Island of contradictions: photos of life in Cuba today.

• Author: Ricci, Jeanne

NINETY MILES from the U.S., yet one of the last bastions of communism, Cuba alternately is portrayed as a backward banana republic, an exotic vacation locale, a country of deprivation, and a once-decadent island, where gambling and prostitution were major tourist attractions. Within the past three years, various destinations on the island have been revamped for foreigners. What we found when we arrived was a sort of cultural schizophrenia, where food and other commodities are more available for the tourists than the local people.

Havana is like a faded wedding dress, packed away at the back of a closet--still majestic, yet slowly decaying, one lacy bit at a time. Columned arches, balconies with elaborate iron grillwork, courtyards, and cobblestone streets abound in the section of the city called Old Havana. It looks very much like areas of Italy or Spain, but much of the baroque architecture is in varying states of disrepair--from needing a paint job to crumbling away.

Our hotel was the Inglaterra, an ornate edifice, complete with flowered tiles, stained glass, and tall windows with wooden shutters. Built in the 1880s, it is Havana's oldest operating hotel. The 84-room building has been refurbished without being stripped of any of its Old World charms. At $70 a night, it is one of the more moderate lodgings in town, in contrast to the newly restored Nacional--built in the 1930s and once host to the likes of Hollywood's Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner--where a room can cost more than $120 a night.

The rooms at the Inglaterra are equipped with a telephone, Soviet-made TV, air conditioning, hot and cold running water, soap, and toilet paper, all of which are luxuries for the average Cuban. In the closet, there is a small safe, which is important, considering the danger of theft. All tourists must use U.S. dollars only--credit cards and traveler's checks issued by American banks are not accepted, and exchanging money into pesos is discouraged. If your money is stolen, you are out of luck. There is no official liaison to the U.S.

New hotels are sprouting up all over the country. In Havana, the Hotel Plaza and the Cohiba opened recently, while the Sevilla and the Nacional have been restored. The seaside suburb of Miramar boasts the Triton and Neptune hotels. This newest effort to attract tourists began in 1991, when the Cuban government, for the first time since the 1959 revolution, allowed foreign firms to buy a 50% share of new hotels and run them single-handedly.

The largest island in the Caribbean, roughly the size of England, Cuba is banking on tourism to boost its floundering economy, which has taken a beating since the country lost its most important trading partner--the Soviet Union. More than 600,000 foreigners visited its shores in 1993, primarily from Canada, Europe, and Mexico, topping pre-1959 records. However, there is an evident lack of U.S. tourists. Although Americans technically are allowed to visit Cuba, they are prohibited--through a series of Treasury Department regulations that are part of the embargo put in place by Pres. John F. Kennedy--from spending money in the country. Exempted are Cuban exiles visiting relatives, as well as journalists and scholars.

Nonetheless, embargo-dodgers enter Cuba every year via Mexico, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and Canada. Cubans, eager to boost the economy with U.S. dollars, gladly do their part by not stamping American passports.

In fact, were not even stopped going through customs at Jose...