Dispatches from the Gilded Age by Julia Reed

Author:Julia Reed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

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Back in America, the overwhelming sensation is one of boredom. Being in Cuba is like being on a drug. It is surreal and addictive. I miss the enormous affection and stunning dignity of the people and the strong bonds so immediately forged. I miss the sense of living inside a drama unfolding, but it continues without me. Sam sends me word that Roberto has had to leave Havana, that he was finally arrested but managed to escape. I get a letter from Emily saying that many more cops are in the streets, that Fidel has launched a huge crackdown on all black-market activity, that at night in targeted areas like Colón people run from doorway to doorway, knowing they could be picked up for any reason. Sophia sends me word that 119 people have camped out in the Belgian ambassador’s residence demanding asylum and that twenty-one more crashed the gates of the German embassy, but that “the people are still not bloodthirsty. The police state is too secure.”

I read in the paper that the head of the Havana Film Festival is seeking asylum in the United States and that Jorge Mas Canosa, the Miami-based head of CANF, has met with the Colombian president and convinced him not to sell much-needed oil to Cuba. There is a rumor that Fidel is dead, and I heard through the grapevine that Mas Canosa is already talking about an interim government. I meet with a man at CANF, a Cuban American who refers to Mas Canosa as “the Cuban leader in exile,” and to the Cubans in Cuba as “them.” He tells me that he knows “these are jovial people who like to dance and drink rum,” even though he himself has never been there. I meet with an American economist who has met with Castro’s representatives in Havana. “They are ready to sit down and negotiate with no preconditions, which is hardly outrageous.” But candidate Clinton wanted to carry Florida and promised CANF that would never happen. Anyway, Cuba is very low on anybody’s list of foreign policy priorities, though it will ultimately affect us a lot more directly than Bosnia or even Haiti. We will continue to impose unspeakable suffering on the Cuban people in hopes they will finally rise up in arms against the only leader most of them have ever known. This is absurd and irresponsible, but the way it is. “Something will happen within the next five years,” says the economist. “It’s just a question of whether we are there or not.”

Anyway, anybody with enough energy or strength to rise up and do anything opts to leave. The coast guard reports that as of June 1994, 3,854 refugees had already landed in Florida this year compared with 3,656, the total for all of 1993. I go see a man in Key West, a Cuban who houses and feeds refugees until they are picked up and processed and delivered to family or jobs or whatever. His office wall

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