudes, behaviour and even thoughts began to be detected, and dealt with like a pest, with ideological, verbal, written and armed pesticides. One method adopted for foreigners was to make them prove their political credentials, not freely and democratically, but in a sectarian and rigorously pro-communist way. Another more general measure was the creation of the Committees for Defence of the Revolution (CDRs), neighbourhood-watch organizations controlling the activities and lifestyles of the inhabitants of an area, block, or even street depending on the density of the population. They started life as a passive vigilante system, with no right to intervene, but morphed into a Hydra’s head, or Big Brother. Nothing escaped the gaze of the CDR. Depending on its make-up, it could help a neighbour with problems, or send him to prison.
Anyway, I needed to legalize my situation, and find a job. I began the exhausting task of running round offices and official bodies. I had no friends or contacts. We ended up in ICAP (the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples of the World). I met the director, my first senior official in the state apparatus, Ramón Calcines, a communist. He was quite young, and very handsome, like the star of a gangster film. He sent me on my way cordially, assuring me they would find something, we would be useful somewhere, all hands were welcome, etc. In these grave times for Cuba, he said, they were grateful to foreign volunteers. ‘But who are you, chico? See that little compañera, she’ll take your details, then we’ll see. Patria o muerte!’ The little compañera, a mulatta poured into clinging olive green, explained that I had to bring credentials from ‘my’ party, to add to my CV. Meanwhile she would find me something. I left wondering how I would get round my lack of credentials. The job the little compañera found me was temporary, but I had to start somewhere. The Cubans were hosting the first industrial exhibition from the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia and they needed designers, decorators, painters, etc. – a field where we could be useful. ‘And your credentials, mi amor?’ I explained that I had sent off for them – which was not exactly true – and that it would take time to get a reply. ‘But chico, without credentials, the Turquino looks tiny next to our problems!’ Turquino is the highest peak in the Sierra Maestra.
On the road to Rancho Boyeros there is an industrial zone with huge exhibition halls where the Czech exhibition was to be held. A Czech interior designer was charged with installing it. He was a tall, blond man who looked and behaved like a librarian, and spoke very basic guttural Spanish in a low voice while he polished his specs. Strictly professional, he indicated what he wanted and didn’t appear again until the work was finished. He soon showed signs he was satisfied, and even appreciative. He arrived at seven to find the place empty except for his foreign technical staff, and went round picking up scattered tools, waiting for the Cubans to turn up after eight, or even nine. When he got to our design table, he let off steam about the workers’ lack of punctuality. ‘They’ll never build socialism like this’, he said. The Cubans always had an excuse: they’d been on guard duty, in a political meeting, training with the militia, in a literacy class. And they really did seem very tired. They took on too many things and did none properly.
One morning, the Czech appeared with someone who was for me a transcendental figure: the Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens. I had admired him since I saw two of his most important films, Power and the Land (1934) and Spanish Earth (1937), at the Cine Club in Mendoza run by my Jewish friend David.
The ‘Flying Dutchman’, as this incomparable man was known, had studied optics before he became a filmmaker and was a specialist lens maker. He chose not to stay at home quietly in his prosperous family business, however, preferring to get involved in the century’s major social and political upheavals. A tall man of about sixty, with unruly greying hair, he was filming the installation of the exhibition. He said hello as the Czech introduced us.
The Habana Libre hotel in Vedado, on 23rd Street and L, was the heart of extra-revolutionary activities. Fidel, a leader without a home, could be seen in the early hours going up to the top floors where he spent the night. The guests, foreigners for the most part, wandered about till late in the large carpeted salons, interconnected by Hollywoodesque staircases. Bellboys in red jackets with gold braid could be seen attending to awestruck campesinos on delegations from the interior to an assembly on the agrarian reform, or children from Oriente province on a visit to the capital, or giggling schoolgirls with starched cuffs on a nursing crash course, or youth brigades holding meetings by the lifts. An atmosphere of supercharged subversion filled the lounges and corridors, dislodging the privileged decadence of the local elites and the omnipresent pre-packaged taste of the gringos.
Joris Ivens was staying at the Habana Libre. He asked me to help with the captions on his documentary, and we formed a bond. It was a reverential relationship on my part, and on his, I think, due to a need to keep the all-consuming Cuban reality at arm’s length, and talk to someone neutral yet just as amazed by the tropical exuberance. He spoke Spanish like an American but we understood each other perfectly. Interested in what had brought us to Cuba, he suggested we go to his hotel ‘where anybody who is anybody goes’. So, that same afternoon I walked the couple of blocks from the Colina and disappeared into the carpeted bowels of the Habana Libre. Whenever I met him after that, he was always with someone important.