Where's Jon?

Before communism in Cuba, the indigenous people wore no clothes. Roles were reversed to what we are used to now – women would put on their armoured stilettos and grab their battle forks and ride their roosters (I was going to say cocks, but that would be juvenile) hunting wild buffalo while the men stayed at home. The indigenous culture is all but gone now, but they do have statues celebrating the history of the ancient Cubans. I was here in Cuba in the wrong season, but every year in March, they have a huge festival where all the Cuban women throw their clothes away and ride their cocks down the Old Havana streets. It is kind of like the running of the bulls in Spain, but the Cuban version.

The newest statue in Old Havana has only just been finished for the recent visit by the Pope. The Cubans aren’t overly religious – there are churches everywhere, but they keep it all contained within the church buildings and are quite secular in public areas. This statue seemed a little out of place though… My Spanish is still not great. From what I could gather from the plaque, it was a statue of a child helping on old monk back to his monastery after buying the child in a slave auction.

The street art is probably the most interesting as it is more relevant to today. I found this on one of the back streets of a Cuban ghetto. It was created in response to the great cheese famine of the 1980’s, when Cuba had to import cheese from Ecuador. For those of you who don’t speak Spanish, the text says “Send Us Your Cheese”.