The last time I visited Cuba, more than ten years ago, the country was coping with the “Special Period” that followed the exit of the Soviets and the continuing U.S. embargo. A whole generation was growing up on a diet of beans and sweet potatoes and the population looked to its small landholders to ward off mass starvation.
Gisnay, the young horse and cart driver who gave rides into the village took me on a day’s outing to one of those small holdings, a 30 acre farm on the edge of Guardalavaca. The name translates as Cow-Keepers, which was ironic because beef at that stage was only available to the tourists. The farmer, an old man named Armelio, took me on a tour of the fields, flocks and gardens that fed his extended family of forty people. The tour ended with the three of us sharing a rum toast in the shade beside a pen of four extremely thin spotted pigs.
Armelio noticed me looking at them. “No Bamisole,” he shrugged, referring to a brand of pig wormer from the 1950s. David Suzuki had just announced his joy and admiration that Cuba’s 60,000 small farmers had gone completely organic almost overnight. Armelio was in the front lines of that movement and he clearly wasn’t feeling the same joy. I said if I ever came back I would bring him a bag of Bamisole and his eyes brightened. Then I asked Gisnay what he needed.
“I don’t ask people to bring me things,” he smiled.
“But what about your horse? Maybe Pintura would like something.”
“Oh,” he said, “She could use a nylon halter.”
A decade passed and I finally returned to the hotel with a bag of pig wormer and a halter. The usual cluster of horses and carriages lined the edge of the parking lot but there was no sign of Gisnay. No one had heard of him. On a hunch, I went to the oldest driver, Tomas, who was snoozing in the back of his carriage.
“Gisnay?” said Tomas doubtfully. “He hasn’t worked here for years. He drives a taxi now.”
“Is there any way of getting in touch with him?”
Tomas reached into his pocket and pulled out a cellphone. “Gisnay?” he said. “You have a friend here.” I could hear the voice at the other end protesting that this was ridiculous. How could he have a ‘friend’ at the hotel after all these years?
“He has a present for your horse . . . for Pintura.” Tomas looked at me, snapped the phone shut and laughed. “He’s coming now.”
Gisnay pulled up about twenty minutes later in a white Lada with a 2 cylinder Suzuki diesel engine. It sounded like tractor. He stared at me and the halter but it was clear he had no idea who I was.
“We went to a farm?” he asked. “Get in the car and we’ll see if we can find it.”
I gave him directions to Armelio’s but when we finally found the laneway, it was just the driveway to a house. Behind that house were more houses. The farm was long gone. Gisnay could sense my disappointment and he drove me back to his own house on the outskirts of Pesquero for a visit. He showed me the two rental apartments he had been allowed to remodel under the regime’s newly relaxed rules for home business.
Outside, there were chickens everywhere and a long row of rabbit cages along a wall. He pointed to the field behind the house where a flock of sheep and three horses grazed. Pintura was gone but now he kept horses just for pleasure. Things were looking up for him.
“Gisnay,” I exclaimed. “You have become a farmer!” He smiled and took me to a small concrete pen under a tin roof. Inside were four spotted pigs munching a diet of ground corn and yucca. Just at that moment, a neighbour happened by for a visit and I asked him what he thought of Gisnay’s pigs.
“I have pigs, too,” he said. “Everybody on this street has pigs.”
Gisnay didn’t know what to do with the pig wormer because his pigs don’t have a parasite problem. Standing in the shade with the small farmers, it occurred to me the Cuban spotted pig has passed through its own Special Period and has emerged just as resilient as its owners.
- Dan Needles