Here Comes a Wave of Change for Cuba


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Warming relations with the U.S. has an upbeat but wary island bracing for a rush of visitors from its Cold War adversary.





A curiosity, a portent, a looming symbol of the impending change: This May, for the first time in nearly four decades, an American cruise ship sailed into Havana Bay.

 

By Cynthia Gorney

Photographs by David Guttenfelder

This story appears in the November 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine.

The first Cuba sighting came Monday morning, just after sunrise. The island is almost 800 miles tip to tip, and for a while there was a horizon shimmer, then hilly outlines against pink sky, and finally: rooftops. A domed shape, maybe a cupola.

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From the Malecón, Havana’s seawall, the closest tip of the United States (la Yuma, as it’s called in Cuban slang) is some 90 miles away. A common refrain, heard among Cubans studying the docked American ship: Pretty vessel. Wish I could travel like that—and go back and forth, between la Yuma and home.

The ship’s topmost deck was jammed with television crews; the rest of us mashed up against the railings on the next deck down. Somebody handed out little Cuban and American flags. Now we could make out the Malecón, the seawall and walkway that serves as a collective front porch for people seeking fresh air or respite from overcrowded households. On warm evenings Cubans always populate the Malecón, but this was something new—nine in the morning, and crowds seemed to have gathered, lofting flags of their own, waving. Cheering!

None of us had known what to expect; as we left Miami on Sunday afternoon, there’d been speculation that the first U.S. cruise ship to dock in Cuba in nearly four decades might fire up anti-Castro hostilities. A lone protest motorboat had chugged around with “Democracia” painted in defiant red along the hull, but that was all. And now in Havana the celebrations were so exuberant, once we made our way into the city’s passenger ship terminal, that the currency exchange booth clerk and I shouted at each other in Spanish through the glass.

The Tourist Boom

Last year the number of Americans visiting Cuba jumped 30 percent, to 454,000. As the United States approves more cruises and flights to the island, tourists could strain the island’s infrastructure and resources. The country’s capital, Havana, remains the main draw, but visitors are seeking out lesser known places, such as Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba.