It’s a place you can’t help falling in love with, Cuba, because although it’s crumbly and dusty and inefficient, it’s also exotic and warm and passionate, like a bit of paradise run by a dead committee. I sort of expected that. What I didn’t foresee was what a paradoxical place it would be.

Example? Cyril Ray used to maintain that the test of a good hotel was whether, whatever else it could do, it would provide freshly squeezed orange juice. Well, in Cuba all hotels provide wonderful orange (and grapefruit) juice all the time. It’s only all the other things they find hard.

Another paradox? That Cuba’s image for export depends on two men of action who were both white-haired and bearded but otherwise totally different. One is Fidel Castro, the collectivist. The other is Ernest Hemingway, the rugged individualist who may not be associated with Cuba in everyone’s minds, but who, by settling down and making his home there, endeared himself to the Cubans. You are encouraged to go to Ernest’s house, his old café, his old bar, even to hotels named after his old novels (“El Viejo La Mar). They would be dreadfully hurt if you suggested that maybe nobody reads him any more - Americans in love with Cuba are not so plentiful that they can afford to drop one.

That’s the biggest paradox of all, of course – that the USA and Cuba, who should be big buddies, have been on non-speaking terms for 30 years or more. The USA has behaved towards Cuba somewhat as a Mafia family head behaves towards a daughter who has married quite the wrong person. After espousing Communism, poor old Cuba was sent to Coventry and cut off without a penny by the old big bully across the water, and still paying for it.

One odd result of this is that there aren’t any American tourists in Cuba. They can’t fly there from the USA, can’t use American credit cards, can’t hardly get permission to go there at all. As far as Cuba is concerned, the White House is still back in the McCarthyite era, so it’s hardly worthwhile for Americans to try and do a limbo dance under all the regulations. We met Dutch tourists, and Germans, French, Brazilian and Mexican, Peruvian, and lots of Canadians, but not a single Yank. You felt us all drawing together because we were all non-Americans. If Cuba really does want to attract tourist, why don’t they use the slogan “The only Caribbean island with no Americans in sight!”?

Hold on. Not true. We saw Lincoln. You can see his bust in the central park, and on all the dollar bills, which are the only currency we were allowed to use. But then, Lincoln never invaded Cuba, so he’s admissible. In the same square we saw half a bus queue go into a bus through a window and grab seats first, which fascinated my five-year-old, and we saw a neon sign saying, SOCIALISMO O MUERTE – Socialism or Death. We didn’t see anyone noticeably die, not even getting through bus windows, but we didn’t see a lot of noticeable socialism either – in fact, the next neon sign I saw was the distinctly capitalist RONNIE SCOTT SALUTES THE CUBAN JAZZ FESTIVAL.

He wasn’t saluting it – he was helping to run it. The Cuban Jazz Festival had been dying a death in recent years, so Ronnie and his colleague Pete King, who love Cuban bands and often bring them over to their Frith Street club, offered to put some money and expertise into this year’s event. They did. They laid on a charter trip as well. That was why we Where there, every night, in the backyard of the Casa de Cultura with maybe 1,000 Cubans, all of us shouting, listening, dancing and drinking rum.

One night Adam, our five-year-old, who normally slept through-out after he had finished dancing, started stroking the back of the woman in the row in front. Startled, she looked round. She was gravely beautiful. She and Adam fell in love, and very soon Adam had moved down to the next row where Rojana (I think that was her name) and her handsome brother Serge, and their friends took him over. He came back to us eventually but by then he had discovered the magic of flirting, and thereafter he kept putting his hand into the hands of women and saying “I love you`’, and by God it worked. I wish I dared myself.

The music was wonderful, especially from the Cuban bands, but we heard music everywhere, in and out of the festival. The day we went to the beach the local hotel was proudly offering dancing lessons for tourists by the pool. Dancing lessons! How old-fashioned can you get? In our rave culture dancing has become so primitive that you can’t learn it – you just pretend to be electrocuted. The difference between us and them is that our dance music is jerky, staccato and machine-based; Cuban – indeed, all Latin – music is much warmer and more flowing. Even constipated stick insects like me (dance-wise) find themselves moving naturally to Cuban music. And this from a man who would rather do anything than dance to modern dance music. My motto: “Disco Es Muerte”. I did hear one mock rave record in Cuba entitled “Ecsta no! Ecsta si!” I hope that’s as far as it goes.

Of course the place is down-at-heel. There are not only pot-holes in the roads, there were also pot-holes in our hotel dining room where the mosaic was chipped away. You never knew what would be available for breakfast. Some days bread, sometimes not. Always vegetables but often pickled, and the black beans were tasty but never without their addition of stones and grit. But everyone on the trip that I talked to said, isn’t this a great place? And aren’t the people great? And yes it was and they are, and someone who had just spent some time in Spain said to us that the Cubans are a distinct advance on the Spaniards…

And the passport official at the airport said to Adam, as we left, “Hey, baby – how many girlfriends you have in Cuba?” Adam put up his hand and flicked his fingers – 10, 20, 30. “Good boy! Muy bien!” As we walked across the tarmac to the plane, Adam waved to the pilot up in the cockpit. Not only did the pilot wave back, but he flashed his headlights at Adam…

The Oldie Magazine 25th Feb 1993