Travels with Olga: CUBA -- Soviet Architecture in Cuba

The Soviets offered Cuba many things, but beauty wasn’t among them. Art historian Lord Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) said that architecture reflects a culture’s feelings and ideas. When you look at Soviet architecture, there’s little mistaking their feelings and ideas about Cuba to the point that you wonder if they regretted their support for her back in 1961. Likewise, when you listen to some people, especially the younger Cubans, you may think their country might have done better by sticking with the Americans. Well, that remains to be seen and I would need to talk with so many more Cubans—both young and old—to make a better judgment about that.

Nevertheless, Soviet architecture is typically big, functional and brutal in its design. We saw two curious Russian structures that are outright ugly and so strikingly Cold War that they made us shiver in disbelief.

The Alamar housing project was built in ___, six miles from Havana. Each building is four or five stories and units have two bedrooms, a living and dining room.

In its day, the Alamar project tried to keep the people there so it offered jobs, stores, housing and transportation. Many of the people who live there today came from the countryside to live in Havana. People at first didn’t like the design of this new housing, but they learned to like it for its function in their lives.

Alamar is the largest public housing project in Cuba (and maybe the world) with 100,000 residents, says a feature story in the Tampa Bay Times (http://www.tbtpics.tampabay.com/news/world/a-socialist-vision-fades-in-cubas-biggest-housing-project/2259638).

“In a country sworn to socialist equality, it is arguably Cuba's most equal place, because everyone pretty much has an identical apartment,” it continues.

Havana is a city divided into zones. In Alamar, this is taken to extremes since there are no street names. Instead, you identify your apartment by the zone and block number.

"It was a model city," said Román Pérez, 76, a retired bus driver who lives in Zone 8, block D52, apartment 21. He helped build D52 and two others with his own hands, as a member of a communist worker "micro-brigade." (http://www.tbtpics.tampabay.com/news/world/a-socialist-vision-fades-in-cubas-biggest-housing-project/2259638).

Although Alamar started as an attempt to bring more equality in terms of housing, it fell short of its promises due to a lack of planning, poor decisions, rushing, and opportunism.

Here’s a revealing commentary (http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=7485) in Havana Times by Regina Cano, a young resident, a graduate of the University of Havana in accounting and finance and an artist, who viewed the recent documentary, Alamar, Ciudad del Futuro (Alamar, city of the future). The film features children who now live in these apartments that were built by their parents as a project that came under that cherished idea formulated by the Cuban Revolution called “El hombre Nuevo” (The new man).

When we moved to Alamar this myth (of the new man) maintained its theoretic vitality. I remember my mother telling me to behave myself and be careful how I acted because only the families of those workers acknowledged for their work -“the vanguard workers”- were allowed to live there.

There was even a regulatory commission to enforce this ideal made up of residents or members of the Communist Party who visited peoples’ homes to confirm the conservation and care of the homes, and the healthy state of family relationships. It was said that a family fight could be grounds to lose the right to live in Alamar. I don’t recall anyone being expelled, but, believe me, the fear alone was enough to ensure that the overwhelming majority of residents made sure that all the rules were followed.

Those were the days when the children believed that “the future belonged to us” and that in Cuba “everything was provided for.”

Thirty years later, Alamar is a dirty city with garbage everywhere and few parks. The buildings suffer from years of neglect, their paint peeling off, with makeshift additions by residents trying to add rooms for their growing families; expansions that stand out more as a solution than as something that follows the building code.

I tell you, it is not easy living in Alamar. What was an attempt to bring more equality in terms of housing -which in reality only succeeded in providing our parents with the necessary conditions to completely dedicate themselves to their jobs.

The majority of Alamar residents go outside of Alamar not only to work but to develop their projects and for recreation. The new people who today are moving to Alamar do so as a result of house exchanges (there is no buying and selling of homes in Cuba), because their homes were demolished, through negotiating with the government, or because they were assigned apartments here for having worked in the micro-brigades and having no where else to go.

For many, living here is a last resort. Odd given that Alamar is a seaside town with beautiful natural surroundings that could be better used and enjoyed.

It was sad for me to watch the documentary and remember how circumstances beyond the control and the civic spirit of many people who still live in Alamar have had such a profound impact on their lives, changing them forever.

film-- http://www.habanaelegante.com/November_2015/Invitation_Rodriguez.html

Far from the iconic Alamar is the Russian embassy, which sits prominently among 106 other embassies of Havana’s Embassy Row on La Quinta Avenida (Fifth Avenue) in the wealthy Miramar district.

Cuban bourgeoisie lived in Miramar before 1959. Today, these houses are occupied by diplomats from around the world.

According to Business Insider locals call the embassy "la espada de Rusia" (the stabbing Russian sword) because it resembles the Soviet-Cuban relationship during the Cold War.

Likewise, the Havana Tour Company (http://havanatourcompany.com/havana-architecture/) provides another less than favorable description of the embassy even though it bills it as a must-see site:

“It is a severe rectangular tower that shows the importance of the relationship between Havana and Moscow at the time. The tower looks decidedly out of place when compared to the rest of the city—it would look more at home in a science fiction movie depicting a dystopian future. It’s strange to see such a cold building in such a tropical paradise.”

The Swiss embassy is an example of what most embassies look like in Havana--a bit more tropical, more Spanish, more warm.

To see the details of the Russian embassy’s layout and to compare it to other embassies, click on Business Insider (http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-embassy-in-havana-cuba-2015-6).

While I'm on the topic of embassies, here is the six-story American embassy, which President Obama re-opened last March as a sign normalizing relations between the US and Cuba after 50+ years. I must admit that while I saw the flags, I couldn’t see the building, so I’m relying on someone else’s photo.