Cuba keeps dancing despite Trump’s oil blockade
HAVANA — After another nationwide power outage debilitated Cuba, power went out again in parts of Havana this past Sunday afternoon. When cell signal came back, Alberto González’s phone was ringing non-stop with messages.
“Are you going to open it today?”
“Is there power?”
“Good day, brother. Will there be dancing?”
It wasn’t a question people had to ask until now. Of course there would be dancing too.
González and his wife, Mercedes Cruz, have been hosting a popular weekly dance night for decades at a historic social hall in one of Havana’s oldest neighborhoods, a few blocks from the Caribbean Sea. Both 72, they call the event Los Tradicionales (“the traditional ones”) because their goal is to help preserve Cuba’s rich dance heritage, from rumba to timba to casino, the forerunner of salsa.
They have continued to host the party in recent months amid power outages and food and water shortages that are the result of a near-total U.S. blockade of oil shipments to Cuba.
Havana’s Vedado neighborhood was plunged into darkness during a nationwide power outage on March 21. Power outages are becoming more common as Cuba recovers from the US-imposed oil embargo.
(Natalia Favre / For the Times)
Many people here do not have water to bathe and flush the toilet. They got used to getting out of bed to cook or do laundry when the electricity came on, no matter what time it was. The party is taking a break from all this and from constantly worrying about what President Trump has planned for the island (“Cuba is next,” he warned after bombing Iran).
“You don’t think here,” Cruz said of the party. “You’re dancing.”
He had barely slept because there was no fan in the house to keep the heat and mosquitoes away. But when the future of electricity became clear, she styled her blonde hair and donned a floral dress while González sought out the characters that powered Los Tradicionales: the svelte ticket collector, the dapper DJ, the man whose sole job was to pop popcorn from a finicky machine.
The couple then walked along the famous boulevard named after José Martí, the father of Cuban independence, towards the old building where Havana’s community center for Cubans of Arab origin is located. Like most things here, the place had a vintage feel, with old tiled floors and walls hung with faded photographs of long-dead Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s visit to Cuba.
1. Alberto González put on his shoes for a night full of dancing. 2. Mercedes Cruz looks at photos of one of her sons on her phone in Havana. She and González have two children who live in Florida and whom they have not seen in four years. 3. Cruz places his hands on the table in the hall where the weekly dance meeting is held in Havana.
Alberto González speaks with a security guard before the dancers arrive at Havana’s community center for Cubans of Arab descent.
“Hola, darling!” Cruz called out to the bathroom attendant, who was on duty. He and González had turned the air conditioning on full blast, filling the living room with cool air, and he took a moment to enjoy it.
The building is on the same power grid as a local hospital; This means it will only lose electricity when the nationwide power grid goes down, unlike most parts of the island that experience rolling daily blackouts.
By sunset, a line had formed outside. Wearing a baby blue polo shirt and a flashy hat, the kind favored by golfers in the 1970s, González greeted guests one by one and helped several well-dressed elderly women up the steep marble staircase.
The first track took off, a Bad Bunny song was remixed with a salsa beat, and people started lining up.
Yaima Pacheco Muñoz, 37, was the first to start dancing along with her friend Míosoti Bell Leon, 52. As a group of people streamed in, many stopped to kiss the women on the cheeks.
“There really is family here,” Bell said as he and Pacheco took a break at a red cloth-covered table.
Nurys Núñez Arellano, 61, gently touches her partner, German Fernández Miranda, 66, who is eating popcorn and watching the dance floor.
Economist Pacheco said that he had been experiencing a power outage at his home for days. Like his phone and computer’s battery, it was also drained.
When a journalist asked who he blamed for the problems, Pacheco closed his eyes and shook his head. “No,” he said. “Not here.”
Sunday nights “are therapy,” he said. “This is the only place I can relieve my stress.”
Sean Paul’s dancehall song started and pulled Bell back to the ground.
Eugenio Leiva was sitting alone at a table next to the bar, drinking whiskey. He called it “The Enemy’s drink” as a joke about the United States. “I love rum,” he said. “But I like whiskey better.”
Maurin Piedra Rodríguez, 52, speaks on the phone during a break from his weekly dance meeting in Havana.
Dance nights are becoming more established and attract twice as many women as men. Leiva, 74, doesn’t dance but likes to watch.
He once worked on cultural issues for Cuba’s communist government before moving abroad as a writer. He recently returned from Spain and expressed shock at the conditions, which he said was partly due to US sanctions and partly to government mismanagement. All but one of his five children had left the island because they saw no future there.
Leiva said dancing was “one of the few things they didn’t take from us.”
Leiva, who works in the community center’s library one day a week, said the dance reminds her that Cubans turn to each other for support, even when things are tough. He said his neighbors offered him food every day, even though they barely had enough to eat. On nights when the electricity was out, Cubans would gather on the street to play dominoes or sing classic songs a cappella.
“We are experiencing our worst crisis,” he said. “But we are one.”
48-year-old Roberto Rodríguez was one of the most talented dancers. After each song ended, another woman eagerly looked at him, hoping it would be her turn to twirl around on the floor. He works seven days a week as a construction worker, but goes dancing every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
“I dance, drink beer, talk to my friends, and then I’m ready for whatever the week brings me,” he said.
Some of her earlier memories are of dancing at family birthday parties or large public carnival events where the country’s best orchestras would play. She plays salsa music all the time in the house, so her sons, who are 14 and 16, know how to use it, too. “Dance is a language,” he said. “This is our native language.”
1. Participants in “Los Tradicionales” record themselves dancing while a “reparto” song plays. 2. A woman who has just given her name as Susana joins 73-year-old Juan Marín on the dance floor.
María Camejo pays for cookies at the bar during the “Los Tradicionales” meeting in Havana
At 9 p.m., González called patrons who had recently celebrated birthdays so the crowd could serenade them.
He later led a large group in the “casino circle”, a type of Latin square dance that originated in Havana in the 1950s. Smiling couples were dancing, taking the same steps at the same time, changing partners every few beats.
To Cruz, this was a symbol of Cubans’ connection to their history and commitment to society. That’s what he missed when he went to the United States, where his grandchildren lived.
González put down the microphone and someone turned off the lights. A. again The track appeared – Cuba’s version of reggaetón. González headed out to his wife of fifty years, and for the first time they did what they had come to do all night long: They danced.
