I had to get rid of him. Very sad. Hope Spuds makes his way in the world.
Today I must sign off, as we head back in the States to research and interview on the homeland, take a hot shower and visit an ATM.
Just when it was getting exciting. Don't worry, we'll be back soon with more great stuff for the next leg. A few cliffhangers for you...
The Saltwater Cowboy and Captain Chavez survived deserted islands and open seas to appear out of nowhere in Mexico. Will they survive Spring Break Cancun 2007?
Castro is back on his feet, to everyone's surprise. Will he survive to see the brothers? Will he don his cowboy hat one last time?
Jack and Ed discovered the first person in Havana who remembers their father. Will this lead them down a path of wonder, or will it, like many things in Cuba, be a confusing dead end.
I'd tell you if I knew, but this is real time folks. Or at least as soon as I can find an internet connection to update the blog.
Hope you enjoyed,
-Ed
I suppose you can chalk it up to his superman complex—I’m starting to believe he just might be.
]]>The Saltwater Cowboy looks pretty damn good.
We have a new crew member, Tom, who sailed with Capitan Chavez up from Belize, successfully, a 45 hour trip. This leg of the adventure is almost over, but next season, you will find out if the Saltwater Cowboy is really up to the test.
I am excited. Until then, Captain Chavez has decided to charter her out for day sails during Spring Break. Perhaps he has found his calling. Instead of Captain Chavez we will have to call him, Captain Cancun. [shout it like "Captain Caveman" to truly understand]
“Al pasar por Houston (Texas), Fidel se encontró con Raúl Castro, que le esperaba para mantener una conversación privada. Era inminente una crisis en el Caribe. Un grupo de expedicionarios había sido capturado al desembarcar en las costas de Panamá con el plan de provocar una rebelión, y entre ellos había varios cubanos.”
That’s all it says about Texas, just one sentence in the life of Fidel. Hopefully we can prove that it deserves at least three or four sentences, perhaps even a full paragraph. That would make me happy.
]]>Word is that he is confined to a bed, with tubes in him. He is not in a coma, but cannot communicate, as the wounds did not heal. He will die any day, perhaps any hour.
He had a surgery to remove a section of intestine, and had a replacement from China. It did not work. The second replacement, the one he currently has, is from Spain, and was the result of the recent surgery by the Spanish doctor. However, many people who have this surgery, need to have a piece of the intestine outside of the abdominal wall connecting to a bag which collects waste matter. Fidel refused this, believing he is different than the normal human, and that was his mistake.
When he is gone…
]]> People will not go crazy here, they will not immediately embrace capitalism, and they will not freak out. They are prepared, and perhaps his prolonged sickness has eased the transition. Many people love Fidel, many hate him, all have a love/hate for him. It’s confusing, like most things here. Even getting an ice cream cone at the famous Coppelia is mind boggling. Those who will be happy when Fidel is gone will not show it, not even to their friends, because the fear that they could lose their job. All jobs here are run by the government, and if you lose your job, the pittance you are paid becomes nothing. We know one highly educated man who requested to go to the USA, and because of this they stripped him of his job – one that would earn him six figures in the US, but of course here he gets less than a taxi driver. They call it the inverted pyramid of socioeconomics. But now, he is not allowed to practice, simply because he requested to visit the USA, and must look for other sources of income.People like him will most likely be happy to have the bearded one gone, however, the government is entrenched, and will change slowly, if at all.
]]>
I had to get rid of him. Very sad. Hope Spuds makes his way in the world.
I never thought I’d say it, but it was nice to see commercials again. I haven’t seen a commercial in two months.
]]> More apropos was the news about Castro afterwards. It made me realize how no one knows what is going on. They interviewed people in little Havana, at the original Versailles restaurant on 8th street in Miami. So first off, the test group is biased. The two quotes were:“They hide him, just like the soviets.”
“He’s probably already dead.”
No news there. I don’t see how they would get news, because no one here has a clue what is going on.
Univision reported that Castro’s sutures had not healed from his intestine surgery. This is not surprising, since older people have more difficulty healing.
And the Beegees. Cubans love the Beegees. When I had a beard, a number of Cubans told me I looked like a Gibb. Stayin’ Alive in Cuba,
Ed
We hung out with Fiff and her grandson, Abdul, who prefers Apples to PCs.
Verera lays it out when he sings. He tells about the bad as well as the good and has been thrown in jail for it twice. This is where we have an advantage over Communism—we tend not to throw our musicians or artists in jail. Once we start to do that, we will lose our advantage.
Verera wears only black and sings about the downtrodden. Sound familiar? He certainly isn’t an MTV pretty musician. He is not skinny and he is not tall, and you would recognize him in the crowd if I told you to look for the gnome.
Searching for this cowboy hat his been practically impossible, yet the image behind Verera was prophetic. Hopefully….
Perhaps the most comical experience of the trip came when a lunatic spectator rushed the stage. He was a big guy with Carrot-top hair. On stage he turned to the audience and danced. Security ran to tackle him, and he fell out like a ragdoll, so they had to drag him by his hands and feet off the stage. A few seconds after the incident, the rear projection screens behind Verera showed silhouettes of security running after the loco backstage, then a quick scuffle. Hilarious.
It was nice, as Jack said, to listen to some non Salsa or Son or Reaggaton music for once.
We continued this the second night at the National Ballet.
We attended the ballet for free because our Cuban friend has ballet connections, but Cubans normally pay 15 Cuban pesos, and tourists pay 15 convertibles. This is a difference of about $14.40. Getting tickets isn’t easy, through, as there is no ticket booth, and people have to deal with a strange guy who works in the book store. Luckily we didn’t have to figure anything out that time.
The theater is world class, with four or five levels above the floor. The red chairs were almost full with smartly dressed Cubans and half-ass dressed tourists. We saw three different shows. A single dancer, two dances, and a finale of seven dancers, doing a bawdy, cliffnotes, interpretation of Carmen. In a country where everyone can dance, it goes without saying that Cuban ballet is good. They danced to speakers and modern music, except for Carmen. The second chapter was interesting, with the two men interpreting a dance about a businessman struggling to carry his briefcase—the other dancer—to work, then struggling at work, then struggling to leave. By the end, his briefcase bests him, and he becomes the briefcase.
The ballet audience was more informal than one you might see in Houston or Chicago, but many of the girls did have fancy shoes, dresses, and accessories. I still can’t figure out how the Cubans are able to dress like they do. They dress far better than people in Central America, and far far better than the Chinese, who profess the same governmental system yet have a far better economy than the Cubans. Yet, in a crowd, the Cuban will stand out.
This banner is at the Museum of the Revolution, which chronicles the obvious with abundant information, however spotty or untrue that information sometimes seems—the museum contradicts itself in areas and tends to gloss over incidents like the Cuban Missile Crisis—but the amount of information and interesting photos makes it worthwhile.
Hats! Camilo Cienfuegos’ hat and Che’s beret.
Speaking of Fidel, he oddly looks like Jack in the below picture.
Last night we reunited with Magdiel. He and Asori and another guy where having a show of some of their experimental film in the lobby of a hotel in Miramar. It was a real art show, complete with people standing around ignoring the art in favor of the alcohol, which was brought around by a waiter. The film was being shown on flatscreen tvs, of which there were maybe six or seven all along one side of the wall. The building could have easily been in the states.
Afterwards we went with Magdiel and his girlfriend to the Gato Tuerto (one eyed cat), for a couple beers. It looked like a cool place, but we were too early for the show. Then we went to a place called Turf, like the good old Turf tavern where I worked in Oxford. It was actually a real bar, unlike anything we’ve seen so far. They played music and not just salsa. They played Madonna, the Police, Michael Jackson, and the Cubans had no trouble switching up their dance styles. It was located next to a student dorm for the University of Havana.
We met with the rice researcher. He had not heard of Blue Ribbon, but did know quite a bit about the rice industry in the US, and had in fact visited Beaumont, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Sacramento California, which is apparently a big rice producer. He was more on the research of agriculture than the business side, which is perhaps why he didn’t know. Funny thing – the researcher has a chauffeur but not a telephone, so he gave us his chauffeur’s home phone in case we need to get in touch.
Then we went to Lazaro and Christina’s for Red Snapper, or Pargo, as they call it here. It was tasty.
Today for breakfast, I am eating frosted flakes, orange soda, and coffee. It is quite scrumptious.
An online article from a US paper says young Cuban-Americans are becoming more liberal in their view towards Cuba / US relations. By “liberal,” the journalist means that they want to share cultures and open up the trading between the countries...
“In America,” another Cuban father told us, “there is more opportunity for people, no matter where they come from.”
Cubans worry about the Miami Cubans. These are the conservative types who are the parents of the liberals the above article discusses. Cubans here believe that, as soon as the blockade is over and Fidel is gone, the Miami Cubans will come take over with their own government and reclaim all the land and houses.
Perhaps that is their dream or intention, but I doubt their ability. Those wish to do that are the old guard. The Cubans who came to Miami in the fifties, and even the seventies and eighties, are old and have children born in the US. They are established. Why would they return and start all over again, again? My cousin has three kids with a girl of Miami Cuban heritage. They are both lawyers and live in north Florida. They aren’t going to give up their lives in the States to come rebuild this torn country. Anyone in this position, who is a community builder, is building a community in the USA. The best, but understandably difficult idea, is to forget the past, and go forward with an open future.
]]>“Azucar,” I asked at a market. The sent me to a bodega. “Azucar,” I asked there. No. Six places later and nobody had sugar. This is Cuba, the land of sugar, which makes rum, which makes mojitos, which makes more Cubans. Hershey used to have a large factory here, and the sugar cane harvesting time is a national event. But nobody has sugar, and if even if we found it, it would be from the “bolsa negro,” the black market.
What we get in the States, refined sugar or, white sugar, is more expensive here. They have raw sugar, which ironically is in style in the US coffee craze, so more expensive there. Each family gets a bit of sugar on their ration card, but not much. Nothing on the ration card could support the diet of one person, let alone an entire family, and each family gets one ration book, whether they are three or thirteen. And don’t expect meat, especially cow meat, which is reserved for the tourist restaurants and paladars - prohibitively expensive to Cubans.
In the end, we actually borrowed a cup of sugar from our neighbors.
Some people might say, well, if they eat the chicken then I guess it’s ok. But they don’t eat the chicken. “We put it on the corner of an intersection,” says Osvaldo, 30, the Santaria priest, “for cleanliness.” This seems counterintuitive, throwing a dead bird on the sidewalk to clean it. Among the other diseases birds carry, the recent “bird flu” comes to mind. Which brings up the question, listen to the science, or believe in the magic?
The chicken was oddly peaceful throughout the affair, which I will refrain from describing in detail because you might stop reading and I don’t’ want to spoil the film. Though we will not be able to appease the animal rights activists by putting, “no chickens were harmed during the making of this film,” because one chicken was. Harmed to death. But this is their belief, so in this case, siding with the animal rights activists is small minded and ethnocentric. Though you do have to draw the line somewhere, as one cannot help but be disturbed by the clitoral removal surgeries in certain cultures. Personally, I draw the line somewhere between chicken and clitoris, closer to the chicken side.
The Priest chanted in rapid Spanish, I couldn’t quite understand what he was doing, but it sounded like he was stating one of those chain of decedents, “so and so begot so and so begot so and so etc.” He lit candles and spoke with the gods, of which there are four main ones. He spoke with his main god, and threw four little coconut discs, cut from a coconut. Depending if how many landed with the white meat part up versus the brown wood part was the god’s response.
“The gods will not put things in your hands,” his wife said, “but they can lead you in the right direction.”
The ritual we did was to ask the spirits for help with our project. Did it help, well, today, one day later, we found help from a rice historian, and a woman who ran the national archives here in Havana for 38 years - a self labeled “raton archivo,” or, “archive rat.” These are hopeful breakthroughs after a bit of a drought. I’m not saying they are because of the ritual, but the timing is interesting, no?
I won’t tell you what became of the ritual, because that would also be a film spoiler. All I will say is that it was very surprising, even goose bump raising. Below Jack and I pose with our Santería hats on.
Many more Cubans than one might think practice one of these religions, which are all rooted in an African, Catholic marriage. Each African god corresponds to a catholic saint, yet Santeria is considered polytheistic. There is a large Santeria population in New Orleans, some call it voodoo, and those who wear all white are priests of this religion. Though you have to make sure they are not witch priests, who practice the black magic and curse people. Like anything there is good and bad. Eventually, it is said, those priest who practice it for things like making money will eventually have all that evil energy turned back on them. I wonder if we have that belief for all those preachers in the US who are banking on money from their congregations, pressing down the gas pedals of their Rolls Royces with their crocodile shoes.