COSG - Gardening Brigade Report 2003

We arrive in Havana on Sunday 26th January at around 8-00pm local time having been travelling – from Heathrow, via Paris – for 17 hours. We are all exhausted and are pleased to find our group leader, Neil Anderson (brandishing a garden fork emblazoned with “COSG”!), his son Ben, Andres (from the Fundacion Antonio Nunez Jimenez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre), Alban (our translator) and Marin (our driver) all waiting for us as we came through customs control. Clambering aboard our rather luxurious coach we drove through the dark streets gaining our first views of the city. After about half an hour we arrive at the Hotel Deauville, swiftly check-in and head for bed.

Next day we gather in the hotel bar area for a group introduction and briefing from Neil and then head off for Miramar, a wealthy suburb of Havana, with well watered gardens and houses in a good state of repair. We cannot help noticing this because many of the buildings near our hotel are quite spectacularly dilapidated.
We are here to visit the headquarters of the Fundacion, the organisation which hosts the visits from the Cuba Organic Support Group. They will provide us with guides everywhere we go. Many of the projects that we are to visit have benefited from donations that COSG has made in the past to aid their work.

In the small building the rooms are absolutely crammed full of the life's work of the founder, Antonio Nunez Jimenez. This remarkable character fought alongside Fidel and Che in the Sierra Maestra mountains, and personally handed in the invitation to surrender to the army in Santa Clara before the ensuing battle which decided the course of the War of the Revolution. He was a world renowned palentologist and environmentalist and a prolific writer. In the display cases fossils and anthropological artefacts jostle for space with revolutionary memorabilia including a photograph of Antonio playing golf, in military uniform, with Fidel and Che (Fidel won) - not quite the Natural History Museum!

A huge array of notes and research is tidily labelled and stacked up to the ceiling, and there is a study room with reference books in many different languages. There are old natural science books from the UK as well as the most recent books advising on “How to Get Good People to Give Your Project More Money”

Another room houses a long canoe that was used on a research journey along the rivers of South America by a group of people from different South American and Caribbean countries…I learn later than one of the researchers was Alexandro, our host in Sanctus Spiritus. Artefacts from Venezuela, Mexico etc collected on the trip are displayed.

Negligible amounts of food were grown before 1990 and there was a state of crisis when the favourable trade arrangement with the USSR came to an abrupt end. The Cubans had to produce twice as much food as before and completely change the technology. Large amounts of pesticides and fertilisers had been imported; now they had to find other ways of dealing with pests and maintaining the fertility of the soil. To this end advice shops were set up, where growers can also obtain tools and biological pesticides. Land was made available to anyone prepared to work it - a bit like allotments in the UK - without owning it.

Roberto describes the problems in a matter-of-fact way. There had been some theft of crops. There were difficulties with the supply of seeds, organic matter and water. Part of the urgency for getting local urban food organised was that there were chronic shortages of spare parts and fuel, so that food could not easily be brought in from the countryside.

It is clear that this had been an extremely difficult time for the Cubans, but their response seemed to have been "just get on with it." We ask a variety of questions, including -

Q. Where do Cubans mainly get their food from?
A. People get their food from three sources: government rations, whatever they produce themselves, and the black market (economia informal).

Q. How committed are Cubans to the largely chemical-free methods they are now using?
A. People generally think that these methods will last for the duration of the current "Special Period" and that when fertilisers and pesticides become available again they will be used again.

Outside the building there is a small permaculture-style garden - created with the help of the first COSG Gardening Brigade - containing many medicinal herbs, and a pond that collects water from the roof. This is the first time that many in our group have seen plants like basil and chillies growing very much more vigorously than they do in the UK!

We then have a fantastic lunch at a dollar restaurant called Palenque. This was the name given to communities of escaped slaves who established themselves in the Cuban countryside. The Cuban food here is an array of taro, potatoes, rice and beans, fresh vegetables, fruit and pork, chicken and fish. We sit outside under straw roofs surrounded by tropical palms and there are small orange and black birds as well as little blue and green hummingbirds that Marin, the coach driver, calls "colibri".

In Havana in the afternoon there is a flying visit to the Museum of the Revolution with its detailed descriptions of the characters and the events of that extraordinary time. Batista's former palace had been lavishly decorated by Tiffany's of New York, but now houses a collection of flags and memorabilia that would have been anathema to its previous inhabitant.

Havana is different from other cities in not having advertising hoardings, except a few that urge people to adopt communist ideas and principles. I had expected to see images of Fidel Castro everywhere, but instead you see Che, and predominantly Jose Marti, the father of Cuban independence who died at the end of the nineteenth century.

In the evening we sort out a mini-mountain of the seeds, tools, pens, notebooks, gardening gloves and so on that we have brought as gifts; We allocate them into bundles for each of the different projects we will be visiting.

Tues 28th
This is the first of the work days and we are rather apprehensive about what is expected of us. We pile into the bus and set off through the old city , passing a garden devoted to Princess Diana, believe it or not. The dock area is quite near the city, and chimneys belch smoke in the distance. There are people everywhere, hanging out, talking- this is a place where all activity seems to take place outside. We divide into 2 groups- the first group worked on Jello’s garden in the centre of old Havana, near the birthplace of Jose Marti, and created a large ombrage to shade one of the vegetable beds; a great success by all accounts.

I was detailed to the second group and we headed off in the bus to the outskirts of the city to meet a group of women who are making their backyards more productive. In the shady back porch of the house of one of our hosts the women of Los Pinos welcome us with hibiscus tea, grown in the front garden. It is sharp and refreshing, full of vitamin C. The area out the back grows bananas and there is fencing made out of whatever is to hand.

We set off to another nearby garden where we are set to work. There are many resources locally - manure, organic matter (weeds) from the nearby paths, and there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of water, but it becomes clear while we are working that there is a shortage of tools and gloves, and general know-how.

We see that the compost heaps need attention, the growing areas need to be more defined, a nursery area is needed for ornamental plants, and an area of little plants needs more mulch. It is an ideal project for our group, and we hope that our enthusiasm enables us to communicate with the women despite our less than fluent Spanish. We learn the words for worms and manure - lombriz and miercol.

The compost heaps are built up with all the organic material lying around, manure brought in from a local stable, and weeds slashed down with machetes. They are then watered and topped with banana leaves to keep in the moisture.

In the course of tidying up the yard, the organic materials go on the compost and the stones go to define the edges of the growing areas.

Pots and containers are hard to come by and we see turmeric (the yellow food colouring in curries) grown in an old cistern.

A nursery area is created, dug over and edged. It is divided with a small path to maximise the growing area. Small cuttings and seedlings of ornamental plants are put in - these will grow very quickly if kept watered, and generate a small income from sales.

The area with small plants, mulched with cardboard, is given large doses of manure, barrowed in from down the road. All we have really done is to use the resources already there in a more effective way.

People come out to have a look and see what is going on, slightly bemused to see foreigners toiling away in a local neighbours garden but, hopefully, impressed at what can be achieved by 12 organic gardeners in 4 hours…Ground Force beware! Close by dogs and chickens scratch around, and there are people engaged in the traditional Cuban occupation of patching up the car.

We return to the shady patio for a sociable late lunch of rice, chicken, and many different fruits and cakes. There is a drink of pink guava, (guayaba) which is indigenous to Cuba.

We have a tour of some other backyard gardens, where fruit trees and medicinal herbs are grown. One woman despite having a small yard, has carefully grown a lovely orchid on her tree, and a scented Peruvian daffodil in a tiny plant bed. In another I see coffee growing for the first time. The last is a roof garden where limes are grown in tubs and there are cages of guinea pigs destined for the pot. (Skin them and cook them like rabbit, we are advised.) Sara who runs the group explains that they get together to swap seeds and plants. The women are retired, or home makers. We ask if they have problems and she replies with some sadness that it is extremely difficult to obtain tools, plant pots and printed educational materials.

We visit a food conservation project in Havana run by an enthusiastic couple - Vilda and Pepe. The small demonstration garden at the front has a familiar plant labelled - which means that I have finally found the Latin name of a plant that I know as Jamaican thyme (also known in Grenada as Big Thyme), and grow on my windowsill in London. The Cubans call it oregano, and its Latin name is Coleus Amboinicus.

Vilda and Pepe explain that food conservation and diversity of food had not been given much importance traditionally in Cuba. From a very early period food had been imported. The first settlers were soldiers and merchants, with later development by colonists of the permanent planting of sugarcane as a cash crop.
Then there was the fact that much of Cuba’s food was imported prior to the crisis of the early 90’s- there was no Cuban culture of food security. Their efforts to further a local knowledge of food plants and how to grow and preserve them were against this background of crisis and lack of local expertise, and their energy and determination are impressive. Cuban radio and television is controlled by the State and Vilda and Pepe have become TV celebrities by virtue of the fact that they have a half hour programme on national TV every Saturday lunchtime. Vilda, whose background is in biochemistry and animal nutrition, trained for a while at the Rowat Insitute near Aberdeen and has even ‘appeared’ on the Food programme on Radio 4! She was amazed at all the regulations around organic food in the UK. Pepe was an engineer. They have been visited by people from 54 countries, and have done workshops in several South American and Caribbean countries.

to provide more food security, enabling families to have control over their own food supplies
to help families grow food and medicinal plants cheaply
to teach people to preserve food without the need for refrigeration (which is dependent on electricity).
to increase the knowledge of food and medicinal plants, enabling the Cuban diet to become more varied and minor ailments to be treated locally.
to link in food preservation with the system of organic production in the family gardens

The school over the road has many different herbs, vegetables and flowers, grown from seeds donated from abroad, in its well-kept display garden. There are several drying racks, demonstrating that when bananas for example are cut up in small pieces, they dry very quickly and efficiently in the sun.

After a delicious locally sourced vegan lunch we set off for another project, paying a flying visit to an advice shop which also sells tools, seeds, plants and biological pest control- all at low prices. Here, as a group, we buy garden forks to use and then donate when we leave. There are 1000 such centres in Havana. It is festooned with Cuban flags and is full of customers.

Project Eden is located in an unprepossessing neighbourhood, amid a stagnant stream and general decrepitude. Inside the gate is a different picture- with considerable enterprise Miguel and his colleagues have created a large vegetable-growing area and pools where fish (tilapia) are raised. Peering into a smaller pool we see eels and catfish. The vegetable growing area is without a weed, and lettuces, which Cubans love, are for sale. Tall bananas to one side shade the crop. Miguel has made a machine himself for milling beans up into fish food. Not only is this project resourceful, but there are many tropical foliage plants in the yard, there just because of their beauty.

Thursday 30th
As guests of Vilda and Pepe we visit a school for 99 children outside Havana which is in a lovely old colonial house built around the turn of the century. The interior is all tiles and wood. The children, who have mild learning disabilities, sing and dance for us, the guests. Their dancing is electrifying, and one of their teachers is the drummer.

The refurbishment of some of the classrooms was carried out with the help of Vilda and Pepe, who also teach the children about food conservation. The school has a small income from preparing food - it can cater for 400 people in its large premises. The grounds are large too, with mature mango trees and a driveway lined with red torch gingers. The school garden consists of small beds edged with tiles, overlooked by a little statue of the ubiquitous Jose Marti. Many fruit bushes are grown here, including one called Doviales, about 4-5ft, with cherry sized fruit, which I have never seen before. We have a drink made from it, fresh and flavoursome.
On to a finca (farm) near Playa del Este outside Havana. Here they grow trees, ornamental plants and vegetables for sale. This is extremely well organised, and funded by the EU and a German environmental NGO. There is a shop and a plant nursery. Organoponico Vivero Alamar started off with 5 people and ended up with 50 and among them are enough professional people with the know-how to keep the project ticking over - it also benefits from advice from Vilda and Pepe.

The soil is red, and Miguel shows us around large greenhouses and well-ordered fields of lettuce, edged with cactus. He explains that they use biological pest control, and do not water too much because they are near the sea and there is a risk of salination. They improve the soil with organic matter instead to help retain the moisture. There is no possibility at all to obtain chemicals. They find the summers difficult because at a daily temperature of 33’C the humidity is 90%, and even at night it is 20’C. “Impossible to cool down or to stop sweating!”

They are experimental with plants and several examples baffle even the most knowledgeable plant boffins in our group. (What is a cheese tree?) The lack of chemicals mean that there are birds flying around too - they look like small partridges.

Another huge lunch appears, with fresh fruit juice, fried sweet potato, chicken and lots of different fruit and vegetables.

After this visit we head for the beach at Playa del Este and some of us are brave enough to ignore the strong breeze and sample our first swim in the warm Atlantic ocean; sightings of a number of jelly fish are made and so we beat a retreat to the bus and back to Havana.

Friday 31st Jan
It rains heavily during the night in Havana and there are loaded comments about a cold front from the north (the direction of the US). On the way to Havana Botanic Gardens, we are lucky and the rain stops. We are set to work clearing around small trees, then barrowing in organic matter to mulch them. It is great to get our hands into Cuban earth and get an idea of what the growing conditions are. The weeds are different and more vigorous. There is a grass like a bigger and tougher couch grass, growing around the trees. We practise using the machetes with varying degrees of competence. I have brought a fold-up pruning saw which impresses Ramon, who explains that the trees are all useful in some way. There are small mango and loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) trees, and one called cedro, of which the wood is used to make boxes that store tobacco. We barrow in compost and mulch the trees with it, then finish off with dried grass that we have raked up from the surrounding area. This should preserve the moisture in the ground and reduce the need for watering- the rainy season is still several months away.

We then have a look at the tropical greenhouses which have a collection of lovely plants, some of which we know as houseplants in the UK. I see a large rainforest cactus (epiphyllum spp) that I have on my windowsill at home, looking much happier and healthier in its natural habitat. We have lunch at El Bambu, an excellent organic vegetarian café located beside the Japanese garden, which has a fascinating strip of ground devoted to vermicultural composting. We make jokes about the worms – they are Californian reds – and then troop back to the coach for a tour of the large botanic gardens, where there are areas devoted to trees from all over the world. We stop with Carlos and his colleagues and explore the tropical fruit area. This is great fun, and we lob palm fronds at a big star fruit tree to get the fruit, like kids getting conkers. There is a fruit like a tamarind, that you eat for the sour pith, a kumquat tree, a weird thing that looks like a pale egg on a thorny bush, and cacao seeds from the pod, which are absolutely delicious if you can manage not to bite in to the bitter cocoa within. The pod grows directly out of the bark of the tree. There are sharon fruit and macadamia nuts, and I am curious enough to chomp on a palm nut, from which palm oil is extracted. It tastes like oil-soaked wood and is pretty disgusting.

Saturday 1st Feb
We travel to Sancti Spiritus on roads with light traffic. The service station where we stop is geared up for the tourist dollar, and there is a band playing, a large selection of Che postcards, the usual political books and various other memorabilia. The countryside is characterised by sugarcane and tobacco fields, with sugarmills smoking away in the distance. Coming into the outskirts of Sancti Spiritus, traffic becomes dominated by the horse and cart. It is an agricultural town, with some lovely old colonial buildings. We are welcomed by Alejandro from the Fundacion with musicians, a goodie bag with sunhats which we will need, and a lunch featuring fresh fish and star fruit wine. I discover that though I have not smoked for the last 15 years, the Cuban cigar has magical powers of temptation! A tour around the town shows us a historic bridge over the Yayabo river, where there are turkey vultures wheeling lazily around a couple of huge mahogany trees, and restored cobbled streets nearby in a very pretty area. Instead of staying in the hotel in the centre of the town the Fundacion lodges us with local family guest houses…which proves to be a delight. A stroll around the town at dusk is notable for a large number of bats swooping around the houses, which have very few items of furniture and possessions. There are televisions, but few houses seem to have been recently painted. There is little in the way of street lighting, but it feels safe despite the darkness. We visit the Casa de Trova in the evening to listen to several groups of local musicians, and join in the dancing in amateur fashion.

Sunday 2nd Feb
We set out in warm sunshine for a full day of visits. Our first stop is a flower-growing project called Lindaflor, which makes an effort to employ older people. They sell bunches of flowers for 20 pesos each, and have a large walk-in fridge to keep the flowers cool. They grow gladioli, callistephus, helichrysum, roses and dahlias, using sanseveria (mother in law’s tongue) as an edging plant.

The composting system is impressive. They heap up organic matter in large rows, and a bed frame is propped up to use as a sieve. I have seen this technique at a composting project (Wyecycle in Kent) in the UK.
We are welcomed with fresh fruit, coconuts with straws in them, sugar cane, cakes and guess what? The star fruit wine has appeared again! It is 9.30am on Sunday morning….

Our next stop is a big organoponico named after Celia Sanchez, the revolutionary and companera of Fidel Castro, who died several years ago. This is a well laid-out place with celery, lettuce, beans, carrots etc in raised beds. Organoponicos are former hydroponic gardens, but since the chemical fertilisers are no longer available, the fertility of the growing medium is maintained by adding organic matter. The composting area here is covered with black netting to shade it and prevent it from drying out, and the piles are labelled “Materia Organica” and “Lombrizcol”- organic matter and worm compost.

We are set to weed rows of beans and little pak choi and lettuces, and manage to get quite a good amount of work done before another feast of fish, vegetables, rice and fruit.

Our next stop is a permaculture plot which is very productive and beautiful. Roger who runs it with his family is obviously passionate about his work and uses every part of his plot in a creative and industrious way. A nursery area shaded by a frame with netting over it near the entrance grows ornamental plants and a trailing maracuja (a type of passion fruit) over the top with the fruits hanging down. The beds have the usual lettuce, carrots etc as well as a pink- flowered oxalis which they call spinach, and there is a bed of fantastically strongly-scented basil with many other herbs. I have never seen a bed system like it before. Roger covers the paths in a thick layer of rice husks. The next year this path is used as the base of a plant bed. This means that the earth is constantly being enriched with organic matter, turned, thereby discouraging weeds, and aerated.
There are bananas and a climbing cucumber plant. There is a plant called Bija, which I think is annatto (used as a yellow food colouring).The reddish seeds grow in prickly pods on a large bush. Verbena azul, a blue flowered verbena, is used for skin complaints. Biological control- a parasite called lysiphebus testacies- is used for aphids. There is a small fishpond and composting area in a shady part.

The production is 20 tons of food a year, much of which goes to schools and hospitals, from an area of 400m2. It is not surprising to learn that this project, “El Ranchon”, is used as a demonstration area. We are presented with chilli relish from the project, tiny sweet bananas, and oranges peeled with the aid of a machine that Roger has made himself.

We then visit a family Patio Agroecologia, where the emphasis is on producing as much food as possible in a small space. On the roof there is a room where there are educational materials – used to instruct local families - which come from Vilda and Pepe’s project (Como se hace la pila de compost?), and an area where food is dried for use as animal feed. In the small yard there are chickens, quails and rabbits reared very intensively in raised wire cages, a pig, and a tank with catfish and large snails. We discover the source of the star fruit wine, and sample some more from the hospitable producer before returning to the town centre for an evening visit to a Santeria house.

In the Santeria house the rooms are clean and bare, featuring pictures of the Virgin and Saint Francis of Assisi. These saints were used by Santeria practitioners as “covers” for their own gods. There is a large, rather tacky throne with a doll seated in a red and gold cloak. In the next room is a photo of our hostess’s ancestor, who was the first practitioner in Cuba of this particular religion brought from Africa, which is governed by women. In the garden my attention is immediately taken away from the commentary by a magnificent, massive tree, which stands out even in the dark of the evening. Finally our hostess brings the group to it and explains that it is iroko, sacred in Cuba. No one cuts it and hurricanes cannot blow it down. It houses the spirits of the ancestors and the people of her religion celebrate the tree with dances every year. She sings a little to demonstrate and this sounds just like music from west Africa. It is a very exciting and awesome moment to realise there is such a direct and strong link with Africa which has survived the brutality of slavery.

Monday Feb 3rd
We set out for Finca Don Tomas, which is 30km from Sancti Spiritus, through prosperous, busy countryside with lots of well-cultivated fields of tobacco, taro, millet and sugarcane. There are hardly any cars, many horses and carts, and a few tractors. There are many birds along the road, including some small hawks, the same shape as a kestrel but about half the size. A type of ageratum, pale mauve and about 3ft high, is a weed in the fields here. A few billboards appear with slogans “Together for the revolution” . We learn that the Spanish people in this area originally came from the Canary Islands.

At the finca there is a big welcome and we are tracked by camcorders wielded by a group from Cuban TV. They grow over a hundred different types of useful tree here, as well as tobacco and many food crops. We plant trees using a tool with a heavy handle like a scaffold pole and a small blade, before setting to work putting a large mound of sieved soil into plastic sleeves ready to pot up plants. We set up a production line and dust off suitable group-bonding work songs- anything from Red Army choir songs to the Geordie national anthem!
Later we are shown around a tobacco drying shed, complete with pig and piglets in a corner. There has been some research into organic growing of tobacco but apparently it is very difficult. Fronds of the royal palm, which grows everywhere in Cuba, are used to regulate the humidity of the tobacco in storage. Tobacco stalks are used to make pesticide. We are taken out to the tobacco fields, where a worker is taking out the tops of the plants that are about to flower- this focuses the plant’s energy into the leaves. We see the curious phenomenon of a parasite plant growing in the tobacco plant’s roots. It is called broom rape, has pale yellow stalks and lilac flowers, cannot make its own chlorophyll and is specific to tobacco. We take the opportunity to ask about the other food crops. Bananas are interplanted with taro (malanga), a root vegetable with large handsome leaves, to increase the food production of the area. We see an 8ft cassava (yucca) plant dug up to reveal the edible roots. Apparently you boil it with salt but it is not that nutritious.

We meet another Santeria practitioner, wearing distinctive beads round his neck. He explains how his group gives practical advice and helps people with their problems.

I have a conversation in fractured German with a Cuban worker who learned the language while on a solidarity stay in the DDR (East Germany) in 1980.

Finally we sit down to the mother of all feasts- a piglet has been barbecued and there is an array of different vegetables and fruit along with fish (tilapia) and moros y cristianos. (white rice and black beans) The star fruit wine appears again…..and cigars….life is good!

Tues 4th Feb
We leave Sancti Spiritus for Trinidad, through a valley where there are many sugar mills (ingenios). We stop at Manaca Iznaga, a lovely colonial building which also has a sobering reminder of the historic reality of slavery- a tall lookout tower built so that a slave owner could survey 360’ of the surrounding countryside to establish the whereabouts of an escapee. From the top you can see tall sugarcane waving in the wind, a man ploughing a field with an ox, and the mountains in the distance.

Our next stop is at another beauty spot with a kiosk and a view over the countryside. A Cuban flag flies at half mast, and, largely deprived of news, we ask why this is. An American space shuttle has crashed, killing all the crew, and this flag is lowered in sympathy. “Our problem is with the American government, not the American people”.

Trinidad is being developed for tourists but its character seems to be carefully preserved. It has stunning colonial architecture, about 300 musicians in the area, mountains and a nearby beach, Playa Ancon, to die for. At night, because of the very limited street lighting, you can clearly see the stars, and one evening we see an owl. It feels safe to wander at night-there is a police presence, and there is no trouble on the streets.

Tues 4th/Wed 5th Feb
We spend a very happy two days in Trinidad, exploring the town, enjoying fantastic music everywhere, swimming in the sea and wandering along the beach looking at the different shore plants. I make a mental note to learn to dance and speak Spanish for when I come back.

Thurs 6th Feb
We leave Trinidad and head through the Sierra del Escambray mountains to Santa Clara. The road heading out of Trinidad has the scariest hairpin bends I’ve ever seen, and we are grateful to Marin for his nerves of steel. After a particularly “white knuckle” moment, Alban cheerfully explains that the name of that particular curve is “the bend of death”.

These mountains are unspoiled and quite spectacular with a huge variety of plant and birdlife. We see large American agaves with hummingbirds feeding from their flowers, and wild black-eyed susie (Thunbergia alata) everywhere. There is a white-stemmed trailing rubus, datura, a tall (8ft)bright yellow daisy, lantana, and ricinus. Coffee is grown in the mountains. We see the national flower of Cuba, mariposa, growing by the side of a mountain road. This is a bit like a crinum or a ginger, 3/4ft high, with a fragrant white flower.

There are fantailed blackbirds and we are very lucky to see the shy national bird of Cuba, a tocororo. Marin stops the coach so we can see it. It is a relative of the quetzal and has blue, red and white plumage, the colours of the Cuban flag. Alban explains that this bird loves freedom, like the Cubans, and will die in a day if kept in a cage.

Coming out of the mountains we see reforestation of young teak plants, and I ask the name of a large tree with red leaves that I have seen everywhere. The Cubans call it the tourist tree, because the leaves are red like the tourists! From Manicaragua to Santa Clara there are small mixed farms, then large dry fields. Land ownership is tightly controlled. Foreigners cannot own land.

We stop off at the memorial to Che Guevara in Santa Clara, which houses a fascinating exhibition of his life. There is an insight into one of the most famous photos in the world- it was taken on the occasion of a memorial service for 200 people who had been killed in an explosion caused to destabilise the fledgling revolution. There is an Irish connection as Che’s father was called Ernesto Guevara Lynch. Che’s wife and children are still living in Cuba.

Santa Clara was the place where Batista’s forces surrendered to the rebels, and the Fundacion’s founder, Antonio Nunez Jimenez, was the one to take the message to them giving them 2 hours to surrender. Gilberto from the Fundacion answers our questions about current affairs in Cuba, and it is apparent that the ideals of the revolution are far from finished. There is a determination to forge alternative trading and political links after the collapse of the USSR, and a certain optimism about the recent events in Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil, which seem to indicate a wider movement away from the capitalist model. When Castro dies, he says, the system will continue because “it is our revolution. When the USSR collapsed, the eastern bloc countries followed suit. We did not- the systems are in our country.” The Cubans pay attention to developments in the USA, including Plan Colombia, because it apparently includes Cuba. There is no sign that the blockade will be lifted, despite the recent lifting of the ban on direct flights from Miami to Havana.

Friday 5th Feb
This is our last day and we explore Havana in the sunshine. The main shopping area has dark shops with not much in them. Many sell ropa riciclada (second-hand clothes). A market further along is lively and the shops are fuller - there are tools from China and inner tubes and parts for the famous Flying Pigeon bicycles. The queue is a constant of Havana life, and there are long, very full caterpillar buses, called “camels”, which were introduced in an attempt to improve the capacity of public transport. Older men and women sell Granma, the communist party newspaper, on the streets, and a man is selling roasted lechon, suckling pig.

There are little cultivated food gardens right in the centre of town. I pass a school with neat rows of vegetables and herbs in its garden, decorative as well as edible. It is in Havana that the contrasts between the lives of Cubans and tourists show up the most. In the country, the food supplies seem better and life seems more equitable.The tourist shops, which we have been able to use, have better quality goods, variety and availability. For the tourists there is CNN and the internet-difficult for Cubans to access, unless it comes with a job. Tourists have access to new cars and fuel is available to tourists. It is hard to find reading matter other than the second-hand book market and approved political literature. The drive to diversify the economy by attracting the tourist dollar has brought in a 2 tier system, divisive and visibly unfair. It is asking a lot of the Cubans to live with it and accept that it is necessary for the economy. However, the strength of the society and the focus on community benefit rather than individual gain mean that ideas that are talked about as aspirations in the UK are a reality in Cuba; community cohesion, community empowerment, the ethos of self help. Sustainable development is a reality here- there is no alternative- people have no choice but to use resources wisely and sparingly. Consumerism as experienced in the USA and Europe has a dark and ugly side - poverty, alienation, social exclusion, violence, unrealistic expectations of endless growth and limitless resources that can only be addressed by exploitation of the resources of other countries. The streets are safe, there is no drug problem and a low crime rate. The culture is not the standard global one of Gap, McDonalds, and Starbucks, but an individual and vibrant Spanish/African mix. The projects that we have visited show that there is an alternative to globalisation for the people of a small country, and one which is sustainable, does not create pollution, does not rely on external inputs, and puts its people first rather than the interests of shareholders. Good luck to them.