HAVANA -- Get the hell out of Havana!
That’s the first word of advice I got when I arrived in the country. But it seemed strange at the time leaving Havana. Havana seemed like the place to be. If I hoped to gain any understanding about this isolated country, shouldn’t I do it in the country’s largest city and capital? There’s so much going on. Fidel lives there. The mafia used to run the city. Now mansions crumble and the black market thrives. In a way it almost feels like New York. Almost.
And then I got out of Havana. While riding horseback through a guava field in a farming commune along the southeastern coast of Cuba it hit me: Havana might as well be Manhattan — a big city far removed from the reality the rest of the country faces.
Located in the outskirts of Campechuela, a neglected little city ten-hours by bus from Havana is the small village of El Puntico. There’s something musical about life here: The stillness, the wind whistling through the banana trees the chorus of animals chirping and rustling.
Oxen and horse-drawn carts outnumber cars on the dirt roads of the town. A lazy eye might say it is the same here as it was during the 19th century. But it’s not. It’s very much the 21st century. It’s just different.
The Sierra Maestra Mountains, where Fidel Castro and his guerilla fighters recuperated their fledgling revolution, cut across the skyline. Billboards on the way into the village remind passersby: “the farmer is the hero of the revolution.” It is in this village where I found them, it was clear from the moment I walked in: several acoustic guitars rested against the side of the house. I knew because the tranquil countryside was cut by the graceful voice of a woman singing. Several guitars accompanied her.
This is the family I’d been looking for. They were playing in a three-room concrete house at the end of the long dirt road. They were expecting me. The whole town seemed to know how to play something: the guitar, the maracas, the congas. Everyone could sing.
Several farmers in the village had trained at an important music school in a larger city nearby. Now they proudly pick bananas on government-subsidized farmland
