I arrived in Havana on a hot day last September and stayed overnight at the postmodernist Telégrafo Hotel, located at the corner of Prado and Neptuno streets, a place known as the birthplace of the cha-cha-cha, a style of Cuban music that became popular in the 1950s. Early the next morning, I left for the town of Remedios, located in the middle of the country, 320 kilometers east of the capital.