Mixed Visions of the Future in Post-Fidel Cuba

In the once-crumbling Plaza Vieja in Old Havana, a European men’s clothing store has opened its expensively refurbished doors a few yards from a fancy new Austrian microbrewery. The store’s plush, wood-lined interior is stocked with upscale sporting and casual wear reminiscent of Brooks Brothers or L.L. Bean, while the microbrewery, with its sparkling counters, moody lighting and mixed clientele of tourists and laid-back locals, seems more Caribbean party hot spot than one-party socialist state.

A few miles to the west, next to swanky beachfront hotels, Cuba’s elite live in modern glass-fronted condominiums and park power boats in the adjoining canals. Along the Malecon, the city’s famous seafront promenade, a construction site advertises its future occupant: a sleek new tapas bar.

Three weeks ago, when President Fidel Castro checked into a hospital with reported internal bleeding after making an unprecedented power transfer to his brother Raul, speculation swept the globe regarding his island’s economic and political fate. But on the streets of Havana, glimpses of a possible post-Fidel future already may be seen.

These mental snapshots leave contradictory impressions. In many ways, Cuba remains frozen in the late 1950s. The vast majority of Old Havana’s elegant colonial-era residences are flaking into oblivion. Their impoverished residents slump in doorways, fanning themselves to stave off the tropical heat. Vintage American cars still cruise the streets, though many have been converted to tourist taxis.

The official Communist Party newspaper, Granma, is still a dreary propaganda sheet with a Cold War-era graphic sensibility. Socialist slogans and iconic images of Che Guevara still hang from public buildings, along with posters declaring, “Long live Fidel -- 80 More Years.”

But those same slogans and images also are being sold on berets, T-shirts, posters and other kitschy paraphernalia. Plastered across a pale, middle-aged tourist’s body, they look about as revolutionary as the Nike swoosh or the Coca-Cola logo.

Despite decades of think-tank predictions that Castro’s eventual decline or replacement would provoke crisis in the government and chaos in the streets, the old warrior’s convalescence seems to have engendered calm rather than panic.

Around Havana, there is evidence of the effect of foreign investment and economic joint ventures with the Cuban government that Castro began encouraging after the island lost its longtime Soviet sponsorship in the early 1990s.

The meticulously refurbished baroque buildings that house the men’s store and the microbrewery are part of a project to bring back what the government refers to as the nation’s architectural “patrimony,” a resident said. Pedestrians pausing to admire the handsome facades may hear snatches of traditional Cuban music drifting from half a dozen trendy bars and restaurants surrounding the plaza.

At one restaurant packed with tourists on a recent weeknight, a musician chatted casually with a table of visitors about his band’s upcoming foreign tour, and offered his name and e-mail address.

The scene was similar a few blocks away, in the Plaza de la Catedral, where tourists sipped mojitos at cafe tables while listening to street bands and watching cigar-chomping women who came of age during the Eisenhower era.

(Be prepared to pay a tip if you snap their picture. Like many Cubans attuned to the country’s active tourist trade, they’ve learned to keep their palms open.)

Just off the plaza, in the Callejon del Chorro, browsers comb through the technically stunning graphic prints and posters at the government-sponsored Taller Experimental de Grafica, where offerings include seaside landscapes along with depictions of the purported evils of neo-liberal capitalism.

But capitalism isn’t always a dirty word in modern Cuba. Along the Parque Central and Obispo avenue in the city’s historic center, tourists and Cubans make their way past a modest but apparently growing number of hotels and small shops selling cosmetics, sportswear and other goods.

At the Plaza de Armas, men labor under the hot sun to set down paving stones that will give the historic area a more authentic look.

A male trio sings an a cappella version of “Guantanamera,” hoping for spare change from the tourists, while a collection of Jose Marti poems rubs shoulders with Ernest Hemingway’s favorite cocktail recipes at the open-air encampment of used-book stalls.

Cuba may be culturally off-limits to the United States, but it is clearly in touch with other parts of the world, especially Europe, Canada and Latin America. The contemporary artworks in the National Museum of Fine Arts reflect a detailed knowledge of modern global art currents. Tourists may flock to hear the old-school sounds popularized by the Buena Vista Social Club, but youths on the street and cabdrivers gravitate to hip-hop and R&B.;

A painter who displays his large abstract canvases in a storefront and has placed his work in shows in Europe and the U.S. acknowledged that his paintings travel the world more than he can. But he expressed appreciation for being included in a recent group show sponsored by the Cuban government.

“After 40 years” under Castro’s rule, “the people are afraid of what’s going to come next,” said the man, who like the other people quoted in this article could not be identified for security reasons. But the unease, he believes, is more a general anxiety about the unknown rather than a specific fear about what the next government might or might not do.

Though Cubans typically are hesitant to approach tourists or start a conversation with them, they don’t appear to shrink from such encounters. Sometimes these exchanges end in offers of cheap Cohiba cigars, cheap home-cooked meals or cheap sex. But just as often, they may lead to a discussion of the city’s historical landmarks, Papa’s pub crawls or the state of U.S. politics.

Cuba’s capitalistic tendencies may conflict with the official party line, but they are nothing new. The resort area of Varadero, east of Havana, is the largest in the Caribbean and has been attracting hundreds of thousands of foreign tourists to its white-sand beaches and azure waters since the 1970s. The Cuban economy actually can be seen as two economies, one for tourists and the privileged, the other for everyone else.

Two images of the city stand out. One is of a packed downtown movie theater on a humid Sunday afternoon, at a screening of the new feature film “El Benny” about the great Cuban singer Benny More.

The nearly all-Cuban audience hooted and cheered at every risque joke and flashy 1950s nightclub number, a kind of group affirmation of the national culture and identity.

The other is of an old, barefoot man in filthy clothes lying on the curb of Aguacate street, directly across from the Museum of the Revolution.

Which is Cuba’s future, and which is its past?

Reed Johnson was recently in Havana.