Witnessing Cuban scars, buying cigars

Brendon Salisbury

At the end of January my family and a group of USC alumni traveled to

Cuba with the USC baseball team, a country that hardly anyone of my

generation has seen. The official “reason” was to learn the role of

religion in today’s Cuba. I “secretly” suspect my dad booked the trip

because they sweetened the deal with three baseball games against the

Cuban national team.

Because of conflicting times, I had to take my finals early. We

flew to Miami, and surprisingly passed through Customs easily. We

expected the Cuban teams to be tough, but USC prevailed 13-3, 20-10

and 23-3. Cuba has a league of 16 national teams, players’ ages

ranged from 16 to 40. One of the games required us to drive way out

into the country. At none of the games did we see more than 50

nationals, and they were not even allowed at the final game.

Concession stands were local people who fried up food in their

backyard and then came to the stadium to sell their wares. The spirit

of Communism prevailed in the games: A catcher, on a passed ball,

walked back to retrieve the ball, allowing the runner to advance all

the way to third from first.

The food and service, as you would expect, were generally poor in

restaurants owned by the government. Recently, individuals are being

allowed to open their homes to paying guests. The “homes” are in

apartment buildings, and the one we went to was serving about 80

guests (supposedly the legal limit was 12). At dinner we met a lady

in charge of women’s baseball, they were so poor that they played

with balls that had long ago lost their covers.

We also went to a cigar factory; each worker has to make 110

cigars a day to keep their job. Their pay: $2 a week and two cigars.

To keep workers from getting bored, a lady constantly reads

newspapers to them. To augment their income, they tried to sell

cigars as you walked through the factory despite the fact that they

would lose their job if caught. An interesting fact was that we only

used American money, even though Cuba has its own currency. As you

see in pictures, the cars are basically old 1950s American cars (with

who knows how many paint jobs). As of recently, some small European

cars are starting to show up.

We saw Fidel Castro’s home. The road that he takes to the capital

is lined 24 hours a day with armed guards. Every building appears to

be at some stage of repair, yet no one is working on them. What you

do see is lots of people standing around, particularly along the wall

by the bay (free air conditioning). The streets were surprisingly

clean. The people seemed happy, not overly so and yet not sad.

Of special interest was how apparently well the races (black,

white, Hispanic, etc.) were blended. There seemed to be no separation

among the people on the streets. You had the feeling, also, that this

happened years ago.

Another thing that struck me was the ever-present propaganda. The

signs were crudely painted and said what you would expect, phrases

such as “The revolution will triumph” or “Yankee imperialists will be

defeated.” Many of the billboards were tributes to Che Guevara, not

so many to Castro. Che died at the right time, like James Dean.

I left with the feeling of a great historical country waiting for

its leader to die so that they could be free again and tourism could

come back.

Since this was a “religious” trip, a note about that. Religions

are allowed and seem to have interest, but I was not left with the

feeling that it was practiced widespread.

We returned through Customs, my dad had the quota of legal cigars

(approximately $250 worth, which filled a unique humidor we also

bought); happily, the Customs agent waved us on through.

* BRENDON SALISBURY is a resident of Newport Beach.