Read: The Castro Gene

This week's read is The Castro Gene by Todd Buchholz. I've been passing it by in the new books at the library for weeks because I thought it was like a Robin Cook disease sort of book. And given the condition of el coma andante, it sounded a bit dated.

Overcome by guilt, young Luke Braden quits the boxing ring after killing an opponent and finds his dreams come true as he goes from security guard to financial hotshot. He learns too late that his success has a progressively steeper price when he finds himself at the center of international intrigues. I found his meteoric rise a bit implausible. Oh yeah, I thought, like someone's just going to be plucked from the blue collar ranks and be given the keys to the kingdom. Later I read Buchholz is himself a pretty formidable financial type, so I guess he knows of whence he speaks.

What he speaks as a foreign language is Cuban. This is definitely an Anglo and sometimes erroneous depiction of Cuban policy, Cuban Americans, Fidel, you name it. I guess it is interesting in showing an American perspective. Nothing too offensive, unless you count fifo's life being saved. All in all, not great literature, but some decent escapist literature. If you're a reader at loose ends and like David Baldacci novels, you should like this.

What's Goin' On Here?

Get a load of this: "Part of Bush speech broadcast in Cuba." It was apparently the last fifteen minutes and was followed by an hour long response by Roque. The article quotes a dissident as saying many Cubans missed it, "because they ''had lost interest'' in the program Mesa Redonda. Unofficial estimates of its audience stand at about 3 percent." So it played to the "Patria o Muerte" crowd. Interestinger and interestinger.

According to the article, this is the text of the speech which was broadcast:

At this moment, my words are being transmitted into — live into Cuba by media outlets in the free world — including Radio and TV Marti. To those Cubans who are listening — perhaps at great risk — I would like to speak to you directly.
Some of you are members of the Cuban military, or the police, or officials in the government. You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure. When Cubans rise up to demand their liberty, they — they — the liberty they deserve, you've got to make a choice. Will you defend a disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people? Or will you embrace your people's desire for change? There is a place for you in the free Cuba. You can share the hope found in the song that has become a rallying cry for freedom-loving Cubans on and off the island: "Nuestro Dia Ya Viene Llegando." Our day is coming soon. (Applause.)
To the ordinary Cubans who are listening: You have the power to shape your own destiny. You can bring about a future where your leaders answer to you, where you can freely express your beliefs and where your children can grow up in peace. Many experts once said that that day could never come to Eastern Europe, or Spain or Chile. Those experts were wrong. When the Holy Father came to Cuba and offered God's blessings, he reminded you that you hold your country's future in your hands. And you can carry this refrain in your heart: Su dia ya viene llegando. Your day is coming soon. (Applause.)
To the schoolchildren of Cuba: You have a lot in common with young people in the United States. You both dream of hopeful futures, and you both have the optimism to make those dreams come true. Do not believe the tired lies you are told about America. We want nothing from you except to welcome you to the hope and joy of freedom. Do not fear the future. Su dia ya viene llegando. Your day is coming soon. (Applause.)
Until that day, you and your suffering are never far from our hearts and prayers. The American people care about you. And until we stand together as free men and women, I leave you with a hope, a dream, and a mission: Viva Cuba Libre. (Applause.)

I left the applauses for fun, and I refuse to use the block quote on Blogger.
Click here for the article.

Cuban Painting 2

Sorry about the quality of the photo, but this is one strange painting. I found this in a consignment shop. I think it's glorious. I love the energy of it. Doesn't it look like an angry ocean? Yet up close you realize that it's two craggy hills enshrouded in mist.

Unfortunately, it was a little too energetic when I had it by the side of my bed. In the interests of getting some sleep, I had to stow it away until I can find some other place to display it. I took two pictures of it when I was taking pictures of Packrat's acquisition next door. Neither picture appeared on my computer, although all the others did. Today, I managed to get the pictures, if somewhat skewed. When I went to upload it on the blog the first time, it wouldn't work. I see the germs of a scary story here. I was half afraid that I'd see a face in the picture. Yup, I'm a superstitious Cuban.

Alberto Falcon, the artist, was born in Havana in 1935 and, surprise, later lived in the states. Other than places he exhibited, etc..., I have very little information.

The Gang of Four

Ever get the feeling that there are only four people in the world writing stories about Cuba and thousands parroting them? I realize there are structural reasons for this, but the thought struck me as I was scrolling through news reports about the speech. Try a couple of headlines.

Bush piles pressure on Cuba transition AFP
Bush piles pressure on Cuba transition Malaysia News
Bush piles pressure on Cuba transition Channel News Asia
Bush piles pressure on Cuba transition UK & Ireland News

Cuba defiant in face of Bush speech AP
Cuba defiant in face of Bush speech KTRE-TV East Texas
Cuba remains defiant in face of Bush speech Naples Daily News
Castro, Cuba defiant in face of Bush speech Miami Herald
Cuba remains defiant in face of Bush speech Sun-Sentinel

Bush to warn Cuba on plan for transition International Herald Tribune
Bush to Warn Cuba on Plan for Transition New York Times
President to warn Cuba Albuquerque Tribune

Bush Urges Allies To Help Cuba Be Free KDKA Pittsburgh
Bush Urges Allies To Help Cuba Be Free CBS 13 Sacramento
Bush Urges Allies To Help Cuba Be Free WCCO Minneapolis/St. Paul
Bush urges world to help Cuba become free CNN.com
Bush Challenges Nations to Help Bring Democracy to Cuba Washington Post
Bush Rallies Nations To Help Cuba Move Toward Democracy NBC 6 Miami
Bush rallies nations to help Cuba move toward democracy San Diego Union-Tribune
Bush rallies nations to help Cuba move toward democracy Sun-Sentinel
Bush rallies nations to help Cuba move toward democracy Miami Herald
Bush rallies nations to help Cuba move toward democracy The Daily Comet
Bush Rallies Support for Post-Castro Democracy NPR

Ain't it grand!

Can't the Guy Do Anything Right?

No sooner had the lights dimmed on President Bush's speech than the usual suspects were back at work. First, perhaps it is because I am Cuban American, I found it beautiful, not that it is going to accomplish anything concrete. I don't know who wrote it, but it was masterful.

Having missed it live, I found the text on Killcastro. Thank you, Charlie Bravo. Then I turn to see how the media framed it and find only one article as of yet. Here's the title: "Bush offers oddly timed attack on Cuba's Castro brothers."

Read the text here. Read the article here.

A Reflection: A Whimper

Maybe it's the weather, but it occurred to me that although we would much prefer that he had make his exit forthwith, there is something poetic about fifo's lingering death. Look at the pathetic figure in the previous post. This is how his world ends. In the greatest of possible punishments, he who would have changed the world is an irrelevancy in a Nike track suit surrounded by the ruins resultant from his life's work. On some level, despite the protestations of sycophants, he realizes it. Else, why the dispatches from the deathbed, if not in vain gesture to assert himself beyond the confines of his sickroom, his home for over a year? I don't believe he has written them all, in whole or in part. But there are touches of fifo in the last few.

Many have written about his latest missive, the one about how Bush is going to starve the world and start World War III, so I will forgo dissecting it. But note, it is brief. How galling it must be to the man who would impose eight hours speeches on his subjects. If he actually wrote it, it is the sound of steam escaping; if he did not, he has become so superfluous that his minders are slowly turning back the throttle. After nearly a half century of acting on the world stage, he is reduced to acting for the world from stage left. He has come full circle, again the young Cuban boy whose vainglorious, inflated estimation of himself prompted him to write to the President of the United States for money and advise him on the procurement of metals.

I could almost feel sorry for the guy, if it were not for the untold millions who have suffered at his hands, for the lives ruined, the lives lost. Yes, I could almost feel sorry for him, almost, but not quite.

Communist Library

Look at the upper right hand corner of the book. It is a 30% discount from Barnes and Nobles. h/t Babalu

On the Lighter Side

Yesterday, I'm standing in line at Winn Dixie. The cashier is a septuagenarian in a blue beehive. She scans the order ahead of me, ending on a suitcase of beer. She turns to the octogenarian purchasing it and asks for his his driver's license. Amusement, incredulity, and exasperation mingle in his expression as he demands, "Are you checking to see if I'm old enough ?" I'm rolling at this point, so I miss most of the explanation which, of course, involves stopping underage teens from buying alcohol. Oh, brave new world!

Update: Oh, My Gosh! They're All Pod People

Update: Townhall.com has risen to the occasion. When I posted yesterday, I emailed them and explained. The picture was changed today. Thanks especially to Mary Katherine Ham. Sometimes we just need to raise their consciousness, I guess.

Children walk through the streets while banging on makeshift drums in Old Havana September 29, 2007. Cubans are celebrating the 47th anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). The CDRs are assigned to every block of houses in Cuba to take care of medical assistance if needed and to guard neighbourhoods by controlling people's movements and activities. REUTERS/Claudia Daut (CUBA)

In a reprise of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the conservatives at Townhall.com, a web site I really enjoy, seem to have been replaced with by left wing clones. Of course, the more likely explanation is that damage wrought by the propaganda machine is more pervasive and more insidious than even I thought.

Anyone who clicked on the link to "Elian II: The Sequel" by Kathleen Parker in the post below was treated to some dillies:

Projecting our own values, it's easy to imagine that E would be materially better off in America. We'd all prefer to live among prosperity in a free country than in relative poverty under a communist dictatorship.

Just whose values are we supposed to use in deciding? Osama bin Laden's? And what values would those be? I mean, aren't we using our values when we decide that the father's rights are paramount. Try the next sentence. It seems that while we prefer to live in prosperity, those little brown people down there don't. They must like waking each day with the knowledge that they must somehow improvise to find food to eat that evening. And then there's the "prosperity" versus "relative poverty." Please note that it's not poverty per se. I'm sure it reassuring for Cubans to learn that the abject misery in which they live is not poverty. It only seems that way in comparison to the living standard in the United States.

And...

The sad truth is that E should have been put on a plane back to Cuba as soon as her mother was determined unfit.
E had a father then. She has one now.

Here she betrays an ignorance of the facts of the case that is hinted at throughout the article. The point is that the child did not have a father. As in the Elian case, it was only when it became a means of scoring political points for the regime that the impulse of fatherhood overcame him.

As if that weren't enough, the article is accompanied by the picture and caption above. Here the culprit is Townhall itself. The happy natives are celebrating the 47th anniversary of the Committees for the defense of the revolution, you know the kindly folks who help in local medical emergencies and guard neighborhoods. I would like to know in what part of their anatomies their brains were reposing when they published this. It is the equivalent of celebrating the anniversary of the SS or the Stasi. The committees are the ground troups of the machinery of repression. Their primary reason for existence is to spy on their neighbors.

That Reuters would publish it does not surprise me, but that Townhall would does. They don't get it. I can only surmise that they can't see the colonialist bias and ignorance because they share in it.

For the article, click here.

WWYD: the Elian 2 Case

I've hitherto avoided taking this one on for pragmatic and, in hindsight, naive, reasons. First, the Elian case cost the Cuban American community just about all of the good will it had taken decades to build, a stunning blow. And I'm sorry, but as a community I do not believe it is a moral imperative to stand on the deck of the SS Principle as it slowly sinks into the sea. There may come a time when we have no other choice, but this is not it.

So when this case came up, I reasoned that it was being heard in a court of law. The facts pertaining to the father were particularly damning, I thought. Let's review some. The little girl is the product of Izquierdo, the father, cheating on his present common law wife. I think this is important. For her entire life, he had no problem leaving her with the mother, both in Cuba and in the United States, with full knowledge that the mother was abusive. The child's thirteen year old brother has testified to this and given the mother's established instability such treatment would seem credible. He, himself, was supposedly abusive to the mother. Finally, he made no effort to contact his daughter or inquire as to her well being in the entire year she was in this country.

It seemed to me that as far as the interests of the child, this was a clear cut case. But, no, I find out that the judge hearing the case once said publicly that the crime problem in Miami would be solved if Cubans were sent back. This is obviously a judge that has a dim view of Cuban Americans. Should she have been assigned this case? Should she have taken it? The defense was accused of falsifying evidence, i.e. letters or pictures that demonstrated some iota of interest on the part of the father. They were accused of trying to get her to say she wanted to go to Cuba. Finally, the foregone conclusion of the ruling: the little girl receives a life sentence.

Unfortunately, the American public sees Cuban Americans as intransigently putting their political agenda before the interests of a young child. They see it as a case of the good life versus the humble life. Their knee jerk reaction is to think of their own children and how they would feel if they were taken away. Such a reaction is so universal that it has reached as far as townhall.com where Kathleen Parker has written this article which was picked up by the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

I have a close personal friend who was also born illegitimately, this time in the bad old days. His childhood was make-a-movie-out-of-it bad, so much so that it bruised his soul and has haunted him his whole adult life. Can you imagine how he felt when he recently found out that he could have been spared the hardship, the rejection and the abandonment, that when he was born his mother rejected the town doctor and his childless wife who had offered to adopt him? The enormity of that yawning possibility was overwhelming. Was it love, or was it narcissism?

So I ask you, as a mother, say you died or were incapacitated, would you want your child placed with a man, the birth father, who had not shown the slightest interest in her for a year? Would you want your child to grow up, not just in poverty, but in absolute penury? Would you want your child to go hungry? They do not starve to death in Cuba, but finding food is a daily battle. The child is of the age when she will not see milk again until she is 65. Would you want her exposed to a whole host of diseases brought on by poor public health, sanitation, and nutrition? Would you want her to grow up in an environment where she constantly has to measure her words, where she is subject to arbitrary imprisonment and worse, where as she grows up, prostituting herself with aging European tourists is often the only expedient left to young women. Here's the kicker for me, would you want her to live under the roof of the woman you had wronged by sleeping with her common law husband?

As a father, many of the same questions apply. Now picture the life your child can lead. She can be brought up with her brother in the arms of a well-to-do family who wants her. She can grow up free. She will enjoy protections you don't even dream of. She can be spared many of life's hardships. She will not know the hunger and privation and repression you face daily. You do not have to bring her into the home of the woman you have wronged, to be a daily reminder of your infidelity. What would a father who truly loves his child do?

Solomon knew the answer to this one. Apparently, we no longer do.

Literary Interlude: Those Winter Sundays

It seemed kind of fitting to use this one after writing about Hijuelos' book.

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father go up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly, I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

Robert Hayden

It Does Make a Difference

Carlos Rios Otero, a Cuban dissident participating in the non-cooperation campaign, has made a plea to be allowed to send a taped message to the Miami program "A Mano Limpia." Some interesting stuff surfaces in his letter.

Discussing how they are publicizing their resistance campaign against the phony upcoming elections, he points out they need our air and radio waves. Let's not forget that due to information restrictions, we in the United States know more about the dissidents than their fellow countrymen do. He states

por la radio estamos trasmitiendo cosas de ANN y la campana por el NO para toda Cuba. Ellos son la VOA, Radio Marti y Radio Mambí y la Poderosa.

over the radio we are conveying info [about the campaign]. They are the VOA, Radio Marti [You know the one we're wasting money on] and Radio Mambi and the Poderosa.

The most interesting thing is the feedback about the recent publicity. Apparently, the Real Cuba stuff has made it to the Real Cuba. He is so fired up to get the word out because

En estos dias vimos uno sobre la crisis de la salud en Cuba del que se han estado repartiendo copias y que se comenta en toda la Habanna.

These days we have one over the health crises in Cuba, copies of which have made the rounds and are the subject of commentary in all Havana

Ain't it something? Those enterprising Cubans seem to have found a circuitous route around the information embargo. Check it out here. There's a link to the actual text of the letter here also. Gracias, Rafael.

Some of My Favorite Books: Our House in the Last World

Recently in the excitement over Cane, someone mentioned in a discussion that the writer had written Mambo Kings. Of course, someone else immediately corrected that she might have written the screenplay, but the novel was written by Oscar Hijuelos. And so it was. Of more importance to me, much as I enjoyed both the movie and the book, is Hijuelos' first novel, Our House in the Last World, so much so that I reread it this week.

There are so many different worlds in this book that it is difficult to apply the title to any one locale at any one time. There is the world of Holguin, Cuba in the early half of the century, the world of immigrants on the upper side of Broadway in New York, a glimpse of 1960's Miami, the oblique reference to Castro's Cuba, even a dream world in Isabella and Ferdinand's Court. In fact, that is the hallmark of this moving novel, in which meaning is layered upon meaning.

Ostensibly, the novel traces the family history and love story of Mercedes and Alejo Santinio as they meet at the movies, fall in love, and marry. Paradoxically, despite the spare prose, there is richness here. Hijuelos evokes the Cuba of that generation using dreams to convey an idealized, yet realistic portrait. Later, as the young couple emigrates to NYC long before the revolution, he depicts faithfully the experience of those early Cubans, as well as other immigrants, who came to the bleak environs of New York's tenements, to jobs in factories and restaurants, and to a world where they didn't even speak the language. It is easy for those of us who lived through those times to see ourselves in that world.

As their marriage turns sour, Alejo turns into an abusive drunk who never misses a day of work in the hotel kitchen and the high-strung Mercedes becomes unhinged, the novel quickly becomes a story of familial dysfunction, much of it seen through the eyes of their two sons. But this is no facile depiction. Much as we resent Alejo's bullying, we pity him when his desperate love for his two sons is rejected as a result of his own actions. We pity him as life and his dreams and all those Cubans he helps pass him by. Our sympathies for Mercedes are qualified when we see the havoc she wreaks. Even as we feel for the sons, brought up in abuse and unpredictability, we share in their guilt. Again, anyone who has seen substance abuse close up will easily recognize the Santinios.

Then there is the revolution, only this time obliquely from the perspective of those who were already here. We see the excitement of many of the early immigrants, their support for Fidel, the famous visit, and later their disillusionment as word and exiles began to filter in from Cuba when the revolution is betrayed. A word- this is not a political story. Don't expect any condemnation or praise.

However, Our House in the Last World is rife with longing. As a novel, it is summarily painful, yet cathartic to read. You really do care, at least if you're Cuban, I think.

By the time, I got to Woodstock...

..there was a museum. What was that I was saying about "self-important" and vacuous? First Gore gets the Nobel Peace Prize, and now we're gonna have the Rural Museum of Drug use, Debauchery, and Rock and roll. Get a load of this.

Republicans say presidential contender Hillary Clinton can forget about getting $1 million in taxpayer funds for a Woodstock museum.
Clinton and Charles Schumer, Democratic senators from New York, want to earmark the federal money for a museum that would commemorate the 1969 music festival in their state

Personally, I really got trashed at a Dave Bromberg concert at the old Academy of Music. I could really use a couple of thousand to enshrine the bathrooms there; they were memorable.
Can't make this stuff up, folks!

"Judge, judge, take me to the 'lectric chair." Ah, those halcyon days of youth!

The Apple...

Here we are again. Published in the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly is an article by none other than Kruschev's son with two co-authors. According to this article about it, he advocates US hospitality industry involvement in Cuba.

“We see a historic opportunity for profitable investment in a ‘new Cuba,’” write the authors. “Not only can the U.S. hospitality industry participate in shaping that new Cuba, in partnership with locals, but we contend that now is the time to advance prescriptive, forward-thinking insight designed to shift the thinking of the U.S. business community about Cuba and, in so doing, shift the thinking of the Cuban government, businesses, and people about their neighbors to the north.”

Just an observation or two or three. Ah, "profitable investment," play to those already frothing at the mouth at the thought of the gazillions of dollars they're missing. Then there's "in partnership with the locals." Would that be the local totalitarian government, the local CDR's? We know it can't be anyone else, since all investment must be done in partnership with the regime. Sorry, but there are no locals in this case, just the monolithic, repressive dictatorship.
Finally, has "the forward-thinking insight" of collaborator countries like Spain "shift[ed] the thinking of the Cuban government" at all? I'll give them that they have managed to shift the thinking of some Cubans in so far as they have imbued them with the less-than-favorable European view of America, something the regime had failed to do in decades of anti-US propaganda. And so, it goes, and goes, and goes

Still working on getting the original article.

Beware the Clowns

In the past year, our local hospice taking its cue from the cows in Chicago, the bulls in New York, even the pigs in neighboring Venice decided to raise funds by displaying and auctioning off statues. But as they scrambled for an animal for the campaign, someone had the seemingly felicitous idea of using clowns. Sarasota was once a circus town. So clowns in all sorts of artistic regalia began appearing on downtown street corners. Even as they appeared, the trouble began. They were vandalized: arms were broken off, an MP3 player was stolen, and a couple of visiting Coast Guard guys even kidnapped two, one of which has never been seen again, I think. Finally, they had to install cameras for clown protection in our normally law abiding city.

It seems that the clown is not such a benign figure, after all. The hostility the clowns were apparently evoking in some of my fellow citizens surprised me. My friend Jo explained, as she phrased it, clowns are "evil." Some reflection reminded me that John Wayne Gacy's alter ego was a clown. And "It" in the Stephen King novel by the same name was usually "Pennywise," a clown figure. It was striking, then, to read a quote from a Havana housewife who -on the condition of anonymity- described Chavez: "He looked like a clown, singing on stage."

It's a sentiment I've shared about fifo, having on occasion described him as as a laughable figure. And so he strikes me, as did Chavez making a total horse's hindquarter of himself at the UN calling Bush a "devil" last year. What I wonder is how they ever achieved power. Who are the people that found or find either of these two Chuckies admirable?

Yet the results of their gambols are not to be laughed at. These clowns are truly evil. And as I've said before, perhaps the greatest cruelty of what has befallen Cuba is that it has happened at the hands of a buffoon, as if some vile sentient force was having a laugh at the expense of a whole people.

Cuba-Venezuela Ties

For the last few days, the "increased cooperation" between Cuba and Venezuela has been the subject of innumerable articles. See here. Some, rightfully so, methinks, have seen it as a species of power grab by Chavez, a clumsy grasping for a bastardized Bolivarian ideal.

Well, it set me to thinking about the Monroe Doctrine. Written to keep European powers from establishing any more colonies in the new world, their existing colonies conveniently excepted, it nonetheless set forth important limits, namely that "we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety." Further on, it states that it would be "impossible" to believe that "our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord."

It seems time for Mini-me to get his own private, geographically updated version of said doctrine. Will the increasingly gun-shy American government take him on? That's a question. Given the spreading virus in Latin America, it undoubtedly should.

Around the Blogs

Ran into all sorts of good stuff and most excellent links this AM. Let's start with a bit of fun. On Cubanology, we have a link to Ideas Ocultas, a website I've missed somehow but is going on my list. Highlighted are some jokes.

Patriotismo en tierra cubana
El inspector de escuela le pregunta a Pepito:Pepito, ¿quién es tu madre?La Patria, inspector.Y tú padre?Fidel, inspector.Y tú ¿qué quisieras ser, Pepito?Huérfano, inspector.

my translation:
Patriotism on Cuban Soil
The school examiner asks Pepito: Pepito, who is your mother? My homeland, inspector. And your father? Fidel, inspector. And you, what would you like to be Pepito? An orphan, inspector.

Enough said. But while you're at the site, read the story about the unfortunate political prisoner whose attempts to escape led to losing both arms. Here.


On Blog for Cuba ran into a very good post on rationing and the supreme irony of sugar being rationed in Cuba. The bonus is a link to a longer article. Some have already raised quibbles about the historical dates, but the rationing is a reality. Check out Cuban Truth

The ever irreverent Gusano on La Contra Revolucion asks "Am I now a Venecuban exile or a Cubazuelan refugee?!?!?" Read it here.

Finally, Alberto "el americanito" de la Cruz marks his entry as one of the contributors to Babalublog with a post dealing with the longing he feels, never having been in Cuba. I've often remarked to my brother that we Cuban Americans have absorbed that sense of loss from our parents, almost imperceptibly. Read it here.

As Alberto says "I could have been born anywhere in the world, but I still would have been born a Cuban." How's that to go along with your morning coffee?

Technical Difficulties

I apologize for the irregular format, but Blogger is doing crazy things. It changes the size of the fonts and the spacing when I hit publish. Still working on it.

The Ringling Show At Last: ZZZZZZ

The Sacred Heart, 1995 Lazaro Saavedra Gonzalez

If I have to provide one overall impression of the Cuba Avant-Garde exhibition it is that of disappointment. I'm afraid it was a little too avant my garde. I'm reminded of visiting the old MOMA. You started on the ground floor and by the top floor you were into performance art, if you know what I mean. Having established my lack of bona fides.....

There were some notables, a tinker toy World Trade Center complete with embedded plane. There was a sizeable wooden zipper with little wooden people teeth, talk about your cogs in the machine. There was a big old car with many feet instead of tires. And there was the painting above, my favorite because it encapsulates so well the doble cara or two faces Cubans have
perfected. Actually, that's what struck me. About half of the works are by artists living and working in Cuba, yet there was no patria o muerte about it. Although the political informs many of the works, most are not overtly political in nature. Even the set of panels depicting the wedding of Fidel and the Virgin of Charity, La Virgen de la Caridad, lends itself to a variety of interpretations, although I would defy anyone to miss the mockery implicit in the work.

If as TS Elliot once said artists are the antennae of civilization, Radio Marti is not the
only thing being jammed. So would I go out of my way to see it? Nope. Would I go see the absolutely world class permanent collection of the Old Masters? In a heartbeat. And don't forget the Butcher photos and the Goya exhibit while you're there.

Literary Interlude: La Nina de Guatemala

Courtesy Realia Project/ Photo Jeffrey Barnett

La Niña de Guatemala: A portrait of Maria Garcia Granados

whom Jose Marti immortalizes in his famous poem "La niña de guatemala"

In honor of this weeks's anniversary, let's make it a Marti poem. This my mother used to love to recite .

Quiero, a la sombra de un ala,

contar este cuento en flor:

la niña de Guatemala,

la que se murió de amor.

Eran de lirios los ramos;

y las orlas de reseda

y de jazmín; la enterramos

en una caja de seda;

Ella dio al desmemoriado

una almohadilla de olor;

él volvió, volvió casado;

ella se murió de amor.

Iban cargándola en andas

obispos y embajadores;

detrás iba el pueblo en tandas,

todo cargado de flores;

Ella, por volverlo a ver,

salió a verlo al mirador;

él volvió con su mujer,

ella se murió de amor.

Como de bronce candente,

al beso de despedida,

era su frente -¡la frente

que más he amado en mi vida!

Se entró de tarde en el río,

la sacó muerta el doctor;

dicen que murió de frío,

yo sé que murió de amor.

Allí, en la bóveda helada,

la pusieron en dos bancos:

besé su mano afilada,

besé sus zapatos blancos.

Callado, al oscurecer,

me llamó el enterrador;

nunca más he vuelto a ver

a la que murió de amor.

Odds & Ends of Things

I've posted on Lone Survivor before. Today comes word that one of the fallen Navy Seals, Lt. Michael P Murphy, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for combat, a well-deserved honor. Read it here.

Gusano at La Contra Revolucion has gathered together the various stories, some posted here, of musicians standing up to the regime. Don't miss it. While you're there, read about the fritas. Click here. Doesn't it seem that the discontent is being brought in the open by Doctors and Musicians?

The day after I posted about generacíon Y, there was a Reuters article about Cuban bloggers which featured Yoani Sanchez. In one of her articles, quoted below, she points out that Cubans learn to read between the lines. Today, I'm reading a link to Cubanet from Penultimos Dias when I come across this first line in article.

Para intentar enterarse de algo en la prensa oficial cubana lo principal es saber leer entre líneas.
or In order to find out anything in the official Cuban press, the most important skill is to know how to read between the lines.

The author, Luis Cino, points out that an Oct. 5 article about a well-attended march in support of the revolution by students and professors from the University of Oriente to the initiated means something altogether different happened there. By means of Radio Bemba, the truth emerges about recent upheaval in that educational institution, which is now reportedly quiet.

Finally, in the what were they thinking department, is the recent vote by a house panel on the Armenian Genocide by Turkey. Forget that it happened during WWI and that this motion has been floating around for ten years, that Turkey is poised to invade Iraq and cause even more havoc, that we use its territory for logistics in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Let's try this: at a time when we are accused of waging war on Islam, why are we alienating the only Democratic government of a Muslim country? It's the timing I question. Read it here.

Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and the Triumph of the Boomer Generation

As a late boomer myself or perhaps because of it, I have very little respect for the generation. A more self-serving, self-important, sanctimonious, and vacuous lot, there has never been. From their youth, they have sought to instruct the rest of us on how to live, all the while plucking the fruits of the system they so abhorred.

This a generation that came of age at an opportune- excepting Vietnam- moment. They graduated from colleges, which they attended without having to mortgage their futures, with their liberal arts degrees into a wide open marketplace at a time when homeownership did not require the pledging of parts of one's anatomy. For this they were not grateful. It was only their due.

This sense of their own superiority, coupled with an unfortunate tendency to mindlessly hop on the nearest bandwagon, led them to take a country which functioned on principle-religious, civic, and moral- into the morass of relativism where anything goes except traditional values.

Without the underpinnings of guiding principles, such as respect for authority, our society has devolved into one characterized by cynicism and arbitrary judgement. The President of the United States, whether Republican or Democrat, is not to be believed and fair game for personal attacks. The propaganda of some totalitarian regimes, however, is swallowed, hook, line and sinker. Despite unheard of amounts of money, still not enough for some, thrown into schools, only 22% of students in Michigan graduate high school. The figures for other metropolitan areas are equally as dismal. A teacher complains and Junior doesn't get the beating he deserves; Mom hires a lawyer. A student with over a hundred stitches in her face from a razor blade attack sits in a biology class down the hall from her attacker whose rights cannot be violated.
The contradictions and absurdities abound.

These founders of the environmental movement have overseen the explosion of the McMansion and the rise of the even more eco friendly SUV. They have presided over the death of factual reporting and the emergence of mainstream tabloid journalism. They have made a religion of conspicuous consumption and a consumer staple of consumer debt. They have birthed the infant nanny state: telling us what food to put in our bodies, what not to smoke, what to wear in our cars, what kind of windows we can put in our homes, and what values we should teach our children.

I am the first to know that the world of my childhood contained much injustice, but as I look around at the fruits of the boomer generation, I am not impressed. As far as I can tell, their only significant achievement was in combating racism. And now it looks like Hilary, who never worked up a sweat in her life unless it was cutting sugar cane for Fidel Castro, is going to be President and Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for bruiting science that may or may not hold up to the test of time. Vanity, all is vanity. Or is it dada?

Literary Notes: Updated

Update: I knew I had seen an article on New Short Fiction from Cuba, but I couldn't find it. It's at El Tono de la Voz where you can find excerpts from the introduction here.

Two new collections of Cuban fiction on the market-

The first is an extension of the Cuban Noir I've written about. Entitled Havana Noir and put together by Achy Obeja's, it consists of crime stories written by Cuban authors set in Havana. And true to form, the political makes up a central fact of Cuban life. Of Ena Lucia Porteles' contribution

Her disturbing story "The Last Passenger" revolves around a woman infatuated with a serial killer, and portrays a class-divided Cuba where the nomenklatura enjoys vacations in the Bahamas and wears gold Rolexes.
"Cuba's upper class is invisible for most people," Portela, 34, said via e-mail from Havana. "Official propaganda insists that in communist countries all citizens live under the same economic conditions, which is a huge lie."

Read the complete article in The Daily News.

Another comes in the form of the more scholarly New Short Fiction From Cuba. Read the little information I could find here.

Good night.

The Ant Can't...

Congratulations are in order. Cuban bloggers in the United States have finally breached the great media wall of propaganda. Through the efforts of George at The Real Cuba, among others, and the courage of Dr. Darsi Ferrer the truth about Cuban health care has been seen nationally, not once but twice, first on ABC, then last night on Fox News. Read all about it on Babalublog, if you haven't already.

Watching the interview last night, I had a moment of epiphany. As I watched both Hannity and Colmes try to co-opt the Cuban truth by enmeshing it in the debate over nationalized health care, I was incredibly proud of George's dignity in staking out his own territory. He made it abundantly clear that his sole concern was to expose the truth about the Cuban healthcare system. On ABC, Stossel had also used the Cuban angle as a means of questioning Moore's whole thesis. Then at some point, it hit me. The plight of Cubans was irrelevant, except in so far as it could be used to fight over domestic policies. They just don't care.

So why am I optimistic? In a word: exposure. For too long now, it is the regime that has controlled the discussion, but maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of change. No longer can the MSM count on their bogus claims and shoddy reporting going unchallenged. And every time they are challenged, the discussion is slowly, tortuously being reframed and the consciousness of the American public raised. And while NBC has garnered criticism, rightfully so, for not using the footage Dr. Ferrer risked so much to get, it was the first network to question the healthcare shibboleth. Where are CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC? Well, if we look at the trajectory, it was Sanjay Gupta who first took on Sicko. Then Stossel picked it up with the teaser. Last night Fox presented a more complete report. Can they be that far behind? At what point does the pain of being scooped overcome the desperate need to not upset the apple cart? Only time will tell. And we'll be watching.

A Week for Remembering

No sooner are we out of the Che daze than along comes October 10. On this date in 1868, I believe, the first of the Cuban wars of independence, the Ten Years War, commenced in what is known as El Grito de Yara. I can't seem to translate it poetically, so I'll leave it in Spanish. With limited knowledge of colonial history, I hit Google. There is a surprising amount of information to be had, some from doubtful sources, if you know what I mean.

One of the more interesting bits of knowledge I gleaned was about what surely has to be the first feminist by the name of Ana Betancourt. You can imagine how dismayed I was to see that this is another historical figure co-opted by the present regime. Still, it got me to thinking about "The Cuban Gender Paradox." With the whole mucho macho routine, which was big at my house at least, you would think that Cuban culture would be sexist, and it was.

Yet the typical Cuban woman of my acquaintance is quite capable of commanding armies, and generally does impose order on her world. Once, my husband and I, on vacation in Miami, stumbled upon two middle-aged couples on the boardwalk stretch. Having stopped in one of those gazebo structures, they were moving on. Apparently one of the husbands did not move quickly enough for his wife. She turned and demanded, "Y, tu, que estas? de referee? or "And you, what are you, the referee?" The exasperation and humor in her voice made me look at my husband, who in the interests of his own survival has made a study of all things Cuban and who was at that moment barely managing to stifle a laugh. With the secret understanding of the young and in love, we shared the thought. In that almost imperceptible moment was the whole
of the Cuban male/female relationships we knew.

Back to my researches, I'll leave you with the perfect holiday gift for that one Cuban American on your list who has everything. I couldn't find prices, but I suspect it follows the if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it-rule. Check it out here.

Updates of a Sort

Chefest (Both sides celebrate)
I haven't posted on Che because others have done it better than I could. If you haven't already read Fontova's book, do it. I'm still harassing my library system to get it. With my reading habits, I can't afford to buy.

Anyway, I came across this on the Spanish language BBC Mundo. The interesting point is that, oh mi gosh, they actually had some negativity as they detailed Che, the man. In addition to describing him as arrogant, ill-tempered, and doctrinaire, but the big surprise comes when they quote Felix Rodriguez, former CIA operative and witness to Che's end.

"Hace 20 años una mujer se acercó a mí en Paris y me contó como cuando su hijo de 15 años fue condenado a muerte por escribir en contra del gobierno de Fidel Castro", cuenta Rodríguez.
Ella consiguió una audiencia con el Che y le rogó que lo dejara vivir. Era viernes y la ejecución estaba prevista para el lunes. Cuando el Che le preguntó el nombre del muchacho la madre creyó haber salvado la vida de su hijo. Él giró la cabeza y dirigiéndose a sus soldados gritó: 'Al hijo de esta señora fusílenlo hoy mismo para que su madre no tenga que esperar hasta el lunes', asegura el ex agente de la CIA.

"Twenty years ago, a woman came up to me in Paris and told me how her 15 year old son was condemned to death for writing against the government of Fidel Castro," Rodriguez states.
"She managed to get an audience with Che, and she ple d with him to let her son live. It was a Friday, and the execution was scheduled for Monday. When Che asked her for the name of her son, the mother thought she had saved his life. He turned his head and yelled out to his soldiers, 'This woman's son is to be executed today so that his mother does not have to wait 'til Monday...'"

Uh-huh, revolutionary "hero," uh-huh.

H/T Penultimos Dias

Cuban Health Study
A thought. I've posted about the John Hopkins study, the one with shades of Reich science about it. Well, since I'm in an anecdotal mood, I'd have to say that the study does not account for the perversity of the Cuban character. At least twenty years ago, I met an aunt of my grandmother's in Union City. She had just come from Cuba. She was about 96 and spent her days sitting in a rocking chair, smoking cigars and drinking rum, which habits she was said to have indulged in her whole life. Actually, every one of my relatives of that generation died well into their 80s. It is the American generations that are dropping well before that.

Cuban Food
Speaking of which, is there a more politically incorrect diet than the traditional Cuban one? Fat is one of the food groups, and everything is fried or stewed with a generous layer of oil. My very American daughter, brought up far from Miami by relatively Americanized me and her Cuban only by association father, was surprised that at college, no one fried their meat. Vegetables barely exist, unless it's the yuca you have with pork or the occasional root vegetable. I can honestly say that for the first twenty years of my life, a green bean was never served in my home. Until my teens I though salad consisted of papery iceberg lettuce, a couple of slices of tomatoes, and some foul tasting radishes. You served it as a species of prop when you laid out a big spread, but no one ate it. It's amazing we're all walking around. Good genes, as one commenter on another blog (my apologies, I seem to have developed CRS) pointed out.

Are We Looking at 4 More Years of This?

What would we do without modern technology. I can watch this clip over and over and over.

Straight from the Belly of the Beast

Of all the blogs I read, there is one which has new posts only sporadically, but which I follow religiously. The blog in question is the creation of a young woman, as she frames it from the "Y generation" in Cuba. Someone living "over there" once explained those names to me, the Yesleidys and Yusnavy's. Let's just say, they were the product of another time and pretourist perspective.

To read her blog is to be privy to the elaborate machinations needed to find internet access, to witness the very human desire to have one's voice heard. Most importantly, to read her blog is the hear the plaintive notes of the genuine Cuban experience.

To me, today's posts were heartwrenching.

About posting:

Mientras usted va al trepidante ritmo del ADSL y de la Internet por cable, yo me muevo a la velocidad de la guagua que conecta a la Víbora con Línea y G.

While you go with the awesinspiring rhythm of DSL or cable internet, I move with the speed of the bus which connects la Vibora with Linea and G."

About the blogger in chief:

Pura frivolidad política esa de estar reflexionando sobre jefes de estado, remitiéndose a correspondencia diplomática y bestseller escritos por exmandatarios. Nuestra realidad pide a gritos que se abran espacios para escuchar la opinión popular. ¿Hasta cuándo se gastarán las pocas páginas de la prensa nacional en satisfacer la vanidad personal de un político que no nos representa, que no se hace eco de nuestras exigencias y que ni siquiera nos menciona?

It's pure political frivolty to be reflecting on heads of state sending each other diplomatic correspondence and bestsellers written by former leaders. Our reality screams for the opening of spaces to listen to popular opinion. How long will the few pages of our national press be wasted in satisfying the personal vanity of a politician who doesn't echo our predicament and who doesn't even mention us.

About how they get their news:

¡Vaya forma que tenemos los cubanos de enterarnos de lo que pasa! Hemos aprendido a leer entre líneas, a sospechar de cada información y a dudar de lo que dicen esos señores de traje y corbata que hablan en los noticieros.

Some way we Cubans have of finding out what is going on! We've learned to read between the lines, to suspect each report and doubt what the men in jackets and ties say on the news reports.

and

Vimos como la delegación cubana ante la ONU se levantaba de sus asientos durante el discurso de Bush, pero las palabras de éste nunca fueron transmitidas.

We say how the Cuban delegation at the UN stood and left their chairs during Bush's address, but his words were never transmitted.

Although she describes herself as a coward, she is a brave woman. I fear for her as I fear for all the voices which manage to make it accross the great divide. If you can read Spanish, you can find her here. I usually find her through Penultimos Dias.

No, I Didn't Get to the Ringling Exhibit Today

but I did read another article, this one from The Bradenton Herald via Hispanic Business.com. You can read it here. If you don't have the time and inclination, the money quote from Stephen D. Borys, Ulla R. Searing Curator of Collection at the Ringling speaking about the special period is here-

"Cuban art was really a place for public discourse, a place where civic dialogue could take place," Smith said. "Because, of course, they don't have a free press. They don't have elections, and no right of free association. So this art was expressing cultural, historical tensions that people were undergoing."

Not quite what I would have wished, but tell me we're not making progress. The get in free planets won't align again until next Monday, so you'll just have to wait for the details.

Whass Up?

Interesting article (in Spanish) at Payo Libre concerning a Carlos Varela concert in Santa Clara at which the singer dedicated a song to a famed retired pitcher. Surprisingly he also included el Duque and another exiled player in the dedication. Talk about living dangerously. As one of the attendees, a university professor stated, "I almost fell out of my seat." Most striking, however,
was something he yelled out. I'll give you the Spanish first.

“La libertad de los seres humanos nunca puede ser a medias. La libertad es única, y se tiene o no se tiene. Porque si sólo es a media entonces no se tiene verdaderamente”.

Translation:

The liberty of human beings cannot be a halfway thing. Liberty is unique, and you either have it or you don't. Because if you only have it halfway, you do not truly have it.

Are you listening all you apologists for the revolution?

Literary Interlude: An Old Favorite

Dover Beach

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.



-Matthew Arnold

Banned in Cuba

New video from Moneda Dura

Spanish in Miami

I was on CNN and found their Hispanic Heritage section. Of particular interest to my Miami brethren is this report on the use of Spanish in their fair city. Click here and enjoy.

Everything I Learned in High School Science

Why does it seem sometimes that everything they taught me in High School science was a lie? First it was that the atom consisted of three particles: electrons, proton, and neutrons. Then I grew up and found out about quarks: up, down, charm, strange, etc.... Now I find out in this article, that the appendix, which we were taught was a "vestigial organ" having something to do with cows and with no apparent purpose, really does have a function.

Won't even get into some of the discussions we had in Bio class with the very quirky Mr. D. Let's just say, atomic fusion hasn't come to rescue us, the ice age has not returned, and plutonium is not the answer.

What do Cubans in the United States Want?

A few things I've come across in the past few days, like this article on a study of the possibilities of redressing the illegal seizures of the Castro regime, have gotten me to thinking, always a potentially dangerous pursuit.

We all know the stereotype du jour that Cubans in the United States are an intransigent lot, just waiting to descend on Cuba, impose our will on the island, squeeze blood out of an economic stone, toss hapless Cubans out of their homes, and reclaim the vast holdings of our Batistiano forbears. I think I got it all.

Reminded me of a great old story, "Sir Gawaine and the Loathly Lady." One of King Arthur's knights ravishes a fair maiden. As punishment, he must find out what women want. Eventually, through marriage to a truly gruesome hag, he finds the answer: sovereignty.

Cuban Americans and Cubans make a virtual sport out of disagreement, but I think none would question that it is sovereignty we want for the Cuban people, the people, not the government. We want them to know what it is to have control over their lives, to earn through the sweat of their brows a decent wage to feed their families, to have the ability to improve their lot through their own enterprise, to be able to stand on any street corner and question the parentage of their leaders without repercussion. In short, what any American or Spaniard or Costa Rican or Turk has.

No one is interested in evicting Cubans from their humble homes. However, if a family had owned a sugar refinery, a home in Varadero where Melia has planted one of its hotels or a Commie bigwig has taken up residence, I would suspect that would be a different case.

The universe has been disturbed. Some judgement must be made, whether through the criminal legal system as in Nazi Germany and Iraq or the civil legal system as in the reunification of Germany...perhaps, at the very least, an acknowledgement of the wrong done to whole generations of Cubans. What form it will take, how dramatic an undertaking, is a question for the Cuban people. One could argue that part of the problem in Russia today is that there was no such cleansing, and the party apparatchiks shed their ideological cloaks and morphed into a gangster ruling class.

With no signs of democracy on the horizon for the poor, benighted island, discussing what we want may seem premature. But it is never a inopportune time to counter stereotypes designed to render us into objects of scorn and sap the moral strength of our arguments.

Che Sighting

Watch this video from Townhall.com. It seems that a University of Maryland building, the youth civic center, has a mural which includes Che, and let's just say it's not called murderer's row.
Gird your loins, fellow bloggers, with the anniversary of Che's execution fast approaching-the eighth or the ninth- I suspect we will be busy. Who knows, the Mad Emailer might even make an appearance.

Media Matters

Fooled you. I bet you thought I was going to post about the brouhaha with O'Reilly or the one with Limbaugh. Well, I am, but only tangentially. Caught an interesting segment on O'Reilly tonight. He had Bernie Goldberg and J Hall on to talk about the media. Well, O'Reilly was ascribing the precipitous drop in ratings for CNN and MSNBC to the disgust of viewers with the recent antics. Goldberg had a different take. He ascribed it to the inclusion of minorities and women, as in they tend to be more liberal. From my perspective, he flubbed it. As he began, I thought, "he gets it." He mentioned how the news business used to be, how you had people from all walks, those who had gone to college and those who had worked their way up. That's the crux of the problem as I see it. There is no ideological diversity. What's missing is any perspective other than that of the Journalism professors at these schools.

The segment reminded me of an experience today as I was waiting in the Doctor's office. Having no book with me, I was limited to the magazines on hand. I picked up a fairly recent Newsweek and was dismayed at the blatant political agenda on the part of a "news" magazine. After subscribing for years, I had canceled when they started the steady diet of Bush bashing, but even I didn't realize just how far over to the Dark Side they had gone. Mind you this is not The New Republic or even The Weekly Standard.

To give you just a little example, I looked at their CW (Conventional Wisdom) table. They had the surge listed and gave it a neutral, something along the lines that it seemed to be working but the statistics were lies. Lies, or false, either was offensive. Nowhere have I seen proof that the statistics were not true. And even if they weren't, if you are going to make that claim in a news magazine, you had better prove it. Further, I find it a shocking lack of civility and proper respect to frame it in those terms. I kept reading, and there was an article on Hilary Clinton that was positively glowing in its admiring tone. No agenda here, huh. Oh, and by the way, Bernie, every Newsweek talking head I've seen is a white, aging, baby boomer male. But don't get me started on the boomers.

And the last media matter, the ascent of Rick Sanchez. I know he has his detractors, but I have always liked him and followed him since his MSNBC days. After serving as Anderson Cooper's lackey for a while, he now has his own show: "Out in the Open." As I watched him dealing with the topic of immigration recently, I was struck with the possibilities of having a Hispanic or Latino voice in English as the anchor of a national evening news show. After his run in with O'Reilly over the Media Matters thing and his pointed questioning of Ann Coulter about the 9/11 widows, I have to worry, though, that he will be co-opted by CNN. Think Joe Scarborough.

Enough! Good night and good luck.

In Fiction, Veritas

This week's read is Comrades in Miami by Joseph LaTour. It was the newest title by the author I could find. Interestingly enough, as I scanned the publication dates and the covers, the earlier titles indicated he lived in Havana. By the time this particular book was published, 2005, he "resides in Toronto." Any guesses?

On the front cover, Martin Cruz Smith is quoted as saying that LaTour is a master of the Cuban noir, which genre I am sad to say I've only discovered fairly recently. Frankly, I thought the book a bit more Elmore Leonard than Raymond Chandler. It chronicles the travails of one Eliot Steil, supposed Cuban balsero made good, as he gets inveigled into a FBI investigation/spy scam with critical input from the Cuban Miami bureau chief/spymaster. Victoria aka Micaela. Remember the five. There are plenty where they came from. Sorry to be so general, but I'm trying not to give the plot away. It's important here.

As far as I'm concerned, the best parts of the novel rest in its examination of the mindset of the Cuban apparatchiks. I know it's fiction, but to those of us even vaguely familiar, it has the ring of truth.

Here she meditates on "the Chief" as she calls the government head.

He would proclaim over and over again that most Latin American governments were lackeys of US imperialism, Cuba was the finest democracy the world had ever known, the Revolution had the best human rights record on the planet. Victoria and many other well-informed government officials, civil servants, and party bureaucrats watching him from their homes closed their eyes and slapped their foreheads in desperation. Had the man taken leave of his senses? Who was he trying to fool?

Later she comes to her own conclusions

First: the system was falling to pieces in slow mo. Second: Considering his genetic background and the medical care he got, the Chief had probably ten or more years to live and would most likely die of natural causes. Third: He would remain in power until the last day because those who could end his rule overnight would not move a finger. They feared (a) losing their privileges and (b) retaliation for having executed or sent anticommunists to prison. Fourth: her husband was 100% right.

Need I say more?