Cuba; The world's most beautiful prison

Havana Cuba is a cluster fuck of dirt, grime, black smoke. It is the massive deterioration of buildings and balconies contrasting with exquisite Spanish architecture, and the smiles of children wandering the street. Cuban music vibrates into your soul, abstract art is alluring; ham and cheese sandwiches are as ubiquitous as the 1950’s American cars that flood the streets. Both lack real depth, and exist only from need. Old Havana is a city of dust and dirt, pollution and rust. The real Havana, is raw, complicated, grimy. This is my experience.

It is late at night. The smell of urine under magnificently crafted stone, arched walls confronts you with disgust, contempt, malice. The sound of chatter floats over the warm Caribbean air, high pitched laughter befriends you while bars overflow out into the streets. Smoke, dense black heavy fumes, fills your lungs with a sweet chemical cocktail that tastes of metal and lead. Cuban women walk the streets, tight, well-shaped figures move with the grace of the moon; nature encompassed in a woman’s body; leering eyes, the sexualisation of femininity complete. Hustling, false friendships, deceit swimming through a wave of desperation, fuelled by the will to survive. Integrity and honesty disregarded; meaningless in a game of manipulation, deceit and lies.

Chugging cars rattle and barge through narrow streets. The old American clunkers splatter over potholed pavement bent with cracked, faded paint and glass. The disease of rust patiently summoning the ancient machine back into the dirt, the source of creation demanding its inevitable return. Full bodied tanks swollen, a symbolic representation of indulgence that is American culture. Excess, abundance, dominance contrasted by jarring angles that once represented success and elegance now plod through the streets, heavy with thick steel, dull, loud uncouth. The machines resist under permanent slavery. They rattle, shudder and groan in protest, as they are forced to propelled forward with replaced mechanical hearts that pump fresh black blood and force rubber limbs turn in a never-ending cycle of punishment and pain.

Black creased faces, fading smiles, impatience, apathy, dead eyes and sharp vocal barks of request. A man asks for a piece of cheap bread with some ham. There is simply not enough. He grunts and he walks away. Dreary streets void of colour, class and appeal. Peeling paint and sagging buildings crushed with defeat. Old Havana is like a tired burnt out, broken old man, full of neglect, lost dreams, unfulfilled potential, youth constricted, castrated, confined and controlled.

I walk through the dusty streets of Havana in awe, looking at a city that has aged, fallen from grace like a queen brought to her knees, I soak up the energy of this place that is a city captured in time. As I dodge the perennial pot holes, the dirty puddles, I see young children playing football on the street. Old women walk slowly, held upright by the hands of youth, clothes faded like the brightness of their lives now lost. I see people sitting on the road, their feet dangling in the street and their eyes on the movement of others. Watching, speaking quietly to old neighbours, some shouting out to their friends, some dancing, and some perhaps waiting for someone, albeit foreigner or family to ease the longing of desire.

The human heart in chains. Clamps of steel, unbending, unrelenting and apathetic. No internet to lubricate curiosity, creativity, expression, ideas. No visa to leave and fly, a dull Caribbean island surrounded by water, it citizens trapped. A prison of rock, water isolation. An illusion of freedom, romanticised, glorified yet masks truth hidden in shadows, a government perpetuates, the elite float, effortlessly in a world of privilege. Revolution, change, a world made in haste. Cuba, a prison frozen in time. Nothing changes. #