A Native Tourist

Alexandra Leiseca

COUNTERCLOCK Emerging Writer’s Awards – 1st Place, Poetry

The first thing I notice is the smell. The air is thick with gasoline fumes, a smell that must  have covered the United States during the days of American Graffiti and drive-ins and Freedom  Riders. But here in Cuba, they are still in those days. To my pampered American nose, the stench  is foul, choking my lungs which are used to perfumed air. The street is a chaotic cacophony of  black fumes, sour smells, and tinny honking. 

Many of my family members fled: a former President’s wife, the Accountant General, the  third in command of the Bank of Cuba, the venerated surgeon. My great-great-great-grandfather,  former President Zayas, was a poet who voted against American influence in Cuba and fought  for Cuban women’s right to vote. The upper crust of the upper class, the very target of Fidel  Castro’s hatred. Fidel Castro, the icon of communism in the Western world. But other family  members were revolutionaries.  

A tourist rides by in the back of a baby blue vintage Cadillac convertible. All the tourists look the same to me because I did not think of myself as one. The tourist takes selfies for Instagram. The driver sweats in the front seat.  

I’m a tourist, but I’m not a tourist. I’m a local, but I’m not a local.  

The proof of my native tourism is when we visit my second cousin. She is in her eighties and the only family member who stayed behind. As if we were some Shakespearean family, Cousin Alba had an affair with one of the top revolutionaries. My blood blends with revolutionary blood in my third cousin’s veins. But even though she was a government official who was close with the leaders, Cousin Alba has no toilet seat. In fact, toilet seats are scarce throughout the city.  

Not at the tourist hotels. The tourist hotels are clean, intact, with toilet seats and unstained  couches. They have large, framed pictures of Hemingway and advertise guided tours of revolution sites. The gift shops sell Havana Club rum, which is far too expensive for locals to  purchase. Sunburnt tourists dressed in their best walk out of the opulent hotel lobbies for a  carefree day of sightseeing. Local women work as cleaning ladies, tidying the messes that  tourists make.  

We aren’t like the other tourists because we stay with a local woman named Maria Clara.  Everyone says this about people they meet while traveling, but we really did become close  friends with her during our two weeks there. We linger for hours over apple cinnamon instant  oatmeal as she whispers stories of living in Cuba. Of her daughter who fled to Belgium by  marrying a foreigner. Of the early 90s when the Soviet Union fell, and Cuba had no power for  weeks. She showed us videos of when a hurricane hit two summers before and the street flooded.  She shows us her weekly rationed groceries and though it doesn’t look like very much food, she  says that she still (illegally) collects her daughter’s rations as well as her own. We walk her dog  Hachi as she shows us around the neighborhood. When we left, she cried. Two years later, we  would email her to make sure she was safe after Hurricane Irma. Her daughter responded, saying  that Maria Clara had suddenly died not long after we left. 

Most nights, the thin restaurant worker says, “I’m sorry, señor, we don’t have that dish  today” and after we order something else, he returns and says “lo siento, we don’t have that  either.” Everything is rationed. Even sugar is imported.  

The gorgeous colonial buildings have fallen into disrepair and are crumbling. Some buildings look like they’ve been bombed. These buildings that survived centuries and hurricanes  couldn’t survive Castro. The other tourists love the “grungy-chic” look of the ruins and Havana’s  most famous restaurant (reserved for tourists) is housed in a crumbling, peeling, cracked, careening old mansion that probably used to be someone’s home. Now, tourists take photos on the decrepit grand staircase beneath the painted word “FIDEL” on the wall. We go somewhere  else for dinner.  

We see Russian tourists often. My 15-year-old brain desperately tries to find a scapegoat  to direct the burden of my pain, and they become the innocent targets. Fat, pasty, with bloated  lips wrapped around sluglike cigars. This country is ruined because of you! Castro’s regime  would’ve crumbled if you idiot Soviets hadn’t interfered! I could be spending holidays at my  grandparents’ house in Miramar if not for you!” In this situation, there are too many villains,  including my family. 

Guilt from complacency blends with the sadness of a lost homeland. Even then, I knew  that my family were not innocent victims, but inadvertently (and perhaps directly) contributed to  the devastating poverty and classism that thrived in Cuba before Castro. They benefited from  the system that created a need for change. And yet they fled their home as refugees and spent the  rest of their lives promising that “next year, we’ll be in Havana.” I carry my guilt and deep loss  as we become acquainted with the land of my people.  

We visit my family’s home. It is a white, medium-sized house with a koi pond in the front garden. The house has been divided into three apartments and a bar: a stranger sleeps in my  grandfather’s room. We still have the deed. I try to imagine my grandfather fleeing this house  one day after school, thinking that he would be back after a few months. I wonder where all my  family’s belongings are now. Who has our photo albums, our Christmas ornaments, the salsa  records that my great-grandfather loved to dance to? A red neon sign hangs on the side of the  house. Abierto, it says. “Open.” We have drinks in the patio-turned-bar. I order mine without  alcohol, but the bartender slips me some anyway. Tourists sit in my family’s front garden sipping  mojitos. 

Locals have to wait in lines all day. A line to get Wi-Fi. A line to change their money  from the tourist currency CUC to Cuban pesos. A line to receive beans, rice, and potatoes. We spend most of our time getting to know our family. My half-revolutionary cousin Josefina takes us to an old house packed with vintage items. As we wade through fine china  teacups and vintage hats, I wonder who used to own these things and if these were the objects left behind by those who fled. Josefina buys me a glass duck because she knows that’s my favorite animal. The duck still sits in my bathroom. 

My cousin Sergio shows us around the island. We visit historical sites like the colonial  fortress and the American U-2 plane that was shot down during the Cold War. The island is  inundated with propaganda. Everything you see is “evil capitalists” this and “glorious  revolution” that. We visit the Presidential Palace, where my family lived during the 20s. It is a  museum about the revolution now. The propaganda here reaches a fever pitch. Every plaque  slanders President Batista, the corrupt president who was overthrown by Castro. My dad asks  one of the museum employees where President Zayas (my great-great-great-grandfather) and his  family would’ve lived, but they insist that Batista was the only President to live there. Later, we  find a tiny sign about Zayas. Even the schools are flooded with propaganda.  

We walk around the stately rooms, wondering where our family drank their morning  coffees, listened to the radio at night, played dominos. I think about my great-grandmother who  was raised in this palace. I look at the crystal chandeliers, remembering that she died penniless  and homesick in a land she never considered her own. More tourists strut around the marble  floors, and I unreasonably judge them as they take pictures with large photos of Che Guevara.  My mom takes a picture of me, unsmiling. 

On the cobblestone streets, women dressed in cheap, colorful versions of traditional  Cuban clothes pose with tourists. These women are smart—they capitalize on their own culture  to make money because they know that’s what the tourists want. But I unfairly want them to be  doctors.  

If I could talk to my 15-year-old self on the plane home, I would tell her not to blame the  other tourists for the waves of gray that wash over this country. I would tell her that even now, I  don’t have any answers or clarity or closure. I wish I could visit this once-beautiful country  without feeling this leaden weight on my chest. I wish that I could enjoy the music and the  beaches without thinking of my family fleeing in terror and dying with broken hearts. I wish I  had the other tourists’ incredible ability to not care, but I do not have the luxury of looking away. 

*some names have been changed to protect people’s identities

Writer’s Notebook

I was inspired to write "A Native Tourist" after my family and I visited Cuba for the first time since my grandfather and his family fled in 1961. I remember feeling very disoriented during the trip and grappling with several different emotions while we visited my grandfather's home and met our family members who stayed behind. We were in such a strange position as we explored our ancestral homeland as outsiders, especially since today's version of Cuba is dramatically different from the Cuba my ancestors lived in. As I wrote to translate my tangled emotions into a story, I tried to give the reader a sense of the grief that my family and I felt for our ancestral homeland, as well as the guilt that we grappled with. I wrote this piece about four years after we went on this trip, but everything was still so fresh in my mind because of how impactful the experience was. I find reading other people's stories to be one of the best ways to open one's eyes to a new perspective, and that is one of my main goals in the pieces that I write. I am very grateful to COUNTERCLOCK for giving me the opportunity to share my story and hopefully, expose readers to a perspective that they had not previously considered. 

Judge’s Notes

"Set in Cuba, this piece felt as familiar as a trip back to any home country. The native tourist's unwavering sense of responsibility (and the guilt it carries) permeates the ambiguity she feels towards her own identity as someone privileged enough to visit. "All the tourists look the same to me," she admits, "because I did not think of myself as one." This line so acutely captures the disjointedness inherent to return, the urge to look inward to make sense of the country. We witness blame flashing briefly towards Russian tourists enjoying Cuba after Castro, but the sentiment is again turned to the fractured self: "there are too many villains," the speaker recognizes, "including my family." The work, like Cuba, is overrun with tourists, and resonates with the burden and grief of a native. The speaker's heartfelt compassion (particularly towards the native women dressed "in cheap, colorful versions of traditional Cuban clothes" who "pose with tourists") illuminates its own futility, and urges readers to consider the duplicity inherent in hyphenated identities. A brilliant, simultaneous account of a tourist's unearned, shameful privilege, and the burden of a native's unspeakable and perpetual loss." — Ghinwa Jawhari, 2023 Poetry Judge

About the writer