My facebook friend Vanessa Alonso posted this to her blog this morning. Errors in translation are mine alone.

Why do the old men at Versailles yell?
Hand in hand we passed through the doorway. I, an imperialist hoaxster, invited you to drink Bacardi at the preferred site of the "Cuban Mafia" and it didn’t taste like Havana Club to you because the charm is in the land that yields the honey. At the door you told me, “They better not tell me anything!” (It was to be expected when you’ve spent a life watching only Cuban TV) I tenderly made you walk holding my hand and we entered one of the places I love most about Miami: Versailles.

Do you know why the old men at Versailles yell? I had to explain, more than once, to a brilliant man why they do. How to understand it? To a person who lives in and returns to Cuba, how to make him understand?

The old men at Versailles are a generation of destroyed hearts. Of souls in torn into tatters by the time and distance. You can’t be happy when you're missing a very important piece of your life. When you miss the land where you were born. I cry every day of my life for the friends I left behind. What good is the best camera in the world if I can’t photograph the beloved face? What good is it to listen to “Buena Fe” in my car every day if I don’t have someone to sing the songs to? Exile is the absence, sadness, remoteness, the void...The void material things can never fill.

Empty souls return to Cuba speculating that they're doing fine. Inert hearts travel to and from Cuba smuggling nostalgia. But living souls bursting with love for their country wither from the sadness of feeling powerless and forgotten...

And I admire the patriotism of those elders at Versailles so much. Elders who scare me when they grab a microphone and start talking. Sometimes I see myself calling 911. Believe me, that with a microphone in their hand, I'm scared. The fear is of losing them, that their love for Cuba will take their lives. Their material lives, for their spirits have long been wandering the destroyed streets of Havana.

Vanessa Alonso

February 27, 2010