Review: Havana Forever: A Pictorial and Cultural History of an Unforgettable City

Havana Forever: A Pictorial and Cultural History of an Unforgettable City by Kenneth Treister
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received an Advance Reader Copy of this book from Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

This is a beautiful and moving book and is more than a coffee table volume. As a Miami-native, it's impossible not to meet Cuban-Americans whose families left before the Castro regime took hold or those who left in the 80's, 90's and 2000's. Even in my own family, though my grandfather was born in Tampa in 1879, of a merchant family of Canary Islands heritage, business concerns in led him to have businesses in Cuba in the 1920's and 30's and several of my aunts were born there. With a treasure trove of family photos from the 1930's in my hand, it is moving to see that so much of the beautiful architecture is still there in Havana but is languishing in disrepair. For every gracious structure like the Hotel Nacional, which is expected to host tourists, there are many more modest structures, including many with façades which are crumbling. In this book, we also get to see many of the lovely public spaces like Miramar, a lovely, if simple urban park, or famous historic places like La Quinta de Molinas, built in 1837.

Havana Forever's two concluding chapters are food for thought: the distressing "Doomsday Scenario" in which a Cuba newly opened to Americans (newsflash: it never stopped being open to most other countries!) gets overdeveloped in hideous ways (think a new Cancun), and "An Uncertain Future" in which yet another change in policy by the Trump administration has made Cuba less accessible to Americans once again, point to the tenuous future of all that makes Havana beautiful, stately and unique. Will it crumble? Will Havana be overbuilt by major hotel chains? Or will Raul Castro or whatever elected leadership succeeds him manage to move the Cuban economy forward, without losing control of the process and development. Tough questions, with no certain answers.


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