HAVANA, CUBA TODAY
The Author’s Note to Havana Passage is as true today as it was when released for publication four years ago.
Havana Passage is intended to entertain. The story is fictional and
takes place in the near future. The characters that dance across the
book’s pages are wholly from my imagination. However, the Havana
in which much of our intrigue takes place is the city we see today.
The concepts and policies that live within the corridors of power in
Washington, Havana and Miami form the background for the novel’s
two protagonists as they tackle an important Presidential assignment.
Not all of us are familiar with Cuba or our relationship with its
people. There are a few historical points and events to consider
before beginning the story.
Fidel Castro is not immortal. There are those who believe that
after he’s gone the Cuban people will be emancipated from the
tyranny under which they live, but that didn’t happen in the Soviet
Union when Stalin died. It happened throughout what was the
Soviet empire when the ideas and dreams of the rest of the world
could no longer be kept out. Who knows, freedom might have come
to the Cuban people already were it not for the isolation imposed
by the United States’ trade embargo that has kept U.S. citizens out
of Cuba for the last forty years. Let the sun shine in, and good things
usually happen.
This is not to say American actions have always been good for
the people of Cuba. What followed Teddy Roosevelt’s charge up San
Juan Hill, in the war and subsequent military occupation that gave
us Guantanamo Bay naval base in 1903,was not always pretty. Ernest
Hemingway, and more recently Tom Miller, gave us a look on the
bright side of Cuba. But Havana, which had always been revered as
one of the more romantic and cosmopolitan cities of the New
World, had degenerated by the 1950s into a frontier of prostitution
and crime, often more base than that presented in Godfather II.
Not all Cubans were unhappy when the Americans were sent
packing in 1958.
Then came the Cuban Missile Crisis and Russia’s cohabitation
of Cuba, ninety miles from our shores. When the Russians went
home as their world began to collapse, Castro was left to his own
devices, and the United States, perhaps missing an opportunity, kept
in place the embargo brought in to punish Russian/Cuban aggression.
Despite periodic notions in Washington over the last twenty-five
years to ease these restrictions, the embargo is still in place, and
Americans are still not allowed to travel to Cuba.
It’s hard to find anyone in international trade or politics who is
neutral on the subject, but one thing seems fairly clear: the
announced and stated purpose of this restriction on American freedoms
(which ironically was implemented in order to bring liberty to
the Cuban people) has not been achieved. Cubans have never been
less free. Washington may be the only place in the world where this
failure of foreign policy is not obvious.
Surprisingly, and no thanks to the Castros or our own government
In Washington, Americans are not unpopular among the people
of Cuba. Most Cubans would like to see more of us than the few
who are licensed to visit by the U.S. Treasury Department. Those
who have been given permission to travel there cannot mistake
Havana for other major cities in this hemisphere. Havana is required
to put its best foot forward. Even so, the city sports an old world
charm that comes alive from noon into the wee hours with music,
good food, and interesting people. If you don’t look too closely at
the man sitting at the next table, to whom the waiters are giving a
deference approaching abject fear, you might even believe you’re in
a free society.
This is Havana today. Tomorrow is not history yet, but it’s coming.