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        An American 'Christian' philanthropic movement in yellow rental trucks fingers Mr. Plimsoll as a CIA operative! These philanthropists hope to deliver used computers as 'high technology' to Cuba, and help end the trade embargo, sanctions, and rumors about Cuba's Human Rights violations. What these philanthropists don't know, is that many have paid over $1,000 to a leadership with a secret agenda- to embarrass the U.S. government into acceding to their 'demands.'
        If you are NOT comfortable with us, U.S., using Cuba's Guatanamo peninsula as our "jail beyond jurisdicction," then you qualify as a sentient being.
        The United States does not educate citizens in Human Rights. They think Human Rights means "Don't kill journalists or jail reporters."

KNOW BEFORE YOU GO.

        If the United States represents Capitalism as the jungle where competition rules, then Cuba is Communism as a human zoo.
        Where would you rather walk around alone at night? Where do you get better health care, social security, and a guaranteed job with a living wage (all Human Rights as defined by the 1949 Declaration of Human Rights)?

In this intercourse-drenched first-person account of Mark Plimsoll's BILINGUAL participation on the tour, he describes the group's confrontations with police, little old ladies, the FBI, professional protesters, altruists, and U.S. Customs agents-

  Richard says "Tell me about your religion."
        Wendy stares for a moment, shakes her forest of wavelets back to reveal her gypsy hoop earings, and begins. "There are seven African Powers, las siete potencias Africanas. Oshun, Yemayá, Elegguá, Changó, Oggún, Obatalá, and Orúnla. Obatá the God of air creates the sky, and fresh air blows away problems, negative energy, bad emotions, and other harmful spirits. Orishas Aganyú and Changó exist in fire, to burn away impurities and transform the spirit, to build character the same way fire tempers steel. Yemayá lives in sea water, the mother of all life. Oshún controls water to wash away evil energy and vulgarity of dirt and filth, to cleanse both body and soul. She came from Africa with her people, and in Cuba, she straightened her hair and her skin became lighter, like polished copper."
        "And like voodoo, they can curse people, to hurt people, to make them get sick and die?"
        "No. Santaría cures people, and heals their spirit. Only the secret societies of ñañigos practice Brujería. Societies that call themselves Palo, like Palo Monte, Palo Mayombe, and Abakuá, and Reglas de Congo, they kidnap and eat people, like the Cucúi, the monster that parents use to frighten children into behaving. Only men join these societies. They won the war with Batista for Fidel Castro. They stopped the United States from defending Batista, stopped the planes and the navy and the armies."
        "Why do you believe that?"
        "The white dove of the orishas blessed Fidel. The people of Cuba gave many offerings, called Ebbós, so that the orishas would help Fidel Castro defeat Batista and liberate Cuba. When the guerrillas came to the city, they wore the colors of Elegguá, the trickster and Holy Warrior, with their red and black flags. Red and black, the colors of the 26th of July movement. We know the Orishas support Fidel because on January eighth, when Fidel Castro gave his first national speech, a white dove landed on his shoulder. The white dove comes as Obatalé, like he came when Changó fought with his brother Oggún. It was an act of Providence."
        "Even so, a white dove, what does that prove? It might be a butterfly, would that mean the same thing?"
        "For hundreds of years, the Cuban people served as slaves, and when the powerful became too cruel, the masters would find a headless white dove in front of their door as a warning."
        "How do you know all this? They teach you t hat in Cuban schools?"
        "Sometimes, but I am a priestess of Santería. I practice the bembe. In bembe, an orisha comes to mount me, and through me, finds a voice to speak to the people, to tell the future, to see things far away, and show hidden things to give power, or do anything a person can do. Sometimes they get very angry, and say things I could never say. But I don't know what an orisha says when mounted, like a horse does not know what the rider wants, but must go where pointed. The people tell me later, the things the orisha said and did, and even if they don't like it, they never blame me. They know the words do not belong to me, but to the orisha who mounts me. Sometimes I become egungun, possessed by the spirit of a dead person. When people saw this happen to me, they say that one day, I might become an Ilayosha, a priestess who can help people become olosha, santeros and santeras, priests or priestesses. Chango mounts me most often, the god of lightning, fire, and thunder, or sometimes Obba, his wife, but she's always very mad at him, so I say very bad things."
        Richard thinks about that for a while, then asks "Where are you from?"
        She smiles. "I come from Santiago." Her sore, rasping throat makes her voice sound sexy. "You have been there? No? Well eet eez a very beautiful place. I work there, and have my family. That is said correct, yes? I work in a show there, as a singer and a dancer, but now I take some time off, to come to Havana. You hear, I have a so-ar in my throat, eez how you say it? So-ar in my throat, no?"
        Richard helps her out, thinking of the pun for a singer. "Soar throat. I have a soar throat. Probably from a cold." One of the symptoms of syphilis, Richard recalls.
        "Yes, probably from a cold. So I come here to get some rest."
        "Not a very restful place, is it?"
        "I don't worry. My throat wheel get better."
        "What is it you want to do in five years?"
        "What?" she looks at him shocked, as if he asked something unthinkable.
        "It's a common question in the States, to decide what you should be doing with your life. What do you want to do in five years, and how can you reach that place?"
        "I am a performer. I want to sing and dance, and work as an artist. But there is no money in Cuba. The Government allows only a few people to work as artists. Even then, you spend your days in the shows inside the hotels, for very little money."
        "So where do you want to go?"
       

Chapter 7: Santería Watches Over You

        This evening, our Government Chaperones bus us to a local CDR, a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. The way they explain these street-level autonomous units of government, they sound like a Neighborhood Watch groups, full of concerned citizens that will write down the license plate numbers of suspicious activity, like your house guests from out of the neighborhood.
        I expect something military.
        Once inside the empty one-room house, they call our attention to the 'task list,' a large poster displayed on one side of the small stage. Crudely hand-lettered, yet very legible Spanish, under the title of "Community Organization for the Defense of the Revolution," the poster listed the tasks that one could do for the neighborhood, such as clean the streets, help older citizens, go on a work detail, organize the communal properties, etc. Each task earns a standard number of points. Each month the person with the most points earns a special prize, either "metal" which means something metallic (money), or a trip to the beach.
        It struck me that the same go-getter might win every time, and rob the incentive for others to try harder.
        More Cubans come in. The meeting starts, the excited crowd of Cubans and Caravanistas settle down in folding chairs.
        With another sentence by sentence translation, a ten year old boy tells us the story of how he cut his fingers with his machete while on a work assignment, cleaning the tombs of the Revolution's war heroes. This touching story serves to dramatize Cuba's free medical system.
        Ellen compliments him on his "poise and leadership," and in her English translation, I hear 'Poison leadership.'
        Our leaders coax us outside to witness a Folk Dance. The drummers pound oversize congas, and out of the crowd bolts a young barefoot boy, dressed in red long sleeve shirt and tight red calf-length pants, a red kerchief tied across his hair, low on his forehead. He scowls, smokes a cigar, and somersaults randomly across the open area in the middle of the crowd, then stands arms akimbo, motionless, staring to intimidate someone, then suddenly rolls away to repeat the insolence in front of someone else.
        A torrential downpour forces everyone back into the meeting hall. The Cubans let us work our way to the front near a small open area in the center of the room. I walk along the back of a small, dark stage where a pile of drums of various sized lay among the cushioned embrace of some blankets. The drummers and singers wear normal street clothes, difficult to know who is who. One of the female vocalists motions me over to a seat on the front edge of the stage. Young and black, she takes her place among the other black faces in the choir and smiles along. The five drummers take the stage in front of the seven vocalists, and the show starts over.
        The cigar-chomping red boy rolls around the floor, and with theatrical rudeness, forces his way between and even under the folding chairs of audience members, to much laughter from the crowd. The music swells with vocal chants, as drum rhythms change to accentuate the boy's strange impudent mood. He yells "Cak cak cak cak cak," like a jungle bird, from under a chair, behind someone, or nose to nose with a befuddled Caravanista.
        After about fifteen minutes of shenanigans, a very pretty young woman sways out in a full white dress with colorful floral midriff. Another pretty mulatta ties a matching floral cloth around this dancer's hair. She dances, swirls and swirls, stops to stare impudently, arms akimbo, and launches a derisive laugh at the vocalists on stage, then stares over the heads of the crowd, as if watching some spiritual suitor begging for her approval from a perch in the rafters above us.
        The drumming and music changed, the complex and well-practiced pace kept us attentive, whether we knew why or not. No one appeared bored, more mystified, apprehensive, on edge. The final dancer, a young man dressed in white, goes through the motions of planting a field. His sedate performance carried none of the derisive intimidation of the boy and the young woman.
        After the folk dance, our leader Ellen gave a speech of gratitude, translated sentence by sentence into Spanish, so that she could speak for us Gringos in our native tongue. She looked like a Saint onstage, her frank and honest expression framed by that tremendous mane of brown hair, her sincere eyes dart about the audience from behind the twin portholes of her glasses while both her hands move in perfect symmetrical harmony. They bounce off her chest, the "house of my heart," as she implores with every expression of her beautiful earnest face and expressive hands, her "fervent hope that the equanimity and good will of the Cuban society be carried back to the United States to perfect our society as well."
        She all but cries with sincerity, as if the profundity of her affection for her adopted Cuban people plummets far below mere altruism, to the very depths of her most ancient soul. I wonder if she feels some genetic imperative toward a Cuban male.
        I talk to the musicians while they pack up their drums. I try to pick out the leader, a tall slender black man whose face triangulates into the protrusion of giant lips. With a demeanor serious as cancer, he looks like a Caribbean gangster.
        I approach him as a fellow musician, and hope for the best.
        After he packs most of the drums, he explains the symbols behind the three dancers. It doesn't ring true to my observations, but then he belongs to these beliefs, and whatever their origins, their meaning must now come from the practitioners. Unfortunately, the veracity of historic symbols suffers in the popular consciousness. Considers that Easter now symbolizes the resurrection of Christ, and no longer represents an ancient Druidic fertility rite, even with such potent symbols as eggs and rabbits.
        They practice their drumming, their religion, everyday from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM.
        That explains their excellence with such complex rhythm changes, the vocal stylings, and the practiced dancers. I wonder how many different songs, or song-cycles, they know, and how many hours worth comprise this one small group's repertoire.
        Then everyone goes outside for a street dance.