Idealism and Cuban Ghetto Art

Today, I attempted an Afro-Cuban rumba dance on the streets of the Salvador art project in Havana, Cuba.

I was not successful, as I am certain future photos will reveal. U.S. teachers seldom find the opportunity to learn Afro-Cuban dance while lesson planning, grading papers, and completing reports. Nevertheless, it is my peculiar classification as an educator that has allowed me and 10 others in the profession to travel to Cuba to conduct educational research.  Only journalists, diplomats, and those with various family connections are otherwise legally permitted to travel here.

And my rumba follies are also aligned with the research. The Salvador art project is the dream of a single man who is painting the faces and spirits of Cuba upon its tenement walls, fashioning park seating from bathtubs, and assembling artists to perform for any who find them.  More, behind a newly-assembled wall is a makeshift courtyard dotted with sculpture and private spaces: a community-centered school for art.

Amongst my most powerful first impressions of Cuba are these—that education is of such vital importance to this culture that it will build itself into empty spaces, that little is done without a learning component for children, and that compulsory education means that learning will happen, not merely a fulfillment of seat time.

For Cuba, education is a fundamental human right which cannot be denied. Along with shelter, food, and health care in this communist system, the nationals who guide us speak to us of this idealism.  The environment is commonly protected; discrimination and homelessness are not tolerated; crime (especially youth gangs) is unheard of. 

And, in part, we are here to test these ideals. We buy the Cuban newspapers and read about how the US media censors information about terrorism in Cuba and freedom fighters arrested in Florida. Our guides tell us that there are black markets and that some corruption occurs, but that Cuba is part of a grand design to bring equality to all, despite its inconveniences.

For me, the Salvador art project is a simple niche in this broader system, a testimony to the work of the impoverished to bring education to all, to enrich their lives with music and art. The smiles of our rumba musicians are broad; they live the music and drag us into it.  The shirtless children gather around our chairs to listen.  The art on the walls around us is a montage of faiths and mythologies:  part Cuban Revolution, part Catholicism, part Masonry, part indo-Cuban mystery, part syncretic voodoo. 

We are already asking questions, led by our capitalist-borne skepticism. We know of the drop-outs in the United States, the failures of underfunded systems, the logistic nightmares of measuring genuine success in teaching literacy.  We won’t meet school officials until Monday, and for the next 10 days, we will question and challenge.

So my first impressions cannot speak to the realities of the claims we hear.  My engagement with the dancers, artists, and street beggars gives me only the first clues to a complex system which is remotely engineered from a central bureaucracy.

 All I can say from today is that in one small ghetto of Old Havana, a single man has a vision of a living educational community based in art, that he works apart from the government’s projects, but that he works with the idealism and conviction of education as a basic human right.  He has few resources but from his gathering of raw materials around the city and the contributions of those who dance with him. 

I buy a $10 CD of the music.

This will be a fascinating study, and my colleagues from around the country are from nearly every facet of US education: K-College, administration to teachers to education lawyers.  I am encouraging them to write here, as well.

I don’t know what we will find when we assemble the pastiche of images across these next meetings.  I do know that in this July heat we will ask.  And we will ask again.

And for now, I believe that as financially and ideologically challenged as the US school system has become, we are not so desperate as the children of Cuba. And the Cuban system is not nearly so desperate as we may like to believe.

P.S.  Our cell phone service in Cuba is non-existent and the internet connections are rare.  I hope to update as often as we are able.

--Steve Chisnell, an English teacher with Royal Oak High School, is studying the Cuban education system as part of a Global Exchange program.