Free Island that Dared by Dervla Murphy Page A

van with a smallishdoor in the back. I could now see the mad (rabid?) dog, a mangy medium-sized lurcher. Mercifully the Trio were not present. Out of the van leaped a very tall man wearing thick dungarees and long leather gauntlets. Seizing the dog by one hind leg he whirled it around and around until it was too dizzy to bite, then tried to open the rear door by flinging the unfortunate creature against it, causing shrieks of pain to replace the howling. When the door remained shut there followed another bout of whirling and flinging, also unsuccessful. I wanted to scream at the nearest policeman – ‘Open the bloody door!’ At the third attempt it did open, the dog vanished and the indisputably brave dustman pushed one shoulder against it while fighting a rusty bolt. Swiftly he drove away and, glancing around, I noticed many in the crowd looking as queasy as I felt.
    That day’s quest, for the Casa de las Religiones Populares, took us east from Parque Cespedes, up and then down along Sueno’s wide, traffic-free, tree-shaded avenues. This district’s art nouveau villas and roomy 1930s bungalows, with tiled facades and colonnaded verandahs, have long since been converted into flats, schools, clinics, kindergartens, government offices. We also passed rows of unassuming old wooden houses (‘Caribbean vernacular’) recalling the arrival of all those French refugees in 1791. En route I tried to not see the garishly decorated fifteen-storey Hotel Santiago which seems to jeer at a nearby white marble monument to the ascetic Che Guevara and the compañeros who died with him in Bolivia.
    In the Casa de las Religiones Populares, a discreetly crumbling mansion encircled by ceiba trees, the exhibits are not conventionally displayed but carefully arranged, in three rooms, to give a sense of their ceremonial significance. Cuba’s popular religions include Santería, voodoo and a cult somewhat ambiguously known as ‘spiritism’. Of these Santería is by far the most popular, its adherents outnumbering Christians. It has evolved from a merging of West African cults with elements of Spanish Catholicism, the former the dominant ingredient.
    The Trio (being reared as agnostics) were baffled by Santería’s interweaving of Christian statues, images and candles with small animal skeletons, a stuffed eagle hanging from the ceiling, weirdly carved walking sticks, intricately embossed drums, cauldrons containing a variety of dead leaves, feathered dolls with forbidding expressions, ebony masks with glaring red eyes and long shaggy manes, votive offerings of fruits, grains and glasses of rum. As we moved from room to room Rose looked increasingly addled while her juniors seemed almost apprehensive. Rachel and I later agreed that this was not our most productive educational effort.
    Emerging into the noon heat, the Trio suggested turning towards Coppelia, forgetting Loma de San Juan, a significant small hill which once formed part of Santiago’s outer defences. There, on 1 July 1898, fewer than a thousand Spaniards held out for some twelve hours against more than three thousand US troops recruited – according to Theodore Roosevelt, who was present – ‘from the wild riders and riflemen of the Rockies and the Great Plains’. This was the only major land-battle of the invasion and Richard Gott records the Cubans’ subsequent resentment:
    Calixto Garcia, the rebel commander closest to Santiago, was invited by the Americans to supply troops to divert Spanish forces during the US advance on the city. He sent 3,000 of his men, but none were asked to the subsequent victory celebrations. Cuba was liberated from Spanish control by the American invasion in barely three weeks, yet the Cubans had been fighting for more than three years. They watched bleakly from the sidelines as their victory was taken from them.
    Rose chose to celebrate her tenth birthday, on 10 November, by returning to Playa Siboney and the mango-shaded restaurant. Despite a