Italy: that’s amore

The tropical pizza is the queen of Cuban cuisine. In the Sixties Fidel Castro opened thousands of ‘pizzerìas’ on the Caribbean island.

“All roads lead to Rome”, says 37-year-old Havana native Regina Hernández enigmatically. “I look for all things Italian that I can afford”. Though she has not yet been able to visit Italy, she did take a somewhat mysterious, spiritual journey to the country four years ago at an art exhibit in Havana. It was one of the many events organised by the Italian Embassy in Cuba for Italian Culture Week. To stand before Narciso, a 1545 painting by the Italian artist Caravaggio (1571-1610), “was a revelation. I’m not very religious”, Hernández swears, “but I saw God. Italy is culture. And its culture is love”.

At the opening of Italian Culture Week, Havana historian Eusebio Leal explained the special sentiment that Cubans feel toward Italy: “There is no Cuban city where the work of Italians is not present. The hand of Italian artists, thinkers, writers, men and women of art and culture and science is felt in all of the country’s cities”. 

Ties between Italy and Central America, however, extend beyond art and culture: there is also trade relations and aid. Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni paid an official visit to Cuba in March, which both parties deemed to be very important, reaffirming their desire to expand bilateral economic trade.

The average Cuban, by contrast, does not see this special sentiment with Italy through the lens of official statistics. Many establish a relationship with the bel paese through the culinary arts. “Pizza is the undisputed queen of the table in Cuba”, said Adelaida, a chef in Havana, “and the finest Italian dishes in Cuba come with a tropical twist. In our Caribbean country people love Italian food, as, indeed, in all other capitals in the Americas”. Italian cuisine is everywhere on the island. Cuba differs from other Latin American countries because of the communist transformation of its economic system. The powerful government oversaw the entire food supply chain in the country, and it was the state that opened thousands of pizzerias in the 1960s. When the economy began opening up in 2008, the pizzerias remained. Restaurants and cafes with names like Milán, Vesubio, El Italiano, La Romana offer their clientele a wide variety of Italian dishes.

“I discovered that Cubans were much more interested in Italy than I’d imagined, considering that Cuban culture is originally Spanish and also very close to Anglo-Saxon America”, says Lucrezia Fanti, an Italian who is regional director of marketing development for the Havana Club Internacional. “Italian tourism is part of the reason, but I think there’s more to it”.

She, however, was very impressed by Cubans’ interest in the activities of the Havana branch of the Dante Alighieri Italian Cultural Institute. “The Institute can’t meet the demands of all the Cubans who want to take classes there”, she says. Fanti admits that love is part of her relationship with Cuba. “I live with a Cuban, which might be why I feel closer to the local culture than other foreigners living here”.

Fanti’s boyfriend, Richel La Rosa, was born in Havana and has been to Italy several times. He says he’s impressed by the dynamism in the Mediterranean country: “For me it is as if everything was moving at double speed. There’s always a lot of excitement; it’s as if there was never enough time. This make you feel really alive, but it’s also a sacrifice”. La Rosa sees Italy as “a land of opportunity, full of traditions and culture, and fragrances, flavours and elegance”. However, he has also witnessed “a lot of instability and insecurity in Italy. It is as if the country were going through a transformation process. Some of its current issues are of vital importance. Like immigration, which affects all foreign visitors”. Rita Bariatti, an Italian living in Costa Rica and author of Italiani nell’America Centrale (Italians in Central America), admits that her move was also motivated by love. Born in Milan, Bariatti visited Costa Rica for the first time in 1963. She later married a Costa Rican doctor and settled there. Her books paint portraits of the many Italians in Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her main characters are descendants of Italian immigrants who came to Central America from the 19th century on.

Cuban actor Tomas Milián, who worked in Italy with great directors such as Luchino Visconti and Bernardo Bertolucci, left Cuba in 1956 for the US when he was just a teenager. There, James Dean and Marilyn Monroe inspired his film career. And when he went to Italy, it was love at first sight.

During a press conference in Havana on a visit last year after many decades of living abroad, he switched from Spanish to Italian many times as he spoke — without even realizing it. His anecdotes were no less emotional for this reason, such as when he told the audience how he was discovered by Mauro Bolognini. Milián concluded by saying that he loves Italy as much as he loves Cuba.

Alessandro Zarlatti, a teacher and writer from Rome who lives in Havana, has much to say about love. His wife is Cuban, and their daughter is fluent in both Spanish and Italian. Usually cheerful, Zarlatti also hides some melancholy. About his love for Italy, which he shares with that for Cuba, he says in Italian: “Fortunately you don’t feel melancholy for such beauty! Because it’s never far off: it’s a beauty that all Italians carry inside them. Always. Wherever they end up living”.