Each book is a village

I. Matanzas, Sunday evening:

Rolando Estévez Jordán sits on a plastic chair handling delicately the butcher paper embossed with cornhusks and etched José Martí likenesses, as if each sheet is one of his daughter’s first teeth, archived for posterity. His backdrop: A shelf of books handmade by the cadre of artists and authors who make up the Ediciones Vigía crew. To his right is the mimeograph they’ve used since 1985. The ceilings above the ceramic tiled floors are high, painted teal, and reminiscent of a boat’s bones. The group’s symbol is a quinqué: An oil lamp. Vigía means watchtower. I suspect in this case it could also signify lighthouse.

Their business: The fusion of literature, art, and manufacturing. It is a spiritual process, this artist tells us. He is the man who co-founded the entire operation a quarter of a century ago in Matanzas, this city named for the slaughter started by the Spanish. This city who’s Museo Provincial houses the hauntings of a slave’s bones and a woman’s mummified body.

He wants the group to know that each page in their books has its own identity. If that is so, I think, then each book from Vigía must be its own village.

II. Varadero, Saturday afternoon:

Welcome to Varadero Internacional. Here the ocean is a clear cerulean and my feet leave temporary prints in the sand closest to the almost non-existent waves. I am greasy with spray-on sunscreen that smells of alcohol. Officially, I can say I am here as a student, to observe the tourist industry in Cuba. After all, I just came from my educational experience in Matanzas.

But I have two visas here. And I am white and American in an all-inclusive resort. And the other clients are mostly white and Canadian. Or white and Russian. Or white and Spanish. Either way, we all wear the same green hotel bracelets. Meanwhile, the employees are mostly brown, and all of them are Cubans. The card marked “tarjeta del turista” that got me off the plane and into Habana definitely has the upper hand here.

The people who work at this hotel are not from Varadero. They are from Cardenas, or other towns whose names sound like birds. If Varadero is a book, each of these people is a displaced page, and the tourists are only the ribbons that once marked the reader’s place. So I understand when I ask at the bar for a mojito that comes for free with my stay here, and the bartender sees no cash in the exchange, and I see no reciprocal smile when I send one in his direction.

Our professor informs us that if not for the government stipulation that groups of foreigners must travel through the tourist system, we would set off with only our knapsacks and a much smaller bus. Nonetheless, we are a group of foreigners, and Norkis is our Transtur-guide, an employee of the Cuban state who has to leave her daughter every time she stays in places like these with people like us. She tells my class that a wealthy man ripped some Cubans off when he bought this terrain dirt-cheap and sold it to the highest bidders in the 1920s. Now, without leaving Varadero or even this resort, I can go the souvenir shop and buy a black Orisha doll for 7.50 CUC (half of the average Cuban’s monthly wage). Or, if I want to take the hotel travel agency’s guided tour to Guamá, I can even pay to enjoy some Afro-Cuban rhythms or a visit to a Taíno Indian village replica and a crocodile breeding farm (according to the brochure).

I try to connect this back to the Cajón I was honored to attend back on Calle San Martín in Habana. How the chanting and dancing of the Santa María ritual gifted me with a deep calm that did not even feel like my own, that was borrowed. How I sweated for four hours and had no desire to leave.

I do not see the connection between the man in his white cap who caught the spirit of an Orisha at the Cajón, swinging his joyous body in every direction, caressing stomachs, and the Barbie-derived souvenir doll with her painted-on eyelashes and typed description tag. But then again, I cannot say which of these is more authentic to its source. I cannot assume that an Afro-Cuban religion with its history books full of intersecting cultures and heritages can be simplified to the one page I was lucky enough to witness unfold that day.