If you’re lucky enough to visit the city of Havana, one of the first things that stands out is the architecture. In fact, Havana is a melting-pot of 17th Century Spanish colonial plazas, Classical 18th Century French columns and portals; brightly coloured 19th Century façades and alleyways with magnificent 20th Century hotels. Often influenced by swirling Catalan faux-baroque naturalism, dotted amongst them. After this visual banquet; you could be forgiven for cringing at the thought of graffiti, adorning these historic stone canvases.
But graffiti in Cuba is more than “tagging” your name or vandalising public spaces. Anyway, whatever you think of graffiti, it’s interesting. You can’t deny it doesn’t have a history either. I guarantee that just a simple search for “ancient graffiti” online will raise the eyebrows in delight of even the biggest sceptics as they browse through varying pictures of horses, ships, warriors and what must be ex-lovers, all scratched on Egyptian, Greek or Roman city walls.
The word comes from the Italian “graffiato”, or “scratched”. And if we leave the Old World and go back across the Atlantic Ocean to the New; Havana is certainly a city where you really have to scratch under the surface of this street art to find out just how deeply it runs in Cuba’s veins.
A short history of how a spray-can became a voice
Although people have been carving images on cave walls or castle gates for thousands of years; graffiti as we know it today really started on the subway walls and bridges of Northern American cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Detroit. With the advent of aerosol paint in the late 1970s and the emergence of Hip-Hop Culture; “tagging” became popular and a new style of art was born. Initially, it was seen as a menace to public spaces and considered vandalism. Unlucky cleaners would spend hours scrubbing walls and latrines around the city cursing the hoodlums who did it. But art always evolves, and with evolution comes improvement. In short, angry hoodlums became graffiti artists and their talented murals became spectacular.
Disaffected and disillusioned young people who felt they had no political voice. Those who were constantly ignored by politicians, stopped spraying vulgarities or exclamations of love. And started a paint-based revolution where their thoughts and ideas could be seen in ten-foot high letters. At least if they couldn’t be heard, they could be seen.
The historic echoes of Havana’s modern voice
If we go back down across the Gulf of Mexico to Cuba, graffiti here has taken on a real voice. Not so much murmurings of discontent, but loud exclamations of political upheaval.
Havana is a city of colour. Bold pinks and greens, youthful turquoises and bright yellows are everywhere on crumbling old buildings. Making classic architecture look like sophisticated children’s building blocks.
But just when you think the city couldn’t get any more colourful, it has. Now, run-down factories, crumbling roadside barriers, corrugated iron fences, and many other mundane surfaces serve as canvases to young street artists in Cuba. Whose famed graffiti is gathering recognition outside the country’s shores.
Gone are the days of the clichéd “Viva la revolución!” Scrawled next to a stenciled portrait of Che Guevara; and even traditional images of heroes from “la independencia” are harder to find. These images are clouded by romanticised tales of government propaganda; painted on by men in uniform to convince the Cuban people that the Cuban people themselves really were behind Castro’s regime.
Instead, the walls of Havana express the mundane and the poignant. The political and the personal; the sweet and the acerbic, the worldly and the divine. You might say that modern graffiti are the vibrating vocal cords to what a new generation of Habanero is thinking.
Where to find the graffiti in Havana
Graffiti has revitalised certain areas of the city that were undoubtedly in decline. The San Isidro district in Old Havana is an example of a community project where urban muralism is essential to give the neighbourhood the lift it needed.
Now, the street art grabs your attention as you meander through the streets, and it really makes you think. The Habaneros walk amongst the murals, not in front of them. They form part of the beating heart of Havana, like washing hanging to dry from high balconies or people sitting down at a bus stop.
Wandering round San Isidro near Vedado, there is a beautiful image of a person with Andean features; his eyes and hands raised to the sky. The image is about ten metres long and five metres wide. And it endures because of the poignancy of the piece. The artist has captured numerous layers of feeling in the eyes alone; and you can’t help but stop to admire how so much it says in so basic an expression.
The Hamel Alley in central Havana is well worth seeing. There’s a collection of striking murals paying homage to the Yoruba religion, an African influence in Cuba, and the swirling symbols dance among the colours to hypnotise the viewer. The art looks completely distinct when standing close up compared to standing at a distance, and it’s then that the viewer realises that this is not vandalism in any sense, but art which has added beauty to the city and now forms an intrinsic part of the culture here.
Graffitti further out from the center
In the municipality of Playa, lovingly painted on the façade of a house; visitors can see the faces of children with very clear countenances. The faces of the little ones are barely reflected, but the image is extremely tender. And its large size contributes to the strong impression it causes.
Also, near to the Marianao district, west of Havana, on 51st Avenue between 120 and 122; there is an art gallery that has fittingly lent its façade to show the face of a girl looking pensively at a canary. It has proved a popular piece of art to visit and cars slow down as they drive past to admire the beauty.
Whether it remains there or whether it has since been removed; there’s another powerful mural that you can see from the Presidents Avenue junction before turning onto Carlos III. Splashed all over the wall of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Havana is the most aggressive statement of anti-capitalism devouring the entire planet. With Cuba’s political history and their complex relationship with the United States, it makes a strong statement about where the real people of Cuba have been left socially, politically and economically.
Where art stops and vandalism begins
“Yunior and Carla together forever”;
“I love you my cheesecake”;
“Obama give me five.”
It would be too easy to continuously eulogise the talent that brims from within the high-rise apartments and studio flats of Havana. However, as with anything, it’s not always the case.
When exploring the city, you can also see the banal scrawling of loved-up or love-sick teens, the bored and hurried scribbling of youthful ennui, or simply the excited exclamations of the talentless. Therefore, because of graffiti like this, although much of the art is indeed beautiful, not all of it is necessary lawful. Often, wanton vandalism in the form of ugly graffiti has totally defaced heritage sites and monuments of great historical value; which must then be subjected to intense and expensive restoration processes. Malefactors are severely punished.
Some pieces of graffiti are openly obscene or express offensive and unwanted opinions. They are usually removed promptly by the authorities and replaced by icons and phrases corresponding to revolutionary propaganda.
The dividing line between art and vandalism is sometimes diffuse. A strong, suggestive, intelligent image has the right to exist, but it must find the best place to express itself without violating the law. Ironic isn’t it, that creativity so often needs to be a rebellious impulse.
This form of art is necessary, even if it is lawfully prohibited.
Are all the aerosol cans anonymous?
Some of these talented graffiti artists do gain something of a reputation and some are known specifically for their own particular styles. Fabián López is one artist who has become well-known in the San Isidro district. Although he is only 22 years old, he has managed to be one of the most internationally known graffiti artists on the island after his popular character “Super Malo” (a man with a balaclava) appeared in a Havana street in 2017 holding the head of Donald Trump.
The art of Luis Casas, (or Mr. Myl), is also instantly recognisable. Casas graduated from the San Alejandro Academy, and taking all his acquired knowledge, he has been stamping his print on the walls of Havana for a decade. His works are halfway between abstraction and figuration, and go deeper than decorative images. Now, several local businesses have joined together to develop the San Isidro Art District, an initiative led by the Taller Gorría Gallery (GTG) run by the famous Cuban actor Jorge Perugorría, where some of the best contemporary artists of the island are exhibited.
“Un poco de poesía”
“And with the brush of his lips
He drew his images on the walls,
For he wanted to paint what his soul felt.”Carlos Varela
And how else to end but with some poetry? For all the bravado of painting countless images of the heroes of the wars for Cuban independence; the counterbalance can be found by reading the words of the intellectual writer José Martí in numerous well-chosen locations around Havana. He was an inspired poet and exquisite storyteller; so his phrases sprayed on the walls and façades of the city he loved are usually of great literary beauty.
True beauty doesn’t last
Perhaps what adds to the romanticism of the graffiti in Havana is how ephemeral it is. For those transitory moments before it is scrubbed off or defaced; we see a fleeting glimpse into Havana’s true soul and the spirit of the people that live there. Regardless of how important or impressive the artist who sprayed the mural is; his or her graffiti is only temporary. The expressions will not be protected by any glass casing or meticulously restored; as Time’s fidgeting fingers wear at them. Over weeks and months, the images fade away, the walls break apart, and the captured moment is gone. It becomes a testament to History, like those of the ancient civilisations, unique in their fragility.
Viewing this other side to Havana’s personality leaves travellers speechless, but it is by being speechless at these visual stories which then make the traveller a storyteller too.
And so, the genius of these artistic statements lies in their location and the quality of their content. They are, and will remain the burning messages from a type of Cuba that up until now hasn’t been exported in travel brochures or advertised in Travel Agencies. That type of Cuba is a long way from the clichéd images of 1950s American Cadillacs, young lovers dancing chachachá on white sandy beaches, or Mojitos and cigars – it’s the voice of a hungry 8 year old boy playing with a baseball alone in a derelict slum; or the tears of a 3 year old girl clutching a ragged teddy bear as she waits for her mother to return home after working all night to make ends meet.
Go and see this wonderful city with its beguiling stories before the art disappears.
