21st June 2013 Havana, Cuba
Villa Clara – awash with orange
I didn’t see any tulips in Santa Clara but this week the town had a very Dutch flavour. Most of the people I met there on Monday were wearing orange, a colour which the local baseball team, Villa Clara, shares with the Dutch national football team. This week Villa Clara finally won the Cuban baseball championship after 17 years of waiting. Although I’m from England, where baseball is considered the younger brother of our cherished national sport cricket, I really like ‘la pelota’ and have had the pleasure of going to the Estadio Latino-Americano in Havana twice in the last few months to watch the local team, Industriales, play. On both occasions their pitching was woeful (for any cricket-lovers, pitching is like bodyline bowling) and, frankly, they deserved to lose. But it was a lot of fun and I learned some very choice Cuban vocabulary.
Villa Clara province (Santa Clara is its capital) encapsulates the strengths and challenges of Cuba’s economy. It has a beautiful coastline with scattered keys and gorgeous Caribbean beaches, which tourists flock to in their thousands every week. There are currently 6,000 hotel rooms in the province with plans to double that number by 2016 – an ambitious programme that will provide jobs in construction and hospitality. A lot more people – about 100,000 – work in agriculture; mainly tobacco, sugar and maize. There are many fewer sugar mills in Villa Clara than there used to be in the heyday of Cuba’s sugar industry but there are plans to reopen some of those that have closed. One idea is to burn sugar waste to produce renewable energy, a technology that British company Havana Energy will soon bring to the island.
Just as in other parts of the country, Villa Clara has seen a growing small-scale entrepreneurial sector as a result of the changes introduced by President Raul Castro’s government. About 33,000 people in the province now work in the ‘non-state’ sector, more than double the number from 2010. Many of these people work in private restaurants, bed and breakfasts, barber shops or as taxi drivers. Soon people will also be working in private co-operatives – the first, running a wholesale food market in Havana, will start work at the beginning of July. That’s an important step forward as it should, in theory at least, lead to more efficiency, less waste and better quality produce.
By the way, FC Villa Clara, also in orange, won the national football championship both last year and the year before. Sports capital of Cuba? It certainly looks like it.
Dear Tim , as written above I flew some days ago to Amsterdam. This was also one of the reasons why I ´ve chosen your 2nd. report for my 1st. comment. Because of this “Dutch Flavour” os “Flair” – but also , ´cause I was impressed by yr. style of writng stories. Well, to make a longer story short : The so-called “Vice Station Manager of KLM-Schipol (KLM : Koninlijke Luchtvaart Maatchipje , 1919 , for oldest airline of the world ) , is a friend of mine . Si I told him about you and esp. this article . He was very, very pleased and said to me some words – meant only for you . I promised , that I ´m gonna send these to you. So, here we go : “…Es Geachte heer Tim Cole , het is geweldig wat je “oranje VILLA CLARA overspoeld met ” over gedaan en ik ben blij dat mijn kleine land dat u ons niet vergeten . Misschien bent u gewoon geinteresseerd in zowel Nederlands als de Britse cultuur. Zo ja , kunt u mailen naar Dit ingo.wais@web.de . Ik like ´ll u verder helpen. Beste wensen en succes , uw KLM-Schipol, A.Verhoouvan.
Well, I really do hope , that you do like this little message and hope also , that this could be a little help for you and for BRITWEEK CUBA , next year.
Best wishes + much success, allerliebste Grüßle + denk an mich….
Ingo-Steven, Stuttgart
Dear Mr. Tim Cole,
1st. of all , my big congratulations for opening this long awaited door to Cuba.I t ´s just great! Nevertheless : You might wonder, why I ve wrote these little lines of mine to your 3rd. report. Well-easy to explain. On next Saturday I will fly for some days to Amsterdam. And as I read in your excellent article lines like ” I didn ´t see any tulip in Santa Clara but this week the town had a very dutch flavour” , or about people , “wearing orange” , a colour which shares their Baseball Team with the Natinal Dutch Football Team , I thought this could be a nice report for a 1st.comment. And it really looks to me so.
For I read about things in Today ´s Cuba, of which you don ´t hear about the “normal” mass-media. E.g. of how importnat agriculture in this state is. Or 2 facts about the strenghts of the Cubanian economy. So I ´m reall looking forward to hear and read more from you.
Best Wishes , Ingo-Steven Wais , Stuttgart/Cardiff