[NYTr] Arabs in Cuba

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[The translation is a bit rough, but it's interesting. -NYTr]

CubaNow - Sep 17, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=5&item=3339&c=2


Arabians in Cuba

By Ciro Bianchi Ross
Translated by Marilola Castro

Cubanow.- There’s an Arabian House in Havana which catches the traces
of that culture, and some restaurants which strive to recreate One
thousand and a night’s atmosphere.

If Spanish Moorish left a peculiar imprint in colonial Cuban
architecture –a central patio, arcades, wooden ceilings with carved
works, ceiling glass windows, mosaics and glazed tiles- during the
Republican period the Arabian culture is assimilated into the Cuban and
didn’t leave a visible imprint. Today it’s estimated that the Arabian
colony, among originals and descendants, is conformed by approximately
50 thousand people. There’s an Arabian House in Havana that catches the
trace of that culture, and some restaurants which strive to recreate
the One thousand and a night’s atmosphere.

Some, pretty few, achieved to establish wholesale stores and import
houses, the majority, became ambulant sellers who set a picturesque
mark in the principal Cuban cities. Others devoted themselves to
jewellery trade. The Lebanese Isaac Estéfano sold the Cuban Government,
during the 20s, the diamond that in Havana’s Capitol marks the zero
kilometre to every distance in the country. The mentioned gem had been
part of one of Nicolás II crowns, the last Tsar of Russia. An excelled
Cuban poet already deceased, Fayad Jamis, had an Arabian ascendance;
his friends used to call him the Moor, which is how Arabians and their
descendants are familiarly nicknamed in Cuba. His son, Gustavo, heads
the Tropical Medicine Institute of Havana, named after him, and whose
work is internationally acknowledged. This is a family which,
throughout time, has provided the Cuban health system with very
illustrious names. The paternity of the guayabera, a national shirt, is
attributed to an Arabian descendant family, and even though it’s not
confirmed, for sure they must have contributed to create that shirt
which is synonym of elegance and comfort. Also Arabian was Jorge Nayor,
the intellectual author and protagonist of the famous assault to the
Royal Bank of Canada in Havana in 1947, the biggest cash robbery
registered in Cuban history.

Differently to the Chinese, who had and still have their neighbourhood
in the Cuban capital, it never existed an Arabian neighbourhood here.
To settle their homes the Arabians searched for places that reminded
them their original locations. The populous Calzada del Monte, one of
the most lively commercial streets of Havana, and its surroundings,
were the centre of their preferences.

Men who came alone were married with Cuban women and very few
maintained their faith. They became Catholics, and got married and
baptized their children according to the rituals of that church. A lot
of the Lebanese who settled in Cuba were Christians from the Maronita
side, and that was why during the decade of 1940 the image of Saint
Marón was placed in a Catholic parish church of Havana, where, by the
way, Lebanese priests were the celebrants.

Many of those immigrants adopted Spanish names at their arrival to Cuba
and, generally, didn’t teach their language to their Cuban children.
They created their own societies and edited their newspapers in Arabian
or Spanish-Arabian languages. And they devoted, them and their
descendants, to maintain their culinary traditions free of
mystifications.

Because even though Spanish or Italian cuisines adapted themselves to
the Cuban taste, the Arabian cuisine maintains, or tries to maintain,
its purity. When you speak about Arabian cuisine in Cuba you are
speaking, essentially, of the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian
cuisines, for being those nationalities the most widely represented,
even though Egyptian, Libyan and Iraqis plates, among others, are known
and cooked.

It is a cuisine that has not been popularised. It survives in Arabian
and their descendants homes, who still create their plates according to
recipes transmitted from mothers to children and using the so called
Arabian spices –a mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet pepper and clove- and
not with the spices used in Cuban cuisine.

There’s a real pledge, it’s just to acknowledge it, in not allowing
that Arabian cuisine disappears in Cuba, which could occur, without
remedy, having into consideration that in the last years the colony has
not received substantial increases of immigrants to strengthen it, and
it rather has been depopulated. Hence the appraisable efforts of the
Arabian Union to preserve it.

As there’s no rule without exception, the circumstances oblige to
certain adaptations, sometimes minimal but, anyway, adaptations. Such
is the case of the use of peanuts instead of almonds and pistachios,
not always accessible nowadays; the lack of certain seeds, which they
attempt to substitute as much as they can, and also the substitution of
chickpeas for peas in the hummus they elaborate here, and with
mayonnaise sauce, which is another adaptation.