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Triviality triumphs over principle, yet again

People are starved, beaten, oppressed, jailed, and murdered on a daily basis in Cuba by the regime, and all this guy wants to talk about is women's shoes. He's just another of the many exiles and offspring of exiles who don't give a fuck about the liberty of Cubans on the island:

[...] The Ingelmos fled Havana in ’61, leaving behind their shoe factory and store, plus Alejandro’s grandfather’s impressive colonial mansion, set in the hills above the city. Ingelmo says his parents, both pre-teens when they immigrated with their families to Miami, as well as his other relatives, have little interest in revisiting that difficult past. “Nobody really wants to go back,” Ingelmo says. “I think it’s our generation that’s more curious about returning.”

Luckily for them, traveling to Cuba as an American is easier than one might think. Special licenses from the U.S. government are required, but there’s a weekly direct charter flight from JFK. And yet to land at Jose? Marti? International Airport, without cell phone reception (U.S. carriers are forbidden to provide service here) and surrounded by tableaux straight out of a Hollywood director’s fever dream—well-kept midcentury cars, crumbling pastel-colored buildings, cigar-smoking men in dusty fedoras, elderly women with ruby-red flowers tucked behind their ears—is to feel a world away, totally disoriented, and, at least for Ingelmo, totally thrilled.

Born and raised in southern Florida and a proud Cuban-American, Ingelmo has long felt drawn to his family’s homeland,and his desire is all the more understandable given his profession. As the founder of a six-year-old eponymous line of architectural, death-defying women’s heels (beloved by Beyonce?, Emma Stone, and the Kardashians), $295-and-up men’s sneakers (Jay-Z and Robert Downey Jr. are fans), and now bags, the dashing 38-year-old is actually a fourth-generation shoemaker. His great-grandfather was a cobbler in the Spanish countryside; his grandfather Cristobal moved to Cuba in 1917 and built an empire in Havana as a manufacturer of elegant men’s wing tips made out of leather imported from France and produced on machinery shipped in from Boston (according to Ingelmo, the brand was considered “the Ferragamo of Cuba”); his father now runs a lucrative footwear distribution company in Miami. [...]

Maybe he can offer some of his shoes to the Damas de Blanco so when they march and get the shit beaten out of them they'll still look tremendously stylish, just like Kim Kardashian and Beyonce!

Jesus, Mary and Joseph. He should be hanging his fucking head in shame. He (and so many others like him) are enablers of the worst sort, giving the jailers and murderers in power carte blanche to continue their reign of terror.

4 comments to Triviality triumphs over principle, yet again

  • asombra

    George, consider what and whom this guy lives off. You think he wants to be grouped with "those people"? What would the Hollywood in-crowd think? He may well hope to parlay the Beyonce connection into a sale to a certain Mrs. Obama. Besides, Cubans ARE trivial, or haven't you noticed?

  • No wonder Beyonce and Jay-Z like his shoes! He's obviously a fellow Non-white!

  • asombra

    Wait, you mean Gloria Estefan doesn't wear his shoes? She must be slipping.

  • okay this is the sentence that really pissed me off: "(The location is so airy, it’s said that during the revolution, Che Guevara, a life-long asthmatic, contemplated making the house his home base, but that Ingelmo’s grandfather, still living on the property at the time, refused to give it up.) As if Che's victims had a choice whether or not live bullets were loaded when they faced the firing squad, as if, the tens and tens of thousands of Cubans forced out of thir homes and businesses had a choice. And he's taking his parents, so what? They to can forget and forgive? Oh, and spend money in Cuba to prop up the regime. How fashionable.