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And only 30 minutes of free airport Wi-Fi :(5 Hours to Kill Till the Rest of the Brigade Gets Here
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Material: 0/10Currency Review: Cuban Pesos
Artwork: 10/10
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Can you believe that neither are acceptable categories under the US Treasury's General License?!Ah Yes, the Two Official Reasons to Visit Cuba: Rum and Procreation
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Havana Sunrise
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2023 May Day Solidarity Brigade in Numbers
- This is the 16th May Day-specific brigade (though the brigades as a whole have been going since the ’60s)
- Over 300 delegates from 29 different countries
- 53 brigadistas from the UK (we're the second-biggest delegation after the Yanks)
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Finally, I have something to read again!Received My Resupply Package
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Big Night on the Cuba Libres
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Basically a big government-run allotment, and part of a wider effort to develop Cuba's food sovereignty in the face of the ongoing US blockadeVisited an Urban Agricultural Co-operative
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Travelling in Style
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Every Fifth Car Here Seems to be a Lada
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How Many Brigadistas Does it Take to Weed a Small Plot?
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Cuba is currently facing massive fuel shortages, and queues like this are common outside petrol stations. We're told that it's entirely the fault of the US blockade, but we're told that for every single problem here and it's not like shortages and queues were unknown in the USSR, Yugoslavia, etc.Fuel Queue
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Afro-Cubano Culture Night
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The Cubans are rightly proud about their COVID vaccinesArts & Crafts at a Special Ed School
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Spent the Day at a State-Owned Electronics Business, Talking About Cuban Industry and Unionism
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Yes, the US blockade is absolutely brutal, illegal and pointless. Yes, I'm sure it is at least a partial contributor to the various problems facing Cuba (and in some cases it probably is the primary contributor), but I do sometimes wonder how much it serves as a convenient excuse for the shortcomings that seem to have afflicted every other centrally-planned economy.All Roads Lead to the Blockade
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The Vegetarian Options Here Are... Not Great
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You Can't Take Us Brits Anywhere
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We Visited a Barrio Undergoing Redevelopment, Then Gave a Bunch of the Kids a Ride In the Party Bus
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The statue is of Jose Martí, effectively the founder of the Cuban national identity and the person to whom the most memorials in Cuba are dedicate (there's been a bust of him in almost every place we've visited so far, often more than one)Plaza de la Revolución
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Che Guevara on the left, his face is absolutely everywhere. Camilio Cienfuegos on the right. Castro always disliked the cult of personality that formed around him (I think pretty organically – imagine how the Americans would act if George Washington was still alive today); he requested in his will that no places be named after him, and monuments to him are conspicuously absent (though there are plenty of posters, street art pieces, etc. commemorating him)Plaza de la Revolución #2
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We had no way of heating the Fray Banto pie or the tin of beans, but I did help myself to some of the alesOur Cultural Contribution to the International Night
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Love a Good Socialist Literacy Campaign, Me
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The State Photographer May Have Misrepresented His Experience When He Applied for the Job
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Visit to the Fidel Castro Centre
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Now our planned trip to Old Havana this afternoon is off; on the coach trip back to the hotel we drove through puddles deep enough to form wavesGot Caught in a Tropical Storm and the Power Cut Out
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That barely narrows it down!Quote of the Day:
One of the Communists Has Tabasco
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Everything from the ambulance to the x-ray were free and there was basically no waiting time at the hospital (apparently the doctors where amazed when told about NHS waiting times). The crutches had to be bought from an outpatient who no longer needed them due to shortages, but the hospital staff called up the family and arranged the transferWe're Halfway Through the Brigade and We've Had Our First Hospital Trip
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How is the rain getting here?I'm in the Hotel Lobby with 22 Storeys Above Me
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Given that that was the main point of this trip, there are a lot of dejected brigadistas drowning their sorrows in the hotel bar right nowTomorrow's May Day Events Are Cancelled Due to the Storm
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What do you meaaaaaanQuote of the Day:
Death to the Jews
Doesn't Really MeanDeath to the Jews
the Left might have a bit of an antisemitism problem
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Truly the strangest breed of tankie. There's one Spanish guy dressed head to toe in DPRK merch, and I had the following exchange yesterday:I'm Running into a Lot More North Korea Stans Than I Expected
Me:
I wonder why you never meet weird Pol Pot apologists, if you can even find people repping North Korea of all places
Tankie:I think supporting the Khmer Rouge is a lot less understandable than North Korea
Me:Please elborate on that claim
Tankie:I don't think there's anything to elabotate on really
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Previous note notwithstanding, there is actually way less of a tankie presence here than I expected. The tankies that are here are kookier than I'd anticipated, but I'd say they represent no more than 20% of our delegation. There's about 6 paid-up members of the Communist Party of Britain (i.e. the dominant successor to the CPGB, for whom the termThe Scale of the Tankie Menace
tankie
was originally coined), slightly more non-Party people who follow a similar line and then one guy whose ideology I could best describe as single-issue fanaticism in which a fundamentally anti-human (and certainly anti-worker) worldview is disguised under decolonial rhetoric (no prizes for guessing who thedeath to Jews
quote came from). For representatives of a mass-based political movement that relies on winning over the working class, the communists have managed to alienate most of the normal working-class trade unionists by being odd. -
El Malecón
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Che's face is on them (and they're a weird denomination), so as a result you can only get them from souvenir shops and they cost 500 pesos (~£4) or moreThe 3-Peso Note
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This graffiti popped up in a few places in Old Havana, a subtle nod to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four2+2=5
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Speaking is Miguel Díaz-Canal, the current President of CubaInternational Solidarity Conference
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Meanwhile, Back at the Hotel
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[Video credit: Ammar] -
For our cultural contribution to the international night, the British Isles delegation chose to sing a couple songs: Viva la Quinta Brigada and There is Power in a Union.International Night: I've Never Been So Proud to be British
As we stepped onto the stage, the heavens opened and the first proper rain I've seen in months poured down on us. Clutching our increasingly wet flags and watching our entire audience fleeing indoors (the big babies), the 50-odd of us powered through despite most being pissed and few knowing the words.
Standing in the rain, belly full of ale, shortbread, cheese Branston nicked from our food stand urrounded by trade unionists from all four of our constituent nations drunkenly belting out songs badly to an audience of five (shout out to the Irish Communist Party lot for braving the rain), I felt a pang of nostalgia for home for the first time on this trip.
Then we left the stage, paused for a rousing chant ofLizzie's in a box
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[Video credit: Rob Miller] -
When that's your opening line to the three pasty Brits sat across from you at the dinner table, it's clear the conversation isn't going to be flowing. I've spent most of this week defending the Yanks against some of the more counter-productively exuberant members of our delegation, but good lord they don't help themselves when you actually sit down with them.Quote of the Day:
I Went to England Once. I Didn't Like It. I Don't Like White People.
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Whip
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For a Political Trip, There's Been Far More Conga Lines Than I Expected
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The best example I've seen was a guy defending the Cuban government's attempts to re-educate homosexuals in the ’60s and ’70s, despite the fact that Castro himself admitted that this was wrong and took responsibility for it in 2010One of the Wierdest Things is When the Tankies Go Further Than They Have To
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The Yanks brought Chris Smalls, founder and President of the first Amazon labour union, with them on the brigade. Whilst what he's achieved is very cool, and he's probably the most effective labour organiser around at the moment, getting called one of theChris Smalls
most influential people of 2022
by Time seems to have gone to his head: he mostly drifted around taking photos with giddy Americans and being filmed doing so by his constant entourage of cameramen; he gave a clearly unprepared speech that stood out as rambling even amidst a conference rife with it; and he was dressed like an absolute pillock.
[Photo credit: Chris Smalls]
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For my money, the most interesting (and most humble) of all the celebrities kicking about was Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, one of the Cuban Five group of intelligence agents who spent 16 years in a US prison for attempting to infiltrate and monitor US-supported Cuban exile groups based in Miami responsible for a slew of terrorist attacks against the island, including the bombing of a civilian airliner. All five are understandably considered national heros here.The Best Dignitary
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Excited to crack this bad boy open and give ’er a whirlPhwoar
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Coming from a context in which he is mainly associated with cringey student radicals or people who wear his face with no idea who he is, it's been interesting to see just how revered Ernesto “Che” Guevara actually is in Latin America (particularly Cuba and Nicaragua from this trip, but bear in mind I haven't been to South America)Che Monument
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This monument in Santa Clara comemorates the Battle of Santa Clara, the decisive battle of the Cuban Revolution in which Che Guevara and hisArmoured Train
suicide squad
managed to ambush a heavily-armoured train carryinh thousands of soldiers of the Batista regime en route to reinforce their forces elsewhere. 340 guerrillas attacked a force of 3,900 and forced their surrender; within 12 hours of the victory, the dictator fled Cuba and the Revolution had won and the real work began.
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The bartenders here free pour, and the portions are generousCubey Libs
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The last night in Havana, we went into the corner shop across from the hotel to buy drinks and they gave us free 3-peso notes from a big stack that they presumably bought for the purpose of giving them away. What a bunch of good eggsFree Ches
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It wasn't my fault this time! A wise and sagacious wit decided it would be abso hilar to push me in the pool whilst I had my phone in my pocket. They did end up gaving me theirs so that I'd have some means of exiting the country in a week (really the least they could've done), but expect updates to come even slower until I'm back in Costa Rica and can pick up a new one: this one already has a big hole in it, and the screen resolution is so low I can see the pixelsDays Since Last Phone Destroyed:
1803 -
This was a line from the lecture we attended on the third day, from a self-describedQuote of the Day:
In times of war, dissent is treason
propagandist
(he was clear that he did not consider himself ajournalist
), serves to sum up the Cuban state's response to the accusations regularly levelled against them with respect to their domestic authoritarianism: there is no free media in Cuba, Internet access is tightly restricted and monitored and many who voice their opposition to the ruling party are subject to harassment and detention.
What struck me was that no attempt was made to deny this throughout the trip. Instead, it was described as necessary to defend the Revolution, and I am somewhat sympathetic to this argument: the Cuban Revolution (and the Party that considered itself its steward) has been facing an existential threat from the most powerful empire humanity has ever seen for sixty years. In the face of such pressures, it is unlikely that the UK or US would allow much criticism: this is not speculation, we have the Defence of the Realm Act from WWII, the PATRIOT and Terrorism Acts from the more recentWar on Terror
and even COVID-era restrictions on speech, assembly, etc. When faced with a threat, be it military, economic, disease or otherwise, the state will encroach on human rights.
The other reason I am somewhat sympathetic to the Cuban argument is that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) lists 30 rights, of which the rights to freedom of expression (art.&bsp;19) and peaceful assembly (art. 20) are only two: where these are fairly well-enshrined in the UK/US (current Tory attempts to restrict the latter notwithstanding), we're backtracking on guaranteeing others such as the right to asylum (art. 14), some are potentially better achieved through alternate systems (e.g., the right to democracy [art. 21], which sounds like it could well be better served by the more participatory Cuban system that we have been shown than our own system of five-yearly elections of careerist PPE grads and atrocious wankers), and on some the Cubans are leaps and bounds ahead of us (e.g., the rights to basic needs [art. 25] and education [art. 26], and taking into account their far more limited resources). -
How About Times of Cartoonish Villainy?
Times of war
may be underselling the insanity of the US–Cuban relationship. For example, take Operation Peter Pan, where the CIA and the Catholic Church spread fears amongst parents that the Cuban government were about to nationalise their children and facilitated the exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied minors (some as young as 6) many of whom suffered abuse and neglect in their new homes and perhaps as many as 10% of whom were never reunited with their parents. There have, historically, been no depths to which the US is unwilling to sink against Cuba, and in that light it makes a lot more sense why the government wants to keep a tight grip on the information reaching its citizens (amongst other, more normal state reasons like suppressing criticism and maintaining control) -
Some Excellent Fashion Pieces on This Trip
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After a week and a half of staying in different hotels and having largely different itineraries, we're now together with the Yanks for a few nights in Sancti SpíritusSpecial Relationship Time
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Whilst some of our delegation have occasionally let themselves down with respect to the Americans (e.g., booing them when they ask questions in Q&As), the Cubans have been models of hospitability. I think it's clear that they view the Americans as the most valuable people to get on-side (for obvious practical reasons), and so the Yanks have been getting the best hotels, best visits (e.g. the Latin American School of Medicine and a personal sit-down with the President) and effusive praise every time they ask a question. I think this bizarre dynamic was best captured when we arrived at the hotel and the Cubans unfurled various flags, including the stars and stripes: a nice welcoming gesture (and probably the only US flag in the whole country), to which some of the UK lot assumed the Yanks had put it up and started talking about nicking it later that night. At least the Cubans seem to know their friends from their enemies, and they are always at great pains to stress that they have no issue with the American people, only the US government.Cubano–American Charm Offensive
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Today we visited a general hospital, part of the second tier of the three-tier Cuban healthcare system (per-town family doctors, per-city polyclinics/hospitals and per-region specialist institutions).International Incident
The visit was overshadowed by one of the Yanks, who kept loudly talking over people asking questions. One of ours politely asked her to be quiet, at which point she flipped out and kicked off, including grabbing our gal by the shoulders and attempting to force her to turn back around. Our gal (with maturity I doubt I'dve been able to muster in her shoes) moved away rather than escalate the situation, but when her neighbour tried to tell the woman to be quiet, she changed tack and started booting off about white people denying black people space. Try as he might, not even one of the black members of our own delegation could convince her to stop.
This, it should again be stressed, during a lecture in a hospital as part of a solidarity brigade we are all members of. -
An initially-heartwarming trans-Atlantic dance-off later in the evening descended into chaos when the the Americans took it upon themselves to determine which songs the UK delegation were or were not eligible to request (apparently Kanye West isQuote of the Day:
I don't care if you're on crutches, let's [fudging] go
theirs
), followed by one of theirs treading on our crutch-bound member's plaster cast-wrapped foot and nearly starting a mass brawl on the hotel dancefloor. Someone told her she as being an embarrassment, so for good measure she responded thatyour whole race [white] is an embarrassment
. The lights went back on, the music stopped and crisis talks were held for several hours.
Whilst I spent most of this trip running defence for the Yanks, this is now the third incident in as many days and the second time they have physically assaulted one of our group in the past 24 hours. Nothing seems to be being done about it, and as some of our delegates rightfully pointed out, this is a predictable consequence of having tried to brush the hotel incident under the carpet.
Near as I can tell, the US contingent is made up of several groups who didn't know one another before coming. There is a core of normal young Cuba solidarity activists with whom we are having a gay old time, a small group of older black guys and gals who've been coming to Cuba for decades (I've heard suggestion that they may be former Black Panthers which would check out) who are lovely and have been contributing some awesome stories, and then there is a sizeable and seemingly-dominant contingent of lunatic black supremacists. This explosive coalition is all being held together by the pair of teenage girls who are the contingent co-ordinators.
Amongst the nutters, the hyperfocus on identity and the gleeful destruction of any basis for shared collaboration with comrades through alienating hostility remind me a lot of the kind of lefty politics I first encountered at uni (though that lacked the physical violence element), which seems to have been imported wholesale from the US and which was so off-putting I ended up chatting a load of shit in the Tab and getting called a right-winger for most of my university career instead of getting involved. It took a while to learn that that was only one subset of the left, the one least threatening to established power due to its utter ineffectiveness and therefore the one most promoted by the institutions of that power.
Shithouses like some of those on the US brigade are primarily a threat to themselves and others; not to capital, empire or white supremacy. -
[Photo credit: Ruaraidh]Happy (Belated) May Day!
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[Photo credit: Ruaraidh]May Day #2
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Rooftop Lunch in Trinidad
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There's a free bar all day: uh-ohPlaya Ancón Beach Day
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[Photo credit: Matt]CDR Block Party
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After an entire day of phenomenally heavy drinking, we retired to our hotel for another night of dancing. The biggest weapons on the US contingent seemed to sit out the night, and so all went off without a hitch: a jolly good time was had by all (except me, frantically trying to dry out my phone)Peace in Our Time
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What a bizarrely anti-bird quote to use to advertise your restaurantBlackstone's Ratio, as Applied to Poultry
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My money is on it being either these busts of José Martí (like this one by our hotel pool) or, of course, the noble LadaWhat is the Most-Populous Single Object in Cuba?
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It's not quite Weimar Germany-levelCurrency Inflation
taking wheelbarrows full of cash to the shops
, but all the notes in this picture sum up to about £20
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The currency situation is pretty wild here in general. Cuba had two different currencies until a few years ago, in effect a local peso and a tourist peso. However, they still effectively have a two-tier currency now: the Cuban pesos in which Cubans are paid, and theFunny Money
dollar
, which is a term that encompasses all foreign currencies and treats them all with equal face value (e.g., one euro is one US dollar is one pound is one Swiss franc).
The Cuban peso exchange rate also changes depending on where you go: the official government rate is $1 to 123CUP (although both the official Central Bank of Cuba Web site and the XE currency conversion site still show it as an order of magnitude lower). However, you can get anywhere from 150–200CUP to a euro if you go to the right places (e.g., getting change in a shop).
The end result is that I don't really have any idea how much I've spent here, and I probably never will. -
I got a bus into town with a handful of other brigade delegates who are also staying on in Cuba for a little longer. Amongst them was the same US nutter who had kicked off the brawl the other day, and who then accidentally (?) swilled a Welsh girl at the beach whilst talking to another of our brigadistas (from what I saw, she seemed to only be willing to talk to our black delegates). She demonstrated her worldliness with the above quote, and then followed it up with a lack of self-awareness so profound, I wouldn't have believed it had I not been there, telling her friend thatQuote of the Day:
New York City is the most corrupt city in the world; potholes and all that shit
I get on really well with new people I meet
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All but two of the UK delegation are now safely back in Blighty; thanks gang, it's been a blast, see you all when I'm back in August (TBC)Viva la Decimosexta Brigada
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Imagine all the stress of trying to organise your plans and accommodation whilst simultaneously trying to set up a new phone, all in a country with some of the worst Internet infrastructure on the planet. I nearly made myself homeless last night, and I hope that anyone who works at Airbnb catches a non-fatal but irritating disease that is easily treated if caught on time, but they are unable to book the appointment because the webite asks them to provide loads of unnecessary details firstHorrible Couple Days
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On the bright side, it flickered back to life the other day so I was able to pull all of my Cuba photos and notes off of it. Then after a while the display started to visually melt and the touchscreen started registering taps constantly, so now I think it's dead for goodGood News and Bad News re: My Old Phone
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You never know what memorials and monuments you're going to find here in Cuba. I went to a park dedicated to Victor Hugo, where there also stood a memorial to the IRA hunger strikers. Up the road was a John Lennon statue, and a couple blocks away was memorial to Abraham LincolnMonuments and Memorials
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Whatever the faults of several individuals amongst them, getting harassed by your government at the border is neither cool not normal (article: https://peoplesdispatch.org/2023/05/08/more-us-activists-face-harassment-from-authorities-upon-return-from-cuba/ )The Yanks Got Detained by US Border Goons
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One thing that I should have mentioned earlier is that we have had complete freedom of movement during this whole brigade, which for me is perhaps the single most compelling piece of evidence to counter the common narrative of Cube as just another authoritarian state. We had a daily programme of visits and events, but there was no hard requirement to attend anything and no register-taking. In the evenings we were also left to our own devices, as well as on a couple afternoons put aside to wander Old Havana and Trinidad. Brigadistas routinely headed into Havana and had candid discussions with normal Cubans and saw some more of the realities of life in the country first-hand.Free-range Brigadistas
Also relevant is that there have been no restrictions to using VPNs when accessing the Internet, so whilst actually getting on can be a pain in the arse, I've been able to access everything fine and my Internet traffic will be of little use to any spooks listening in. Unlike China, where VPNs are illegal and possession can get one in big trouble, here in Cuba they are widely accepted and we've even had speakers directly point to them as vital for bypassing US restrictions. -
After a rough couple days and the collapse of my original plan to spend this extra week volunteering at a youth centre, I now have a wildly cheap apartment (£12/night) to myself right by the Old Town, and it comes with normal Wi-Fi. Now I can spend my remaining time here catching up on things, sorting out my phone situation, planning and booking my next steps and exploring at my own leisurely paceDeep Breath
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I found out I hadn't been shortlisted for the Radio Officer role in mid-April, but I'm still waiting to hear back about the IT Manager role (which I assume can only be a good sign)Antarctica Update: Still Waiting
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One weird contradiction resulting from the popularity of Che Guevara and the restrictions on information within Cuba is that Guevara's Guerrilla Warfare is available absolutely everywhere, from roadside book stalls to monument gift shops. This despite the fact that it is a detailed treatment of how to begin, prosecute and win a guerilla war against the state, delving into minutiae such as acquiring weaponry and assembling Molotov cocktails, how to position one's base of operations, how to organise one's forces, etc. The manual has served to inspire radical guerrilla movements for decades, even where some parts of its theory have been disproved.Guerrilla Warfare
People have been arrested for possession of less spicy (and certainly less actionable) works in the UK, yet here this book is everywhere. -
It's not often you see an org. chart in the entryway to a restaurantReally Putting the
Brigade
inBrigade de cuisine
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León was cool, but the architecture in Havana (and Cuba as a whole) is really something else. For some reason the place it reminds me of most is Rome; maybe it's all the scaffoldingHavanarchitecture
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I'm only running three countries behind on these write-ups!New Blog Post: Panama
Read it here.In which my best-laid plans keep going awry, and a trip to a Caribbean party island to celebrate New Year's Eve becomes a two-month odyssey from one side of Panama to the other.
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El Capitolio
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10 Pesos (~6p) for the Sweetest Espresso I've Ever Had
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Cannon Bollards
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One of the few things I have been keeping up on religiously whilst travelling has been Discover Connection's series I Crossed America on $0, in which the host and his friend attempt to do just that. Alternately sad, heartwarming, inspiring and just a lot of fun, the tenth and final episode dropped the other day. The first episode is available here, check it out!I Crossed America on $1
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If anyone remembers my GCSE Art & Design final piece and Mr Parker's hostility to collage as an art form, let it be known that I am among equals here in this contemporary arts centreVindication, Thy Name is Bauhaus
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Havana Cathedral
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I don't think they do tours, but I realised that the base of the Oficina de Seguridad para las Redes Informáticas (OSRI, Cuba's NCSC) was just down the road from me and I had to take a lookOne for the Dorks
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And José Martí International is boring afAnother Day, Another Overnight Stay in an Airport Terminal
