Book review

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.10.2.0275
• Pages: 275-276
• Published date: 01 December 2018
• Date: 01 December 2018
• Author: Stephen Wilkinson

booK reVIeWS 275

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Dick Cluster and Rafael Hernández, The History of Havana (New York: OR

Books, 2018), pb. 344pp. ISBN: 9781944869670

Reviewed by Stephen Wilkinson

This is a highly readable and enjoyable book written, it seems, very harmoni-

ously by two collaborators from either side of the Florida Straits. Cluster, a US

citizen and translator, who first visited Havana in 1969, provides the Coca-Cola

to the rum of his partner, Rafael Hernández, editor of Temas magazine and one

of Cuba’s foremost public intellectuals, to provide a captivating cocktail that

evokes the flavours, atmosphere and vivacity of the Caribbean’s largest city.

Comprehensive in its reach and devilishly detailed, this book is certainly a

worthy history of Havana. But how far it merits the definite article in its title is

perhaps more debatable. This is not because it is in any way lacking in scholar-

ship, indeed, there is ample referencing of a copious bibliography to make this

the starting point for any research project, and the authors deserve praise for the

way they have accumulated information and chosen judiciously from a huge

amount of material. Yet, this is a book that is light in touch and written with an

eye on the tourist market, rather than the university library shelf.

The authors point out in the introduction that the word historia means both

‘history’ and ‘story’ in Spanish, and their book is very much a cross between the

two. I think it is fair to say it is a social history, albeit heavily spiced with poli-

tics. The authors alleviate the narrative account by using the device of following

the fortunes of two specific Havana families to illustrate the daily vicissitudes of

life in the city at various times. These are the Larrinaga-Cañizares family, whose

story begins in the early twentieth century when two sisters migrated to Havana

from the East and finishes with the percussionist Sergio in the early 2000s. Then,

there are the Motolas, a Jewish family that arrived from Turkey via New York

at the outbreak of World War I, whose descendants work variously as academics

and musicians today.

Peppered with juicy anecdotes and iconic cameos about famous Habaneros,

from the now fabled Gentleman of Paris to the picaresque and sartorial pimp

and gangster Alberto Yarani y Ponce de Leon, the pages turn easily and build a

readily accessible representation for the newly initiated. It assumes that the

reader is largely ignorant of Cuba and at the same time curious – exactly how a

tourist (and an American one to boot) might be. Having said that, there is a lot

to be learned here. I was not aware for example that the British soldiers who

occupied Havana in 1762 were called Mameys because their red uniforms

resembled the colour of the tropical fruit or that Havana was such a violent city

as it is described in the 1940s.