Chantal spent three years living in Cuba during the Special Period. It was cut off, another world, another reality. These pictures are a meeting of Santería, Communism, and Salsa, the Cuba of my youth. Las Mañanitas is a celebration of that Cuba. Not about survival or resilience, but simply the way life was. Sexy, funny, wild, Cubans enjoyed being Cuba. The past lingers in memory through music, gestures, and spaces that carried their own rhythm. It is a portrait of an island insulated in its own universe, vibrant and unapologetically itself.