When they were children, Cuba’s surfers used to transform their school desks into boards to ride the waves.
They now have real equipment, and since surfing became an Olympic sport, it is gaining acceptance in Cuba, where surfers have often faced police harassment.
In the fishing community of Santa Fe, Ayax Borrero, 34, carries his surfboard under one arm as he and two friends meander through the streets that separate his home from the sea.
Photo: AFP
It is a cloudy day and the waves are crashing against the shore.
“Over all, we depend on weather conditions like cold fronts, hurricanes — which are what create the waves here — so that’s why the season begins in winter” from November to April, said Borrero, who is an architect.
Their playground is the ruins of an old rock pool allegedly once belonging to a bourgeois called Antolin before the 1959 revolution that brought the communists to power.
The area now serves as a promontory from where surfers can launch themselves into the water.
Surfing reminds Borrero of his youth, although back then boards were almost impossible to find.
“I started young, around seven or eight, with wooden school desks. That’s what we used back then. They were really heavy,” he said, laughing.
He recognizes that it was a good starting point as “afterward, when my dad bought me my first board at 11 years old, I was able to stand up straight away.”
“It’s a bit difficult to surf here,” the 29-year-old Yasel Fernandez said.
Born into a fishing family, he began surfing at 13, but he only managed to “have my own board at 29 and that was my dream, having my own board and surfing.”
Getting hold of their own board is not the only difficulty for surfers, who have often aroused the suspicion of police in a country where the sea is seen as the escape route to Florida.
“It’s annoying to be surfing, taking part in a sport in a specific place with the best waves, and the police come and tell you to go,” said Frank Gonzales, 35, one of the only people repairing boards in Cuba.
However, things are looking up. Surfing made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo Games last year, and now Cuba’s authorities are recognizing it as a sport.
Since last year, the Cuban Sports Institute has been in contact with the International Surfing Association and has plans to welcome a delegation from the global governing body in the coming months.
“We want to present them a work project that will support us in terms of instruction, equipment, and specific surfing elements such as first aid and refereeing,” said Yaliagni “Yaya” Guerrero, 39, one of Cuba’s first women surfers.
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