Sarah Lawrence Magazine, Winter 2005

Adapted from the memoir "Falling for Cuba"

Following the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq, in April of 2003, the Cuban government ordered the arrests and lengthy imprisonment of 75 dissidents. In response to this and to fulfill campaign promises to Cuban exiles in South Florida, President Bush's tightened the embargo on Cuba. Despite Congress's vote to lift the travel embargo on Cuba, in June 2004 almost all cultural licenses for travel and education programs in Cuba were cancelled. As well, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security hunted down U.S. citizens illegally traveling to Cuba.

Over the past four years, an illicit, small tropical island changed my life. My love affair with Cuba began in Brooklyn at Angel Navarro's Mambo Unico, where I first started taking salsa-dancing lessons. I stood behind the other dancers, avoiding the mirror while concentrating on the instructor's feet, and counting the beat to myself. I endured the early awkwardness and burning embarrassment because I believed that somehow, learning to dance would be worth it.

Those lessons led to my first trip to Cuba in spring of 2001. I wanted to dance salsa at the source and my sister wanted to scuba dive. Cuba was off limits, so we traveled through a third country. I fell in love with the place— not just the dancing, but the warmth and humor of the people, the tropical beauty, the way music is a part of every aspect of life and the entire island seems to move to a sensual, languorous rhythm.

When I returned home from that trip, at the urging of my Creative Writing students at Hunter College, I proposed to teach a writing course in Cuba. A year later, it came through. Before that trip, while writing an article on the use of plants in Santeria, I was visiting a Botanica. The santero there, Anthony, warned me, "On this visit, to Cuba, you're going to be swept off your feet by a son of Changó. Be careful."

Santeria is the most popular religion in Cuba. Originally, slaves from Africa hid their Yoruban deities behind Catholic saints. Now, it's a hybrid of the two, and some say synchronized into one religion. But the drumming, dancing and magic of Santeria are far more popular in Cuba than traditional Catholicism. The saints are known as Orisha in Santeria, and Changó is one of the favorites. He's the passionate god of thunder and lightning. He's a skirt chaser, absolutely irresistible to women, and his domain is dancing.

Cuba is a nation of sons of Changó. The men in Cuba know a thousand ways to tell a woman she's beautiful. Rica, guapisima, lindisima, sabrosa. Delicious, the prettiest, the most beautiful, the tastiest woman in the world. Cubans have a broad definition of beauty, and if you are a woman in Cuba, you are an object of their veneration and desire. While open to having fun and going out dancing with men in Cuba, I was determined not to fall in love. The last thing I needed was a relationship with a Cuban, and to have Fidel Castro and a Republican government between us.

And then I met Rafael. He drove a taxi particulare, a black-market car that helped supplement the meager pay he got for his official job as an industrial mechanic. When I first met him, he ushered me to his light blue Russian Lada. The address I had for the concert I was supposed to attend led only to a dark empty street, so I had him take me home. We chatted both then and back, so when we got back to my neighborhood, he asked me to go out dancing. I figured "why not?" He was cute, probably would make a good dance partner and would know the places to go.

One night later we went dancing at a bar just below an old Spanish fort, El Morro, that sits across the bay from Old Havana. The beam from the lighthouse reflected off the ocean, and waves hit the stone wall, splashing the old cannons still standing guard over the city. Inside the small bar, Cubans danced to salsa, hip-hop, and reggae. Rafael bought few rum and colas. I watched the dancers gyrate, mesmerized by their grace and sensuality.

Rafael asked me to dance, but at first he kept us tucked into a corner. Gringos dancing in Cuba usually aren't a pretty sight. But my salsa dancing classes in New York paid off--twice a week for three years including a ladies' styling class on Saturdays to practice hip rolls and head tosses.

"You can dance," Rafael said, and we moved to the center of the dance floor.

We danced for hours, having our own private conversation, humorous and amorous, bold and timid, expressed with our hips, shoulders, and feet. As the bar closed, the bartenders herded us out onto the old stone patio, where the spray from the sea cooled us and the lights of Old Havana sparkled in the distance. Leaning against the damp rock wall, we kissed-- it seemed like the only thing to do under the rustling palm trees and starry skies.

I started seeing Rafael everyday, as he worked the cabstand near my house. I usually rode a bike to school, but when I didn't, Rafael spotted me walking down the hill to the cabs, and he'd motion me into his car. At some point, it started to happen. When I went to unlatch the gate for Rafael, my heart would pound and I'd suck in my breath at how handsome he was. I'd start having fantasies about our future.

Rafael had a Spanish passport, and convinced me to send him a letter of invitation, so he could visit me in the United States via Mexico. My three-week romance in Cuba turned into months of paper work in both countries. Finally, the day came and I waited at Newark for the plane to unload passengers from Mexico City. I peered through the waiting room windows hoping to see Rafael. But all were too tall, too short, dragged their feet when they walked, moved too brusquely, or hauled lots of new suitcases-- I knew without seeing their faces they weren't Rafael. Eventually I stood absolutely alone in the terminal waiting room. I approached the security guard and asked if I could view a passenger list.

"Who you looking for?" he asked.

"Rafael Dominguez," I answered.

A few other security guards overheard us and one said, "Oh yeah, the Cuban guy. You his girlfriend?"

My heart started palpitating like crazy.

"Yes, I'm his girlfriend," I said. "And he's not Cuban, he's Spanish."

"So he's never lived in Cuba," a guard asked.

I didn't know if my lying was going to get Rafael into trouble, if he wasn't already in trouble, so I tried to skirt outright lying.

"Maybe," I said. "But he's Spanish."

"They're talking to him in immigration now," the first security guard said.

After a few moments, the door opened, and Rafael came down the aisle way; his bark brown eyes, latte skin, tall and handsome, he walked with his slow melodic gate, like he might break into dance at any moment-- looking very Cuban.

In my apartment, he told how he passed through customs in both countries while holding Santeria beads from Zoila, a Santera in Havana. He unwrapped a statue of Saint Barbara, the Spanish front for Changó
"Changó?" I asked.

"Yes," Rafael answered. "He's my saint. I'm a son of Changó."

Towards the end of that summer, Rafael started bringing up marriage. He had a good argument for it, "I don't want to spend three months here, then do paperwork for three months, then three months in Cuba. I want to get on with life."

I agreed with that, and the politics between the countries were too volatile to try and have a long distance relationship. But I needed a little more romance.

"Okay," Rafael said. He stood up and slapped a hand down on the table. "In the sky, there's a star sweet and beautiful. It reminds me of you, and it glows in the sky, like you do in my heart."

"There," he said. He sat back down. "Did you like it?"

"Okay," I said. "I liked it."

In this manner, I agreed to do the one thing you're never supposed to do. Marry a son of Changó. We set the date for January 4th, 2004.

We decided to have our wedding in Cuba. There were several reasons for this. First, the prices for weddings in New York seemed to be outpacing Manhattan real estate. Second, if we did have a ceremony here, none of his family members nor friends could have attended. Since he would be moving away from his country, I figured the ritual was more important for them to accept change. I also wanted dancing at my wedding and nobody dances like Cubans. And to me, Havana is the most romantic city in the world.

On my first morning back, I awoke early to roosters crowing, and a neighbor kid yelling. I got up and went to a window that looked over a courtyardóa few scrappy palm trees breaking through the cracked dirt, growing up above the corrugated tin. Laundry fluttered in the occasional breezeówhite sheets, men's t-shirts, baby diapers, a sundress, told vague tales of the lives of the neighbors. Beyond the red tiled roofs I could see the ocean. The morning light created a soft glow around the greens and blues emanating from around the buildings of Havana. I smelled coffee brewing at a neighbor's house and heard reggae spilling out of a nearby apartment.

I looked outside a different window, and noticed the underwear I had worn down here-- my hot pink seamless thong, had already been washed by Rafael's mother and flayed, cotton crotch front and center, then hung out to dry on a line strung between the apartments in the open air, much like the wedding night sheets after a Medieval marriage.

My first full day as part of a Cuban family began.

I spent three months in Havana with Rafael and his mother. Living in a small apartment and a humble neighborhood, black outs and water shortages created another rhythm to life in Cuba. As well, planning a wedding where we relied on the black market and under-the-table arrangements made for a challenging and at times startling experience. We bought rum from out the back door of the Vietnamese Embassy, bribed workers at El Rapido fast food restaurant for plates, and didn't ask too many questions about where our rings came from. My parents, sister, and about a dozen friends from the U.S. and Europe were coming for the wedding. As the time grew near, I worried more and more about my friends and family being arrested and fined by the U.S. government for visiting Cuba.

My Havana wedding was picture perfect. We went from Hotel Nacional to a gorgeous neo-classical mansion in a 1959 red, Ford convertible. But in actuality, it was a disaster. Soldiers almost arrested us while taking photos in the Plaza de la Revolucion, the priest didn't show up and at the last minute, Zoila said the ceremony, which she started before I had made it to the altar. The ring bearer threw a tantrum, Zoila didn't know to pause for the translator, and the entire ceremony passed with the precision of a rudderless boat. I had asked for boleros to be played after the ceremony, before the band started. But during the champagne toast "Welcome to the Hotel California" blared over the speakers. A married woman caught the bouquet, the waiters got drunk and didn't help. The huge, tiered wedding cake looked typical from the outside, but sugared roses had been stuck into it with electrical wires.

It was only when the salsa band started playing, and Rafael and I started dancing, that it all seemed right. I forgot the worry that my friends and family might be hunted down by the Department of Homeland Security, or that the Cuban government might not allow Rafael to leave or the U.S. airports not allow him to enter this time. The claves, drums, and trumpets played songs of seduction and betrayal, yearning and love and disappointment, but most of all, the music spoke of joy. We danced, the Cubans grabbing Americans and joining in, until by nightfall, couples from the two embattled countries gyrated, spun, and whirled into the warm tropical night.