Wandering into a small park shaded by fruit trees in Old Havana, I was surprised to come across a bronze bust of Hans Christian Andersen. Havana is a city of surprises, the biggest of which is the miracle of its preservation. It’s not just that half a century of socialist revolution has kept modernization at bay; it’s just as much about the Cuban people’s abiding sense of history and deep cultural pride.
Speaking as an innocent in the Latin context, this is of no small significance. For as you wander around the exquisite baroque cathedral square in Old Havana, where the bones of Christopher Columbus were once interred in the cathedral, you sense the legacy of Old Spain and its role in the vanguard of discovering the American continent, with all that has meant for the wider world.
Old Havana is a living relic. It’s narrow lanes lined with stuccoed mansions and tenements, their doors often opening onto graceful courtyards painted in soft tones, evoke an era of high European civilization that has disappeared under the onslaught of steel and glass in the modern metropolitan centers of Europe. Across much of Asia, where there were similar influences shaping early modern metropolitan life, a combination of perpetual humidity and relentless progress has buried the remnants of colonial civic planning. The closest parallel is Old Hanoi with its ochre-hued mansions, but that’s almost gone.
To wander the streets of Old Havana is to experience the civic norms and values of a bygone era — where the space is for people, not for cars; where narrow lanes give onto public plazas and tiny shaded parks like the one with the bust of Hans Christian Andersen.
It’s not that Havana hasn’t had its brush with modernity. Drive up the four-lane Calle 23 from the sea in Vedado to the east of the city center and you almost feel like you’re on Hollywood and Vine. But even in the newer parts of the city, there’s an air of genteel preservation. The old Havana Hilton, built in the same blockhouse design of the Athens Hilton and Nile Hilton — but renamed the Hotel Habana Libre — is a perfect example of its type. It should be preserved.
Away from the intensive tourist touting of rum and cigars, the endless but rather limited repertoire of Son and Salsa, and the cheesy Hemingway trail there is a quiet civility about Havana that would seem to hold many lessons for modern urban living. Cuban street life allows for little privacy. At ground level, you peer into front-room parlors and hold conversations with families, or shout up to neighbors hanging perilously over balcony railings. Some of these houses rent rooms to tourists. The absence of cars turns every street corner into an open-air café. The streets are for the most part clean and safe.
The cynics will say it is all because of the heavy hand of the socialist state that the old city has been preserved. They point to the government monopoly on tourist revenue that puts convertible pesos spent in the bars and cafes of Obispo street into state coffers while ordinary Cubans struggle to buy eggs and fresh vegetables, let alone meat, in poorly stocked government stores and threadbare markets. It’s hard to ignore the hardships ordinary Cubans face, but also easy to forget that every basic service from health to education is free.
Others fear that all the stuccoed charm will disappear under the onslaught of modern capitalism when it comes. And it’s on the way. Just recently, Cubans were given the right to buy and sell property for the first time since 1959. The convertible currency has put money in some people’s pockets and global luxury brands have established beachheads in Old Havana. I’m rather more optimistic. Cubans seem to regard Havana as a valuable heirloom, a lasting symbol of a culture and civilization that is proudly Latin and American and predates Fidel and Che.
The city historian Eusebio Leal Spengler has labored for decades to preserve and restore more than 300 buildings in the old city; he has harnessed tourist revenue to pay for the work. The old city’s streets are mostly barred to traffic, kept out by vertically planted cast iron replicas of the 18th century cannons that once defended the city from invading corsairs but that now defend it from invading automobiles.
“These days, when Eusebio Leal Spengler walks the streets of Old Havana, people treat him like a rock star,” waxed The New York Times in 2007. “Ladies kiss him on the cheek and whisper that they love him. Children point at him.” After a week wandering Old Havana, I wanted to kiss him, too.
Speaking as an innocent in the Latin context, this is of no small significance. For as you wander around the exquisite baroque cathedral square in Old Havana, where the bones of Christopher Columbus were once interred in the cathedral, you sense the legacy of Old Spain and its role in the vanguard of discovering the American continent, with all that has meant for the wider world.
Old Havana is a living relic. It’s narrow lanes lined with stuccoed mansions and tenements, their doors often opening onto graceful courtyards painted in soft tones, evoke an era of high European civilization that has disappeared under the onslaught of steel and glass in the modern metropolitan centers of Europe. Across much of Asia, where there were similar influences shaping early modern metropolitan life, a combination of perpetual humidity and relentless progress has buried the remnants of colonial civic planning. The closest parallel is Old Hanoi with its ochre-hued mansions, but that’s almost gone.
To wander the streets of Old Havana is to experience the civic norms and values of a bygone era — where the space is for people, not for cars; where narrow lanes give onto public plazas and tiny shaded parks like the one with the bust of Hans Christian Andersen.
It’s not that Havana hasn’t had its brush with modernity. Drive up the four-lane Calle 23 from the sea in Vedado to the east of the city center and you almost feel like you’re on Hollywood and Vine. But even in the newer parts of the city, there’s an air of genteel preservation. The old Havana Hilton, built in the same blockhouse design of the Athens Hilton and Nile Hilton — but renamed the Hotel Habana Libre — is a perfect example of its type. It should be preserved.
Away from the intensive tourist touting of rum and cigars, the endless but rather limited repertoire of Son and Salsa, and the cheesy Hemingway trail there is a quiet civility about Havana that would seem to hold many lessons for modern urban living. Cuban street life allows for little privacy. At ground level, you peer into front-room parlors and hold conversations with families, or shout up to neighbors hanging perilously over balcony railings. Some of these houses rent rooms to tourists. The absence of cars turns every street corner into an open-air café. The streets are for the most part clean and safe.
The cynics will say it is all because of the heavy hand of the socialist state that the old city has been preserved. They point to the government monopoly on tourist revenue that puts convertible pesos spent in the bars and cafes of Obispo street into state coffers while ordinary Cubans struggle to buy eggs and fresh vegetables, let alone meat, in poorly stocked government stores and threadbare markets. It’s hard to ignore the hardships ordinary Cubans face, but also easy to forget that every basic service from health to education is free.
Others fear that all the stuccoed charm will disappear under the onslaught of modern capitalism when it comes. And it’s on the way. Just recently, Cubans were given the right to buy and sell property for the first time since 1959. The convertible currency has put money in some people’s pockets and global luxury brands have established beachheads in Old Havana. I’m rather more optimistic. Cubans seem to regard Havana as a valuable heirloom, a lasting symbol of a culture and civilization that is proudly Latin and American and predates Fidel and Che.
The city historian Eusebio Leal Spengler has labored for decades to preserve and restore more than 300 buildings in the old city; he has harnessed tourist revenue to pay for the work. The old city’s streets are mostly barred to traffic, kept out by vertically planted cast iron replicas of the 18th century cannons that once defended the city from invading corsairs but that now defend it from invading automobiles.
“These days, when Eusebio Leal Spengler walks the streets of Old Havana, people treat him like a rock star,” waxed The New York Times in 2007. “Ladies kiss him on the cheek and whisper that they love him. Children point at him.” After a week wandering Old Havana, I wanted to kiss him, too.
Michael Vatikiotis is a Singapore-based regional director of the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue.
