Waiting for Fidel

Library Journal

Having also written about biking on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Hunt seems to enjoy offbeat travel. In Cuba, he immerses himself in the culture as few would dare. He uses local transportation, but when that system fails (as it often does), he rides with whomever happens to be going in his general direction. He rents rooms from people he meets on the street and swigs rum from bottles handed to him by virtual strangers. His experiences with and commentary on those who make up the masses within Cuban society offer a gloomy prospect for the future of that country. Hunt rather ably presents the history and dilemma of the unhappy people and their corrupt bureaucracy. Slowly he comes to understand that the whole of the Cuban economy and government is so interwoven with Fidel, poverty, and ethnic issues that there are no easy solutions. Readily understood, Lloyd James is generally well spoken and credible with the author's words. An interesting, if overly long trek through Havana and the countryside, this book includes some profanity and recurrent discussions of sexual conduct. Recommended for libraries with patrons interested in a maverick traveler's impressions of Cuban lifestyles and the Castro regime. Occasionally plodding and rather expensive, it will discourage most listeners and prospective visitors.--Carolyn Alexander, Brigadoon Lib., Salinas, CA Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Hunt doesn't travel the easy way. His last book, Sparring with Charlie (LJ 5/1/96), was about navigating the Ho Chi Minh Trail on a motorbike. Here he retraces Fidel Castro's 1959 Liberty Caravan through Cuba, doing it illegally (as a foreigner) by hitchhiking on crowded trucks and staying in the unlicensed homes of local people. His goal was to interview Castro, but in this he failed. He did, however, come in contact with a cross section of ordinary people to provide a view of a nation that appears to be reaching the end of its socialist era, rife with shortages and encountering a notable increase in crime. He finds growing dissatisfaction with the government and an alarming polarization of power and privilege. Hunt writes with sympathy and humor, which somehow makes for enjoyable reading despite the suffering he describes. A good choice for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/15/97.]Harold M. Otness, Southern Oregon Univ. Lib., Ashland, Ore.

Booknews

The author, an American travel author and staff reporter, sets his sights on Cuba, where an aging Fidel Castro is struggling to maintain a grip on the population. In recounting his search for Fidel, he takes the reader from Havana's squalid alleys to its steamy nightclubs, from Cuba's endless expanses of sugar cane to the craggy peaks that once sheltered the bearded dictator. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Mark Schapiro

Christopher Hunt opens Waiting for Fidel with a preposterous conceit: that he, a naive American writer, new in town, with no previous history in Cuba, might be granted a meeting with el jefe himself, Fidel Castro. Why, you wonder, would this audacious presumption be either possible or -- from Castro's point of view -- a remotely desirable way to pass the time? Hunt is off to a wobbly start. His premise leaves a bad taste, as if Cuba were such a puny entity and so craving of American attentions that even an insinuating young gringo might gain an audience. El Comandante -- surprise! -- is busy, so Hunt sets off to do the next best thing: retrace the steps of Castro's ragtag band of barbudos as they conducted their victorious march on Havana in 1959.

"Having tried and failed to find him [Castro] in Havana," Hunt writes, "I ... substituted a metaphoric meeting. Following his footsteps from Las Coloradas, where he landed, to the Sierra Maestra, where he plotted the war against Batista, seemed a sensible way to get a sense of the man and his motives. Traveling from Santiago de Cuba to Havana would help me understand the movement that defined the man."

It takes about 50 pages, but once Hunt sheds his faux naivetT, and sets off for the countryside, his narrative reclaims some credibility. Traveling along Cuba's improvised mass transit system -- which involves clambering in the back of passing trucks for nerve-rattling, open-air journeys between the stations of Castro's crusade -- he allows the characters he meets along the way to tell his story. He renders them well, from the elderly villagers who witnessed the passing of Castro's growing army to the young entrepreneurs who have given up revolutionarily correct careers for the thriving black market. En route, he softens to many of Cuba's numerous seductions -- of the female, rum-fueled sort -- and to the defiant, sensual and generous spirit of its people. It is the people he encounters who force Hunt to take Cuba seriously -- even as they greet the news of his professed purpose for being there with well-deserved and derisive laughter.

Particularly effective are the complex and contradictory feelings they express for Castro -- referred to generally with a soundless gesture around the chin, suggesting a beard -- a mixture of respect and allegiance tempered with exasperation and anger over rapidly deteriorating living conditions. When Hunt lets people speak, his portrait of their lives (particularly those left out of Cuba's tourist-fueled parallel dollar economy) does accumulate into a picture of Cuban life outside the well-trodden pathways of Havana.

But Hunt's knowledge of Cuban history seems to have been limited to tourist brochures and guide-book synopses, and in the end one is left with little more than a string of colorful anecdotes. And it's hard to shake the sense that Hunt's travels were undertaken because, after his straw man left him blowing in the wind, he had nothing better to do. --SalonFeb. 18, 1998

Lance Gould

Hunt's enjoyable third-world romp manages to convey more information about life in Cuba than any network reportage of the Pope's visit. -- Lance Gould, New York Times Book Review