The Cuba Diaries: One Day with a Havana Sports Fan

Editor's Note: VICE Sports senior staff writer Jorge Arangure Jr. recently went on a reporting trip to Cuba. "The Cuba Diaries" series is a collection of his stories while exploring the country.

It's 4 a.m. and we are piled into a 1950s vintage taxi, speeding down a quiet street at 60 miles per hour, the smell of gasoline burning our nostrils, the wind slapping our faces. Sitting in the backseat, dizzied from either the burning fuel smell or the rum or a combination of both, I can't resist thinking that this ride on my last night in Havana might be one of the best moments of my life. I don't want to leave.

That is what Cuba does to you. It scares the shit out of you one moment, makes you embrace it the next, and then makes you miss it the moment you are gone. And when you do get home, the first thing people want to know about Cuba, the first thing they ask, is, "What's it like?"

Cuba is so many things—desperation, ingenuity, survival, academia, artistic imagination—that it's difficult to encapsulate the place in a single sentence or phrase. Mostly, Cuba is a nation in transition, and you can sense the anticipation from the people you meet. Nobody quite knows what's coming next, but they all want it to happen soon so they can get on with their lives, whatever those lives may be.

In Cuba, old revolutionary ideals mingle with youthful exuberance (an exuberance fostered by decades of isolated socialism). Most everyone is educated, and as a result, most everyone has informed opinions about everything, from sports to literature to politics, even if those opinions are sometimes punishable by law.

Prior to the taxi ride, we had spent several hours at a Cuban hipster joint listening to a fusion band—whose influences undoubtedly came from the outside world, mainly the U.S.—sing about love, life, and the modern day realities they face. The crowd was a mix of young and old. Middle-aged men and women in fancy suits and dresses intermingled with 20- and 30-somethings in skinny jeans and ripped t-shirts. Everybody was dancing. The rhythm was enthralling.

The band played until 2 a.m. but this was not the end of the night. We hung outside the bar for an hour, hopped in a cab, and then decided to go elsewhere: a new place, a spot your bohemian artist friend might say exemplifies the modern Cuba; a spot that could exist in New York or Paris or Mexico City; a spot that now exists in the new Havana.

After the harrowing early morning taxi ride, we finally arrived at the club. A bright white modern deco sign stood out among a row of dimly lit houses. The establishment seemed somewhat hidden, which is probably part of its allure. Cuba has sold itself on mystery for decades. Inside, the bar was lacquered black and the dance floor was glaringly white. It could indeed have been anywhere.

This is the fear: that in opening up, all of Cuba will soon turn into a place that could be like anywhere. From the old cars to the old tattered buildings in old Havana, at times you feel as if you've entered a time warp into the 1950s. And while nobody wants Cuba's citizens to continue to struggle—poverty is not actually quaint—nobody wants Havana to turn into an American Spring Break destination either.

Case in point: in the club, a stream of inebriated Uruguayan 20-somethings stumbled right by us. They were rich kids who arrived on a chartered flight simply to have fun. After several days of spending loads of money, they would go back home with hangovers and cigars in tow. Pre-revolution Cuba was often a play den for the rich, and post-Obama Cuba could head that way as well.

People ask "What's it like?" But the real question is what is Cuba going to be like? How will it cope with the inevitable change?

As for right now, Cuba is a nation in transition, redefining its identity while clinging to a sense of self; a vacation island bombarded with free-spending tourists while its citizens can barely afford to live; a place racing toward an uncertain future in an old beat-up car in the middle of the night without a clue as to what will happen when it gets there.

One night in Havana, I met Frank Duran, a 29-year-old restaurant manager and former elementary school teacher. Duran—who is about 5'10", thin, and light skinned—studied education throughout high school, and then in college, which led him to a teaching career. But after an initial excitement about his job—the part about molding young minds—he became disenchanted with his $15 per month salary. He could barely afford to live. On average, Cubans earn about $20 per month.

What separates Havana from many other major Latin American cities is that everyone there has a little bit of something. There's poverty, but not the absolute poverty you might see in Santo Domingo, for instance.

"Sometimes this country is not as bad as its painted by the outside media," he said. "We have good schools, a strong medical system. But the reality is that this is a socialist country with limited resources."

At first, Duran says students loved working with him. But after a couple of years, students began to notice that the friendly Duran often moped at work. He sullenly went through the motions in class, and nobody, not him, not his students, ended up getting much out of it.

So he decided to go into the tourism industry, where he could earn much more simply on tips. On a lucky night with the right customer, Duran could earn the equivalent of a monthly teacher's salary.

I immediately liked Duran because he was gregarious, intelligent, and opinionated. And he immediately grew fond of me because I was a foreigner and he found out I write about sports. Duran is an avid sports fan, mostly baseball, but other sports too. He knew more about American baseball than what I thought he'd know. For example, he knew the San Francisco Giants had won the World Series in seven games. One comes into Cuba with the preconceived notion that information from the outside world—especially the U.S.—is hard to come by. You learn it's not as hard to come by as it used to be.

I asked him how he knew so much, and he told me he learned from watching television. Recently, one of the state-run Cuban television stations began showing one Major League Baseball game per week, although they avoid showing games that involve exiles like Yasiel Puig or Aroldis Chapman. (An MLB spokesman said that it has no deal to broadcast games in Cuba. In all likelihood, the station is picking up one of the Latin American feeds.)

"For me it was great because it was a signal that we were changing ideologies," Duran said of games being shown on regular television. "But we knew that they weren't going to show Cuban players, the guys who we idolized."

But that's okay, because Duran doesn't rely on state television. He gets most of his information about the major leagues from watching cable. Cable? How? He invited me to his house to show me.

The next afternoon we met at the Casa de Musica Galiano, which is close to his apartment in the San Leopoldo neighborhood of central Havana. We walked through the busy streets, several bicycle taxis zipped by us. He advised me to be careful because the area wasn't altogether safe. While guns are rare in Havana, theft is not.

He brought me to a sliver in the wall tucked in between two buildings, his building's front door. Squeezing through the door was a bit of a struggle. We headed up the stairs, at times maneuvering through scaffolding crowding the stairway. Duran's building was going through a bit of a renovation. Although modest, the building housed teachers, doctors, and other professionals. Duran lived here with his girlfriend, an engineering student at the local university.

We went into his apartment and headed toward the bedroom where a small black television sat in the corner. Beside it was a black laptop that Duran told me wasn't working. He didn't have Internet hooked up in his apartment anyway. Hardly anyone does.

Duran turned the television around and showed me a wire that plugged into the cable outlet on his TV. The wire extended out his window and led to the roof.

Nothing seemed unusual about Duran's cable setup—except there is no cable system in Cuba. In fact, having cable is quite illegal.

We headed to the roof where Duran showed me wires extending from every window in the building. And there were wires on the roof that extended to other buildings. And those buildings had wires that extended to other buildings, and so on.

And then Duran proceeded to tell me how cable came to exist in a country where it is outlawed.

Illegal television begins with one simple cable box. One enterprising Cuban will purchase this box from someone in the U.S. for about $1,000. Then this entrepreneur will purchase a certain amount of programming hours from a U.S. provider, almost always out of Florida, which is only 90 miles away from Havana.

In order to monetize this investment, the entrepreneur will purchase several cable adapters and thousands of feet of actual cable. He will offer his services to nearby buildings. If people in a building want to purchase cable then the entrepreneur will hand over one of the adapters to one of the residents, who will then have everyone else plug in cables to the adapter. One outlet in the adapter is left open so that it can wire cable to the next building, where the process begins again.

Duran said it's not uncommon for one main box to provide cable to almost 500 different customers, each of whom pay about $12 per month—or, almost what Duran earned in a month as a teacher. Rigging cable can be a lucrative business.

"This is a luxury," Duran said. "Not every Cuban has that much to pay. For me, I love television. When I get home from work, I like to be informed. But Cuban television is terribly bad. What can I watch on Cuban television? Maybe some soap operas."

Even with rigged cable, programming can be varied. Since the original box was purchased with only a certain amount of programming hours, Duran's cable system offers only four channels at a time.

The main box determines which four channels run at what time. For example, during the week, the four channels could be the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, Telemundo, and a local Miami network affiliate. During the weekend, the owners of the main box will switch to more sports programming.

If Duran badly wants to watch a particular baseball game—for example Game 7 of the World Series—he can call one of the entrepreneur's intermediaries and request it. If enough people request something, the owners of the main box will usually play it. Cubans have even figured out pay-per-view.

Rigged cable is something of an open secret. Duran said the police are aware it exists, but they don't usually do anything about it.

Duran said the only time it becomes an issue is when a government official addresses the country on national television. Police will then raid buildings to make sure there is no counter programming or dissenting opinion being broadcast.

But on those occasions, many customers will pre-emptively hide the cables. And even if caught, nobody usually gets arrested or fined. They are only warned. Only the owners of the main box are subject to heavy punishment. But those people are hard to find.

"They notice that it's something they can't control," Duran said. "They've tried to control it, but they notice that the kids who have been doing this will keep doing this, no matter what the police do."

With cable, the world has gotten significantly smaller for Cubans. The outside world slowly creeps into view. In its own way, watching sports on television has become a form of passive revolution.

And with that, the conversation then turned away from television. We sat at Duran's dining room table—which is a bit of a misnomer since his small one-bedroom apartment doesn't have an actual dining room—and discussed the struggle. La lucha.

We talked about the difficulties of everyday life; about how living shouldn't be so complex; about what an internal conflict it is to be a prideful Cuban and still have a desire and need to want more from life.

"We want changes," Duran said. "I would like to visit Yankee Stadium. I would like to visit the Roman Colosseum. Why is it that despite having a good job it's still almost impossible for me to take any kind of vacation? I work all year so that I can take a tiny two-day trip. And even that stretches me out financially. I have to sacrifice. I will skip having regular dinners for a week. I'll have eggs instead of meat. A lot of the intellectuals here are very frustrated. The system doesn't allow you to thrive.

"It's one thing to love your country, your traditions," Duran continued. "It's another thing to disagree with what's going on. We are all waiting for changes and for more opportunities. I love Fidel. When he dies, I will be the first one at his funeral sobbing because I realize that he's done so much for us. But it's time for the system to evolve."

You speak to enough people and you realize that Cuba's youth aren't necessarily dissidents or counter-revolutionaries. They are part of a new revolution. They simply want the system to adapt, to adjust. These young people, like Duran, with new ideals and new desires, aren't the reason Cuban socialism will fall. They are the reason why Cuba will ultimately survive no matter what happens.

My final morning in Cuba was a blur. I woke up hurriedly after the long night and had just enough time to pack, head to the airport, pay the appropriate fees at customs, and then get to the gate.

About 45 minutes prior to takeoff, the airline employee announced that rows 20-25 would be first to board.

I felt a tap on my back shoulder.

"Excuse me, sir, how does this work?" a middle-aged woman asked.

She explained that her husband and son had different numbers on their tickets.

I told her that only certain numbered rows were allowed to board at that time. Her ticket had allowed her early boarding because she was ticketed to sit in the back of the plane. But her son and her husband were seated in other rows that weren't allowed to board yet. She nodded and headed to the gate. Just before entering the gate she turned back and smiled at her husband and son.

When the mother passed through the gate, the father tapped me on the shoulder and asked, "Excuse me sir, what is the significance of the 'C'?" The man was ticketed to sit in an aisle seat. I explained that the number on his ticket was the row, and that the letter showed which seat.

The family had never been on a plane before. Now they were headed to Mexico to visit acquaintances. The world was changing.

And that seemed to be the same for everyone I encountered: the young actress from Santa Clara who was now starring in a Spanish version of an American musical after having moved to Havana in search of new opportunities; the countless baseball players who openly spoke about wanting to play in the Major Leagues; the men and women who prowled hotels, restaurants, and bars looking to link up with a foreigner for a night, for a week, for a lifetime.

This is the new Cuba: a nation racing toward a new beginning one reconfigured cable box, one new jazz club, one exhilarating late-night car ride at a time. Nobody knows quite what will come next.

And that's why the question of what Cuba is like is so difficult to answer. This is what Cuba is like now. But it may be completely different in six months, or a year.

I finally reached my seat on the plane and buckled my seat belt. The plane slowly made its way to the runway, sped up, and finally lifted from the ground.

Looking down on the island as it shrank, I could not help but think that I could have learned so much more had I been able to stay an extra week, month, year. That's what Cuba does to you. It leaves you wanting more.