The man lifted his shirt to show us that he was carrying half a beer can, torn to a jagged edge, tucked into his waistband. It was for our protection, he assured us. It was late, this part of Old Havana was dangerous, and he would walk us home.
He wasn't the first person to make the offer that evening. Most of the others, even the pushiest, never made us feel uneasy. We told him we didn't need help and kept walking toward our casa particular, a private guesthouse. And he drifted off, for the moment.
We spent three days in Havana in September, with Cuba in the depths of its worst crisis since the 1959 revolution. Decades of economic mismanagement, the collapse of tourism and a U.S. oil blockade imposed this year have left the island short of fuel.
Food and medicine are scarce, too. In much of Havana, residents get only a few hours of electricity a day.
The crisis revealed itself in the trash heaps and darkened streets, and in nearly every encounter we had. With so few tourists around, strangers offered us tours, directions, friendship, company and protection we hadn't asked for. And a request for money was rarely far behind. That’s just how many Cubans get by now.
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Finding ways to get by
Most requests were simple: money for milk for the kids, a little something for the walk.
One evening, as we sat over drinks on a restaurant patio, our rental bikes propped up beside us, a woman approached our table. Earlier that day, she said, Daniel had nearly hit her young daughter with his bike. The scare had brought on some sort of medical episode, and the girl had needed treatment. That, at least, is what we made out with our imperfect Spanish.
None of it had happened. She didn't argue or raise her voice. She just kept her eyes locked on Daniel, pleading, and waited.
In the end, we gave her 3,000 or 4,000 pesos, about $5, or roughly two weeks' pay for the average state worker. She thanked us and left without asking for more.
We didn't want to reward a lie, but it was hard not to admire her inventiveness.
Our Airbnb host had made a different calculation. He'd been an air traffic controller – his “dream job” – until he quit to run the casa particular where we stayed. One rental brings in more than the state ever paid him to guide planes. It's now his only income, and it showed. He checked on us constantly and told us several times that we had to come back.
Outside our door, Old Havana's once-grand colonial buildings were coming apart after decades of neglect. Garbage was heaped along entire blocks, and someone was nearly always picking through it for anything worth keeping. People lined up for drinking water. On one wall, a painted slogan read "Viva la Revolución."
Along the road to the airport, a billboard read simply "Raúl es Raúl," a reference to Raúl Castro, Fidel's younger brother and Cuba's former president, who turned 95 in June. Daniel asked the driver what it meant.
"It means Raúl is the boss," he said. "And don't forget it."
Near the Malecón seawall, a couple approached us beside a World Press Photo exhibit on environmental journalism, cosponsored by Cuba's Ministry of Culture. One panel warned that press freedom "cannot be taken for granted." Two men who looked like security sat on folding chairs within earshot.
When we asked about freedom in Cuba – of the press or anything else – the man said there wasn't any. Whenever the talk turned to politics, his voice dropped. Eventually he suggested we walk toward the water, away from the chairs.
They had no shoes and no flashlight for the blackouts. The woman sang us a song, and we gave them some money.
Life on the street
Still, Havana was full of life. A street quartet serenaded a woman on her birthday while someone in a Minnie Mouse costume pulled passersby in to dance. A few streets over, kids played soccer with a worn-out ball, a stretch of curb for a goal. Not far from the U.S. Embassy, men played baseball on a dusty field, uniforms and all. People sat on their stoops talking with neighbors, sold odds and ends from doorways and pedaled bike taxis through the streets.
Each night, the power cut out and most of the city went dark. People came outside to escape the heat and find their neighbors.
Who had power depended on where you lived. Our host got only a couple of hours a day. The couple who gave us a cooking lesson almost never lost it, because they lived near a hospital. Even so, the couple said, everyone they knew wanted to leave the country or already had. When the lights go out, they told us, people bang pots in protest, and sometimes, afterward, the power comes back for a while.
The man with the beer can hadn't gone far. It was past midnight, and moments after he'd drifted off, he caught up with us just short of our door, demanding payment for the escort we'd turned down. Daniel offered a few dollars. The man wanted more, and followed us into the building.
Bethany went upstairs; Daniel went back out to deal with him, then slipped away through the restaurant next door. For half an hour, the man rattled the iron gate, shouting that he'd be back in the morning for his money.
Daniel insisted the police be called. They arrived close to 2 a.m., after the man had gone, and took us to the station. The moment the squad car door shut, we looked at each other: Maybe calling the police hadn't been such a good idea. It turned out fine. Officers at the station dutifully took down our information, but without a name or a photo, they said, there wasn't much they could do. We never saw him again.
A couple weeks after we left, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered Washington's verdict. "The truth is Cuba has already fallen," he told Fox News on Sept. 28, calling the island a failed state.
In one sense, Rubio's right. The state can't keep the lights on or pay its workers enough to live on. But Cubans haven't fallen. They are doing what they've done for decades: getting by, just barely. For now, at least, that seems to be enough.
By our last day, we were trying to steer clear of anyone who looked ready to strike up a conversation. We knew where it would lead.
That night, during a blackout, we walked the Malecón. The seawall was nearly black, lit only by people’s cell phones or an occasional vendor's cart. The crowds came anyway. It's the coolest place in the city, and with the power out, there was nothing to do at home.
In the dark, it was harder to tell we were foreign, and hardly anyone approached. For once, we didn't have to avoid anyone. We were just two more people waiting for the lights to come back on.
Daniel Allott is USA Today's conservative opinion editor and author of “On the Road in Trump’s America: A Journey into the Heart of a Divided Country.” Bethany Williams is a communications specialist at international nonprofit and humanitarian organizations.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Is Cuba breaking? Inside Havana's blackouts and hardship | Opinion
