2005 Tinker Summer Research Report Maki Tanaka Anthropology “Tourism development in socialist Cuba: Old Havana and its residents”

Restored landscape contains an unstable residential unit.

The purpose of my trip to Cuba this summer was to find out the spatial practices that take place in the tourist area of Old Havana. The state-led tourism development in Havana presents an interesting window through which the current transformations in Cuban society can be understood. Old Havana is the “historical center” of the urban area where a quite autonomous body (City Historian’s Office, Oficina del Historialdor de la Ciudad de la Habana) backed up by the government oversees its tourist industry, restoration of colonial built environment, and social welfare of the residents. Specifically, I studied the restoration activities, the presence of international tourism and tourists, the Cubans who occupy the space as residents, workers, artists and experts in order to closely look at how this tourist landscape is produced and experienced. My focus was inspired and informed particularly by the work of Michel de Certeau and his figure of the urban subject. This trip constitutes the preliminary stage for my ethnographic research I plan to carry out in the next academic year as part of my Ph.D. work.

Residential buildings are supported by makeshift scaffolds.

I spent my time in Havana taking Spanish classes at the University of Havana and observing spatial practices and talking to tourists and Cubans in various parts of the city. The area I stayed (Vedado) was about 30 minutes’ walk away from Old Havana, yet accommodated quite a few upscale and middle-range hotels for international tourists. Thus I decided not to focus my attention exclusively to the confined area of Old Havana, but to Vedado as well; in fact, this observation shed light on a touristscape (landscape punctuated by tourism) that lay beyond Old Havana.

Some buildings collapse after rain.

The beautifully restored built environment and the people who occupy Old Havana are overwhelmingly touristic, as if the whole town turned itself into a museum for the tourists to see. The Cuban government, in fact, accelerated the tourism development effort after the fall of the Soviet bloc, a decade since the declaration of Old Havana as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage (in 1982), redefining and bolstering the role of the City Historian’s Office, which was established in 1938 for the study of the old city center. The Cuban government envisioned the business of international tourism as possibly the least stressful means to save socialism; the state engages in the profit-making enterprise in alliance with foreign investment, without jeopardizing the life of the ordinary citizens and without the sort of privatization that took place in the former Soviet bloc (Jatar-Hausmann 1999: 81). The heavily tourism-geared restoration effort, however, implies that appeal to the international tourists is more urgent than to residents. The Cuban government’s painstaking effort in keeping its citizens out of the international economy notwithstanding, since the decriminalization of the private possession of hard currency (“dollarization”) in 1993, the dual economy has been established and the economic disparity between dollar-possessing Cubans (those with remittances from relatives overseas and those who run their own businesses in tourism-related sectors) and others without such access to hard currency has quickly intensified.

A Cuban scene: an old woman dressed up awaits tourists’ cameras .

International tourism is also a terrain in which the state makes distinct presentations of Cuba as an international destination, and reinserts itself into the post-Cold War global economy through the discourse of heritage. Especially in Old Havana, the City Historian’s Office makes sure that the tourists encounter the “Cuba” they are looking for; there are elderly people dressed in “traditional” (read pre-revolutionary) outfit, with cigars and walking sticks, who are licensed by the Office to roam around for photo ops for a small fee; “street” musicians (again licensed) playing tunes from Buena Vista Social Club; craft markets operated by the Office; and ultimately, the special police to send away hustlers or possible hustlers. The latter phenomenon is termed “Cuban apartheid” for its highly racialized practice of suspecting darker skinned individuals as Cubans hustling lighter-skinned foreign visitors (de la Fuente 2001: 329, Hagedorn 2001: 25). Cuban people are part of the landscape, the spectacle, keeping a safe distance from the tourist. In fact, before the dollarization of the economy, Cuban nationals’ access to tourist venues without a foreign companion was virtually prohibited (de la Fuente 2001: 328, Hagedorn 2001: 26). There are, then, certain legitimate ways for Cubans to be present in the touristscape, and not surprisingly most concern work, i.e., serving tourists. Nonetheless, I found during my trip that affluent Cubans’ way of consuming the space can be akin to international tourists, rather than peso-earning Cubans. The difference articulated in the tourist space is then the newly emerging economic disparity rather than long-established social class or nationality in this moment of political economy.

Craft market with licensed artisans.

The state-led tourism development has not only intensified social difference but also opened up spaces for creativity of the population. The Master Plan allows architects and planners to experiment and express, artists and artisans to have a new arena of exhibition and trade, entrepreneurs to innovate and be free to work on one’s own, low-skilled laborers to be trained in construction and restoration skills, children to be educated on architecture and history in new light. That your neighborhood is now a national and global commodity enables different social dynamics and engenders new possibilities. People discover novel ways of relating to the built environment, engaging in the sociality, appropriating the urban space.

Tourist art flourishes.

The dominance of touristscape in Old Havana is undeniable. Tourists, international investors and the state tread and produce the space. And yet, de Certeau seems to suggest, ordinary Cubans are not excluded. Their presence, their labor, their citizenship and claim to the city make the production of Old Havana possible. If the restoration of old buildings rather estranges residents from their “heritage,” their neighborhood is still where they meet with friends, sit on the doorstep and observe, play dominos with neighbors, shop, play, walk, live. They may not have a $3.00 cold glass of mojito at the café in the Plaza where the band is playing Cuban music, but right next to it is their everyday space of living. Their act of walking may be of different register from that of tourists, yet their steps overlap and extend beyond the tourist map; this transcendence makes their footsteps alive and restores agency in these subjects. In the rapidly changing climate of today, what it means to be Cuban is also daily negotiated. Old Havana is one such sphere whereby the map gets charted and re-charted everyday.

New dollar-operating businesses are under way.

Tourists and residents occupy the cityscape.

Bathing at the rocky shore off Malecón is Cubans’ favorite leisure.