Picturing the Past

A few years back during a trip to Havana, I found myself seated beside my aunt, sucking down cup-after-cup of cafe while chatting away into the night. It was simply too hot to sleep on that particular evening and so we figured we’d talk ourselves into comas.

At one point, tia Mirta stood up and asked me to hold tight while she retrieved something from the top shelf of her closet. She returned a short while later, carrying a rather old and dusty binder, filled with an entire ream of papers. She set it on the table before me, slid it over and pointed out the label on the front of the binder, which read simply “1939.”

As it turns out, the binder contained an entire year’s worth of letters written from my grandfather Gerardo to my grandmother Lola, a couple of years before their marriage in the early 1940s. In the hectic days leading up to their escape from the island, Lola and Gerardo had piled all of their personal documents in the back yard of their Miramar residence. Not wanting any of the family photos and personal letters that remained in the house to fall into the hands of Castro’s henchmen, they proceeded to burn the whole lot. They would leave Cuba several days later, never to return.

Fast forward one week (after the bonfire). Mirta’s husband, my uncle Paco, was dispatched by family members in Cojimar to retrieve as much of the house’s remaining furniture as was humanly possible. Gerardo had asked this of his brother stating “I don’t want any murderers sitting on our furniture – the idea repulses me. Take what you want.” Paco arrived with a small moving truck in the dead of night and moved a few select items into the vehicle under cover of darkness. As he was leaving the house for the last time, he noticed a binder of letters Lola and Gerardo had forgotten to set ablaze.

Forty-some-odd years later, I would take that binder back to the United States and present it to my grandmother, who to this day - at the age of 89 - still keeps it in her bedroom, occasionally opening the faded cover to relive the Cuba that once was, gently caressing its yellowed pages and using a finger to trace the lines indicating where she had once folded the sonnets before hiding them (from an imposing father) inside the lining of her jacket.

Here is but an excerpt, translated from the original Spanish:

January 15, 1939
Sunday; 8:20 p.m.

When we separated at the bus stop, I was watching you until I lost site of you. It was then that I took the bus. It rained throughout the entire ride to catch the transfer at Belascoain and Reina, I called home from the café in order to get a ride . . .

On a whim, I set off on an internet search in hopes of finding a photograph of the corner of Belascoain and Reina. I found not one image, but two. I have always had a great fascination – some would call it an obsession – with the past. The only Cuba I know firsthand is the third world disaster it was transformed into by Fidel Castro. During my occasional visits to the island, I’ve tried to find and photograph the places of my family’s past. In my mind’s eye, I can see Gerardo on that street corner, waiting for his transfer after bidding goodbye to Lola – clear as day.

Below, I've included the two photographs of the corner of Belascoain and Reina as it was in the 1940s and as it appears today.

Belascoain and Reina circa 1945. Photograph courtesy "Cuba en Fotos."

The same intersection as it appears today. Photo courtesy of flickr user aperez241

Posted by at November 8, 2007 02:13 PM

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