…an island on the net without a bearded dictator
If this is your first time at Babalu Blog, you’re probably here for the BlogCuba Day project and probably coming via Instapundit or possibly VodkaPundit and I want to thank you for dropping in. So make yourselves at home, sit back and enjoy the excellent reading found in the BlogCuba entries. Do drop by the BlogCuba bloggers’ sites as they are all great writers, superb bloggers and good friends.
Mojitos and Romeo y Julieta’s will be passed out shortly….
Today is BlogCuba Day here at Babalu Blog where you will find some of the blogosphere’s best taking on anything and everything Cuban. All of the entries are excellent, so sit back, have a cafecito, light up your favorite Cuban cigar and let the swaying palms and ocean breezes sing.
So far we have:
*An excellent anti-Castro poster– the first of its kind – by Howard Morseburg of yeoldecodger.
*A pin-striped suited and fedora’d Dean Esmay preparing some concrete galoshes for the pro-Castro left.
*Will from Mire, mi socio cubano, showing us how alike we really are.
*Interrobang!’s Dave Tepper remembering some scared Cuban neighbors.
*Kevin Aylward from Wizbang! making sense on the travel embargo.
*The Sgt Hook’s short fiction on the Cuban’s war against the Spanish.
*Right Thinking’s Lee kicking some pro-Castro behind.
*El Che gets exposed by Scott of Burton Terrace.
*Our delightful southern gal Kelley of Suburban Blight has a beautifully written story of her Spanish teacher.
*If the writing weren’t so darn good, this entry by zombyboy of resurrectionsong could have been written by me. Zomby, you sure you ain’t Cuban?
*Cuban Boliche ala Little Tiny Lies. Yummm….
*A surpirse post by Jose Piedra, who just sent me an email titled “Wishful Thinking.”
*Finally we have Sheila O’Malleys wonderful interpretation of poetic works by Cuban masters.
*Jay of One Fine Jay comments on Castro as a caricature.
Sheila…ayyyy…Sheila…I saved Sheila O’Malley’s of Redheaded Ramblings for the last entry in todays BlogCuba because, well, because she made me cry. Sheila took on the daunting task of writing about Cuban poetry. A difficult task as the words lose some effect in the translation. Suffice it to say she did an incredible job and, as I told her, I felt she was seeing the world through my eyes when I read her post. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
My poems are light green
And flaming red.
When Val came to me for his Blog Cuba project, I was very excited but also a bit daunted. What I know about Cuba is relatively superficial, and almost wholly political. But Val was interested, it seemed to me, in having others discover the heritage of his country, and get to know Cuba in a more personal way, from whatever angle they chose.
I chose the angle of poetry.
A quick note before I begin: I hesitate to make any sweeping generalizations about Cuba, based on the couple of poets I have read thus far. It seems a bit presumptuous. However, there do seem to be recurring themes in these poems, themes which may not be specific to only Cuba, but themes nonetheless.
What do I mean by this?
Just when you though BlogCuba was all about politics and the embargo and Fidel and El Che, Steve H., fellow Miamian..ooops.. I mean Coral Gables-ian…of Little Tiny Lies blesses us with his version of Boliche, a Cuban culinary deliciousness. Order your pressure cookers now…..
INGREDIENTS
1 boliche
3 chorizos
3-4 big peeled potatoes suitable for boiling – red potatoes or Yukon Golds work
2-3 huge onions 1 red bell pepper
4 tbsp. minced garlic
? cup bitter orange marinade (look in the “Hispanic food” section
? cup dry red win3
1 ? cups beef broth
1 ? tsp. cumin
1 ? tsp. oregano
salt and pepper to taste
Take a skinny knife or skewers and poke holes all over the meat to let the juice and seasonings in. Poke holes in the skins of the chorizos. Cut a channel through the center of the roast and stuff the chorizos in. Brown the meat, if you want.
Salt the meat heavily. Add spices, pepper, and garlic. Allow meat to sit so the salt works in.
Put meat, onions, and liquid ingredients in pressure cooker. Cook at 15-16 lbs. pressure for 60 minutes. Cool and open. Add sliced potatoes and sliced red peppers. Cook at 15-16 lbs. pressure for 8 minutes. Remove from stove and allow to cool before opening.
I followed up by slicing the meat and letting it sit in the sauce for a few hours.
The most excellent zombyboy of resurrectionsong gives us this most excellent entry for BlogCuba. Look out Fidel, look out Dixie Chicks, zomby’s here and he ain’t partial to your tune:
Turning Our Eyes to Cuba
For most Americans, Cuba is an afterthought.
Unless it’s in reference to Ricky Ricardo, Cuban cigars, presidential elections, or an occasionally interesting refugee story, Cuba is our unnoticed neighbor. After these decades of our embargo, and after the collapse of communism through most of the developed world, Cuba remainsstubbornly under the heel of a dictator still committed to faith in afailed political philosophy. Our policies have yet to bring about thepolitical changes that we might have hoped for, but the continuation ofsocialist policies have utterly failed Cuba’s citizens. While America
prospers, Cuba slowly fails.
Our embargo has always been a porous one. For those Americans intent on visiting Cuba, a quick stop in Mexico and a short flight will bring them to a country that welcomes their money. Customs agents will even be kind enough to not stamp passports to maintain the polite illusion of the travel ban. Since other nations refuse to recognize the embargo, Cuban trade, as such exists, still flows through other Central and South American nations.
So, for Americans, Cuba is a merely what we learn from former-President Carter’s visit or from a fawning Hollywood star who proclaims Castro to be the kindest or most intelligent or most empathic leader.
Kelley of Suburban Blight fame has graced BlogCuba with a wonderful piece of storytelling – in classic Kelley style – about someone from Cuba who touched her life. As I read this I was there with her and at the end, I was certain that Kelley truly understood the nature of that woman’s pain:
Gisela
In the fall of 1981, I entered the sixth grade. A bookish child by nature, I was exorbitantly thrilled when I learned that this year, we’d be embarking on two new classes: Literature, and the study of a Foreign Language. Literature sounded so grown-up and aloof; I was disappointed to learn that it was still “Reading” dressed up with a fancy name. As for the Foreign Language (always capitalized like that), our small elementary school was lucky enough to have retained a teacher of sterling repute, who would come into our classroom three times a week to give us basic lessons in Spanish. Our teacher’s name was Sen-yora Gar-seeeah.
To a child growing up in Georgia, the very word “Spanish” was tinged with mystery; my vision of “Spanish” included rare spices and beautiful, dark-skinned men with flashing eyes. I was excited that I was to be given a glimpse into the outer world, the world in which people spoke another language. I hardly knew that learning Spanish – the extra class – was supposed to be a chore.
Fellow Florida blogger J. Scott Barnard of Burton Terrace is another one of my daily multi-stops. Here for BlogCuba he shows us just who El Che – lefty poster boy ala capitalism – really was:
Or so says the website, Che-lives. The website proprietor’s sense of irony goes beyond the title. While promoting the legacy of the slain guerilla leader, there’s a buck to be made.
Note: Che-Lives has to finance it’s own web server and without this commercial section, Che-Lives can’t stay online.
You can support the revolution by buying t-shirts, key chains, berets, even a brushed metal red star “zippo styled” lighter. And who wouldn’t want that Che Guevara shot glass to while away their evenings playing quarters in the dorm room under their very own Che poster. Hasta la victoria siempre indeed!
You’ve seen them, I’m sure. All over campuses across the globe, the young flock to the image of Che. What is it about this failed revolutionary that drives the burgeoning adolescent mind to revere? Oh, sorry, I mean the martyr of the revolution. Yes, he lived, he fought, he believed in…something. He died. Brian Peterlinz thinks it more than simply the fervor and passion of a revolutionary that attracts young people to him.
Certainly his good looks didn’t hurt.
Apparently Che was a quick learner too.
He quickly demonstrated the natural ability to take on new tasks that he showed through his life by swiftly rising to the command of one of the rebel columns. (…) His ability to take on various tasks was impressive. [Peterlinz]
So he wasn’t a moron. Except that he really wasn’t that bright either.
Despite later serving as minister of the economy (of Cuba), he had no notion of the most basic ideas of economics and ended up ruining the Central Bank. [Fontaine]
So really his forte was as a fighter, not an administrator.
If you think everyone out in California is Berkely-esque, then you need to meet Lee from Right Thinking from the Left Coast. A man that knows he’s in Liberalafornia, but digs in a tells it like it is. In this post for BlogCuba, he takes on not only the Hollywood set but Castro as well. A Coast to Coast fisking, perse:
What is it about the left that makes them love dictators so much?
President Fidel Castro talked this Wednesday with at about 600 American university students that arrived to Cuba in the cruise Universe Explorer, as part of the project One Semester in the Sea, according to a report by Prensa Latina in Havana.
“In our trips we have never been honored with the presence of a head of State?, affirmed the Executive Dean on board Larry Singell, when thanking the opportunity that the students coming from 239 universities and schools of several states of the Union had of meeting with the Cuban leader.
The professor explained that the project “One Semester in the Sea” has as its main objective to prepare the youths so that they understand the history, the culture, the economy and a lifetime of any region where the cruise docks into.
This is a very important visit for our mission?, assured the academic, when referring to the interest of the participants of the course in knowing how Cubans live and think.
Honored with the presence of a head of state? Is this guy for real? Fidel Castro is one of the most brutal dictators the world has ever known. Can you imagine them being thrilled at an appearance by Robert Mugabe, or Idi Amin, or Adolf Hitler, or Nicolai Ceaucescu?
I’m honored to post this next entry for BlogCuba, a short story, by one of my favorite bloggers, Sgt. Hook. His orders are for us to follow him back in time, to Cuba and meet Jack Rodgers, a soldier, who fell for one of Cuba’s pearls: a Cuban woman:
La Perla del Caribe
Jack Rodgers lay on his cot under a white cotton tent on the outskirts of Montauk, a small town at the eastern most end of Long Island. He laid there wondering how the son of a wealthy Scot shipping merchant, who only four years earlier was studying economics at NYU, could end up in the uniform of an American Rough Rider quarantined in Montauk.
“Who am I kidding?” he pondered, “It was damned easy getting here.”
Dressed in khaki pants, leather riding boots, a navy blue longsleeve cavalry shirt and suspenders, Jack smiled as he remembered the first lecture he attended given by Professor Mart?. He’ll never forget those first words spoken:
You take your rights, you do not beg for them; you do not buy them with tears but with blood.
Kevin, owner and proprietor of Wizbang!, has been very busy lately with the 2003 Weblog Awards but he still had the time to join BlogCuba. And what he has to say makes sense, I may have to rethink my views on travelling to the island:
Engagement
Read this, or as much of it as you can stomach. It’s actually humorous in a totally pathetic way.
It’s clear that the 40+ years of embargo as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union have completly marginalized Cuba to the point that the last thing most people can remember about Cuba is that Eli?n Gonz?les got sent home. That controversy started 4 years ago. Unless you live in South Florida you probably haven’t seen any news about Cuba in years.
The point is travel is still officially banned. Given the history of popular and bloodless revolutions in the last decade, perhaps it’s time to look beyond embargo’s and start engaging again.
Castro is not going to live forever, but communist governments have proven that they can only maintain power in the absence of capitalism or socialism. When populations get a taste for freedom they tend to rise up. This is the big danger for China which is struggling to open markets and change from a command to a market economy while keeping the cork on political freedoms.
Cuba is ripe for revolution from within. The greater our engagement the quicker Castro will fall.
Is that what we are doing?
Not exactly, we are limmiting travel even further.
On my first visit to Dave’s blog Interrobang!, I was shocked to find a picture of Che Guevara. I asked why the heck he would have a picture of El Che on his blog and his response was It isn’t Che, it’s a picture of me. Whew! Interrobang is one of my daily multi-stops in blogdom. His entry for BlogCuba hits home as, I remember the days of checking under the hood and wincing when turning the ignition:
When I was younger, I lived in an apartment building that my grandparents owned. There was a mix of tenants there, some students, some younger couples just starting out, some elderly people on fixed incomes. My parents would look after the place and knew pretty much everybody in the building.
There was one older couple whose name I can’t remember, but I can still see their faces. I was maybe 3, 4 years old, 5 at the most, when I first noticed them. Looking back, I think they must have been in their 50s or 60s, but I was at the age where they were just “old”. They were quite friendly, always giving us a smile whenever we’d cross paths.
In the mornings, however, they would always open the hood of the car, inspect it for a bit, and then slam the hood down, enter the car, and drive off. Every single time.
This continued for several years, smiles, inspections, and all. Finally my parents explained to me that the older couple had escaped from an island called Cuba. Cuba, they told me, was a place that mistreated people badly, and they left in order to start a better life in the States. They were always scared that they would be caught, however, so that’s why they inspected their car every day. They were looking for bombs or traps that the Cubans might have set.
To a young child, it seemed a fantastic story. I imagined Cuba as a magical land with a bad king, a king so evil he couldn’t stand to see his subjects happy. I felt sad for the couple that they always had be careful of the bad king and his men, but I don’t think the reality of communism and what Cuba was really registered with me at the time.
So I think eventually the couple moved away, and some years later we moved in with my grandmother after my grandfather died when I was 11. And during those intervening years I went to Jewish day school and learned about Nazism and fascism, which at the time had shaped recent Jewish history and consciousness a lot more than communism had. There were reports and rumors of Jewish people trapped in the Soviet Union, and throughout the 80s there were efforts to get the Jews of that communist state resettled in Israel.
But believe it or not, until I wrote about that Cuban couple just now, I hadn’t remembered them for decades, nor had I really made the mental connection between their plight and that of the Soviet Jews. What a lost opportunity to explain to a young child what freedom means, and why the human rights abuses under communism are just as terrible as the abuses under fascism.
I don’t remember exactly how I found Will’s blog Mire, but I was damn pleased that I did. Until then, I thought I was the only Cubanito in the blogosphere. Sometimes, it’s good to be wrong:
Commonalities By Will Plasencia
Let’s start with the premise that we are all more similar than we are different from each other. For Cubans, both on the island and in the diaspora, that premise is often ignored, forgotten, or actively campaigned against.
Prior to Val inviting me to participate in the BlogCuba project, he sent me an email commenting on my weblog and saying, “I suspect perhaps our political views may be a little different, but the Cubanismo is all ours.” It is all ours and binds every one of us inextricably. Humor me, please, as I take a stab at deconstructing the differences Cubans are said to face among each other.
[This isn’t meant to be some all-encompassing dialectic, just brief observations from a Hialeah-bred Cubanito with a little extra education tucked under his cinturon. For purposes of clarity, I’ll try to eliminate hyphens here.]