Our Man in Havana

Off The Cuff with Michael Martin

Apr. 22, 2014

9:43 p.m.

Byday Michael Martin is senior community planning and development representativewith the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but he moonlights asadjunct professor of urban planning and lecturer at the Center for LatinAmerican and Caribbean Studies at UW-Milwaukee. For the last two years he hasled small groups of students on a trip to Havana, Cuba. The three-credit studyabroad trip is designed to expose students to issues of historicalpreservation, community development and sustainable developmentsâ€”morespecifically, urban gardens. He first visited Havana in 2003 and led UWM tripsin 2013 and earlier this year. He isalso a great fan of Cuban jazz. That conversation will have to wait for anotherday.

How did your preconceptions during your first visit matchwith what you experienced?

Mywife and I took a junket from CancÃºn to Havana in 2003because we really wanted to see the city. What most intrigued me is how people willsay, “Havana is frozen in time.” It is a thriving place. There were commerceissuesâ€”no signage, no billboardsâ€”yet political sloganeering all over the place.It was exotic and unique.

Was it tourist friendly?

Noless tourist friendly than many other cities in Latin America. What isimportant to remember is we look at Cuba very differently due to politicalreasons. Travel bans, communism and the idea that there is no trade between ourcountriesâ€”we’ve been so isolated due to the Cold War. We are the only countryon Earth that treats Cuba this way. So there are European and Canadian touristsall over the place, people from the Bahamas and Jamaica. What is interesting isyour perception of a place is due to the political propaganda that has beenthrown at you your whole life, and what it really is. They are just people.

We often hear that cliché, “Cuba is frozen in time.”

Theidea of consumerism, for the average person, is really difficult. I had astudent who broke his glasses when we were there. He kept telling me, “All Ineed is some Super Glue.” We scoured the town and finally found a place thatwas an eyeglass factory and got some there. It’s not like you can go out andbuy Super Glue.

What changes have you seen over the course of your trips?

Theeconomic reforms that are going on there are real. There are about 180 jobsthat have been now deemed OK for the private sector that previously had to gothrough the state. A lot of this is service industry, construction or touristinfrastructure. People are putting their entrepreneurial hats on and figuringout ways to do stuff. There is money in Cuba. When the Russians pulled out, oilbecame difficult to get in the early 1990s. Transportation was difficult. Therewas no money to get food into the city. Urban gardening has started and wereally looked at trying to do a Will Allen-type sustainable growth model.