Cuba - Lonely Planet [4]
Campismos Go even more local, stay in rural huts, and save even more money
Agropecuarios Buy local at free-enterprise markets and do your own cooking
Cadecas Swap your Convertibles in the change booths and enter the peso economy
Peso pizza It’s not Italian but it’s got cheese and tomatoes, and it’s cheap
Quiet towns No tourists = lower prices; hit Las Tunas, Gibara, Puerto Esperanza…
Spanish lessons Se habla español and suddenly the prices start to drop
FAMOUS NON-CUBAN ‘CUBANS’
Relocating to Cuba was an important career move for many of history’s famous expats. Make a note of the following names and look out for their colorful legacies as you troll your way around the country (and through this book). See also History and Culture chapters.
Ernest Hemingway They loved him so much they named a marina after him
Graham Greene Observant Brit who brought the seediness of 1950s Havana to life
Winston Churchill WWII leader who did his apprenticeship as a journalist in Cuba during the 1895–98 Independence War
Diego Maradona History’s greatest soccer player was once treated for cocaine addiction in Holguín
Che Guevara The most famous Argentine (and non-Cuban Cuban) on the planet
La Rusa The Russian émigré from Baracoa who gave Fidel US$25,000 to buy more rifles
Meyer Lansky A Mafia boss who ruled Havana as his personal fiefdom
Hatuey Cuba’s first rebel was a Taíno mercenary from Hispaniola with an axe to grind – literally
Máximo Gómez A great Independence War general and native of the Dominican Republic
Alexander von Humboldt The second ‘discoverer’ of Cuba was an eminent German naturalist
SEMINAL CUBAN MOVIES
They haven’t won any Oscars (yet), but cutting-edge cinematic creativity has kept Cuban movies at the forefront of Latin American culture for decades. For more details Click here.
Fresa y Chocolate Robbed of an Oscar in1995, but who cares – it’s still brilliant
Memorias de Subdesarrollo In which Tomás Gutiérrez Alea tests the boundaries of Fidel’s censorship police
Lucía Humberto Solás’ made-in-Gibara classic that inspired a film festival
El Benny The Barbarian of Rhythm in glorious Technicolor
Soy Cuba The director’s choice, this 1964 groundbreaker apparently influenced Scorcese
Viva Cuba Award-winning road movie with kids
Una Mujer, Un Hombre, Una Ciudad Obscure, art-house flick about postrevolutionary life in Nuevitas
* * *
Reminiscent of the uncompromising, in-your-face style of Irvine Welsh or Charles Bukowski, Pedro Juan Gutierrez Dirty Havana Trilogy (2000) is a fascinating, if sometimes disturbing insider look at life in Havana during the dark days of the Special Period. Carlos Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana (2003), meanwhile, is a nostalgic account of boyhood during the tumultuous days of the Cuban Revolution.
In the literary field, classics include Hemingway’s Nobel Prize–winning Old Man and the Sea (1952), and his less-heralded but equally compelling Islands in the Stream (1970). Graham Greene captures the prerevolutionary essence of Havana in Our Man in Havana (1958), while Elmore Leonard documents the events surrounding the explosion of the battleship USS Maine and the Cuban-Spanish-American War with thrill-a-minute panache in Cuba Libre (2000).
Biographies of Che Guevara abound, although there’s no contest when it comes to size, quality and enduring literary legacy. Jon Lee Anderson’s Che Guevara: a Revolutionary Life (1997) is one of the most groundbreaking biographies ever written, and during the research for the book Mr Anderson initiated the process by which Guevara’s remains were found and dug up in Bolivia before being returned to Cuba in 1997. Unauthorized biographies of Castro are equally authoritative: try Volker Skierka’s Fidel Castro: a Biography (2000) or Tad Szulc’s exhaustive Fidel: A Critical Portrait (1986). By far the best to date is My Life: Fidel Castro (2006), a spoken-word testimony catalogued by Spanish journalist Ignacio Ramonet who spent more than 100 hours interviewing the Cuban