Happy Peasants photo essay’s behind the scenes

The day has come to begin my essay on the precarious living conditions of peasants in Cuba. The story would be called sarcastically “Happy Peasants”. I was inspired in the famous Campesinos felices (“Happy Peasants”) well-known 1938 oil painting by Cuban painter Carlos Enríquez Gómez (1900–1957), one of the most important figures of the Cuban avant-garde.

Every project leads me to travel, and with every journey there is, inevitably, some kind of “extra adventure.” A broken camera, a car that refuses to move, rolls of film gone missing. I’ve come to see these mishaps as offerings to the Gods of Photography. Strangely, the trips without such “problems” almost never yield the best images. “Happy Peasants” was no exception.

We left Havana and about three hours later the truck carrying us came to an abrupt stop. We were half an hour from the town of Jagüey Grande, on a secondary road — in other words, in the middle of nowhere. “Looks like I’m already earning my good luck on this trip,” I thought, as I stepped out to photograph the mechanics who got to work fixing the truck. And I was right: two hours later I made the first good photo of this project!

A peasant family prepares a meal in the kitchen of their “bohío.” Dinner was to be roast pork with root vegetables. Zapata Swamp, Cuba, 1999.

There were more trips for Campesinos Felices and, as expected, more “obstacles” appeared. The funny thing is, the problems always seemed to come from transportation. Getting to the different places I had mapped out was never simple. But maybe that was part of the process — the friction that forces you to see things differently.

I remember the day when the steering wheel of my car came loose in the middle of Cuba’s National Highway, on the way back from the eastern provinces. We had been talking about what might turn out to be our “good” photos (since with film, of course, you never know until the rolls are developed), when — half joking, half serious — I announced that the nut holding the wheel in place had gone missing. “Look, the steering wheel can actually come off,” I said, removing the piece. Panic broke out among the passengers, who immediately ordered me to stop the car. Luckily, that old wreck of a vehicle could no longer reach high speeds anyway.

From left: Raul Canibano, Gonzo Gonzalez and me holding the steering wheel of my car. I don’t remember who the other guy is. Santa Clara, Cuba, 2001.

Then came the last expedition (though I didn’t know it at the time). While “sailing” through the flooded streets of the town of Surgidero de Batabanó, south of Havana, searching for something interesting to photograph during a hurricane, I got stuck in an open manhole. I managed to leave with my cameras and rolls of film in another vehicle, but my beloved UAZ remained behind, standing as a witness to the rising floodwaters.

The year 2004 was coming to an end when I was expelled from my country. I never photographed Campesinos Felices again, nor did I ever drive my old off-road vehicle.

My last image of Campesinos Felices. Surgidero de Batabanó, Cuba, 2004. I made it with a Nikonos V