Exuberance persists in a two-track economy

LETTER FROM HAVANA: While in Ireland January can seem like a month of cold, grey Mondays, it is high season in Cuba. Winter here can mean that one day you can be looking out to Havana harbour, watching mountainous, raging seas crashing down all along the five-kilometre arc of the Malecon seafront promenade, and the next swimming off golden sands in Santa Maria del Mar, 20 kilometres to the east.

But that's Cuba, a place of contrasts, surprises and contradictions. It is also the only place in the world where you can get a sense of being a time-traveller; it has the feel of being snagged in a time-warp some time around 1959 when Fidel Castro seized power.

In Havana's bustling Old Town, one is struck by its liveliness and sense of joie de vivre. Every day in bars and restaurants dotted along its pretty colonial streets bands blast out all sorts of sounds from son and salsa to chachacha. Here, tourists groove to Latino and African, drum, guitar and horn fusions, while sipping iced mojito cocktails. You get the impression that if three cars honked at the same time, a conga might spontaneously erupt in a natural expression of Cuban exuberance.

There are, however, some blots on the landscape encountered by the first-time visitor, the most visible of which are the hundreds of once-fine houses in various states of decay, some on the verge of collapse. And fall down they do, scores each year.

On the other hand, the whole of Old Havana with all its old-world charm is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and much work is currently taking place on its restoration.

Some of this work is being carried out at present to restore the peeling plasterwork and fading facades of houses on the Malecon, all of which have magnificent views out to the Straits of Florida. Most of these houses were abandoned by the middle classes when they realised the writing was on the wall for the mafia-friendly dictator, Fulgencio Batista.

Nowadays, most have been divided into family units, usually one floor per family. Some of the current owners let out rooms to tourists. These are called casas particulares. I stayed in two while in Havana (one had the family name O'Hallorans, who say they have been in Cuba since 1745).

Looking out from the balcony with the Malecon stretching out for miles either side, you can easily imagine you are back in pre-revolution Cuba, with its casino and cabaret mafia character.

Looking down to my right I could see the 1950s Chevys, Buicks and many other classic cars cruising down towards the Rivera Hotel, which was built by US mob boss Meyer Lansky. Nearer still is the Hotel Nacional where Frank Sinatra attended a Mafia reunion in 1946. The Nacional and Club Tropicano are among the many venues that still hold 1950s-style cabarets each evening.

Those who live on the Malecon these days are truly blessed, as nowhere else in the world can ordinary people have such fine housing and views. Also on the bright side, I am unaware of anywhere else where people of all colours co-exist as comfortably and casually as they do here. Skin colours go right through the black-white spectrum, so much so that after a while distinctions blur and you tend not to notice colour.

The well-documented excellence of Cuba's health and education systems, along with the friendliness and joyous exuberance of its population, are the shining lights of the country's successes. The impeccably turned out junior infant, primary and secondary schoolchildren in their wine-and-white and mustard-and-white uniforms represent the flowering of the Cuban social experiment.

Back on the negative side, in parts of Havana and other places where tourists gather visitors will be struck by the number of young men who pester them to buy cigars, to bring them to places where they get a commission or to arrange chicas (prostitutes), for the evening. With the average Cuban wage at just $12 a month, many jineteros (jockeys) earn much more from hustling tourists, some even more than doctors.

The jineteros' opening line is almost always a variation on "Hello, amigo, where are you from? You want Cuban cigar?" It is a signal for a bit of botheration, and for the first day or two tourists can feel somewhat like hunted creatures. While these jineteros are a nuisance, there is no aggression involved and they do go away with a polite but firm "No, gracias."

A heavy police presence also helps to ensure that the visitor feels safe. The level of street crime of a violent nature in Cuba is low and visitors tend to remark on the sense of safety. However, the unwelcome attentions of the jineteros has the unfortunate effect of making you wary of casual contact with ordinary Cubans, who are very friendly and courteous.

Earning even more than the jineteros are the chicas, or jineteras, who might make in one night what the average Cuban earns in a year. In an economy so out of kilter, the temptation for young women to engage in this activity is obviously great.

After dark, the chicas are everywhere that tourists congregate, outlandishly tarted up in multicoloured, skin-tight leotards or micro-minis, trying to catch the eye. And there are many willing eyes. Much older European men can be seen with young black women in many places. (Though on a much lesser scale, you can also find in Havana and elsewhere older European women with young Cuban men.)

These jineteros and chicas are but symptoms of the pathology of the two-track Cuban economy. The mighty dollar rules in the tourism economy, while the fragile peso is the currency of the indigenous economy. So all eyes are on the tourists.

If any one thing would help the lot of the ordinary Cubans it would surely be the lifting of the US embargo on trade. This could provide the dynamic that might blow away the cobwebs from the controlled Cuban economy and open it up to change. It would certainly take from the Cuban government the main excuse it uses for the many shortcomings of its economy. But in the current international climate, this is unlikely.

And yet despite all the hardships and dearth of everyday goods due to the embargo, there is no bitterness towards individual US tourists, who still come despite a government ban on travel. Bandanas with Stars and Stripes and US flags and symbols are casually worn on the street by young Cuban men and women.

This laid-back attitude is characteristic of everyday life in Cuba. It results in a much slower pace and little sense of urgency. One night I arrived at a hotel bar in Old Havana after spending a thirsty day taking in the historic sites. Even the piano player stopped to join the bar staff who had crowded around the television set to watch the local version of Fair City.

They all connected so enthusiastically with this piece of popular television culture in the fine old lobby bar of the Ambos Mundos hotel, where upstairs Ernest Hemingway wrote much of For Whom the Bell Tolls. And our man in Havana just had to wait for his mojito.