Callejon de Hamel

This guide to Callejon de Hamel in Havana follows Salvador González Escalona, a self-taught painter who arrived in this crime-ridden alley on an April day in 1990 meaning to paint a single mural, and never left. You'll hear how he built the neighborhood's discarded bathtubs into wall shrines for the orishas of Santería, and why he filled one with a mural of Ochún, goddess of rivers and love. The guide traces the Sunday rumba that still gathers at her feet, drummers and dancers calling down the trickster orisha before the music begins. Sit on one of the cut-down bathtubs and listen for it.