Rock climbing by Cubans discouraged

Posted on Tue, Dec. 26, 2006

CUBA
Rock climbing by Cubans discouraged
Rock climbing -- an extreme sport brought to Cuba by foreigners -- has
begun to irk the Castro regime as an outside influence.
The Wall Street Journal

VINALES, Cuba - Seventy feet up a sheer limestone cliff known as La
Cuchillita, or Little Blade, 17-year-old Roylandi González held onto a
ledge by his fingertips. Then he glanced down to check the harness
around his waist, grabbed hold of the rope that was tethered above him
and started shimmying downward.

Over the past several years, adventurous Cuban youths like González,
schooled by an influx of foreign rock climbers, have turned this western
town into an extreme-sport magnet. Climbers test their mettle on
dramatic crags, barely touched by man, which soar above a green valley
designated as a U.N. World Heritage Site.

But climbers who have conquered Viñales' jagged peaks are now up against
a more formidable obstacle: the Communist political system.

González cast a wary eye for park rangers and police.

''There's something about rock climbing that really seems to worry our
government,'' he said.

As Cubans begin contemplating life after Fidel Castro, rock climbing has
emerged as an improbable battleground between the government and young
Cubans eager to embrace the latest foreign fashions.

PERMIT REQUIRED

In 2003, amid a broad crackdown on civil liberties and fraternizing
between tourists and Cubans, the government announced that rock climbers
henceforth would be required to obtain a special permit. But the
government has never granted the required permit to the many climbers
who have requested one.

Adrian Pérez Martínez, a 20-year-old art teacher, says that police
showed up at his house recently to warn him against climbing, especially
with foreigners. ''Good Cubans don't do this,'' he says they told him.
''Climbers use drugs. And you shouldn't take foreigners to militarily
significant areas.'' Indeed, some caves in Viñales are designated as
civil-defense sites in the event of a U.S. invasion.

Some of the official anxiety over climbing seems to be based on Cuba's
revolutionary history. The revolution that brought Castro to power in
1959 was launched from a clandestine encampment in the Sierra Maestra
Mountains on the eastern end of the island. ''The Revolution was the
work of climbers and cavers,'' Castro is reported to have said.

Now the government may be worried that history will repeat itself. 'The
system is paranoid about Cubans' private activities, but especially when
those activities are occurring in hills away from sight and when
foreigners are involved,'' says Vitalio Echazabal, one of the first
Cubans to take up rock climbing in the 1990s. 'The authorities would
ask, `Are they spies? What are they plotting up there?' ''

Echazabal got so fed up that he defected to Spain during a climbing
expedition in 2001, one of three Cuban climbers who have escaped the
island during international sporting events. About a half-dozen others
got off the island after marrying foreigners they met on the hills.

The exodus of climbers has only served to intensify official suspicion
of the sport. ''Climbers are very independent people, and the Cuban
government has a real hard time with anything it cannot control -- even
a form of recreation,'' says Armando Menocal, a 65-year-old Wyoming
lawyer who is the leading international proponent of Cuban climbing.
Menocal, who runs the Cubaclimbing.com website, has been caught in the
backlash himself.

TURNED BACK

Beginning in the late 1990s, Menocal, who has family ties to Cuba,
started training Cuban climbers, mapping local routes and importing
donated equipment. But after about 15 climbing trips to Cuba over the
past eight years, Menocal has been turned back by immigration officers
at the Havana airport the last two times he tried to visit, most
recently earlier this month. The authorities, he says, offered no
explanation.

The 100 or so climbers remaining in Cuba would certainly welcome his
return. Without official funding, Cuban climbers rely on equipment sent
by Menocal or donated by tourists. José Luis Fuentes, a 20-year-old
climber, says his shoes were given to him by an Italian, his rope by a
Canadian and his harness by an American. ''You speak a common language
with other climbers no matter where they come from,'' he says.

`CRAZY KIDS'

He isn't sure it's a language Cuba's leaders could understand. ''Older
people just think we're a bunch of crazy kids,'' says Fuentes.

Climbing has attracted a special breed of Cuban youth since Menocal and
some American friends used a slide show to recruit a core group of about
half a dozen Cuban climbers in 1999. One Cuban went AWOL from his
military unit to go on an outing with Menocal, subsequently earning two
weeks in the brig.

Official eyes were watching. ''The Cubans were always being persecuted
because it was not looked upon favorably to socialize with foreigners,''
says Craig Luebben, a rock-climbing guide and journalist from Colorado
who has made several trips to Cuba. As the pressure increased, the
Cubans and their American climbing partners would avoid appearing
together publicly, arranging separate transportation to a rendezvous at
the secluded climbing site, Luebben says.

Climbers say official government climbing policy has been inconsistent.
A few years ago, Hollywood, a cigarette brand partly owned by the
government, launched an ad campaign featuring a climber. Yet at around
the same time, a visiting Menocal was called before two different
government authorities and told climbing wasn't permitted.

The inconsistencies continue today. On a recent day at the park visitors
center near the Viñales climbing site, there were large posters of
climbers in action. Nevertheless, the park ranger on duty insisted that
climbing without a permit wasn't allowed under the 2003 law. ''It's not
something one should even consider,'' he said, though he had no idea how
one might go about getting a permit.

The climbers are regrouping under the leadership of Alexei Suarez, a
medical worker who sometimes reaches his second-story Havana apartment
by scaling the wall. He has been talking with government officials,
trying to better climbing's image, and he says the Cuban sports ministry
has been very supportive. ''We are loyal Cubans who want to make Cuba
famous for climbing champions,'' Suarez says.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/special_packages/5min/16317808.htm