In Havana’s Palace of the Captains General, a baroque edifice on Plaza de Armas, the city’s main square, a remarkable event took place on a recent late fall afternoon. As travelers with the Mobile-Havana society, we entered the 18th-century courtyard, along with Cuban nationals, greeted by a Spanish poster of a book presentation, its translation: “Mobile and Havana: Sisters Across the Gulf.”
One of our own, Mobile historian John Sledge, in Cuban fedora, took his place at a table under a leafy colonnade and told of the challenges and joys of a project about two cultures, their histories interwoven through time.
The 16th century escapades of de Soto in Havana and Mobile Bay, the 1702 founding of Mobile by d’Iberville and his death in Havana in 1706, centuries of exchange between the port cities – the book’s narrative, up to the 21st century, unfolds.
At the table were also Sledge’s co-author, Cuban historian Alicia Garcia-Santana, and the book’s two photographers, Alabamian Chip Cooper and Cuban Jose Larremendi.
I’d attended their earlier launch of the English edition in Fairhope. Tyler Wilson, Page & Palette manager, in our travel group, was delighted “to participate in another event internationally.” The “camaraderie of the authors,” she said, “proves we have so much in common.”
Here in Havana, as we applauded the Spanish edition, there was added richness, a sense of place that washed over us like the island’s salsa and rum.
In a tradition of authors signing at this historic locale, it was rare for an American to do so, said Grey Redditt, an officer with the Mobile-Havana Society, whose wife, Elizabeth, had joined him on the trip.
Founded in 1993 by the late Mobile historian Jay Higginbotham, the mission of “Society Mobile-Habana” was realized, yet again, on this balmy November day: “to promote the interchange of arts, culture and education activities between the cities.”
Afterwards we joined Cubans in a celebration of the sister-city relationship, walking beneath the royal palms of Plaza de Armas to an art gallery across the square. Images of Mobile and Havana by the book’s photographers lined the gallery walls.
We conversed with Cubans, in our two languages, about each other’s homes. Rum drinks flowed.
I’ve long been fascinated by Cuba. Fidel Castro, Ricky Ricardo, “The Godfather II,” the Buena Vista Social Club – Cuban figures, and rhythms, seemed both close and faraway.
It felt that way geographically, too, after our group’s 45-minute flight from Miami to Havana. As our tour bus passed Revolution Square, I looked up to see a 16-ton steel portrait of Che Guevara on the side of a government building. I caught first glimpses of the city’s grand colonial architecture, facades peeling, plaster in need of repair.
Before we reached our hotel we stopped for lunch, a leafy, open-air restaurant where the cook prepared lobster on an outdoor grill.
Within our first hour, contrasts were everywhere.
Our sleek hotel on Havana’s port was a short walk to Old Town Havana, a Unesco World Heritage site whose two square miles were a model of architectural restoration and civic pride. We could have been exploring Madrid. In another direction, though, the Paseo Marti, a long promenade with streets to either side, was lined with buildings once majestic with columns and balconies, many dilapidated, some falling in.
Taking a stroll on that promenade, sun setting, I found boys playing soccer, teens zipping by on skateboards, girls in their school uniforms on benches, chatting and laughing. The split screen – the decrepit surroundings, the spirited people – was at play.
A young couple passed with a toddler in a stroller. “Hi, where you from?” asked the husband, introducing himself in rudimentary English as Julio. The U.S., “Los Estados Unidos,” I said in our bilingual chat.
“We love Americans,” he said. “We need you to come here as tourists.” He recalled the relaxed strictures during the Obama years when the number of Americans visiting the island surged. The number plummeted in subsequent administrations. He said he could feel the impact on the economy.
He told me he worried about the future for his little girl, and that, if he could, he might consider leaving the country with his family, as a million others have done in the last few years.
The centralized economy provides citizens monthly rations, I learned, free education, and little to no homelessness. But there is little home ownership, wages are set – doctors earning $50 a month often look abroad for work – and upward mobility seems a promise in a world far beyond.
With a fat roll of American dollars in my pocket I’d brought with me – U.S. credit cards do not function in Cuba, and there are no cash machines – I felt like the rich American. Indifferent to how it might seem, I peeled off a $5 dollar bill and gave it to the little girl. “Un regalo,” I said. A gift. Julio brightened. “Gracias,” he said. As I walked on I heard him call out, “Two dollars more? For milk?” I turned; they were lost in the shadows.
As night fell I realized how dark the side streets were, single lights in doorways. A man called out, “Hola, Hemingway,” reacting to my white hair and beard, referencing the great author who lived for many years in Havana and whose house we later visited. A woman of the night approached me and asked, “Que quiere?” What do you want? “Nada,” I said briskly and kept on.
I did not feel threatened but disoriented.
Sydney Betbeze, former director of Restore Mobile, a nonprofit dedicated to saving and restoring old houses in Mobile, said that she and her husband, Jaime, a maritime attorney, both first-timers on our trip, “seek the story of a city as told through its buildings.” In Havana, she said, she was “overwhelmed with the scale,” not only of the distressed buildings, but also “the scale of the streets, the scale of the desertion, the scale of the despair.
“Before we left for this trip, when I saw pictures of these crumbling facades, I thought they were abandoned buildings, not buildings where people lived.”
Sydney admitted she’d had misgivings about traveling to the island, having read about the electrical outages from the failing power grid, the impact of hurricanes, the despair, she felt, worsened by everyone’s dependency on the government. But she wanted to see for herself. Experiencing Cuba is hard, she said, without going there.
But the organizer, Maria Mendez, a Cuban-American living in Spanish Fort, our tour leader, had oriented us in a group phone call in advance, saying “The Cuban people need our help.” That encouraged Sydney, she told me, to feel there was not only adventure but purpose in our days.
Mendez arranged a visit to Sanctuary of San Lazaro, a pristine church outside of Havana, where we set out bags of toys we had brought from Mobile as Christmas gifts for children in need. The priest, Father Charles, thanked us for our act of giving.
Mike Rogers, one of our number, a builder in Mobile, had traveled to Cuba in the past, and knew the needs were great. At his suggestion we brought, from our Alabama homes, what we took for granted in our medicine cabinets, including toothpaste, mouthwash, shampoo, aspirin. I never thought of them as gifts, but they could be hard to come by in Cuba.
Many of us on the trip had come, as Jaime Betbeze expressed, “to learn more about the historic connections between Havana and Mobile.”
But we were discovering far more. As Jaime said, even afterwards, he could “visualize the grandeur of Havana’s opulent past, the despair of its crumbling present, and the potential for its hopeful future.”
Of course, there were the cars. Who could have imagined in 1958, when Fidel led his revolution, that the great time capsule would be the vintage Cadillacs and Chryslers and Chevys of that era? Once the U.S. began its embargo, and the import of American cars to Cuba ended, those became the symbol of a time.
In a usual excursion for tour groups, we took our places in the 1950s convertibles as our drivers hit the pedals.
In the pink Pontiac Star Chief next to us was Chelsea Lawrence, a Spanish teacher at UMS-Wright Preparatory School, who looked at our experiences – and all she was learning – “through the lens of a Spanish teacher,” and her “passion for understanding my course focus area of Central America and the Caribbean.” She appreciated the “resilience” of the Cuban people.
In my blue Chevy Bel Air was Desi Tobias, a Mobile attorney who’d come of age fascinated by the image of Hemingway in Havana “writing at his desk with his window open to a lush tropical scene.”
He spoke of the impact of the embargo, the “wildly fluctuating Cuban peso,” and how even a bottle of rum cannot be brought back to the U.S. But he relished every day.
Like me, with the wind whipping over our heads, the streets zipping by, Tobias had become enveloped in our trip. He loved the concerts, the country’s celebration of the arts, the culture. He wished for a “serious discussion about the changes that can be made to improve the relationship between Cuba and the United States.”
Later that afternoon we arrived at a village transformed by the magical eye of Jose Rodriguez Fuster, known as the Cuban Gaudi. At his home was a phantasmagoria of outsider art, colorful tile work, murals that gave me the sensation of “Alice in Wonderland.”
There were other heightened experiences, especially from the arts.
On our final night in Havana we attended a concert at the Basilica San Francisco, a 16th C. church in Old Havana that’s a concert hall. The choral group sent up mystically beautiful songs.
As we strolled out under the moon casting its mantle over all the contrasts of despair and hope across the city and island, I understood what John Sledge told me after his many trips here: “Cuba,” he said, “has gotten into my soul.”
Roy Hoffman, who lives in Fairhope, is the author of six books, including the novel “The Promise of the Pelican” and nonfiction “Alabama Afternoons.” He has written for the New York Times and Wall St. Journal.
