By José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez on April 18, 2023
Vinales, photo: Bill Hackwell
Since 2022 there was a family plan to go all the way to Viñales, Pinar del Río, to take a few days of vacation. Anyone who has visited it knows that it is one of those places (many) in Cuba that has special charms, which remain in the memory as a permanent debt. Cyclone Ian was responsible for delaying the plans of many Cuban families. Months later, when we thought about the project again, it was uncomfortable to go to a place that was recovering from three pandemics: the official COVID, the adverse economic situation and the scourge of winds and rains.
We had learned from the press and first hand from several colleagues who preceded us, that the impact of the climatic and economic storms is still being felt and will continue to be present for a long time to come. Finally, a stroke of identity, more than ties of consanguinity, ended up bringing us closer to each other. And the pleasant surprises were not long in coming.
Already in the vicinity of Viñales, small improvised garbage dumps, ashes of felled and burned bushes, bad conditions of several stretches of road and roofs of houses that are still missing, remind us of a recent wound that has not closed. But as soon as you enter the village you immediately breathe an atmosphere of vitality. A lively population in the broad sense of the word, fighting, welcoming strangers and friends, smiling and telling the latest joke about the situation.
We do not know how many inhabitants the small town currently has and how many tourists or visitors of various origins they receive weekly. But what is clear is that it is a creative town at all hours of the day and throughout the week. On the seventh day of the week, the celebration known as Viñalero Saturday will be held along the main avenue.
There is economic activity of all kinds, from lodging in private homes, varied gastronomic offers, tours, light transportation alternatives where the conventional one is missing. In the surroundings you can appreciate an agriculture affected by the strong winds and severe drought, but local products appear here and there, people grow even in backyards and gardens.
And so we set about trying to understand the mystery by asking questions over and over again. The answers were very similar. We were told that over the years a kind of informal social pact has been developing, by which some families have been complementing the offerings of others, beyond competing for a demand for services that is limited anyway. As it happens in our small towns in population, most of the inhabitants know each other, or give the impression that they do, because people greet each other kindly and even with intensity, even if they have coincided a few hours ago.
But additionally, Viñales lives with pride the passion for cleanliness of the women and men who live there, lives with emotion without stridency, without noise pollution and, even more shocking in these times, happiness is enjoyed with a citizen security that unfortunately no longer prestige us in all our geography. Incredible the amount of gates, one after the other, in which remain throughout the night, armchairs, tables and other properties that dawn in the same place, unprotected by bars, padlocks or custodians.
It is a humble and wonderful place where you can stay several days without witnessing that someone’s irritation translates into exaltation or bad manners. The letter of introduction of each citizen there is respect for the other.
prehistoric mural, photo: Irene Pérez
Foreign tourists do not visit Viñales to enter sumptuous facilities that do not exist there. To some extent they do it for its unique and spectacular natural beauties but, apparently, essentially for the social phenomenon that settles in that place. Foreigners do not go to take refuge in the air conditioning, but to sweat through the streets on long walks, to visit the Indio and Palenque caves on bicycles, the spectacular mogotes, to admire the Mural of Prehistory and to find out who came up with that huge project, why and how it is still standing. They want to be told how pride reproduces itself and how, despite the many reasons to cry, people smile. They feel that the quality of the drink they drink or the food they eat depends less on the ingredients used and more on the affection with which they are served.
Visitors traveling with children do not fear the advent of night, or leaving them with other friends they have just met in the Church Park, which is enriched by the daily operation of three adjoining cultural institutions, distinct and modest, but vibrant. At the Art Gallery, the Casa de la Cultura and the Polo Montañez center there is always something to do, and if not, something to invent. Artisans are around every morning and afternoon, not to sell something imported and disguised, but to propose products with Cubanness, more or less refined.
And, please, let these lines not be interpreted as a little paint to hide a lack of color. There are still traumas, frustration and pain in families that lost everything, or almost everything. In farmers who pass again and again through their fields literally lamenting what the wind blew away, or the production they have not yet been paid for. Many families regret that there are young people who linked their possible recovery with the act of emigrating. But the majority of the Pinar del Río people who are there and in the surrounding areas are in permanent movement, like the planet they inhabit, doing, pushing, giving their opinion and also dreaming of the future.
And there are even more, children and young people who do not remain glued all day to the screen of a cell phone, something that is reflected in the attitude of visitors of the same ages, many of whom leave their own androids or xiaomis in the rental place, so as not to detract attention from the social phenomenon they find there.
photo: Bill Hackwell
In short, the main attraction of Viñales is the human being that inhabits it, with his stories and prides. That young gastronomic who in a modest installation of the sector asks you how you appreciate the recovery of the place, the old woman who every morning cleans and polishes the cement of the sidewalk in front of her house, with little or much water, the one who makes you part of his family without knowing you, the one who does not throw garbage in the street even if there is no trash can, the expert who takes charge and protects the child who goes with you on a canopy with high safety standards, the pioneers who come and go with their impeccable uniforms and everyone who kindly says good morning, congratulates himself for receiving you and at the farewell asks you with passion to come back. There are no formalities, only spontaneity.
In the little time you have available to reflect on what you have in front of you, you wonder what would be that place with other material conditions, with other supplies, with other budgets. You also try to imagine how much we still have to do to promote the uniqueness of each of our regions in the country.
Thinking with admiration of what is now called resilience, both of the people of Viña del Mar, the people of Baracoa, the people of Trinidad, as well as many other destinations on this island, we returned from a very short educational vacation that reaffirms our conviction that representing, or speaking on behalf of Cubans as a nation is a very high responsibility.
José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez is Director of the International Policy Research Center (CIPI) in Havana,
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English