Havana without Makeup: Inside the Soul of the City
248
Havana without Makeup: Inside the Soul of the City
248eBook
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Overview
Havana without Makeup is the ultimate insider’s view of Havana, a wide-ranging exploration of its complex facets as seen by few. Its aim is to capture the soul of a city and a society that have evolved on their own terms at the moment before they face inevitable transformations.
Opening on the eve of the announcement of reconciliation between the U.S. and Cuba, the book then looks back at the cultural, political, economic, and religious influences that led up to this historic moment and beyond. Readers are led by a brilliant renaissance man and writer who has been at the vanguard of the city’s struggles for more than twenty years. Portocarero’s anti-tourist guide to Havana examines the built environment of “the most sensual ruin on the planet”: why are large parts of the city so neglected, and what changes may we see over the coming years? Examining all things Cubania--racial issues, la revolución, baseball, Hemingway, communism, synagogues, Santeria, Cimarron culture, and much more--Portocarero overturns every stone in his endeavor to bring us inside the city he loves.
Illustrated with original photographs, this is a unique and essential account of Havana’s history, its present, and what its future may hold.
Herman Portocarero is a Belgian-born writer and diplomat of Spanish and Portuguese descent. He has published more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, including the Hercule Poirot Prize-winning crime novel New Yorkse Nachten (New York Nights). He is presently the European Union ambassador to Cuba.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781933527925 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Turtle Point Press |
| Publication date: | 08/29/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 248 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Thanks to his professional trajectory, he has been familiar with the region since the 1980s and with Cuba since 1995. He has unparalleled knowledge and understanding of Cuban history, politics, and society, and of the relationship between Cuba, the Caribbean, and the United States.
Portocarero has published over twenty works of fiction and nonfiction in Europe. He authored the libretto for the oratorio Flamma Flamma by composer Nicholas Lens (available on Sony Masterworks), a monumental work popular with audiences of neo-classical music. He is also a gifted public speaker, and was one of the pioneers to launch TED talks in Havana in 2014.
His Havana without Makeup is the crowning achievement of a career in writing pursued in parallel with his diplomatic activities. He mixes narrative skills and a novelist’s feeling for people and places, with tireless searches for the truth behind the façade. Applied to Havana, a city he acknowledges to be in love with, this results in a kaleidoscopic visit full of unexpected angles and insights.
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SYNOPSIS
Havana without Makeup aims to provide an insider’s view of Havana, exploring its complex, prismatic facets as seen by few. Its ambition is to capture the soul of a city, and a society, that have evolved on their own terms, just at the moment before they face inevitable transformations. Above all, the book tries to understand and present the unique essence of the city and its joys and pains, its endless struggle for survival, for dignity and respect.
The announcement. The book opens on the eve of the historic announcement of the reconciliation between the United States and Cuba on December 17, 2014. The event was totally unforeseen, but in retrospect we detect omens and precursory signs. However unexpected the event was, the times were ripe for it, as the Cuban and US societies had been growing closer in spite of hostile politics. We see where and how those early contacts developed.
Fidel. Fidel Castro since his retirement in 2006-2008 has lived in a suburb of Havana: where and how he lives, and how the environment of his autumn years relates to the rest of the city.
The most sensual ruin. But what of the rest of Havana, the real Havana, away from the fancy suburbs? Why are large parts of this gorgeous city so neglected? This question becomes one of the recurrent themes of the book. But the very neglect of entire neighborhoods of the city, and the improvised solutions the people of Havana have found to personalize their surroundings, have also turned the city into an organic metropolis. “The most sensual ruin on the planet,” this book calls it, because of the very special interactions between the people and the buildings, between flesh and concrete.
Cubania: a unique melting pot. Moving from the buildings to the people, the book explores the roots and the very specific circumstances that made Havana also a racial melting pot, but in a very different way than in other cities or countries. The almost undiluted survival of African cultures in a predominantly white society is remarkable. The book focuses in depth on racial issues as seen and lived in Havana. These parts provide many historic insights explaining present-day situations and attitudes. Going deeply into the African roots of Cuba’s national character or cubania, we enter the rites and secrets of Santeria.
Economic wreckage and recovery. Moving to the economy of the city and the country, we explore the impact of the Cuban revolution on the daily lives of Habaneras and Habaneros, how the implosion of the Soviet Union wrecked the Cuban economy overnight, and how the country and the society came out of that deep crisis in the 1990s. We recall the libertarian years 1994–99 when Havana was in the grip of early waves of tourism and its sequels.
Heroes of la Revolución. We meet remarkable characters of the revolution’s history and propaganda, Che Guevara first and foremost. Who was the real man behind the ubiquitous image? What was his part in the 1962 missile crisis, when the world was on the brink of nuclear war? We explore in detail his last moments and the search for his grave in Bolivia, listening to the precise and emotional voice of an eyewitness.
The end of Cuban history? We venture into politics: why and how the generation that won power through the revolution is clinging to often outdated ideas and convictions, and how this will play out for the future. We try to understand how the revolutionary old guard sees itself as the end of Cuban history, because they maintain a myth of rebellion that started with the revolts of runaway slaves in the 18th century, was followed by the independence war against Spain in the 1800s, to finally bring independence in 1959.
Cimarron culture and genocide. We visit the sites of the slave-runaway camps near Havana, and the remarkable survival of traits of runaway or Cimarron culture in squatter’s areas to the west of the capital. We ask ourselves if the names of many places around Havana still referring to native Cubans—the Taino and Siboney people—hint at survival or are mere reminders of genocide.
Catholicism and Communism. We follow in detail the evolution of religion in Havana, from official atheism through the remarkable visits of three successive catholic Popes, the survival and the unique history of the Jewish community, the growing evangelical movements. But we also go to a traditional May Day parade on Revolution Square, when all the trappings and slogans of communism are stubbornly maintained for a few hours.
Sex and prejudice. We see sexual liberation reaching the LGBT community, overriding both Caribbean homophobia and Latino machismo.
Ghostly stones. We visit remarkable buildings and sites of Havana: the Colon cemetery and the ghosts it evokes, and what they whisper about Cuban history. The vast Palacio de la Revolucion. The Lenin Park and its monuments on the outskirts of the city. The unexpected Napoleonic Museum, and how it came to be here and what other secrets it harbors; the mysterious underground structures under the city.
Artists without borders. We meet famous Cuban artists, from the timeless prima ballerina Alicia Alonso, at age 95 completely blind but in firm control of the national ballet; the Cuban voices in exile like Celia Cruz, La Lupe and Xiomara Laugart; the origins of Latin Jazz between Havana and Harlem; the new generation of musicians and singers who brought down the Cold War separation between Cuban and the US long before politics followed suit. We see the thriving Havana visual arts scene, also becoming bicoastal now between Cuba and Chelsea.
Baseball and bling. We explore Cuban baseball culture and its impact on the people. We see hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans traveling back and forth with such quantities of luggage – the pacotilla or “bling” of unbridled consumerism- that they have created an entire parallel economy in Havana.
Hemingway’s heirs. We follow Ernest Hemingway’s Cuban years, from his 1930’s stay in the Hotel Ambos Mundos in Old Havana when he was at the top of his talent, to his fading last moments in his villa on the outskirts of the city, his last drinking escapades, his obsession with marlin fishing and cockfights. But we also read the new generation of Cuba’s own talented writers, and we follow Havana’s movie culture all the way from the days of Hedy Lamar and Errol Flynn, to Cuba’s own multi-faceted film productions from the 1960s till the present.
The godfathers. We live the entire story of the US mob in Havana, and the minute-by-minute tale of their defeat and flight when the revolution arrived.
The end of the end of history? The clock is ticking for Havana's future to start on different terms. We ask pertinent and even painful questions about what will happen to the city, the people and the buildings when this new age sets in and harsh realities will have to be faced by people who have lived in their very peculiar and uniquely Cuban world, by choice or necessity, for more than half a century.
Table of Contents
Contents1. Walls of Illusion 3
2. Exceptional 6
3. Nocturnas (Havana-By-Night) 7
4. Afro Cuba 10
5. Havana in Black and White 12
6. Rumba 13
7. Santeria 14
8. Santeria and the Racial Divide 15
9. Communist Orishas? 16
10. Salsa! 19
11. Asia de Cuba 20
12. ‘Achinado’ 22
13. Sex&Cenesex 23
14. Tremenda Mariconada! 25
15. Havana’s Hour Zero 26
16. Proposal for a Controversial Monument 27
17. Good Money, Bad Money 29
18. The Economy as a Book and a Beast 30
19. Looking West – To Asia Again 32
20. La Mula Como Vaca De Leche 34
21. La Libreta 35
22. El Canonazo 37
23. The Last Salvo 39
24. A Defining Moment 40
25. It Takes (At Least) Two to Rumba 42
26. Sitting Down (And More) With Europe 44
27. Cuba No Soy (I Am Not Cuba) 47
28. Trafic Lights of History 48
29. Ghosts of Revolutions Past 50
30. Much Louder Ghosts 52
31. Napoleon in Cuba 53
32. The Orestes Ferrara Secret 55
33. The Cave at the End of the World 57
34. Conversation in Café del Oriente 60
35. Palacio de la Revolucion 63
36. Who’s the Terrorist? 64
37. Parque Lenin 66
38. Playas del este 67
39. Jardines de la Tropical 69
40. Two Shores of Art Deco 70
41. Rum and Cigar Wars 71
42. Waves Over the Walls 72
43. Patria es Humanidad es Patria 75
44. Havana’s Palestinians 76
45. Next Year in Havana / Jerusalem 78
46. Cantos de Ida y Vuelta 81
47. Mulatas de Rumba&Puellae Gaditanae 84
48. Alma Mater 85
49. God’s Crocodile 88
50. La Fabrica 90
51. Mercenaries 91
52. Bloggers Breakfast 93
53. Primero de Mayo 94
54. The Pen&the Sword 96
55. Prima Ballerina Assoluta 100
56. Le Parisien 102
57. Hatuey&Huracan 103
58. Todo el Mundo Canta 105
59. Who’s the Boss? 107
60. The Holy Spirit on the Plaza de la Revolucion 108
61. Winners and Losers 109
62. Jacobins&Dinosaurs 110
63. Other Churches, Other Gods 111
64. Misionero de la Misericordia 113
65. Mozart in Havana 115
66. Art&Politics 116
67. Pelota 117
68. The United Mobsters 120
69. Una Mal Criada 122
70. Hollywood Havana 123
71. Pirates of all Kinds 125
72. Elian 128
73. New York Connections 130
74. Music has no enemies? 131
75. El Paquete 133
76. Hemingway 134
77. Fuster 136
78. The Last Cimmaron 137
79. Fabelo 139
80. KCHO/STAINLESS/CUTY 140
81. Casa Verde 142
82. Rio Almendares 145
83. Havana and the Chocolate Factory 145
84. Tallapiedra (Havana High Line) 146
85. Radio Reloj&Radio Bemba 148
86. La Muerte 149
87. Apotheosis 150