Next Year in Havana

by Chanel Cleeton

To be Cuban is to be proud—it is both our greatest gift and our biggest curse. We serve no kings, bow no heads, bear our troubles on our backs as though they are nothing at all. There is an art to this, you see. An art to appearing as though everything is effortless, that your world is a gilded one, when the reality is that your knees beneath your silk gown buckle from the weight of it all. We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel. We try to preserve the fiction that this

The world as we know it has died, and I do not recognize the one that has taken its place.

When Christopher Columbus arrived in Cuba, he described it as the most beautiful land human eyes had ever seen. And it

To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world—the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon—taken from you. They exist on the other side of a wall—there and not—unaltered by time and circumstance, preserved in a perfect memory in a land of dreams. My Cuba is gone, the Cuba I gave to you over the years swept away by the winds of revolution. It’s time for you to discover your own Cuba.

Never forget where you are,

The rights you enjoy here will vanish once you land in Havana. Never take that for granted.

It’s strange to be in a place that is so cut off from the rest of the world, to realize we likely view life through such different lenses.

and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.

That’s the thing with grief—you never know when it will sneak up on you.

we vote, but what does a vote mean when election outcomes are a foregone conclusion?

My cell service doesn’t work, either, so it’s just Cuba and me.

black beans and rice

My hair’s prone to frizzing in humidity, and it’s risen to the occasion provided by the Cuban climate,

The exiles in Miami and around the world hate Castro because he took their country from them, because he took everything, really.

Cubans who left prospered whereas those who stayed behind still appear to be struggling despite the promises they received from the government.

The best thing to do, the smart thing, the way to survive in Havana is to keep your head down and

go about your daily life as though the world around you isn’t creeping into madness.

But it’s hard to hope when all you’ve known is corruption, when your reality is rigged elections and the possibility of more of the same.

There are other parts of the city—far too many—where people are suffering tremendously, yet it still feels as though Havana exists in its own self-contained bubble.

They’re too occupied with surviving in the present to spend their time living in the past.

There’s a different level of poverty in Cuba that suggests that not only is the deck stacked against you, but someone keeps stealing all the cards.

Havana is a beautiful city shrouded in sadness,

“On average, your ration book entitles you to rice, sugar, cooking oil, eggs, pasta, and coffee every month. Protein—typically chicken—every ten days. A bread roll every day. Every few months you get salt. Young children and pregnant women receive milk.

“Terrible things rarely happen all at once,” she answers. “They’re incremental, so people don’t realize how bad things have gotten until it’s too late. He swore up and down that he wasn’t a communist. That he wanted democracy. Some believed him. Others didn’t.”

Fidel took everything away so now we all have nothing. We are all equal, you see.”

The legacy of modern Cuba is that we can enjoy things for a moment, but we cannot truly possess them. The country is not ours; it is merely on loan from Fidel.”

“This country. It has so much potential. So much possibility. But it breaks your heart every single time you dare hope for more.

“I want to be my own person.” His words wrap around my heart. “Not another number in the eyes of the government. Another food ration, another worker, another Cuban who isn’t free in his own country.”

They ensure we’re so preoccupied with the daily struggle that there’s little left over for the most important one, for taking control of our future.”

We’re guests in our own country. Second-rate citizens because we had the misfortune to be born Cuban.”

And that’s what terrifies the regime. If the people don’t fear them, they lose their power.”

They watched the country they loved change into something they no longer recognized.

Both sides love Cuba, they just do it in different ways. Some love it so much they can’t leave; others love it so much, they cannot stay.”

“Then you know what it means to be Cuban,” he says. “We always reach for something beyond our grasp.”

Even in a country where everyone is supposed to be equal, there are clear disparities between those who have little and those who have less.

That’s the thing about death—even when you think someone

is gone, glimpses of them remain in those they loved and left behind.

I didn’t realize how much people still suffered, didn’t understand the depth and breadth of the problems facing everyday Cubans.

“You never know what’s to come. That’s the beauty of life. If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected pleasures.”

Cubans exist in a constant state of hope.