In Days at the Lennon Park, 95-year-old Juan works as a custodian in John Lennon Park in Havana. His job is to keep the statue’s famous round glasses in place, which get stolen almost as often as he puts them back, so he always carries spares.
The bronze statue, showing Lennon seated on a park bench, was unveiled in 2000 to mark twenty years since his death, a quiet act of reconciliation in a country where the Beatles were banned from Cuban radio for decades. Tourists from all over the world now queue up to have their photo taken beside him.
Juan isn’t alone at his post. Every day he’s joined by other park ‘residents’: Ondina, 84, for whom the statue represents the ideals of the Cuban Revolution; Rodolpho, a veteran who performs Lennon’s songs and hears in the statue his heroism as a ‘peace activist’; and Ernesto, who has come to think of it as an old friend. For Juan himself, it’s mostly a way to make a little money, and a good excuse to meet women.
For all of them, unable to travel far beyond Havana, Lennon has become a kind of stand-in dreamer: someone who imagined a different world and dared to say so out loud. Gathered around his statue, they borrow a little of that imagination for themselves, and share it with anyone who stops to listen.
Days at the Lennon Park doesn’t try to explain Cuba. It simply sits with the people who return to one small statue, day after day, and lets their conversations unfold. What emerges are the lives and dreams folded into their stories, and just how much creativity it takes to make peace with the limits of an ordinary life.