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When Englishman Christopher P. Baker arrived in Cuba to travel the island on a
motorcycle in order to write a guidebook for tourists (a book he wrote in addition to MI
MOTO FIDEL), he brought several preconceptions along. Foremost among these were the
related ideas that, on the whole, Castro's revolution had done more good than harm for the
island's inhabitants and that American policy toward Cuba was primarily responsible for
any suffering of the Cuban people. His journey on his "moto fidel" --- a clever
double entendre, which translated literally means, "faithful motorcycle" ---
leads him to temper his opinions, while allowing him to cling to his core belief that
Castro is often unfairly vilified by his enemies on the island, in the United States, and
elsewhere.
On the whole, Baker's narrative is filled with enough interesting anecdotes about the
people he met and the sights he saw to carry the reader along through his sometimes
tedious political analysis and his seemingly endless supply of young Cuban women willing
to go to bed with a middle–aged foreigner on a motorcycle. Indeed, his sexual
adventures are so prevalent in the book that he felt it necessary to mention, if not
apologize for, their frequency in both the preface and the epilogue to MI MOTO FIDEL.
Despite his contention that he is merely trying to highlight the eroticism native to Cuban
culture, the tallying up of women soon sounds like locker room braggadocio.
Baker is at his best when he is recounting the conversations he had with the wide variety
of people he encountered. His ride brought him in contact with government officials who
ran the gamut from the endlessly cagey and dissembling to the bored and incompetent; his
various stops in Cuban towns and villages found him seeking shelter with people up and
down the economic ladder; and his fearlessness led to explorations of the seamier side of
many communities as well as the glittering areas set aside for the tourist trade. The
many, often contradictory, stories he collected from the people he met paint a broad
picture of Cuban culture, and his commitment to evenhandedness creates a picture of Fidel
Castro --- who looms large over, but never physically appears in MI MOTO FIDEL --- which
is far more textured than anti–communist rhetoric generally allows.
--- Reviewed by Rob Cline
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