The Faces of Cuba

Michael Schölzel, Johannes Schönherr

Cuba: a land of music, dance and constant struggle in the face of everyday adversity, whether it’s a problem of basic food, water and electricity shortages, or the question of how to get from point A to point B. Havana is an enormous open-air museum for several centuries of architecture, and restorers have enough work here for decades to come. In the country’s fifty-eighth year, Fidel Castro, the grand old authority in all of life’s questions, continues to invoke the ongoing revolution, the one-party state and the Cubans’ joie de vivre in a mantra-like manner. Barack Obama has understood that all the coup and assassination attempts, together with an economic blockade in place for over fifty years, are not effective means for bringing the island state to its knees. And the Rolling Stones played ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ in Havana for free on Good Friday of 2016.
But what do the Cubans do? Along with their music, they manage their everyday lives with a great sense of inventiveness, and they wait, all the time and everywhere. And maybe a little bit, too, for what the future brings. Michael Schölzel and Johannes Schönherr observed everyday life in Cuba in 2015.