Reporting from Cuba, a place frozen in time yet full of potential

Reporting from Cuba, a place frozen in time yet full of potential
BY JEFFREY BROWN June 15, 2015 at 5:47 PM EDT

Deciding to go was the easy part. I'd been looking for an opportunity to
get to Cuba for a long time, for all the obvious reasons: the history,
the politics, the culture, the place, the fact of it being — the cliché
is true — so close and yet so far away. The announcement in December by
Presidents Obama and Raoul Castro that the U.S. and Cuba would move
toward normalizing relations provided the big, history-in-the-making
reason to go. The Havana Biennial, an international art festival,
offered the immediate "peg," something to hang our hats on for our own
planning and, importantly, for the Cuban press office. It's still not
easy to visit Cuba. Most tourism is banned under the U.S. embargo and
Americans who wish to visit the island must qualify under one of 12
categories of licensed travel, including so-called educational
people-to-people trips. (These have become ever more popular, the
definitions ever more expansive. We met a tour leader who was hoping to
set up a yoga trip.)

Our group — me, producers Merrill Schwerin and Frank Carlson, cameraman
Steve Mort — was traveling as journalists, requiring special visas from
the Cuban press office. That process took time, lots of it. Merrill
stayed in constant contact — rather, I should say, she tried to stay in
constant contact — with the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C.
We were required to lay out the stories we intended to pursue, the
people we wanted to interview. We were given positive early signs but
then long silences. We weren't sure the trip would happen — until we
were, just a few weeks before we left. It's still not clear to me if the
delayed response was purely bureaucratic or something else.
In Cuba, as in many other countries we visit, we worked with a local
producer, a "fixer," (we'll have more from him this week, when he gives
us his "tour" of Havana) who helped arrange things on the ground, from
the logistics of hotels and cars to setting up interviews. Our fixer was
extremely friendly and helpful. We were also aware that he was in
contact with the government press office. Again, this is not entirely
unusual. But it meant we had to take some care in what we did.

The pluses of reporting from Cuba? It's visually stunning, the layers of
time all there before you in Havana's crumbling buildings. With so few
vehicles, it's an easy city to move through. And those 1950s cars, of
course! The "frozen in time" feel — all real. It's fascinating to be in
a commercial-free zone — no chain stores, no ads, few signs — without
the visual clutter of so much of our lives. Then there are the people,
universally friendly, who we met along the way and who became part of
our stories — the human dramas within the larger political, economic and
cultural drama that is unfolding. For a reporter, a rich country,
indeed. Not in wealth, but in everything else.

The minuses? There's the heat, high 90s every day we were there. There's
the lack of internet connections. Frozen in time, right? A time before
the internet and international cell phone service, for the most part.
International hotels are one place where service is available, at a high
cost. At ours, you bought time and could sit in a lounge on the second
floor (not your room or elsewhere) to use it. No international banks, so
American credit cards are useless here — this is a strictly cash
economy. And there are few of the amenities international travelers are
used to, including air conditioning. Let me be clear: these were
inconveniences for us, real problems for Cuban's citizens. Many spoke to
us of the feeling of isolation and the lack of resources available to
them. So many intelligent, energetic, get-it-done-whatever-the-obstacles
people — it is painful to see so much potential being stymied in so many
ways.

There is also the continuing presence of the state in the daily lives of
people. We met the artist Tania Bruguera, who'd been detained, her
passport taken, for trying to stage a performance piece in which average
citizens could speak their minds. We also met 26-year-old Manuel Mons, a
member of a dissident group called "Somos Mas," who told us that
"thinking differently is actually illegal in this country." As we spoke
to Mons, two police cars watched. He was quite aware of it, still ready
and willing to speak with us. It was, in fact, the only time in our week
in and around Havana that we were aware of any overt surveillance or
police presence. Much has clearly changed here, we were told over and
over again. And we saw it for ourselves — as we note in one of our
reports: more American flags than images of Fidel Castro. But some
things, the country's critics and opponents will note, haven't changed
enough.

Source: Reporting from Cuba, a place frozen in time yet full of
potential -
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/reporting-from-cuba-a-place-frozen-in-time-yet-full-of-potential/