Swimming To Guantanamo: From Elian to Obama A Decade in Cuba under the U.S. Embargo

By Jim Ryerson

Under a U.S. trade embargo imposed half a century ago, U.S. citizens are barred from traveling to Cuba. As a journalist, I began visiting Cuba in 1998 and during my more than 35 visits I’ve met hundreds of Cubans who have graciously shared their lives, music, food, and culture and created my passion to tell their stories. In writing these stories, I’ve tried to counteract some of the false impressions about Cuba and its people, and to present an objective look at this fascinating neighboring country.

Many things have changed since that first visit and, while on the surface Cuba seems to be stuck in a time warp somewhere in the 1950’s, it is so much more than the old American cars, the Spanish colonial architecture of Old Havana or the waves crashing over the Malecón. Today Cubans have much more freedom, Communism is all but gone and President Raul Castro has thrown open the doors to a Socialist-based free enterprise that is catching on across the country. The Cuban people are opening their own businesses, and keeping what they make (after taxes of course, just like in the USA).

What will come of this remains to be seen but, given the industriousness of the Cubans, they will make it work and I will continue to tell their stories. Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of those who had talked to an American reporter, but their stories are as they happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jim Ryerson
• Release date: Feb 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311815330

Jim Ryerson

Jim Ryerson is the founder and owner of Jim Ryerson Productions and Travelingman Films, a motion picture, television, and corporate video production company based in Los Angeles. Over the past 12 years, he has worked as a documentary film producer in Cuba, which he has visited more than 30 times.Jim is a veteran of radio and television news reporting. As one of Californian‘s most visible television reporters, he received the Los Angeles Press Club Best Individual Reporting Award, and was part of several Emmy Award winning newscasts, and interviewed all of the living Presidents of the United States.A native of Chicago, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Illinois, studied for his Master of Arts degree at Arizona State University, and is a veteran of the U.S. Air Force. He served on the Board of Directors of the American Red Cross in Orange County for 20 years, and received the Clara Barton Award, the organization’s highest honor, for volunteer service. He is a lifetime physical fitness advocate, as a distance runner and boxer for 10 years at a professional gym.

Book preview

Swimming To Guantanamo

From Elian to Obama

A Decade in Cuba under the U.S. Embargo

By Jim Ryerson

copyright 2014 Jim Ryerson

Smashwords Edition

http://www.cubaconnections.org

Cover art courtesy of Jose Fuster

mailto:[e-mail]

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and didnot purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION: ELIAN AND ME

SWIMMING TO GUANTANAMO

¿TAXI SEÑOR?

THE ENGLISHMAN, THE ITALIANS AND THE SKY MARSHALL

SHOOTING FIDEL

INDUSTRIALES

MICHAEL MOORE NO MORE

TOBACCO ROAD

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE HEAT

I KNOW WHERE YOU CAME FROM ERNEST HEMINGWAY

FOGGED LENSES

THE DAY THEY KIDNAPPED FORMULA ONE

SEARCHING FOR TV MARTÍ; FINDING DON FRANCISCO WHILE DODGING DENGUE IN RAÚL’S CUBA

IS MOB RULE ENDING IN MIAMI?

KISSING FIDEL ~ A MEMOIR BY MAGDA MONTIEL DAVIS

MARCHING WITH COMMIES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

AUTHOR BIO

PREFACE

Under a U.S. trade embargo imposed half a century ago, U.S. citizens are barred from traveling to Cuba. As a journalist, I began visiting Cuba in 1998 and during my more than 35 visits I’ve met hundreds of Cubans who have graciously shared their lives, music, food, and culture and created my passion to tell their stories. In writing these stories, I’ve tried to counteract some of the false impressions about Cuba and its people, and to present an objective look at this fascinating neighboring country.

Back then Cuba was coming out of what was known as the special period when the Soviet Union fell and Cuba was left to go it alone on the world stage after four decades of alliance with the Russians. When the Russians left, they took the five million dollars a day they had been giving the Cubans in foreign aid. Pundits in Washington and Miami declared that this was the end of Castro’s revolutionary government. As with most who have predicted the end of the Cuban revolution, they were wrong.

While taking on the United States alone, the Cubans have managed somehow to keep going. It is a life which is difficult to grasp for those growing up off the island, especially here in the United States where news about Cuba is mostly written in Miami by people who lie about Cuba for a living.

Many things have changed since that first visit and, while on the surface Cuba seems to be stuck in a time warp somewhere in the 1950’s, it is so much more than the old American cars, the Spanish colonial architecture of Old Havana or the waves crashing over the Malecón. Today Cubans have much more freedom, Communism is all but gone and President Raul Castro has thrown open the doors to a Socialist-based free enterprise that is catching on across the country. The Cuban people are opening their own businesses, and keeping what they make (after taxes of course, just like in the USA).

What will come of this remains to be seen but, given the industriousness of the Cubans, they will make it work and I will continue to tell their stories.

Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of those who had talked to an American reporter, but their stories are as they happened.

INTRODUCTION: ELIAN AND ME

As I sat down to a lobster dinner at a restaurant in Havana on Thanksgiving Day 1999 and watched the waves grow, I knew there was a storm brewing in the Straits of Florida. What I didn't know was that there was a little boy out there somewhere over the horizon, that his name was Elian Gonzalez, and soon the whole world would know about him.

I didn’t know much about Cuba at the time, having made just one other trip to the island. But I did know about journalism which was my profession and the only reason I, as an American, was even allowed to be in the country. Americans were prohibited from coming by what seemed an outdated cold-war relic of a law. But as Elian’s story began to be told, what was being said in Miami did not match the reality that I saw in Cuba, and the lie of our foreign policy toward this country became a lot clearer. There was no one to defend Cuba against a roaring voice of Florida based Cuban exiles that put down anything and everything coming from the island.

We had been well practiced in lying about Cuba for more than a century. William Randolph Hearst and the rest of the expansionist press of the late 19th century drummed up the headlines which dragged us into the 3rd War of Cuban Independence, which we renamed the Spanish American War. The Cubans had the Spanish on the run, but the might of our Navy and the invasion force made famous by Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders, pushed the Spanish out and allowed the Americans in, apparently forever. The base at Guantanamo is on Cuban soil, and their government has asked us to leave for more than half a century.

But in recent years the propaganda seemed to reach its high point with Elian. The company line in Miami was that he could not be returned to Cuba because he would become, as all Cuban children allegedly were property of the state. Since Cuban-Americans were saying this, and no one else was saying anything different, it was easy to make the rest of America buy into that story. But, because I had been there, I knew the story was a lie. And now that I’ve been several dozen times, I discovered that a birthday party may say more about their everyday lives than the Communist party, a lesson learned in the tenements of Central Havana.

You can make fast friends in Cuba, especially in Havana. It can seem like lots of people want to meet and interact with foreigners. However, most of those who initiate contact with you are probably hustling something; a room for rent, tour guide services, cigars, a restaurant, or sexual companionship.

As a six foot, two hundred pound blond, I do not blend in well in Cuba. Foreigner is figuratively stamped across my forehead, and every hustler of every ilk in Havana and Santiago has hit me up in the past dozen years of visits to the island. It is a way for them to make money and if you let them (rather, if you don’t stop them) they will stay with you your entire trip, and remain in contact with you after you go home. Some will even attempt to come home with you, as marrying a foreigner is the quick ticket off the island that many of these hustlers want.

Those who only experience this Cuba, or who fly directly to the beach at Veradero and ignore the cities, are missing a great deal and certainly the flavor of the island. In more than 30 trips I’ve come to make friends and have visited with Cubans, and their children, in their homes. One friend had invited me to come over for a birthday party for his niece.

My friend’s family runs a restaurant (known as a Paladar) in Central Havana. Although most things in Cuba are state run, the government allowed some independent businesses to start up in the mid-90’s after the Soviets had taken their fallen communism and gone home. They also ended the five million dollar a day subsidy that they had been pumping into the economy. So to bring in some needed currency, the Cubans allowed for a bit of capitalism like these small independent restaurants to exist.

Of all the barrios of the capitol, Central Havana is something of a stepchild. Ignored by tourists wanting to dive into the five hundred year history of Havana Vieja (old Havana), or the upscale suburbs of Vedado and Miramar, ‘Centro’ is overlooked and underappreciated. The street where my friend had his restaurant was typical. The block was lined on both sides by apartment buildings well over 100 years old.

They rose five, six, seven, eight stories high, and people seemed to be flowing in and out of them all day and night. At the corner, what I presumed to be a toy store filled the first floor, with an assortment of dolls in various colored dresses. I was wrong in my assessment of the business. It turned out that it was a Santeria shop, where devotees of that Afro-Cuban religion could buy the things they needed for their ceremonies. The dolls weren’t toys, but saints in their religion.

A few doors down was an Agro or vegetable market where avocadoes the size of American footballs could be bought for ten cents, and juicy sugar-sweet papaya were sold under their Cuban name, fruita bomba (for the resemblance to a bomb). I had to learn to restrain myself at the Agro since it was so good, and so inexpensive, I would end up buying more fruit than I could possibly eat before the tropical climate would take back its bounty.

As I looked over the selection, a basket attached to a rope suddenly dropped from the sky. Actually, it wasn’t from the sky, but rather from a woman living on the fourth floor of the building which housed the Agro. The market manager took a five peso bill from the basket and filled it with fruit. The woman, whose building didn’t have an elevator, waved thanks and then pulled her purchases up to her apartment. I would see this delivery system used throughout the city to haul all kinds of things, the most surprising being a small dog who would ride down to street level, hop out and do his business, then jump back into the basket for the ride back up.

Moving up the block, a line was always present at the Guarapo stand. Guarapo is the juice of the sugar cane, and it is the simplest of drinks created by a three person crew. The stalks are fed into a crushing machine, which squeezes the juice out. On the other end a second worker collects it in a pitcher. The pitchers are then passed forward to the server, who pours glasses as fast as they can, and collects the half Cuban peso (about 2 and a half cents USD) which they charge for this wonderful drink. There are no seats here, and you take your glass and drink it standing just to the side of the main counter. The pourer is usually faster than the crusher, which is necessary since the pourer is also the dish washer, who takes the dirty glasses gives them a supposedly thorough cleaning, and puts them back in the lineup for the next batch of Guarapo.

This sharing of glasses is not for everyone, and it’s probably best not to watch them wash them. But the taste of Guarapo on a warm afternoon surpasses anything you could find in a 7-Eleven, and since there are no 7-Eleven’s in Cuba, it has the market all to itself. Having drank more than 100 glasses of Guarapo at stands across Cuba, and survived to write this, I guess the cleaning process is better than it appears.

The one time paved street is now a monument to potholes, with water-filled caverns ready to swallow the tires of any car stupid enough to venture down. Since taxi drivers knew this, they avoided it, so traffic was nonexistent most of the time. And, since most Cubans don’t have cars, the streets are usually empty of parked vehicles. A stickball game is often in progress, using an actual stick for a bat with which to smack a very used tennis ball. I also discovered something I never imagined I’d find in Cuba; illegal immigrants. One of the apartment houses was known as the Embajada Oriente or Eastern Embassy, because of the number of people from the eastern part of the country (Oriente) living there.

Most of these people were economic refugees, having left their rural birthplace to come to the big city to try to find work. The problem is that because of housing shortages in Havana, unless you are from the area, you can’t work or live there. So many of these people were technically illegal, but most of them would stay and be absorbed into the city, going through bureaucratic hoops which would allow them to live with a relative and eventually find work in the area. But until they had their paperwork, they kept a sharp eye out for immigration enforcement officers.

The party was to start at 3:00 in the afternoon and, even after the