Free Close to the Edge by Sujatha Fernandes Page A

revolution had eradicated racism.
    One guard, tanned and broad shouldered with a close buzz cut, assured me, “Maybe you have experienced racism in the United States, but that doesn't happen here in Cuba.”
    And then something unexpected happened. Lily started to agree with them. “She is not from here, she's a foreigner,” Lily told them. “She will never understand how things are in this country.” It felt like a slap in the face. But I've spent years studying race relations in Cuba, I wanted to say to her. I understand how racism functions here, I wanted to tell a black woman who had spent her life under the revolution and was now just trying to bury her disappointment and discomfort. Instead, I burst into tears.
    Soon Lily was crying too, and we were both crying, tears of frustration and impotence and sadness. I imagined that Lily was crying as she remembered the nights that she spent here at the Hotel Riviera with her husband for only forty pesos a night after the revolution opened up Cuba's grandest hotels to the poor, a hotel that now she couldn't even enter. I imagined she was reminded of that husband, who left her as a young bride to raise their son on her own. I was crying because Lily was right. It finally dawned on me that the reason I really didn't get it was because—like the foreign reporter—I was ultimately an outsider who had to be convinced of the merits of the revolution. My Cuban friends were not brainwashed or passive. Rather, it was I who had failed to see the intricate ways Cubans negotiated their revolution. So much for the grand global movement I imagined I might find. I couldn't even connect with my own friend. And we were both crying with the emotion of seeing each other after so long, and having to share the moment with some buzz-cut security guards and a manager in pink high heels.
    To avoid a scene the manager took our elbows and steered us toward the bar. “What would you like, mi corazon , order anything you want,” she cajoled. “It's on the house. Please don't cry.” We nodded dumbly, as she gave us her public relations spiel about how the client is important above all else, the new lingo of capitalism in which a customer is a customer—black, white, or brown. The guards stood together in a corner, throwing glances over our way, confident that they would not be reprimanded for just doing their job, just carrying out the policy of the hotel.
    T hat evening I took my delegation of fifteen students to a rap concert at the Teatro America in Central Havana. “I am always a realist,” rapped Hermanos de Causa in their song “Lágrimas negras” (Black tears). “Don't say that there's no racism where there's a racist / Always and wherever I come across it / I find prejudice in some form or other.” The rap opens with a sample of the famous Cuban song “Lágrimas negras,” brassy horns punctuating the sadness of an abandoned lover: “I weep without you knowing that my crying has black tears, black tears like my life.” There was something cathartic about listening to the songs. Maybe it was the realization that the powerlessness of racism could be collectively transformed into something empowering.
    After the concert, following rounds of joyous hugs and greetings from Magia, Alexey, Sekou, Adeyeme, Pablo, Randy, and others, the rappers left me and began circulating in the crowd, selling their CDs—five pesos for Cubans, five dollars for foreigners. Where did I fit now, after all these years—pesos or dollars, foreigner or Cuban? Neither. “For you, Suyee, free,” they said and thrust CDs into my hands. But I was no longer living from a stack of depleting dollar bills saved from waiting tables. I had a real income. I must have bought about fifteen CDs in all. “La profesora Fernandes, now she thinks she's a big shot,” joked the rappers, as I pulled out the dollars.
    As soon as I got