As often happened during the Special Period (and, to a certain extent, continues even today), towns, historical sites, and cities like Sagua la Grande that prove off-the-beaten-path for most tourists brimmed with antiques and curiosities that local people often happily showed to a visiting historian. In this case, a woman invited me to her home to show off treasures she had been collecting since the first waves of anti-Communist neighbors and relatives began fleeing the island in the early 1960s. She told me she was not interested in selling—after all, a college professor was certain not to offer the highest price—but she wanted to show how much she had saved from prying agents of the state. Local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, she explained, had continuously confiscated anything of beauty and value from departing Cubans. The state then put them on international auction blocks to make up for ever-dwindling revenues and inability to make ends meet. Perhaps most unusual were sketches she claimed Wifredo Lam had made and gave her when he left—with Fidel Castro’s blessing—to live in Paris for the duration of the Revolution in return for a promise never to publicly criticize it. Sagua la Grande, March 2002.
