Al combate, corred, Bayameses, Que la Patria os contempla orgullosa; No temáis una muerte gloriosa, Que morir por la Patria es vivir. En cadenas vivir, es vivir En afrenta y oprobio sumido; Del clarín escuchad el sonido; ¡A las armas, valientes, corred! Pedro Felipe Figueredo, 1867
Hasten to battle, men of Bayamo For the Fatherland looks proudly upon you. Do not fear a glorious death, For to die for the Fatherland is to live. To live in chains, is to live In dishonor and ignominy. Listen to the clarions call To arms, brave men, go!
A journey to
CUBA by Taco Anema and Anne Stienstra
2 | Havana
3 | Havana
4 | Havana
5 | Havana
6 | Havana
7 | Havana
8 | Havana
9 | Havana
10 | Havana
11 | Havana
12 | Havana
13 | Havana
14 | Havana
15 | Havana
16 | Havana
Mafia bosses, most notably Meyer Lansky, lost $100 million in hotels, clubs, casinos, brothels and other such establishments – a good tenth of the value of US assets taken over by Fidel Castro and the Cuban state after 1959. FBI Estimate
25 pre-embargo Punch Shorts de Luxe in their original box. [...] They also have that special distinctive smell of old Cuban. [...] Price: 800.00 EUR / 1,013.67 USD/ 550.82 GBP Internet advertisement
Avoid purchasing Cuban cigars from unknown parties, particularly on the Internet. [...] It is commonly estimated that greater than 95% of the cigars in the US reputed to be Cuban are actually fakes. Steve Saka in ‘The Ultimate Counterfeit Cuban Cigar Primer’, www.cigarnexus.com
17 | Havana
18 | Havana
19 | Havana
22 | Havana
23 | Havana
24 | Havana
We do not want to facilitate something that puts dollars into Castro’s hands. Molly Millerwise, a spokeswoman for the US office that administers the embargo against Cuba, 2004. Her office declared illegal any private American help efforts to preserve the decaying villa Ernest Hemingway bought in Cuba in 1939.
One of the supposed more visible manifestations of the embargo is the low number of modern automobiles on the streets of Cuba. Cuba makes no cars of its own. Non U.S. automakers that might normally be eager to ship vehicles and replacement parts to the island are hampered because of U.S. trade rules. Ships are prohibited from entering U.S. ports for six months after making deliveries to Cuba, thus effectively blocking access to the world’s largest automobile market. Wikipedia
The U.S. will place embargos on sugar, oil and guns. President Eisenhower, imposing a partial economic embargo on Cuba, October 19, 1960. His successor, President Kennedy, imposed a full embargo.
25 | Havana
26 | Havana to Santa Clara
27 | Havana to Santa Clara
28 | Havana to Santa Clara
29 | Havana to Santa Clara
30 | Havana to Santa Clara
31 | Havana to Santa Clara
32 | Santa Clara
After a while wanting to leave became a way of life. It meant that my father scanned the paper for news of conflicts with other countries, calculating which enemy nation would be most likely to welcome fleeing Cuban refugees. My sister and I rarely got to wear our nicest outfits, because my mother saved them, pressed and covered in plastic, so we could look elegant upon landing in Madrid, which was the plan for a while, or New York, which was always the dream Author Mirta Ojito in her novel ‘Finding Mañana’. Ojito was one of the 125.000 ‘Marielitos’, who left Cuba by boat from Mariel Harbor in 1980.
The crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter could not believe their eyes. Chugging along at a steady 13 kilometres per hour in the Straits of Florida was a bright-green 1951 Chevrolet truck with 12 Cuban migrants aboard. The ingenious craft was kept afloat by 12 drums strapped to its sides. The wheels were still in place and the engine was running, turning a propeller attached to the drive shaft. There was even a captain at the wheel. “We’ve seen surfboards, pieces of Styrofoam, bathtubs, refrigerators. But never an automobile,” Petty Officer Ryan Doss of the U.S. Coast Guard said yesterday. National Post News Services, Friday, July 25, 2003
33 | Havana to Santa Clara
34 Santa Clara
35 | Santa Clara
36 | Santa Clara
37 | Santa Clara
38 | Santa Clara
What is presented as light entertainment, comedy, and the hypocritical free flow of information, serves as a vehicle for gross distortions of reality in Cuba, as well as banality, consumerism, and other hallmarks of capitalist society. Government newspaper ‘Granma’ (March 8, 2003) on ‘illegal’ television programs that are picked up by Cubans with satellite receivers and sold to their neighbors. Police conduct raids in residential neighborhoods to disable the networks, destroy the antennas, and assess fines on the offenders.
Journalist Guillermo Fariñas, 43, was hospitalized February 7 due to the effects of the hunger strike he began to demand that the Cuban government allow him and his colleagues access to the Internet. In Cuba, Internet access is restricted to agencies of the national government, educational and cultural institutions, and foreigners who pay for the service in convertible currency. Cuba Report, Inter American Press Association, 2006
There are currently 72 prisoners of conscience in Cuba. Amnesty International, 2006
39 | Santa Clara
40 | Santa Clara
41 | Santa Clara
42 | Santa Clara
43 | Santa Clara
44 | Santa Clara
45 | Santa Clara
46 | Santa Clara
47 | Santa Clara
48 | Santa Clara
49 | Santa Clara
50 | Santa Clara
51 | Santa Clara
52 | Santa Clara
53 | Santa Clara
54 | Santa Clara
55 | Santa Clara
56 | Santa Clara
They passed the Carmen Bar and the Cha Cha Club – bright signs painted on the old shutters of the eighteenth-century façade. Lovely faces looked out of dim interiors, brown eyes, dark hair, Spanish and high yellow: beautiful buttocks leant against the bars, waiting for any life to come along the sea-wet street. To live in Havana was to live in a factory that turned out human beauty on a conveyor-belt. Graham Greene, ‘Our Man in Havana’, 1958
In 1943 German U-boats were slipping into the Gulf of Mexico to torpedo American and Venezuelan shipping, and Hemingway saw an opportunity to participate in a war without straying too far from home. By now he had his own fishing boat, the Pilar, and [...] embarked on a slightly-crackpot ‘U-boat hunting’ scheme. He had the Pilar outfitted with machine guns and ammunition, rounded up a crew and made a number of patrols in the Gulf Stream looking for German subs. (They never found one.) 57 | Santa Clara Kelley Dupuis, ‘Ernest Hemingway in Cuba’, 2001
58 | Santa Clara to Camag端ey
59 | Santa Clara to Camag端ey
60 | Santa Clara to Camag端ey
61 | Santa Clara to Camag端ey
62 | Santa Clara to Camag端ey
63 | Santa Clara to Camag端ey
64 | Santa Cruz del Sur
The Republic of Cuba hereby leases to the United States, for the time required for the purposes of coaling and naval stations, the following described areas of land and water situated in the Island of Cuba: [...] In Guantanamo [...] The grant [...] shall include [...] generally to do any and all things necessary to fit the premises for use as coaling or naval stations only, and for no other purpose. [...] Agreement Between the United States and Cuba for the Lease of Lands for Coaling and Naval stations, February 23, 1903
The unlawful detention of ‘enemy combatants’ at the US Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay has now entered its fifth year. Hundreds of people remain held in effect in a legal black hole. Many of them allege they have been subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Three detainees have died at the camp, after apparently comitting suicide. Others have gone on prolonged hunger strikes, being kept alive only through painful force feeding measures. Guantánamo Bay has become a symbol of injustice and abuse. It must be closed down. Amnesty International, 2006
65 | Santa Clara to Camagüey
66 | Santa Cruz del Sur
67 | Santa Cruz del Sur
68 | Santa Cruz del Sur
69 | Santa Cruz del Sur
70 | Santa Cruz del Sur
71 | Santa Clara
Despite the fact that rationed products are sold at subsidized prices (fixed throughout the country), their supply always falls short.. According to the majority of Cubans, the rationed items are not enough to feed a person for the entire month. JosĂŠ Alvarez, Professor, Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Florida, 2004
We have more than doubled wages in the past two years to an average of 398 pesos* a month, and we increased the subsidized monthly allotments for every Cuban citizen of staples such as rice, eggs and cooking oil. We have added chocolate to the food package. Cuban Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez, 2006 *21 US dollars
74 | Santa Cruz
75 | Santa Cruz
76 | Santa Cruz
77 | Santa Cruz
78 | Ciego de Avila
79 | Ciego de Avila
80 | Ciego de Avila
81 | Ciego de Avila
82 | Havana
The first time Cubans found out about the record was when it won the Grammy. That was big news. What I hear from Cubans is a thankfulness for restoring this music to prominence. Because even though it was socially incorrect for a bunch of years, it didn’t die off, and these people aren’t forgotten. Guitarist Ry Cooder, who in 1996 went to Havana, assembled a band of long-forgotten Cuban musicians and made the Grammy-winning record ‘Buena Vista Social Club’
83 | Havana
84 | Havana
85 | Havana
86 | Havana
87 | Havana
88 | Havana
89 | Havana
90 | Havana
Castro is either incredibly naive about Communism or is under Communist discipline. Vice-President Richard M. Nixon after Fidel Castro became Prime Minister of Cuba in February 1959. Castro, back then, was a constitutional liberal and nationalist.
I recommend that thorough consideration be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro. J.C. King, head of the CIA’s Western Division, in a memo to CIA Director Allen Dulles, December 11, 1959. It was the first time that the idea of assassinating Castro was committed to paper.
The Eisenhower Administration is permitting a Communist menace [...] to arise only ninety miles from the shores of the United States. Senator John Kennedy, running for president, in October 1960. Kennedy knew – having been informed so by CIA Director Dulles – that Eisenhower had ordered Cuban exiles to be trained for operations against the Castro government.
Bring me a couple of hairs from Castro’s beard. Nicaraguan dictator Luis Somoza wishing good luck to the 1400 Cuban exiles setting out from his country to invade Cuba’s Bay of Pigs, April 14, 1961. The Cubans had been trained by the CIA and were escorted by ships from the US Navy.
The shit has hit the fan. The thing has turned sour in a way you wouldn’t believe. Robert Kennedy to Senator Smathers of Florida, after hearing that the 91failed, | Havana invasion had April 18, 1961
92 | Havana
93 | Havana
94 | Camag端ey
95 | Havana
Cuba, a journey to Cuba, made by Taco Anema and Anne Stienstra in 2004
Photography: Taco Anema Design: Anne Stienstra Dtp: Henk Hoebe Quotations: Anneke van Huisseling Printing: Spinhex Industrie Lithography: Spirit & Sketch Binding: Handboekbinderij Geertsen © Anema-Stienstra, Amsterdam All rights reserved. No part of thispublication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the publishers. Thanks to Martinair Holland N.V. ISBN-13 978-90-9021498-6
Capital: Havana (23째8 N 82째23 W) Official language: Spanish Government: Socialist republic President of the Council of State: Fidel Castro (Raul Castro acting, 2006) Cuban Republic declared: May 20, 1902 Date recognised in Cuba: January 1, 1959 Area: 110,861 km 2 (42,803 square miles) Population: 11,382,820 (2006 estimate) Wikipedia