Climbing on Wall Street Journal

[powderhound]

Yesterday I noticed a picture of a climber on the front on the Wall Street Journal. This in something I would never thought would make its way to the WSJ. The article went on to talk about how you have to have a permit form the government but anyone who has applied for one since 2003 has been denied. I looked for the article on WSJ.com but could not find it. Apparently the goverment is scared that the climbers are conspiring aginst the government up on the cliffs.

[Dechristo]

The article went on to talk about how you have to have a permit form the government but anyone who has applied for one since 2003 has been denied.

 

a permit for what?

[powderhound]

To climb, anywhere in Cuba

[Winter]

Cuban Rock Climbers

Inspired by Foreigners

Irk Castro Regime

Youths Are Asked for Permits

And Visited by Officials;

No Fraternizing Allowed

November 28, 2006; Page A1

 

VIÑALES, Cuba -- Seventy feet up a sheer limestone cliff known as La

Cuchillita, or Little Blade, 17-year-old Roylandi González held onto a ledge

by his fingertips. Then he glanced down to check the harness around his

waist, grabbed hold of the rope that was tethered above him and started

shimmying downward.

 

Over the past several years, adventurous Cuban youths like Mr. González,

schooled by an influx of foreign rock climbers, have turned this western

town into an extreme-sport mecca. Climbers test their mettle on dramatic

crags, barely touched by man, which soar above a green valley designated as

a United Nations World Heritage Site.

 

But climbers who have conquered Viñales's jagged peaks and imposing walls

are now bumping up against a more formidable obstacle: the Communist

political system. As Mr. González touched earth and removed his hard hat, he

cast a wary eye for park rangers and police. "They threaten us and chase us

off the hills," he said. "There's something about rock climbing that really

seems to worry our government."

 

As Cubans begin contemplating life after Fidel Castro, rock climbing has

emerged as an improbable political battleground between the government and

young Cubans eager to embrace the latest foreign fashions. In 2003, amid a

broad crackdown on civil liberties and fraternizing between tourists and

Cubans, the government announced that rock climbers henceforth would be

required to obtain a special permit. But the government has never granted

the required permit to the many climbers who have requested one. Many Cubans

and foreigners have continued climbing.

[Photo]

Cuban climber Josué Millo in Viñales Valley, western Cuba

 

Adrián Pérez Martínez, a 20-year-old art teacher with a joker tattooed on

his shoulder, says that police showed up at his house recently to warn him

against climbing, especially with foreigners. "Good Cubans don't do this,"

he says they told him. "Climbers use drugs. And you shouldn't take

foreigners to militarily significant areas." Indeed, some caves in the

climbing area are designated as civil-defense sites in the event of a U.S.

invasion.

 

Some of the official anxiety over climbing seems to be based on Cuba's

revolutionary history. The revolution that brought Mr. Castro to power in

1959 was launched from a clandestine encampment in the Sierra Maestra

Mountains on the eastern end of the island. Mr. Castro became intimately

familiar with Cuba's highest mountain, 6,500-foot Pico Turquino. "The

Revolution was the work of climbers and cavers," Mr. Castro once said,

according to a history by Antonio Nuñez Jimenéz, a prominent revolutionary

leader and naturalist.

 

Now the Cuban government may be worried that history will repeat itself.

"The system is paranoid about Cubans' private activities, but especially

when those activities are occurring in hills away from sight and when

foreigners are involved," says Vitalio Echazabal, one of the first Cubans to

take up rock climbing in the 1990s. "The authorities would ask, 'Are they

spies? What are they plotting up there?' " Mr. Echazabal got so fed up that

he defected to Spain during a climbing expedition in 2001, one of three

Cuban climbers who have escaped the island during international sporting

events. About a half-dozen other Cuban climbers got off the island after

marrying foreigners they met on the hills.

 

The exodus of climbers has only served to intensify official suspicion of

the sport. "Climbers are very independent people, and the Cuban government

has a real hard time with anything it cannot control -- even a form of

recreation," says Armando Menocal, a 65-year-old Wyoming lawyer who is the

leading international proponent of Cuban climbing. Mr. Menocal, who runs the

Cubaclimbing.com Web site, has been caught in the climbing backlash himself.

 

Beginning in the late 1990s, Mr. Menocal, who has family ties to Cuba,

started training Cuban climbers, mapping local routes and importing donated

equipment. But after having made about 15 climbing trips to Cuba over the

past eight years, Mr. Menocal has been turned back by immigration officers

at the Havana airport the last two times he tried to get into the country,

most recently earlier this month. The authorities, he says, offered no

explanation.

[photo]

Roylandi González

 

The 100 or so climbers remaining in Cuba would certainly welcome his return.

Without official funding, Cuban climbers rely on equipment sent by Mr.

Menocal or donated by tourists. José Luis Fuentes, a 20-year-old climber,

says his shoes were given to him by an Italian, his rope by a Canadian and

his harness by an American. "You speak a common language with other climbers

no matter where they come from," he says.

 

He isn't sure it's a language Cuba's leaders could understand. "Older people

just think we're a bunch of crazy kids," says Mr. Fuentes.

 

Climbing has attracted a special breed of Cuban youth since Mr. Menocal and

some American friends used a slide show to recruit a core group of about

half a dozen Cuban climbers in 1999. One Cuban went AWOL from his military

unit to go on an outing with Mr. Menocal, subsequently earning two weeks in

the brig.

 

Official eyes were watching. "The Cubans were always being persecuted

because it was not looked upon favorably to socialize with foreigners," says

Craig Luebben, a rock-climbing guide and journalist from Colorado who has

made several trips to Cuba. As the pressure increased, the Cubans and their

American climbing partners would avoid appearing together publicly,

arranging separate transportation to a rendezvous at the secluded climbing

site, Mr. Luebben says.

 

Climbers say official government climbing policy has been inconsistent. A

few years ago, Hollywood, a cigarette brand partly owned by the government,

launched an ad campaign featuring a Cuban climber. Yet at around the same

time, Mr. Menocal on trips to Cuba was called before two different

government authorities and told climbing wasn't permitted.

 

The inconsistencies continue today. On a recent day at the park visitors

center near the Viñales climbing site, there were large posters of climbers

in action. Nevertheless, the park ranger on duty insisted that climbing

without a permit wasn't allowed under the 2003 law. "It's not something one

should even consider," he said, though he had no idea how one might go about

getting a permit.

 

The climbers are regrouping under the leadership of Alexei Suárez, a medical

worker who sometimes reaches his second-story Havana apartment by scaling

the wall. He has been talking with government officials, trying to better

climbing's image, and he says the Cuban sports ministry has been very

supportive. "We are loyal Cubans who want to make Cuba famous for climbing

champions," Mr. Suárez says.

[Dechristo]

"The

Revolution was the work of climbers and cavers," Mr. Castro once said

[powderhound]

Thanks I could not use the wsj search engine very well.

[pindude]

Climbing articles have appeared in the WSJ previously. Now that climbing is considered more mainstream, at least in the western world (compared to even 10 years ago), I would expect to see more.

 

Thanks for pointing this out, and to Winter for posting the article. Armando is a great, stand-up guy who regularly helps others. With Castro's demise apparently eminent, perhaps we'll see some big changes coming down the road in Cuba, especially in regard to climbing and the attitude of their government and general culture toward it.