The Cuban Chronicles: A True Tale of Rascals, Rogues, and Romance - Softcover

St. Hilaire, Wanda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1440132941 ISBN 13: 9781440132940

Publisher: Iuniverse Inc, 2009

Synopsis

In the infancy of Cuba's tourism, Wanda St.Hilaire takes a trip to the tiny island. In spite of her love of all things Latin, she puts herself on a travel ban to Castro's Cuba, one that lasts twenty years.

When she is forced to cancel a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico at the last minute, she finds herself in Cuba twice, on back-to-back trips. Walking into the backstreets of Havana, eyes wide open, she is pulled into a dalliance with a charismatic cubano.

Underneath the façade of Cuba's tourism lies the desperation of a society living mostly in abject poverty. When tourists mingle with locals, we get a glimpse of what underlies the frivolity of Cuban entanglements. St. Hilaire speaks with an authentic voice and doesn't mince words; she recounts her own activities, emotions and opinions with refreshing honesty.

With each solo adventure, the author reaches a deeper understanding of human nature and the world. At the same time, she conducts a journey of self-discovery, learning about her own entrenched beliefs, biases and blemishes.

About this title

About the Authors

Wanda St.Hilaire supports her travel and writing habit by working as a reluctant sales and marketing representative. She spent four blissful winters away from the frozen landscape of Canada living in the barrios of Vallarta, Mexico, and she has traveled throughout the world. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Professions I'd like to try ... National Geographic Photographer/Travel Show Host/Anthropologist.

iggest mystery ... why humans still value money and power over love and beauty.

Most memorable meal ... a surreal, lavish lunch in Barcelos, Portugal on market day.

Wisest decision ... Not having children. I couldn't even keep a glass fish I once owned afloat.

Addictions ... Two and a Half Men, nonna's freshly baked bread at the Italian market, and Latin anything.

Biggest surprise ... having an independent film director contact me to work on an adaptation just as the book was being released!

I'd love to have coffee with ... writer and rogue extraordinaire, Hemingway.

If I were "Bewitched," the first thing I'd do ... is dematerialize all of the world's garbage and pollution.

Mantra ... I now create heaven on earth (okay, lofty goal).

Wanda St.Hilaire supports her travel and writing habit by working as a reluctant sales and marketing representative. She spent four blissful winters away from the frozen landscape of Canada living in the barrios of Vallarta, Mexico, and she has traveled throughout the world. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Professions I'd like to try ... National Geographic Photographer/Travel Show Host/Anthropologist.

iggest mystery ... why humans still value money and power over love and beauty.

Most memorable meal ... a surreal, lavish lunch in Barcelos, Portugal on market day.

Wisest decision ... Not having children. I couldn't even keep a glass fish I once owned afloat.

Addictions ... Two and a Half Men, nonna's freshly baked bread at the Italian market, and Latin anything.

Biggest surprise ... having an independent film director contact me to work on an adaptation just as the book was being released!

I'd love to have coffee with ... writer and rogue extraordinaire, Hemingway.

If I were "Bewitched," the first thing I'd do ... is dematerialize all of the world's garbage and pollution.

Mantra ... I now create heaven on earth (okay, lofty goal).

From the Back Cover

I sit on the plane and I am too fatigued and brain-fogged to open my laptop or read a book. I let the faces and events of Cuba pass through my mind like movie clips in bits and bites. I think of women I know and other women I don't know who have innocently entangled themselves with the men of the beautiful island I have just left. I understand all too well; I am flying back into a business-class culture that does not feed a woman's soul or anyone's sensuality. We go through the motions of our lives, too busy to identify what is missing, only knowing that we have a small yet painful ache in our hearts or our bodies or both. I recall the poem I wrote after returning home to the carnal void from my first long-term winter sojourn on the steamy coast of Mexico:

Icemen

cold, insinuating stares

they starve us of tender smiles

of playful lust

leaning, sipping with cool façades

they wait and watch

selecting their prey for night's end

I live in a land of extinct passion a lost art how did they get here all these Icemen?

One day, we take a trip, maybe to Cuba, maybe to Capri, and we come alive in ways we did not know we could. We become the women we have always wanted to be, always known we were: beautiful, sensuous, glowing, and vibrating with sexual energy. Like wilted flowers living in cracks of cement, we are transplanted into a lush tropical jungle and watered with the attentions of hot-blooded men who think we are beautiful, even if we don't fit the image of a magazine. We are seduced and intoxicated, awash in a cascade of pheromones as powerful and persuasive as any opiate. Like travelers in a dry desert, we do not believe we are seeing only a mirage; we believe we have arrived at the oasis. Only when we endeavor to bring the oasis home do we realize it was only a mirage and cannot sustain itself. Then, it evaporates before our eyes. We think we can transplant hot, tropically grown men and that the cold, harsh environment we plant them into will not reject them. But what is the true success rate of these transplants?

The radical variances between a Cuban life and a Canadian life pass through my mind. Glaringly, there is the utter contrast in culture and language. Cubans are a people who live on the street, in the heat and the pulse of music that runs through their veins, imprinted in each cell of their bodies. What is music to us? We do not have songs handed down from generation to generation that move us to the core, inciting passion and patriotism--songs that make us dance in the street in harmony and understanding, bonding us to each other. (God forbid we should dance in the street at all). The salsa and African rhythms are thematic every day, all day, wherever you go in Cuba. Son defines the music that moves the bodies of the Cubans sensually and beautifully in ways we can only hope to imitate but will never be able to replicate authentically.

Cubans walk and interact with each other every single day and feel the ground beneath their feet and the humidity on their skin. We climb into the mechanically controlled weather systems of our vehicles each day, detached from the grounding of our bodies to the earth. We drive long distances to see each other and to get to our endlessly varying destinations. What must they think of our harsh winters when they arrive to find us scraping ice and snow off our cars, living under layers of heavy clothing, boots and scarves, and freezing up the minute we step outside?

We whiz past each other, unconnected from our neighbors, individually encapsulated in our own lives and unconcerned about the condition of the lives of others. Cubans live in commune style, crammed together in close quarters. One does not feel anonymous in Cuba, even as a foreigner. Although we in our culture share a country, we each live a completely different reality because of our freedom of choice. How do Cubans feel when separated from their street life and the commonality of living side by side under a regime that has dictated their condition throughout their lives? (The émigrés are inevitably under the age of forty-eight).

We have freedom of speech and can draw cartoons, sing songs, or protest in front of Parliament about any subject we choose. We can bash our politicians and the system in the streets, in cafes, in our homes, in the press, and on TV, without consequence. We can travel anywhere at any time, both because we are allowed to and because we can afford to do so. We take our endless cornucopia of food for granted. Food is another nucleus of Cuban culture. Although we view their diet as bland and limited, it is the centre of life in Cuba and another commonality and comfort that we can't possibly comprehend. I imagine if I were to visit each home in Calgary alone on any given night, the diversity of meals I would find: barbequed steaks, roasted chickens, hamburgers, fish, seafood, pork, turkey, eggs, fast food, frozen food, vegetarian meals, pizza, crackers with cheese and fruit, sandwiches, soups in every flavor, an endless array of vegetables, some meals with rice, some potatoes, some pasta, some bread, and then the ethnic food; Indian, Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Salvadoran, Croatian, Ukrainian, German....

Then I imagine if I were to visit each home in all of Cuba on that same night. In all likelihood I would find rice, beans and a little pork in a vast majority of homes. This is a reassuring certainty for Cubans. When they come to Canada, it must leave a hole in their daily existence not to have that certainty. I am sure their senses are assaulted by the strange and unfamiliar food they are presented with: the sweet, spicy, pungent, aromatic, grainy, savory, bitter, and battered as well as the profusion of oils, vinegars, sauces, herbs, and condiments, to say nothing of the multitude of ethnic restaurants we frequent. When Cubans enter a grocery store for the first time in Canada, are they overwhelmed with the abundance, the heaps of vegetables and fruit, the selections of meats, the mountains of bread, the rows of foods that they have never seen before?

I think of Santería and how this mysterious religion influences the islanders. I wonder how many Cubans go to their babalaos for advice and help with the problems of their lives, or at least live by some of Santería's values and beliefs. With our pragmatic lives, we can view this religion as silly and superstitious. We once many years ago had our own babalaos, but we called them witches and burned them at the stake, and that was the end of that. The babalaos are mystical and magical "sorcerers"; they are revered and are a part of everyday life, even for no-nonsense Cuban engineers.

When we bring a man or a woman home from Cuba, we may not consider that we are, in essence, time traveling that person fifty years into the future. Although they see the North American culture on illegal TV, and by observing tourists and communicating with their Miami relatives, they are not living it. They can imagine it but are not steeped in the fast pace of Western culture.< Their dilapidated American cars from the `50s are still functioning, as if by miracle, and their rusty Russian Ladas are running on a wing and a prayer. They cannot drive down to the car dealer of their choice, call up their bank and pick out a new shiny vehicle on a whim. Their economy works through simple exchanges of cash for goods. They do not live with debit cards, credit cards, frequent user cards, air miles, discount cards, multitudes of bank accounts, investments, and debt. They do not make a hobby of shopping in massive malls with access to a barrage of brand labels and miles of commercialism and capitalist materialism. They live with outmoded computers and phone systems discarded long ago by other countries. Their Internet access is extremely limited, slow, and antiquated. There are no fake tits, step-aerobic bodies, lyposuctioned thighs, botoxed brows, and faces.

Edition details

• Publisher: Iuniverse Inc
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1440132941
• ISBN 13: 9781440132940
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236