Branding Cuba: La Vida Nike

Face it -- America is obsessed with its communist island neighbor to the south. Since its revolution in 1959, Cuba periodically takes center-stage in the American psyche. Take this month for instance. In preparation for Jimmy Carter's long-anticipated visit to the island, George W. Bush, with great media fanfare, inaugurated Cuba into his "Axis of Evil." A week later, Carter made history as the first American president, sitting or former, to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge.

With Carter came the American press corps, agog with a freshly invigorated curiosity. Once again the land of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro and Elian Gonzalez is lighting up television screens across the American heartland and once again the American media is examining our relationship with our island neighbor -- only now, a main focus is on when, not if, the United State will reestablish trade with Cuba.

My experience in Cuba tells me the media is behind the curve. American businesses have already established a beachhead and are impatiently waiting to break from the starting gate in a race to stake a claim in a new consumerist Cuba. The Cubans, for their part, won't know what hit them.

My first trip to Cuba was in 1987; a university-sponsored sojourn to the forbidden island "behind the iron curtain." My odyssey began at the Toronto Airport as I boarded a vintage Russian-made IL 62. The plane, prohibited from flying over the U.S., headed to the Atlantic Ocean and then made a sharp right turn, depositing us in Havana's Jose Marti airport at about midnight. I looked out the window at the dimly lit terminal, expecting to see troops, perhaps statues of Lenin. What I did see was the biggest Visa Card that I had ever seen, above the words, "Welcome to Cuba." So much for communism.

Upon leaving the airport, however, we saw no more Visa billboards. Actually there were no billboards touting any product other than the official "revolutionary" ideology of the communist party. Cuba was still a rare advertising- and commercial-free zone. Its stores were filled with generic products. Its culture was yet to be branded.

At the time I didn't appreciate how rare this ad-free experience would prove to be. The following year, as a journalist based in Costa Rica, I hiked deep into the highlands of Guatemala, looking to escape American corporate culture. But alas, a half-day's walk beyond the last electric wires, in "guerilla" territory, beyond the reach of government, Coca-Cola and Pepsi were still slugging it out, with Coke reigning supreme. Malnourished campesinos would spend a day's wages for a warm bottle of Coke, el sabor de la vida Norte Americano.

Cuba was different. Havana is one of the world's most vibrant cities, yet it didn't have a single commercial billboard. People began to travel to Cuba for the sole purpose of experiencing a landscape free of commercial clutter.

Rebellious Cuban youths would scrawl the names of U.S. and British rock bands onto walls and into fresh concrete as symbols of resistance to state-controlled media. Next to them were peace and anarchist symbols and English words such as "punk" and "metal," dangling devoid of context. That was 14 years ago.

Today all this graffiti of resistance seems to have morphed into one symbol, the omnipresent Nike swoosh. It's not just on walls and in the cement, but embroidered by hand onto shirts and hats, stenciled onto car windows and on the backs of Chinese-made pedal-cab bicycle taxis. La Vida Nike has taken Cuba by storm. American culture -- in essence corporate consumer culture -- has established a citadel in Cuba and seemingly is there to stay.

The Swooshification of Cuba

But let's back up. Cuba became commercial free when its government nationalized most foreign businesses in the early 1960s, establishing a so-called communist economy and earning the ire of eight successive U.S. presidents. The Havana Hilton was de-branded and re-christened the Habana Libre. United Fruit and Meyer Lansky's crime syndicate were both driven from the island. The U.S. State Department, ever quick to protect foreign investments, isolated Cuba with a comprehensive economic embargo that exists intact to this day.