Before going to Cuba, it was an impossibility for me that there might be thriving community organizations there. I was raised to believe Cuba to be a place of sterile totalitarianism, a playground for the rich and famous that underwent a deadening, Communist transformation that produced a poverty-ridden, malnourished, island country teeming with people trying to escape to Miami on boats or scraps of wood. I should have known that this myth of Cuba, like so many other myths we cling to in the United States, would prove to be propaganda, but when you don’t know a place yourself you have to rely on the stories you hear. As the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” “single stories show a people as one thing, only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.”



For me, before going to Cuba, despite having been previously exposed to Cuban literature and film as well as academic works about the country, and despite having traveled extensively to other parts of the world, Cuba remained defined by the monolithic US-media narrative I had grown up with: a failed experiment, a warning of what can happen if the Left is allowed to take over. We met with several community organizations while we were in Havana, including Community Project Cintio Vitier, Community Project El Rincón de los Milagros, and Proyecto Espiral. All of these community projects work to utilize space and materials in creative and beautiful ways. They also seek to engage community members in creating more vibrant and healthy communities. One of the projects that we met with that I really appreciated was Proyecto Espiral.  We met with about ten members from the project in the early evening at the Hotel Nacional. Staying at the Hotel Nacional was a constant reminder of our privilege. For example, the coffee I drank at our meeting cost as much as a university professor in Havana might make in a week. We sat in a circle, all together. Down below, many clusters of mostly young people sat on the Malecon, the sun still high in the summer sky, and Yemayá, the orisha of the sea, in one of her more tranquil moments, the waves small. 



Proyecto Espiral was insipired by Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Members of the project are mostly under-thirty. They are self-selecting, and represent a diverse spectrum of backgrounds in terms of race, class, education, and occupation. Their mission is twofold—to empower the members of the project themselves, and to empower communities. The groups we met in Cuba had a grassroots structure, advocating for social justice and change within specific communities. In Cuba, grassroots organizations are one of the principle fomenters of change, as there are not free, open elections. Because the grassroots community projects work within specific communities, they do not have a pre-existing agenda; they work on whatever issues the community members feel need to be addressed. 

​

In an example of action that Proyecto Espiral shared with us, members went to a marginalized community on the outskirts of Havana that, like most of the city, had real problems with housing. Most people in Havana live in small apartments together, which means that people suffer from a lack of privacy. With the help of Espiral members, the community was able to articulate the housing problem they were having, and they successfully petitioned the government to construct more apartment buildings. They also did a community-relevant adaptation of a classic Cuban theatrical work. It was so popular that Fidel Castro asked for an encore, which was attended by Guatemalan Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum. Other projects they talked about included working at elderly homes and primary schools.



For two hours we sat and talked with the group. We shared our mis/perceptions of each others’ countries and cultures, we discussed our personal and professional goals, and we even imagined traveling together to a deserted island. In that circle, every voice, from Cuba or the United States, had equal weight. Every person spoke and was heard. In political discourse, especially in the United States regarding Cuba, it is so easy to forget that humans everywhere share some common desires, and our meeting with Proyecto Espiral was a reminder that we can sit together for two hours and laugh and share dreams for the future; it may sound idealistic and naive, but if our politicians could do that, the world would be a safer place.



What truly impressed me about Proyecto Espiral was its members’ passion and commitment to their own self-improvement and to helping facilitate social change. I was inspired by their model of creating grassroots change, of their consensus-based non-hierarchical structure, and how their organizational structure permitted many people to participate, no matter what level of commitment they were able to offer. I think that in the US, where so many of our well-intentioned progressive groups are top-down enterprises based in population hubs with corporate sponsorship, we could learn from their model. There are obviously many grassroots social organizations in the United States, but the holistic model that Proyecto Espiral has, where they are interested in social and environmental justice, and not in only one specific issue, is a model that progressive activists could implement in the United States or anywhere else.



When you think of Havana, don't imagine cigars, rum, the Cold War, Fidel, or ruins. Instead, try to picture vibrant community projects, full of energetic, talented, people, working together to make their communities healthier and more vibrant.