My next stop is Santiago de Cuba, a heroic city of the revolution west of Baracoa. ‘Thank you Santiago!’ cry murafe of the Castro brothers. The people of Oriente province are still poor, but better served than they were when, as impoverished sugarcane cutters, many threw down their tools and went into the mountains to join the revolutionaries. It was here in 1959 that Castro made his first triumphant entry into a Cuban city and here, among the older generation, his philosophy of Cuban Socialism still enjoys committed support. Palatial buildings near the docks are the legacy of the Bacardi family, though you won’t find their rum on the island now, only state-owned Havana Club, which is banned in the USA.
The historic city centre is a jostle of spectacular Spanish-style buildings, and great renovations are underway. Santiago is built over the undulations of low hills overlooking the sea. I find a large neighbourhood band practising for a fiesta. They have pinned their music to the shuttered windows of a pharmacy and are rehearsing with tremendous verve and volume as people gather around. This gleeful scene is entirely unstaged; there is no money in it. It’s culture for culture’s sake. There are no other foreigners in sight. But Santiago won’t be peripheral to visitors’ itineraries for long. International hotel chains with money are snapping up operating contracts here, as in Havana. You can smell the cash in the fresh paintwork.
On a rooftop bar with panoramic views, a young lawyer expresses the frustrations of his generation. He, his dentist sister and doctor partner have a combined wage of £100 a month.To be allowed to leave Cuba would require the kind of income only obtainable by marrying a foreigner, and marriages of convenience are popular. If non-natives wish to buy Cuban property they need a Cuban name on the deeds. ‘Outsiders can invest in businesses here, but not Cubans,’ says the lawyer. ‘You can own one bar. If you own five they will take them from you because they don’t want anyone else having power.’ Entrepreneurs use friends and family as fronts behind which to invest. ‘But Cubans have ideas. We have abilities, we have creativity. All we can do is survive.
