asombra

This is not a first offense, but a repetition and confirmation of an old one.

In 1992, the small backwater town of Láncara in Galicia (in northwestern Spain), where Fidel Castro’s brutish father Angel was born in 1875, officially named Fidel “Hijo Predilecto” (favorite son) and invited him to visit. The town’s mayor at the time was a socialist, which obviously fits, but the main Spanish and Galician figure in the business was Manuel Fraga, a major right-wing politician both under and after Franco, who had a soft spot for Fidel (not unlike Franco himself, who was also from Galicia). Fidel came over to pick up his honorary title in his customary costume, publicly praised his friend Fraga, and everybody had a great old time.

Now, the town’s current mayor, also a socialist, with the backing of the top political figure in Galicia (who belongs to the ostensibly right-wing Partido Popular), has officially named Raúl Castro “Hijo Adoptivo” (adopted son). The measure was put to a vote in Láncara and was approved unanimously. The mayor is trying to get Raúl (or at least another family member like his daughter Mariela) to come and visit like Fidel did previously. He also wants to turn the house (more like a shack) where Angel Castro was born into a museum (the property still belongs to the Castro family). The old homestead, by the way, bears a plaque placed on it in 1992 that reads ““Aquí nació en 1875 Ángel Castro Argiz, gallego que emigró a Cuba en donde plantó árboles que aún florecen” (Here in 1875 was born Angel Castro Argiz, a Galician who emigrated to Cuba, where he planted trees that are still flowering).

The only glimmer of respectability or decency in all of this is that the mayor openly admits it is a ploy calculated to drum up tourism to Láncara, which is facing hard times economically. He also claims not to share the ideology of the Castro regime. In other words, presumably this is nothing political, just business.

I suppose this distinctly distasteful, not to say contemptible, incident is ultimately inconsequential, certainly in and of itself. However, it is quite representative of a much bigger and far more serious problem, not to say scandal: the longstanding collaboration of Spain, Cuba’s “mother,” with the totalitarian Castro tyranny and its enabling thereof. The fact that such collusion actually has a “sentimental” component along with the obvious profit motive makes it even more repugnant.

There’s absolutely nothing new or unusual here, not just for Spain but for the world in general, which makes such amoral and tawdry opportunism even more depressing. Needless to say, the mayor in question knows he can get away with this easily enough, whereas it is highly unlikely that he would have gone for something truly risky PC-wise. Alas, that’s always been a major part of the Cuba problem: it’s too safe to dance with the devil.

Postscript: In 2005, while still the No. 2 figure in Cuba, Raúl Castro visited Láncara with his son Alejandro and the goonish grandson that serves as his bodyguard. When the recently proposed honorary title of “Adopted Son” for Raúl was brought to a vote before the municipal council of Láncara (population less than 3000) by its socialist mayor, even the supposed opposition members (belonging to the Partido Popular) approved it. There was some lip service on the side to the effect that this did not constitute approval of the Castro regime, but at best these people have things very conveniently compartmentalized: this is first and foremost about promoting revenues from tourism, and the nature of the honoree is a separate and effectively irrelevant matter. It’s not moral relativism; it’s simply amoral opportunism.

While working on a post about La Marquesa of Havana, I came across a document I had never heard of which seemed worth sharing. It is a public letter to Fidel Castro from the early days of the “revolution,” written by or attributed to María Luisa Gómez-Mena y Villa, Countess de Revilla de Camargo, from her exile in Spain. The lady in question (born around 1880, died 1963) was a Cuban aristocrat and philanthropist whose Havana mansion was confiscated by the regime (it is now a museum of decorative arts). The letter was apparently initially published in Miami in a Cuban exile periodical, and I found it here with additional information here.

Unfortunately, any translation of the letter will obscure certain nuances and dilute its full flavor, so those who can read Spanish should certainly go with the original in the above link. My translation follows with some explanatory footnotes at the end:

Doctor¹ Fidel Castro:

Notice that I address you as “doctor” instead of “señor.” And don’t be surprised. I am prepared to call you “Premier,” “Comandante,” “President” and all things at which, somehow, “one arrives.” But I would never call you “señor,” because one does not “arrive” at that, one is born to it. And you were not born a señor, doctor. That last comma explains everything; from your congenital inferiority to your destruction of our country. Because commas, doctor, have a great deal of importance in our language; that same language you mangle and destroy with the same cruelty with which you destroy and mangle everything else. But note that a misplaced comma can transform not only grammar but history, so that if instead of saying “and you were not born señor, doctor” I said “and not you, you were born señor, doctor,” I would be offending señores, Cuba and God, Our Lord (Nuestro Señor).

And now, with the commas and periods in their place, let us move on to a topic that infuriates you and entertains and even amuses me: the society pages.

The other evening you tore into those who write them and into society. Especially society. It is understandable: that is the only “estate” that has been destroyed that would not involve your family.

Oh, that hatred of yours against society! It is irreconcilable. How can one go through life carrying so much hate? It is incomprehensible. And even more so in someone—like you—who has had to climb, because you have gotten everything by climbing. Wasn’t carrying that hate too heavy for you? Didn’t it get in the way? Foolish question. It did not get in your way. If it had, you would have suppressed it. As you have suppressed everything that was in your way. From Camilo Cienfuegos² to parental rights, which, in fact, are already suppressed, or transferred to the state as a “social function.”

You, doctor, hate everything. But it makes sense: you hate what you never had, and you never had anything. If I did not find you so repugnant you would inspire in me profound pity and even compassion. If you could see yourself! You are so abominable! You are so repulsive that you have managed to make humanity feel for you what you have always felt for humanity: disgust, revulsion and contempt.

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A guest post by Asombra:

La Marquesa de La Habana

Marquesa (marquise) is a title of nobility which ranks between a countess and a duchess. There were actually nobles in Cuba, whose titles came from the Spanish crown, some of which were rather poetic (like el Conde de Pozos Dulces). The popular street character known as La Marquesa de La Habana, however, was something else. I’d heard of her before as the female counterpart of the contemporary and much more famous Havana “character” the Caballero de París (Gentleman of Paris), but I knew little else. Recently, I happened to come across more detailed information, which led me to online sources here and here.

Her real name was Isabel Veitia (or Veitía). Reportedly, she once worked as a cook for the very aristocratic María Luisa Gómez-Mena y Villa, Condesa de Revilla de Camargo (a countess whose Havana mansion wound up, of course, confiscated by the “revolution”). That could have given her the idea to adopt the persona of “la marquesa” later on. Apparently, she had a disabled husband and a daughter with special needs, meaning she had to bring home the bacon, and evidently becoming “la marquesa” did the trick.

She was short and slight, ever smiling, with dainty mannerisms like constantly fanning herself, and gotten up in a distinctive ensemble: a small purple hat with a little tulle veil, an old mantilla (shawl) over a ladylike dress, a shiny black purse, and eye-catching gold shoes. She had a regular route, including dropping by an insurance firm which paid her to go get café con leche and buttered bread for the staff, strategic stops at select movie theaters and popular gathering places, and strolling through Havana’s Central Park, where tourists with cameras were likely to go for a photo-op. La marquesa was happy to oblige, for a fee, but she wouldn’t take coins: “Billetes, sólo billetes! Yo soy una marquesa! Mi condición no me permite aceptar monedas” (Bills, only bills! I am a marquise! My status doesn’t allow me to accept coins). Her disarming delivery worked like a charm.

Her heyday, like that of the Caballero de París, was during Cuba’s Golden Age, the 1950s, although both of them lived well into the Castro era (she is said to have died in the late 1970s). It is not clear if she was mildly demented, harmlessly delusional or, more likely, a creative and clever panhandler. Unlike the courtly Caballero, who was a Spanish immigrant, la marquesa was quite black. The significance of that, to me, is the contrast she provides to the current gaggle of coarse and cartoonish photo-op magnets in Havana, the garishly grotesque Mammy brigade. The marquesa at least posed as an upper-class lady, not some heavy-handed and demeaning throwback to colonial slavery days.

Alas, in a way, this is a fitting metaphor for a formerly grand lady indeed, Havana, now a mostly pestilent and crumbling ruin reduced to serving as a perversely picturesque backdrop for amoral, hypocritical tourists and cretinous foreign celebrities. I’m pretty sure that la marquesa was happier in the “bad old days” than she would be now in Cuba, where being a fine lady is definitely not the order of the day, degeneracy rules, and the ruling class has no class at all.