Wednesday night, M, E and I headed downtown to Habana Vieja to meet up with two friends. We immediately found our friend O, who is hard to miss with his rasta dreads that reach his knees. He said that J would be another thirty minutes so we decided to walk down the street into the Barrio Chino to get some water. When we got back, and stood around for a little while, waiting, E mumbled something to me and subtly gestured to the two cops who were hovering nearby. I asked for her to repeat and she shook her head and said “later”. J still hadn’t returned so I suggested that we wait inside, being that it was already quite late and I was excited to hear some music other than salsa for a change.
I walked in immediately behind O who handed the doorman the 1CUC entrance fee. Upon seeing three foreigners about to enter, the doorman stopped us and said that it would cost 5CUCs for each of us. I laughed and we counter-offered 5CUCs for the tree of us together. One of the bouncers agreed and the other shook his head and stuck firmly to his price. Miffed at this injustice, we 180ed and walked out as the bouncers started calling after us with a lower price.
We waited outside with O for a few minutes and E again whispered something that I didn’t hear and again pointed to the cops with her eyes. I pulled her a few steps away so that she could tell me. She explained that the night before, she had been obliged to stand apart from our friends so that the cops wouldn’t harass them for talking with tourists. That explained why O had been standing off to the side when we were standing around outside.
After a few minutes, the cops approached O and asked for his ID. I say cops… imagine two young kids, 18 at the most, all dressed up in their uniforms with their batons and guns, walking with their chests puffed out and their chins jutted out. O handed over his ID and they garbled something into their walkie-talkies. We waited nearby in case O needed us to explain to the cops that he wasn’t harassing us.
Some rapid fire Cuban Spanish back and forth between the cops and O had the three of us confused and lost within moments. One of the cops walked over to us and asked us if we spoke Spanish. “Por supuesto”, we replied in unison.
The cop began asking us how long we had known the guy, where we met him, why we were out, what he had said to us. We answered the questions and then the cop said that O had lied to them and was calling him a liar and untrustworthy. At this point, the cops were becoming increasingly cocky and O was becoming disgruntled at being talked down to by kids half his age. The other cop walked over to us and they both seemed to have latched on to the fact that he had supposedly lied. The “lie” was that he said he had met E the day before and she had told the cop that she was waiting for another friend who she had met a week ago.
The two cops started lecturing us and explaining that we can’t just go around talking to any Cubans we want and that we had to be careful because some of them are bad and will take advantage. Blah. Blah. Blah.
I kept asking the cops why we weren’t allowed to talk to Cubans. What was wrong with it? At that point the cop became patronizing and telling me that not all Cubans are good people and that this was to protect us.
“He lied to us” the cop said.
‘No he didn’t, it was a misunderstanding” I explained.
I didn’t like his tone. I started getting “Em-like” with the cops (as M put it). That means bitchy… I started asking them what the problem was, why they were bothering us and our friend. They very politely explained that there was no problem.
“So we can go?” I said.
“You three can”, the cop answered pointing to us whities, “but he can’t”, gesturing to O.
“So there is a problem?” I retorted
“Yes” He said.
“So you lied to me…” I said.
“No, it’s a police problem, not a tourist problem” He answered
“We’re not tourists. And he wasn’t bothering us. You are.”
At this point, M took over the conversation and politely asked the officer to explain what was going on.
These guys were kids with guns. It’s insane to me that the government just hands these guys a uniform and guns and tells them to go uphold the law, without them ever questioning what they are doing or why.
J showed up and calmly tried to sort out the situation, but at this point, the cops were changing shifts and the new guys on the scene decided it would be easier to just sort this out easily.
Long story, but basically O was arrested for talking to tourists and put in a police car and taken to the station. We had to go to the police station to tell them that he wasn’t harassing us and that we were there with him as friends, not tourists. This country is so odd. I suppose it comes from an attempt to protect their largest industry, which is tourism. The way they go about it is so strange. Not allowing Cubans to freely speak with travellers is such a backwards, intense, dramatic way of protecting tourism.
Anyway, we walked to the police station with J to clear everything up. J ended up knowing one of the guys behind the desk. He walked up to him, shook his hand and explained the situation. The man behind the desk picked up the phone, spoke into it for 3 minutes and said that our friend would be right out. Just like that. After all that insanity, all it took was someone knowing someone. J told us that it helped that we were there too, as they don’t want to cause a scene in front of foreigners.
We found out afterwards that if a Cuban is stopped 5-6 times for “harassing” tourists (basically just walking and talking with them), he can get a big fine, or be placed under house arrest, or placed in a work yard or sent to prison for one year, depending on the person’s contacts.
When the friend came out of the cell, he described it as a cesspit and a total violation of human rights. Apparently there were 120 people inside in the cell in the basement, waiting for the ridiculousness of Cuban bureaucrazy to work them through the system. The courtyard of the police station was filled with families just waiting for their loved ones to come out. If only they knew the guy sitting behind the desk…
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