100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go. Conner Gorry
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long-term in a foreign country, I go to the seawall, kick off my shoes and lay back. The salty sea breeze and negative air ions are panacea for body and soul, that much is clear. And though there are parts that get crowded—especially in densely-populated sections of Vedado and Centro Habana—it’s one of the few places in Havana where Cubans can secure some privacy.
Havana hosts nearly 20 percent of the country’s population according to official statistics. But with 70 percent of the national economy based here, the figure is certainly higher since folks pour in from the drought-stricken, struggle-ridden provinces every day (despite laws controlling internal migration to the capital). On average, one building collapses in the city almost every day and existing housing stock, woefully inadequate and insufficient, is rapidly being converted into rental accommodation for tourists. All of these factors have created a housing crisis, what authorities categorize as one of the country’s biggest problems; it’s not uncommon for four generations to share a two-bedroom apartment, like my neighbors, or to squeeze half a dozen people into one-room solares (inner-city tenements, sometimes with shared kitchen and bathroom). On the Malecón, Cubans living in overcrowded and dilapidated housing can get away from a nagging mother-in-law, bickering parents, or their four mold-festering walls. Lovers can secret themselves (or not, a YouTube search will yield many videos of Cubans caught en flagrante) in darker sections for conjugal fun. Marriage proposals and first kisses, plans to flee and plots to swindle: it is all going down on the Malecón. There’s another simple, practical factor to the Malecon’s magnetism: temperatures are always cooler along the seawall. In a city where summer temperatures often top 100°F accompanied by stifling 100 percent humidity, and air conditioning is a luxury reserved for tourists and the well-to-do, spending an hour or two people watching with a few cold beers by the sea is pure survival tactic. As you may imagine, Cubans are proprietary about their patrimony, especially when it comes to the Malecón; if current rumors prove true that the new luxury hotel under construction where the Prado and seawall meet intends to appropriate part of the Malecón for the exclusive use of guests, things could get ugly.
THERE’S OFTEN CONFUSION ABOUT THE hotel scene in Cuba—what’s government owned, what’s a mixed venture, who runs what, how the profits are split—but about the Hotel Nacional, nothing is fuzzy: this is 100 percent Cuban-owned and operated and is a potent symbol of national sovereignty and pride. Designed by the New York firm of McKim, Meade and White (they of New York’s Penn Station and Columbia University), the Nacional opened in 1930 on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Malecón, and was long the preferred place to stay of the rich, famous and powerful. Winston Churchill, Frank Sinatra, and Jean-Paul Sartre all strode the marble and mahogany lobby here, making their way through the heavy doors to the tropical gardens, catching the sea breeze, a stiff rum cocktail at hand. Who didn’t stay here was Josephine Baker: the inimitable chanteuse was turned away for being black, whereupon she spun on her heels and checked into the Sevilla-Biltmore, holding a press conference in the spectacular lobby of that hotel, denouncing the Nacional’s racist policies. Other stars of sport, stage and screen turned away based on race include Jackie Robinson, Nat King Cole, and Joe Louis.
An all-time classic read, out of print but still available used, is Sartre on Cuba.
Luckily, those days are long behind us. The history of the Nacional runs so deep, the bar tucked away behind the lobby is called Salón de la Fama (Hall of Fame) and is packed with photos of famous guests (Steven Spielberg, Rita Hayworth, Errol Flynn, and Marlon Brando), and vitrines filled with ephemera from golden times gone by. Part of the reason the Nacional is so symbolic and Cubans take such pride in now having full ownership stems from its links to the USA and other developed nations to the north. Designed by a US firm, and a favorite of the global glitterati, the Nacional was also the setting for the climactic scene of Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana. But perhaps what sticks most in the Cuban craw are the Nacional’s pre-revolutionary mafia ties: notorious mob boss Lucky Luciano convened his cronies here to divvy up the city and its casino, prostitution and other nefarious money-making niches. A handful of years later, Meyer Lansky took over operations at the Parisien, the Nacional’s casino and cabaret; today, the Parisien makes a good alternative to the world-famous Tropicana for a hip-shaking, butt-quaking extravaganza.
You need not book a room at the Nacional to experience its seduction—though if it’s within your budget, the setting, location, views, and amenities (two pools, an executive floor with added services like a private restaurant, and one of the city’s top cabarets) make it worth a night or two. Get a coveted room during the Festival Internacional de Nuevo Cine Latinoamericano (AKA The Havana Film Festival), headquartered here each December and you’ll be a fly on the wall for all kinds of star sightings and gossip. Pop in during the festivities and you can get a taste without paying the price. The lobby, with its combination of Moorish, modernist, and eclectic styles is laced with ribbons of cigar smoke, punctuated by the sound of ice shaking in highballs and a polyglot of excitable voices bouncing off the walls. It encapsulates Havana’s wicked torpor and promise; no wonder it sets the tropical tone for Pico Iyer’s novel Cuba and the Night.
Through the double doors lie the hotel’s elegant gardens, with wide-angle views of the sea, stately palm trees, and comfortable wicker couches for taking it all in. A cocktail and snack will set you back at least $10CUC—a small price for gaining access to such hallowed ground. The central fountain and grassy expanses leading to the Malecón beyond are popular spots for Cuban quinceñeras (girls turning 15, this is a coming-out of sorts, where the 15-year-olds dress like child brides or harlots and videotape the entire affair) to pose and mince; a more kitsch rite of passage doesn’t exist—have your camera at the ready. Speaking of kitsch, there’s one Havana spectacle that doesn’t seem to die, though most of its performers already have: an incarnation of the Buena Vista Social Club plays here three times a week and the music, while not played by original members, is superlative—but then again, if you’re listening to bad live music in Cuba, you’re doing something woefully wrong. For those looking for history below the neatly clipped gardens of the Hotel Nacional, daily tours of the underground tunnels and bunkers are a unique way to learn about Cuban defensive mechanisms and get beneath the surface of the hotel—literally.
I LIVED IN HAVANA FOR years under the mistaken impression that the giant parade ground that hosts hundreds of thousands every International Workers Day and the occasional pope, high-profile funeral procession (both Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro were mourned here) and military displays, was constructed by the revolution. But like many buildings, plazas, hotels, and monuments, the Plaza de la Revolución was built by previous administrations, in this case by the infamous Fulgencio Batista. Back in those days, when it was known as the Plaza Cívica, no one imagined eight-hour speeches by Fidel Castro attended by a million admirers or Pope Francisco taking several turns around the plaza, without bulletproof glass or added protection in the Pope mobile, like happened in 2015. The giant sculpture of José Martí looming over the Plaza is one of the few full-body depictions of the “Apostle” in Havana. In 2018, an exact replica of the José Martí statue at the entrance to New York’s Central Park, a collaboration between the Bronx Museum and Cuba, was unveiled on Havana’s Prado; another one is Marti holding a baby and pointing (accusingly, say folks who like to read into these things) toward the US embassy. Both the Plaza de la Revolución and the “Protestódromo”—the open parade ground along the Malecón directly in front of the embassy—were once the preferred sites for railing against “yanqui” policies, but since the ascension of Raúl Castro to the presidency (and by the time you read this, there will no longer be a Castro as President), the rhetoric has been tempered mightily. No one says yanqui anymore, for instance; the preferred term for foreigners is Yuma and you’ll hear it wherever you go. There are still giant demonstrations held here,