Cuba's island of broken dreams

Cuba's island of broken dreams
Relations between Havana and Washington are improving.
But that offers little hope on the 'Isle of Youth.'
Story by Nick Miroff
Published on October 31, 2015

ISLA DE LA JUVENTUD, Cuba

Some places are blessed by geography, with a deep harbor, mighty river
or abundant natural resources.

Then there are places where geography is more of a curse. In the absence
of any distinctive feature or economic purpose, they appear like a blank
slate, inviting grandiose schemes and outsize ambitions.

Cuba's Isla de la Juventud, the "Isle of Youth," is one of those places.

In other forlorn corners of Cuba, newly warming relations between
Washington and Havana have kindled hopes for more tourists and
investment. Here, the one place that came closer than any other except
Guantanamo Bay to actually being part of the United States, Cubans have
learned to temper their expectations.

Their island is a boneyard of big ideas. Over the years, it has been a
pirate hideout, a Spanish penal colony, an American enclave, a Cuban
penal colony and the setting for one of Fidel Castro's most ambitious
attempts at communist internationalism.

All of them failed. An island Castro renamed in 1978 to honor young
people is now struggling to keep them there.

"If the Americans want to come back, great, but I doubt it'll happen
anytime soon," said Carlos Enríquez, the proprietor of an outdoor
nightclub built out of the ruins of 19th-century mineral baths, showing
off the gurgling pools where Cuban partiers now swill beer and wriggle
to reggaeton on weekends.

U.S. visitors once came for the cure-all properties of the springs.
"They called it Shangri-La," Enríquez said.

The island was then known as Isla de Pinos (Isle of Pines), named for
the native conifers that once covered its rolling plains and swamps.
Hurricanes have blasted through every few years, enforcing a sense of
impermanence.

The comma-shaped island is the seventh-largest landmass in the Caribbean
but has only about 80,000 residents. Persuading them to remain is an
ongoing challenge for the Cuban government. Handmade "For Sale" signs
hang above many doorways.

Residents here talk about their home as a "double island" — isolated
from the rest of Cuba, a country that already feels cut off from the world.

Cuban authorities are trying to counter this with new public works and
free long-term leases of state-owned land to farmers. Fertilizer,
pesticides and farm tools that go scarce on the mainland are available
here. A few farmers are prospering.

But the pull of the sea is strong.

Migration from Cuba to the United States is up 80 percent this year, to
its highest level in a decade, partly on fears that easing hostilities
with Washington spell doom for the privileges essentially granting
asylum to any Cuban who arrives on American soil.

Most rafters leave from Cuba's north coast, but here on Isla de la
Juventud, 30 miles south of the mainland, the prevailing ocean currents
have produced an unusual migration route. Boaters push off for Mexico's
Yucatan Peninsula, hoping to hit a beach or get picked up by passing
ships. If they avoid repatriation to Cuba, they can make a dash for the
U.S. border.

"There are boats leaving from here every night," said Jean Pablo
Concepción, a 28-year-old soccer coach, lowering his voice. He was
browsing the Internet in the main plaza of the capital, Nueva Gerona,
where authorities have recently installed public WiFi. "In my
neighborhood, it seems like there are hardly any young people left."

His friend Alberto Deceaux, 19, said he plans to leave for the Cayman
Islands as soon as he finishes his military service. He had seen the
pictures of shiny banks and vacationing celebrities. "Tiger Woods goes
there," he said. "It's paradise compared to this."

Castro was not the first to change the name. Christopher Columbus called
the island "La Evangelista" ("The Evangelist") when he landed in 1494.
But a generation later it appeared in Spanish records as the Isle of Pines.

Spanish authorities cleared the timber and brought cattle, but the
island's coves, rivers and caves made it a refuge for pirates. Spanish
ships transiting the Yucatan Channel were an easy target. Spain
eventually converted the island into a penal colony.

Mineral baths brought the first American tourists in the 1860s. But it
was the 1898 Spanish-American War that turned it into a U.S. satellite.
Washington had its sights on a possible canal project through the
Isthmus of Panama and was eager to establish bases in the Caribbean.
Soon, U.S. government maps were depicting the island as an American
possession.

By then, U.S. speculators had begun buying up land. Thousands of
American settlers arrived. They built churches and English-language
schools and covered the island in citrus groves, sending steamers to New
Orleans loaded with grapefruit, lemons and oranges. The dollar was the
island's currency.

When the United States granted Cuba quasi-independence in 1902, the
status of the Isle of Pines remained in limbo. Maritime surveys found no
deep harbors. The U.S. Navy lost interest. But so many American settlers
had arrived that U.S. lawmakers balked at giving the island back to Cuba.

The ratification of the Hay-Quesada Treaty in 1925 fully relinquished
the American claim to the island. Most of the settlers left, cursing
what they saw as a betrayal by Washington.

A ruined American cemetery is one of the few traces of their presence.
Many of the headstones have toppled over, and the old citrus groves
around it are smothered under 15-foot-tall thickets of marabú, the
thorny African bush consuming the island's abandoned farms.

Castro's pet project
When Cuba took full possession of the island, President Gerardo Machado
ordered the construction of a vast prison complex, Presidio Modelo.

The prison's most famous inmate arrived in 1953: 27-year-old Fidel
Castro. He and his younger brother Raúl, then 22, were sent there with
30 comrades who had attempted to overthrow the government in a bloody
attack on a military garrison.

Castro and the other conspirators were assigned to the prison's
infirmary to keep them apart from the other inmates. After 19 months,
they were pardoned and set free.

Less than four years later, Castro took power and then revoked the
island's status as a free port, wiping out a second wave of 1950s U.S.
investment. After the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, he militarized the
island, seeing it as vulnerable to attack. He shut down Presidio Modelo
in 1966.

"Fidel made sure we had everything because the island was such an
important place to him," said historian Roberto Únger, author of
"Americanos en la Isla" ("Americans on the Island").

There were frequent daily flights making the 25-minute trip to Havana.
Russian-made hydrofoils zipped between Nueva Gerona and the mainland.

"We used to go to Havana on Fridays to catch a movie or a concert, then
come home on the hydrofoils," Únger said.

In the early 1970s, Castro launched a bold plan to fill the island with
rural boarding schools where Cuban students would labor in the fields
and take classes in Spanish, math and Marxism.

This was the era of Cuban internationalism, when Cuban soldiers were
deployed to Africa and thousands of students arrived from poor countries
to study free of charge.

The government built 61 boarding schools on the island, each with a
capacity for 500 pupils. Assembled from prefabricated slabs, they rose
from the citrus groves in big blockish shapes that resembled space stations.

You can drive around the island today and see their hollowed-out shells.

The schools were referred to by their numbers: The Sudanese kids were in
47. No. 4 was the Ethiopians. Fifteen was the school for Namibians.
María Álvarez arrived there as a primary-school teacher 25 years ago.


When the international schools shut down for good in 1994, at the worst
moment of Cuba's post-Soviet economic collapse, Álvarez chose to stay at
the shuttered School 15. She lives with her family in what used to be
the administration offices.

A steady ocean breeze whistles through the ruined dormitories, their
windows long gone. Faded murals celebrate Vladimir Lenin, Che Guevara
and Namibian revolutionaries.

"This was one of Fidel's favorite schools," Álvarez said. "He used to
visit a lot and bring guests here."

The Namibian kids were wonderful: polite, affectionate, well behaved,
she said.

"Every once in a while, one of them comes back to show their own
children where they went to school," Álvarez said. She has met several
Namibian officials this way.

"They are very important people now," she said. "They come here and see
this, and they cry."

Source: Cuba's island of broken dreams | The Washington Post -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/world/2015/10/31/cubas-island-of-broken-dreams/