PAN AMERICAN GAMES : DATELINE: CUBA : THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, THEN AND NOW

Havana

Harbor, 1898

During the latest in a series of uprisings against the Spanish by Cuban independence fighters, the USS Maine, a battleship dispatched by Washington to protect American lives and property in Cuba, exploded on Feb. 15. The American press, particularly that which was controlled by William Randolph Hearst, blamed Spain, and, on April 28, Congress declared war.

Havana, 1991

In the United States, El Malecon perhaps would be known as Bayshore Drive. It stretches for miles alongside the Caribbean, creating a dividing line between a calm blue sea and the lively, chaotic rhythms of Havana.

On the Malecon in the afternoon, young women walk hand in hand, laughing, and some young men interrupt their games of stickball to watch the oblivious young women.

There is the sound of a rumba coming from a loudspeaker, competing with the horns of cars and buses. There is the smell of salt air, of exhaust fumes, of urine, of sewage backed up, and of something being fried in tiny, hot kitchens. The people here have so little meat that they bread grapefruit, put it into frying pans and call it steak, someone explains.

There are colonial mansions, freshly painted with thick coats of yellow, blue and fuchsia, like dowagers with too much makeup. Some are crumbling. And naked babies play in the dirt while mothers stand at windows with no panes or screens and watch protectively. Underfed dogs sleep in the shade.

Underneath a sign on the wall that says Fidelidad --faithfulness--a boy, maybe 16, spots a foreigner on the sidewalk and runs to greet him.

“My father is from New York, but I cannot go because the government does not allow the people to leave,” the boys says in broken English.

“That’s too bad,” the foreigner says.

“Yes,” the boy agrees. “Do you want to buy some Cuban cigars?”