© 2008 David H. Lyman

(In the 1998, 1999 and 2000, I ran photo and documentary film workshops in Havana, Cuba.  We were on a US Treasury License as an educational organization, but the experience was a stressful, challenging and rewarding venture. It ended in the winter of 2001, when the Cuban authorities realize I was bringing in hundreds of photographers and journalists as students, not as officially recognized members of he press. They kicked us out. Personally, it was worth all the organizational agoney. My daughter learned to walk in Havana. My son was conceived in Havana and that’s now his name--Havana. As soon as things settle down, we’ll be back with our friends in Cuba.

For now, here’s a story of one of those stressful times as I tried to get permission from the Cubans to run my school down there.

 

Summer 2000. As I sat in the Montego Bay airport on Jamaica, waiting for my connecting flight to Havana, Cuba. I had a thee hours to mull over my situation. I was on my way to Cuba to see if I could work out a deal with the Photo Center in Havana to sponsor my photography workshop program for the coming winter. I was scared. 

 

Just when everything seemed to be going along splendidly, I receive a fax from the new director of FotoTeca in Havana that, when translated, said they were not interested in sponsoring my workshop program this next winter. They wanted me bring down three wold-class photojournalists to teach just Cuban photographers–no Americans.  I had conducted a very successful series of workshops in Havana the previous winter (2000), sponsored by Fototeck under its former director, a photographer. While it was difficult to get professional E-6 color slide processing done anywhere on the island, the experience was magical. The place was magical, worth my fighting to establish an international workshop center there. But what was driving me was less the desire to establish the Havana Center, but the desperate need I had to ensure this next series of workshops took place this next winter, for the income from these workshops was needed to sustain the operation back in Maine, as we grew the new college program. Also, we had spent the deposits from the Cuban workshops as soon as they came in, and would be unable to make refunds of the program was cancelled for any reason. I was stuck, caught between a rock and a hard place . . . in over my head, facing too many unknowns. It was a big gamble, and I was sweating. As I sat in the terminal writing in my journal, I could feel the fear creep in again, that lump of lead that sat in the pit of my stomach. My palms itched, my mouth was dry, I was drossy. I wanted to pee . . . to take a nap, to slip out of this reality, and lose myself in dreams of a better world. There was a tightness in my chest. “This stress is going to kill me,” I thought.

 

The last time I felt this fear, I was in the middle of a Hurricane Hugo in 1987, fighting to keep my boat off the beach in Coral Bay, St. John (USVI), as the winds blew at over 140 knots, the waves crashing over me as I worked on the bow to secure the anchor lines from chafe. There I was scared of losing my boat, perhaps my life, but what saved me was a cool head, and the realization that I would get through this. The hurricane would not beat me. I’d been there before, on the slope of a Wyoming mountain lost in a blizzard, in Hurricane Emily in Bermuda in 1983, in Vietnam waking to screams of “In Coming!” and diving into a mortar put with my helmet, flack jacket and rifle, clad only in my green underwear as VC rockets rained down around the camp. I am sure death has sat down next to me a dozen times in my life, a bullet that passes my head unnoticed. Sometimes its my wits that save my ass, other times, it’s just luck. 

 

Siting there in the Jamaica airport I wrote: what am I afraid of: losing The Workshops, loosing who I am, losing my family’s respect and lifestyle? Could I go on, realizing I was responsible for bringing this 28 year experiment in alternative education to an end. Could I hold up my head up in public, my self esteem, my integrity lost, along with my source of income to sustain my new family. All this was crushing down on me.

 

My journal notes include the following advise:

    “What have I learned from surviving three hurricanes on my boat? What lessons are there I can draw on now?

• Hold on . . . keep going . . . don’t stop moving

• Trust your boat and your intuition to do the right thing. 

• Stop worrying and get to work . . . work harder

• Seek local knowledge, and if help is offered  . . . accept it, graciously

• There will be an end to this terror

 

I arrived in Havana that night. My Cuban Fixer, Victor, was waiting for me. As we drove me into town he briefed my on what he’d heard on the coconut telegraph since my last visit.

    “There was great interest in what you was doing, or planning,” he reported. “but this being Cuba, no one could say yes, and all were afraid to say no. We have to see what happens with your meetings tomorrow.” I told him of the fax I’d received from the new director at Fototca. 

    “You have your work cut out for you, my friend,” Victor said. “This new person is a real Party member. She is not an artist. She does not understand the importance of what you can do for them . . . for Cuba.” He hesitated and then asked, “Isn’t there something else you can do with your life other than deal with Cuban bureaucracy?” I thought about that for a long time. Over two majitos at the hotel bar later, I tried to answer his question.

    “Yes, there are other things I could do, but being here in Havana, bringing down other Americans to experience this place and its people, that is one thing I can do to change the way our two countries relate. The program is profitable, and we do need the income to run the operation back home, but it’s less the money and more the challenge.

    “You like a hard time, my friend,” remarked Victor, he the former head of the Cuban FAA, now retired from the government he was anything but a Cuban bureaucrat. I’d been working with him for a year now and we were good friends. He spoke perfect English and Russian, having received his PhD in Aeronautics from the University in Leningrad. He could do instantaneous translations, which was most helpful.

 

The next three days were full of meetings with the directors of various Cuban institutions, the first of which was Fototeca, and Victor was right, the new director was right out of central casting as a Russian KGB interrogator, the furthest you could get  from an artist. She spoke no English and refused to allow Victor in the meeting so we made do with a secretary who tried to translate between us. I left the meeting depressed, my inspirational presentation fell on deaf ears.  Victor and I spend the next two days visiting others in Havana who might help, and while we were welcomed with warmth and an eagerness to corporate . . .  nothing came from any of those meetings. Victor was right. Too many people know there was an American entrepreneur in town and no one wanted to say no, but no one could yes either.  The Cubans appeared as scared as I. I left Cuba still without a sponsor, nervous but with enough knowledge to feel we could some how make it work, under the radar, as they say down here.   

We held a dozen workshops that next winter in Havana by using rented spaces in various hotels. Over 250 Americans and Europeans participated. It was a financially successful program and kept The Workshops afloat for another year. But, it wasn’t easy. Without an office Stacy, my Spanish speaking assistant, and I managed things on the fly, walking through the streets of Old Havana talking on our cell phones.  Victor and his friends were involved, as were most the Cuban photographers. A couple of these worked for me in the back of a sign shop processing film, making contact sheets and prints for the various classes. I’d managed to bring down a Jobo processor, three enlargers, tanks and reels, chemistry and get it all in past Cuban Customs. This complete commercial darkroom is still there. We are not.

 

The next year, 2002 following 9/11, our first class was caught meeting in a room at the Abos Mundos Hotel. Two men in suits arrived un-announced  and told the instructor and the class to leave. I was back in Maine. Stacy called me from the hotel, asking what to do. I though for a moment than gave her the following instructions.

    “Have Victor rent two vans and drivers. Contact the travel agent we use here and have them book you rooms in Trinidad, Cenfrego, Vienyalas. Get the class out of town. There won’t be any film processing or critiques, but the experience of seeing the rest of Cuba should more than make up for that.”

We cancelled the rest of the Cuban workshop for that winter, and refunded the deposits. It’s a long story for another time. The Cubans felt my photography program was allowing in too many photojournalists who they would otherwise not have granted permission. The Cuban bureaucracy looks at photography as a political tool for propaganda, not as an art form.  So while we had a US Treasury Licenses to conduct educational program in Cuba, the Cubans pull the rug from under us and we’ve not been back since. But . . . given a change in administrations here, and there, I would go back in a minute.