{"id":490,"date":"2018-06-13T21:51:10","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T21:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jabali.com\/?p=490"},"modified":"2018-06-13T23:42:23","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T23:42:23","slug":"it-all-makes-sense-in-santiago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/?p=490","title":{"rendered":"It All Makes Sense in Santiago"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe first thing Ernesto says after picking us up at the train station is that Santiago is the heart of Cuba.
\nA large port and rail terminal meet at the bay, where a distant Colonial fort overlooks the country\u2019s second-oldest city, guarding the channel. (And where I found a postcard of Camilo with Fidel before entering Havana during the revolution)
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\nWe later learn the city is the home of the black Madonna. She resides in a church outside of town that is a major pilgrimage site and sits in front of a mountain where escaped slaves fled.
\nAlso known as Och\u00fan, she\u2019s the goddess of love and femininity, dark-skinned and dressed in bright yellow.
\nErnesto, still trying to understand our journey, notes all Cubans are white with a little black or black with a little white, before asking
\n\u201cAnd why did you take the train?\u201d
\nMilena, our next Airbnb host, gets the idea.
\n\u201cComo Che en moto,\u201d she says, referring to his motorcycle trip across South America before meeting Fidel. Yes, it\u2019s a good way to meet the average Cuban, we tell her, adding that I\u2019m more a fan of Camilo, who I think is like Pete?\/George Best, the fifth Beatle.
\nThe bathrooms were nothing more than a stinking metal tube extending up from the floor, I tell
\nErnesto later during lunch at a restaurant in a patio overlooking the bay.
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\nHe says the Chinese are bringing in new trains.
\n\u201cThe problem is the government never has money for maintenance,\u201d Ernesto says. \u201cLook at the rental cars, they\u2019re the cheapest Chinese cars available.\u201d
\nOur arrival is just in time for a weekly fair with the narrow streets closed to traffic. A live orchestra in the square plays classical music, and Cuban bands are on the side streets, where historic buildings abound, with plaques detailing its history.
\nIn 1801, the rights of the escaped slaves and others were legalized and they were recognized as free men and landowners.
\nThe Royal Order was read before the image of the black Madonna, also known as the Virgin of Charity. That marked Santiago as the first in the island where the freedom of slaves was proclaimed, 80 years before the formal abolition of slavery.
\nI chat with Milena about our differences, including race and crime and guns in America, telling her most shootings are drug related, and America is fairly safe. School shootings disturb her and while Cuba is poor, she\u2019s glad she can walk outside whenever she wants and feel safe, something I, as a recent stabbing victim, admit I don\u2019t always feel.
\nShe lives in one of the eight or nine houses her grandfather had before the revolution.
\nA woman who worked for him lived in the house for years and he was able to sell the others before they were taken. However, he lost a store, a bar and parts of a finca, or ranch, where her father still lives and grows coffee as well as some produce.
\nA truck owned by her grandfather that was used in the revolution now sits in a museum nearby where he is credited with aiding the rebels.
\n\u201cHe really just wanted them to go,\u201d she said of the donation.
\nSome of her cousins now live in Europe but others stayed. With Castro\u2019s brother Raul retiring this year, everyone is waiting to see what will happen.
\n\u201cWhat Cubans really want is for the blockade to be lifted so we can trade more freely with the rest of the world,\u201d she said.
\nI settle in to the comfortable house, waste a few 1CUC \u0131nternet cards going online because she has a WiFi router and listen to my new favorite station, Radio Reloj, news bits read off while a clock ticks in the background. The station is the voice of the revolution, it seems, constantly informing the populace of developments across the country and the globe, and it hooks me.
\nAfter a day of rest, including mass where the priest stops the process to ensure I am a confirmed Catholic before giving me the host, we enlist Ernesto again and head to the mountains.
\nErnesto, who drives a small Peugeot, says decades old Wiley\u2019s Jeeps and Toyota Land Cruisers can cost $40,000 because it\u2019s like buying a business. Milena\u2019s husband later says he\u2019s heard of a new car selling for 250,000CUC,
\nOn the way out, we stop to see the
\nchanging of the guard at Fidel\u2019s tomb, which is smaller than Jose Marti\u2019s memorial just to the left, and is marked by a large boulder with a plaque reading Fidel.
\nErnesto later agrees Camilo is the forgotten revolutionary but adds outsiders weren\u2019t responsible for his disappearance in a flight to Havana that never arrived.
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\n\u201cHe was the most charismatic of all of them,\u201d Ernesto says. \u201cThere\u2019s a story that Fidel was speaking once and Raul and Camilo were in back working. When they came out, the crowd cheered so much for Camilo that Fidel had to stop speaking. Fidel was smart and realized that Camilo was more popular and you know what they say, you can\u2019t cast a shadow on Fidel.\u201d
\nThe car winds it\u2019s way up into the mountain to see the Gran Piedra, past guajiros on horseback out cutting brush for firewood. Little piglets suckling on their mother on the way up, strolling down the street on the way back.
\nThe car goes as far as Ernesto is comfortable taking his livelihood, then it\u2019s a
\nhike up to the top of the big rock. Then down into the little row of houses and stands to see the coffee plantation started by a French planter who escaped Haiti with 25 slaves. Caught in the rain, we stopped for wood-fired coffee and overpaid, 5CUC for coffee and cigar.
\nAnd there it was, a little shack, an iron pot over a wood fire, a cloth coffee filter, a few cigars and some carved wood Orishas. All doled out by a few Yuban who have been in these hills for years, now making up prices for foreign tourists like any other Cuban.
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The first thing Ernesto says after picking us up at the train station is that Santiago is the heart of Cuba. A large port and rail terminal meet at the bay, where a distant Colonial fort overlooks the country\u2019s second-oldest city, guarding the channel. (And where I found a postcard of Camilo with Fidel before … Continue reading It All Makes Sense in Santiago<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=490"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":510,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490\/revisions\/510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jabali.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}