Text and photos by Nester Nuñez (La Joven Cuba)
HAVANA TIMES – I recently posted something on Facebook, to stir people up a little. I told the story about the first time I climbed up the Escambray Mountains, back in the 1990s. I was studying in Santa Clara, where everything had collapsed just like in the rest of the country. They were selling grapefruit ice cream at Coppelia, you’d get a fish hamburger – with bones – per ID card; and trucks transporting sugar cane during the zafra (sugar harvest) would leave from the bus station.
It was with those images and experiences all around me that I arrived in Gavilanes one afternoon, after walking through the mountains for I don’t know how many hours. I remember the photograph of a stream with a large tide-pool in the foreground, with the town’s huts in the back. The water was super transparent, and children playing baseball were reflected in it. The “game” was the focus of all the locals’ attention. Families applauded from their doorways, they’d shout out names, make jokes… it was a proper Sunday party. The children were hitting the ball hard, and one of them covering the centerfield was an expert at throwing himself into the tide-pool and catching the ball in the air.
To provoke a reaction from readers, and because it’s somewhat of a real doubt, I wrote: “The picture was imprinted in my mind, and ever since then, I’ve wondered if Cuban guajiros are happy, if they are happier than city dwellers and what really is happiness.”
It’s worth looking at some of the comments I received:
AMH: Having known one or two guajiros, and even becoming friends with them, I can tell you that they have a different idea and understanding of happiness, they have a somewhat mystical connection to Nature at least. If their animals are healthy, they’re happy. If their crops grow, they’re happy. If they can substitute the palm leaf roof of their home or put lime down on the ground, they are also happy. In some people’s eyes, this might be conformity or the thinking of a poor person, but I have seen them go back along a trail, the same path they’ve walked their entire lives, old and almost blind, but with a smile when they hear a goat kid bleat or the sound of the leaves rustling. Honestly, I’d like to have the pure soul of a guajiro.
YDSS: Oh, the nostalgia of walking by those fields! Yes, they are happier, definitely. They need a lot less to live than any of us.
MC: Having belonged to both groups, I would dare to say that you don’t choose happiness because of where you are. Rural and city dwellers are the same.
OF: All I can say is that I haven’t enjoyed the smiles and good energy I get from my guajiros in my beloved Topes de Collantes more than anywhere else I’ve ever been.
ISV: I’ve been looking at your photos for a long while, too long for the little I have, but this confirms our need for a little shred of happiness. Their level of needs is different, and they have plenty of them. You CAN’T ignore technological breakthroughs and the changes we can begin to see in rural Cuba too, which tinges happy moments with despair.
YG: The photos take me back to my childhood at my aunt’s house in the countryside. I will hold onto them dearly. Unfortunately, sometimes you can’t miss what you don’t know. Happiness is the good times, in my opinion. But I still like the countryside… in the day.
JFR: People suffer for what they have lost, not for what they’ve never had. Everyone is happy depending on their own experience, and their means.
RM: I believe that happiness isn’t something we have in plentitude on our island.
CF: Guajiros are happy because they don’t rely on the Government or politics, but on what they plant and harvest, the greatest wealth of a free person.
MG: The thing is I imagine these places at dawn, with birds singing, the sunlight playing on beautiful trees… As you get older, you realize just how little you actually need to live. Because… what is happiness at the end of the day?
“What is happiness?” MG asks again and I say that I don’t have an answer, that I’m still figuring it out. I don’t know about the guajiros either, in general terms. I’d have to ask them one by one. But one thing is for sure, the trips I made in 2023 with friends from the Cuban Club of Nature Photography to Banao and Guajimico, gave me the same sense of fulfillment and satisfaction as I got when I went to Gavilanes, in the 1990s, when I watched those kids play baseball.
Read more from Cuba here on Havana Times.
