Be My Guest in Cuba
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El Mejunje: Cuba’s gay oasis in Santa Clara
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SANTA CLARA, CUBA—Crowds of gay and trans people wait outside a ruined hotel with trees growing out the windows. Inside, a disco beat begins to pound. The throng files in and starts dancing, while a couple of lesbians kiss passionately in the middle of the courtyard. This is not a trendy nightclub in Havana—we’re in a small city in the central province of Villa Clara, an area that many tourists pass through without a second glance. The club is El Mejunje (which means, “The Mixture”) and they’ve been having discos and drag shows here for 20 years.
El Mejunje was founded by Ramón Silverio, an impoverished local kid who loved it when the travelling circus came to town. Silverio worked in education and theatre, and dreamed of a place where artists, rock musicians, drag performers and intellectuals of all kinds could gather and find acceptance.
“Ramón Silverio is a very important cultural figure in Cuba,” a local tourism worker tells me in Spanish; however, the easy-going ambience here is not just because of him. “The city culture is very friendly and accepting; tranquilo,” the worker says. Gays and lesbians can walk on the streets with no fear of violence. Transwomen can dress as they wish— people won’t assault them or call them names, though they may say, “Que bonita!” (“How beautiful!”)
There was a lot of beauty on display during the International Day Against Homophobia last May, when an outdoor drag show outside El Mejunje drew thousands of spectators. It was part of the nation-wide celebration organized by CENESEX, the government’s National Centre for Sex Education, under the direction of Mariela Castro Espín, the daughter of President Raúl Castro. She’s helped bring in a number of progressive policies, including free gender reassignment surgery. (Read more at www.thestar.com/travel/caribbean/article/936318–pink-planet-gay-havana-tastes-freedom)
On an ordinary weekend, Santa Clara’s social life centres on the main plaza, Parque Vidal. Seniors relax on benches or dance to live music, children ride around in miniature donkey carts, and young gay men hang out with friends. Many are students at the Universidad Central Marta Abreu de las Villas, a place which contributes to the city’s open-minded attitude.
My tourism worker friend is pleased with the progress of LGBT rights in Cuba. It’s easier for gay couples to live together now, he explains. They just have to find someone with a spare room to rent them. He tells me about his trans friend who had surgery in Spain and came back to Cuba with a female passport, things which are now possible in Cuba, but take much longer. With her new ID, she was able to marry a man in Cuba.
Then he goes off on a different tangent. “There are lots of trans prostitutes in Cuba,” he claims. “Everyone, all over the world, likes the breasts and the pipi together.” He’s standing right in front of me, poking out his chest, making a pretend-pipi with his hand and waving it in my face. At that moment, his boss walks in with a disproving look. Awkward.
I slip away and head back to El Mejunje, which has a full roster of cultural activities during the week: rock, folk, theatre, magicians and senior citizen’s dances. Students are gathering in the café next door to the courtyard, so I join some young women at their table. A man hovers behind me and asks a series of questions in a slurred voice. Am I a journalist? Do I prefer men or women? Would I like to have sex with any of these women?
I ignore him, and chat with my companions, who are students of psychology, journalism, art, and computer science. One wears a winter scarf and a toque marked, CSI Las Vegas. She picks up a worn guitar and strums a few chords, and her friends begin to sing folk songs. Two women link arms and tell me they are girlfriends. Another pulls out a deck of cards and asks me if I’d like to play.
Suddenly I hear a crash and see a body flying across the room. It’s the question-asking guy. Another body lands on top of him, and they roll around on the floor, fighting. Our table slides sideways, scattering the playing cards. We head outside and I decide to call it a night.
A couple of days later, I run into someone who’d been there. He tells me the fighters were thrown out, everyone went back in and everything was fine. He goes to El Mejunje most nights. “It’s my Facebook,” he says. January 2011
Cuba next travel destination
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January 01, 2020
Café Tilin is a place that you must visit in Havana, for the excellent coffee and the peculiarity of its menu, where you can find: Chocolate Pizza, Fried Ice Cream and Pork Chocolates ... what about that? !!
You should also try the cream of malanga and an exquisite frapuccino in the style of Tilín. If you are visiting Havana, visit Café Tilín, you will not regret it !!! "
The incredible history of Trinidad's devilish palace Sancti Spíritus
May 10, 2017
The incredible history of Trinidad's devilish palace Sancti Spíritus.
This story begins when the Borrell family, of Catalan origin, settled in Trinidad and was one of the great fortunes that placed this city among the first three of Cuba of the nineteenth century.
José Mariano Borrell y Padrón (1767-1830) founded the sugar mill Guáimaro, one of the colossi of the Valley of the mills, almost demolished in 1913 but with which he reached the highest harvest in the world in his time and with whose benefit he built the Today known Palacio de Cantero.
At his death, he inherited his second son, Mariano Borrell y Lemus, Marquis de Guáimaro, who in 1850 bought and converted the Borrell Palace into his family mansion, hiring for the interior decoration of the famous Italian architect, decorator and painter Daniel Dall Aglio.
The halls were the most beautiful in the country, covered with murals from floor to ceiling with romantic and neoclassical themes and whose finish, from pigments that today still remain a mystery for the restorers, are preserved along arches and stairways.
Legend has it that in one of the rooms of the Palace the Marquis ordered a devil to be painted. When they died, their descendants set themselves the task of painting the wall over and over again to eliminate the figure of the devil, but unsuccessfully, because again and again the diabolical image came back to surface.
It was said that Borrell had a pact with the Devil and for that reason had ordered to paint it and the figure did not disappear. In the past there were sounds of dragged chains and people were afraid to go there at night. It all ended when they knocked down the wall.
One day, while the marquis was riding on horseback for his wits, a slave shot him 5 times, but none in vital organs. The marquis shot the slave on one knee, reduced it and took him to Trinidad where, in front of witnesses, he forced him to confess that his wife and his eldest son Frederic Eduardo had paid him to be killed. Upon learning, Borrell disinherits one and has the other imprisoned.
According to legend, distrusted by family betrayal, the Marquis de Guáimaro decided to bury his fortune in jars filled with ounces of gold by different places of his rural and urban properties, burials in which he always ended up murdering the two slaves who dug the grave And who was responsible for burial with the money to preserve the secret of the place.
The questionable veracity of this anecdote may be motivated by the envy that aroused its wealth, a fortune that is said to have ascended in 1850 to five million gold pesos.
The legend was booming in the late 20s with the alleged unearthing of a bottle in the kitchen of the slaves of Don Mariano, in a house with brick floors and wooden balusters windows adjoining his house. The legend continues alive and even today in Trinidad there are those who think that treasure exists and remains dispersed without unearthing.
Paradoxically in his will bequeathed many benefits to several slaves for their fidelity. At the time of testing the marquis had about half a million pesos in loans to his relatives and friends, although he had also invested in business to increase his fortune.
In his testament, the Marquis de Guáimaro registers actions of the Railroad of the port of Casilda to Trinidad for 25 thousand pesos and appoints people who owe him big amounts of money.
From that testament perhaps most interesting is his twentieth clause, where he declares that his wife was the person who on Saturday, February 16, 1861 sent him to murder a gun shot from which he miraculously escaped with five wounds to the chest And left arm.
This clause prohibits that their children, during the minority of age, go with its mother, therefore he feared that this one assassinase them to inherit them.
As a last will he requests that some of his slaves with their children be freed from bondage and bondage.
From clause twenty-fourth to twenty-eighth she leaves several sums of money to the free mulatta Beatriz and her two brothers, Consolación de la Caridad and Evaristo, as well as the free mulatto María de los Santos, the mulatta Brigida and the sparrows José Del Carmen and Facundo, as well as Domingo.
Mariano Borrell and Lemus, the Marquis of Guaimaro, died young, at age 51, without knowing for how long, between the solid walls of the Old Dragons' Quarters, now Trinidad Academy of Arts, was imprisoned his wife Doña María Concepción Villafaña, Of Guaimaro, because of his responsibility in the attempt against him.
KLM Expands in the Cuban Market
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