A busy street in Havana, Cuba. Photography by Michael DeMocker.

Tulanian’s intrepid photographer dons his best guayabera and heads for summer school - Cuban style

I am in so much trouble. Loaded down in a Mexican airport, I prepare to invade the territory of America’s dearest and nearest enemy. Glancing back, I see the torrent of tourists, pale Griswolds stampeding from the plane out of New Orleans, drawn lemminglike toward the pre-packaged fun of Cancun. Ahead, at a ticket counter half hidden behind piles of duct tape-bound appliance boxes and sleeping passengers, a sign in Spanish is being updated: "Vuelo 7902 Habana: On Tiempo." My flight to Cuba is leaving on time. I recall every nuclear-attack drill, every spy novel, every movie of Cuban intrigue. Feeling like a traitor and a spy, I head for the gate. I am in so much trouble.

Weeks before, I had stumbled over a little-known fact while checking out a Cuban photo exhibit in the Latin American Library. Tulane University, by virtue of its new Cuban Studies Institute, has a greater presence of faculty, staff, graduate students and undergrads in Cuba than any other American university. Plus, this summer, Tulane would be holding its first summer school in Cuba. Surely they’d want a photographer along.

It was not until later that I realized traveling to Cuba might not be the vacation I had envisioned. I began to read about our own government’s history of "actions" against Cuba, and it wasn’t pretty. I was starting to believe that traveling to Cuba, like skydiving and marriage, is one of those things that looks more exciting from a distance. Yet, as if summoning the courage to leap from the plane or walk down the aisle, I stepped toward Cuba.

I thought there would be chickens at the Havana airport. There were not. I thought I would be shot on sight by Cuban immigration. I was not. I thought the hotel in Havana would be inexpensive. I was misinformed.

Stepping into the streets of Havana is like being born: the glaring light, the assault of sound, a cultural smack on the rump. Of course, I’m not naked, but it’s so hot I wish I were. Music abounds, everywhere at all times as if by decree–from the lyrical samba in the hotel corridors, to the radios and throats on the streets, to the pool-side disco polka (a genre worse than the sum of its parts), which punches you in the sternum and is effective at long range. Between the bustle and weave of bikes, dogs, schoolchildren and citizens are the policemen, whose eyes lock on like missile-tracking radar as I pass.

Havana - a living museum of classic cars... kept alive by ingenuity and sheer will.

The avenues are a living museum of classic cars, pre-revolutionary American-made steel beasts kept alive by ingenuity and sheer will. Roaring down the blacktop, gulping precious gasoline, most sport hand-painted cardboard signs advertising them as taxis, competing with the pricier, drably comfortable sedans the government hires out for tourists. I meekly hail a tourist taxi; two attempt simultaneously to stop on my ankles. I randomly pick one, sliding into a leathery, luxurious backseat. The driver is silent. He rolls up the windows and blasts the air conditioning. Using Spanish I picked up while working in a bad Mexican restaurant during college, I tell him I need to go to the Univer-sity of Havana. He pauses, and out of the blue declares, "This is not a Russia car. This is a Korea car. I LOVE IT!" My first lesson in Cuba was that things Russian are bad, things American are good–from cars to food, from clothing to people.

An ebony statue of a woman in robes, arms outstretched, beckons down the escalinata, a long set of steps 50 meters wide, down Avenida San Lazaro and out across the Florida Straits. Behind her rises a columned façade and a series of buildings modeled on the architecture of Columbia University. Former Tulane president Eamon Kelly was struck by the similarities to his New York alma mater when he first viewed the University of Havana. The university’s original 1728 charter stated that anyone from the delta region of Louisiana could attend the university for free because the waters of the Mississippi River touched Havana.

Says director of the Tulane Cuban Studies Institute Nicholas Robins, "We always joke with our colleagues at the University of Havana that we are going to send them thousands of delta residents, all expecting a free education."

The Cuban university hosts several of the Tulane Summer in Cuba programs. Today, it is the destination for the Introduction to Cuban Studies class. A mix of Tulane students and university students culled from the rest of the United States are studying Cuban historical, cultural, ethnic and gender issues. Sweaty and flushed, the students lug well-traveled canvas backpacks stuffed with dog-eared Spanish/English dictionaries, the translated works of Ché Guevara and the paperback novel Dreaming in Cuban. A bottle of Agua Naturelle appears on each scarred, wooden desk. Four pink oscillating fans are positioned around the students, straining to cool them as the morning sun patterns the floor through wooden slats. A University of Havana sociology professor wafts an ornate fan, cooling herself while discussing Cuban women in the labor force and in mass media.

One student in the class is Ronnie Clifton, a 36-year-old University College student working on his master’s in liberal arts. Like many students, his family was worried when he announced his intention to study in Cuba.

"My family was concerned for me going into a communist country. But our generation doesn’t remember the Missile Crisis or the Bay of Pigs." Clifton was most impressed with the Cuban people. "I’m surprised at how similar the Cubans are to people in the United States, especially New Orleans. You see it going up the street. It’s just like uptown. Of course, the streets are safer here than in New Orleans.

"The real learning experience is getting out on the street, meeting people. I got to ride in a ’58 Nash Rambler with some elderly Cubans. They couldn’t speak English, and I couldn’t speak Spanish, yet somehow we got along. I’ve never met a better bunch of people."

Stephen Fowlkes, normally a mild-mannered reference librarian at Tulane, bangs down the phone in the lobby of the Villa Eulalia, the guesthouse in the Miramar suburb just west of downtown Havana that serves as the Tulane Summer in Cuba headquarters. Fowlkes handles many of the program’s day-to-day operations. His patience is already frayed by an 11 a.m. courier that has yet to make an appearance at 1 p.m. "Cuban time," he laments.

Fowlkes has spent the morning listening to staticky phones, trying to arrange the last details of a meeting with an undersecretary to Cardinal Jaime Ortega. The young priest had reluctantly agreed to address the students about the changes going on in the Roman Catholic Church and the great hope brought to the island by the pope’s recent visit. Last-minute obstacles are casting doubt on the viability of the talk. Robins, always on his way somewhere, leads him away from the phone.

Surrendering, as most do, to the inefficiency of Cuban daily life, Fowlkes concedes to lunch. We follow Robins to a paladar (privately owned restaurant) down the street, in the front yard of a family home. Robins talks about the flourishing Cuban Studies Institute he has managed to put into place at Tulane, and the enthusiasm for the Summer in Cuba program. For the month of June, a record 34 students from Tulane and other U.S. universities are attending up to two of seven courses being offered. I ask Robins how he managed to put together all these classes, as well as a host of other active programs for the institute–book exchanges, a lecture series, art exhibits, musical performances. Robins replies simply, "Because I’m a troublemaker."

Fowlkes asks me if I’ve visited the Virgin of Regla yet. Um, no, should I?

A decrepit, rusting ferry churns water the color of cold coffee, stubbornly clawing across Havana Bay with its load of passengers and bicycles. Passing an oil tanker named Bahia de Conchinos, or Bay of Pigs, the ferry heads toward a dock jutting out like a beggar’s hand. I am crossing to the sailors’ town of Regla, a former smugglers’ lair seemingly abandoned in the surreal light of an approaching storm: clouds gray, then blue, then black.

Upon disembarking, three shirtless boys approach me, wanting a dollar to photograph them with a puppy.

The only open door on the street houses a shrine to the Virgin of Regla, the patron saint of sailors. Dried flowers line a hand-painted wooden altar with a built-in kneeling bench and a slot for offerings to the Virgin. She stands about three feet tall, cradling a child. I see now why Fowlkes thought I should see the beloved shrine and why this is one of the destinations of the program’s Afro-Cuban Culture and History class: The virgin is black, while the Christ child is white. Various religious curios–small, ceramic statues, spent candles, three sailors in a boat–gather around the feet of the Virgin.

Outside, the buildings disappear one by one as the storm engulfs the town, the rain or perhaps something more chasing me from the shrine and back across the harbor.

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