The Last Days

by Ruben Santander (Chile)

A leap into the unknown Cuba

You may like very much La Havana, but even the most fanatical for the Cuban capital must admit that it is a city that doesn't let you breathe. After two weeks of walking around its streets, I began to feel tired of its tourists, jineteros, and vehicular gases. Of the dissipation, the excess of joy and the ubiquitous reggaeton that today, after a few years of tolerance to some capitalism, invades their nights and days. I decided it was time to escape. Through a long day and an endless night of traveling to the most humid and mountainous corner of the island, I got off the bus. I was in a small town painted mainly in worn shades of pink and yellow: Baracoa, the first Spanish settlement in Cuba. There, under a light tropical drizzle, I engaged in casual conversation with Jorge, a Brazilian man who was a professional photographer. He was there preparing a book, as he told me, about “the last days of Cuba” as we knew it. Baracoa would be the final step of his two months trip around the country. His goal was to arrive at Maisí, the most oriental town of the island, about 60 kilometers southeast. He invited me to join him. There I was and those would be the last days of Cuba. They would also be the last of my trip. Everything began to fit. After some negotiations, we found a smiling driver willing to take us. Through the window of his old Soviet car, we admired the generous tropical landscape of the Guantanamo province. But also we saw its most devastating aspect: once in a while, you could watch the violent effects of a hurricane who had passed a few months before. Was that a sign of the last days of the island or just life, nature, death and chance? When we were leaving the last semi-destroyed hamlet behind, I could glimpse the aim of our trip, the lighthouse of Maisí. Sadly we discovered that the place was not a big deal. Jorge was visibly disappointed but devoted himself to taking some photographs, certainly not very striking. I suggested that we could walk by the rocky coastline towards some buildings that appear to be within walking distance. After a brief hike against the wind, we arrived at an esplanade with three large sheds whose roofs had flown presumably because of the hurricane. Jorge began to photograph everything when suddenly three soldiers appeared shouting in Spanish that we must not be there. - No pueden estar aquí! Váyanse, váyanse! It could have been a very tense situation, however, the tone that they used was as friendly as any other Cuban's. That place was, as the officer in charge told me, a concentration camp for illegal Haitian immigrants. The sheds were empty at that time, except for rows of rusted bunk beds, but they had sheltered more than a thousand people. We returned to Baracoa. Upon arriving at the place where I was staying, my casa particular, I fell into a deep sleep. In dreams, the lighthouse of Maisí appeared to me in the middle of a violent storm, lighting in all directions with frenzy. Occasionally, its beam of withe light fell over unknown faces with deep and resilient eyes. It was like one of those old movies where we could see crowded and frightened people in the holds of old ships crossing an inclement tempest. In the afternoon at Maisí, I was struck by the fact that the sheds' walls were free of any kind of human sign. Those places had been full of people who had faced the unspeakable in the sea with a futile hope of a better life. Nevertheless, they left nothing behind, not even a trace. They knew that those were the last days of something, so what mark was it worth leaving and for whom? In my dream, instead, those walls were crammed with messages.