Cuban Stories and other Tales

Dear Readers,

I have been fine tuning five new stories since the last posting (The Obnoxious Cuban), and will be uploading them to the blog soon.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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During the time when I was on vacation from being Cuban, I visited Miami several times, to see friends and relatives. These short visits, usually a week long, provided me with “exposure” to Cuban exiled culture, in its “natural habitat.” But, as an "outsider" my perspective of Cuban things was slightly wider than when I was officially Cuban all the time. My critical eye was carefully tuned! On one of these trips, I was forced to analyze a very Cuban character trait, that of the “Obnoxious Cuban.” Indirectly, this process also forced me to look at my views on political correctness.

As a liberal I looked at the Obnoxious Cuban as a serious problem, and one of the things that had turned me off to Cubans. I looked at these individuals with a very superficial eye, reacting almost instinctively based on what I later realized was my unconscious adaptation of political correctness. I, a Cuban exile, a person who escaped from the country that unleashed political correctness in Latin America, had in the process of assimilating into American culture, become politically correct. I did not go around thinking or claiming to be politically correct, because during that time the most important belief I held was that I was an open minded, objective and independent thinker, a person who would never fall under the spell of any one ideology. I was in other words, flexible and open minded as long as my opponents where not conservatives.

Conservatives everyone knew were intellectually deficient, unworthy of respect, racist, fascist and not to be taken too seriously. I was so liberal, and so comfortable among liberals, that I had become close-minded to the rest of the world. I was Holier that holy, believing that the “best people” where those who held liberal leaning ideas. It is ironic that the very ideology that professes to be “open minded” takes many of its followers and makes them into drones. The appeal of helping the underdog, saving the needy, fighting oppression, unmasking injustice, and being on the side of the poor, is a maternal and primal instinct shared by men and women all over the world, and one that appeals with great force to the young. The desires to right these wrongs are universal. In centuries past this was manifested via religious zealotry, then it shifted to communism and now it’s neo liberalism, and its popular cousin “humanism”. Some of the greatest social movements in history have taken place due to the human desire to radically improve the lives of the underdog! But, often in the past, those who disagreed with the “revolutionary” ideologies of the day were always ostracized, persecuted and killed. With few historical exceptions, the “angels of change” and the "champions of the people" become the bloody murderers of innocent women and children.

There is a misconception that claims that the improvement of the human condition always follows a forward moving linear timeline. That is, that which is proposed today is always superior than that which was proposed yesterday, and that which will come tomorrow will be better than what we have today! This natural optimism does not always hold water. Think of the end of the Roman Empire and its aftermath. Think of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Think of the fall of Jerusalem. Think of the destruction of the Inca Empire. Think of the downfall of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe. If you think that on every of these instances the future brought progress, more freedom and an expansion of culture, you are living in another planet! In the case of Rome, Western civilization took about 1,000 years to recover. In the case of Russia, it took almost 75 years. In the case of the fall of Jerusalem, the Jews are still, to this day recovering from that catastrophe! Yes, in theory the future “repairs the mistakes of the past,” but at what cost and after how many generations? For Cuba, Castro’s “progress” has set Cuba back at least 50 years, and at the cost of three generations!

We must therefore, never assume that social theories, political movements, or calls to “change the system” are valid, or will actually improve the status quo, because they are “new ideas,” or because they are proposed by “young energetic visionaries.” But, approaching this balance is “counter intuitive” behavior, and something difficult to act on because we have a strong need to believe that “tomorrow will always be better.” The liberals’ claim that they are the ones “pushing the limits in order to have a better and progressive tomorrow,” goes along with this “natural tendency.” While conservatives, by having the very label “conservative” are made out to stand for “the status quo, the preservers of the past, the supporters of archaic groups, and the ones standing in the way of progress.”

The problem that we have today is that sometime during the early part of the 20th. century men like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tze Tung rationalized these primal instincts and group behaviors into political theories and sociological methodologies that can now be used to manipulate people who never heard of Hitler, Stalin or Mao. Mass communications, standardized curriculums, a monolithic entertainment industry and political parties controlled by intellectual elites, choreograph public opinion and mass behaviors. Few recall that Hitler, Stalin and Mao, and their ideological descendants are responsible for the deaths of more than 250 million people. All done in the name of defending the rights of the underdog, the poor and the oppressed. These magnificent geniuses of evil are now rarely mentioned, but their tools of mass control are in wide use. Their theories today are no longer only found in books like Che Guevara’s manual for revolutionaries, the Humanist Manifesto, or Saul Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals, but in hundreds of books cloaked with very innocent titles, used at universities around the world as teaching tools for people precisely at the age when they are most susceptible to accept a theory that proposes peace, humanism and a world order based on justice, dignity and love. Who in their right mind would be opposed to these things, unless they realized that these labels hide deep lies designed to obtain raw political power and mass manipulation?

We seem to be in a transitional period, where few see these things for what they are, and instead succumb like a pack of dogs to certain “hot key” words and slogans that when voiced, rouse us up as if we were being thrown bones. The ironic part about this phenomenon is that like in a cult, while brainwashed, the American liberal will swear on his/her mother that they are not brainwashed. Because, part of the brainwashing is to say and believe that they are not! Others can be brainwashed, especially conservatives, but liberals honestly believe they cannot be brainwashed because they hold a piece of the “real truth,” and they are "too smart" to be brainwashed!

It never occurs to liberals that conservatives are also interested in helping the poor, liberating the oppressed, fighting injustice, working for progressive ideas, opposing racism, and sacrificing to make a better world. This could never be accepted, because if it were, it would undermine the entire set of sociological and psychological controls that keep liberals “fighting for the right causes.” They say: "We are on the side of “Humanist” causes. We are opposed to “racism.” We are the only ones interested in protecting the “environment.” We can see the real causes of poverty." And, the list goes on, automatically convincing the ignorant that anyone who opposes them is by default “against humanity, a racist and an ignoramus intent on destroying the environment!” This simplistic view of politics was my view of politics. And, like a good liberal I ardently claimed I was not brainwashed, until I met an “Obnoxious Cuban,” the most unlikely philosopher I’ve ever met.

Often, an “Obnoxious Cuban” is also a good example of a Hispanic conservative. A man not afraid to discuss complex political ideas, while listening to Salsa, drinking a beer and puffing on a cigar. A man capable of discussing the black Panther Movement, the joys of sex and the balance of payments all in the same sentence. But, because of his experiences with communism, this is the type of man whose radar screen is well tuned and capable of identifying the type of mass political manipulations previously discussed, and prevalent in today's society. However, this type of conservative shares few social characteristics with his American cousins, disconnecting him from the mainstream of acceptable conservative circles. This disconnect guarantees that his often accurate social observations are rarely taken for serious. American conservatives after all are often uncomfortable discussing sex, while discussing the balance of payments! The moral agenda of the Anglo-Saxon American conservative, which equates sex of the hetero or homosexual type with filth, immorality, decadence and some form of social illness does not bode well with healthy Cubans famous for their well developed libidos, and specially with an "Obnoxious Cuban." So, as strange as this may sound, a conservative Cuban, is not exactly a natural ally of an American conservative!

So, as a liberal, looking for some time off from the snow and cold of the northeast, I headed to Miami, and while there I visited my friend Kiko Buendia.

The day after I saw the Orange Bowl for the first time, my friend Kiko took me sightseeing around Miami. Kiko insisted on stopping to see two old friends of his father from New York City who were now living in Little Havana. Enrique and Pablo were expatriates from Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. Enrique had arrived from Cuba, where he was a student at the University of Havana in the mid sixties, worked for the New York Times distribution center as a driver, and by 1972 had saved enough money to open a small Bodega where he prospered during the time Washington Heights was a thriving Cuban neighborhood. Enrique, the man who was going to be a geologist in Cuba, found himself selling bananas in New York City because one day he questioned Fidel Castro’s wisdom in drilling for gas in the peaks of the Sierra Maestra. Enrique was a mild mannered man who carefully thought out his words and made sure he understood who he was speaking with prior to letting his opinions known. He was, as I was later told by his friend Pablo, “un hombre de buena precencia, pero un poco timido.” Or, a man who made a good impression, but a bit on the timid side.

On the other hand, Pablo was a typical rowdy obnoxious extroverted Cuban from Pinar del Rio, who wore white patent leather shoes, black pants, white polyester leisure shirts, and smoked a long cigar when he wasn’t drinking a beer. Having been a political prisoner in one of Castro’s jails for seven years, his face had that indescribable air often found in men whose suffering have aged them beyond their years. When Pablo spoke it seemed that his words rhymed with a fast Cha Cha Cha, and since he did not appear to reflect very much about what he said, he simply gave the impression that he spoke directly from his brain, but never listened. Whenever he was asked a mundane question, his responses regularly began with a sexually flavored comment, or something so outrageous as to extract pure amazement from his listeners. But, in fact Pablo did pause at slight unnoticeable intervals, to gauge his surroundings and determine if those around him where still trying to figure him out, or if they had reached that state of confusion he so much enjoyed seeing. If they were still trying to figure him out, he would inject one or two rational and intelligent comments, which then extracted a sign of relief from his victims, causing them to engage him in what they thought would lead to a more dignified and socially accepted conversation. This is exactly what Pablo wanted, and he would then take the opportunity to respond with even more outrageous and obnoxious social and political comments building a crescendo of disbelief and discomfort in those around him. When he was satisfied with the state of discomfort and shock in the faces of his victims he would make an exit by telling everyone that he was very sorry, but he had to leave in order to meet an old friend.

I was a victim of Pablo the day my friend Kiko took me to meet him and Enrique at what turned out to be a typically Cuban roasted pig party in the heart of Little Havana. I could not understand why Kiko wanted me to meet Pablo, and how someone like Enrique could be a close friend of someone like Pablo. These guys personalities seemed like oil and vinegar. By the end of the day though, this obnoxious rowdy Cuban turned out to be something very different than I expected.

After a short drive, which took us past a street full of monuments honoring Cuban exiles and the Bay of Pigs Invasion, we arrived at an impressive Spanish styled house in a well-kept section of Little Havana, where our hostess, an aristocratic Cuban widow of Portuguese ancestry happily greeted us. After the customary hugs, this proud lady explained how most of the seeds for the fruit trees in her large yard had been smuggled out of Cuba in the brassieres of old exiled ladies. Indeed the yard, as seen from her living room, was impressive and full or Cuban fruit trees rarely seen outside of Florida. Echoing in the background, an old 33 rpm record of the “Trio Los Matamoros” played “Frutas del Caney” over tiny loudspeakers. As I walked through the house, I remember whispering to my friend Kiko, “what is this, a meeting of Cuban tropical fruit experts?”

When we finally got to the ample yard, we noticed men and women mostly in their late 50’s and early 60’s mingling and drinking. The mixing took the typical animated Cuban fashion, which is often misunderstood by outsiders as an angry mob trying to out shout one another. In the middle of the yard several older guys played Dominoes on a tiny table by the shade of a large Avocado tree. Being the youngest man in the party, I tried to be very observant of what was going on and what was being said. In many ways the Cubans leave the Italians far behind in their ability to communicate with exaggerated facial gestures, touching one another, and flapping hands. Pablo who due to his dress, manner of speech, and body language I believed to be a perturbed man, seemed to be holding court with a group of men who were drinking Cuba Libres, while he poured himself a tall glass of pure dark Bacardi rum. To my surprise, those around him, who apparently knew him well, treated him with patience and seemed interested in what he was saying.

“So you were there in 1968, and again in 1972”, Pablo asked a tall black Cuban named Joseito. “Si”, said Joseito. “In 1968 I went with my uncle Lazaro. We went to setup a small farm near El Cibao, and I was shocked by the backwardness and poverty I saw. I never imagined that there could be so much corruption, prostitution and rampant stealing as I saw there. Nothing in the most remote wilderness of Oriente, even comes close. When I returned in 1972 it was to help my uncle and his family leave because on top of it they hate Cubans and made his life miserable during the four years he was there.” “The only thing in common we have with these people is the Spanish language”, said another man as he ate a ham croquette he had taken from the beutifully laid out appetizers’ table.

“When we came from Cuba we thought everyone who spoke Spanish was like us. We thought we shared the same values, the same social and class expectations, and we thought we could open our doors to them with confidence. This was a bitter mistake.” Pepin, a young Americanized looking man and also an ex-New Yorker, gave his opinion. “There isn’t one Dominican that can be trusted. They’re all connivers. They first come as the sweetest most innocent people in the world to gain your confidence. Then when you think you can trust them, they’ll steal everything you have, and then they look at you in the face without any guilt or remorse.” Joseito added, “while we try to succeed based on hard work, they just look for ways to cheat, steal, and break every rule in the book.”

“The death of a Cuban is to go into business with a Dominican, or to allow one into his house.” Concluded an old Cuban man who was quietly listening in the background. He then asked Pablo, “tell them about Washington Heights!”

“They came like the plague” said Pablo. “We had been living there in peace for years. It was never a paradise, but everyone knew everybody, and there was not much crime. Most of the businesses were Cuban and we got along fine with the Puerto Ricans. The minute they started to arrive, drugs, crime, and fear began to creep in. Slowly the Cuban stores started to get hit by petty Dominican criminals. Even the Puerto Ricans, who were there before all of us, began to fear going out at night. The Dominicans would go into a Bodega and stab the owner for a meager $40 dollars! They’d wait on the street corners on Friday afternoons knowing people had gotten paid, and would rob the women. It became unsafe to keep a decent car in the street, because within hours they’d strip it. After a couple of years, when their numbers grew, and their understanding of American police tactics increased, they began to target most Cuban businesses for extortion and then offered to buy them out for insultingly low prices. Not only did they learn how to manipulate New York City laws, they also learned effective Mafia tactics. Those people who could not protect themselves against this type of black mail, had to leave in fear they’d be killed. When the sound of Merengue arrived in an apartment building, it was the end for decent people. And that’s how they established themselves in the area. Now they dominate Washington Heights, and the Cubans and Puerto Ricans are mostly gone.”

Pablo’s audience listened attentively as he continued, “in 1983 I walked into Enrique’s Bodega and I found him on the floor with a knife sticking out of his back. That was the first time I had ever entered his Bodega, but by then that kind of thing was so common that I immediately knew what had happened. I dragged him into my car and drove him straight to the hospital where they said that in another five minutes he would have been dead. Not a single Dominican who was standing in front of the Bodega offered to help, and when I came back to lock the place up, three quarters of the stuff had been looted.

While Enrique recovered we became friends, and I learned that he knew the man who had stabbed him. It was a Dominican hoodlum nicknamed “El Grillo,” the cricket, who had been coming to the Bodega for months, making small talk and bragging about his petty crimes. The day of the stabbing he came in, filled up a bag with groceries, walked up to Enrique and told him that he wanted the groceries plus all the money he had in the register. When Enrique told him that he was crazy and went to get his bat, the Dominican dropped the bag, jumped over the counter and stabbed him in the back. When Enrique re-opened the Bodega and told some Dominicans in the block what had happened, many of them said they couldn’t believe that someone as “tranquilo” and “honesto”, tranquil and honest as “El Grillo” could be the one involved in this crime. Then “El Grillo” had the courage to visit the Bodega to tell Enrique that if he didn’t keep his mouth shut, he would stab him again!”

Now I understood why two men as diverse in character as Pablo and Enrique were friends. Pablo continued, “Their meaning of tranquil and honest is not the same as ours. So, “El Grillo” helped us to decide what to do. I got my Walter PPK 9 millimeter pistol and lend it to Enrique. We made a big sign in yellow and red that read, “El Grillo is a Homosexual and a Thief”, and we placed it in front of the Bodega for everyone to see, and we waited for “El Grillo” to come to the trap. Sure enough, three days later he barged in with a knife in his hand and a 32-caliber revolver in his belt, and he said: “Say goodbye to the world, Cuban.” What “El Grillo” did not know was that I was sitting behind the counter with my PPK pistol in hand. I quickly stood up and pointed the pistol at him, then he made a gesture like he was going to throw the knife, and I shot him in his wrist and he dropped the knife and started screaming, “No me mates, no me mates”, don’t kill me, don’t kill me. As he was screaming, I noticed that he was moving his other hand to grab the revolver, so I shot him in the arm. He stood there perplexed that I had actually shot him, and had not allowed him to shoot me. I then told Enrique to call the police and at that point “El Grillo” went wild screaming obscenities and he started to run out the door. I simply followed him out, and noticing that there where about a dozen other Dominicans in the street, I took aim at his right leg and I shot him, and watched him drop. I walked over to where he was and stood there besides him so that there would be no doubt to anyone that we Cubans are able to fight back, and we were fed up with this sort of thing. A few minutes later the Police arrived followed by an ambulance. “El Grillo” was taken away unconscious, and we went to the police station where we filed a report, got an attorney, and were interrogated by several fat guys with suits for several hours. Since I had a license for the pistol and it occurred inside the Bodega during a robbery, we were let go.

A Puerto Rican sergeant who walked us out of the precinct said to us: “I’m glad you did what you did. He’s a criminal, an illegal alien, and a numbers runner. Those are the type of people that give us all a bad name.” We knew the Puerto Ricans were suffering with this sort of thing just as we were, and that sergeant expressed that frustration to us that day in very clear words. In all the years we lived next to the Puerto Ricans, there had never been anything like this between us. Whatever problems existed between the Cubans and the Puerto Ricans, they were always petty and of no consequence.

Six months after Enrique was stabbed, we learned that “El Grillo” had been let out on parole, and had gotten involved with a shooting in the Bronx and someone else had shot him dead. Someone else put an end to his life of crime; someone else did our society the favor that the New York City police and courts could not do. From the day I shot “El Grillo” onwards, no one ever bothered Enrique. This unfortunate event in a strange way made us close friends. But, few Dominicans frequented the store, which hurt business. In essence they boycotted the business. When they realized they couldn’t rob him, they decided to drive him out of business. The fact that there were few Cubans left in the area by the mid 1980’s simply meant that we had to watch out for one another. In 1986 I retired and moved here with my family. In 1987 Enrique sold the Bodega to a Korean family who opened a produce shop and somehow tolerates that kind of environment. We can tell you that the further away you can be from those people, the better you will be.”

Listening closely by, a well-dressed man named Gerardo, who I later learned was a political science professor at a Florida university, with an appalled look on his face, eagerly commented. “Pablo, there are good people and bad people in every group. Look many Americans hate us Cubans too. What you described for the Dominicans, I think some people say against us too.” The other people in the group listened attentively. Clearly, this group of well-educated men and women felt uncomfortable with Pablo’s harsh description of the Dominicans and the exchange of ideas it was beginning to extract. “The Dominican Republic is very close to Cuba, if we after all do not feel comfortable with Dominicans, who can we feel comfortable with?” “Gerardo is right,” said the mistress of the house, the Portuguese-Cuban lady. “We have to judge people by their social class, their education, and their abilities as good human beings. Don’t you find any good qualities in the Dominicans?”

“But, the problem”, interrupted Luis a Chinese-Cuban, “is that most of these people, and unfortunately many other Hispanics that come to this country, are simply “Chusmeria”, the underclass, the most poorly educated and crude types produced by their countries. They are dysfunctional in their countries, and change very little here. If they appear to be hoodlums to us, it’s because they are hoodlums. They are the ones responsible for the high crime in our neighborhoods; they are the ones who give us all a bad image. You cannot blame the Americans for saying they are hoodlums! We should not be ashamed to call a duck a duck, even if it’s a Hispanic duck.”

“I don’t understand how this country lets these people in? It’s like importing crime and social instability on purpose! And, to make it worse, they send all the money the earn or steal here, back to their countries.” Commented a woman who appeared to be Joseito’s wife.

Offended at the observation, Gerardo accused Luis of being a Fascist and of making dangerous generalizations. “How can a Chinese guy say such things?” he asked the group. Pablo in his infinite ability to scrape “picardia” or malicious ideas from a rock, and maneuver among the most surreal of waters took a shot of Bacardi, and declared in defence of Luis, “You, senor Gerardo, the most liberal mind in our midst, will you feel happy and satisfied if your daughter brought home one of these Dominicans for dinner and announced that they were having an intimate relationship?” Gerardo’s jaw muscles stiffened, and he did not answer the question, but instead said to the crowd, “such hypothetical stories are not worthy of an answer.” With a grin in his face, and smelling blood, Pablo now directed his next statement to the mistress of the house, “And you, my dear senora, you who lives in this beautiful Spanish mansion, with the well manicured garden and marble floors, and fountains, will you be a happy woman if this block became full of Dominicans drinking beer in the street corners, your walls filled with graffiti, your nights became unbearable with blasting Merengue music, and your real estate values dropped?” Like with Gerardo, there was no direct answer, but an accusation that Pablo was an “animal and a crude man without manners”. But, since Pablo’s personality was such that he actually gained satisfaction from such exchanges, he simply did what came naturally. Savoring the victory, he clapped his hands, and invited everyone to dance as he walked over to the record player. “Come on stop being so serious, and move your asses to this Mambo.” As Pablo danced, the others had no choice but to watch in amazement while their faces slowly turned from puzzlement to half smiles. In two or three minutes, the magic of Mambo and Pablo’s comical dance erased the tension from the air.

My friend Kiko came over to me and said, “Did you see that? He manages to get his hosts upset, he insults people but in the end it just rolls right off him, and he gets away with it. He is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. In his madness, and within the thousands of words of rudeness that come out of his mouth, he manages to say things that most people are thinking about, but no one dares to admit. He forces people, at least for a brief period to realize that life is not always nice, congenial and friendly. His outrageousness gives him poetic license to insult while everyone realizes that what he is saying is based on the truth, or at least half the truth. For me Pablo is right up there with Socrates and Plato, a muse that is not afraid to say uncomfortable and shocking things. He is like a social laxative that challenges both his allies and his enemies, something that we Cubans are lucky to have in greater numbers than some other groups and is becoming impossible to find among the Americans, especially the so called educated ones who have forgotten how to say the truth without dying of fear.”

I then carefully thought about my own memories of Washington Heights during the 1980’s, the acquaintances and stories I remembered, and sure enough, I found echoes of the truth in Pablo’s words. But, what value does this man have in the social pecking order? From what cave did he crawl out of? What value could there possibly be in a person like this? Was it the specifics of what he said? His choice of words? Is it some hidden agenda? Is it his lack sensitivity? His poor judgment, his rashness? Was it the way he looked, his dress and mannerisms? What does Kiko really mean? Then I began to realize why my friend Kiko had arranged for me to meet Pablo.

The idea was to see beyond the immediate experience and the insulting discussion about the Dominicans, which could have very well been about Russians, Argentinians or Jamaicans. In a rare moment of relaxed observation, I managed to break through my liberal mind, my invisible political correctness, and I overcame the feeling of wanting to squeeze Pablo’s neck, and the desire to tell him what a bigot and incredibly obnoxious person I thought he was. His value had nothing to do with the critical comments he had made about the Dominicans. His value laid in his rarity, in his symbolism as a member of a type of person who was disappearing, and who was being replaced by hypocrites, liars and wimps. For Pablo's style of talking dealt with the truth, the truth without any fancy talk, without academic prophilactics, it was simple and to the point.

Analyzing Pablo came down to two things: His ideas and his lack of fear in expressing them! Right or wrong when you stood in front of Pablo, sooner or later you realized you were standing in front of a real person, not a modern interpretation of what a real person should be. And, real people are imperfect, not well groomed, they often say insulting things, can be impulsive, and do not care to say what the polls say they ought to be saying! Kiko was right; this was a philosopher hiding as an “Obnoxious Cuban.”

The value of this man had little to do with the specific issues he brought to the table, and a lot with the importance of having such a colorful and unpredictable man as him challenging people to think beyond the superficial and the politically acceptable, while tolerating his oppinions. The idea that you could go to someone like Pablo and ask about a problem or social issue, knowing that his answer was going to be unrehearsed and truthful is in today’s world very rare. A man who never adopted political correctness, and has lived in a social milieu that has allowed him to survive is even rarer.

Without doubt, Pablo was the most important person at the party, except few saw him as such. “How refreshing to meet this man,” I thought to myself without realizing the impact of this realization, and the fact that this event symbolized a crack in my liberal body armor. “The man is not a hypocrite,” I repeated to myself. I thought back to my late teens when I worked at Gramercy Park as a doorman, where most of the tenants despised Hispanics and all minorities, while promoting themselves as members of the Democratic Party’s elite and the defenders of minority rights. I thought about my work at City Planning and the countless lying politicians I had contact with, I thought about the fashion industry executives and their exclusionary ethnocentric professional practices, and I could not help but hear an echo in my head: “Hypocrites, hypocrites…” With people like Pablo, I thought, “you know where you stand. You don’t build false expectations, and if he tells you something he means it! An honest bigot is worth more than a lying spineless politically correct nice guy,” I concluded that day.

A few years later when I revisited this event in my head, I realized that all the “hypocrites” I had made an accounting of, were New York Democrats, and they were also the biggest proponents of political correctness. By then, my transformation to Republicanism was well underway. Something unconceivable to me a few years before was happening, I was becoming a conservative. But, not because I was recruited by conservatives, or convinced to change by a particular event, but because I could no longer stomach the liberals and their false claims to represent me as a "Hispanic."

After that trip to Florida I never again saw Enrique or Pablo, but several years ago Kiko told me Pablo had died in an auto accident while visiting exiled relatives who had settled in Lima, Peru. Pablo left a will with instructions asking that when Cuba is free again, his bones should be moved to the “Cementerio Colon” in Havana. On his Cuban headstone he wants the inscription: “To all those who thought I was crazy, I’m sorry to disappoint you. My only fault was to tell you what you did not want to hear. Viva Cuba Libre!”

Prior to realizing the role of a man like Pablo, I also did not understand how it is that we Cubans manage to produce more Pablo’s than most other groups. We do not have a monopoly on them, but we produce large quantaties of them. Certainly we are number one in this area among all the Hispanic groups in the USA! I still cringe when I see them, except now I realize they are a very valuable part of what makes us tick, and they provide us with one of those difficult to explain quirks that sometimes gives us an intellectual edge over our neighbors. It isn’t that their ideas are highly intellectual and deep, for they are often in the gutter, but they force us to question ourselves. They irritate us out of certain comfort levels we should be removed from in order to expand our perspectives and horizons. These people who some times come across as crude and obnoxious are made of the same stuff many of our relatives are made of. They are survivors who stood up to a tyrannical dictatorship and at the risk of death exclaimed: “The emperor is naked”.

Perhaps we make more Pablo's than anybody else, because the exile experience stimulates this phenomena! This will to stand firm for an ideology, and the ability to use humor and linguistic acrobatics to prove your point, in an almost circus like fashion, are things alien to American society, and out of character with those of us who have adopted a liberal education and affluent lifestyle. Many of us easily forget that these are Cuban character traits as typical as our love of cigars, rum, and music. It seems that we Cubans argue and disagree with others, and among ourselves just for the love of doing it. We argue because we like the challenge of an argument! Some of us accept the idea that there is nothing wrong with saying absolutely irritating things. Some of us do it like Pablo, others in a less abrasive manner. An old Cuban said to me once, “If you can survive the psychological battleground of socialist Cuba, what’s the big deal with disagreeing, arguing, and insulting a few people in America?” This unique character trait of course does not endear us with most of our neighbors, and has given us a reputation as “difficult” people. A Cuban that is not arguing, is an unhappy Cuban!

When I last visited my friend Kiko, who has since moved to Los Angeles, after he married a very beautiful Mexican woman, he was very upset at local politics and Bill Clinton. In his typically long winded way of letting out steam, he said “Every time I meet a polished, politically correct American, or Hispanic whose conversation is so calculated and antiseptic as to never insult or challenge anyone, a person who never lets out an inch of his or her own beliefs or feelings, I can’t help but remember Pablo. Every time I hear the words ‘weight challenged’, I hear Pablo say “fat.” When I hear ‘alleged perpetrator’, I hear Pablo say “criminal.” When I hear ‘ethnic sensitivity training,” I hear Pablo say, “learn double talk so when you share a room with a person of another race that gets you upset, you don’t say what you would normally say if they were of your own race. And, you avoid saying what you really think. This way you can avoid a lawsuit.”

Kiko showed me an article from the New York Times he had just read and had highlighted a few lines. "Look at this," he said, "this is what they say, and I’ll follow up with what they really mean: “Your statement does not seem to conform with the facts as presented by others”, which really means, “you’re a liar and a manipulator”. And, this one is even better, “My friend on the right, whom I admire a great deal does not represent the interests of black and Hispanic peoples because he does not have a track record of support for minority issues. And, as a result his plan will benefit only the rich”. This means, “You’re a conservative white man and a Republican, and if it’s shown that people like you can actually do good for minorities, it will shatter the carefully manipulated liberal Democratic monopoly on such issues, and black and Hispanics may begin to ask uncomfortable questions of us Democrats.”

Listening to Kiko’s translations, I could not help but remember how as a child in 1960’s Cuba, teachers constantly told me that Cuba was a “socialist paradise” and the “only free territory in the Americas”. This was taught to us in order so that we could obtain a “socialist consciousness.” What sort of consciousness are the people behind the politically correct movement trying to accomplish?

With this perspective in mind, I said to Kiko, “It is truly refreshing to meet a person who dislikes you, looks at you in the face and tells you, “I don’t give a dam about you, I don’t like your face, and if you don’t get out of my path I’m going to punch you in the nose.” Kiko thought for a minute and said, “No, you’re not going to find honest people like that anymore among the Americans. Even the Cubans who’ve being here for a while are not like that anymore. Pablo’s generation is slowly disappearing. The young are now politically correct.” I then asked, “You don’t think any of these people will believe Pablo and Enrique’s story about what happened in Washington Heights?” “No way”, said Kiko. "The stabbings, extortion and robberies that took place are now described as 'an inevitable process of assimilation into the urban environment.' This way no one gets offended!"

This event during this trip to Miami, although insignificant at the time, signaled the beginning of my slow return to identifying myself as a Cuban. It took however another three years to complete this journey, and it was due to unplanned events like these that I began to also question my blind devotion to liberalism.

I thank all the “Obnoxious Cubans,” for the fine work they do. Not so much for the content of what they say, but for the process they keep alive. Freedom of speech, at least that still survives in America.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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Some years ago I visited friends in Miami, and was taken by them to see some “paisanos” from Puerto Padre. While visiting these nice people, I witnessed a most interesting exchange.

"Caridad, this looks like a letter from Paris, France, and its addressed to you." Exited, eighteen year old Caridad nervously opened the envelope suspecting that this letter was the letter her friend Tomas had mentioned she would receive from a Cuban “patriot” exiled in France. According to Tomas, few would be in a better position to critique her short story on the Cuban flag. She hoped to include the much-awaited critique with her story in a literary contest at her parents’ Cuban Club in Miami.

With her mother Alicia and aunt Sofia sitting by the kitchen table, Caridad began to nervously read the letter aloud:

“Mi querida exilada,

A friend recently mailed me a copy of your nostalgic short story about the Cuban flag. I read it and could not help but laugh. I found clear analogies between your way of thinking and those so common with the children of all immigrants in the United States, and especially young Cuban-Americans. Many of these exiles have tried so hard to be unlike their parents that they have become grotesque caricatures, like the young blond man whose manners and appearance were so non descript that no one could tell he was Cuban when he visited Cuba with the hypocrite Jesse Jackson, and his white American cheerleaders.

My dear friend, ironically I am now also an immigrant, or as your friends would like to call me, a man living in exile. I was born in the city of Havana, Cuba, which is our fatherland. This fatherland, the one that has been brutally stolen from us by that demon we unfortunately and painfully inherited from your parent’s generation, and have not been able to rid ourselves of during all these long years. That place of birth, which seems to give so many like me nothing but disgust and shame, and has spawned a generation of brothers who spy on brothers, and institutions designed to keep people in fear and from thinking for themselves.

The nostalgia, the national pride, the air, the tropical sky, the hot sun, the fields of sugarcane, the unforgettable fruits, the Malecon, the streets of old Havana, my house, and my neighborhood, I did not experience from afar, from an old documentary, or by reading a book in a comfortable living room with air conditioning, but live with all its impurities, blackouts, hungers and lies. These memories have been burned into my brain as a result of painful daily experiences which idealists like you can never imagine.

I did not attend or graduate from a liberal American University, since I was obligated to march double step in a Soviet military academy. Wearing a Soviet military uniform, eating Soviet food, reading Marx, and learning Soviet formulas. I was taught to be a good Communist. When I graduated as a military engineer and became an officer in the Cuban Army, I was sent to Nicaragua to defend Socialism and help the oppressed masses. I went to spill blood in the name of Socialism, because I was a faithful Cuban.

Regardless of my sacrifices for the fatherland, living as a “new man”, and risking my life for the dignity and solidarity of the poor, I was imprisoned for two years and suffered terrible punishments for simply comparing life under Communism with what I read life was like in other countries. For more than five years I have not seen my wife and son, and I am completely cut off from them. For making the mistake of asking impertinent questions I was deprived of everything I love. Using any description you like, I am now a victim of a communist dictatorship, and a lonely man without a country.

That flag that you nostalgically mention, is not my flag. That seal is not my seal, because a bearded criminal stole them and has used them as his symbols while committing atrocities and crimes. That Cuban flag you mention in your story, was waving on the patrol boat that recently sunk and killed dozens of innocent women and children in the open seas. That flag was painted on the sides of the MIG fighter planes that shot down unarmed rescue planes in international airspace. That flag was the flag that fluttered in the wind as hundreds of thousands rampaged through Havana looking for “criminals” whose only crime was a desire to leave the country seeking peace of mind and liberty. Under that flag, and before that seal thousands of innocents have been condemned to life in prison, have been shot and people like your parents were robbed of their futures. How can that be my flag?

I cannot share your theoretical nostalgia. I don’t share your blind love for Cuba. I don’t have a country because my country has been stolen from me. That flag and those other symbols cannot be mine while they represent a tyrant and those who support him.

Unlike you, I cannot be proud to be Cuban. Those qualities you mention live only in those who have not experienced the injustices of the true Socialist Cuba first hand. And, the timeless honor that you speak of, the work ethic, and the respect for traditions, those things now only live in the memories of old exiled impotent men, and sad women.

Knowing these things, how can anyone be a proud Cuban? How can anyone find pride in being part of a culture that has eliminated all normal social structures, has maintained a brutal dictatorship, and has passed unanimous decrees against the most basic human freedoms, and forces children into the streets to honor a tyrant? Can anyone claim with pride to be part of a culture that elevates liars, criminals, and thieves into the status of national heroes?

Youngsters like you have no idea as to the sufferings that have occurred because of that flag. The simplest of human values have been trampled. The biggest lies have been told to native and foreigner. Slave labor has been renamed “volunteer work,” political indoctrination has been renamed “education,” the destruction of the family has been renamed “social equality,” meddling in other countries is called “international solidarity,” and a dictator is honorably called “president.” My flag, and my seal no longer exist for me because of what they have represented during all these years. They do not represent what you and many others imagine. They are symbols of blood, suffering, frustrated hopes and betrayal.

You as a Cuban exile can write beautiful things about Cuba, you can let your nostalgia run because your parents paid their quota of pain and suffering, and sacrificed so that you could live in freedom and without hunger pangs. Your happiness offends me due to your ignorance and lack of touch with the painful reality that Cuba has become. When I see it in pampered foreigners it offends me less, because their flesh and blood has not been exposed, and their interest in Cuba now is the same as it was fifty years ago: Rum, cigars, prostitutes, music, and the beach. Their views of Cuba are fabricated inside plush Hotels, brothels, over big fat steaks, and in the sands of Varadero beach.

When Cuba is free, then it will be my country, then I will honor its flag, and then you and I may be closer in our feelings.

I am not a Christian, and as a result I don’t believe in turning the other cheek. There is too much pain and suffering in Cuba to talk about turning the other cheek. Because of that real suffering, I cannot accept your childish and ignorant calls for a romantic love of flag and country, and reconciliation. This is my critique of your story!

I don’t want to be Cuban, but in some ways, just like you, I’m stuck in my own reality. I live now in France, far away from Cuba, and the Miami exiles, in a place where few know of our troubles, and most don’t care.

Sincerely,

Nestor, a man who can no longer be an idealist.”

In shock, Caridad looked at her mother and aunt and could not muster a word. Finally her aunt Sofia began to speak. “Pobre hombre.” Poor man, she said. “He must have been a Communist who believed very much in Fidel and was some how betrayed. He found out in the most painful way what we learned thirty years ago. Like him we must have thousands here in exile.” “Yes, but remember that it was men like him who zealously made our lives miserable while we were in Cuba,” added her mother Alicia, “and now they jump ship because the system has not delivered the benefits they expected. These people are like lovers who’ve been cheated.” “Yes,” added Sofia, “but it looks like he was able to see the truth after all. He saw the truth from the innards of the beast, as Marti once said, in a more terrible way than most, because he was part of the beast.”

Alicia continued, “Cari, don’t feel that your story is bad because of this man’s reaction. I think your story simply reminded him of how things were a long time ago, and how they can be in the future. He is probably hurt because at one time he worked to destroy the past, and participated in building the very ruins he now rejects.” “I don’t understand people like that,” said Caridad. Alicia continued, “It’s OK. That type of person needs time to heal and recover from the terrible experiences he’s been through. He needs to recover his family, and he needs to understand that not everybody is evil.” Trying to reassure Caridad that her story was not to blame for the reaction they had just experienced, Sofia concluded, “remember that a good writers’ first audience is his inner happiness, and not those who claim to be offended.”

Two weeks later Caridad submitted her short story on the Cuban flag to the review committee without the letter from France, knowing that since both documents were so geometrically opposed in views, it would only cause confusion, and its inclusion could have hurt her chances of winning the contest. In the end, Caridad won second place, and received a $500 recognition award for her work. First prize went to a seventy year old man named Epifanio, who wrote a treatise entitled, “The pride of Cuba: The Zun-Zun, the world’s smallest bird.”

Thinking about Caridad’s story reminded me that I went through a phase were I also did not want to be Cuban, for reasons similar to those expressed by the Cuban man from France. When I was in college, and during the time I was estranged from my father, and my mother was dating David, while I was in the fashion industry, I was smack in the center of an “I don’t want to be Cuban” phase.

For many years I was not a Cuban, and as a result there are multitudes of people who may to this day not know that I am Cuban. Not being Cuban for me was actually easy, since I didn’t have many Cuban friends, my English is generic enough not to give me away, and I saw my family irregularly. When I don’t tell, I can be confused with being Greek, Italian, French, Welch, Canadian, Belgian, and even sometimes English. I am a generic white guy.

My feeling of not wanting to be Cuban crept in slowly over many years, and then it spilled over as a result of a series of disappointments. It included personal, family, and political reasons, as well as a desire to cleanse away the past and start a new chapter in a new environment. By the time I sat down to analyze the situation, most of the psychological pieces needed to face this question had comfortably landed in place, and I did not experience any traumatic challenges. It didn’t take me long to completely divorce myself from the habit of labeling myself “Cuban”, and once done, the experience opened up a new world I had not previously been privy to. The world of how Cubans are viewed by non-Cubans, the opinions expressed about us behind our backs, and a sense as to why some groups tend to have favorable or disfavorable opinions of us. Actually, not being Cuban allowed me to see Cubans in ways most Cubans never see themselves.

I arrived in the United States at age eleven as a “super Cuban” kid. In many respects, Cubans of all backgrounds seem to be embedded with a very strong sense of nationalism which often expresses itself in a chauvinist way, and adds to that already long list of elitist traits we so carefully nourish. Although, Cuba is in ruins, and we exiles are a minority in a foreign culture, most Cubans do not walk around feeling inferior to any European or American, and we love the challenge of competing with others as a way of reaffirming our independence and self-respect. If at the time of my arrival someone had told me that years later I would undergo an “I don’t want to be Cuban” experience, I would have thought they were trying to pull my leg.

The problem that some youngsters like me faced as a result of arriving very young in the United States, and growing up away from a Cuban community, is the dilemma of a dual culture. The interpretation of an old Cuba from the view of our parents, a Socialist Cuba whose policies were clearly leading it to ruin, the high social, political, educational, and economic standards that came along with the “honor of being Cuban”, the contrast with American culture, and our highly individualistic approach to life are things a bit more complicated to arrange than the more mundane challenges faced by American kids regarding whether they should grow up to be baseball players, or accountants. These things are negotiated almost unconsciously by most young exiles that grow up in Miami, or Union City. In those places the overwhelming Cuban culture that surrounds them insures their Cuban identification. These kids are rarely visited by the question of choosing an identity. The idea of choosing not to be Cuban must be preposterous, funny, and perhaps also insulting. Intellectually I found no challenge to this question. So, by the end of my college years the process of not being Cuban was just waiting to happen.

Early in the transition, when I needed a philosophical basis and an excuse for not being Cuban, I did what comes naturally to me. I studied the history of nationalism and the evolution of the modern state! My intellectual analysis of nationalism led me to conclude that politically based national identities in the New World are a modern construct, almost baseless in racial, religious, ancestral and linguistic terms. In Europe for hundreds if not thousands of years, what we now call “the fatherland” or “our country” did not exist. Loyalty and a sense of belonging was vested in a particular group who spoke your language, looked like you, had the same religious beliefs as you, and respected your family values. Those who were outside of this closely-knit circle were considered outsiders, and foreigners. For “Hispanics” it was not until the establishment of the modern political state in Spain in 1492, that Europeans and Spaniards began to expand this concept to include a multi ethnic populace. For the benefit of the centralized aristocracy, and later beurocrats, Basques, Galicians, Catalans, Andalucians, Canarians, and Castilians, were pieced together, almost always by force, into the “Spaniards”. Similar conglomerations took place in France, England, Italy, Germany, and later throughout the “modern world”. And, there are still places in the world that do not accept this interpretation of “nationality”.

For a New World country like Cuba that came into existence as a republic in 1902, with a population of “Spaniards”, “Africans”, “Chinese”, and “other Europeans”, the question of identity is complex, and the roots of the “Cuban nationality” is less robust than most are willing to admit. The informal view held by Cubans that everyone who lived in Cuba was “Cuban” by virtue of their presence in the island is very nice, but spurious when put under scrutiny. “Cuban” like “American” is more a state of mind, than anything else.

Here are some of the questions I asked myself while seeking an understanding of my feelings. Does a person become part of a label, like a product in a supermarket, by the simple accident of being born in a particular location? Do several thousand years of heredity become null and void by a change in diet, clothing, and ambiance? Do Africans become Europeans when they move to Europe? Do Caucasians become Asian when they move to China? Did the Europeans who moved to South Africa become Africans due to the change in geography? Did the Jews become Iraqi Muslims just because they lived there for a long time? To me, the only difference that Cubans have that can be claimed as a unique identity factor is that the races mixed in Cuba in a way and in proportions different than in other places. But, at the end of the day when a person looks in the mirror and asks himself or herself “where did I come from?” The answer is not “my ancestors came from Cuba”. Given that more than 95% of the original native people’s of Cuba disappeared from existence within one hundred years of colonization, claims to being a “100% pure Cuban”, are clearly not accurate.

When group behaviors, physical characteristics, family habits, predisposition to disease, natural intelligence, and other “fuzzy” issues associated with human interactions are taken into account, heredity is probably the dominant factor, and not artificial political labels like “American” or “Cuban”. For me this view means that it is not inaccurate for someone to claim their ancestors’ heritage as their own at certain times, especially if they are educated to their family history. A more realistic description of Cuban identity, and for that part one that should be used by most New World countries, is to admit that we are all a hodgepodge of ethnicities with multiple national origins. Cubans are a hyphenated people, and have been such all along. The truth in our identities is closer to “African-Chinese”, or ‘Irish-Andalucian”, than “100% pure Cuban”. But, as we all know, politics does not like these hyphenated identities.

In the old days most cultures passed identity and values from generation to generation by an oral tradition within each family. Today in most Western countries we have surrendered the link to our pasts to the public education system, and politicians, who create millions of men and women who cannot figure out who they are, and worse off, who believe that they are only that which they can perceive from their immediate neighborhoods. History has been stripped of all family connections and has been impersonalized to the point of having little to offer the young. Young adults who have no sense of place or history are easily molded into perplexed marionettes that easily follow the whims of others with hidden agendas. This is a fact well understood by communists all over the world, whose first rule of order when taking over a society is to deny the past and erase most symbols of ancient heritage.

To me choosing not to be Cuban did not challenge my sense of who I was. Nor did it confuse me, nor was it done at the instigation of some powerful figure, because I never looked externally for a justification of who I was, and my sense of history was well planted in a family who’s roots are documented and ancient. Therefore, when I began to label myself “Catalan” it happened almost automatically as I ceased to label myself “Cuban”. The notion that I was a Cuban-Catalan, or a Galician-Canarian-Catalan was always in my consciousness, although direct links to these ancestral places had ceased generations ago.

Unfortunately, the catalyst that triggered my change from “Cuban”, to “Catalan” was a strong sense of disappointment with Cubans similar to the experiences described by the Cuban man from France, in Caridad’s story. My falling out with my father was highly influential, and my disappointment with my mother’s family in the U.S. and in Cuba also played a major role. Sometime during my college years I asked myself: “Where is that anchor of pride I’m supposed to have for being Cuban?” Is this more a mirage rather than a reality. Am I admiring something really worthy of admiration? Cuba has been nothing but a cesspool of problems, suffering, lost opportunities, oppression, lies, and corruption. The grandeur of the past seemed but a brief interlude in a typical pattern of Latin American mismanagement, and a playground for foreigners. The Cubans in Cuba seem to support Castro and deserve the misery they have, and most of the exiles here don’t live in reality. I felt that the elitism, the pride, the claims of “differentness” we have are all without basis. Taking inventory of these things I lost that sentimental connection with labeling myself Cuban.

For more than seven years Cuba was a secondary and distant topic in my mind, and it felt perfectly fine. When I encountered Cubans I did not identify myself as such, and I never told any other Hispanics that I was Cuban either, to avoid their questions regarding Fidel and Communism. I did not go out of my way to listen to Cuban music, read Cuban literature, or to keep up with any of the events that were taking place in Cuba. The only thing I could not give up was Cuban food. When I went without Cuban food for a sustained period of time I found myself daydreaming about it. “Ropa Vieja”, “Tostones”, “Yuca con Mojo”, and “Moros y Cristianos” were just too powerfully ingrained in my being to give up. And, Cuban coffee and flan are god’s gifts to mankind, those I could not give up either!

During my vacation from being Cuban, one of the things I noticed was the small-mindedness of those groups that dislike us. I noticed that although I did not have a good grasp of the nationalism phenomena, and my interpretation of identity was probably flawed, the problems and bad habits of these other groups made Cubans actually look good. I realized that in the balance of things, those who dislike us, criticize us, defame us, and are jealous of us, are often more obnoxious, irritating, loud, petty, double faced and chauvinistic than we are. I realized that the exiled experience is so complex we Cubans do not fully understand it ourselves, never mind others who try to analyze us based on a thirty second snapshot, or old Ricky Ricardo stereotypes.

Cubans are not a halfway people; we are either liked, or hated. We live on the edge, and although many of us complain about it, we like the edge. I began to see Cubans not as born again angels, but as a group that I had been mad at for a variety of personal and family reasons, and was no better or worse than any other group. Slowly, my exposure to unlikable, irritating and obnoxious Cubans seemed to diminish and I began to meet admirable, well balanced, and honorable Cubans. As my anger at Cubans diminished, I slowly began to rediscover those things that used to make me proud of being Cuban. Those intangibles that make us different and have helped us prosper in the face of adversity. My interest in Cuban things slowly crept in over a period of about three years to a point where I found myself again identifying myself as “Cuban” to new acquaintances. All in all, my period away from being a Cuban lasted about ten years. Seven years as a Catalan, and three years in a transition back to being Cuban. These ten years were from the time I left college, up to the birth of my daughter. The decade of the 1980’s.

While I was in this voyage, I met a few other Cubans who were also on vacation from being Cuban, for reasons similar to mine and those expressed by the Cuban man from France. I also realized that if we experience this challenge ourselves, it is understandable why some non-Cubans so easily misunderstand us. This discovery has led me to believe that this phenomenon may be just another side effect of living in exile and adjusting to a new culture, one that may not be too uncommon to other cultures, but because of its sensitivity, is not openly discussed. Of all my experiences as an adult, this one is one of the most difficult to convey to others, and perhaps the most misunderstood. Issues of patriotism, group honor, identity, self respect, loyalty, and love of country all come into play. But, having the courage to criticize my birthplace, to point out some negative character traits in the Cuban personality, to distribute blame for negative historic events to both the right and the left, and to chose to disassociate myself from my national identity as a result of anger and pain, did not leave me with a sense of shame. Do I wish I had not had this experience? I think so. The enlightened contemplation and self-analysis achieved afterwards, and shared with you now, was probably un-necessary. But, my family conflicts, personality and isolation from other Cubans led me in this direction. Who knows?

A few Cuban friends harshly criticized me for having admitted that I went through this process. To them only persons of weak character, ignorant of their families and disrespectful of history can “fall into this type of un-patriotic shame”. Perhaps there is some truth in this criticism, but the world does not operate in a neat perfect manner. On the other side of the coin, in Cuba, Fidel Castro has used nationalism to enslave the minds of a nation for more than forty five years, and that same nationalism has been used in the exile community to often manipulate public opinion and garner support for groups who did not deserve it. No one has a monopoly on the right type of patriotic behavior. Let he who is innocent, cast the first stone!

Those who support socialism and Fidel Castro surely feel patriotic and more nationalistic than we here in exile. But, that type of pride I can do without, and that type of Cuban I do not care to be. At the conclusion of my voyage, I realized that it’s OK. to be selective with expressions of patriotism and nationalism. When I hear the Bugle sound, I’ll be the judge in determining if it’s my patriotic music, and not because others tell me it is.

By not being Cuban for a while, I also saw the issue of identity in the United States in its schizophrenic grandiosity, mixed with racial overtones and often manipulated by political parties. American nationalism calls for the “Melting Pot” to be vigorously stirred, but holds in place social and economic barriers that are clearly ethnic based. The young are pulled into a popular culture that destroys or erodes traditional values and replaces them with a non-descript “global” identity anchored in the needs of an ever-changing market oriented economy. With few surviving structures to help the young transcend this barrage of ideological confusion, they decay into innocents waiting to be molded into the trend of the moment. Breast implants for fifteen year olds, Viagra for sixteen year olds and, Chinese-Americans that want to be African-Americans. We all now watch these things and think its cute, without wondering why this happens. Interestingly, we now have an entire sub-culture that thinks this is good and promotes it in the name of diversity!

America is a vigorous and creative country, with a fountain of good will and generosity that has not been equaled in history. America is also a manipulator of the first degree because of its wealth and power. It has evolved a system of manipulating its own population, and the rest of the world in a magnanimous, happy, and almost invisible way. But, at the end of the day, manipulation is control, no matter what the name. Internally this strategy puts every group in America in its own “place”, and every country is categorized based on a similar and shallow method, although such a concept is “legally” non-existent. Within all the freedoms, all the rights, and all the protections allotted to its citizens, the fact remains that everyone who observes and thinks for a while realizes that there is a strata, and coincidentally certain groups seem to fall at certain levels of this strata. Most political and cultural leaders of course deny this well-balanced system because admitting to it would debunk one of the pillars of American self-identity.

Since there is no magic solution for these problems, and the proposals espoused from the liberal left are pregnant with socialist hidden agendas, designed to dismantle the good aspects of the society, little change takes place. The belief that anyone can come to America and rise from cleaning toilets to owning a Fortune 500 company is critical to social stability. One of America’s main magnets in attracting the top minds of the world to its shores is this belief and its promotion overseas. As Cubans, we have made an uneasy adjustment to this invisible structure. We have succeeded economically as a group, reaching high levels of responsibility and influence in business circles. We have also reached high levels of influence in the American political system to the point that we hold disproportionately more power than many other immigrant groups with much higher populations. Our intellectual, literary, and creative contributions in the United States also surpass that of most other Hispanic groups with higher populations, and we continue to have the image and aura of an elite group, although we have a population where 80% of its members are foreign born who view their stay in America as transitory, and who use Spanish at a higher rate than most other Hispanics. This anomaly, as can be expected, causes friction with other Hispanic groups, and blacks.

The issue of identity is at the root of every person’s view of the world, and how they go about contributing to, or taking from others. Avoiding these complex questions is a formula for letting others define us. America is a superpower, but in the case of its ability to deal with identity, ethnic issues, and helping its youth acquire a strong sense of self worth, and self respect, it is truly impoverished. I suspect that this failure is partly responsible for the high level of criminality and drug addiction we have in the US. This lesson I learned as I dealt with my own personal questions of identity. The days of the old “Melting Pot,” if there ever were any, are gone. The world has changed.

The Cuban exile, for a variety of historic reasons refused to play the game of comfortably falling into a place reserved for them in the invisible social strata of the United States. The Cubans while holding on to their very Hispanic culture, refused to be the “kind of Hispanic” the Americans where expecting to see. The Cubans somehow have refused to allow others to define them, and have taken the responsibility of shaping a Cuban-American culture based on their terms. How perplexing this must be for some Americans used to living in a comfortable “Melting Pot” where Hispanics are supposed to fit "the image."

If you want to get a wide perspective of your ethnic group, or nationality, take a vacation, call yourself an Eskimo and listen with your ears, and look with your eyes. You will learn some things only an Eskimo can find out about your group. Some of it may be good, some not too good. If someone insults or attacks you for doing such a “treacherous” thing, tell them to fuck off. You don’t need others to tell you who you are, so that you can conform to some artificial political label. You are however, what your heart tells you, and you belong with those who respect and love you, who ever they are. Now that I'm at peace with "the Cubans" I think I like them better than before. And, I also understand the intricacies of this label called "Cuban" better than before!

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
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As the tiny little plane climbed though the clouds, I could see the Altimeter inch its way closer and closer to 5,000 feet; that’s almost a mile high. From the Co-Pilots chair, I was filled with tension as I looked at both sides of the plane to finally see the coastline of Long Island on our left extending out into the horizon in front of us. The chalky beach line could barely be seen. We were smack in the middle of Long Island Sound flying out to sea. The squeaky seat and flimsy seat belt were probably the originals from 1957, when the Piper Tri-Pacer first saw use. The instrumentation was also original, and the canvas skin covering the plane also looked original, with a few rips to prove it. The noise in the cockpit was high, along with a slight smell of gasoline, since we were almost sitting on top of the engine. My friend, the pilot was also an original; a World War II Army Air Corps veteran who flew B-17’s over Germany, and considered the four seat Tri-Pacer a toy. Although, we could have been flying one of his other planes, the Beech Twin Bonanza for example, learning to fly according to him had to be done on a simple airplane. The Tri-Pacer was so simple, that to start it, a man basically pushed the propeller with his hands, after we yelled, “Clear!”

At 5,000 feet he told me to grab the controls and pull the wheel in order to continue the climb. In what felt like a few seconds we reached 5,500 feet, and he began his lesson. He carefully explained each instrument’s function, the way to turn, ascend and descend, and the radio and compass. After each explanation he asked if I understood what each instrument was for, and in the end he calmly proclaimed I was almost an expert. He then told me to take the wheel and put my feet on the rudder so I could fly us both back to Republic Airport, our point of departure some 30 minutes before. “Are you crazy,” I said. “I’ve been up here only 30 minutes, how can you expect me to know where Republic is, or land this thing without us getting killed?” “Don’t worry, this airplane is very forgiving. It can fly by itself. Let me show you!” Grabbing the controls again, he said, “Get ready!” With a smile, he put the plane in a steep dive and then he released all the controls and watched me melt into pure fear and shock as we nose dived towards the water below. But, just as he said, the plane somehow leveled itself at around 3,800 feet and I noticed how it began to cruise by itself. The drop from 5,500 feet to 3,800 feet was steep, but without autopilot or any interference from us, the plane flew by itself maintaining a level flight with the horizon. He then looked at me and said, “You see, this is safer than a car!” Thus commenced my first flying lesson.

That beautiful sunny afternoon, I found myself zigzagging in the clouds over Long Island in a Volkswagen Beatle with wings, thanks to the daring of a very wise, kind, generous and entrepreneurial man. My dream to fly a plane under my control, something I had wished for since I was a child in Cuba, and had done only in my flying Bicycle dreams over Chaparra, came true when I was 20. I learned to fly that little plane based on daytime Visual Flight Rules (VFR) and practiced landings and take offs in tiny dirt landing strips and airports in Long Island, Connecticut and Up-state New York; airports that no longer exist because they are now considered dangerous, or too antiquated. Then, when the day came to move on to nighttime Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) I enthusiastically went to the FAA doctor, who tested me and we found that I was colorblind. And, colorblind people cannot obtain IFR certification because night flying relies on color-coded airport lights and signals, whose improper identification could mean the difference between life and death. I was to be a fair-weather, daytime only pilot. No night time trips, or complex navigation stunts based on fancy instruments or “blind” routes in the event of bad weather. I was very disappointed, not so much because of my limitations as a pilot, but because up to that point I was not aware I was colorblind, and I did not realize that the way I saw the world was not the same as that of most people around me. The idea others could see an entire range of colors that I could not see, depressed me. I also began to understand why many friends often told me I wore uncoordinated clothes, and why I was always wrong when I thought something was green, red, or orange, or a combination thereof. As a result of my colorblindness, three years after I learned to fly, I dropped it, feeling concerned that if one day I was caught in a daytime storm, the ones whose thick clouds eliminate visibility and force pilots to navigate based on IFR rules, I would end in a deadly accident.

But before my colorblindness was discovered, I flew with great gusto, and thanks to my friend, what is for many an expensive hobby, did not cost me a penny. The reason this happened was because we needed to get to know each other, and we had a powerful link uniting us. The plane in essence was the perfect vehicle that allowed this experienced pilot and I to become friends. And so it was that during countless Saturday mornings, I accumulated flying hours, attended Ground School, cleaned the plane, learned to navigate, learned about the clouds, fuel efficiency and mixtures, landing strategies in high winds, proper radio etiquette, and memorized the locations of navigation beacons and FAA regulations. The powerful link that united this man and I, was my mother.

The pilot who graciously adopted me as a protégé, the World War II pilot, the man from the greatest generation that ever lived, was Colonel David Tandoff, a Jewish boy that grew up and rose from the dirty crime infested immigrant streets of 1930’s Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to admirable heights in the business world. A man who knew what he saw, and said it like it was. A man, who was full of human frailties, but had more goodness to his credit than most of us. David was the type of man you either loved or hated with passion. He was a Jew who embodied many Cuban character traits, (or perhaps its that Cubans embody many Jewish traits?) and in the end when you were mad at him, by some incredible magic, he would win you over again. He was capable of arguing or socializing with the highest academicians, the wealthiest business people, as well as the most common worker, or poor uneducated person in the totem pole, without ill will or discomfort. He was a highly instinctive man, who walked around naked; that is with David, you got what you saw. A man from the old school who despised mediocrity and double talk, worked hard, recognized the hidden potential of most people, and was not afraid to say “fuck you” or “you’re an asshole” or “I’ll break your neck” if someone deserved it.

Those who did not like David, called him a “Garmento” in reference to his work in the fashion industry, and his slightly bombastic and very New York Jewish admiration for “personal trophies” like thick gold chains, expensive diamond encrusted watches, unusual rings, Louis Vuitton wallets, expensive Italian Shoes, Gucci briefcases, expensive cologne’s, especially fitted Hong Kong shirts, British suits, extravagant car, and manicured finger nails. During a time when the average American businessman was considered well dressed with $500.00 worth of clothes and accessories, Colonel David Tandoff on a daily basis wore between $5,000 and $8,000 worth of clothes and “personal trophies”. By the time I met him he was overweight and suffering from diabetes, but he was strong as a bull, and full of energy. His wartime pictures showed a handsome slim man in an aviator uniform with a chest full of medals, and with the look of a man full of conviction and courage.

Everywhere we went, everyone knew him, or knew of him. As a pilot, he looked the part with leather aviator jacket, Rayban glasses, khaki pants and sometimes sporting a white silk scarf with his Lacoste polo shirt (at a time when few people knew of them). He had so many uncollected favors, that often upon landing in some obscure airport, the airport manager would refuse to receive payment for parking our plane, and we were treated to lunch by FAA staffers and other pilots, just so they could talk to him and hear his endless stories about all types of esoteric aeronautical things and historic characters, like Hap Arnold, Juan Trippe and Dwight Eisenhower which he personally knew. Quietly, I’d listen, watch and learn how easily and often clumsily, he successfully moved from one situation to another. For he did not care if he was graceful, clumsy, rude, or polished; he was an “in your face” kind of guy, who placed high value on personal interaction, rather than pre-planned meetings, or orchestrated events. His confidence radiated like sunlight. In a meeting, the thing that concerned him was the outcome, and the rest he managed to improvise. He once told me that during the war he beat the odds so many times, evading death and coming back when he was not supposed to, that he knew anything else in life was within his reach. This realization seems to have taken away all his fears, giving him a joy for life that was contagious.

Colonel David Tandoff met my mother in the fashion industry, when she worked as a pattern maker for a moderate dress manufacturer, and he was the partner of a well-established competing company. David, a hands on type of guy, was not happy running a multi-million dollar company, he also had his hands in the design, merchandising, and sales of the line, traveling extensively throughout the country making sure all his clients saw his face at least three times as year. A man, who although having “Garmento” traits, did not have an inch of femininity, could and probably had the pick of the most voluptuous and available women on 7th Avenue. But, having gone through an ugly divorce was unhappy and unable to rekindle his interest in women. However, David fell deeply in love with my mother on sight, hired her away, and courted her for a year before she allowed the relationship to evolve into a love affair that lasted more than nine years. There was never a day in which this man failed to say, “I love you” to my mother, and showered her with gifts and affection. His greatest desire was to marry her, and he announced this to the world unashamedly. He adored her. David was the most romantic Jewish man I’ve ever met, and the most generous and understanding man my brother and I knew, while our father was estranged from us due to the divorce. David taught me to fly in order to become my friend, and make my mother happy. He succeeded in both things, and later on, he ended up teaching me things about human nature I never expected to learn, and for which I am to this day grateful. But, I have to admit that most of what he taught me, I was not able to absorb and understand until many years later.

My mother traumatized by the Cuba experience, by her family, by a divorce, and by the hard life of a single mother, took a long time to accept that this man was genuine. She had gone through a period where Cuban exiled men had courted her, many of these men were nice decent guys, but she could not muster the energy or sensitivity to start any romantic relationships. These men were dismissed like puppets after a few weeks, and my brother and I came to believe that our mother would never again find happiness with a man. In an ironic way, my mother was experiencing the female version of what David was experiencing, except her background had taught her to be cautious, and to retreat into a very private world. When David appeared, he was the most unlikely candidate we had seen; a man from another culture, a man who did not speak Spanish, a Jew with what we considered an arrogant extravagant personality, and someone without any knowledge of our past. Initially, David was as far away from the image we had of ourselves, as a Martian.

Thinking he was incompatible with her, she ignored him. When he attempted to buy her gifts, she did not like it, and did not cling on to a “rich man” as many women of lower economic status often do in these situations; instead she dismissed him as a “loco”, or crazy man. A man who got manicures was for us somehow, no matter how masculine the rest of him may have been, a “maricon,” or a homosexual. Just looking at his hands without laughing took some time!

His personality, zest for life, in your face approach and over confidence were foreign to her also, making her suspect that he was attempting to take advantage of her, and her lack of familiarity with American culture. It was only after a year of courtship, resembling an old-fashioned Cuban dating ritual, with family members meeting, children in tow and countless weekends visiting us for coffee and introducing us to Bagels and Lox, that my mother began to accept the idea of a manicured man, and that he truly cared for her, and was sincere in his intentions. The patience exercised by David in order to convince my mother of his honesty was admirable.

After that clumsy first year, David and my mother developed a close relationship, sharing many things. They went into business together, opening a sportswear company appropriately called “Take-Off Sportswear, Inc.” where she designed the line, they traveled around Europe and the Orient, influenced each other’s taste in food, art and fashion, and acted as husband and wife. In spite of her broken English, they communicated very well. By the third year of the relationship, my mother was wearing Adolfo, Oscar de la Renta, had a collection of Louis Vuitton bags, sported an Omega watch, and looked very much the part of a New York “Garmenta.” For weekend getaways, David would pick up my mother early Saturday; they’d fly out of Flushing Airport in his Twin Bonanza and land in Portland Maine for a Lobster lunch. Then, in the afternoon they’d take off again and head out to Niagara Falls for a late dinner by the waterfalls. David liked the beach, and during the summers he enjoyed visiting Cape May, the Hampton’s, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod and Newport, Rhode Island. As a pilot, sometimes he would visit all of these destinations during a single weekend! So, it was not unusual for me to ask my mother where they had gone for the weekend, only to receive an answer that included multiple locations hundreds of miles apart.

David was a great analyzer of people. He analyzed new acquaintances on multiple levels. First it was race, then religion, then education, then political affiliation, then place where you lived, then your mate and finally, but perhaps most importantly to him, the value of what you wore. Upon coming into contact with a possible business associate or social contact, the person’s “value of dress” was quietly calculated in his mind. For example, someone would introduce David to a stranger: “David this is Sam Smith. Sam is with Acme, Inc.” As David shook the mans’ hand his brain was calculating: Bostonian Shoes $98.00, Macy’s men’s shop cotton/poly dress shirt $22.00, Barneys New York wool gabardine two piece suit $249.00, Guy LaRoche silk tie $12.00, non descript basic haircut $8.00, 14 carat wedding ring $150.00, generic briefcase $69.00, Bulova sports watch $120.00, plus another $15.00 for underwear, socks and tee shirt – Total $743.00. For people who respond to this type of hierarchical social and business structure, as most in the fashion, entertainment, hospitality and advertising industries do, David always ensured that his $4,000 Rolex watch was easily seen during the initial handshake. Ninety percent of the time, after a handshake with David, there was no doubt who was treated as top dog! This he once told me was called the theory of “The Coin Around the Neck.” I knew David and my mother got along well when I noticed that my mother had learned David’s rule of the “Coin around the Neck,” and was also using it with everyone she met. My mother’s optimism, desire to succeed in the United States, and David’s business experience and personality turned out to be a winning match. His adoration for her gave her back some of the confidence she had lost during the divorce, and her “we are temporarily poor, but mentally rich” attitude was able to expand towards a “we may leave this temporary poverty soon” kind of attitude, but she wanted to make sure her relationship with David was a partnership, and not that of a kept woman. As soon as she could, she began to invest in Real Estate, which later turned out to be a very wise thing, providing her with a comfortable retirement in her olden years.

David’s relationship with my brother and I was first cordial and respectful, and eventually informal and close. During the time David and my mother were together, he was the closest thing to a father my brother and I had. When David appeared in our lives I was 20 and my brother was 16. When I ended my job as doorman in Gramercy Park, and I was moving on with my life, David was the closest male role model I had, and after a few bumps he helped me leave the instability of my late teens. Without David, my life would have turned in a very different direction.

When I arrived in Brooklyn College, the born again, smiling and eventually ineffective and incompetent Jimmy Carter was president of the United States. But, as a fledgling Democrat, I highly admired him for his nice smile, and friendly southern way of speaking. Carter told the country we were in a malaise, and America’s best days were behind. A few years prior, another imbecile American president, the clumsy Jerry Ford, told us that there was no Iron Curtain, apparently embracing an Ostrich approach to Geo-politics. As a Cuban exile I looked at the world from a Cold War perspective. The Soviets were waging a war in Afghanistan, and their aggression in Hungary and Czechoslovakia some years before went un-answered by the US. India was controlled by a socialist government, South America was at the verge of an ideological collapse to communism. The Shah of Iran, the most pro-Western ruler in the Middle East had fallen, and most of Central America was at war with the communists, the Sandinistas had taken Nicaragua and other Castro supported rebels were winning everywhere they had gone. The Cuban army was triumphant in Angola, Mozambique, Somalia and the Transvaal, with over 100,000 Cuban soldiers and “internationalist” volunteers actively fomenting “revolution” throughout the third world. The Vietnam War had been lost by the US, and Socialist or outright Communist parties intent on breaking American power in the world governed most of Western Europe. Red China was testing nuclear weapons. Even Mexico, our neighbor to the south was not a democratic country, ruled by a corrupt treacherous one party system that would sell itself to communism at the slightest invitation. The United Nations was enamored with the so-called “non Aligned nations” which was/is anti-American. When I looked at the globe I saw more communism than capitalism, and I saw, with Jimmy Carter’s own admission, that capitalism was in an inevitable retreat. How could I think otherwise, I was a Democrat and a Cuban exile!

And so, I evaluated what had happened in Cuba with most of the professionals in mind, an entire class of people who lost everything due to exile. I looked at the many eastern European acquaintances I knew, and spoke to many Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and Yugoslavs also exiled in the United States, and saw the same thing. The business, intellectual and professional classes of those countries were the first ones to be wiped out by socialism, in essence the ones who made it to exile were the lucky ones. And, I wondered when the United States would itself become communist. The eastern Europeans all expressed a similar opinion, and that was that the United States was doomed unless some supernatural miracle occurred (later the miracle was called Ronald Reagan) to save Capitalism. I looked at the American communists, the honest ones who publicly identified themselves as such, and the huge hidden mass of organizations disguised as religious, civil rights, libertarian, feminist, ethnic and labor, who were/are ideologically communist, and then I added the socialist organizations whose intent is to dismantle capitalism while lying about it, and I gave the United States between ten and fifteen years at the most. What profession will survive communism, I then asked myself, in order to select my major in college, and not find myself as an exile in the future just like my parents, and the countless eastern Europeans I already knew. First, we were exiled from Cuba to the United States because of communism, but when the United States becomes communist; then there will be no place to go! I thought to myself.

I selected City Planning, not because the idea of calculating the garbage output of a city exited me. I selected City Planning as a major in college because it was not related to private enterprise; because it was not related to law, it was not related to government, academia, law enforcement or banking. My field of “communist safe” professions fell in a category that dealt with “technical and planning” fields, the areas a centrally planned command economy needs the most, and values the most. In communism, technicians and planners are at the heart of the gargantuan bureaucracy. Well-trained technicians and planners are more important than doctors. In a society where laws are decreed and the party decides the outcome of judicial and legal questions, planners are more important than lawyers. In a society where there are no rich people, and the resources are controlled by the state, with no private property, planners are more important than bankers or financiers. In a society where a small oligarchy of political ideologues makes all the decisions based on impersonal statistics and projections, the planner is high on the totem pole! So, although my interests were history, law and business, I focused on City Planning and after a short period, I enjoyed it very much, somehow mixing in those other subjects into my core classes in order to find enjoyment and satisfaction. I am the only person I know that chose his college major based on the Geo-political considerations of the Cold War, a fact that baffles most Americans, and is hard to comprehend years after the end of the Cold War. My decision however is well understood by Eastern Europeans and the first wave of Cuban exiles. Here is another example of the legacy of exile, and the profound impact Fidel Castro and his regime has had on those of us, who even as children left his “socialist paradise.”

During my sophomore year in Brooklyn College, I joined the Vista Volunteer program, and accepted an offer to work in the University Year in Action program, which was linked to the Urban Studies department, and the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development. As an Urban Planning major, this was a great fit. I spent a year doing volunteer work in the South Bronx, helping gangs adjust to society, then I spent another year attached to the New York City Planning Commission as a field researcher and community organizer. I did countless surveys to determine why homeless men urinate on the south side of a street, and not on the north side. I studied the benefits derived from planting lettuce in the roofs of abandoned buildings. Wrote proposals to the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation to get funding to conduct studies on the reasons why inner city children have lower math scores than other children, and why the ratio of working women is much lower in black neighborhoods, than in Hispanic neighborhoods. And, my pride and joy, a comprehensive statistical analysis based on a correct sampling of visitors to the Kings Highway Business strip, using the SPSS analytical software application, determining the ratio and volume of litter accumulated in the streets, during different business hours, and during different holidays. All in all, while I was a Vista volunteer and an Urban Planning major, I must have generated more than 250 pounds worth of research papers, opinion surveys, action plans, policy recommendations, and funding proposals.

Since I was good at studying and analyzing things, and I was Hispanic and liberal and a Democrat, and New York City is an almost 90% liberal Democratic city, with the entire bureaucracy and civil service “fairly selecting” even the lowliest jobs, and I was eager to work for almost nothing, I easily found part time work as a researcher for the New York City Board of Education. My Vista, Pratt and South Bronx credentials left little doubt as to my political affiliations. Wow, what a match, given my history and High School education! And so it was that during the summer of my senior year, I found myself conducting a study to determine why the children of incarcerated fathers, and/or single mothers on public assistance, consistently scored lower on standard tests than other children. The study conducted in Bedford Stuyvesant, with the assistance of the local Community Board, was comprehensive but did not yield politically correct results, or something that could be parlayed into a grant for the Board of Education. After the study was completed, and the findings prepared and presented, I faced the reality of having to think about real work, and the fact that I’d soon be in the real world with bills to pay.

Although, the Vista volunteer program paid a stipend, and the work for the City Planning Commission paid a wage, and the research project for the Board of Education also paid a per diem, the compensation was just enough to pay my basic expenses, sometimes forcing me to ask my mother for help, in order to cover my share of the rent at a railroad flat on Coney Island Avenue, which I shared with another college student. My resume blast and job search prior to graduation resulted in zero offers from all the “logical” places. Nothing at City Planning, nothing at the Mayors Office, nothing at Borough Hall, nothing at any of the City and state departments, and nothing from any of the politicians I had by then so happily courted and for whom I had provided free services during many local elections. Politicians who thought I was either Jewish, because of my name, or Puerto Rican because of my “Hispanic” category check mark, in all the application papers. The only offers that came were for more volunteer work; some short term per diem research work, but no real jobs.

New York politics, then more than now, controlled by liberal Democratic Jews is a funny place, and it wasn’t until years later that I realized how all the real decent paying jobs just happened to land in the laps of my Jewish friends, and the volunteer and per diem garbage projects would land on me. Being a Cuban, and not a Puerto Rican also proved educational, for the Puerto Ricans were beginning to be perceived as a political force, and the New York Cubans were politically insignificant, translating to Cubans having no “political” value, or little chance of getting patronage jobs. Although, in the United States City Planning is promoted as a profession removed from dirty politics, it is not. In a major city, City Planning is highly politicized, and more dependent on old boy networks and back room deals than the public imagines. Operating under the guise of public meetings, open forums and zoning boards, the final analysis boils down to the fact that Planners are the ones called upon to provide “expert technical” recommendations on how millions of dollars are allocated, and rarely, perhaps never, do decisions get made against the “recommendation” of a politically connected Planning Board, with “loyal” members. The legacy of Robert Moses lives on, in spite of Rachel Carson and Lewis Mumford. In many ways a capitalist City Planner is very similar to a communist one, except in capitalism there are some free market pressures no one can ignore.

Finally after more than eight months, two real jobs materialized, one as a Junior Planner in Anchorage Alaska, and another as a trainee for a Texas land developer. President Jimmy Carter’s disastrous economy and gloomy policies, and years of financial mismanagement by New York’s reformed Democrats had brought a reduction in city jobs, and my improper positioning as a politically unconnected Cuban all worked against me. I did not go to Alaska, and Texas did not interest me either. The next three months I spend brooding in a serious depression pondering what my life was going to be like, now that I was a good unemployable numbers cruncher. My choice to be in the public sector, and lack of business training had not prepared me for the private sector, and I knew it; my lack of interest in relocating further limited my chances of finding work in a bad economy. My application to work for the Harris Poll was unanswered, the United Nations was not interested in yet another rookie planner, and my rent payments needed to be paid. I began to contemplate working in a Pizzeria again making dough and pasta at the minimum wage.

“Tomorrow I’m picking you up at 8:30 in the morning. Be ready because we’ll be out all day.” Said David on the phone. Before I could ask what this was about, he hung up. At exactly 8:30 am the next morning Colonel David Tandoff rang my bell and when I stuck my head out the second floor window, to tell him I needed another five minutes, I saw him leaning on his huge black Cadillac, yelling at me. “Move it, move it, we’re already late!”

As soon as I sat in his car, he started. “We’re going to Binghamton. I bet you’ve never been to Binghamton?” Of course I had never been to Binghamton, and he knew it. “So, you’re not making any money,” he said. “I’m going to take you for a ride so you can see how I make money. Is that OK. With you?” “What do you think,” I thought to myself. Like I have something better to do. “Alright, how far is Binghamton?” ‘Three and a half hours with good traffic.” he responded. But, don’t worry we’ll make a few stops along the way!”

Along the way we stopped at an American Indian gift shop, by an Armenian roadside Bakery, a Greek Diner, and a Private Golf Club by a lake, where he proudly pointed out “five years ago they didn’t allow Jews in this place.” Everyone knew him by name, hugged him and exchanged small talk about things that seemed important to them, but completely stupid and silly to me! The back seat of David’s humongous gas guzzling 1976 4 door Cadillac Sedan De Ville had a rack where he hang dozens of women’s dresses, blouses, pants and skirts. Our trip was one of his regular rounds to the New England area where he personally visited clients, in spite of the fact that he had sales people doing this for him. David loved the road and this type of social interaction, and he had it down to a science. He was playing the role of a top notch “road Garmento.” “I’ll take you to Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania first, then we’ll go up to Rhode Island and Maine.” “How long will this take?” I asked. “What’s the matter,” you’ve got more important things to do?” “No,” I said. “Well, all I ask is that you watch, and don’t think too much. Trust me, and you’ll get an education, because in college now days they don’t teach how to make money. And, you need to know how to make money! Right?” “Fucking shit. I now have to sit here for hours listening to this fat guy tell me about his life and anything that comes to his head.” I thought, but instead said, “You’re right.” I sank into the seat as I realized how far this day was going to be from the planning, surveys, reports, statistics and meetings I wanted to be doing. After listening to what seemed like a never ending number of Frank Sinatra, Benny Goodman and Luis Armstrong tapes, we stopped for a late lunch somewhere past Bear Mountain, where David explained that his trip was to drum up some business with certain clients that had been “slacking” during the previous quarter, and he thought the slacking had to do with his salesman, or perhaps the new colors in the line. Either way, “showing your face is always good,” he said.

About half an hour from Binghamton, we stopped by a roadside mall, and headed for an upscale clothing store. David instructed me on how to setup the rolling racks and how to hang the line. Then he proceeded to pull the rolling rack, while telling me, “just watch and go along with anything I say.” Upon entering the large store, David started to whisper to me. “Look at that rack over there, that wasn’t here before, its Michael Doral’s stuff. And, that one over there, you see it, the slim dresses in the corner, that’s Sag Harbor, none of this stuff should be here.” I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Harry, Harry come out front, David Tandoff is here.” I heard a woman say. David’s face lit up with a smile, then he responded. “Harry stop redecorating and come out before I run away with Esther!” After giving Esther a hug and a kiss, David continued, “Hello sweetheart, how’s business?” Coming out from the back of the store, Harry responded for Esther, “it’s been lousy. Look at that floor, I’m overstocked and I’m not ready for spring.” Looking at the floor, David asked, “How’s the Michael Doral selling?” “Not moving,” said Harry. And, the Sag Harbor, is that part of their regular line, or is it their latest promotional?” Asked David. “Promotional? Hell no. Irving Greenberg, you know Irving, he gave us a 20% discount and promised to throw some promo money, but it hasn’t happened yet.” “But,” asked David, “is the stuff moving?” “No.” Said Harry. “Well,” said David, “ I thought that stuff would be flying out of here.” Then changing his tone, he asked, “What ever happened to Muriel Schotz from Binghamton, is she still married to old Abe?” Harry and Esther started to laugh, “you didn’t hear what happened? Old Abe went to New York, and when he returned he found her screwing one of the warehouse guys in the back of the store. We all knew what she was up to, but for years he put a blind eye to it. She left him and now lives in Elmira with another guy.” After about thirty minutes of gossip, laugher and coffee, during which David introduced me as his “helper,” without yet showing his new line, he said “I want you to send back the Sag Harbor and Doral lines, because I’ve got something that’s been selling well and will knock your socks off.” “David we can’t do that.” Said Esther. “You just look at what I have to show you, then you can ague with me!” David signaled me to unzip the rolling rack, and then he pulled out an ensemble and said, “Macy’s New York sold 18,000 pieces last month. No one up here has it. Give me a price?” Baffled, Harry scratched his head and said, “David my budget is dried up.” “Come on give me a price.” “$12.99” said Esther. “Close,” said David. “Now, check this one out,” pulling a beautiful linen dress, “What about this one? You see the stitch. This is Irish linen, look at the count.” Moving to the rack David began to take out his entire line, hanging the garments so the colors (I assumed, because of my color blindness) could be appreciated, and then he said. ”Look at these colors, now look at the Sag Harbor colors, and tell me what you see?” “I like these colors much better,” said Esther. “Now look at the Michael Doral colors.” “It’s a much duller palate she said.” “You see the same things your customers see. Over there a dull line. Over here energy and excitement. Why would they buy those, if they could buy these?”

When we walked out the door, David had managed to convince Harry and Esther to return the entire Michael Doral and Sag Harbor collections, in favor of his. He had sketched out a floor plan and display area for Harry to use when the new merchandise arrived, and had taken a $5,000 deposit on an $18,000 order, deliverable in 15 days. As we got back in the car, David told me he knew Muriel was a nympho maniac because every road salesman in the territory had been banging her for the last ten years. Then he asked, “Did you think I was going to make that sale?” “No, I thought you were just making small talk with them, because they told you they had spent all their money, and you just didn’t want to rudely walk out!” He looked at me, and said, “lesson number one in making money. Making money is all a lot of bullshit. Watch me and learn to bullshit and you’ll make money.” I thought to myself, “this guy is crazy! Making money requires intellect, complex negotiations, making products from raw materials, sweat and tears, legal agreements, financial instruments, and effort in convincing clients to part with their money. This man is a joke.” “What about the colors, do you like my colors better?” he asked me. “I’m color blind remember.” “Well, according to my fashion designer our colors are not exactly in tune with the current trends, but that’s how I want it. This season’s dull palate probably turns off half the market, so by having a slightly different tone, I become the choice for those who wont buy the new color trend.” “The problem,” he continued, “is that the sales people don’t know how to sell this strategy!” “But, suppose that the problem is not due to colors, but to people not buying because they have no money?” I said. “My job is to solve that problem, by selling the store my product.” He concluded. This answer was completely nuts I thought.

I traveled with David for about three and a half months, and saw the Harry and Esther scene play itself out time after time. “No David, we have no money to spend,” came out of the clients’ mouths, and entered David’s ears as, “show us what you’ve got, so we can buy!” In three months David closed more than $470,000 dollars worth of business in this manner. But, I was not ready to comprehend his lessons. Making money has to be hard, I believed. School, the liberal ideology about distribution of wealth, the poor masses exploited by industrialism, the monsters controlling capital in the banking sector, Jimmy Carter’s “malaise”, the old boy network, the ethnic prejudices, etc, etc, all pointed at how incredibly hard and depressing, and nerve wrecking it was to make money. But for David Tandoff, making money was all bullshit! He simply went to those who had money and convinced them to give him some, in exchange for something as silly as women’s clothes. No fancy reports, no statistical models and no overhead presentations. When he ran out of pre-printed invoices, he hand wrote the orders on scrap paper!

“You can do this.” He said to me after a couple of months and thousands of miles traveled. “But, I’m color blind, I tamely said.” “Leave that to me,” said David. After a little bit of thought, he said he had the answer, and it was textiles. “Expensive novelty textiles. Sell fabrics, because with fabrics you can sell using color-coded swatches, and the colors are prepared for you by color specialists. All you have to do is present them, and take orders.” David looked at me as if this was the simplest thing in the world. “You can do it, he said. An idiot can sell fabrics. Well, you’re going to have to learn about weaving, fiber counts, dyeing processes, finishing, mills, knitting and your competitors. Tomorrow I’ll get you started!” Damn, I thought, this is all Japanese. He makes it sound easy, but he’s got twenty five years of experience, and I have none!”

The next morning I drove in to New York with David, and found that he had lined up four consecutive appointments with the largest textile mills in the United States, so I could meet his friends and start learning about the fabrics business. At Burlington Industries, Alamac, Cone Mills and Millican, we met what I later realized were typical fabric professionals, who are different from typical “Garmentos.” My entire day was spent talking about fabrics. David’s optimism simplified what is really a complex and, esoteric profession. Textiles are part of a science that needs years of study to properly master. There are infinite varieties of fibers, colors, weaving combinations, textures, weights, strengths and costs that must be considered when making fabrics. A good salesman must know these things well in order to be successful. We are talking about the sale of hundreds of thousands of yards, not a few dozen yards. So, the best way to start is to pick a niche and attempt to break in, while you gain an education and move up the ladder.

While I was considering whether to go into the textile business, leaving City Planning in stillbirth, I accidentally met an old friend from Erasmus Hall High School, who had decided not to go to college, and had gone into the fashion industry instead. Gabriel Bouza was a Moroccan Jew who during the time I was in Brooklyn College went and made a fortune first selling sportswear, and then setting up his own shop on Broadway. Gabriel drove me to his $500,000 home in Long Island on his new Mercedes Benz, and basically told me he thought he wasn’t cut out for college, and he had gotten in the fashion industry because he couldn’t get hired anywhere else. Gabriel’s story of success was a variation of what I had heard and seen from David. Businessmen do not need to be brain surgeons. Successful businessmen in the fashion industry need to keep it simple, but be extravagant and extroverted. I had what it took, and more, except I was never able to master the extravagant part, and that hurt me.

Two weeks later, and after many practice interviews with David, I bluffed my way into a job as representative for a European textile consortium, selling to the New York trade. Exactly as David had described, it was almost a sell by the numbers job. I sold expensive European novelty fabrics to American designers who after purchasing them sent the swatches to Hong Kong to have them copied at one-tenth the cost of the originals. For me this was good, because it kept me busy with lots of small orders, and sampling, allowing for decent commissions, but it was not very good for the Europeans who dealt with the logistics of a barrage of small transatlantic orders that never materialized into large production orders. I enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Technology’s textile science certificate program, knowing that I would not finish it, but with the intent however of learning as much as possible about the business. Acetate smells like fish when burned. Sunlight destroys the color fastness of most organic fibers. Three hundred pounds per square inch of pressure is too much for even the hardest canvass. A four by four weave is usually the cheapest fabric. Pima cotton is very different than Egyptian. Alpaca has a caloric value lower than Merino, but Cashmere is higher than Merino. Synthetic Blue is close in tone to an Indian Indigo, but the Indigo is usually ten times more expensive. Silk is stronger than polyester. Women’s stockings are made in a circular knitting machine. A 40-inch roll selling for $1.45 a yard is more expensive than a 55-inch roll selling for $1.85. Last season’s colors are usually discounted at 40%, and last years colors are as good as junk. Selling fabric for a small salary and a commission when the American market was still a domestic industry in need of European samples was not bad.

I quickly learned that American designers are almost all copiers, with little creativity of their own. The biggest copiers are often the most renown names. Americans copy from the Europeans, everything down to the last fiber and zipper, then they look for ways to manufacture at a low cost, in order to maximize profits. A $250.00 Paris skirt, gets “translated for the American market” and ends up in Macy’s for $49.00. Constant trips to Europe, the purchase of expensive photo albums, sketch books and color “guidance” books, with samples, and sit down consultations with “fashion consultants” keep the American designers “in tune” with the trends. Because of this dependence on Europe, European “market intelligence” is very important. After about a year of studying and selling European textiles, mostly French and Italian, I felt more comfortable with the industry in general, and when I was offered a job by a textile fashion service, the equivalent of a professional cheating service for textile designers, I took it. The company took care of the hard work, designing from European inspirations dozens of unique fabric and knitted patterns. These were sold as technical books with all the needed information to setup the production mills which would then roll out the fabric under the name of what ever company or designer wanted to take credit for the then “proprietary” design. This service allowed dozens of so called “designers” to wallow in the beach, snort cocaine, or spend the afternoons in tanning salons, while they took credit for creating just “fabulous and fantastic” winning fabrics.

Although, I was nowhere near my friend Gabriel in compensation, I was making money, and the days of Vista, Pratt, and the South Bronx seemed far. The idea of surveys to find out about human pissing patterns was put in its proper context, as a stupidity I was glad to leave behind. The entire Cold War fear of America collapsing under communism began to take a surreal feel to it. If capitalism were to collapse then I’d deal with it when it came. Like the Polacks who emigrated to Cuba in the late 1940’s after Poland became communist, only to be chased out of Cuba again in the early 1960’s because Cuba had also become communist. Sometimes you have to go with the flow, sometimes things are much bigger than you can handle. My intellectual attraction to complicated theories, statistical models to answer simple questions, projections, plans, legal inclinations, and financial models with what if scenarios were all fine, and perhaps in the future would mean something, but in the fashion industry Dumb was OK. Everyone around me who was making big money was basically intellectually challenged. Like in my High School days, I noticed the rewards were not going to those who worked hard, but those who played the system. Soon I noticed what the system was.

The fashion industry was divided into three stratas, like a layered cake. The Jews on the top who pulled the strings and controlled everything, along with a few WASP’s who remained from the old days. The Italians who worked the creative jobs, and some production, and then the rest who comprised a large group reflective of all the ethnic groups in the city, minus the blacks. Blacks rarely worked the industry outside some warehouse and showroom cleaning positions. China Town did local production in downtown sweatshops, with scattered but tiny “sewing rooms” in Queens and the Washington Heights area worked by Puerto Rican’s and some Cubans. There was no Asian overseas production of any significance outside Hong Kong, and anything made in Korea or India was considered “schlock” or poor quality stuff. Mainland China was off limits. Hispanics where a few notches above the blacks in this pecking order, but never as high as the Italians. Each group guarded its position with care, with the Italians famous for aggressively “dissuading” others from infringing on their creative jobs. The corporate structure of a fashion company usually looked like this: Jewish partners run company. Italian designer, pattern maker and assistant designer. Polish or Eastern European head seamstress, Hispanic sewers and shipping clerks, Jewish salesmen and bookkeepers. The Fashion media and retail buying offices were also all Jewish, with the top positions at the garment and textile Labor Unions all in Jewish hands. It was rare for example to find an Italian in a sales position, or a Jew as a pattern maker!

I remember there were no Hispanic designers, aside from Oscar de la Renta, Adolfo, and Carolina Herrera, and one day I mentioned to a Jewish friend, that in the 20th century the greatest artist, Pablo Picasso, and the greatest fashion designer, Cristobal Valenciaga were both Spanish, and there was no lack of creative Hispanics capable of working as designers. “How come there are none in the industry?” His response was “not on 7th Avenue.” To some, it seemed that the memory of the Inquisition was still fresh. It was fine to complain about how years before Jews were not allowed to enter certain places, or play Golf in WASP only country clubs, and it was also OK to keep Hispanics from entering “their” fashion industry! I was “in” because I had a powerful godfather in Colonel David Tandoff. A good ninety percent of these Jews were also liberal Democrats, my buddies at the time.

So, after a while I got the feeling that one other requisite not mentioned to me by David, or Gabriel was that in a Jewish controlled industry, Jewishness was as important to success as product knowledge, extroversion and extravagance. When the Indians and Chinese broke the walls of Jerusalem in New York’s fashion industry, I thought it was a miracle. It only took the combined power of two of the world’s most populous countries with more than three billion people to do it, and this was only achieved in the late 1990’s. If you want to study the monopolistic impact of a particular group’s hold on an industry, study 7th Avenue and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Together, they danced and are still dancing to a most corrupt music.

From the textile industry I eventually moved on to garments when the Indians began to make inroads in the early 1980’s and non-Jews had an opening in the major leagues. Not interested in displaying Rolex watches, wearing trophy gold chains, treating clients to cocaine, and dressing like a “Garmento,” or an effeminate Hispanic, (for which there was plenty of demand) in an industry well known for “decadence,” I was always at the periphery of things. When the Rolexes were flashed at me, the gold chains dangled, and the discussions about hanging out in the Hampton’s came up, I was un-impressed. I actually hated it, having seen David play the game so well, I knew it was all a very sophisticated strategy to place me in a pecking order, very much like a pack of dogs, where the Alpha dog gets all other dogs to roll over whenever he howls. As a Cuban exile, and with my family history, “I’d rather starve to death than roll over for some snot nosed imbecile half educated Garmento,” I used to say to myself. I was therefore not plugged in to the in-crowd. I tried doing business in a “wholesome” way; as a result I did not make the big bucks. I dressed as a preppy, with a few “blues Brother’s” suits, good quality but simple L.L. Bean Penny Loafer shoes, always in a button down shirt and classic tie, a decent Seiko watch and that was it. I avoided the flashy labels and “personal trophies” everyone wore. Noticing the use of David’s “Coin around the Neck” process being used on me was interesting, especially when the other party expected me to kiss their ass, and I did not.

I learned a great deal from David, and made a transition to the private sector thanks to him. Many of his lessons were on target, many where things that did not translate well outside the fashion industry, some were leftovers he carried from 1930’s Bensonhurst, which by the 1980’s were completely crazy. I also learned that it’s OK to appreciate a person for their good qualities, while understanding and criticizing their bad ones. At the same time that David, one of the best Jewish persons I’ve ever befriended, was educating me about the fashion industry, I was seeing how unfair and often corrupt the Jews were in that same industry. And, I say “Jews” as a category, because that is exactly how the majority acted, as a very tight self-centered group. I have never met a Jew to this day that admits to the negative aspects involved in their almost total control of the fashion industry. Simply because they profited imensily from the arrangement. It seems that all groups, Cubans included of course, just want to be told how good and benevolent they are. If you criticize, you are anti-Semitic, or anti-Cuban. This of course brings questions about the whole American concept of the Melting Pot. In my opinion there has never been a Melting Pot, but theoretically it would be nice if there was one. Each group in America takes care of its own, and when there are leftovers, then those are shared. Of course, there are lots of gray areas, like the one I myself inhabited.

My transition to the fashion industry was a big break with the past. I left behind a lot of my big fears of communism, which had influenced many of my important and mundane decisions, and for better or worse are still impacting my life. For, had I not been a Cuban exile with the ghost of Fidel Castro chasing me, I would have gone directly to business school or law school, something I later contemplated doing for over ten years. But, in retrospect, not finding work after college was a good thing. Had I found a job as a City Planner, I would perhaps still be studying why Bums pee where they do, I would probably be a loyal dog to the New York liberal Democratic machine, and I would not have had the opportunities that later came to me in the business world. However, the break was bumpy, and the transition took me to many places, and gave me lots of surprises. In many, many ways, the real world for me began on New York's seventh avenue.

In 1982 I met a client that eventually became my wife, and the mother of our two children. An Italian fashion designer. In 1984 we honeymooned in Paris, Florence and Barcelona. When we returned from our Honeymoon, we set up house in an apartment located of all places, in Gramercy Park. What an interesting voyage, how far from Cuba!

In 1986 my wife and I started a sportswear company with an Indian manufacturer as partner. We took the company from zero to seven million dollars in a year and a half, after which we suffered the impact of a sudden huge import restriction (Quota) imposed on Indian cottons, forcing our Indian partner into bankruptcy, leading later to the collapse of our business, as quickly as it flourished. As a young married couple we experienced extreme success, followed by extreme financial disaster. I left the fashion industry disappointed and seeking to diversify our family’s means of survival. After seven years in the fashion industry, I had enough. My next stop would be somewhere else. Somewhere that was connected to City Planning, but in the private sector and away from politicians and Rolex watches. And, that job led me to technology, which eventually became my love and the start of a life as a “Nerd” and high tech pioneer. Like my father, I am a tinkerer and an entrepreneur.

My mother and David parted ways after nine years as friends, lovers and business partners. In the end she could not marry him. I don’t believe it was because she did not love him, but because she concluded that she did not want to be “under the control” of a man. I believe the Cuba baggage, and the divorce from my father made her into a rebel, and although David was a liberal man, he was still a product of his generation, with certain expectations. When he realized there was not going to be a marriage, he was heart broken, tried everything in the book to change her mind, and then he pulled back and disappeared for a year. When he re-appeared, it was as a platonic friend who called once in a while and during holidays to wish us well. When he died in the late 1990’s, my brother and I cried. I miss him. But, I have never developed an ear for Frank Sinatra, his favorite singer.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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Hormel makes a foul smelling Corned Beef Hash, which in the 1970’s sold for about $0.28 a can. Mixed with chopped onions, a little garlic and green peppers all worth about $0.15, this mixture when stir-fried leads you to think you are eating something akin to a Cuban “Vaca Frita.” With one and a half cups of white rice worth $0.14 and a fresh tomato worth $0.08, four persons ate a comfortable dinner. Ad two tablespoons of King Kullen iced tea to water worth $0.04 and two Yodels at $0.12, and you had a feast with desert all for under $1.00. This was the typical meal prepared by my mother for several years after her divorce from my father. For variety she would substitute the Corned Beef with chopped Hot Dogs, and we were happy, and everything was still under a dollar! Thanks to supermarket coupons, we would sometimes splurge on chicken legs and pork chops. Steaks were things we looked at with envy, and rarely could afford.

While my mother, brother and I survived on a shoestring budget, and my mother’s many tensions kept her from sleeping a full night, my brother and I learned to fetch for ourselves. We learned to survive the concrete jungles of Brooklyn, and then Queens. All of our Cuba reference points seemed irrelevant and when called upon, would always let us down. Without a father, my brother and I quickly learned that in a crisis we should never expect any backup or support from anybody. My mother, away from home from 7:30 in the morning till 6;30 in the afternoons because of her work, could not help even if she wanted. Exposed to every conceivable vice, criminal activity, drugs, rampant sex of the straight and homosexual type, gangs and epidemic school truancy rates, my brother and I somehow managed to keep to ourselves, going to school, coming home, keeping the apartment clean, studying and staying away from destructive habits. To this day, I cannot clearly explain why we survived, while so many around us fell victims to behaviors that eventually killed them, or put them in jail for half their lives.

In this lifestyle we lived, with my mother fervently believing that we were “temporarily poor” but “mentally rich.” My mother’s biggest concern was that we focus on education, and we study hard, which my brother and I did as best we could, within all the constraints that accompany teenage boys when left to themselves. My mother’s formula for study was simple; “read all you can, and stuff your head with information.” I was very good at this, my brother not so very good! I was a mental vacuum cleaner, and every time we moved to a new neighborhood, my first priority was to find the local public library, and some type of part time work. Parks, amusement areas, places where kids hung out, and theaters where at the bottom of my priority list. From age 14 onwards, my priority was to read and work.

Perhaps because of my early Quaker upbringing, my sense of ethics and work was conservative, but I did not know it. Favoritism, paternalistic behaviors, stealing, double talk, laziness, and disrespect for private property turned me off, and when seen in others it always resulted in me distancing from the person. So, between the instability brought about from my parent’s divorce, the constant moving, the lack of money to acquire the material things teenagers find “necessary for social survival” and my sense of ethics, I did not have many close friends. By the time I was 15 or 16, I felt I was much older than I actually was, and I lived in a world not commonly inhabited by my peers. I was also very disappointed with the public school system, which I felt was keeping me from excelling, while operating based on a set of rules unworthy of my respect.

When I arrived at Brooklyn’s Erasmus Hall High School in 1975, my interest in American academia had deteriorated to a level that I looked at all teachers with contempt. Having strong study skills acquired in Cuba, my mother’s influence, and a love for reading, saved me from giving up on my education, and later allowed me to recapture the desire to succeed in life via intellectual pursuits, and business instead of my bare muscles, or crime. How I got to this rebellious state and how I formed a long lasting antipathy for American education is a trip that took many turns before I reached my 16th birthday. But, I know it began the very first day I stepped in an American school. Those who know me today can never imagine how I navigated through these waters and how I managed to survive.

In 1960’s Cuba, the only way a young “Gusano” (a person black listed for disagreeing with the revolution) could safely compete with his communist peers was through academic achievement. Learning was a process whose meaning was tinged with family pride, survival, an athletic like competitive feeling, and the knowledge that this was the only way to get back at people whose parents at any time could torment your life. As a result all the “Gusanos” I know from that period that became exiles are academic over achievers. I was a straight “A” student in Cuba, a country whose education system was at that time highly regimented and probably superior to that of the United States, and whose military model of discipline produced one of the highest per capita levels of university educated people in the world. From this I came to a public education system whose teachers were experimenting with “Groovy Flower Power”, Ivan Illich’s “Deschooling Society” and “the everlasting love of the Woodstock generation”.

Upon our arrival in the US, my brother and I were at least three years ahead of our American peers in all subjects except English. And, for lack of English skills, I was placed in a class with mentally retarded children, and my brother was placed one year behind the grade level where he should have been. American teachers and their education system welcomed my brother and I with a slap in the face and a three-year demotion. Soon, after transitioning into “a normal class” and gaining comfort with the English language I began to suspect that in American schools kids were promoted for reasons other than academics, good behavior, and hard work. And, I also learned that there is no room for over achievers, like there was in Cuba, because Americans are afraid of creating over achievers, lest they be classified an “elite” group, which is a major taboo, especially for liberal Americans.

I learned that age and some other things not clear to me, like race, are determinants and that as one progresses up the grade levels, these things gain in importance. Kids who were clearly undeserving, who cut classes, were inconsistent with their homework, were troublemakers, disrespected teachers, and failed on most tests, were promoted. Bright, studious, hard working, and deserving kids went with little recognition and for the most part were mocked as square. As my suspicions formed and I began to accept this as the “way things work” I became unsettled because I did not remember anything like it taking place in Cuba, even though the public policy there was always to “provide equality between the social classes”, while the “Gusanos” were harassed. The day that I was able to confirm this merit less system was the day I lost respect for all teachers, and anything that had to do with education in the United States. But, at the time, I did not rationalize it in clear political terms. I was simply overcome with a tremendous inability to hold serious conversations with most teachers on any academic topic. It was clear to me that what was going on in the New York City public education system, had very little to do with what I considered “education”, and a lot to do with things I did not quite understand, cared for, or even respected.

This view caused a great conflict for me, because accepting the idea that a school was not a place for academic pursuits was unimaginable. Realizing that the public schools were more like assembly lines for lazy pampered teens, giant baby sitting places for future unemployable social misfits, and places of work for largely incompetent grown ups who could not be fired, simply did not fit my simple expectations. And, as a Cuban whose family fled the political repression and humiliation of socialism; the sit-ins in protest over the “capitalist” Vietnam War, and the waving of Vietcong flags, the middle class white teachers who lectured in defense of the Black Panther movement and Angela Davis (considered heroes in socialist Cuba), and the Puerto Rican and black students who wore Che Guevara pin buttons in their jackets, did little to encourage my class attendance.

As time went on, my challenge became how to avoid the education system, while becoming educated. How to avoid the “flower power” teachers whose social studies lectures floated around the classrooms like sick echoes from a three-hour speech by the Maximum Leader, the butcher Fidel Castro. While wearing faded blue jean bell-bottom pants, colorful polyester shirts, long hair, and enjoying Jimmy Hendrix, my mind was nowhere near that of my school peers who happily accepted the wisdom of our “groovy” teachers.

By this time, my divorced mother with limited financial resources could not even contemplate the idea of transferring me to a private school. The New York City Board of Education in its infinite wisdom did not allow transferring to another public High School, and moving to another neighborhood was not in the cards. Believing that there were no choices, left little in the way of alternatives. Had there been something akin to school vouchers, or a way to easily transfer to another school, perhaps my life would have been dramatically different. But, it didn’t turn out that way. My decision to solve this challenge was simple but against everything I had been taught, and everything I believed regarding social advancement and “education”. I dropped out of Erasmus Hall High School at the end of my freshman year. And, I did not tell my mother, or anybody else, for fear of ostracism by fellow Cubans. Dropping out of school, was considered as bad if not worse than taking Welfare, and a thing no self-respecting young Cuban exile should have even contemplated.

Ironically, the thing that helped me the most when considering dropping out of High School were thoughts of my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my father and mother. I thought about “El Come Balas” and his long life, the fact that he rose from illiteracy to the status of a hero due to his courage, natural wits, and hard work. I thought about Pedro Font the man who rose from poverty, to high levels of material well-being and social standing due to his intellect, honesty, and perseverance. I thought about my father and his entrepreneurial habits, and I thought about my mother who always told me that if we could conceptualize something, we could do it. If these people where able to achieve what they did in a small country like Cuba, how could I not achieve greater things in a big, powerful, rich country like the U.S.A.? And, I said to myself, “this school challenge is all bullshit. I can do what ever I want to do. I’m going to drop out of High School, and I’m going to go to college and be a successful businessman.” And, I saw myself going to college, but the details of how I would leapfrog on to college never bothered me!

In one swoop, and vested with self authority, I declared the public education system in New York City illegitimate, and did what every person who faces this dilemma should do; I disassociated myself from it. I resigned from the system. I told myself that I would take a year off, and then I’d figure out my next steps, and how I would get to college. With only “gut feeling” I proceeded into the unknown!

During my year off, which when asked by family and friends was called my “sophomore year,” in order to cover-up the fact that I had dropped out, I worked at an Italian restaurant. I saved money, bought a Fender Precision bass guitar, took music lessons and joined a Rock band. I did all the things I felt I wanted to do in previous years, but could not do. I also made sure I continued reading, and I focused on the classics, and philosophy spending long hours at the Public Library near Flatbush Avenue. My hair grew, and I began to wear uncoordinated filthy clothes just like most of my new friends from music school. Jimmy Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Who, Santana, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Black Sabbath and Jethro Tull where my idols, and my fingers always hurt from practicing the bass guitar, and my ears buzzed from standing next to 800 watt Marshall amplifiers at full blast. Because I didn’t have Cuban friends, Cuban music was something I rarely heard and was exposed to only when visiting my father and his friends. But, when within earshot, I’d tune it out of my brain. Cuban music for me at that point represented the past, and not the present.

During this “sophomore year” when I was unrestrained by the past, and discovering an American identity, I also discovered sex. Not in a bar, or at the beach, or in the movies, but, in a public library. Sex first came to me while I read “Lazarillo de Tormes,” in the form of a gorgeous Philippine girl that enjoyed sex uninhibitedly, and rubbed my legs under the table to see if I was receptive. Then with a Hungarian girl that looked like a young Zsa Zsa Gabor, and enjoyed oral sex in public places. For a while libraries helped me learn, and pick up women. I lost count of the number of women I had sex with during that year, all picked up at public libraries in central Brooklyn. So it was, that by age 16 I had achieved two of the three most important things a teen-age boy of that generation should have mastered. I was in a Rock band, and I was having lots of sex. The third thing was drugs, Marijuana to be precise, and I didn’t touch that until age 17, when I thoroughly inhaled three joints before feeling any effects, one of which was a two hour erection I happily shared with a gorgeous Irish girl.

Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll are for teens like nectar for bees. Who doesn’t like to get buzzed, listen to music and have sex all at the same time? When discovered and shared with others, this trio quickly takes over all other priorities. The sex buddies I made in my late teens in Brooklyn and Queens remained in contact with me until my mid twenties when everyone started to get married. Many, however found it very hard to kick the habit, and paid dearly for not becoming adults, when the time to become an adult arrived!

Sex, drugs and Rock and Roll broke down whatever conservative Quaker restraints still remained in me, and I still recognized just a year prior to dropping out of High School. My concerns became a little more Hedonistic, and less focused on Cuban concepts of right and wrong. Some of the values of the "Flower Power" generation got to me. I accepted the 1970’s pre-AIDS notion that recreational heterosexual sex is something to be thoroughly “practiced” until marriage. In order to do it right, that is in order to have lots of good sex, I read the Kama Sutra, and a few Tantra manuals, but at that age, and high on pot, none of my partners were interested in experimenting with position number 204, which facilitates the “blow of the bull,” where “as it enters, the linga strikes both sides of the yoni at the same time!” I probably averaged 11 orgasms a week, and I was very slim, tired and happy.

Secretly dropping out of High School was a serious challenge. Had my mother found out, I think she would have castrated me, and if my estranged father had found out, it would have given him ammunition for his claims that my brother and I were growing up as wild boys. For three years, while I worked several jobs, played in a band, studied at libraries and had wild sex with whatever willing female I could find, I told my mother and close relatives that I was doing well in school. Because my mother left for work early in the morning, and school started at 8:30, she believed my claims, never noticing that instead I was going elsewhere. My brother covered for me, and when the school sent letters regarding my attendance, I simply intersected them. After a year the school gave up. What I did tell my mother was that my part time jobs were paying better, and hence the more money I was sharing with her, and our improved ability to buy “luxuries” like a new television set when our second hand one burned out. I lied to my mother, and many others, but I did it thinking that what I was doing was grounded in the reality of our poverty, and not the idealism of 1950’s Cuban values. Values that were half destroyed anyway! We needed more money, and idealism was not going to get it.

What kept my mother from figuring me out was my reading. I kept reading, and with more disposable income, I developed a decent library. When I got tired of the Spanish classics in English, like Alarcon’s the “Three Cornered Hat,” the extremely long “Don Quixote de la Mancha,” and Calderon’s “Life is a Dream,” I began to read Sarte, Hammet, Shakespeare, Terkel, O’Neill, Verne, Orwell, Shaw, Huxley, and Chekhov. Of the Cuban authors, I only read Marti, whose “La Edad de Oro” I had read in Cuba, and did not find very interesting in English, considering him a gifted journalist, a romantic poet and political leader, instead of the great literary figure many make him out to be. If my mother was judging my education by the volume of my reading, she was very satisfied.

Having spent more than a year working in an Italian restaurant making dough, sauces, and pasta, I longed for a change and the ability to earn more money. I realized that I had spent enough time investigating life without a college degree, and went about looking for a “hidden path” or a “loophole” into college. The hidden path was the GED High School Equivalency Diploma, which I earned after “several weeks” reviewing the study guides. Obtaining my High School diploma one and a half years prior to my regular High School class, had I stayed in Erasmus Hall was a victory I savored. Entering Brooklyn College a year prior to my class, and greeting some friends from Erasmus who remembered me as a drop out, was also an exalting moment, and something that caused great surprise in many. But, before I achieved these things, I needed to make a stop in beautiful Gramercy Park.

My mother’s heroic attempt at supporting my brother and I with a seamstress’ wages always felt short, and my restaurant wages being part time were often unreliable. So, one day she asked my uncle Fernando if he knew of a part time job that would pay me better than what I was making at the restaurant. It turned out that uncle Fernando’s brother-in-law was the manager at a luxury building in Gramercy Park, and he was looking for a part time doorman. After agreeing to say I was eighteen years old, instead of the sixteen I really was, I got the job. I quickly got a haircut, and traded my funky Rock and Roll clothes for preppy attire, and penny loafers, as recommended by my uncle and mother. From the working class streets of Flatbush Avenue, I headed to the well-groomed sidewalks and “invitation only” private clubs of Gramercy Park.

The oldest elevator in New York City is in an old luxury building in Gramercy Park. Getting to the top floor of the building is strenuous since you have to propel yourself up like Fred Flintstone, by pulling on an iron rope that protrudes through the side of the cab. Everyone who loves architecture and urban planning goes there to experience the humble beginnings of a technology that later on revolutionized the face of cities around the world. For many who know about these things, this building is revered like the Flatiron building on 23rd and Broadway, with its hydraulic elevator. Each building around Gramercy Park has a unique history and very special character, and most of the people who chose to live there were, as I later found out, also unique.

My work as doorman gave me access to some of the buildings surrounding Gramercy Park, and I often enjoyed going to their roofs to look down and contemplate the views of the park, the New York Life Building and beyond towards midtown and the Empire State Building. In the summer time the roof in the hand cranked elevator building is a great spot to enjoy a cool iced tea, a steak sandwich and then read Tirant Lo Blanc’s chapter on the Order of the Garter or his travels to Constantinople. From the vantage point of a sixteen-year-old doorman in one of those luxury Gramercy Park buildings, I learned a great deal about New York City, myself, and the views of the youth culture that existed in the mid 1970’s, which later became the established culture of the 1990’s. This exposure shaped my political and social views of America for many years.

Upon arrival in the building I discovered that of the eleven employees who provided services to the tenants, ten were Cubans, and they all came from Oriente province. Martinez, Enrique, Alfredo, Julio, Manuel, “El Guajiro”, and Jose, became my friends. Quickly it became evident that these men all knew my extended family in Cuba, and immediately began to treat me like family. Without exception, each of these men had better work ethics, humanity, intelligence, family values, decency and sensitivity than most of the wealthy people they had to serve. In spite of the fact that the tenants, who earned more money in one week than most of us earned in four months, treated us with disdain, we went about doing our jobs quietly and as dignified as possible. Like my father, my co-workers were cleaning toilets, vacuuming floors and cleaning windows. But, amongst ourselves we all knew we were in a twilight zone and we were not toilet cleaners. The Americans however, had no idea of this and saw us simply as menial laborers with clumsy Latin expressions, and a short temper whenever the subject of Fidel Castro was mentioned by anyone.

Reading Spinoza, Voltaire, Spencer, Kant, Darwin, Malthius, Marx, Freud, Lenin, Tocqueville and Adam Smith between 1:00 AM and 5:30 AM every night (the Grave Yard shift) was an uplifting experience, and somewhat peaceful given the occasional sounds of police sirens on Park Avenue, and the unceremonious solicitations of beautiful prostitutes who traded oral sex for five dollars, or less if business was slow. Sometimes when I was deep in my reading, some respectable looking middle-aged man wearing a tuxedo or a Saville Row suit would knock in the door, drunk and clasping to a younger man, who was obviously his lover for the night, and in clumsy language complained about my tardiness in opening the door.

At other times bisexual couples holding wife swapping orgies in their expensive Penthouses would call me upstairs to order Champagne or Chinese food, while the guests had rough sex and moaned on their plush living room carpets, before my not so very calm eyes and ears. My job required the utmost patience, courtesy, control of erections and good manners in addition to staying away from the women, and accepting the credo that in a dispute or misunderstanding the offending party and not I was always right. The art of fake compliments and self-control in the face of idiots were also traits needed for the job, and I learned these well. I also realized these professional qualities were everywhere else called, “hypocrisy.”

Looking good required a serious amount of time polishing shoes, making sure the pants were properly pressed, the white shirt impeccably starched, the black bow tie balanced properly around the collar, and the jacket was creaseless. The hat had a policeman’s air to it, and for a perfect fit I had to maintain my hair well trimmed. When in full garb, I looked like a doorman from a Woody Allen movie. My nametag said “Mr. Joel Font” so everyone could properly identify and address me, but few did. Instead, most tenants called me “Joe”, unceremoniously chopping off the “L” from my name. A Cuban with the name of “Joel” somehow did not match, and “Font” was too complicated to explain. Clearly, “Jose Fernandez” was what they expected, and many thought “Joel Font” was not my real name.

The double personality of Gramercy Park in the late 1970’s during the heyday of hip cocaine, cheap Marijuana, no AIDS, and discothèque stimulated sex was orgasmic, but as a Doorman it was also a great education on the lifestyles of upper middle class America, and especially the new rich. The decadent Gramercy Park of the night was nothing like the conservative gracious well groomed Gramercy Park of the daytime. Its inhabitants conducted themselves with great style and flair during the day, often discussing politics and the problems of the poor and ethnic groups of the city with thoughtful care when with strangers, and paternalistic disdain when among themselves. During the summer weekends half the building would empty, as the younger tenants would head out to the beach, and the older ones would head for their limousines, driven by smiling black drivers, who quietly whisked them away to Democratic Party fundraising events in the Hamptons, Hyannis Port or Martha’s Vineyard.

While living in an exclusively white neighborhood, using Asian, black and Hispanic nannies for their children, and sharing nothing but a condescending attitude with the minorities, these wealthy Democrats thoughtlessly took advantage of privileged institutions, but talked about the sufferings of the poor, the problems of racism, and the injustices of the Nixon administration as if they had unique insight on these issues.

Living with my single mother, and my younger brother in a six story walkup in Queens, and considering a Saturday Kung Fu movie matinee a splurge on entertainment, I quite well understood the differences between the rich and poor in New York, and I clearly knew, first hand, how the poor lived in Black Harlem, and Spanish Harlem. I also knew that the people I catered to, the “socially conscious,” had never set foot inside the house of a poor black or Hispanic person, and their meaning of “poor” was not mine, or for that matter that of those they claimed to “protect.”

I enjoyed talking to the younger tenants in the building, who at one point explained to me what a “Trust Fund” was, along with the joys of summer camping in Vermont and Maine. My job required that I help their parents bring up boxes full of silverware and fine crystal from Tiffany’s, silk dresses and expensive shoes from Saks, and Cashmere sweaters for their dogs purchased at Burberry’s on Fifth Avenue. As a young Cuban in the process of Americanizing, I had admiration for many of these people because by then I considered myself a New York Democrat, and most of these tenants were at the top of the political pecking order, and I wanted to be a good New York Democrat.

How wonderful, I thought, to have so much and to at least be aware of the needs and existence of the poor. And, with such style and panache, like the Kennedy’s and Camelot. Here were American capitalists, with an interest in sharing the wealth and, although in a strange and distanced manner, trying to at least do something about class disparities. Even though I detected hypocrisy in their behavior, a paternalistic disdain for Hispanics, and their decadence was in full view, these were my champions. Unlike some Cubans who equated the defeat at the Bay of Pigs with the Democrats, I felt this view was short sighted. In order to be a good American, accepted by other “real” Americans, Cuba must be placed in its proper context. And, that is a tiny little corner where it can be hardly noticed!

And so it was, that in 1979 when I finally met a Republican, I could not help but pull away in utter disgust. His name was Joseph Marchetti, he wore khaki pants, a red polo shirt, penny loafers, was Italian-American, and was visiting his aunt in Gramercy Park. Joseph was working on a plan to bring parental choice and competition to the New York City Board of Education. I thought this made sense and was a good idea, but had to be a right wing reactionary and disruptive scheme, if not part of some fascist plan to defraud the City. Fixing the education system can only be done by screwing the teacher’s union, and that must have been what was behind Joseph’s plan, or so I thought. I was sure that no Republican could understand the problems of the working class and the poor. A Republican in New York City was strange, and rare! As a Hispanic, I already knew, because the Daily News, Mrs. Winthrop, and everyone I knew had clearly explained, my allies were not the Republicans, even if they made more sense and appeared more decent and honest than the Democrats. Although, I was still years away from becoming an American citizen, I was already ardently liberal and anti-Republican.

My Cuban co-workers on the other hand were all Republicans, but also un-able to vote because they were not yet citizens. I brought great disappointment to them, when my liberal tendencies were revealed, and I told them that we should not decide our American political affiliations based on the Cuba experience! “You guys should at least be Independents, that way you can vote for the best candidate.” One of the guys, Martinez, who was very philosophical and wise, looked at me and with pity said, “How young, how foolish and how stupid you are!” It took me 21 years, the shenanigans of Bill Clinton, numerous insults to my intellect, and the unabashed racist and polarizing tactics of the Democratic Party during the 1990’s, for me to understand how right Martinez was and how thoroughly brainwashed I was.

In my efforts to assimilate, to be accepted as a New Yorker, to transcend the pain of the Cuban exiles, and be liked by my generation I gave in to the herd mentality that says Republicans are all Neanderthals, and the enemies of all the minorities. As a result, I refused to allow myself to objectively see the Republicans, to find out about the large numbers of minorities, women and especially Cubans involved in the Party, and to compare my core values with theirs. When ever I tried to find out about the Republicans, I relied on Democratic commentators, read Democratic controlled newspapers, spoke to local Democratic politicians, consulted with my Democratic friends, and accepted Democratic polls and the world view expounded by Democratic academicians, entertainers and advertising agencies. As a result, every effort to find out facts on the Republicans resulted in greater fear, hatred and misunderstanding of what they stood for and who they were. When I was finally able to break away from this spell, a legacy of Gramercy Park, I happily voted for George W. Bush, and now I cannot see myself ever returning to the Democratic Party.

Standing there handsomely between the ages of 16, 17 and 18, like an invisible knight from the days of Tirant Lo Blanc, and with a strong liberal heart, I saw and heard the grandchildren of 19th century Jewish, German, Irish, and Italian uneducated immigrant paupers, drunk with pompous self-importance and with an unabashed desire to transform themselves into White Anglo Saxon Protestants, at the same time they were preaching a hatred of the W.A.S.P’s. I saw them in fantastic Giorgio Armani tuxedos, and I saw them stark naked high on cocaine on all fours with their asses high in the air waiting for salvation.

I also watched many Academy Award level performances by people who clearly thought I was incapable of enjoying the shows. Most memorable were shows where middle aged American Jewish women compared notes on plastic surgery, hair dyes, cosmetics, breast implants and designer clothes upon their return home from vacationing in Grossinger’s, without their husbands. The desire to acquire trophies and become trophies takes a central place in their views of life, and how others are judged. I often thought that if one had the ability to move some of these arrogant people from the area, Gramercy Park and its wonderful architecture would definitely be one of the most beautiful and idyllic places in all of New York City.

Every day I went to work brought about a new chapter in what was for me a highly educational environment, on other days it was an incredible fantasy from a Frank Kafka novel. But, I was well paid and I was a member of local 32B with benefits, and a Shop Steward who told funny jokes, and occasionally smoked pot. And, I no longer had to stir gigantic cauldrons of spaghetti sauce in a dark room. The better pay earned from catering to pompous asses also meant I could go to the movies and watch a Planet of the Apes marathon with my brother without feeling guilty about the expense.

After a short while observing the people I catered to, I learned to see things below the surface. Many of the wealthy women who lived in the buildings lived in boredom, or were clearly in relationships for reasons other than love. Most of them seemed to enjoy teasing the “Hot Cubans”, as they sometimes called us, while we held the doors open for their early morning jogs around the park. Our “hands off” policy towards the women was self-imposed rather than external, and it seemed that the women knew of it, making them more aggressive and uninhibited towards some of us. My co-workers explained the meaning of “Hot Cuban,” and it was a mixture of a gregarious but discreet Ricky Ricardo character, a romantic Latin lover, and an over sexed stud that could copulate with any willing woman on demand. The definition was adjusted depending on the expectations of the woman, and the willingness of the Cuban to play along! Since most of my Cuban co-workers were married men, they’d comically dismiss this, but the two that weren’t discreetly took advantage of it as often as possible.

During my second summer as a doorman, during my regular “Grave Yard” shift, an unusually beautiful red headed woman in her forties whom I had never seen before started to take her dog out for walks around 12:30 every other night. After a few nights of not saying a single word to me, or even acknowledging my existence, the woman, knowing that I could not leave my post, asked me to come up to her apartment for a “hot glass of milk”. With an instant hard on, I thanked her but explained I could not leave the door un-attended. Two nights later the woman having noticed my enthusiasm for reading, gave me a copy of the “Perfumed Garden” by Cheikh Nefzaoui, an Arab masterpiece on love making, and told me that the book had left a “tremendous impression” on her and she hoped I learned from it. A week later, upon her return from her dog walk she asked me to take her up in the freight elevator because she had some garbage to dispose and didn’t want to keep it overnight in her kitchen. This request was within the scope of my responsibilities and I agreed to help her.

As we went up in the freight elevator, she quietly and carefully looked in my eyes as her hands unzipped my pants and she then proceeded to do things, which made the elevator abruptly stop in between floors. When we finished having sex like rabbits in a cage, I took her up to her floor, opened the elevator door, and she said “have a nice night”. Clearly, the woman had no garbage to take down. My red headed lover turned out to be a well-connected Wall Street attorney who like most in the building underwent a metamorphosis from day to night. She would often come home with male friends or co-workers decked out in pinstripes, wearing expensive Ferragamo shoes, Alligator briefcases and a $4,800 Rolex watch, walking past me and my $14.99 Timex as if I didn’t exist, to spend hours with her friends in her plush apartment, and then at night she’d change into shorts and tee shirts in order to have wild uninhibited sex with the “Hot Cuban” doorman. An older woman used me as a sexual object, and at age 17, I enjoyed every minute of the exploitation. During the next two years I met four other women from neighboring buildings, who were also attracted to me, or the myth of the “Hot Cuban,” and I found myself with the difficult task of having to “ration out” sex to older but insatiable women. So, between the very sexually active friends of my age group, and the older often-frustrated sexually deprived women of Gramercy Park, it’s a miracle I did not develop anemia, or some other decease related to physical exhaustion.

The opportunity of making money from quietly observing people and giving them a sense of safety was good. Being a doorman in Gramercy Park was my transition from “High School” to College, although not quite in the traditional sense, since I did not have a normal High School “experience.” My part time job in Gramercy Park during the summers evolved into permanent part time work, for a period of close to four years, helping me pay for most of my college expenses, and giving my mother great financial relief. Gramercy Park exposed me to wealthy New Yorkers, it sustained and allowed me to execute my self-designed “High School curriculum,” and it kept me from falling into despair due to financial want. It also exposed me to hundreds if not thousands of regular people who were very different than my family, or any acquaintances I had made in the US since arriving from Cuba.

Aside from the nannies, the cooks, the house sitters, the personal shoppers and the private tutors, who were almost all decent human beings, there were perhaps three or four tenants out of close to one hundred, worthy of my memory, the rest remain mostly caricatures too self absorbed in arrogance and hypocrisy to remember.

While I was a “Hot Cuban” in Gramercy Park, I was barely a Cuban elsewhere. During the year I attended Erasmus Hall I met about five Cubans in total, (out of a student population of about 3,600) two of which became my friends. There were no significant numbers of Cubans of my age to associate with anywhere in central Brooklyn. The occasional Cuban girl I’d meet was “sexually repressed” when compared to my other female friends. Boredom would set in after a day or two contemplating the idea of having to visit parents, hold hands without getting too close, and being in the presence of a chaperone. Knowing that the girls' maximum limit was a few hugs and kisses, but never sex was like a splash of cold water for me. At an age when my male hormones and erections held control over my judgment, and falling in love was “silly”, Cuban girls could not compete with the 11 orgasms I was already having per week! A few years later, when I was already in college, I became concerned that my behaviors were unfair to Cuban girls, and I decided to try and “slow down to their speed.” The two Cuban girls I ended up dating during this “experiment”, resulted in relationships that lasted a little over a year, unprecedented for me at the time, but they never gave in to their desires to have sex. I never again dated a Cuban girl, and I married an Italian woman.

I took the sexual element away from the image of “the Cuban woman” which I had rudimentarily constructed as a youngster in Cuba, thanks to Idania Aued and Maria Belen. For years I looked at Cuban girls as exotic, beautiful, and strong, but sexless. The Victorian lifestyle and morality of the Cuban upper middle classes of the 1940’s and 1950’s, that equates female sex with decadence was imposed on many Cuban exiled girls of my generation, and I suspect this has caused many regrets, and may be the root of many problems when added to all the other culture shock issues we had to deal with. To make things worse for the girls, Cuban boys did not have to abide by similar rules, and in many ways acted to perpetuate the “Hot Cuban” myth. Cuban girls were supposed to be all virgins, and the boys all studs!

My High School education was indeed very different than that of most kids. By my sophomore year I already carried more life experiences, good and bad than most adults. I was already set on certain study habits that were later to define my career, but also set me in conflict with American education. And, my social and political values were so esoteric because of the Cuban experience, that my responses to the events of the day where often the opposite of those expressed by my peers, but at the same time, they were out of synch with my Cuban elders. I was a young Cuban, far away from the center of Cuban exile culture, with a strong desire to assimilate to American society, and living with huge tensions, many clearly left from my parents divorce, some economic and some due to basic teenage insecurities. Lacking adult guidance, I improvised, and for consolation and as a tranquilizer I relied on 11 orgasms a week.

My brother and I survived the 1970’s without becoming drug dealers, addicts or runners for the Colombian mafia, as countless of our acquaintances from that period ended up doing. I was saved from falling into these things by books and sex, for in the final analysis those were the things I became addicted to, and they were the least destructive of the available options. My mother’s insistence that we were temporarily poor, but mentally rich somehow provided the rudder I later used to straighten my self out. And so, I went to college, and new experiences, somehow weaning myself from the most destructive aspects of this phase of my life.

After I had been attending Brooklyn College for a year, I invited my mother for a tour of the college, and in front of Boylan Hall, looking out across the neatly manicured campus, I told her the truth of what had happened to my High School education. I said it had been like education “A la Carte.” I had looked at the menu, like in a restaurant, and I had picked only those things I felt were important to me. And, somehow it had worked. As I expected by then, she did not become upset.

In 1999 when I was preparing to take my high tech company public through an IPO, I went to have dinner with an Investment Banker on Park Avenue and 22nd. Street. After the meeting I strolled over to Gramercy Park and visited the building where I had been a doorman. Only three Cubans work there now, and I chatted with one, a young man in his early 20’s. Five minutes into the conversation a beautiful blond woman in her late forties strolled in from the Park and told the Cuban doorman that she needed help moving her sofa, and wanted him to stop by her apartment after work to help her. Smiling, I thought to myself, “the legend of the Hot Cuban continues.” I then asked him; “Do you think she’s a Republican or Democrat?” His response, “Democrat of course! Why do you ask?” “Just curious,” I said.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
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After my Saturday morning duties as a “Shabbats Boy” for the Ocean Parkway Moroccan Synagogue, I often biked over to Manuel’s house in Brighton Beach where his mother waited for me with a snack. Like in Cuba, condensed milk, crackers and “café con leche” were a great way to treat a child to a temporary heaven. Manuel, his sister Elena, his older brother Ricardo, and their parents where for a long time the only Cuban family we knew in southern Brooklyn. Manuel’s father Ruben Gonzalez was a successful dentist in Cuba, but was now, like my father, cleaning toilets, and moonlighting as a watchman at a warehouse by the port. Like us they had ended up in Brooklyn, and not Miami. But, our end of Brooklyn was far from Brooklyn Heights, where the majority of Cubans then lived, and our feeling of isolation was tangible, although we were surrounded by perhaps four million other Brooklynites. Sometime after we discovered the Gonzalez family, the elder Gonzalez found a better paying job as a handyman in a nearby apartment building, and kept plungers, electric snakes, buckets, brooms and a navy pair of overalls, his new tools of the trade, in a huge closet in their overcrowded apartment, a detail I’ll always remember. His mother Marta was a nurse in Cuba, but in Brooklyn was doing “piece goods” sewing at home for seven cents apiece.

In our neighborhood, no one besides us had any idea of our pasts in Cuba, and no one really cared, or attempted to find out. It felt to us like in the entire city of New York we were the only ones who knew who we really were, where we came from, what we had left behind, and why we were, where we were.

Prior to my parents’ divorce, Ruben and Marta were my parent’s only friends, because by then my mother’s relatives had become estranged from my father. While tensions between my parents were high, they would manage to put on a good front when we got together with the Gonzalez’s, and the get-togethers were always joyous.

For short periods during those get-togethers, we provided each other with a strong sense of worth, and lifted the curtain of invisibility, which was all around us. We were far away from home, penniless, in a strange society, but damn it, we were Cubans, and we knew we were important people, even if only to ourselves.

Following the custom from Cuba, where tragedy is always made into a joke or fable, my parents and Manuel’s used to invent jokes about the nostalgia and sadness of exile. One joke I clearly remember goes like this: One Cuban meets another, each from a different part of the island, and shaking hands, one says, “So, Pepe tell me, what did you do in Cuba?” Pepe, with great confidence and arrogance says, “Oh, in Cuba? I owned half the island. From the border of Las Villas, west it was all mine. And, here I am now, just like that standing here in front of you!” The other Cuban un-impressed says, “I knew we would met one day. Do you know that I was the guy who owned the rest of the Island? Everything east of Las Villas was mine!” They shake hands again and the other Cuban then says; “How much money do you have now? Maybe we can pitch in and buy a beer to celebrate this meeting?"

From time to time, Ruben would call my father to let him know of the arrival in Brooklyn of a Cuban family from the Puerto Padre region of Oriente. Often, word would get to Ruben or my father from someone who was a friend of a relative of an acquaintance, who had mentioned to someone that we were from the Puerto Padre region, and they would contact us to tell us that someone’s aunt or uncle was arriving from Cuba. In exile, this long chain of contacts extending ten or twelve people from one end to the other was considered normal, and when my parents spoke of the arriving family, they spoke of “Miguel and his wife, the niece of Raquel Perez from Gibara.” Miguel was considered almost family, even though my parents had never met him, his wife or Raquel Perez, and only knew of the existence of the Perez’s family from Gibara, from their childhood memories. Needless to say my parents and the Gonzalez’s would always find time to visit and welcome these new arrivals. With a few chickens, yuccas, rice and beans and Cuban spices, an impromptu dinner party was always put together in someone’s tiny apartment as fifteen or twenty “guajiros” would reminisce about Oriente and sad stories of life under socialism were exchanged.

After the initial jubilation of seeing people from back home, the parties would often turn melancholic. After playing music, and under the influence of two or three Cuba Libres, someone would play the Cuban national anthem, and in an incredible exercise of synchronized pain, many would burst into tears. If not for our ability to laugh at ourselves, our knack for making jokes out of tragedies, and generous amounts of rum, some of these parties would have resembled funerals. When no one could lift the sad clouds, the recordings of Alvares Guedes and Tres Patines always saved the day. Most of us were in the United States for less than five years, and although youngsters like my brother and I were quickly Americanizing, there was no doubt that in the minds of the adults, we were in the US temporarily, and we all missed Cuba very much.

“Nosotros estamos aqui temporaneamente nadamas;” We are here only temporarily, my father would say, and everyone else would agree. When Fidel falls, we are all heading back the following day. This reminder was repeated often, especially after someone would compare Cuba with the US by saying: “Este pais es maravilloso, pero no es Cuba”. This is a marvelous country, but it's not Cuba! The comforts of America were good, but the love of a Cuba free of Fidel Castro was still overwhelming. For the adults, the thought of any of us staying in the US permanently was unimaginable! It was believed that the nature of the Cuban soul was contradictory to communism, and it would only be a matter of time before those confused into supporting Castro would wake up and return to their normal selves!

While our parents welcomed new arrivals, worked at menial jobs to support us, and experienced the pain of exile, most of us exiled kids began to unconsciously adapt to the America of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. At age 9 and 13, my brother and I became more interested in hamburgers, Star Trek, model airplanes, American Music, American girls, and Bugs Bunny, than the poetry of Jose Marti, pictures of the Morro Castle, the songs of Beny More, or stories about Miami Cubans.

Because of the marital problems between my parents, and my father’s attempt to forcibly re-create Cuba on the corner of Ocean Avenue and Voorhees Avenue in Brooklyn, my brother Jose Luis and I were psychologically paddling away from our Cuban identities as fast as we could. Early on we knew an artificial Cuba was impossible. By the time I reached 14, I began to feel that Cuba was no longer ours, and it belonged to people we didn’t like, and had little intention of liking. Unlike our parents, we saw the misery, to which Cuba had already sunk, as a payback to those who had tormented us and turned our lives upside down. Although, I did not think of it in terms of justice versus in-justice, I remember telling my father, “let them eat garbage, they deserve it. And, stop saying we are going back next year, because we are not.”

I began to notice that although my father continued to laud the official “we will return next year” line, he began to add qualifications to “how” we would return. We will return if Fidel leaves along with all his cronies. We will return after elections are held and a new government is in place. We will return when all the private properties and businesses are returned to their rightful owners. We will return when there is stability, and we can be sure there will be no vandalism and bloodshed in the streets. We will return when all the murderers who have blood in their hands are punished, and, so on.

I think my father’s deep dive into depression began when he started to add qualifications to how we would return to Cuba. I think his past and social links in Cuba, his view of himself, and the peer pressures of exile kept him from seeing the international political web, which made us exiles into pawns in the Cold War. My father took many years before he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility that the United States was going to be his new country. When that happened it occurred as a result of a visit to Cuba to see my ill grandparents in the late 1980’s, and experiencing deep pain, dissatisfaction and realizing that many old friendships were irreparably torn because of politics.

Manuel’s father Ruben on the other hand seemed to have assessed the Cuba situation much clearer than my father, and as a result for a long time, he was the black sheep in the group. He was the guy who went against the current. The guy who did not believe in the viability of the “we will return next year to Cuba” song, and questioned how we could all be sure that the Cuban soul was by nature anti-communist? To everyone’s chagrin he would say, “Castro is there because the majority of the people support him!” “You are crazy,” my father would say to him, “it’s the other way around. People support him because everyone is at gun point!”

Ruben would point out that if the United States wanted to take over Cuba, it could do so in probably less than two days. He was never comfortable with the authenticity of stories about bungled CIA attempts against Castro, and used to put the Cuba versus United States conflict in local New York City terms, which always resulted in everyone getting upset and in a shouting match. He would say; “Cuba has less people than the city of New York. To the Americans, the problems of Cuba are like a garbage strike in Brooklyn.” He used to say that half of the bungled CIA attempts against Castro were actually stories fabricated by Castro himself to make it appear as a David versus Goliath conflict. He would ad that as long as the people in Cuba lived in fear of an American invasion, Fidel will be in power. “Fidel needs the Americans more than he needs the Russians. And, because of the Cold War chess game, we exiles are nothing but accidental players in the game.”

If not because everyone knew Ruben well and liked him personally when not talking politics, some of the exchanges he would instigate would have exploded into fistfights. I used to watch these exchanges and think to myself that Ruben was the only one in the group who was actually listening to the news and analyzing American society. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think the Americans are telling us all there is about Cuba. If they were going to fix the problem, they’ve had plenty of opportunities. President Johnson went to the Dominican Republic in the blink of an eye and fixed that problem. Why not Cuba? The new president here, this Nixon, is not going to do anything about Cuba either!” Poor Ruben, his political opinions were never welcome.

One Saturday afternoon, after I was done with my duties sweeping and vacuuming the Beth Shalom Yeshiva, a job I obtained thanks to Mrs. Winthrop, I went to visit Manuel and his family. While visiting I overheard Ruben and Marta talking about how they could improve their lives and perhaps regain their professions in the United States. Ruben and Marta had concluded that a return to Cuba was unlikely, and they needed to focus their minds on a future without Cuba. There was a conversation on the phone with relatives in Miami, but it appeared to be an offer to move to Miami, which did not satisfy Marta. Later there were tense discussions, full of disappointing conclusions, ending with one realization: As a family they did not have enough money and time to implement any plan that required that they first learn English at a college level, and that they enroll at a University part time, in order to be accepted in a Dentistry or Nursing program. Their desire to re-start their careers was strong, but the obstacles huge.

But, that day there in Brighton Beach in 1972, while we kids played with new American toys, and quized each other on esoteric questions from the encyclopedia, and a scratchy record of Orquesta Aragon played “Virgen de Regla”, Manuel’s parents were tormented by the undeniable reality of their options. In order for them to recover and re-build the standard of living, and class standing they had achieved in Cuba in the late 1950’s, they would have to scrub floors, clean toilets and hold menial jobs until the early 1980’s. Then I witnessed one of those things whose significance did not register in my mind until years later.

Ruben and Marta sat in their kitchen table, had some Cuban coffee, and without commotion simply began to speak to one another as if they were two people with one mind. “Lets create an outline first, then we can fill in the details as they come,” said Ruben. Marta with a pencil and writing pad in hand began to list things as Ruben elaborated on each item. “And, how long do you think that will take?” And, “Lets create another list of the things we are not sure about, but we need to know before we start.” This process lasted about four hours, and it looked to me as if time was standing still for Ruben and Marta that Saturday.

When Ruben realized it was 6:00 PM and we kids were hungry, he proclaimed to Marta, “We are on our way now. Lets make some “Picadillo” otherwise we’re all going to drop dead from hunger”. After dinner my father came by to pick me up and as usual a brief conversation ensued. Before my father could start on his usual Fidel Castro is a pig discussion, Marta announced to him with great jubilation, “Ruben and I have decided that he is going to get his dentistry license here, and we are going to make every sacrifice needed to do it”. Ruben standing in front of my father with a half smile on his face said; “Well, don’t you think I can pull American teeth?” My father’s response was, “Usted sabe bien que nosotros estamos aqui para alludarlo.” Or , you know very well that we are here to help you. As my father began to react to the news, the phone rang and Marta picking up could not contain her excitement, and began to tell who ever it was, about their plans. Her response to the questions on the phone went something like this. “Yes, we have little money.” And, “Yes, it will probably take 8 or 10 years.” And, “Yes, if Fidel falls it will probably all be a waste of time and money.” And, “Yes, he will not have free time for anything”. And, “No, I’m not afraid of the sacrifices we have to make.” She finally said, “Look here he is, let him tell you the good news.”

That evening Manuel’s family did one of those hard to describe things that keeps Cuban exiles believing that they are somehow different than other immigrant groups in the United States. It is a propensity to do things that are either suicidal, or of heroic proportions. The exiles have adopted this “Cuban man with bare hands kills the dragon” type of thing, and since this belief is admirable, behaviors have been adopted to propagate it. If something is difficult to do, and there is a group of people in a room who may opt to do it, and one of them is a Cuban, that one Cuban will feel something in his bones that often irrationally, makes him think that he is more qualified than the others to undertake the challenge. There are high failure rates, as a result of this belief, but at the same time, there are enough success stories to nourish the belief and continue to create the psychological and economic supports needed to pass it on to the young.

When faced with a major undertaking, seemingly insurmountable, a group of Cubans will simply ask each other, “Somos Cubanos, o que?” Meaning, are we Cubans, or what? This without further elaboration is all that is needed to motivate people into action. Those who dislike us describe this behavior as “that Cuban arrogance”. Fidel’s supporters hate us for it, because it’s behaviors like those that have kept us from sinking to object poverty, as they expected and told the world would happen. Every time a Cuban exile succeeds in business, culture and society, we see it as a victory against Castro and his regime. Like Castro needs the United States to stay in power, we need Castro to keep us motivated!

Manuel’s parents after a long time of painful reflection did not decide to give up. Instead at a crucial point when things looked very bad, they somehow found an inner strength that allowed them to act outside the norm, and were able to dream about a possibility, that although difficult, could be made into a reality. Their strength came from within because the thought of looking for an external solution did not even figure in the equation. And, because of their sense of self worth, they did not sit down to plan a scheme to rob a bank, cheat local merchants, run a prostitution ring, or distribute illegal drugs. Although, they were cleaning toilets, they knew that they were not really toilet cleaners. As they and my parents would often remark, “we’re Cubans, and we need to get ahead.”

A few months after the incident at Manuel’s house my parents separated and I moved away from Sheapshead Bay losing direct contact with Manuel and his family for more than fifteen years. From time to time my mother and I would hear stories about Ruben and Marta’s struggles, how Ricardo had managed to win a scholarship to a prestigious university in Chicago and was studying engineering, and how Manuel and Elena where both working part time to help the family and pay for their studies in New York’s City College. I learned that my father and other friends had helped Ruben with small loans and other things that nowadays seem insignificant, but are important when you are a struggling exile with three children, a wife and a limited income.

In 1984 after a long struggle Dr. Ruben Robles Gonzalez reclaimed his license as a dentist and opened a private practice in Manhattan Beach where he provided dental services until his death in 1998. My friend Manuel became an architect, his sister Elena is a clinical psychologist, and his brother Ricardo is an engineer. In fourteen years Dr. Gonzalez brought his family from the social level of toilet cleaner, to the middle classes and beyond.

During a recent visit to my father in Hialeah, I found to my great pleasure that Marta and Manuel were visiting Miami, and my father took me to see her at a friend’s house in Coral Gables. She is a wonderful woman in her 70’s with a sharp mind and a most dignified demeanor. I spoke to her about our times in Brooklyn and I asked her why she and Ruben decided to take such a hard road, when there were probably easier things they could have done to survive in America. Her answer was, “We could not have lived in peace if we didn’t at least try to achieve success for ourselves and our children. What were we to do, accept that we were now floor sweepers and dishwashers when we knew we were not?” She then gave me a very serious look, and pointing her finger at me said; “We cannot allow others to tell us who we are. When we do that the game is over.” With those words of wisdom in the air I looked around the room and found my father, and four other old Cubans in their 70’s looking at me as if they were thinking: “What else did you expect to hear?” I then thought to myself, "Old Cuban exiles are wise, because they’re old and they've seen a lot and because they've had to remake themselves from scratch a few times with little but their pride to lean on. Like my grandfather Pedro, they've been to hell and back."

Stories of perseverance and success abound in our community, but from time to time I also wonder how many doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, professors, accountants, businessmen and simple honest workers have struggled quietly without anyone knowing of their failures; how many became disheartened and were eaten by the melancholy and depression of exile. How many our jokes could not comfort, and Alvares Guedes could not fool into a sense of happiness?

When my father and I were ready to leave, we walked out the house with Manuel who was eager to show my father his new $64,000 Mercedes-Benz. In front of the car, Manuel said to my father, "We've come a long way from cleaning toilets in Brooklyn. I only wish my father was here with us." Looking at the car, my father turned to Manuel and said, “Dame un habrazo muchacho, que usted se ha ganado esto como un verdadero hombre.” Meaning, come and give me a hug my boy, you’ve earned this like a real man! After they hugged, my father said to me; "If Ruben was here I know he would not like this car!" Manuel perplexed asked, "why not?" "Because this is a metallic color, and your father hated metallic colors! He liked strong manly colors, like a tomato red." "No me jodas," or stop busting my chops, said Manuel and then we all burst into laughter.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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Watching my father clean Mrs. Shapiros’ windows with ammonia water I wondered how he felt doing this for a woman that screamed obscenities at her husband in order to get him to take the garbage to the incinerator, while he watched a football game. “Yes, Mrs. Shapiro, I will clean the other window with extra care.” And, “Yes, Mrs. Shapiro I will also clean the toilet after we’re done with the windows.” The job of superintendent in a large residential building carried many responsibilities, most of which must have felt very degrading to a person like my father, since as time passed it became evident that many of the tenants in our building where of a lower social class than we, had we been living in old Cuba.

One day when I was helping my father paint an apartment, I asked for his opinion on our status within American society. Where do we fit in, I asked. He paused for a long while, and then gave me this statement. “Here we are at the lowest level of society, because no one knows us, and we know no one. We also have little money. Here, like in most places in the world, money is the only measure. Pigs with money are honored here. Look at the Shapiro’s, they are pigs, but they have been here for two generations and they have money!” A few days later I asked my mother the same question, and her answer was, “we are temporarily poor, but we are not mentally poor. Think about who you are, who your family was, and what we believe in, and you will know the answer to your question.”

Everyday after school I’d have a quick snack, and I’d head for the basement shop where my father kept his “little Cuba” radio shop. Here he had crudely reconstructed his old radio shop from Cuba, and in between unclogging toilets, cleaning windows, and vacuuming the halls, he built radios just like in Cuba, except here it was a hobby. Every day around this same time he would call my mother on his home built intercom that looked like a Toaster with an ice cream scoop, and would yell, “Rosa, donde esta el café?” or Rosa where is the coffee? My mother always had the same response, “dile a Joely que venga ha buscarlo,” or tell little Joel to come and get it. After bringing my father his fresh hot Cuban coffee, I was instructed to clean all the washing machines and dryers from the laundry room, to sweep the halls on all six floors of the building, and check the incinerator closets for any un-dumped garbage bags. Checking the incinerators was a task I enjoyed because I often found Playboy magazines and other adult periodicals kids of my age were not supposed to be reading. This was my job, and for this I was paid seven dollars a week.

Other Cuban superintendents who traded job related stories and discussed the eventual downfall of Fidel Castro often visited my father’s radio shop. Many of these men were dentists, architects, engineers, and lawyers in Cuba but now they were cleaning toilets just like my father. There were often discussions about one or another Cuban exiled group that was planning to liberate Cuba and was looking to raise funds to purchase arms and equipment. Usually, about six to eight months after a big fundraiser for one of these groups, word would circulate that the leader of the group had swindled everyone, or had purchased a mansion or an island off the coast of Portugal or in South America. After a few of these frustrating swindles my father and most of his friends stopped paying attention to these types of appeals. The “business” of liberating Cuba became a disappointment that let to disinterest years later.

Discussions of how American culture was changing us all were lively held. The men felt these changes were affecting their wives and daughters, and asked one another: Should they allow their wives to wear elastic pants that accentuated their buttocks? Should women who work be allowed to control the money they earned? Should young women be allowed to go on dates past nine o’clock, without a chaperone? Is it OK to let women take the subways by themselves after dark? What should be done if an American man “disrespects” a Cuban woman? What should be done if a girl shows up at home with a longhaired “hippie” boyfriend? And, a question that often prompted the old guys to ask me to leave the room after they lit up big cigars: What should you do if an American woman asks you to fix her faucet and when you show up at her apartment she’s naked and wants to have sex? Or, the one they all laughed about, and I never heard the answer to: How do you handle the fact that many American women believe Cuban men are sexual objects? Tough questions during a time when the reference points that were used to arrive at the answers where ninety miles south of Key West, and the men asking them were still in the process of learning how to pronounce the words “kiss”, and “keys”, which sound identical in Spanish, without getting slapped in their faces. A superintendent cannot go around asking his tenants for kisses!

My parents found themselves in this environment between 1969 and 1971. My father affected by this type of disorientation entrenched himself in what he viewed as survival mode. As the “man of the house” he handled the challenge as best he could, which was disastrous. My mother on the other hand absorbed American culture and especially a washed down feminist approach to family life that was unparalleled among her peers, but later resulted in a complete transformation of her personality. The transformation to American culture set my parents in a journey that lead them in opposite directions.

“Let me understand this: You want to go to work in a factory in Manhattan as a Seamstress, because you want to make money, and you think you can work your way up to Designer in a year?” My father asked my mother. “Yes. Marta Gutierrez says they are looking for help in her factory, and with my flair for fashion I can probably work my way up to Designer as I learn English on the job!” My mother responded. “But, you never worked in your life. You don’t speak English, you don’t know how to get around, and you never studied Fashion Design!” Said my father. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, “I know I can do it, and we can use the extra money.” Thinking for a minute while looking at my mother as if she had transformed herself into a strange alien, my father made his decision known. “No. My wife is not going to expose herself to that kind of thing. I forbid you to talk to Marta about this again. Things are hard but we can make ends meet.” “But, I think,” my mother tried to pursue the subject without success as my father interjected: “I don’t want to hear of it ever again. My wife will not cheapen herself in this way no matter how bad things are. You understand. No. No. No.” “For as long as I’m wearing the pants around here,” he continued, “that will never happen.” “Esta bien,” said my mother, “I thought the extra money would be helpful, but if you feel that way, I will not do it, for now.” “What do you mean for now?” He asked, and then clarifying as my mother carefully listened. “I mean not now, not tomorrow, next month, or ever. Your responsibility is here in the house, and that’s it.” “Esta bien chico no te exites mas.” She announced, meaning, all right dear don’t get so excited.

This spectacle was like the middle of the “Danzon”, a classic Cuban dance where the syncopated music reaches a point where the dancers pause for a second, and then change the direction they were going as in a role reversal. The shy insecure woman from Oriente somehow found a way to experiment with a more assertive attitude, while the Quaker businessman transformed himself into a clumsy macho man. As close observers to this dance, my brother and I could not help but see it as a painful fall down a mountain. Often stopped by attempts to put on a good face for public consumption, their public personas were those of a model happy Cuban couple, while privately it was the opposite.

Coming to America after years of political, economic, religious, and social impotence and persecution in communist Cuba was a cathartic experience for my parents. The family and social controls that kept their relationship in balance and their personalities functioning within a range of expectations based on early 1950’s Cuban society, was completely wiped away. The years of tension built up due to my father’s workaholic personality and my mothers’ insensitive family, finally found a wide boulevard of expression. By the time my mother walked out on my father, out of pure frustration with his behavior, I was 14 and my brother was 10. Three years in the US wiped away a lifetime of social controls. It would be years before we again felt a sense of balance with one another, as had existed in Cuba. Our ways of transitioning to American society was to disintegrate, and then build ourselves up again. But, when we reconstructed ourselves it was as individuals and not as a family. For us, the sense of family, that warm sheltering concept, has only existed in Cuba, and the United States, with all its wonder and generosity has symbolized a cold place where individuals achieve success but lack happiness and a sense of belonging. It was clear to me, somewhat clear to my mother, and denied by my father, that the divorce was the best thing that could have happened to them, given the circumstances. All in all, their marriage lasted fifteen years.

“Aqui no se le da comida a ningun Jipie,” or here we will not feed any Hippies, declared my father when I came home from Junior High School one day with my Paul McCartney style hair blown from the wind. He then proceeded to take me to a Cuban barber in Brooklyn Heights who gave “good Cuban style haircuts”, better known in English as Crew Cuts. When I came home one day with a red headed Irish girlfriend and proceeded to go to my room to do homework, he barged in after ten minutes and declared in Spanish, but in front of the girl, “en esta casa yo no admito putas. Recoge los libros y dile que se valla.” Meaning, I don’t admit any whores in my house. Gather up her books and tell her to leave. Apparently, the idea of a girl studying in my room, between 4:00 and 5:00 PM was considered risky, and in his view no decent girl could possibly do such a thing. When several Cuban women whom my parents knew managed to convince their husbands to allow them to work, my father criticized both the women and their husbands for becoming too Americanized. Then, he found an excuse to forbid my mother from talking to the women. His belief that we were in the United States temporarily, helped him hold on to the idea that adapting to American social manners, especially things dealing with family relationships was a waste of time.

My father’s affinity for corporal punishment and strict obedience went overboard during this time, and increased the level of frustration and antagonism my mother already felt for him. His common sense and rationality as a Quaker, and his self-control also went out the window. This personality transformation completely erased whatever teachings my grandfather so patiently nurtured in him. His work frustrations and sense of dislocation could be measured by the look on his face, which often resembled that of a mad man facing a great catastrophe. He must have sensed that he was loosing control of my brother and I, and being that he could not complain to “American Culture” for “hechandolos a perder”, or making us go bad, he generously used a thick leather belt on us. My brother and I paid dearly as a result of my father’s bumpy adjustment to American culture, and the pain of exile. Had there been no Fidel Castro in Cuba, I know my father would have made every effort to return within two years of arrival. After all, when he kissed the ground in Miami, his proclamation to us was; "Don't worry, well be back in Cuba within a year".

His logic was simple; beat the heck out of my brother Jose Luis and I, so we could maintain good Cuban values and manners based on his interpretation of manners, and to remind us that change could only result in more beatings. When my mother intervened in these beatings, he would scream out that he was the man of the house, “Yo soy el que lleva los pantalones en esta casa”. This process achieved its logical conclusion. My brother and I learned to hate him in a most profound and creative way, and engaged him whenever possible in psychological warfare. His awkward attitude became predictable, and after a while we lost respect for him. The more discipline he demanded, the more we went against him. The more respect he demanded, the more we disrespected him. The more Cuban he wanted us to be, the more American we behaved. We found ourselves in a family situation where my mother, my brother, and I realized we were the family, and my father was someone whom we no longer loved, because his version of love was based on subservience, and we could not accept that. Especially in light of the freedom “El Norte” had given us. To me my father became a caricature, a sad angry man perplexed and dangerous, interested only in his interpretation of the world. I longed for the day when seeing him would be an accidental event. In the end, my fathers’ crude and insensitive efforts to control us became the major factor and reason why he lost us.

It became clear to me, as I became an adult that my father was run over by a monster he never clearly understood, and we didn’t clearly understand either. The monster of leaving behind every reference point, social, political, and financial he had known, of leaving behind his friends and family forever, of dropping from the top of the social strata to the bottom, of having his educational credentials ignored, of feeling perplexed due to not understanding the language, of knowing that his children were taking their cues from the very culture he could hardly understand, and the monster of knowing that no matter how hard he worked, he was never going to be understood by neighbors who could never imagine his past. When we came to “El Norte” my mother’s family awaited us, whereas my father did not have a single relative. In “El Norte” he became a very lonely man with no one to turn to but his inner insecurities.

The macho stupor in which my fathers’ mind boiled was so removed from the new reality in America that after my mother, my brother, and I left him and took refuge in my aunt and uncle’s house, he sent a letter with two Cuban macho friends, who announced to us that they carried a message from “the man of the house.” In his letter he proclaimed my mother’s wrongdoing for having left, demanded our immediate return, and threatened to change his mind and not forgive us, if we did not apologized to him within three days. He threatened that if we did not “come to our senses” there would be serious consequences. My mother’s response was to laugh in amazement and declare; “este hombre esta loco. Dile a Joel que la unica consecuencia que llo quiero es un divorcio.” Meaning, this man is crazy. Tell Joel that the only consequence I want is a divorce. The messengers were so dumbfounded by my mother’s response, that they were left speechless, finally one of them asked my uncle Rodolfo Obregon, “y que le decimos a Joel?” meaning, and what do we tell Joel? My uncles’ response was, “dile a Joel que se busque un abogado. Rosa quiere un divorcio”, or tell Joel to get a lawyer. Rosa wants a divorce. They then turned to my mother and said, “piensa en los ninos,” meaning think about the children. My mother with anger in her voice responded with, “si ustedes conocieran a ese hombre, entenderian que es por los ninos que llo lo dejo”. Meaning, if you knew that man, you would realize that I’m leaving him for the sake of the children!

A week after we moved in with my aunt Georgina and uncle Rodolfo, my mother found a job as a seamstress in Manhattan. Three months later we had moved to a small apartment in Flushing, Queens. After a year of legal separation, during which my father acted like a Neanderthal fighting my mother on every possible legal issue, they were granted a divorce.

For the next four years my father had visitation rights and provided child support for me, doing that for another four years in my brother’s case. While my mother claimed that she never wanted to interfere between my father, my brother and I, she could not help but do it in subtle ways that later my brother and I resented a great deal. My father on the other hand, kept to his clumsy macho ways and although rarely directing his anger at my mother through us, he used us to get at her during his phone calls, or by passing lies to mutual acquaintances about how carelessly my mother was bringing us up. He would say to friends that he was paying twice as much child support than he actually was, and that if not for our visits to him, we would be completely undisciplined, and would grow up to be wild boys.

We visited him every other weekend, and those visits were usually spent watching TV, visiting some of his friends, or going for a drive while he discussed news from Cuba. His interest in our daily needs and school necessities was nil, and his expression of care, love, and fatherly warmth must have been locked up in an icebox somewhere, because my brother and I never saw it. We went to see him in a mechanical way, because we had to, and he demanded to see us, but that too was mechanical. This was the type of parental guidance he claimed was keeping us from turning into delinquents, and according to his friends was giving us a chance to see a good positive male role model.

The truth, and something most of my parents acquaintances never found out, was that my mother as a single mother, with poor English, little knowledge of American culture and an erroneous understanding of business, stood up to the challenge and worked extremely hard to make ends meet. I don’t know how she did it, but she found a tremendous amount of strength and focus, and out of thin air re-constructed her life in a way few around her expected. In order to survive, my brother and I learned to fetch for ourselves in ways never imagined in Cuba. As time passed, we realized the sacrifices my mother was making for us, and we admired her, knowing that she was improvising our lives as we moved forward into the unknown. One day I found myself thinking, “wow, my mother is both Mother and Father to us”. Then, I felt an uneasiness come over me, as I heard a little voice say inside my head, “and, we are all alone”. As a little child, my superhero was El Zorro, until my parents divorced and I began to see my mother do heroic things before our very eyes.

But, as hard as she worked and as focused as she was, and as nurturing as she was, the fact could not be denied that we lived on a seamstresses’ meager salary, plus the minimal child support payments we received from my father. In a period of four years after the divorce, we moved four times. From Flushing, Queens, to Flatbush, Brooklyn, and twice around Flushing, Queens. It seemed that whenever the rent in our apartments was increased, which on a monthly or year by year arrangement was regularly, we moved. While my mother worked, Monday through Fridays, from 7:30 AM to 6:30 PM, my brother Jose Luis and I lived pretty much by ourselves, miraculously staying out of trouble, attending school, doing homework, and keeping the apartment clean.

I remember this period as a time when making friends was almost futile because as soon as I’d get comfortable with anyone, we moved. My brother and I went to four different schools during this time, and I got my first taste of work as a delivery boy for a grocery store on Church Avenue and Westminster Road in Brooklyn. From the grocery store I went on a succession of jobs too numerous to count or remember, but there was never any doubt that extra money was needed. When kids my age headed to the park to play, or to bike around the neighborhood after school, I headed for work. When I noticed that one of my acquaintances had three pairs of Keds sneakers, I thought to myself, “wow, his parents must be rich.”

Our only form of entertainment during this period occurred on weekends when my mother, my brother, and I would stroll to Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. We learned every corner of the park, and loved to picnic near the Japanese garden where my mother would daydream about visiting the Orient, a fantasy that came true for her years later. The Prospect Park Lake, with its pedaled boats was a thrill the three of us looked forward to, and my mother was able to sometimes afford. Later when we moved to Flushing, we replaced Prospect Park with Flushing Meadows, and the Queens Botanical Garden, which was tiny, compared to the garden in Brooklyn, but nevertheless had a similar ambiance.

As we strolled through these parks, which at that time were still frequented by upper middle class families wearing their best weekend clothes, my mother often philosophized about our situation saying, “it is better to eat a small sandwich in a decent place, than to gorge on a big steak in a place full of bums and low class people.” Here, my mother’s “temporary poverty” views were supported by the ambiance, and no one could tell that her weekend budget for all three of us was five dollars, and sometimes she’d go without eating lunch during the week, in order to provide for my bother and I.

The only helping hand we had during this time was my mothers’ sisters, Georgina and Ana, and their husbands Rodolfo Obregon and Fernando Corella. Since we did not believe in welfare or any type of public assistance, my mother occasionally took loans from them when things got tough. My mother’s pride also meant that we never told anyone how difficult things really were, and since she dressed us up very neatly on weekends and when we visited anyone, the perception was always ahead of reality. My mother’s two brothers living in New York did little to help us and ignored our situation. Having arrived in the United States in the late 50’s and early 60’s these guys had accumulated the resources to help us, but instead visited us on rare occasions to provide lip service to family togetherness and enjoy my mother’s Cuban coffee. While they bragged about their expensive suits and the interesting restaurants they had frequented, it never occured to them that we were in despair. Later on when we least needed it, they occasionally invited us to their homes for dinner, showing us their fancy china, crystals and nice linen. It is no wonder that my mother often says that her real brothers turned out to be Rodolfo and Fernando, her brothers in law, who were always there when we needed them. The difference between her communist brothers in Cuba, and the capitalists ones in the US, is slim. Both are experts at taking, and have never perfected the art of giving.

Thanks to my father, his friends, and my Pupo uncles, I became familiar with the clumsiness, stupidity and rudeness of Cuban men who out of choice or by unconscious inheritance incorporate macho behavior in their personalities. The thing that accentuated this issue to my young mind was the realization that my father and his friends were completely oblivious of their insensitivity and were living in a fantasy world. But, to them the problem seemed to be that the world was maladjusted. Women and children were somehow placed in this world to serve macho men, and that was the natural order. How stupid it is to believe that masculinity is measured by how rude and imposing a man can be towards women and children. This type of behavior was the antithesis of my grandfather Pedro Font’s Quaker beliefs, and had he known that my father had adopted it, he would have condemned it on the spot. However I think that my father always had these beliefs, except that in Cuba due to my grandfather’s sphere of influence he did not dare to express them. In an incredible twist of irony, my father had to come to a foreign country at the age of 36 to become a clumsy Cuban macho man.

My mother can write a book about abuse at the hands of Cuban machos. Some of her brothers have tried to break through their inherited macho behaviors and arrogance, but their insensitivity towards the women in the family is deeply ingrained. They do not know how to handle the fact that they’ve hurt their sisters, and a lifetime of poor communication, apologies not given, and ignored hurt feelings have taken a huge toll. The habit of not telling the truth has also worked against all of them. The idea that men need to apologize to women for insensitive behaviors does not fit in their scheme of life, and such a possibility probably conjures up fears of castration.

During my first year in college I argued with my father about what I viewed as his obsession with sending money and parcels to friends and relatives in Cuba, at the expense of our own needs, and we stopped talking to each other for ten (10) years.

At year ten, I received a call from my mother saying he had been struck by a car and was dying in a hospital. When I went to see him he looked like a mummy all covered with bandages as a result of seven bone fractures cause by a drunk driver running over him. At the edge of death, I decided to forgive him. I listed all the parking tickets I had mentally given him: 1) Beatings for no reason. 2) Crew cuts against my will. 3) Scared off girlfriends due to his insults. 4) Pain and suffering caused my mother. 5) Lies told to acquaintances about his child support. 6) Money he never lent me, because he preferred to send it to Cuba. 7) Lack of affection and support in the face of teenage challenges in school. 8) The feeling that when he was around, only his body was there, and not his soul. 9) A feeling that when in need of help or advice for something important, he would be the last one on the list. 10) His insensitivity to my brother. Etc, etc.

When he recovered we reached a détente. My mother’s wishes were that I find a way to love him because he, after all, is my father, and it had been many years since the big black painful leather belt was used. So, the parking tickets were thrown in the garbage. And, I treated him like a man who had died, and somehow had come back. I visited him on weekends and saw him recover from his injuries, slowly re-learning how to be kind to him in his weakness, and seeing him completely vulnerable. In this process I think we both put away years of anger and frustrations, and saw each other for the first time as simple men. Not a father and son, but two men naked without pretense, fear, chauvinism, and not in competition with one another, and I very cautiously saw and realized that I had seen things in him, that he himself had never noticed. Perhaps things he had never allowed anyone to tell him. And, I told him without fear. From that moment on our relationship grew to one of affection, to eventually one of love between a father and son. For most people, reaching this point with a father occurs almost at birth, for my father and I, it occurred when I was 30 years old. My father's macho-ness and my reaction to it, caused us his absence in my, and my brother’s weddings, his absence during the birth of his granddaughter, ten Christmases apart, many vacations we should have taken together, and innumerable family events we should have shared. It is possible that if he did not get struck by a drunk driver, and brought to the edge of death, I would still not be talking to him. It's amazing how sometimes the worse disasters can bring about a silver lining.

Prior to the ten year rift, between the time I was in my teens, when I used to visit him because it was court mandated and my mother used to make me, to my early 20’s in college, there were many memories I was able to later classify as funny. Some of these memories later helped me reconcile with him. Without his knowledge, one of the things he used to do was very un-macho, and that was his cooking! My father's cooking is a menace to society! I adjusted to his cooking during my visits, but have always been amazed at how he used to ruin perfectly good food by over cooking it, under cooking it, or splashing it with strange spices that guaranteed indigestion. As a result, I promised myself that I would do better, and in my twenties I seriously learned the art of cooking.

Even when faced with a horrible dish, I learned to pay him compliments because I realized that in life everything is relative. His over cooked Dutch noodles smothered with Heinz Ketchup with a side of pork grinds is as close as a Cuban guajiro is going to get to “home made” Italian food. Sitting on the table with him I often remembered my grandmothers’ elaborate and famous Catalan style banquets, the delicious side dishes and deserts, and realized how far we were from those days, and how much our lives had changed since leaving Cuba. Here we were, in the richest country on earth, with huge supermarkets full of delicious foods, and we were sitting there eating terrible food, looking at each other and saying, “good stuff hey?” So, I found myself volunteering to cook during some visits, clearly for survival reasons, and he reluctantly allowed me to experiment, as if he was doing me a favor! After many disastrous experiments in the kitchen, we both felt equally defeated and he brainstormed a solution. In Cuba, restaurants used to deliver food to people’s homes in tin containers called “cantinas”, and he remembered that several Cuban restaurants in Brooklyn Heights were offering the service. After getting pricing information, which turned out to be quite cheap, he decided to have real Cuban food delivered to his apartment every day for dinner. He thanked me for having “stimulated” this enlightened solution, and I thought to myself, “well this guy is not such an animal after all, at least he can show gratitude”. During this time, any sensitivity that digressed from his tense behaviour would surprise me.

My father’s choice of clothing after the divorce can only be described as completely hilarious. In Cuba, my grandmother, and then my mother “helped” him with his wardrobe, but when he found himself single he was free to dress, as he liked. Again, in this case he was better dressed in old Cuba than in “El Norte”. My memories of him in Cuba are of a man wearing light weight tropical suits, nicely pressed Guayaberas, and never giving the impression of sloppiness. Since I am colorblind, I can only describe what I was able to perceive in terms of his dress style in New York, but countless neutral observers have confirmed my opinions. He was a clown, with sprinkles of a Cuban hillbilly all over him.

His frugality was amplified as a result of the exile experience, and he always made it the key to his decision-making. It was never, “which shirt looks better,” or “which pants have a nicer fabric,” but which one is cheaper. Completely mismatched when it came to “ropa de sport” or casual clothing, and uninterested in dry cleaning because he was too cheap, he adopted the wrinkled look with a vengeance. I remember coming to see him on weekends after getting a phone call from him letting me know that he planned to visit some friend, and asking me to dress “como persona decente”, or as a decent person; and finding him wearing polyester blue/green plaid pants, with a wrinkled white cotton shirt, white socks, and black patent leather shoes. I never counted the number of times my jaw dropped from the amazement of having seen him in one of those outfits. I suspect it was in the dozens. The funny part was that after a while I noticed that all divorced Cuban guys of my father’s generation turned out to dress in similar fashion. Thank goodness that I have some pictures from this period, to prove my point.

A few years after the divorce my parents tried to move on with their lives. I noticed that my father was dating a succession of women from a myriad of nationalities whom he usually met in the Brighton Beach area. He seemed to be successful, from a purely quantitative perspective, and I was impressed with his ability to attract both younger and older women to his bed. The Cuban stud myth worked well for him.

My mother attracted a variety of intellectual and professional Cuban-American men who she dismissed with ease, usually by the second or third month, by telling them that “my children are uncomfortable with our relationship”, which to my amazement, the men always accepted and then backed off never to be seen again. After becoming aware of her “Men Repellent” my brother and I began to take bets on how long each new guy would last. Most of the men my mother attracted where very nice, very handsome, and always behaved very decently towards us.

If my mother engaged in any sensual activities with any of her suitors, she did it so discreetly that my brother and I never suspected it, and for a long time we felt she had become celibate. But, the truth appears to be that she just never allowed herself to get close to those types of feelings. Her motto became “I live for my children” which in the beginning appeared as her only alternative and a form of therapy, but it may have been a scapegoat and an excuse for not moving past the pain, depression, and hatred built up during the divorce. The scars created by the divorce and later re-woven by my mother as a result of her introverted personality kept her from ever again experiencing intimacy with men regardless of how good and handsome the man may have been.

My mother became a one-woman army. The world against her, and she set out to prove that she had the strength and astuteness to overcome any challenge. This was her crusade to prove to her brothers, relatives, and her ex-husband that she, the underestimated poorly educated country girl could do anything they could, and she could even do it better than they. In this crusade male companionship became a nuisance, the opinions and views of others were discounted or ignored, and slowly she created a unique world where only her, my brother, and I dwelled. Her comfort level in this private and lonely world has always been high, and in spite of multiple attempts to help her out of it by many well-intentioned people, she remains in it to this day. I’m alone and I’m happy is her motto.

Regardless of the artificial world she created around herself, she was able to succeed in most endeavors. She managed to pass to my brother and I a strong respect for capitalism, hard work, the value of private property, entrepreneurship, a love for education, and a keen understanding of certain group behaviors that often go un-noticed by most Americans. She worked for over twenty years in the fashion industry, on Seventh Avenue in New York City, which was her dream since the day she arrived from Cuba. She worked her way up from a piece goods Seamstress, to Pattern Maker, to Assistant Designer, and finally during her last eight years in the industry, as a Designer for an active sportswear company. While she worked as a Designer she entered into a partnership with a well-known fashion entrepreneur who opened a successful sportswear company with her designs. These endeavors provided her with a modest income, which she smartly invested in Real Estate, which later significantly appreciated in value. By the time of her retirement and later move to Miami Beach, Florida, she was well off, and able to continue living independently, and “without caring what anyone thinks, or says about me”.

My mother was changed by “El Norte”. Transforming herself into an independent woman in a way that would have been impossible in Cuba. Her divorce gave her the independence she wanted. But, she moved on with her life at great psychological expense, and by numbing a part of herself that now appears to be too late to recover. When she philosophizes about how better her life could have been had she come from a more “civilized” family where women were given more opportunities, I wholly agree with her.

My father, the man obsessed with wearing the pants, grabbed on to his pants so tightly that he lost sight of where he was. After several years of experimenting with carefree sex with women from all over the world, one of the few good things he has found in “El Norte”, he decided it was time to find a “good woman of values” and re-marry. A “good woman of values” to my father means a woman brought up in a family and culture that unquestionably accepts the predominant control of a man over all family and social issues, and “serves” the man because such “respect” brings “happiness” to the woman. Since these types of happy women cannot even be found in the Cuban exiled community anymore, and an American woman is completely disqualified because they don’t know how to experience this type of happiness, my father searched far and wide and found a qualified candidate in a very nice Colombian lady. My stepmother is a nice woman who shares his values and understands many of his views. In essence, my father reached back to his past to a system of values my grandfather did not allow him to adopt as a young man, values he viewed as "typically Cuban" and non Quaker, and he used them to re-construct himself. He then went out and looked for a mate that shared those values. Even though, he has made many of the same mistakes he made with my brother and I, with our stepbrother and stepsister, from his perspective he’s moved on to a new life based on his rules. And, since everyone involved shares those values, there is peace and contentment.

Even though it has been a long and arduous voyage, both of my parents have succeeded in “El Norte”. But, my father’s excessive frugality (cheap as hell) has prevented him from fully enjoying the fruits of his labors. As a superintendent in Sheapshead Bay, he saved every cent that passed through his hands, he took on all kinds of odd jobs, refurbished and sold old furniture to antique stores, chauffeured senior citizens around Brooklyn, ran a parcel service to Canada for exiles that needed to send medicines to Cuba, and became a partner in a house painting company. Echoes of “El Flaco” could be seen, and just like in his 20’s, he hardly had time to sit down for a peaceful meal.

Like my mother, he built wealth via sweat and Real Estate. He would purchase run down apartment buildings in Brooklyn in order to meticulously improve them, and then raise rents. After his equity in the building increased, he would purchase another apartment building in order to repeat the formula, raising rents as often as the law allowed. While becoming a Real Estate baron, he told no one of his financial success, and kept working as a superintendent. Completely devoted to the wrinkled un-coordinated dress style previously described, few acquaintances ever suspected that he had become wealthy by the time of his retirement.

Succumbing to the primal call Florida has for all Cubans, my father purchased property in Miami years before moving there. Now, he lives in the super Cuban city of Hialeah, just north of Miami, because according to him, Miami is not Cuban enough for his taste. He has Mangoes, Papayas, Avocados, Fruta Bombas, and a wide variety of Cuban plants and garden flowers in his yard, along with a specially built radio shop full of Ham Radios, antennas, and other electronic gadgets that only he knows how to operate. In the mornings, his neighbors’ chickens and Cocks can be heard welcoming the day. On his fence he has a sign that says, “Soy Guajiro y Orgulloso”, I am a Cuban hillbilly and proud of it!

My father now in his mid seventies continues to send parcels to relatives in Cuba, but after a sad and frustrating visit to my grandparents in 1980, when he saw how communist relatives mistreated and stole from my grandfather, he now says he has no interest in returning there. When we talk about Cuba, and the current situation, my father points out that he stays in regular communication with some acquaintances and relatives, but that the communications are always the same: “send us money, send us medicines, send us clothes, and send us food.” Most of these people, he says, are communists who still sign their letters to him with, “Patria o Muerte, Venceremos”, which is the communist defiant motto against the Miami Cubans, and the USA, meaning “Fatherland or Death, we will win”. The “we will win” part means “we here in Cuba, will win our battle against you traitors over there!” He says he knows he is sending aid to people who had the roles been reversed, would probably never send him an ounce of help. But, in a strange way this process is a vindication of things that happened more than forty years ago. For it was us the exiles the ones who were supposed to live in object poverty and misery when we were cast off Cuba by the communists! Instead, it's those who cast us off into the wilderness that are today pathetic beggars.

Both now retired in Miami, my parents are content with their lives. When I last visited my mother I asked her if she was happy living in an upper class gated beach community, where there are hardly any Cubans, and the nearest relative is ten miles away, and she said; “its what I always wanted, and I am very happy because I can do as I please, and no one bothers me.” When I visited my father in Hialeah later that same day, I asked him a similar question and he said; “Well, the crooked politicians we have here want to increase the price of water, and they’re all a bunch of womanizers. But, at least, in my house, I am the one who wears the pants, and as long as no one challenges that, the rest seems minor.” Then he said, “lets go to the back yard and grab a Papaya”.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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Like most stories about the Quakers, this is a story full of minutia, dates, and people not normally discussed around the dinner table or during a baseball game. When I told my fifteen-year-old daughter to read it, she rebelled and told me that it was boring. But, like a foul tasting medicine, it is important to read it, if you want a better understanding of the society and environment in which my father’s family lived in Cuba, up until the mid 1960’s. Most importantly, it will definitively answer the question: “Why did these people leave Cuba.” Please take a tranquilizer, relax, and read. This story, the most dry of all my stories, should answer many questions!

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Cuban Quakers? You must be kidding! Is the response I get from both Americans and Cubans, when I mention that I come from a Cuban Quaker family. Cubans tend to add the “what’s a Quaker?” question, which then forces me to explain the profound differences in outlook and religious practices that Quakers have compared to Catholics and most other Christians. This lack of familiarity with the Quaker experience in Cuba is normal given the lack of information that exists on Quakers in general, and the fact that average people have never had any direct political, or economic interest in this trivial detail. Furthermore, Cubans are ignorant of this issue because they have always enjoyed the self-deception of thinking that somehow by magic, everyone in the island was the same. In religious matters this meant that everyone was, in one flavor or another, considered Catholic. But, prior to 1959, Cuba had more religious, ethnic, and cultural diversity than most countries of the Western Hemisphere. Its Jewish population was one of the largest in Latin America, with a vibrant and growing Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, and Adventist population as well. Cuban blacks who composed more than 40% of the population, practiced the Santeria and Palo Monte religions with their African roots, and many in the Cuban Chinese community who had been in Cuba since the early 19th century still practiced Buddhism. And, there were large numbers of Masons, Odd Fellows, and Rotarians, as well as countless other ethnic and secular organizations throughout the island.

Cuba also had, like most countries, a significant number of atheists and agnostics. Jose Marti, the great poet and the father of the Cuban nation was a Mason and an agnostic who viewed religion with disinterest. The romantic reinvention of Marti as the “Apostle” of the nation reflects the dependence of average Cubans on Catholic symbolism, without concern, or in ignorance of the fact that such a title would have been considered an insult to Marti, the rational intellectual.

Because of this “we are all the same innocence”, there was never a Christian fundamentalist movement with the fervor that has often manifested itself in the United States. In general terms, Cuba was never a very religious society. The heritage of the Spanish Empire made the Catholic Church the institution of the elite’s by default. And, given the sensuality of the tropics, the average person chose a day at the beach, or a roasted pig party, to a morning in Church.

The Quakers have never been famous as a religion obsessed with converting others. Quakers are a stealthy people who believe others may come to know about Quaker beliefs, and join them, by simple exposure to “Friendly” ideas, and by being attracted by the good deeds and lives of practicing Quakers. Upon this gentle exposure, interested individuals are supposed to “convince themselves” that this lifestyle is in harmony with their personalities. The person is then supposed to commit to a regimen of study where they learn about Quaker history, religious faith and practices, and acclimatizes himself or herself to a disciplined lifestyle focused on a rational understanding of human relationships and the environment. Quakers do not believe in the trinity, priests, saints, the sacraments, fancy ornate churches, confessions, communion, original sin, or the Pope.

Of all the Protestant religions, the Quakers are the least dogmatic, the most decentralized, and some claim, one of the most focused on work and social equality. Their pacifist efforts are known the world over. This low-key approach to seeking converts and its lack of bombastic rituals has guaranteed that their numbers have always been small.

During the second half of the 19th century many Cubans fled to the United States due to the semi-constant state of war that existed in the island. Some of these emigrants became exposed to Quaker ideals, and became Quakers. The most notable of these people was Don Tomas Estrada Palma, who in 1902 became the first president of the Republic of Cuba. Estrada Palma lived in Happy Valley, New York for many years, and as a “Convinced” Quaker followed the disciplined peaceful lifestyle of the “Quiet” branch of the religion. A member of Jose Marti’s independence movement in exile, he was eventually ousted from office by an insurgency that took advantage of the fact that his “friendly” government lacked the force and authority of a standing Army. Criticized by many as naïve or even incompetent, for his dependency on American advisors, Estrada Palma left an outstanding reputation for financial integrity never repeated thereafter by any Cuban administration until 1959.

But, like Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon, (all Quakers) Don Tomas Estrada Palma showed that even though Quakers often have excellent intentions, when involved with the administration of governments, non-Quakers have proven to have sharper skills. So, the history books show that the first president of the Republic of Cuba was a Quaker, a fact forgotten or ignored by most people today. Cuba has the distinction of being the only country on Earth whose founding father was a poet, and its first president a pacifist. Clearly its claim of being a country full of idealists is well established.

During the 1890’s, the “Evangelical” Quakers were experiencing a burst of energy and creativity, which caused many of the faithful to venture to the Four Corners of the world. Like most Americans of the period, they shared the feeling of “Manifest Destiny” which for good or bad brought American ideas and values to the doors of non Anglo Saxon peoples living in places like Cuba. Because of the timing of their burst of energy, and political events in Cuba, the Quakers were invited and were welcomed in Cuba. Independent of Don Tomas Estrada Palma, they found a fertile environment for their “convincement” process and planted roots that sprouted a new kind of “Friend”. The Quakers are also known as the Religious Society of Friends.

In May of 1900, an American banana boat (the cheapest means of transport during that time) landed in Gibara, northern Oriente province. On board was an unimposing man named Zenas Martin, agent and superintendent of the Iowa based American Friends Board of Foreign Missions, one of the most active Evangelical Quaker movements of that period. After observing the locals, Zenas wrote to his wife that, “this country is delightful, it has been cool and pleasant, the air has such a refreshing feeling about it,” and the people he felt, were charming, graceful, intelligent and, to his surprise, mostly white. “Among them are some of the most beautiful people I ever saw”. Zenas Martin was of course, politically incorrect by today’s standards.

In typical understated Quaker fashion, Zenas’ arrival represented a response to a call for help from one of the first native Cuban Quakers, a man named Francisco Cala, whose reason for conversion to The Religious Society of Friends, and activities prior to this date have always been a mystery. Observant, religious, and industrious, Zenas quickly understood why Mr. Cala had so desperately asked for help. In 1900, Cuba and Oriente province in particular were in ruins. The 30 year long war of independence from Spain, which had ended less than two years before, and the tropical diseases it precipitated, had ravaged the land, and claimed almost 300,000 lives, out of a total population of 1.8 million! Despair, disease and hungers were rampant, and the people were still in shock and spiritually disoriented. For years, the Catholic Church had been indifferent to the needs of the people due to its allegiance to the defeated Spanish colonial government, and at this juncture, lacked the resources or fortitude to do anything beyond offering prayers for those who mostly viewed it with suspicion. Ninety percent of the priests were Spaniards who rarely ventured beyond the walls of their parish churches. Soon, Zenas stopped writing about the beauty of the people and the pleasant air, and sent a report back to Iowa Friends explaining the desperate conditions he found.

On November 14, 1900, two years before Don Tomas Estrada Palma’s inauguration, an army of five Quakers arrived in Gibara and began organizing an international aid program that brought food, medicine, and basic necessities to northern Oriente at a time when there was no effective government in the area. The Quaker arrival also coincided with a massive influx of American land speculators, sugar barons, industrialists, and get rich quick schemes that took advantage of the unstable situation, and laid the foundations for American dominance over the Cuban economy. But, before that type of American dominance had taken hold, Quakers were busy with the unromantic task of feeding the hungry, and saving the sick.

By 1905, Zenas and a handful of hardworking American and Mexican Quakers had established Quaker Meetinghouses, schools, and relief organizations in Puerto Padre, Holguin, Gibara, and Banes, and reported attendance in these organizations in the hundreds. By 1912 there were Meetinghouses in places like Chaparra, Delicias, Velasco, Potrerillo, Los Angeles, Bocas, and Santa Lucia; an incredible accomplishment for a small group of people whose command of the Spanish language was described by observers of the time as “most rudimentary”, and whose first collection for the local treasury was a pitiful six cents. The Quakers established a network of social services where none existed before, with their bare hands and the force of their will.

“Los Amigos”, as they became known in Cuba, established a tradition for running strict high quality schools and helping the poor. Their straight independent talk, rational views on business, and minimal involvement in Cuban politics, gave them great appeal to many people whose temperament or worldviews were different than those of the majority population. By coincidence, Zenas Martin had landed in a region of Oriente province that had a high concentration of Catalan immigrants, traditionally a group known within the Spanish world as industrious, frugal, and independent minded, or as some have said, “ideal minds for Quaker conversion”. So, it came to pass that a large number of the early Cuban Quakers were second or third generation Cuban Catalans, but this detail went unnoticed by the early missionaries.

By the 1920’s the Cuban Quakers had become an independent group functioning with little assistance from American Quakers, and by 1927 there were enough native Cuban Quakers to warrant the formation of the “Cuba Yearly Meeting”, the Quaker equivalent of a Catholic Dioceses. By 1948 there were no American Quakers left in any positions of authority in Cuba. This is how the Quakers took root in tropical Cuba, the land of Cha Cha Cha, Mambo, and Cuba Libres. The mingling of the teachings and cultures of George Fox, Jose Marti, the African Sages, and the Chinese, created a Quaker that sometimes wears colorful clothing, smokes big cigars, and gyrates his/her hips to the sounds of music in a way that makes their religious cousins in Philadelphia, or London faint in disbelief. The Spanish “Creole Quaker” shaped by the tropics had arrived. Bring on the Conga drums!

In general, Cuban culture was ambivalent towards the Quakers, like it was ambivalent towards Protestants and Jews. Fulgencio Batista, a Creole of white, Chinese, Taino, and black heritage, and the last dictator before Castro, was educated in a Quaker school in the city of Banes, but never became a “convinced” Quaker. He joined the Army as a young man, and when he became a politician declared himself a Catholic. Fidel Castro, the son of a Galician emigrant, who was educated by the Jesuits, had his rebel army wear crucifixes to battle, and once he became dictator, announced that he was an atheist, and then tried to abolish religion all together. To complicate this matter, most so called Catholics, were also practicing the Afro-Cuban Santeria religion. This nonchalant religion a-la-Carte attitude was the norm rather than the exception in Cuba. Except it was not a polite issue for discussion.

Because of this natural ambivalence, it was not uncommon for middle class families who professed to be Catholic to send their children to Quaker schools. But, throughout the history of these schools, the vast majority of the students came from poor humble families whose tuition was covered in part or in full by scholarships, or by an intricate system where parents and relatives would barter services to a variety of Quaker organizations or causes.

In the early years of the 20th century, when more than eighty percent of the population of northern Oriente province was illiterate and the Cuban government cared little about it, the Quakers provided the only means of education for many. By the mid 1940’s and early 1950’s there had developed a significant number of second and third generation Cuban “birthright” Quakers (Quakers born to Quaker families, not convinced in adulthood) who had graduated from these schools and were taking leadership roles in the society. These native Cuban Quakers formed on Quaker principles of justice, hard work, discipline, and fair play were generally not well liked by the Cuban upper classes, and were viewed with perplexion by the lower classes.

The group composed mostly of professionals represented a rare meritocracy in the clannish paternalistic Latin society of Oriente province. Its members, from humble origins, were treated as upstarts and often ridiculed for restraining from getting drunk, not having multiple mistresses, or refusing to take or give bribes. Because of these factors, valued by Anglo-Saxon Protestant cultures, large numbers of Cuban Quakers in Oriente were recruited by American companies and given positions of authority, which improved their standard of living relative to their peers, but did little to change their relationships with the Cuban elite’s. In a country where social standing, access to resources, and political power was controlled by a system that dispensed it based on family connections, bribery, and often brute force, the concept of social mobility and merit based on honest hard work and intellectual prowess was revolutionary and threatening.

Family lore says that on his birth, my grandfather’s Catholic family named him after a Catalan saint, Sant Pere Nolasco, the founder of an ancient order devoted to rescuing Christians from Muslim enslavement. But, as events unfurled during his childhood, my grandfather remained within the bosom of the Catholic Church for only a brief period. The religious beliefs, life style, and ideology of the Religious Society of Friends instead shaped his life.

Pedro Nolasco Font e Hidalgo, was the product of the Quaker school in Puerto Padre, Oriente, Cuba. He was one of the first Cuban Quakers and like many of his generation, a man who rose from dire poverty and hunger, to a respected position in his community. From an old Catalan noble family that had settled in Cuba in the late 18th century, and initially supported the Spanish Royalist cause, they had seen their fortune lost during the 30 year long war of independence, and were impoverished by the time of his birth. His life reflects much of the history of the Quakers in Cuba during the 20th century, from his birth in 1892, to his death in 1982.

During the last year of the war with Spain, my grandfather’s father abandoned his family out of desperation and depression after watching many of his relatives’ die of illness and hunger. Later in his life, my grandfather would recall how his mother had to hunt for rats in order for them to eat, and how difficult things got when he was fourteen years old and his mother died, leaving him and his three younger brothers with a poor uncle. So, when Zenas Martin and his unimposing Quakers visited Puerto Padre in 1900, my grandfather and his brothers may have been part of the many destitute hungry children that were begging for scraps in the streets. Little is known of his early activities with the Quakers, or how he and his brothers survived from 1900 to 1910.

From his Catholic family, he was the only one to change religion. We do know that by 1911, he was already calling himself an “Amigo”, whether he was a full member of The Religious Society of Friends, we are not sure, but he had already been attending the “Colegio Los Amigos”, or Quaker school, as well as assisting the American missionaries in their travels. The years during his schooling had to be very difficult as well because they have been described by family members as “the years of desperation”, where my grandfather was the main breadwinner for himself and his three siblings. While attending the “Colegio Los Amigos” in Puerto Padre, and befriending the headmistress Mrs. Martinez; his affinity for numbers became clear, and he was encouraged to study bookkeeping.

He excelled in his studies and also became known as a serious student of the Bible. Somehow, he began to assist Quaker Missionaries with bookkeeping matters, and gained a reputation for efficiency and good work habits, finding bookkeeping work with small businesses that had dealings with the Quakers in northern Oriente.

In 1916 he applied for a bookkeeping job with the Royal Bank of Canada, which had opened a branch in Puerto Padre, but was offered instead the job of “barrendero” - a floor sweeper. This was because the bank manager, a tall blond Englishman, doubted his abilities and mistrusted Cubans, and he thought floor sweeper was a more appropriate job for him. This conclusion may have also been precipitated by the fact that my grandfather still lacked money to buy himself “clothes worthy of a bookkeeper.” After several months, the Canadians realized that Cuban Quakers did not steal, and he was able to convince them that his bookkeeping skills were real, resulting in a promotion to head teller. During his tenure with the Canadians he became a full accountant by studying part time, and when he left the Royal Bank of Canada in the early 1930’s he had become branch manager, and head of the business development group.

When he moved to his next job during the depression, he was recruited by the Cuban-American Sugar Company to head its accounting and personnel departments in the Chaparra and Delicias sugar mills, the largest sugar mills in the world at that time, employing more than 11,000 workers. The job in the sugar mill also allowed him to run an independent accounting and consulting firm, which he and a partner profitably ran for many years.

Moved by the carnage and destruction of World War I, and with memories of the War of Independence still in his mind, my grandfather told his family at that time that he was going to devote his life to Quaker concerns and pacifism. He met my grandmother Maria Ferraz at a Quaker fundraiser for European orphans in 1919. After a long old style courtship, which included never meeting without a chaperone, they were married. Both coming from old Majorcan and Catalan families, they shared similar cultural backgrounds, and although her family was considered well off, they took a liking to him. My grandmother’s strong feminists will, Quaker zeal for taking on controversial social issues, and feistiness endeared her to him. As his social and economic conditions improved later on, she enthusiastically took on a leadership role in the community, and helped him polish off his rough edges. In 1926 my aunt Ruth was born, followed by my father Joel, in 1929. My grandfather, the man who lived in poverty as a child and ate rats in order to survive had pulled himself out of misery and had a decent existence by the time the depression of 1929 hit.

When my father was a boy, he too was sent to Quaker school, and although by then my grandfather could afford it, he made arrangements so that my father was obliged to contribute to his tuition expenses by selling soap and household items door to door throughout Chaparra and the nearby town of Delicias. After school and on weekends, he washed cars, sold sugarcane juice “melao”, and delivered groceries. My father also studied bookkeeping, but later decided to study electronics and never followed in my grandfather’s accounting footsteps. Years later, my father told me that as a youngster he hated selling soap for two cents a bar, but later he realized what a great thing his father had done for him by giving him the opportunity to pay for his education, and that experience had given him a taste of business he always respected. “El Viejo knows about the ups and downs of life,” my father would say, “and no one can look at him in the eye and tell him anything about suffering, because he’s been through it in the worse way.”

There were other men and women like my grandfather in the Cuban Quaker community, leaders who earned the respect of their neighbors by their actions. These people’s very existence in remote Oriente province acted as living proof of their faith, and a magnet that attracted new members. The belief that giving to one’s community was a responsibility for both rich and poor was seriously taken. Giving and helping others was not done from guilt, or because it was mandated, but because of the belief that Quakers should do good things, and helping others is a good thing.

Since the 1930’s when he was able to afford it, and until his retirement, my grandfather gave on average 10% of his wages to Cuba Yearly Meeting, and acted on a pro-bono basis, as the national treasurer of the organization until shortly before his death. He acted as the un-paid pastor of the Puerto Padre Meetinghouse for ten years, and the Chaparra Meetinghouse for more than thirty years. He also taught business, and Quaker studies at the Puerto Padre Quaker School during most of his free time. Consistent in his belief to contribute to society, he advocated for prison and public school reforms in Cuba. His house was considered a meeting place where all kinds of people would visit in search of financial help, spiritual help, and mundane things like what to do with unruly children. Groups of Quaker men wearing the uniform of the day, long sleeved white linen Guayaberas and black pants, seemed to always follow him wherever he went. As Pastor, or “Clerk” of the Chaparra Meetinghouse, he participated in weddings, births, funerals, and had to attend public events representing the Quaker community throughout Cuba.

When people met him, they never knew what a difficult life he had endured, or how committed he was to humanitarian ideals. Tall, fair skinned, well spoken, and impeccably dressed; he always spoke of the future, of ways to live better and how to improve other’s lives. He never dwelled on his past, and shied away from anyone who tried to aggrandize him for it. He believed in simplicity, life long study, and the idea that work was the best therapy to cure all ills, social and personal. He strongly believed in the Quaker concept that every man had that of God in him, and everyone was capable of some mistakes, but with a little guidance, one could return to our “normal good nature”. Almost all non-Quakers that knew him, including some members of his family criticized him for what they used to call his “inability to take advantage of a good situation.” In Cuba that meant that he didn’t take or give bribes. His “incredible” habit of letting petty conflicts just bounce off his daily routine was also misunderstood in a culture not famous for calmness.

By the time of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959, the Cuban Quakers were a successful and institutionalized religious order with a bright future in Cuba. They tried their best to remain out of the conflict, never officially joining either side, which indirectly caused both sides to view them with suspicion. But, like most Cubans at that time, they felt concerned about the future of the country and tried, in “the manner of Friends”, to reason with both warring sides sending open letters to Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, asking that the conflict be resolved peacefully.

After Castro’s victory, they protested the public televised executions and excesses of the revolution, but generally supported the new government. When Castro established universal obligatory military conscription in Cuba, the Quakers protested, explaining their pacifist traditions. This appeal was ignored and ridiculed. Soon after, the attitude of ambivalence that had characterized Cuban society’s dealings with the Quakers for the previous fifty-nine years began to change.

As Cuba declared itself communist and atheist, and the Castro regime began to drum up anti-American sentiments, everything that smelled of North America was targeted for destruction. Suddenly, men like my grandfather were suspect, and accused of being stooges of the Americans. The Cuban Quakers, after all, “learned” their religion from the “Yankis”. The decentralized organizational structure of the Quaker faith, and its foreign links became a target for the KGB trained cadres of the new intelligence service and the infamous G.2. Word was sent down to the local “Committees for the Defense of the Revolution”, (the CDR); that they should carefully watch and harass this dangerous group who may at any moment betray the fatherland. Che Guevara’s antipathy towards religion took its toll. Many of the very people, who had been fed and clothed by my grandparents and their co-religionists since childhood, turned against them with vigor. Personal insults, racial slurs, and sexual innuendoes became common practice, along with the defacing of Meetinghouses and other Church properties.

Ignoring the very essence of the Quaker faith, its lack of participation in politics, its refusal to be involved in corrupt practices, its good deeds in Cuba in the last fifty nine years, and its 100% Cuban leadership, the “good socialist patriots” as they were called, put in place a destabilizing program designed to drive away new members, and force its leaders into exile.

By 1961, all Quaker schools were nationalized depriving the Cuba Yearly Meeting of its main social and economic function in the island. Soon after, the government confiscated all private property and small businesses. The entrepreneurial spirit, and the small business culture that was so carefully cultivated and valued by Cuban Quakers, was declared un-patriotic. The new social and political order de-emphasized individualism and demanded that the future of the country and everyone of its people be under the tight control of a central authority. In every way but in name, a new “religion” descended on Cuba, it was the cult of Communism and state sanctioned atheism, a new religion that acted violently towards the slightest expression of criticism or dissent. Under the flag of Socialist Humanism, men and women were forced to replace god, with the state, Jesus with Karl Marx.

This new revolutionary government set out to create a new man in Cuba. “El Nuevo Hombre” which was to be nurtured from the ruins of the “decadent” society of which the Quakers were supposed to be an integral part. Social engineering on a massive scale quickly began, with book burnings, the renaming of every minute thing that may have reminded people of the past, and the re-education of the young based on a “socialist approved” vocabulary, which for example required that “Friends” (Amigos) no longer be addressed as friends, but “Comrades”, or “Companeros”. Laws were passed requiring the militarization of the entire society, the imposition of state policies over those of the family, and the encouragement of wanton sexual behavior, so there would be plenty of “Nuevo Hombres” for the future.

The deconstruction of all the old values, the good ones and the bad ones, took place mostly under the leadership of young political zealots whose experience in life was often an elementary school education, with two years of fighting in the mountains. The gusto and euphoria that these “heroes of the people” brought to the destruction of private property and other “symbols of imperialism” could never be exaggerated, or easily described to those who didn’t witness that period of time. In order to build a new “consciousness” new books were printed, artwork, statues and songs commissioned, plays and television shows produced, toys created and the entire education system revamped from Kindergarten to the Universities.

Veneration of Che Guevara and international guerilla movements took center stage in daily life. The display of pictures of Fidel and Che holding guns was viewed as a sign of loyalty to the “fatherland” and expected of every “good Cuban.” In this environment, many Quakers found themselves hanging these pictures in their living rooms.

During the late 1960’s, when rebellious young Americans were smoking pot, (punishable by death in Cuba) waving communist Vietcong flags, and protesting the unjust involvement of the U.S. in Vietnam, Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church in Chaparra, the most beautiful church in our town was burned to the ground allegedly due to “mysterious circumstances”. Several years after, the Chaparra Quaker Meetinghouse, the place where my family worshiped, and my grandfather was Clerk, also burned to the ground due to “mysterious circumstances”. In the streets we regularly heard the “good revolutionaries” boast of how well Cuba was being “cleansed” of Capitalist influences like religion, and how excited they were that one day soon, the U.S. would lose the war in Vietnam.

Their boasts of “international solidarity with the oppressed people’s of the world,” gave us a chill down our backs. And, every time the U.S. mounted a major bombing campaign in Vietnam, we “Gusanos” in Cuba were made to suffer. Years later in the United States, a college professor asked me why it was that most Cuban exiles supported the US involvement in Vietnam? After looking at him, and realizing that he was of the hippie pot smoking love child generation, I just said: “We saw the war from a different angle. An angle that you will never be able to understand.” And, I left it at that. I know that to this day he believes we exiles are all fascist pigs.

The elimination of the intellectual and economic infrastructure that occurred in Cuba, in the 1960’s and 1970’s, and yielded so much misery years later, was not the result of a foreign plot, or an anti-revolutionary strategy, but the well thought out centrally planned policy of Fidel Castro, and his government to eliminate opposing and alternative economic, political, and religious ideas. Current claims to the contrary by American religious groups and other socialist sympathizers who operate from the safety of the US Constitution, while advocating for totalitarian ideals, are fabrications based on either ignorance, or purposefully created to misinform the innocent and gullible.

Along with the more than one million people who fled Cuba as a result of Fidel Castro’s revolution, more than half of the Quaker population also left. Like the majority of the exiles, they established themselves in Miami, and built “La Iglesia de los Amigos” which stands today, with most of its elders now dead, as a living reminder of a once vibrant past in Cuba.

Fidel Castro’s effort to cleanse Cuba of religion or “the Opium of the people” was effective, and culminated with the abolition of Christmas, which remained outlawed until 1998. By 1965, thousands of religious leaders from the Protestant, Jewish, and Catholic communities had been harassed into exile.

For people like my grandfather who refused to leave his beloved Cuba, because as he said, “Cuba is my country, and I have a responsibility to help my people here,” what Fidel Castro brought was a betrayal of everything he stood for and caused bitterness to his last days.

When my parents, my brother and I saw my grandfather for the last time in 1968, when we were coming to the United States, after a five year torturous wait, he said to us, “go because here there is only conditional freedom, and we live at the whims of a man with a poor character who forces his opinions on the innocent. Go, because up north you can disagree without fear, you can succeed based on your labor, and you can go to sleep knowing that your property will not be confiscated by the state by the time you wake up.”

Now, years after his death, I realize how lucky I am that I haven’t had to eat rats out of desperation, or that I will never have to endure the pain of watching people I considered to be friends and good neighbors, humiliate me, steal from me, and spy against me.

The Quakers who remained in Cuba, and have survived are an admirable group. Many stayed for the same reasons my grandfather did, others were denied the right to leave, and still many stayed because they accommodated themselves with the communist regime in order to live. Many of the new leaders are graduates of a state controlled “religious institute” with questionable authenticity, and affiliations with pro-Castro groups in the US. But, this is all part of the phenomenon of the Cuban experience.

When an American asks me, “why did your family leave Cuba?” I really have a problem answering in a neat well-defined 30 second American style sound byte. Most Americans now days have accepted the leftist story that says that we were all part of the corrupt, racist, mafia infested, inhuman, capitalist, and oppressive white minority that lived to destroy and kill the poor, and keep the workers in chains. When I start by telling them that we were Quakers, and I discuss a few of the things in this story, they question my honesty, and then they hate me. They hate me because my existence challenges their reality.

In Cuba today Quakers no longer wear long sleeve white linen Guayaberas because such a luxury would cost about $75.00 US dollars, and the average Cuban’s monthly salary is now less than $10.00 US dollars a month, less than the average wage people earned when my grandfather took his job as “barrendero” or floor sweeper, for the Royal Bank of Canada, in 1916!

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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My fathers’ third job in the U.S.A. after our stint in Harlem, turned out to be back in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. My uncle Fernando learned that a superintendent’s position had opened up a block away from his house, and was able to convince the landlord to give my father a chance at the job, even though he lacked some of the required qualifications. Fernando also arranged for several Cuban superintendents whom he knew from different parts of Brooklyn, to meet him so they could help him in the event of an emergency.

My father enthusiastically took the job, which paid $310.00 per month, and we moved back to Brooklyn during the winter of 1968. Although this represented a great leap forward for us, it was still significantly lower than the income he had been earning in Capitalist Cuba during the 1950’s and even later in the early and mid 1960’s during Socialism when he was involved in the black market.

The corner of Ocean Avenue and Voorhees Avenue was in a clean neighborhood with shady trees, and well dressed people who strolled around the neighborhood in the afternoons and evenings, without fear of crime, politely greeting one another as they ended up by the Bay where they took the sea air and chatted as they watched the fishing boats rhythmically ride the waves in their dockings.

Sheepshead Bay was a middle class Jewish, Italian, and Irish neighborhood, where Jewish mothers babysat Italian and Irish kids, and Irish men took Jewish and Italian kids to baseball games. Our building reflected this mixture of people, and we later learned that my aunt and uncle were the only other Hispanics in the area, with the next nearest Spanish speakers, a Puerto Rican family, living about four miles away in Coney Island Avenue. This was the genteel New York of Nelson Rockefeller, the City of John Lindsey, the big apple that few now remember prior to the large influx of South Americans, Dominicans, West Indians, Russians, Mexicans, Indians and Asians that later changed its social and political face during the 1980’s. From the early 1960’s to the early 1980’s the Puerto Ricans and us Cubans were the only Hispanics of consequence in the city, and prior to our exodus to Miami in the late 1980’s, more than half of all the Hispanic owned businesses in New York City were Cuban. This is the New York in which I grew up, where my parents tried to rebuild their lives, and my brother and I tried to assimilate.

A week after we moved to our spacious two-bedroom apartment, which had been sparsely furnished with second hand furniture, a strange elderly woman named Mrs. Winthrop, who had strange numbers tattooed on her left arm, visited us. Since we spoke no English, and Mrs. Winthrop spoke no Spanish, we had no idea what she said to us. But, she seemed friendly and looked at my brother and I with great interest. Mrs. Winthrop returned the following day with two shopping bags with clothes, and underwear for my brother and I, and communicated to us via signs, grunts, and strange words, that we should try our new clothes on. As we modeled for Mrs. Winthrop in a state of disbelief at what was going on, it became clear how happy she was that her gifts fitted us. She then sat down in our living room, and proceeded to give us all an English lesson. Pointing to every physical object in the room she made us repeat its English name a few times, asking afterwards to tell her the Spanish name for the object. “Ein Espanishe” she would ask. When Mrs. Winthrop finally left, we weren’t sure if she had given us a lesson in English, or we had given her a lesson in Spanish, but her good heart and incredible gesture needed no translation.

For the next six months Mrs. Winthrop came by our house once a week to teach my parents English, and help my brother and I with our homework until we gained control of the English language. We later learned that Mrs. Winthrop was a Holocaust survivor who had lost all her close relatives in Auschwitz and lived alone with two cats in our building. After a short period of time, my brother and I adopted Mrs. Winthrop as our stand in grandmother, and created many good memories with her as she took us to libraries, museums, the beach, parks, and introduced us to the old folks in the neighborhood. Thanks to the kindness of this old Jewish woman my parents learned to communicate in English, and our transition to American culture became less traumatic.

Arriving in Sheepshead Bay during the summer time, school was out. So, I had a few weeks to learn the neighborhood, and with Mrs. Winthrop’s help I met a few kids from the building and the nearby houses. Although, my parents were still concerned about safety, in light of the Harlem experience, they quickly realized Sheepshead Bay was not unsafe, and I was allowed to play with my new friends, although I did not yet understand them. Two kids invited me to their homes, Kevin O’Brien, whose mother introduced me to the pleasures of Oreo Cookies and a glass of cold milk, and Luigi Turano, whose father was a cabinet maker and used to explain to me, in Italian, how to cut Formica. I have no idea what Mr. Turano used to tell me in Italian, and I never learned to cut Formica, but the man loved his work and probably thought that since Spanish is so close to Italian, I would catch some of his instructions. The fact that I listened attentively and was impressed by his many tools seemed to be appreciated and I was often rewarded with snacks of Prosciutto ham, olives and Ricotta cheese.

Kevin used to have posters of the Beatles, the Monkeys, and the Archies in his room, and loved listening to “Sugar, Sugar” over and over again. Kevin’s father worked in the post office and was home from work everyday by 3:30 in the afternoon. After changing his clothes, he would take Kevin’s little sister for walks around the neighborhood, where everyone knew him and stopped him for little chats. Kevin seemed to come from a very big extended Irish family, since on weekends their house swelled with visiting skinny blond and freckled face kids who looked like him. It was amazing that these eleven and twelve year old kids befriended me, and their parents allowed me in their homes, given the fact that I could hardly communicate with them, and we had so few cultural links.

By the time school was ready to start my brother Jose Luis and I felt good about the new surroundings and we looked forward to the challenge. A few days before the first day of school, uncle Fernando arranged to have a friend of my aunt, Mrs. Schiffton who spoke broken Spanish, and was a member of the Parents Teacher Association, to enroll us at Public School 254. Mrs. Schiffton was an aristocratic looking woman whose family owned a furniture store in the neighborhood and had a son named Mitchell. On the first day of school, Mrs. Schiffton, my brother and I, and Mitchell walked to PS 254 where I found a very different school to the one I had known in Harlem. Here, the kids looked neat, and did not seem to gather in aggressive gang like groups, but a big surprise awaited me after registration.

Not having any transcripts, or academic records from Cuba indicating our grade levels or educational achievements, and not having concluded the semester in the Harlem school, PS 254 officials placed my brother and I at the grade levels they thought we belonged, based on our ages. But, there was a twist. In 1968 PS 254 did not have any bilingual teachers, and there were only three Spanish-speaking kids in the whole school. Myself, my brother and a Puerto Rican kid I later met named Freddy. Although, I had picked up some English by this time, I was still shy about holding a conversation with adults. So, the school did what it could to accommodate me. I was placed in a class with mentally retarded and handicapped children. First, I thought I was placed in that particular class for a few hours, while some issues were ironed out with my records. I felt that any minute another teacher would come in to the room, and take me to another classroom. Unfortunately, the kids in the classroom, about fifteen of them, did not act, or look normal. The first few hours in class, on that first day of school at PS 254 felt strange, then scary, and eventually I felt angry at the thought that this was going to be my regular class. I soon realized that my lack of English had put me there, and probably the only way out was to learn English as quickly as possible.

The fact that I had been promoted to the sixth grade in Cuba, was an over achieving A student, loved reading and writing, and felt positively challenged by most academic pursuits, became irrelevant. Within a period of nine months I went from being a model student in Cuba, to a class with retarded students at PS 254. My first impressions of the American education system were not good, an impression that did not change throughout my High School and college years, and remains today.

On that first day of school I returned home full of anxiety, and described the situation to my parents, who called my aunt Ana for advice. After speaking to Mrs. Schiffton my aunt stopped by our apartment and informed us that indeed, my tenure with the retarded children was to be temporary and due to the school not having any other way to accommodate foreign children. My aunt looked at me and said, “tienes que aprender Ingles rapido, para que te saquen de hesa classe de locos.” Or, “you have to learn English quickly so they can get you out of that class full of crazies”. My immediate goal in life had just been clearly set.

That afternoon, my parents, my aunt and I strategized on ways I could quickly learn to hold conversations in English. It was decided that my aunt would buy me comic books, that I should watch daily cartoons, the Three Stooges, the Bowery Boys, and the Little Rascals on TV, and that I should be very diligent with my schoolwork. It was also agreed that playing with my new American friends was going to be a great help. Used to a methodical way of studying I quickly found studying English to be easy, and the comic books, cartoons, slapstick TV shows and socializing with my new friends became a regimen I welcomed. I learned conversational English with a humorous twist, and with a tremendous fear that if I did not, I’d be condemned to stay in a class with retarded kids forever.

After a few weeks of diligent study, I built enough courage to hold a broken but understandable conversation in English, and I planted myself by the school principal’s office and told her, “I speak English now, I don’t belong in that class with the crazy kids.” Perplexed by my presence, and my comments, the principal said something about an exam, my teacher, and next week. I went away feeling that next week I’d leave the crazy class. I went home and told my mother, who was so happy she made a special “Arroz con Pollo” that night in my honor. But, by the following Wednesday, nothing had happened, and I was still in the crazy class. So, Thursday morning I again planted myself by the principal’s office. “I speak English now, I don’t belong in that class anymore”. Without saying anything to me, the principal called someone on the phone, and a few minutes later a teacher came by the office and an animated conversation ensued. Then the teacher left, and returned five minutes later with a skinny black haired boy. “This is Freddy”, said the teacher in English to me. “He speaks Spanish.” Turning to Freddy she instructed, “tell him he can’t keep coming to the principal’s office like this. That we will take him out of his special class when he learns English.” Freddy began to tell me in Spanish what was just said, when I turned to the teacher and said in English, “I’m ready to leave that class now, I don’t belong in that class, if you don’t take me out of that class I’m going to come back here every day.” Finally, their ears opened. The two women who did not expect to hear clear English uttered from my mouth realized that although choppy, the sounds coming out of my mouth were not in Spanish. Then I heard what I wanted to hear from the Principal. “OK, we’ll give you a test this coming Friday to see if you are ready for regular classes.”

The test was easy, since it contained other subjects besides English. The math and social studies were at a lower level than I had studied in Cuba, and the English reading and writing was manageable. My pronunciation however was bad. But overall, I managed to pass the test and the following Monday my teacher, in the crazy class, told me to go see the Principal. With lots of tension, I went to see the Principal, who with a smile told me “you did very well”. She then called someone on the phone, and a very tall and muscular blond woman who looked like a Viking came and was instructed to take me to my new class.

My new class was composed of about thirty boys and girls. The teacher after chatting for a minute with the tall blond Viking, told me where to sit, then asked the class to pay attention because she had an announcement. “Class, please pay attention. We have a new student in class. His name is Joel, and he comes from Cuba. Joel is learning to speak English and you should speak slowly to him. OK?” Most of the students were unimpressed with the announcement and went about normally as if nothing had happened. The class seemed to be very casual and the teacher was discussing social studies. I could pick out most of the information in the back and forth discussions that were ensuing and I felt satisfied at the realization that I was finally at a level where I belonged. I spent the rest of the day watching, listening to the teacher, taking notes, and admiring the cute American girls.

After several weeks I made friends with most of the kids in my class, and became friendly with many others I met in the school playground. Freddy, the Puerto Rican kid and I became good friends, and I learned his real name was Fernando Enrique Maldonado, and his family came from a place called Rio Piedras. I found most of my school acquaintances to be happy, relaxed, and friendly, with a variety of interests outside the school environment. Generally, my new friends in Sheepshead Bay were good kids, whose parents adored them, were proud of them, and the entire neighborhood cared and looked after them. Conspicuously missing where the tensions of childhood in Cuba, the political risks, the neighborhood spies, the scarcity of food, clothes, and toys, and the fear of having your parents unexpectedly arrested by the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, for some minute digression.

Walking around the neighborhood without hearing people accuse me of being a “Gusano” was refreshing, as well as knowing the fact that if someone bothered me, I could now fight back without worrying that the incident could ruin my family’s possibilities of leaving the country. I remember saying to myself, “aqui no ahi comunistas, y la gente ni saben lo que es un comunista,” meaning here there are no communists, and the people don’t even know what a communist is! Although in Harlem we knew we were in America, the racial tensions prevented us from fully absorbing the impact of freedom, and we temporarily replaced the tensions of Cuba, with the tensions of the Ghetto. Sheepshead Bay was on the other hand, the America we expected. No communists, and no racial tensions.

After a year at PS 254 my command of English was pretty good, and I graduated. From PS 254 I went to Shell Bank Junior High School on Batchelder Street, and loved it. Shell Bank was full of great looking girls who appreciated my accent, and were impressed with my ability to hug and kiss them. And, I did a lot of hugging and kissing. How wonderful it was to be the only Cuban boy in a school full of young beautiful healthy girls just discovering the effects of their estrogen. Soon, I had a new Irish girlfriend, followed by an Austrian girlfriend, who in turn introduced me to an Italian girl named Roberta who after punching me in the chest told me she wanted me to be her boyfriend. Compared to the more reserved Cuban girls I used to know, these Brooklyn girls knew what they wanted, and they knew how to get it.

In the academic area I did well, and began to enjoy my family’s visits to the Batista family (no relation to Fulgencio), my parents friends from Cuba whose son Felix Batista had an Encyclopedia Britannica, and we both quizzed each other on scientific trivia and memorized entire chapters on esoteric subjects just for the fun of it, something my American friends did not seem to understand. My instinctual thirst for history and geography was satisfied by that Encyclopedia like no teacher could have ever done. The disciplined study methods brought from Cuba and the desire to excel in order to make up for what I perceived as a disadvantage due to having come from another country, eventually put me ahead of most of my peers in school. Something I did not realize until later, and something that created a habit of self-teaching and the pursuit of intellectual minutia as a sport. A trait now considered “typical” of Cuban exiled children of my generation.

As my brother and I adjusted to the new culture and language, my parents tried as best they could to understand it, while maintaining a little bit of Cuba within our apartment. Soon we became aware of every Cuban enclave within the metropolitan New York region, and every weekend my parents would make trips to Queens, Manhattan, and Union City, to purchase Cuban food, music, and of special interest to my father, white cotton Guayaberas which he would occasionally send to Cuba, along with razor blades, shaving cream, B-12 vitamins, condoms, men’s and women’s undergarments, Milk of Magnesia, Alka-Seltzer, bandages, iodine, and Aspirin. All items that had disappeared from Cuba, and our relatives would regularly request from us, via sad heartbreaking letters. It became common knowledge that the Cuban government stole more than half of the parcels sent to relatives, and ninety percent of our letters were opened and read prior to arriving at their destinations. All the letters we used to receive asking for basic necessities were always signed; “Viva la Revolucion”, or “Con Fidel asta la Muerte”, (With Fidel until Death), and the ever present “Desde Cuba, Territorio Libre De America” (From Cuba, The Only Free Territory in the Americas). Our parcels to relatives had to be shipped to Canada first, where someone would then re-ship them to Cuba because direct shipments from the United States to Cuba were not allowed.

One day during a stroll under the Roosevelt Avenue El, in Jackson Heights, Queens we found a Cuban Domino set at a Bodega called “Los Cubanitos”, and we felt like we had discovered America. Jackson Heights during that time was a Cuban neighborhood, and my father found a Cuban Chinese Restaurant near a Cuban sandwich take out place called “La Lechonera,” and he was so happy that he got on the phone and called all the other Cubans we knew in Brooklyn to let them know. The following weekend about eight families trekked from Brooklyn to Jackson Heights to meet a very happy, “Alberto, el Chino Cubano,” who to our delight made us the most delicious “Tostones”, or fried bananas and beef fried rice we had ever tasted. Our visits to Alberto’s restaurant were usually concluded after a typical Chinese fare, with flan, Cuban pastries, and Cuban coffee, while everyone listened to Alberto’s father tell stories of Havana during the 1930’s. Often, as the old man went over some special memories, he would pause, and in a heavily accented Chinese Spanish, he would say, “me cago en Fidel, cono.” Or, I shit on Fidel, damn it. The most impressive thing about Alberto, aside from his love of Beny More and Celia Cruz, whose music often echoed from the back kitchen, was indeed his family, who like us had escaped Fidel’s communist paradise penniless and had through hard work, prospered. Alberto’s restaurant was regularly full of white, black and Chinese exiled Cuban’s dreaming that we were all back some where in Havana, Oriente, or Las Villas.

During one of our happy trips to “Alberto, el Chino Cubano,” we invited Mrs. Winthrop who was curious to meet these strange Chinese people who spoke Spanish. After my parents and Alberto concluded their discussions explaining to one another why we would all be back in Cuba within two years due to the collapse of Socialism, the food came out. Unfortunately Mrs. Winthrop was only able to eat “Yucca con Mojo”. We had forgotten that pork chops and Kosher people, did not mix. When Alberto’s father came to greet us he saw Mrs. Winthrop’s tattoos and said in Spanish “Sefardita?” Mrs. Winthrop thinking for a minute responded with “No, Askenazi”. We all looked at each other as if we knew the difference. In Oriente province, when someone talked about the “Judios”, most thought it was a reference to a breed of crows that were numerous in the mountains! We knew the Jews existed, and they did not eat pork, but we did not know what Kosher was.

Years later my father explained to me that there were many Jews in Cuba, but people referred to them and most Eastern Europeans simply as “Polacos” or Polacks. He recollected that in our town several stores were owned by “Polacos” but in Cuba no one ever paid much attention to religious categories. If you where white, spoke a little strange, ate weird food, did not enjoy rum, and did not seem to be Catholic, you were “Polaco”. What about if you were Muslim, I asked my father. He corrected me. In Cuba he said, we’ve never had any Muslims, but Moors, Moors we’ve always had. Did the “Polacos” get along with the Moors in Cuba? “Who knows” he said, “we never paid any attention to that stuff. In Cuba, everyone was Cuban!”

Due to our Harlem experience, in Brooklyn, and as we gained a better knowledge of the English language and American culture, we began to see how American’s categorize other people and foreigners. We realized that five minutes after explaining to people that we where Cubans, the Americans would describe us as “Hispanic” or “Latins.” We were not familiar with these labels. To us, other Spanish speakers were “Colombians”, “Spaniards”, “Argentineans”, “Mexicans”, “Puerto Ricans”, and so on. That is, identity based on national origin. We realized that Americans ignore how we see ourselves, and how we define ourselves.

One day a group of visiting Cuban Quakers talked about the Latino and Hispanic labels with my parents and they realized that we Cubans were guilty of doing something similar to the Eastern Europeans and Jews in Cuba, when we categorized them all as “Polacos”. It was laziness, ignorance, and in some ways a method that erased or de-emphasized the past in an attempt to create a new identity we felt comfortable with. But, perhaps because of other positive traits in the Cuban character, the “Polacos” in Cuba became as Cuban as the rest of us, and there were never any American style social animosities.

I have met many Cuban “Polacos” in the United States, my best friend of over thirty years, Rebecca Rosenfeld is one, and none say this label was considered derogatory, realizing that the informal nature of Cuban culture did not transform the label into a hateful term. But, that it would have been nice if people really acknowledged who they were.

Questions of identity have always interested me, and my life as a Cuban exile, the way we started life in America and the racial conflicts experienced left me with a strong need to learn my own family’s lost past. Remnants of which, were forever lost in the family trunk destroyed during Cyclone Flora in the early 1960’s.

And, so it was that fifteen years after the interesting get together with Mrs. Winthrop in Alberto’s restaurant, I visited the Royal Archives of the Kingdom of Aragon, in Barcelona, Spain with my Italian fiancé, with the goal of methodically researching my father’s family history, whose records I knew went back over a thousand years.

During the Inquisition, the family was listed as having Jewish origins; other documents indicate a Moorish link via the Island of Majorca. Intermarriage with Celts and Goths from Provence is also in the pot. In the late Middle Ages when Aragon was the dominant trading power of the Western Mediterranean, a branch of the family moved to Ireland and established a merchant dynasty in Galway. The family is recognized today as one of the “Fourteen Tribes of Galway”, the founding families of the region. From the 13th to the 16th century the family was part of the Catalan nobility, serving the King of Aragon throughout the Mediterranean, and southern Italy until Aragon was absorbed by Spain, and Catalan culture fell into decline.

In the late 1740’s when the Catalans where allowed by the Spanish monarchy to integrate themselves in their American colonies, many of our ancestors began trading textiles with Cuba and some went on to live in Mexico. In 1775 a friar named Pedro Font (also my Quaker grandfather’s name), walked with a train of donkeys and a troop of Catalan Volunteers headed by Lieutenant Colonel Don Juan Bautista de Anza, from northern Mexico to what is today Arizona and New Mexico, leaving behind a diary and map recording the first European exploration of the American Southwest. A year later he participated in the great expeditions of Father Junipero Serra, in California, and went on to discover San Francisco Bay, taking part in the founding of what is today called the city of San Francisco. And, to my surprise, I learned that in the early 19th century, a branch of the family in Havana was established as one of the leading Rum and slave merchants of Cuba. Good thing that by then my branch of the family was in Oriente province, and not Havana. Interesting how all these things mix over time. To these we now have to ad our experiences as Cuban exiles in North America!

Hiking through the Camino Real and Turquoise Way in New Mexico, I once stopped to see the magnificent beauty and uplifting spirit of the people at the Santuario de Chimayo, and then visited the Pueblo de Taos, by the Sacred River of the Pueblo people. In a moment of awe, holding my daughter's hand, I thought to myself: If Pedro Font made it all the way out here, thought these mountains, valleys and deserts, on foot with a few Donkeys, all the way from Mexico, and prior to that on a Carrabelle from Spain, on the other side of the world, then my experiences and challenges in life have all been puny. Life is not so bad. There's just lots of surprises along the way.

My first friends in the United States, Kevin O’Brien, Luigi Turano, Mrs. Winthrop, and Fernando Enrique Maldonado, may have all been long lost relatives!

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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As we walked down the tarmac, I looked around for some sign of Winter. Perhaps some ice attached to the trees, like I had seen on post cards, or a policeman wearing a long coat and galoshes, but the air was actually warm. Looking back towards the plane, I noticed that my father, along with several other men, had dropped to his knees, and in a Pope like fashion had kissed the ground. My mother, my brother, and I just looked at him in astonishment, as he got up and said, “don’t worry we will be back in Cuba by early next year.” He then looked at me and pronounced, “it is now time to cry out of happiness.” But, instead of happy tears, I could only muster astonishment at the sights around me. Miami in January of 1968 did not have snowstorms, and I could not see any skyscrapers anywhere. Would I see the Empire State building if we took a taxi and drove north for a while, towards New York? I wondered.

Our first day in exile was very long, but sunny and beautiful. After all the paperwork and medical exams were done, we were taken to “La Torre de la Libertad”, Liberty Tower, where we were shown to our room, a tiny closet like space with four bunk beds, which became our home during our first three days in the United States. In “La Torre de la Libertad”, we were given new underwear, socks, a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, and shampoo, and my parents were allowed to make two phone calls. After the phone calls, a group of us newly arrived “exilados” were taken to the commissary, where we were told, “you can eat as much as you want, and you can go back as many times as you like.” Coming from a country were coffee was rationed and scarce, my mother asked, “and coffee, can we have two cups of coffee too?” The tour guide, apparently a Cuban-American, looked at my mother, and with a smile said, “senora, ahora usted se puede tomar todo el café que le de la gana!”. Meaning, “Lady, now you can drink all the coffee your heart desires.” “What a wonderful country”, I heard a voice say from the back of our group. Then I got in line and waited to see what American food was all about. I had heard vague stories about it, but now I was there, and about to experience it myself. Mayonnaise, the real thing! And, nice fresh ham, with cool lettuce, and a slice of American cheese on two perfectly sliced pieces of white bread. My God! There was no doubt, this was not Cuba. As I moved forward on the food line, I noticed a huge refrigerator with glass doors, and to my astonishment, the thing was full of Coca Cola bottles! If deliverance has a description, for us it had to be that day in “La Torre de la Libertad”. No more Castro, no more persecution, and no more fear, with all the ham and cheese sandwiches you could eat! At eleven years old, my life was about to begin anew.

Soon, friends and relatives came to visit us at “La Torre de la Libertad”, and we were taken for a ride around Miami. Everyone we saw seemed well fed, well dressed, and happy. The cars were all agile and colorful, and the houses were nicely painted. The streets looked very clean, and there were no signs of starving, homeless, or rioting Cuban exiles anywhere to be found, as Castro’s propaganda had made everyone in Cuba believe. Everything that we had believed in for years was confirmed in one day in Miami. The entire Socialist ideology, its followers, and the results of that ideology seemed so inferior to Capitalism and the free market, that to compare the two was like comparing a plate of manure, to a plate of “Ropa Vieja”.

The warmth and generosity extended to us by the exiled community in Miami, from newly arrived, as well as established exiles, was unexpected and unforgettable. They knew the hardships we had endured, and needed no qualifications to help us. Again, Fidel Castro’s claim that we would die of hunger and poverty in the United States proved to be just another flagrant lie. In two days we received new clothes, new shoes, and even money. My parents received several invitations to work in Miami, and people even offered to put us up in their homes until we got settled. But, our destination was New York City, where my aunt, Ana Pupo-Corella, awaited for us in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. For us exile was to have a New York flavor. So, as soon as I had discovered the wonders of mayonnaise, and had seen a few Flamingos, we headed for New York City.

As we walked into Kennedy Airport from our arrival gate we heard another Cuban from our group say, “Cono, esta a cinco bajo zero compadre.” Meaning, “Damm it, compadre it’s five below zero.” As I looked out the airport windows I noticed parts of the airfield were covered with snow, and everyone was wearing big coats, boots, scarves, and hats. This is more like it, I thought to myself. This is what “El Norte” should look like! Then my mother with tremendous joy in her voice said, “mira, alli estan. Ahi dios mio, no lo puedo creer.” Look there they are. Oh my god, I can’t believe it. Looking at her sister Ana whom she had not seen in ten years, and her brothers Jose and Eduardo, whom she had not seen in nine, my mother began to cry out of joy, sadness, nervousness, and love all at once and the urge to cry spilled over to my brother and I, and we found tears running down our faces. Along with my aunt and uncles were other friends of my parents whom they had not seen in years. In tears my mother turned to them and said, “Yo pensaba que nunca hibamos a salir de hesa pesadilla, y nunca los hiba a ver de nuevo”, or I thought we would never leave that nightmare, and I would never see you again. Moved by her words, some of the people who came to welcome us broke into tears and there, in the middle of Kennedy Airport, on January 13th 1968, while it was five degrees below zero outside, we all hugged and cried as strange voices speaking English were amplified over the loudspeakers.

During our first week in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, there were winter blizzard conditions, with several feet of snow accumulated on the ground, and my aunt Ana felt that the shock of going out in such extreme cold would give us pneumonia. During this week, we ate better than we had during the previous eight years in Cuba, and we received several visitors, who slowly helped us patch together a picture of life in exile, and New York City. Things were generally described as good, but quickly my father concluded that his career opportunities in New York did not lay in entrepreneurial pursuits, electronics, or bookkeeping, because of his lack of English, and because his educational credentials were not recognized in the United States.

My uncle Fernando Corella, summarized it for him. “Look, you’re going to have to start from the bottom, and work your way up the ladder.” “So, where is the bottom of the ladder here?” Asked my father. Counting with his fingers, Fernando explained, dishwasher, floor sweeper, handyman, superintendent in a building, watchman, taxi driver, doorman, deliveryman, or factory worker. “Well then, since the three cents Fidel allowed me to take out of Cuba will not buy much, I will have to improvise.” Said my father. “Which of these jobs is the most promising for us as a family, and which one will give me the most freedom, with the least humiliation?” “Probably superintendent in a building.” Said my uncle Fernando. “But, in order to get a job as a superintendent, you first have to learn about building maintenance, plumbing, heating, and basic English. You will have to first get a job as a handyman in a building and apprentice for a year, then you have to join the union.” “And, how do I get started”, asked my father. Fernando said that he knew some people who could probably find him a handyman job quickly, and he would call them right away. Uncomfortable with the idea of staying in my aunt and uncle’s home without contributing financially, my father suggested to uncle Fernando that while he waited for the handyman job, he should take a job as a dishwasher in any nearby restaurant that would take him, “so that I can contribute to our expenses while we stay in your house.”

And so it was, that during the two months we stayed in my aunt and uncle’s house, my father worked as a dishwasher for Lundy’s, the famous Italian seafood restaurant in Sheepshead Bay. My uncle Fernando knowing how out of place my father must have felt as a dishwasher, said to him, “you don’t have to wash dishes while you’re in my house”. My father’s response was, “when I get old I don’t want to think back to this time, and remember that I got my start in this country by taking handouts”. Thanks to Fidel Castro, my father went from successful businessman, to black market bribery expert, to dishwasher in America.

During our first critical few months in the United States, neither my parents, my relatives, or any of our Cuban acquaintances ever consider, or even mentioned to us any form of public assistance, welfare, or charity, as a means of survival. For my parents, acceptance of any form of public assistance would have been tantamount to stealing from the government that was providing us with a safe haven, and an act of laziness. Worse than that they felt it would be a shameful way of handing Fidel Castro a victory, since he claimed that we would live like beggars in exile.

As we began to become accustomed to Sheepshead Bay, a friend of the family found my father a job as a handyman at a building in Manhattan, or to be precise, Harlem. During 1968, race relations between blacks and whites in the United States were not at their best. Riots, looting, civil disobedience, and mass demonstrations were taking place all over the country, but we were oblivious to it. When these things were mentioned to us, my parents discounted them as exaggerations. We thought little about the fact that we were white Cubans, and were moving to 116th. street and Saint Nicholas Avenue. At the time, there was a Cuban community along Broadway between 135th street and 150th street, called “El Escambray” and we thought being close to it would be a good thing. But, the distance between 116th street and 135th street turned out to be significant. We found ourselves in the minority in our building, a six-story apartment building with perhaps forty or fifty families, where most of our neighbors were black and New York Ricans. I was enrolled in a public school a few blocks from the building where we lived, and soon began to notice that in America the racial issue was very different than anything we had previously experienced. Slowly we began to realize that there was a problem. In Cuba we lived in a multiracial environment, but we were never exposed to the type of bigotry and racism we encountered in this place during this time. In school, not knowing that I was Cuban, the Puerto Rican kids taunted me in Spanglish, “hey blanquito”, they used to say followed by other things I couldn’t decipher. Not accustomed to being called a whittie, by kids who looked white and similar to me, I wondered: “what do these kids consider themselves?” Not speaking any English, I found it awkward to spontaneously meet and talk to other kids. Some of the kids I thought spoke Spanish, would respond to me in English. The black kids ignored me completely. My classes during the first month were focused on getting me accustomed to English, and were taught by bilingual teachers. I was placed in a class with other kids who did not speak English, where the teachers were very nice and took great care in teaching me the English alphabet, verbs, composition and pronunciation, but most of the time everyone spoke Spanish with one another.

As I became more aware of the school dynamics, I noticed that most kids in the school were there to play and hang out, instead of academics. Coming from a very strict educational environment, and a regimented society like Cuba, I was stunned to see kids hanging out in front of the school, wearing messed up ruffled clothes, and sometimes arguing with a teacher. “In Cuba”, I told my parents, “these kids would be sent to the sugarcane fields to cut cane on their second day of classes”. (A typical punishment for enemies of the revolution, homosexuals and unruly young people). My parents were not impressed with my observations. My mother worried for my little brother and I, decided to check out the school, and came back with a report of what she had observed. “There is absolutely no discipline in that school,” she said to my father, “its like a huge circus”. My father could not understand how the parents of these kids who had so much given to them for free, and lived in a country with so many opportunities could allow their kids to squander education so carelessly. My mother in a philosophical way pointed her finger at me and said; “when everything has been taken from you, and you are naked in the middle of the jungle, the only thing of value that will allow you to survive is the education inside your head.” I looked at her and instinctively knew she was right. I also knew what that conversation meant in terms of our likelihood of remaining in that building and that neighborhood.

Soon after settling into our one bedroom apartment, where my brother and I slept in cots, and my mother cooked everything in one pot and one skillet because we still didn’t have money to buy cooking utensils, we began to wonder if all apartment buildings in America were populated by people who yelled obscenities out their windows, where the police regularly made arrests, where loud music played all the time, and where women screamed for help in Spanglish while crashing sounds were heard during the middle of the night.

About a month after we had our discussion on the quality of the local school, my father found a middle aged black man laying on the lobby floor of our building, drunk and apparently recovering from a beating. None of the tenants walking by showed any compassion for the man, and went about their businesses unmoved. Responsible for the upkeep of the building, my father helped the poor man to the street, and then cleaned his vomit from the lobby. From that moment onward we began to feel uneasy about our safety, and wondered how it was possible for people to walk by someone in pain, without blinking an eye.

My mother, a Galician looking woman with light brown hair, gray eyes, and pale white skin started to notice how in the supermarket and sometimes when she walked home, many of the local men looked at her with anger and sometimes said things in English she could not understand, but felt were directed at her. As time passed we felt more and more tension and more unwelcome by our neighbors. Then, one day two recently arrived middle aged Cuban exiled women, one of them black, came to visit us in our new apartment, and were harassed in front of our building by a group of black kids. One of the women had to fight off one of the kids who tried to steal her purse. The first hour of their visit was spent in a tense discussion of how disappointed and afraid they were at the sights they had seen on their way to our building. “Never, anywhere in Cuba did we feel as threatened as we did walking here today”, they said. When their visit was over, in the middle of the afternoon, my father had to walk them back to the subway station, because the women were in fear of walking the streets by themselves. The feeling of “we don’t belong here” was intensified and we never invited anyone else to visit us while we were there.

My father, in an effort to better understand the environment we were in, and the people around us, attempted to befriend some of the Puerto Rican men who lived in the building and sometimes hung out in front of our building in the afternoons. They were very curious about life in Cuba and how we made it to New York. After my father explained life under socialism, and the lack of freedoms in Cuba, one of them told him “things are not very different here in New York.” Then, they explained that there was police brutality and discrimination against blacks and Puerto Ricans all over New York in a way that paled the problems we had experienced in Cuba. While this conversation was going on, a bunch of kids approached one of the men, paid him some money and received in exchange a green bag of what my father concluded was Marijuana. In Cuba drug trafficking was punishable by death, and that very interchange had it taken place in Cuba would have meant the firing squad for the dealers and ten to fifteen years for those witnessing the transaction without reporting it to the secret police. Appalled by this exchange, my father returned home in raged and commented to my mother, “these people around here are communists and drug dealers. They should all be sent to Cuba for six months so Fidel can straighten them out. If they hate this country so much, why don’t they just get out.”

From that moment on whenever my father heard anyone complain about the United States, he would coldly say; “Mira, a nosotros no nos gusto el socialismo de Fidel Castro, y por eso nos fuimos de Cuba dejando todo por detras. Si a ustedes no les gustan este pais, porque estan aqui chupando del sistema.?” Meaning, look we didn’t like socialism and Fidel Castro, and because of that we left Cuba and everything we owned behind. If you dislike this country so much, why are you here sucking off the system?

These types of things made us aware, and forced us to see the differences between us Cuban exiles who arrived in the US penniless, who did not have the benefits of US citizenship, spoke no English, and could not return to Cuba, and many of our neighbors who were almost all US citizens, spoke English, regularly flew back to their home towns, and received the fruits of Capitalism, but seemed to disdain it.

We became convinced that in America a large segment of the population had figured out how to live off the fat of the land. Having lived for years under a totalitarian dictatorship that did not respect basic freedoms, it bothered us to see how almost always it was the people who exploited the capitalist system the most, the ones who took every opportunity to insult its leaders, criticize its institutions, and complained about discrimination. My father said once, “the energy invested in complaining, if used for self improvement would make all these people rich and happy. But, they are all hypnotized into whining and complaining.” Because of these experiences we thought for a long time, that most Americans were in their hearts, complainers. “If you put them in heaven, they will complain,” my father would say.

By the end of our second month in Harlem my parents were looking to move, and my father was looking for another job. By the sixth month we managed to move. Living at 116th street and Saint Nicholas Avenue in Manhattan for six months in 1968 seemed like a long time, and given the social and racial tensions of the period, and our naïveté it probably was. For us 116th street presented two lessons. First, that in America, like everywhere else in the world, it matters very much where you live. Where you live can brand you for years after you decide to move because a place’s political habits, prejudices, social relationships, and economic limitations are psychologically absorbed whether we like it or not, and somehow my parents knew this. Secondly, that in America racism goes both ways. And, we saw that racism against whites can be manifested with the same hatred and vigor, as whites have been known to practice it against blacks. This was a lesson that was unexpected for us.

The innocent Cuban attitude of “we are all the same” did not translate very well in the Harlem of that period, especially after dark. The particular realities of North American history are different from ours, and I suppose every other immigrant group in the US has to go through some “right of passage” where you hit your face on the brick of the new culture.

Had it not been that we always had black Cuban friends, that our culture is a culture that springs from both Europe and Africa, that these things are undeniable, we would have been scarred into a hateful attitude against many good people in the future. Thanks to family and friends our next stop in America was to be far away from Harlem and the racial tensions of 1968.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
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After making several stops at “tiendas del campo” (country stores), and exchanging small talk with the owners on new consumer products and radios, “El Flaco” arrived at the Pupo family farm where two young men who asked him if he had brought over the “portable records player” greeted him. Pulling a suitcase-like box from the trunk of the car, “El Flaco” says, “lets go inside and see if it works”. Once inside the farmhouse, “El Flaco” is taken to a large well-furnished living room where suddenly about ten handsome young men and beautiful women gather to hear and see him play some records.

Surprised by the reception, but elated, “El Flaco” plays a few 45 rpm single records of Cha Cha Cha, and Beny More. The young women found “El Flaco” instantly “muy simpatico”, especially since it was rare for a young man from the city to show up in their farm, wearing a cotton drill suit and tie with shiny black leather shoes. After one of the young men paid “El Flaco” for the record player and records, “El Flaco” told all present that his “big dance” was starting at 8:00 and he hoped all could go. Several of the young women appeared to hesitate and he asked why they were not going. Answering that their father was still leery of letting them go out to parties without a chaperone, “El Flaco” asked if their brothers didn’t count as chaperones. The answer was that a good chaperone had to be female, over 30 years old, and from a good family. Thinking for a minute, “El Flaco” called the oldest brother, “Ramon”, over to the side for a quick private talk. Having known him for several years “El Flaco” spoke in a friendly and direct tone. “You remember Matilda that voluptuous “Muchachona” (Big Girl) that works at the “Bar Azul” in Chaparra? She’s working for me tonight. Well, she’s over 30 years old, and I can tell your parents she comes from a good family. You think you can force yourself to go along with me on this one. You chaperone Matilda, while she chaperones your sisters. That way everyone can go?” Thinking for a minute, “Ramon” said, “are you kidding me, Matilda is gorgeous, but you’re crazy, my father would see right through that in a second. You’ll make a fool of yourself in the attempt, and I’ll have to explain why I went along with you.”

Thinking for a minute, “El Flaco” decided to try a different approach. Calling “Rafael”, one of the younger brothers, he said, “you know Matilda the big breasted “Muchachona” from the “Bar Azul”? While “Ramon’s” jaw dropped to the floor, “El Flaco” made his offer, and “Rafael” accepted, saying, “I’ll take care of everything. Go now and don’t come back until 7:30 PM so we have time to get ready, then you can do your act with my parents.” Without explaining anything to the girls, “El Flaco” bid farewell and said to “Rafael”, “I’ll see you soon”. Turning to his brother, “Rafael” with a smile said, “you chicken. I’m going to get Matilda tonight”. As “El Flaco” headed back to oversee the preparations, he thought to himself what a great thing it was that there were going to be four more women in the party, since he always felt that there were more men than women at these countryside events. “El Flaco’s” main concern, to make sure he had a successful and profitable event was well on track.

One of the beautiful young Pupo girls who got to go to this crazy Guajiro party in the middle of the countryside, thanks to “El Flaco”, was my mother, Rosa Natividad Pupo Nieves. The youngest girl in a family of twelve children, in some ways she was the most sheltered of the bunch. She was introverted, studious, very beautiful, attached to her mother, and deadly afraid of her father. Her knowledge of the world was limited to the second hand information she absorbed from her siblings, a fifth grade education, reading Readers Digest, the poetry of Jose Marti, and an occasional magazine article on Hollywood stars.

Although, she had a great curiosity for new things, and yearned for greater education, her father’s low expectations of women, and the geographical fact that she lived in a farm in rural Oriente province had always stood in her way. Of the “acceptable” things that a girl in that environment could do, cooking, sewing, and gardening, she loved sewing the most and learned at an early age to use her mothers foot pedaled Singer sewing machine, to make beautiful clothes for herself and relatives. Otherwise, along with her sisters, she catered to her brothers, and waited to become a good wife to a man acceptable to her parents. When she saw “El Flaco” she noticed that he was different from her brothers, but aside from the formal clothes it was difficult to pinpoint exactly how. But, she didn’t think much else.

During the party, everyone had a good time. The Pupo brothers all got drunk, and hugged and kissed lots of willing girls. Most of the Pupo girls got chances at dancing with boys, and enjoyed watching their brothers do silly things. By 2:30 AM Rafael and the beautiful voluptuous Matilda had returned from their long walk in the bush, and the whole clan prepared to go home. Since the boys were drunk, no one could drive the Jeep and trailer used as an impromptu party vehicle, back to the farm. “El Flaco” overhearing this, and knowing it was only a five-minute ride volunteered to drive them home after he finished cleaning up. Unbeknownst to “El Flaco” this deed endeared him to the Pupo girls, who from that night on thought of him as a friend, and not just an acquaintance of their brothers. Instead of referring to him as “El Flaco”, they called him by his name, Joel.

During the next several months, the girls indirectly tormented their brothers with comments like, “You should dress more like Joel”, or “I bet Joel treats women with more respect than you”, and “Joel is very smart, he makes his own money”. The boys on the other hand, often responded with, “El Flaco” is a crazy guy, no one takes him serious”, or “how can you like a skinny guy like that, he’s probably a sissy”, or “he is crazy about making money because he doesn’t have any”. After a while, my mother Rosa, started thinking a little bit more about Joel. Her brother’s derogatory comments actually made him more appealing. She wondered why they disliked him in private, while they publicly treated him on friendly terms.

These questions opened the floodgates to other issues. She loved her brothers but she knew that most of them lived off her father’s money, felt superior and acted condescending towards most people outside the family, and treated women like children. She loved her father and mother, but wondered how other families lived, and whether every family went through the same machinations as hers, in order to keep their children from making their own decisions, and aloof from the world. Why didn’t her brothers go out to work and find independence from her parents, like Joel? What was wrong with having different ideas?

Several times during this interlude, my mother visited Chaparra with her sisters and mother on shopping trips to “El Departamento Comerical”, then the biggest store in town, and each time they came in contact with “El Flaco’s” uncle Manolo Font who was the store’s manager, and “El Flaco” would always be around. During one of these chance meetings, “El Flaco” concluded that there was something appealing about Rosa, and found himself focusing more attention on her. Unlike the women he had become accustomed to in his entertainment and promotions business, Rosa’s reserved shy personality and natural beauty seemed refreshing and he felt challenged by her different ness.

Six months later, my grandfather Jose Pupo, three of his sons, my grandmother, and an Albino stopped by “El Flaco’s” radio shop to buy a dozen radios, which were to be given away as gifts to their employees. “El Flaco” had become well known in the region for his locally built private label radios, which he called, “Radios Vociferosos”, the vociferous radios. After placing the order, my grandmother Carmelina surprised him and the others by asking him to deliver the radios himself early the following Saturday so he could have lunch with them and spend sometime in the countryside. After a minute of awkward silence my grandfather reached over to his ear and whispered, “if you pull another Matilda trick on me ever again, I’ll break your neck.” Stunned first by the invitation, then by the threat, “El Flaco” was left speechless. What kind of invitation was this, he thought?

But, sensing that my grandmother may have been acting on behalf of one of her daughters, and remembering that all the Pupo girls were beautiful, especially Rosa, his response was, “I’ll come by the farm with my father, since he hasn’t been out to the country in a while”. The Pupo’s seemed to like what they heard, and left the shop in a happy mood.

The truth was that my grandmother had not acted on behalf of my mother, but impulsively on behalf of all her daughters. And, my grandfather had gone along with her invitation only because of his dislike of public disagreements with his wife. But, such an invitation would have never come from him because he already knew a little about my father, his father, and the Font family in general. What he knew did not excite him. Furthermore, the idea of a strange “Cuaquero matraquilloso”, fastidious Quaker, with an urbane accountant father, did not fit well with his view of the world. Had “El Flaco” been the son of a “Colono”, a rich sugar farmer like himself, a Galician, or a Canarian, Jose Pupo would have been very happy. But, he had daughters to marry off, and a wife who long ago made these types of decisions, often over his objections. “El Viejo Pupo” as the family fondly called him, had one major satisfaction, and that was that he maintained absolute control over what was really important to him, and that was his sons.

After “El Flaco” explained to his father, my grandfather Pedro, that he was going to drop off some radios by “El Tres del Vedado” and afterwards he was planning to stop by to visit the farm of Juaquin Batista a friend of the family, his father agreed to come along. He then explained that the radios where for the Pupo family, and they had been invited there for lunch. As customary with my grandfather Pedro, he said; “well, then we just can’t show up empty handed. I’ll get a few books to bring along as gifts!” Thinking for a moment, he added, “these people are very wealthy, but they are very backwards in their thinking. I hope you make the visit as diligently as possible.”

Saturday morning around 10:30 my father and grandfather drove off to “El Tres del Vedado” with a small box containing 8 books, and twelve radios in the trunk. Arriving about forty five minutes later, they drove up the main road to the farmhouse, blew the horn a few times, and an Albino with three barking dogs came out to greet them. The Albino said they were expected, but that the family was by the big barn preparing for the party. My grandfather Pedro in his khaki suit and polished black shoes, along with my father wearing a white linen Guayabera black pants and patent leather shoes, had come ready for a formal sit down lunch, and could not help but ask where the big barn was. Pointing past a muddy field, the Albino said; “when you get to the Mango trees, turn left. There you’ll see a corral with a bunch of guys castrating some pigs, they’ll tell you where to go from there.” Hesitating to embark on a muddy hike, my father asked the Albino to go to the big barn and let the Pupo’s know he had arrived with his father. When the Albino left, my grandfather asked if they were there for lunch or some type of party. My father responded that the invitation was for lunch.

About fifteen minutes later a tractor pulling a cart with people on it could be seen approaching from the direction of the Mango trees. Jose Pupo, the patriarch of the family was driving the tractor, with several of his sons tagging along in the cart. Stopping in front of my father and grandfather, they deeply contrasted their farm overalls, and muddied boots with my father and grandfather’s neat appearance. Without a formal greeting, Jose Pupo jumped down from the tractor and asked; “you brought my radios?” “Yes they’re in the car”, my father responded. “Very well” he said, and pointing to the Albino he ordered, “Jose, get the radios out of the car and put them in the storage room.” Extending a hand to Pedro Font, Jose Pupo said; “we have a few friends over, and are having a little fun with some wild horses.” Looking at his clothes he concluded, “but I can tell by your clothes that you are not going to join us. But, at least you’ll get something to eat, and you’ll learn how real men conduct themselves here in the countryside”. At this point, Jose the Albino, called out; “hey Flaco, what are these books for?” My father in a loud voice responded; “they are gifts my father brought for the Pupo family.” Hearing this, for some reason caused the Pupo’s to giggle and laugh. Jose Pupo then said; “put those books in a sack and throw them in the back of the storage room, along with the other ones we got last year.” Without further discussion, Jose Pupo clapped his hands and said; “come on hurry up, everybody is waiting for the two of you,” and signaling to my father and grandfather, he told them to jump on the cart for a ride back to the big barn.

The big barn was located on a quiet corner of the farm, surrounded by ancient Guira trees whose bending thick branches were used as monkey bars by children. With dozens of chickens, turkeys, and pigs running loose, and several cows and ponies gracing in an enclosure, the scene was serene, full of healthy innocence, and full of natural beauty. As they walked around to the back or the barn, they could hear laughter and animated conversations. The first thing the Fonts noticed was a magnificent view of a distant valley with fields of sugarcane broken up by small forests and tall Royal Palms. Then they noticed that the back of the barn was actually a circus like environment with about 80 people, reminiscent of an ancient Roman gladiatorial event as depicted in a Hollywood movie. There appeared to be a good amount of arm wrestling, eating, drinking, laughter, joke telling, and two loud teams playing tug of war. There was a huge circular fenced area in front of the revelers, with several young men on horseback chasing horses in a Rodeo like fashion and many onlookers cheering. On the right side of the barn there were five pits where five huge pigs where being roasted, and several men entertained themselves by playing guitars.

Looking at my father my grandfather Pedro said, “I don’t think we’ll be able to make it to Juaquin Batista’s house today before 3:00 o’clock.” Waving at a long table where the Pupo women where seated, my father responded with; “I agree, and I think this lunch party started at 9:00 o’clock this morning! Lets make the best of it, please”. Walking over to the table were the women were seated, my father introduced my grandfather to everyone, and was then brought over to another table were there were some other guests, mostly “colonos” (Land Owners) from the area. The “colonos” immediately began to question my grandfather Pedro about certain business procedures at the Chaparra sugar mill, and his opinion on how to best operate a company store. My father left the table and went over to where Jose Pupo was engaged in a conversation with several of his sons. It turned out that part of that day’s event was the taming of a wild horse by Jose Pupo himself. A ferocious wild horse had been selected for the day and everyone waited the arrival of “El Come Balas”, the man who eats bullets, Jose Pupo’s 104-year-old father, and my great grandfather, who would officially start this honored family ritual.

Back at the table, my grandfather Pedro Font was getting along very well with the other guests. He invited one of the “colonos” to visit him when in Chaparra so they could have more in depth discussions about his business ideas. Then a young man brought over a big bottle of rum and placed it next to him and said; “Here is a token of our gratitude for the excellent books you gave to us this morning. Lets open it up and drink in the spirit of friendship.” Looking up at the young man, who had obviously had a few drinks, my grandfather said; “young man I am moved by your offer, and I am happy that you appreciate good books, but I don’t drink rum. Let us celebrate by having a simple good time.” “What do you mean”, said the young man. “No rum? What about Brandy, or Whiskey?” My grandfather Pedro shook his head. “Come on you’re kidding me.” Insisted the young man, “how about Cerveza?” My grandfather shook his head again. “Whose ever heard of a Cuban that doesn’t drink? You’re crazy!”. Patiently, my grandfather Pedro responded. “Young man, I don’t drink rum or any other alcohol because its use leads to intoxication, and when intoxicated men loose control of their rational behavior, and in that state of mind we cease to act as civilized human beings.” Totally perplexed, the young man walked away and returned to his table and his bottle.

Turning his attention back to his table, my grandfather Pedro noticed that everyone was quiet, and they where staring at him. One of the women asked, “do you eat?” One of the men said, “Pedro, that young man didn’t want any trouble. Why did you have to be so rude to him? You can’t be serious about this drinking thing?” Again, patiently my grandfather tried to explain his views. “Look I’m a Quaker. We believe that in order for people to have enjoyment and happiness, we need not be intoxicated. The money spent on liquor can be put to better use. That is my belief, and I don’t force it on anyone, but I expect those with other views to respect me.” Totally stunned, a woman then said; “huh, the next thing you’ll tell us is that you don’t believe in Jesus and the Pope!” My grandfather Pedro, again digging into his fountain of self-control said; “senora, we are all Christians here, and as such we believe in Jesus. But, as you know the Pope is the leader of the Catholics only. To us the Pope is nothing more than a fine decent man.” The “colono” my grandfather Pedro had invited to his office to discuss business, turned to him and seriously asked; “well then, do you consider yourself an Atheist. And, if so are you also a Communist?” He then crossed his arms and stared at him waiting for his answer.

While my grandfather Pedro was struggling trying to explain that Quakers were not Atheists, or Communists, a bell rang repeatedly in the background. It was the signal telling everyone that the pigs were ready to be eaten, and the long awaited “El Come Balas” had arrived. Everyone stood up and looked around.

“El Come Balas”, true to his reputation, came with great fanfare riding a white horse accompanied by two young men on black Andalucian stallions doing the Spanish step. Although, 104 years old, he looked like he was in his late 60’s. Getting off his horse unassisted, he waved at everyone as young women gathered around him competing for his hugs and kisses. He walked over to the side of the big barn where his sons, grandsons, and other relatives had setup a special table for him, and he gave a short speech directed at the young people about the importance of virility and having a strong large family. He then addressed all the guests in a most careful manner, explaining the proper method for growing 88-pound Yuccas in record time, without the need for inorganic fertilizers. The speech was so well received that he got a five-minute standing ovation. Then three men brought one of the famous 88-pound Yuccas out of the barn, and ceremoniously placed it by the foot of his table.

Oblivious to these events where Joel and Rosa, my parents who in a rare and precious moment got a chance to talk to each other without a chaperone. In the environment of that period, expressions of affection in public were unthinkable. So, they said everything they could in ways that left little doubt that they liked each other, and as was customary, they agreed to correspond via a common friend. They then stood there admiring the way “El Come Balas” waved at everyone, and giggled when an 11 year old girl came by and asked Rosa if the skinny guy was her “novio”, boyfriend.

When everyone had finished eating, my grandfather Pedro noticed that a line of teenage boys had formed by one of the Guira trees and some adults where instructing the kids on some type of game that was soon to begin. Curious to see the game, my grandfather went over to the group. As he approached, one of the adults raised his hand and said “disparen”, or shoot. At this order all the boys dropped their pants, and at once began a most joyful pissing contest. After a few minutes the winner, whose urine had reached a distance of more than 4 feet, got a brand new slingshot as a prize. As the group of boys broke up, one of the adults reminded them of the importance of cleanliness when “massaging” their penises. Several of the boys remained near the Guira trees comparing the length and girth of their penises. It is difficult to determine the type of impression my grandfather Pedro, the conservative urbane Quaker must have gotten from this interesting game. Years later my father mentioned that this was the only time his father had ever seen this type of sporting event, which for a time had gained popularity in rural Oriente.

Walking over to where his son was talking to Rosa, my grandfather Pedro asked my father if it was not time to start heading back. Thinking for a minute, and wishing to extend his conversation with Rosa, my father told him that out of respect for their hosts, they had to wait until after Jose Pupo had done his horse taming show, which was an hour away. Rosa, realizing that something was wrong, and having noticed my grandfather Pedro previously involved in a discussion about religion, decided to apologize to him for any offense anyone there may have caused him. She then said to him with great sincerity, “I admire you and your son very much and I hope whatever may have happened here today does not create a wedge between our new friendship.” Thinking about what a wonderful reminder this young woman was of the miracle of the good nature that dwelled in the hearts of mankind, my grandfathers’ spirits were lifted and he said to her. “Senorita, your sentiments are like a ray of sunlight on a hazy day. Please tell your parents that you will always be welcomed in my house, and when ever you come to Chaparra you should have no hesitation in visiting us.” Thanking my grandfather, she then asked my father to tell her a little about his religion.

Impressed with Rosa, and wanting to let my father continue with his conversation undisturbed, my grandfather decided to walk around the area and take in the scenery. Walking away from the big barn he reached an area where there were four windmills that powered the farm’s water pumps and charged the battery powered electric generators. At first, he thought these windmills were the most technologically advanced devices in the farm, aside from the tractors and jeeps he had seen earlier. He then noticed the models and generating capacity of each windmill, and realizing how antiquated they really were, he figured that greater efficiency could be achieved if they were modernized. Quickly making a calculation in his head, he concluded that if all four-windmill generators were modernized, the farm would increase its power output by a factor of 5, or by 4,500 kilowatt hours per day. This would allow the Pupo’s to install all sorts of modern farm machinery, at a very low cost. There would even be enough excess power left over to sell to some of the nearby farms.

Excited by the discovery, and the simplicity of how such a beneficial thing could be implemented, he headed back to share his idea with his son. Immediately grasping the concept and what it could mean in economic benefits for the Pupo’s, both father and son decide to approach Jose Pupo immediately, with the added proposal that my father could do the entire upgrade for a minimal fee, plus the cost of materials.

Getting ready to tame his wild horse, my grandfather Jose Pupo was inside the barn changing his clothes, and putting on his favorite Italian riding boots and gloves. He then began practicing his long whip technique when the two Fonts approached. “Don Jose”, said my father, “we have a great idea to share with you. Please listen to us for just five minutes.” “Very well, but you’re going to have to talk while I practice with my whip. Let’s go outside, and you can start talking.” Ten minutes later, Jose Pupo says, “neither of you have any idea how a farm works. You came here from the city with your shiny shoes and callous-less hands, you eat a little roasted pork and yucca, and suddenly you’re telling me how to run this farm. Why would I want to sell electricity to anyone? Why should I buy new machines, if everything here works fine the way it is? I think this is just a money making trick, and the only one whose going to make any money out of all this will be you.”

Stunned at first, my father and grandfather Pedro looked at each other, then my grandfather Pedro said to my grandfather Jose in a typically Quaker fashion, “If you think this is some mal-intentioned trick, and you believe us to be men whose word and integrity can not be trusted, we will then wish you and your family a happy day, and we will leave so we can all be among those we trust and respect.” Thinking for a minute, Jose Pupo responded with, “look Font, I’m going to tame my wild horse now, if you want to stick around until this afternoon, I’ll let you try to explain this silly idea of yours again then. But, don’t talk to me about kilowatts because this is a farm, not some electronics shop!”

Suddenly, overcome by a great desire to return to Chaparra, both Fonts thanked Jose Pupo for his kind hospitality, and walked by the tables were the Pupo women were sitting, and waved goodbye as they headed towards the big house where the car was parked. As they walked through the field, they felt the cold mud and occasional manure splash on to their nicely pressed clean pants.

Before arriving in Chaparra, my father told my grandfather Pedro that he liked Rosa and wanted to see her again. He also said that he had only good intentions for the girl, and if things went well, he wanted to propose marriage. My grandfather responded by saying, “she seemed to be the only nice one there, but perhaps you should think this out very carefully, especially in light of today’s events, and her father.” My father looking at the road said, “you’re right, what a pain in the head this is going to be!” My grandfather then said, “I know what you’re going to say, but I think you should try to find a nice Quaker girl.” Thinking for a moment, my father responds with, “all the Quaker girls I know are ugly. And, remember, I’m going to marry the girl of my choice.”

After several months of correspondence and short informal get togethers, an engagement was announced against both families’ wishes. The decision to marry was reached by the young couple after they both agreed that love was stronger than social, religious, and family pressures.

When the marriage announcement was made, the Pupo’s tried every direct and indirect strategy possible to change Rosa’s mind without success. Facing the impending fact that one of his daughters was to marry a Quaker, a rebellious urbane entrepreneur, and a man without strong ties to the rural “Colono” society of Oriente, brought great irritation in Jose Pupo’s mind. If the wedding was to take place, he decided it should at least conform to his values and standards. The daughter of a rich man, the granddaughter of Don Victorio Pupo Pena y Avila, “El Come Balas”, had to follow certain conventions.

Jose Pupo’s generosity was timely and convenient. After learning about the simplicity of Quaker weddings, and Rosa’s agreement to have a Quaker religious ceremony at home, presided by my grandfather Pedro Nolasco Font e Hidalgo, instead of a Catholic ceremony in a grand Church, Jose Pupo offered to pay all expenses, and volunteered to coordinate the festivities in their home. The only requirement placed on the young couple was that they leave all the details in the hands of the Pupo’s.

My fathers family invited forty two relatives and distinguished members of the Quaker community, while the Pupo's invited more than two hundred and seventy five relatives, and one hundred and twenty other “friends” including local Colonos (Land Owners), business associates, politicians, the chief of police, the local judge, veterans from the war of independence, several Parish priests, nuns, and members of the local Catholic Youth Organization. There were half a dozen cows slaughtered to feed the party goers, and so much liquor that everyone was drunk by the time the Quakers arrived in their automobile caravan from Chaparra.

Full of happiness and excitement, the Quakers got out of their cars to what they thought was going to be a memorable wedding between the son of one of their most respected and revered religious elders, and the granddaughter of one of the wealthiest Colonos in northern Oriente. Instead, they were met by a mob of disrespectful, drunk, and poorly educated Catholics who immediately challenged the “authenticity” of the wedding because it was to be conducted without “a real priest”. After trying a last minute attempt at a switch to a Catholic priest, and my mother’s threat to “expose this hypocrisy” to everyone present, the Pupo’s relented and everyone gathered in a huge tent for the ceremony.

My grandfather Pedro Font spoke eloquently about the miracle of the human heart and the special love that bring two human beings together in marriage. Other Quakers spoke in the manner of Friends, and read passages from the Bible, then following the Quaker tradition my father and mother married each other.

During the ceremony, half of the attendees from the Pupo side of the family left the tent in silent “disapproval”, and the members of the Catholic Youth Organization who remained turned their backs to my mother in an expression of “sorrow” and “disappointment” that she had abandoned the Catholic religion. This day, which should have been one of the happiest for my mother, turned out to be one of the saddest, thanks to her family.

During the ceremony and festivities my father chose to act as if nothing irregular was happening, and in his clumsy and insecure way, he joked and danced with the very people that were humiliating him. In spite of this event, my mother never became a convinced Quaker, and never fully renounced Catholicism. But, she does from time to time admit that this experience eroded her previous blind respect of all things Catholic.

On the day of her wedding the Quakers showed only kindness, patience, and respect for her, my grandfather Pedro treated her like a daughter, and my grandmother Maria comforted her. Everyone else was drunk and focused on their selfish prejudices.

The pattern of social interaction between my mother’s family and my father’s family established during the wedding, lasted throughout the 15 years my parents remained married.

Unfortunately for my mother, the exposure to my father’s family caused her to see the crude, arrogant, loud, and superficial ways of her own family, which caused her much tension and even shame.

Her family habits and training to be a subservient female clouded her perceptions for most of her adult life, even when she made a strong effort to be independent. Among the strong minded, and assertive women of my father’s family and circle of friends, she was always slightly out of balance. As her son, I believe that her life would have turned out much happier had she married someone of her own religion, social values, and someone who shared her superstitions. The young lover’s wishes to go against family, society, and religion, in the end did not work. Although, my brother Jose Luis and I would not be here today, and I would not be telling this story.

For a long time when my mother saw a young person question his or her parents, she interpreted it as “disrespect”. When she heard an open long discussion or brainstorm between people of different ages and sexes, in the fashion so common to Quakers, she interpreted it as “indecisiveness”. When she saw elders asking the opinions of younger people, she was “confused”. When she saw wives strongly disagreeing with their husbands, she felt “uncomfortable”. When she heard husbands tell their wives to manage the household based on their good instincts and common sense, she felt it was “abandonment”. She never truly understood the openness, dislike of rituals, and lack of status symbols practiced by the Quakers. She was perplexed by the “coldness” and rationality in which the Font’s behaved, without the familiar Cuban references to superstitions, lighting candles to Saint Lazarus, or offering an Apple to Santa Barbara.

When it comes to Santeria, my mother “respects” it to the point of appearing afraid of anyone who claims to be a Santero. But, at the same time she participated in Santeria rituals whenever she was away from my father and his family, but never discussed it. The fact that half of the Pupo’s practice Espiritismo, a tradition separate from the Santeria and Palo Monte religions, was something she was only awkwardly able to discuss with me after I was well into my adulthood.

My parents themselves had difficulty understanding their own differences. Theirs was mostly a difference of worldviews. Both were good people, with good intentions, and a desire to follow their love’s instincts. But, without fault, each wore a different set of colored glasses. After a while both began to change, or adjust with the circumstances and each other. My father’s interest in “explaining” things to her wore off, and her interest in “compromising” also wore off.

My parents however kept a decent front, maintaining a home, paying bills, and putting on the image of a nice happy couple. My father with his workaholic patterns had the belief that he was a good provider and his hard work and lack of vices, qualities highly valued within his family, would also be admired and understood by his wife. They were not. Instead, my mother interpreted his behavior as disinterest in her. She complained that he spent more time with his business associates than at home. She felt that he should have provided her with more guidance in domestic matters, and that he should have been more involved in family decision-making. She complained that he was not focused on “me and the family”. In essence she felt that he had not taken on the responsibilities of a husband.

My father was not prepared to understand that my mother did not understand how to use her freedom, that instead of valuing it, it made her lonely and insecure. He did not understand that she had little background in decision making, or acting independently. Although, she was uneasy with her own family’s “Machismo”, she indirectly longed for it because she viewed it as a structure with clear points of reference. On the other hand, my father erroneously thought he would somehow transform my mother into one of the assertive women he had grown up around. Collisions with reality became my parent’s routine, with my mother escaping to a make believe world where the loneliness of her mind created countless plots and intrigues, and my father escaped deeper into his work.

If not for the patience and kindness of my grandparents, Pedro and Maria, the difficult divorce laws of old Cuba, and the social stigma attached to divorced women, my parents would probably have divorced before their fifth anniversary. Instead, by the end of the first anniversary, I came along, and four years later my brother.

With the same clumsiness practiced during the wedding, the Pupos from time to time attempted to convert my father into their ways. Not realizing that aside from the money, they had little to offer to someone like him. And, being that my father considered money not earned from his own direct labor, as tainted, even the money had little effect. The Pupo’s felt frustrated in their failure to manipulate him. My uncles were mostly selfish crude types whose behavior found admirers only within the Pupo family. These machinations caused many un-necessary tensions in the family. And, my father was unable to take most of the Pupo’s seriously.

When Castro came to power, most of my mother’s brothers enthusiastically adapted to communism. They would sometimes visit our house wearing their rebel army uniforms, with their Czechoslovakian machine guns and bullet belts around their shoulders, and took great pride and care to recount how diligently they were working to wipe out “imperialism”, and “make Cuba, Cuban”, which by then we also knew it meant getting rid of foreign influences like the Quakers.

Once they casually mentioned during a lunch visit, that the divorce laws in Cuba had been liberalized thanks to Fidel. And, now women were granted uncontested divorces based on “political incompatibility”, resulting in the “liberation” of countless poor women who would otherwise had to endure “torturous” situations next to their “counter revolutionary” husbands. Hearing this, my father turned to my mother and said, “querida, I guess this is your chance”. To my mothers’ credit she responded with, “Joel, please don’t turn me in. I promise to stop being a counter revolutionary tomorrow after breakfast.” Turning to one of her brothers, she asked, “can a husband turn a wife in too?” Not amused they got up from the table and said, “Si ustedes siguen comiendo mierda, van a parar en el paredon.” (If you don’t stop with this bullshit, you’re going to end up facing a firing squad). After my uncles left the house, my father said to my mother; “your brothers just love me, and they love to see us together, don’t they?”

But, thanks to socialism, and Fidel Castro, my parent’s relationship got closer. My father’s small businesses were shot down, and his entrepreneurial activities ceased. Forced to be at home most of the time, my mother got her wish. From a political and ideological perspective, they both disliked the revolution and the concept of communism. When my father was falsely accused of plotting with the CIA, (A Quaker spy!) and arrested, their minds synchronized into survival mode. Most of the religious, social, and family differences that had caused past friction were miraculously set aside. A psychological defensive wall went up around our house, keeping away anyone who “smelled” like a threat to any of us. My parents quickly understood that in order to survive the catastrophe of communism, whose ideological battle unfolded before us on a daily basis, we needed to survive the psychological war. United we stood a chance.

The “us” against “them” reality set in, and slowly we began a system of re-interpreting “their” reality and social policies, in terms of what those things were really meant to achieve. We knew they were out to deconstruct our beliefs and turn us into mindless followers of socialism, in subliminal ways. The more the psychological attacks against us intensified, the more we intensified our simple family discussions against them, and the more we understood the need to protect and look after one another. We, and many of our “Gusano” friends quickly learned the analytical approach needed to understand the double talk, new language, and deconstructive reasoning put in place by the government and the socialist mobs. My parents, although they were not intellectual or highly educated people, found a way to inoculate my brother and I against this form of political correctness, and I am forever proud and thankful for their efforts. Whenever we heard the local militia say, “we need to be vigilant in order to save the freedoms of the oppressed peoples’ of the world,” we knew it meant, “find and harass every Gusano you can, and make sure they are in a state of fear, so they keep their dissent to themselves.” Or, “It is the obligation of every Cuban to make sure there is equality among all.” This one meant; “any remaining private property in the hands of the Gusanos is to be taken away as soon as it’s found.” And, of course the one feared the most by Gusano parents; “From now on all private schools are closed, and the fatherland will provide the best teachers and free education to all children.” You can interpret that one yourself!

A “Gusano” housewife like my mother faced gigantic challenges on a daily basis. With the responsibilities of caring for young children, keeping a house clean, preparing food, washing clothes, and catering to a husband, she had to also endure constant insults, and sexual harassment (all Gusano women were considered open game by the good revolutionaries). Standing in line for five hours in order to buy a one-pound bag of rice was common. Having to overcook rancid codfish to avoid food poisoning became an art. Sewing clothes for my brother and I from old curtains or left over rags was a common occurrence. Having to cut newspapers into thin strips in order to use them as toilet paper was a constant frustration. Learning to bathe and wash your hair with coarse industrial soap that irritated your scalp and genitals was another challenge. Looking at my brother and I with anguish and unable to help when we were sick because there were no medicines, was an art form sadly perfected by my mother. And, often drinking sugared water for lunch, in order to give my brother and I the only remaining pieces of bread, or crackers in the house, was a motherly act I’ll never forget. My mother went from having the life of a rich country girl, to a life where misery was a daily reminder of our fragility as human beings. This was the price paid for political dissention in Cuba, Che Guevara’s paradise and the “only free territory in the America’s.” And, these are our memories of the great socialist egalitarian experiment glorified by many Americans today.

Before things improved for us as a result of my fathers’ black market activities and his work repairing refrigerators, our insecure existence as “Gusanos” was harsh and painful. Men faced these pressures as men often do. With either courage or cowardice. Women faced them as they often do. With compassion, or resignation. Everyone tried his or her best but for us depression was never an option, because depression was an admission of defeat.

Having said that depression was not an option does not mean that there were no knots in our stomachs, pressure in our chests, a feeling of sadness, and the wish to occasionally commit suicide. What it meant was that we knew that Fidel Castro and his followers took great pleasure in our suffering, and viewed the “defeat” of every “Gusano” as a victory for socialism. This type of situation went against what we stood for. The idea of allowing such a thing simply became unacceptable to us. So, we learned to smile and became very good at telling jokes. Our pain and our hearts were never easily revealed. As a young boy between the ages of 8 and 11, I understood these things.

For my mother these experiences and the process of going from riches to rags in a short period of time left her disoriented for the rest of her life. For the crime of marrying outside her religion, her family punished her. For the crime of having different political opinions, her country took everything she cared for and exiled her. In exile she acted as if we were rich, while our pockets were poor. Then, when we reached middle class, she finished adjusting to poverty, and acted as if every dollar was our last one. For a while, she didn’t quite get a grip of the here and now, and managed to go through a role reversal with my father, where her pent up anger made her into an assertive demanding and somewhat unreasonable person, while my father switched into the super macho man he never was in Cuba. Without any of the family and social restrains of home, this adjustment to “El Norte” ended in the best thing that could have happened to them. Divorce.

My parents worked hard during the time we waited to leave Cuba. They conducted themselves with dignity in the face of humiliation, showed our communist tormentors that we were survivors not losers, and always kept a close warm relationship with those members of our family that deserved friendship and respect. My memories of our family during this time are full of togetherness and toughness in the face of adversity. Never did my parents succumb to escapism, hedonism, or any addictive behavior in order to survive the heavy pressures put upon them.

The highlight of my parent’s marriage while they were in Cuba, was not that they lived as love birds sending each other love letters and chocolates. But, that as young people with very different backgrounds, and different expectations, they managed to stay together during a time of extreme hardship, providing my brother and I with a clear sense of right and wrong, and survived the psychological war directed at them from both close relatives and the state. In Cuba, my parents showed that a man and a woman, together, even with great imperfections, could rise to the top and meet any challenge thrown their way. If this is not a miracle, I don’t know what is.

When we were about to get on the plane from Varadero Beach for the short flight into exile in Miami, my mother looked at my brother and I, held us in her arms, and said, “we’ve made it. A new life awaits us now.”

My father standing closely, and noticing that my brother and I were getting teary eyed, said to me, “Don’t cry out of sadness. Save your tears for when we arrive in “El Norte”. There we will all cry from Happiness.”

We got on the plane and the silence was weary. All of us were in a state of suspended animation, not believing that we were indeed leaving Cuba. People quietly sat on their chairs, and just waited to see what would happen next. Fear was still thick in the air, and the belief of many was that even at this last minute, the long black hand of Fidel and socialism would creep in and pull someone out of the plane based on some erroneous technicality. The plane took off and the awkward silence continued. Twenty minutes passed without anyone moving, and then finally the pilot’s voice coming from the loudspeaker said that we had just crossed into United States airspace. All at once people began to talk, and we heard some people uncontrollably crying. A man from the back of the plane started shouting, “Estamos libre cono. Estamos libres!” (Shit, we are free…we are free!). Then the stewardesses, who spoke no Spanish, and whose very act of not speaking Spanish confirmed to us that we were indeed heading to the US, came by offering everyone a can of Coca Cola. My father looking at his can of Coke said, “I haven’t tasted this since 1960.” Not realizing that the Coke was free, my father reached in his pocket and got all the money he had, the three Cuban cents the airport authorities had neglected to take from him on departure, and prepared to give it to the stewardess, who with a thankful gesture refused to take the three cents. Every time I remember this event I get a knot in my throat.

When the plane landed, my mother in a symbolic act of emancipation from fear, and in irony turned over to another woman sitting across the isle, and said, “nos escapamos del Paraiso”, (We’ve escaped from Paradise). The other woman said, “Ahi nina, gracias a Dios” (Oh my dear, thank God!). We arrived in the US, a land totally unknown to us, a family of four, without speaking English and with three worthless Cuban cents as our total net worth. (So much for the stories of rich Cuban exiles arriving with suitcases full of dollars). As we prepared to leave the plane, a little girl asked her mother, “when will we go back to Cuba?”


(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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It was a beautiful Saturday morning and we were all very excited about our trip to El Jiqui. My father Joel P. Font, had spent several hours the previous day cleaning and waxing our 1953 two-tone Chevrolet. Now wearing our best weekend clothes, my mother, my baby brother, and I waited for him as he loaded the trunk of the car with several portable radios, and a large weekend valise. Each radio had been carefully wrapped with a beautiful bow.

As we drove away from the outskirts of Chaparra, the ring of sugar cane fields surrounding the city gave way to small farms and endless greenery with palm trees covering the hills for as far as the eye could see. This peaceful scenery was regularly broken by the sights and sounds of a steam locomotive huffing and puffing in the distance as it pulled a long train of cars full of sugarcane. Spotting the horizon we could see the traditional Cuban bohios, or peasant houses, so common in Oriente province.

I liked and hated these trips. I liked them because of what happened once we arrived at our destinations, but hated them because the three hour trips bored me, and my parents conversations were so removed from my childhood experiences, that inevitably my brother and I would sleep for most of the way. If we were awakened during these outings, it was for some extraordinary event.

As always, we reached Velasco around ten o’clock, entering the colonial cobble stone streets, and slowing down past the old stone bridge to allow the milkmen to pass with their horse drawn milk buggies. As we approached my grandparent’s house, everyone in the street, seemingly aware of our coming, wave at us and smile. My grandparent’s Spanish style home, built in the second half of the 19th. century when Velasco was one of the few Royalist towns in Oriente, had a simple but classic look. Unlike Chaparra, which was a sugar town built in the early Republican era following an industrial urban plan popularized in North America, Velasco's atmosphere and people seemed to reflect an older spirit and time in Cuba's colonial history.

With a keen eye for punctuality, my grandfather Pedro Nolasco Font e Hidalgo stands by the main door of the house looking at his pocket watch. Ready to say something to my father as we approach, he turns to me and says "Arrubiado, come here and give me a hug". Happily, and already knowing that my grandfathers' sense of logic, and well-cultivated formality usually melted when I entered his presence, I hugged him. He then said "Your father tells me you want to be a cowboy. Remember, you can be a cowboy, but you also have to be a lawyer, or an accountant!" At this point my grandmother, Mari, comes out of the house and kisses everyone and tells my father that our breakfast has gotten cold because we were one hour late. With a tame frustration apparently achieved after years of practice, my father looks at the sky and says. "Senores, I did not ask you to prepare a banquet. A cup of coffee and a piece of bread is usually what normal people have. With an annoyed tone, my grandfather responds, "Normal you say. You refuse to understand that we have our ways. You've always tried to adopt street manners, and it always ends up the same. You are not from the street. You have a family that did not invent itself from thin air last week. Look, when you come to our house, we reserve the right to treat you like a civilized person." Knowing that he would never win this type of debate, my father looks at my grandfather and says, "Esta bien viejo, lets see what delicacies Mama has made for us. But, I want to be in El Jiqui before 3 PM."

The table was impeccably set for twelve with silverware, tall crystal glasses, and crisp white linen. A beautiful porcelain Cupid adorned the center of the table. As my grandmother began to place her delicacies on the table, she began a long explanation of how hard she had worked early that morning to have everything just perfect. Their neighbor Clotilde Valls had shown up at 7:30 AM with fresh fruits, which they used to make marmalade, bunuelos, and a Majorcan fruit pudding. My grandmother's Catalan style cooking was famous throughout the region, and she took great pride in everything that had to do with food and dining. My grandfather would regularly say, in reverence to her work, "Senores, your eyes are gazing upon a masterpiece. This work Mari has created is the only artistic endeavor that mankind can admire, and joyfully consume. Can you do that with a painting, or a statue?"

Dressed in his light tan cotton linen suit, white shirt, and navy blue and red tie, my grandfather contrasted with my grandmother's lively flower pattern dress whose reflection shined on the polished black and white Spanish tiled floor. As we were all settling into the table and began to enjoy our potato omelet, Clotilde the neighbor, walks into the dining room from the kitchen, with two well-dressed men and a teenage girl. Holding a wicker basket full of Figs she turns to my grandfather and says, "Viejo, these are the Figs I promised you. Now, Mari can make her famous Figs with Anisette" Standing up, my grandfather said to Clotilde, "Your surprises always bring us joy. Please sit-down." The two men greeted my grandfather with the customary "Que dios lo vendiga, Viejo." At this point my father stood up and shaking each man's hand mentioned his name. "Enrique", "Gustavo". And, turning to the teenage girl said, "Montserrat, I cant believe how much you've grown." At this point my grandfather asked everyone to settle down for a prayer. Holding hands around the table my grandfather began. "Lord thank you for blessing us with this wonderful food. Thank you for giving us health. Thank you for bringing us to this beautiful place where we can enjoy our families in peace, and thank you for giving us the mental capacity to live as rational men."

As we ate that Saturday morning, the sights, sounds, and smells of the tropics embraced us. The bright Cuban sun brought in by colored glass skylights filled the interior of the house. The songs of an infinite variety of wild birds could be heard in the background, and the aroma of fresh mangos and guava fruit floated in the air. And, like always, my grandfather's Agua de Peralta cologne occasionally teased my nose.

"Now lets have Enrique tell us about the trip to Camaguey," said my grandfather. "Well, the business is expanding." responded Enrique. "Uncle Martin has added two new ovens, and one new production conveyor to the factory. They are now selling our candies and lollypops all the way up in Matanzas. But, he complains that the added business is not generating as much profit as planned because the price of sugar has dropped again, and he's been forced to lower his prices sharply." Enrique continued, "The new master candy maker, the man from Valencia, is excellent. He has devised more than a dozen new varieties of Chupetas based on our own fruit extracts, and Martin is hopeful that this man may be the one we need to administer the new factory in Pinar del Rio, if we ever get the right bank financing." "And, what is the problem?" Asked my grandfather. "Well, everyone knows that Perez, the Vice President of the Bank of Camaguey is corrupt. When uncle Martin went to see him, he jokingly said that no one could get that kind of loan without a good uncle. So, now you can imagine," Said Enrique, "If Martin pays off Perez, in no time there will be a line of uncles lining up in front of that factory asking for all kinds of payoffs." Turning to Enrique my father says, "And, this surprises you?" There is silence in the table. Thoughtfully, my grandfather says to Enrique, "I will write to Martin with the name of the Director of the Royal Bank of Canada in Havana, who is a friend, and I am sure we will solve this problem without soiling ourselves in this type of garbage. I have all the papers here and will send them directly to Havana in a few days. Also, tell Martin that we are sending him two young apprentices in August to work as bookkeepers. They are from the Serrat family." Enrique, with both joy and innocent sarcasm turns to my grandmother and says, "Vieja, one day they are going to erect a statue to this man in Camaguey." At which my grandfather responds with, "Stop being an exaggerated man, and finish your omelet."

Now turning to Gustavo, my grandfather says, "and what news do we have from Holguin, and La Brillante?" "More of the same." Responds Gustavo. "Your nephew Pio cant get enough people in Holguin interested in working in a brick factory. They come for a month, and then disappear. Pio offers decent wages but Cubans nowadays don't want to work hard anymore. Things are so bad he can’t keep a steady production run anymore. And, demand for good bricks is terrible. If not for the Terra Cotta business we'd be in bad shape. Shaking his head at Gustavo, my grandfather says, "Remember the last time I visited the Quarterly Representative Meeting at Friends Academy in Holguin, I went to see you boys and gave you my findings on this matter. The problem is not that people don’t want to work, it’s that they don’t want to buy our bricks. You and Pio like your fathers and grandfathers, make excellent bricks. Artistically fired, with hand-crafted textures and colors, but these days everything is cemented over. The Americans have convinced our architects to use these ugly cheap gray blocks in all types of construction. According to Jorge de Lerida, and Pedro Cortina, the best architects in Oriente, there wont be any Cuban brick making firms left within five years." Carefully measuring his words, my grandfather continued. "Have you boys acted on our advice to look for an Almacen (hardware store)? What is keeping you from taking Juan's offer of assistance in Havana. He will take Pio in as an apprentice for a year, then he will help you both setup a new Almacen in Holguin. You will, as always, have our support, but the time to act is running out." With youthful annoyance, Gustavo responds. "Viejo, Pio thinks we can beat the Americans in this business. We are going to copy their ugly cheap gray blocks, and cement trims. Whenever they come out with a new style, we will copy it. That's it."

Looking at Gustavo with astonishment, my grandfather says, "a most direct and simple solution." Gustavo then added, "We don’t even have to invest in creating our own styles." My grandfather turning to my father says, "These boys have not considered that most of the cement we now use in Cuba comes from the United States. And, that their cement block factories are mechanized, and their production quantities are so large that their costs per block is probably the lowest in the world." Turning directly to Gustavo he continued, "You would have to buy new tools, and train these very people who you now say don't want to work, to use these new tools, and you will need to pay them more so they don't quit so quickly, and then you have to convince your old clients, and new ones, that your ugly gray blocks are better than the Americans. I think in the end the Americans will be able to produce more ugly cheap gray blocks than we, and our losses will then, after this great effort, will be much greater than if we stop this now." Turning to my father and Enrique, my grandfather said, "Your opinions count." Then turning to my grandmother he said, " Mari this coffee has gotten cold, can you please warm it up." Breaking the serious mood in the table, my grandmother responds by saying, "May god protect us from cold coffee and finicky Quakers." After reheating the coffee, all the women walked to the Living Room where they held their own lively conversation. "That old brick factory has to be demolished. It's a relic," said Enrique. "Pio has to go to Havana and apprentice with Juan. While he's there Gustavo should go to El Jiqui where everyone knows he's needed. Upon his return, we will follow up with the plan as agreed last year."

"La Brillante is finished. Luckily, Juan will make Pio into an expert in the Almacen business, because everyone knows Juan is the most thorough, frugal, and astute merchant in our family." Said my father. Concluding the discussion, my grandfather informs Gustavo that he and Pio are to come to a family meeting the following Saturday, where final action was to be taken regarding the brick factory.

As we finish our breakfast, someone knocks in the front door. We hear my grandmother open the door and exchange greetings with some people. Soon two older men wearing long sleeve white linen Guayaberas and black pants approach the dining room. They were Roberto Fung, the oldest Chinese person in Velasco, one of my father’s old teachers, and like my grandfather, one of the first Quakers in Cuba. The other was Dr. Emilio Pratts, my grandparents Dentist, a member of the Communist Party of Cuba, and a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. After all the greetings were done, they turn to my grandfather and ask, "Viejo, are you ready for our inspection?" Looking at his pocket watch, my grandfather responded, "I estimate that if we leave here in a half hour, we will arrive in Delicias before 1:30 and we'll catch everyone by surprise." Turning to my father he added, "We are getting the Meetinghouse ready for tomorrow. Fernando Galba and Gladys Lopes are getting married tomorrow morning. But, before I leave, come to the library so I can give you some special things for the folks in El Jiqui." Following my father and grandfather to the library with its huge ceiling fan, were he kept his desks, typewriter, two walls with barrister bookcases, a picture of himself wearing a 1920's style straw hat standing next to Eddy Chibas, a photo of the Capitol building in Havana, and a picture of the Almendares baseball team with a big "Los Campiones de Cuba" sign scrolled on the bottom, was always an experience that made my heart pound. This was my grandfathers' intellectual inner sanctum, this was where he worked as national treasurer for the Cuban Quakers, where he administered all types of businesses for far away clients, where he practiced his accounting profession with two young helpers who always wore suits and ties in 102 degree temperatures, where with some frustration he'd try to teach me about life, George Fox, our family history, and the importance of being an honest man in a dishonest society. Pointing to two boxes full of books, he explained to my father, "Each book is properly labeled for the right person, but if they do not play the book game, just remove the labels. And, when you see Paulo, tell him Pio's time is up, and Gustavo has not been able to convince him to act. Tell him he has to take over the brick factory within a month, otherwise the losses and the grief will give him an ulcer that will torment him for the rest of his life. Tell him I have a buyer for the entire property, and he has to come and see me next Saturday." Picking up one of the books from the box, my father said, "Do you really think that people in El Jiqui are interested in reading about the Rise of the Kingdom of Aragon, and the Usatges of Barcelona in the Late Middle Ages?" The answer was, "Of course, this book has a whole section on agriculture and trade practices whose impact is timeless." My father in his customary sarcasm said, "but they didn’t have tractors back then, what’s the relevance." "The relevance is" answered my grandfather, "that when you come back we need to talk about what is happening with your Taxi business. I met with Luis Aran who has a client in Santiago who is selling off a dozen Taxis due to a family bankruptcy. Luis thinks we can barter for a few of these cars. You realize that if you add three or four more cars to your fleet, you can expand service to Puerto Padre, or Victoria de las Tunas?"

As we left Velasco towards El Jiqui, my father and mother could not stop discussing how my grandfather was able to keep track of so many people and details, and how annoying he could be at times, with his expectations for a strict life style and rationality. A sharp contrast to the majority of our acquaintances, and my mother's family. But, my mother loved my grandfather, and always ended up defending him, as my father would ramble with his criticism.

About thirty minutes after leaving Velasco, and as my brother and I began to doze off to the music of Beny More’s “Corazon Rebelde” playing on the car radio, it started to rain. Looking at each other, my parents knew what this meant. The dirt road would muddy up and our car could, as in many previous occasions, get stuck in the mud. We proceeded, since it was too late to turn back. As we reached the old train station near the entrance to El Jiqui, my father said to us, "I know what is going to happen now." As the car moved forward several hundred feet, there it was. A flood of water had covered the road. Driving slowly onward, we found ourselves in the middle of this shallow flood. Suddenly, the wheels lost their grip and we were stuck in the mud. After a vigorous but futile attempt at moving forward or backwards, my father turns the car off, and says, "we should have taken the train." My mother laughing said, "that’s what you say every time we get stuck." A few minutes after getting stuck, the rain stopped, and about five minutes later the sun was out again as if nothing had happened. Rolling up his pants and taking off his shoes, my father leaves the car in search of help. While my father is away two men dressed as typical Guajiros, the country folk of Oriente, and two oxen approach us and greet my mother, telling her that just like last time, they had come to pull our car out of the mud. With hesitation we all leave the car and get our nice clothes wet and all full of mud, while the oxen pull the car to dry ground. As the men untie the ropes from the car my father returns with another man and four horses. After the men laugh at my father for getting stuck in such a predicament, they also hug us, telling us how happy everyone will be when they see us. And so we enter the famous family finca (farm) of El Jiqui on horseback, wet and full of mud, followed by two oxen carrying a box full of radios with colorful bows, our valise, and my grandfathers’ boxes full of books. I thoroughly enjoyed getting stuck in the mud, and riding the horse, but my mothers' face seemed to show a different sentiment, that of annoyance.

In front of the main house, past a huge wooden archway and a flagpole with a Cuban flag, there was a large boulder with a bronze plate holding the inscription "El Jiqui. Un Campo de Palma en Cuba. Fundado en 1821 por Don Jaime Ferraz." El Jiqui was not just a family farm, it was a way of life, a Utopian experiment, and it was revered by my grandmother Mari's family, the Ferraz's. Located on about 300 acres, in a beautiful and fertile valley with an arroyo running through, El Jiqui was a fruit farm, furniture factory, distillery, and dairy. A diversified family owned cottage industry in the middle of the countryside. Here on a huge rectangular building with sky lights and windmill generated electricity, carpenters and furniture makers, using old style rustic tools, took great pride in making the distinctive rough oak and cowhide furniture so popular throughout Oriente. Here in another identical rectangular building, old men and women speaking a Catalanized Castillian lingo distilled rum and mixed it with tropical fruits and extracts based on old Majorcan recipes passed down from Jaime Ferraz himself. This liquor whose label was fondly named, Joderin Lijero, (Screw You Lightly) was loved by the Guajiros and demand was always incessant. And, the most modern of the businesses, the dairy, located in a fenced off section of the complex holding dozens of cows and goats, was worked by young women who wore white tunics, and produced farmers cheese, feta cheese, and butter for the regional markets. With one of the first rail lines in Cuba running nearby, El Jiqui had a reliable communications link to most markets in Oriente, and although it was far from all major cities it was not unusual to see visiting merchants inspecting one or another of these great buildings. Everything about El Jiqui symbolized self-reliance. Somehow, this place had survived the destruction and carnage of the war of independence from Spain. It survived the terrible depression that befell Cuba during the “Machadato” period, and somehow there it was a surviving oasis for so many people in the middle of an ocean of Royal Palms. In El Jiqui every building had been constructed as a family project, and each building was named after the crew master who constructed it, going back to the 1820's.

Waiting for us sitting on a swing in the shaded veranda of the main house was Vicente Ferraz, 104 years old and the family prankster. "Joel, I've been waiting here all day for my new girlfriend Josefa, and instead you show up. Turn around right now and don’t come back until you find me a beautiful 30 year old princess." Laughing, my father responds, "and what are you going to do with a 30 year old princess?" The response was, "I'm going to teach her all the lovemaking secrets I've learned in the last 104 years." Suddenly, more than fifty people of all ages appear from within the main house and come out to greet us. This multitude represented not only my grandmothers and grandfathers’ family, but also representatives of many of the old Catalan and Majorcan families that had settled northern Oriente province since the middle of the 18th century. Although, all were Cubans by birth, some of the women wore espadrilles, flowered pattern dirndl skirts, white blouses, and loose kerchiefs, a style of dress not characteristic of Cuba, but mimicking the old folk dress of Catalonia. On the other hand, the men all wore Cuban white Guayaberas, and black pants. The group did not have a single non-European looking person in it. We looked different from the general population that surrounded us in Oriente, we also ate differently, thought differently, danced to different musical rhythms, and chose mates differently. All these things were not so clearly evident to the general public, or ourselves, unless we were in a concentrated form, like the yearly feast and book games held in El Jiqui, and several other places like it in the region. It was easy to understand why my grandfather used to say that "in Cuba you can spot a Catalan from 10 leagues away." But, regardless of the aesthetic differences, my grandfather also pointed out that we were Cubans, and my father would ad with pride that we were also Guajiros.

Having changed into clean clothes, my parents proceeded to make the customary rounds greeting old friends, and soon I found a group of boys, and cousins, I could have a top-spinning contest with. The comings and goings of an army of people responsible for the smooth operations of the party was occurring flawlessly, and every half hour that passed saw the arrival of one or two dozen new guests, with the greatest number arriving around 5:00 PM by train. In total I heard that more than 225 people had arrived by 6:30 PM. Everyone seemed to know each other, and everyone came with a box full of gifts, or books. As the sun began to set, Ortensia Ferraz, my grandmothers cousin and the respected matron of El Jiqui, came out of her kitchen smoking a huge Cuban cigar and said, "Senores, it is time for us to walk over to Las Palmas to enjoy the moonlight." Without much commotion, everyone began to walk towards a distant field surrounded by Royal Palms, with the arroyo in the distance, and several huts. As both adults and children approached, we could see the perimeter of the field lit by torches, and a wooden dance platform flanked by long tables full of food and liquor. In front of one of the huts there was a typical Guajiro organ band, with a huge hand cranked organ, a timbalero, a congolero, a clavero, and a contrarrallista. In front of another hut there were several tables full of boxes were all the books had been placed, and other tables full of a variety of gifts. Upon closer look, you could see large barbecue pits near the arroyo, and several large cauldrons over bon fires. This is where people where roasting pigs, several cows, making rice, ajiaco, and dozens of chickens which were to be vigorously consumed during the festivities. As people arrived in the field, the syncopated sensual sounds of "El Barbero de Sevilla" could be heard from the organ band. This party was to last all night, or until the Joderin Lijero ran out, which was unlikely. What was to happen here this night and the next day was part of the invisible glue that kept us all together, and reminded us of a long and proud tradition.

After several songs were played by the organ band, the heads of the three main extended families walked up to the dance floor. From the Ferraz family there was Ortensia, Paulo, and Vicente. From the Font family there was Jorge, and Ramon. And from the Montcada family there was Guillermo, and Ofelia. All of these people were past 75 years old. Each made announcements pertaining to births, deaths, or upcoming marriages in their respective families, and provided brief summaries of issues of common interest to the group. There was a brief period opened for questions, and then Ofelia Montcada, the youngest of the group announced, that "now the time has come to reflect on business. Paulo will go first." “As you probably have heard, we are going to close La Brillante, because the business is no longer producing. Next year we will be opening an Almacen in Holguin, and will need your support to make that a success. Those of you interested in doing something in Holguin come to see me soon." Now, Ramon Font has an important announcement, said Ofelia. "I have a letter from Pedro regarding the status of the school in Banes. He says there is an immediate opening for a Mathematics teacher and we need to find someone fast. He also informs me that there are three clerkships open at the Centro de Contabilidad in the Dockyard at Gibara. Please see me later if anyone is interested. "Finally," said Ofelia, "we have Guillermo with his announcement." "Our bitter Orange hybrid finally works." He said. "After trying for more than three years we've achieved a pittless fruit with a half inch crusty skin, and a mild sweet aroma similar to the expensive Valencia's we've been using. We expect to be able to supply El Jiqui with about half of the oranges it needs within two years. And, since each bitter Orange is twice the size of a Valencia, you can imagine what that means." "Now" said Ortensia, "I have the last word. I want everyone to have a nice time here tonight, and remember that all the cots are setup and numbered in the Pere (furniture) building, and the Mateo (distillery) building. The outhouses have not been moved since last year." A signal is given and the organ band starts with "Lagrimas Negras." The party is now officially starting.

After a night of dance and revelry, which ended at 4:30 AM, and without any drunken disorder, my father and I find our cots, which were in the furniture building. My mother and baby brother slept in the main house along with all the other mothers with babies. No one awakened that Sunday morning until past 11:00 AM, when the sounds of a man singing, backed up by a guitar, mandolin, and a flute filled the quiet valley. It was Vicente and several old men singing old Catalan songs that no one younger than 60, any longer understood.

After we all washed and ate breakfast by the distillery building, everyone headed towards the Palm tree shaded area near the arroyo, where small groups of men formed and animated discussions began. The biggest group was discussing Cuban politics and Fidel Castro. Someone asked my father if he had seen Fidel when he passed near Chaparra the previous month. My father answered in the negative. An older man posed an open question. "What do we all make of this?" One by one the answers came. "I'm surprised at the incompetence of the Batista regime." Said one man. "The culture of corruption we have in this country can only be cleaned out by a revolution like this." Said another. "These bearded boys are too young to understand the international politics Cuba needs to navigate in order to be stable." Said another. "I hope a new more mature government is formed soon, so this instability can end. Its bad for business otherwise." Everyone shook their heads at that comment. "If Fidel wins this revolution and forms a new government, he should shave his beard and take on a more professional demeanor. If not, who is going to take this man seriously outside of Cuba?" Said another man. At this point, Jorge Pratts, my grandparent’s Dentist younger brother gives his opinion. "In Spain during the civil war, the anarchist mobs won some battles, but in the end we lost the war because we failed to organize in a rational, logical way. The Fascists, on the other hand calculated all their moves with military discipline. The informality of Fidel, and the mobs in the streets concern me a great deal. Where is the ideology, where is the plan for the future. I'm afraid we have a revolution based on good intentions, and no direction. Its almost irresponsible." To this opinion, another man said, "the average man in Cuba today is not interested in long term plans. They're all intoxicated with the idea of getting rid of Batista and his regime. If Fidel was to stand up tomorrow and say, I am a man without any ideas for the future, but I'm here to fight Batista, his popularity will not diminish." At this statement, everyone nodded in approval. Another man, in a sarcastic tone said, "You all worry too much. I can tell you that this thing is going to end within a year. Batista, or the Americans are going to pay Fidel off with $10 or $15 million dollars, and you'll see all these bearded boys disappear. Fidel will buy a private island off the coast of Portugal, or he'll exile himself off in Galicia, and that’s it. If it doesn’t work out like that, then the Americans will intervene, and in the end it will still be the same. In Cuba things have always had that kind of rhythm." This sour comment brought only silence, and the group broke up.

At the sound of a bell, everyone gathered around the hut with the books and gifts. Seven young women stood in front of the tables, and an older but most beautiful woman who was mistress of ceremonies, read from a paper: "We are happy to be this years' princesses for the Wisdom and Beauty contest. All the participants please line up on the left and get ready to begin." Soon, about a dozen teenage boys, and young men in their early twenties stepped up, each with a piece of paper in his hand. "Miguel Mestres," Shouted one of the girls. Shyly and awkwardly, a boy walked to the center of the group and said, "I will read a poem I wrote about the first time I kissed a girl" When the boy was finished, there was light applause, and another name was called. "I will read a poem in honor of Jose Marti" and this went on until all the boys had a chance to read their poems, or short stories. "Now we will select the winners," said the mistress of ceremonies. All the girls gathered in a circle for a few minutes, and then the mistress of ceremonies announced, "We have chosen the winners for this year. Third prize goes to Esteban Martorell, Second prize goes to Luis Bolet, and the First prize goes to Carlos Montiel." The crowd breaks up in applause, the losers walk away, and the three winners proceed to get their prizes. The third and second place winners got to pick three of their favorite books from the hundreds of books stacked on the tables, and the first prize winner got to pick six books. Then each winner got a chance to explain why he chose each book, and read the name of the book donor, or "patronador" of each book. Each explanation got a vigorous applause from the crowd, filling each boy with pride and washing away the awkwardness they first showed. Incredibly, Esteban had chosen one of my grandfathers’ books, the one my father had pointed out to my grandfather in the library, and tugging my father’s arm I mention this. Looking at Esteban with an incredible face, my father said, "Your grandfather is going to be very happy when he finds out that Esteban is going to read his book about the kingdom of Aragon during the middle ages." When the winners left the area, each of the girls got a bunch of books and reading the names of persons scribbled on the labels, called each person from the crowd to come a get his/her book. In this way, all the remaining books were given away with great fanfare. This is how I got my first book on El Zorro.

After the noise quieted down, the youngest of the girls, announced that, "the chain of gifts" was ready to start. Within a minute everyone had organized themselves into a group six or seven layers thick in front of the girls. "Bring Ortensia to the front," said the Mistress of ceremonies, “she goes first." Walking with a huge smile on her face, Ortensia stands in front of the girls and a wheel barrel full of gifts is brought to her. She turns to the crowd and says, "the biggest pleasure of my life is to see you all here and happy." Two young men take the wheel barrel away and the first name is called. This person receives several gifts, turns to the crowd and waves. This process goes on for about two hours, my father getting most exited when his portable radios are given away to friends and relatives. Walking over to my mother I notice she has gotten a pair of Espadrilles, and an American pressure cooker, and she is happy.

The Wisdom and Beauty contest, or as the old folks used to call it in archaic Catalan, “La Festa de Savi i Beldad”, was something uniquely ours. Something that was often misunderstood, and criticized in a macho society. It was not a beauty pageant where men judged women for their body contours. It was a rite of passage for young people, a ritual where young women judged young men for the wisdom and beauty of their poems and short simple stories. Here young men stood before a crowd of adults and got their respect and acceptance based on the most innocent of the arts. This process did not produce sissies, or effeminate men, and El Jiqui was a sexually charged place, with the old people like Vicente at the lead. But, the expression of sexuality had a different flavor here, with women like Ortensia walking around smoking cigars without anyone lifting an eyebrow. This was perhaps another echo of our Catalan heritage, where women were not told what to do, but had to be consulted. The heat of the tropics affected both sexes equally, but without embarrassing erotic shows. This environment, and this type of order was what my grandfather referred to in his thankful prayers, when he would say, "thank you god for giving us the mental capacity to live as rational men."

Indirectly, and perhaps unconsciously I already understood at this early stage of my life, that we held an invisible line of mannerisms, character, and a worldview that differed from that of the majority of Cubans who did not attend the big family feast in El Jiqui each year. Although, not wholly Catalan, Quaker, or Cuban, this mixture existed in that time and place, and is now only a memory. As Dr. Pratts would often say, “Cubans are an exaggerated people, prone to boastfulness, single minded, and too reliant on superstitions for their conduct.” Then he would add with a chuckle, “and that’s part of the reason this is such a colorful country, and why we are here.” With our idiosyncrasies, we too were part of that exaggeration and diversity that made the island of Cuba, the “Most Beautiful Land Man has ever laid his Eyes Upon”, and the “Pearl of the Antilles”.

Late that afternoon, as we prepared to return home to Chaparra, a young man quietly approached my mother and told her that he was a friend of her cousin Major Paco Cabrera, who had joined the revolution and Fidel Castro, in the hills of the Sierra Maestra two years earlier. He said Paco was fine, and that thanks to my mother’s family, they had been getting food supplies on a regular basis. He told her to tell her family that hopefully, Paco would see them soon. Turning to my father the young man said, “for your family’s safety, when you get to the outskirts of Velasco tonight, don’t continue on the main road past 8:00 oclock.”

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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“Oh my god, there’s that car again”, said the peanut vendor. Slowly the green 1947 Buick moved forward covered with all types of placards, advertising posters, and pulling a long rope with half a dozen empty cans making a loud noise as they scraped the road. On the roof, two huge trumpet like loudspeakers blasted the rhythmic sounds of “Los Hermanos Ajo, y su Organo Oriental”. After a few songs, a loud young voice began to deliver an animated message in a generic and well-pronounced Castilian Spanish. “By popular demand, we are back in Chaparra. The most prosperous and happy town in Oriente, where the women are beautiful and the children well behaved. Today’s entertainment and news are brought to you by the great dentist and gentleman, Dr. Ruben Ricardo Rodriguez. When you visit Dr. Rodriguez your teeth will shine, your cavities will disappear, and your wife and girlfriends will love you more. Visit Dr. Rodriguez today at his modern office located at 130 Calle 10.” After two or three minutes of local news, the car moved to the next spot, while playing “Siboney” over the loud speakers, and the cans again scraped the road. Now in front of the post office, the car’s old fashioned and obnoxious horn sounded a few times in case someone had not noticed it. “This has to be the best day of 1953” the voice said. “The men are walking around with money in their pockets, and the women are in the mood to spend. For the best bargains in home appliances, and the best quality, there is no place like “Los Precios Fijos”. When you go to “Los Precios Fijos” you always leave knowing that your money has been well spent. Attention, attention, all young men and women of Chaparra, “El Mocambo” the best bar and restaurant in the city invites you to a night of Mambo next Friday. All “Media Noches” will be half price. Get your tickets today!” After another two or three minutes of music, the car moves on to the next spot. Now in front of a popular department store called “El Escandalo del Polaco” the car honked it’s horn a few times, and then the loud voice started again. “Friends, ladies and gentlemen, children, everyone within the sound of my voice, pay close attention to this most important and timely announcement. It has just come to my attention that the good people from “La Libanesa” department store, just across from this very spot, have decided to reduce the price of all their merchandise by 15% between now and 3:00 o’clock. Don’t miss out on this opportunity, go there now and you won’t be sorry.” This being the last announcement before lunch, the car now sped away making its loud annoying noise, while blasting music over its loud speakers. Looking back with a grin on his face, the driver of the car could see a crowd of people leaving “El Escandalo del Polaco”, heading towards “La Libanesa”.

Stopping for lunch, paid for through a barter arrangement for advertising, at the “Sans Souci” bar and restaurant, the driver of the car and the announcer discussed their strategy for the afternoon. They also joked in anticipation of getting a contract from the owner of “El Escandalo del Polaco” the following week, to do a special promotion in front of “La Libanesa” department store. While they ate lunch, they listened to a rare radio address to the nation by the new president of the republic, Fulgencio Batista, who outlined his plan for a new era of prosperity, honesty, and integrity in Cuba’s history. At the end of the program, other patrons of the bar could be heard in agitated conversations analyzing whether Batista was a “dictador”, or a “presidente”. A policeman sitting nearby, oblivious to the commotion, calmly read a western novel with a picture of John Wayne on the cover.

Two years later these young men had earned enough money from their irregular advertising and promotions business that they had repaid the private loan they had taken to buy the car and public address system, which were the core of their business. They soon hired several employees to expand the business to the surrounding towns, and began to think about bigger things. Nine months after that expansion, the announcer bought out his partner, and diversified by opening a retail radio store, and a year later purchased several taxicabs to form a taxi company. Focused almost exclusively on entrepreneurial schemes and not deterred by the instability of the political and economic environment endemic in Cuba at the time, this young man felt that there was nothing that couldn’t be conquered with hard work.

Although, a bookkeeper by training, he found bookkeeping work boring and contrary to his extroverted personality, and switched to the study of radio and electronics when he realized that as a radio announcer he could make a living while being as crazy and extroverted as he pleased. He then learned that he could make even more money by going into the advertising and promotions business. With an extraordinary amount of energy, and a zeal for engaging the imagination of strangers, by the time this guy was 25 he owned and operated three successful and profitable businesses, and had traveled throughout most of Cuba. This extroverted skinny guy with the loud mouth was my father.

Three things shaped my father’s personality. First, the desire to be a “typical” Cuban, accepted and liked by the people of his generation, and not viewed as a “strange” Quaker. Secondly, the fear of failure and poverty that he knew existed in Cuba and that my grandfather had successfully evaded. And, thirdly, an unwavering belief in frugality, and hard work. Outwardly not very religious, and at times expressing the most un-Quakerly mannerisms, at the end of the day, when he had to analyze the world and find his place in it, he could not help but revert to Quaker ideas and values. Without deeply analyzing his psychological core, I will simply say that his “common sense” was a Cuban Quaker common sense, and not a Cuban Catholic “common sense”.

To my religious grandfather’s dismay, in his youth my father often chased women and got drunk with his friends. He chased women because he believed healthy women liked being chased by healthy men, and this was a natural process of life. After crashing with a locomotive in the outskirts of the nearby town of Delicias, after a night of drinking and partying, destroying his car and breaking several bones in an accident that almost killed him, he realized he “wasn’t made for drinking” and tried to restrain himself from drinking more than two or three shots. Whenever friends gave him a bottle of liquor as a gift, he made a big thing out of it, not because he was thrilled to get the bottle, but because it was the social norm. He always manipulated these situations so he would not be obliged to get drunk, or restrained from going past the two or three shot limit.

But, my fathers’ effort to be “a well liked guy” also meant that he traded some good qualities for bad ones. The Catalan heritage, which was a great source of pride for my grandfather, with its mercantile, and legal traditions was fine, but not the intellectualism, and certainly not the “different-ness” it implied. So, to him claiming his Catalan heritage, and family history stretching back to the middle ages, was considered awkward and even un-Cuban. The Quakerliness, another source of pride for my grandfather, was dealt with a rambunctious behavior. “A man with a very short cultural memory”, was the way some of the old folks in the family referred to him. This strategy may have been unconsciously patched together after he correctly concluded early on in his life, that in old Cuba, a Creole society that over-valued a shallow “simpatico” and “macho” character, the expression of good Quaker, and Catalan social traits would have made him an unpopular person. What outsiders saw when they observed him closely, was a skinny rebellious young man whose religious upbringing, family background, and nature kept him from crossing the line beyond being a prankster, into lawlessness or macho thuggery. Still, he made sure that everywhere he went people became aware of him. Even if it meant ringing bells, sounding horns, or making loud farts. Most of his peers, the real “simpatico” dandies who took their cues from popular street culture, and lived off their parents, did not quite know what to make of him, and called him simply “El Flaco”, the skinny one. To his satisfaction, whenever his peers wanted to have a big party, needed a band, entertainers, and contacts with business or nightclub owners, my father was the first one they called.

For most of his life in Cuba, “El Flaco” had an advantage over most of his friends, and that was that his father was the opposite of what he was. In his youth, this counter balance often had explosive results, and it was not until years of painful experiences that he learned to appreciate the rational level headedness, critical thinking, kind heart, straight talk, and disciplined life style of my grandfather. The amount of patience and perseverance that my grandfather must have exercised while bringing up my father must have been of monumental proportions. The many disappointments experienced by my grandfather in the process were always kept quiet, but became known to me years later. But, in spite of himself, and peer pressure from his dandy friends, the family environment, strict education, and my grandfather’s social contacts eventually had a positive affected on my father, and by his mid 20’s he was what we call today, a successful young entrepreneur - albeit an insecure one. But, as manifested in many great historic figures, for my father insecurity was the engine of his creativity.

After making his first business a success (advertising, promotions and entertainment) and becoming financially secure, my father set out to build another unrelated business (retail radio and electronics store), “just in case that thing goes bad”. After succeeding with the second business, he started another still unrelated business (TaxiCab business), “because my way of running a business makes more money than their way”, even though at the time Chaparra a prosperous town of about 18,000 people already had more than 50 taxicabs. This behavior also meant that he was a generalist by default, without ever consistently focusing on any one thing. Needless to say, after a while his free time was non-existent. Family members who remember him from this period say they don’t have any memories of him ever sitting down.

During the early 1950’s Cuba experienced great social and political instability, which lead many young men to join anarchist, communist, and nationalist groups bent on the radical and often violent re-organization of the entire society. As a believer in non-violence my father channeled his political dissatisfaction in the only creative way he knew. Miguel Sicilia, a good friend of his told me that my father once told him that whenever he drove from Puerto Padre to Holguin, during the “tiempo muerto”, the off season for sugar cane harvesting, and he saw the hundreds of unemployed men walking along the roadsides, a little voice would go on in his head saying, “you have to work harder”. So, instead of picking up a gun, my father went out and got more clients for his businesses.

Because of the time required to nourish a business to maturity, the notorious shortage of working capital in the Cuban economy, and difficulty in finding reliable personnel, all of my fathers enterprises where profitable but “young, aggressive, and growing”, which was the way he liked them. This pattern would have continued, had Fidel Castro not stopped it in 1959. We will never know how this process would have played itself out, under different political circumstances. Had there been a venture capital market within Cuba in the 1950’s (not the loan sharking schemes that existed under the guise of private finance companies), my fathers’ nerdy type “A” personality may have naturally evolved into a startup expert or a mergers and acquisitions man, Cuban style of course.

Getting his work habits and consensus building skills from his Quaker education, and having a natural instinct for organizing small groups of people to undertake challenging tasks by using and mixing both humor and complex financial or technical facts, his “informal” management skills worked well in Oriente. In an environment where many of his peers were poorly educated, he must have hovered as a brainy type. If the issue at hand had to do with legally making money, had some intellectual challenges, and provided a high profile, “El Flaco” was always inspired and found himself involved.

“El Flaco” was at the peak of his entrepreneurial form during his late 20’s, which were the early 1950’s. He ran his three businesses, and worked in the Chaparra sugar mill as payroll manager during the sugar-milling season. Since he had such extensive contacts throughout the region, other business people constantly exposed him to new ventures, and solicited his participation in all kinds of deals. Because my grandfather was considered a solid, conservative, and trustworthy self made man, my father profited by association, and often relied on my grandfather to provide him with the aura of respectability and seriousness he inconsistently projected.

Of all his early businesses, “El Flaco” enjoyed the most producing “Fiestas del Campo”, or country-dance parties. These allowed him to exercise his extroverted personality while managing people, technical equipment, and provided him with a high profit. Here’s how these parties usually worked. On a Saturday morning two squeaky old Ford trucks full of chairs, musical instruments, loud speakers, a modular dance floor, a portable electric generator, and tents, would find their way to an open field flanked by Royal Palm trees near Puerto Padre or Delicias. The Guajiros in charge of setting up for the party normally had everything setup by three o’clock in the afternoon. Ten pits were dug up for roasting the pigs, and the local farmer who sold the pigs was normally in charge of preparing the charcoal and making sure the roasting would go smoothly. Then the liquor and beer was brought in from Chaparra, along with five or six “Muchachonas” or sexy party girls, who also worked as bartenders. The loud speakers where placed high on especially built stilts facing the dance floor, and a midget named “Epifanio”, who coordinated most of these parties, checked them to make sure the dance floor vibrations would not knock them down. Once everyone felt comfortable with the arrangements “Epifanio” got on a car and was driven to the train station where he placed a phone call to “El Flaco”. After explaining that everything was ready, and mentioning that out of the 350 tickets officially distributed, there appeared to be 389 receipts turned in so far, clearly indicating that some of the “bodegueros” had oversold by hand writing “Last Minute” tickets. “Epifanio” asks, “what do you want me to do?” “Buy two more pigs, and four bags of “Casabe”, said “El Flaco”. “I’ll bring an extra 10 bottles of Bacardi, and 25 big bottles of Coca Cola when I come tonight at 6:30 with the band.”

Going back to the field, “Epifanio” gets the pigs, double checks everything and gets ready for 6:30. While everyone waits some Guajiros come by and offer themselves as bouncers or “party helpers”, and the “Muchachonas” flirt with the Guajiros. Around 6:15 PM a navy 1950 Studebaker is seen driving up to the field. Everyone straightens up, the “Muchachonas” quit their flirting, and “Epifanio” tells the Guajiros to get out of site. The car circles around the big tent where the modular dance floor had been set up, honking its horn three or four times, while “El Flaco” laughs at the Guajiros who are running away perplexed at what is going on. The car stops, and out come four musicians with frilly white shirts, red silk fabric wrapped around their waists, and tight black pants. The musicians go directly to where their instruments had been setup and begin to check them. “El Flaco” waving to the “Muchachonas” hands over the car keys to “Epifanio” and asks him to unload the liquor from the trunk. “El Flaco” begins an immediate inspection of the site, and reaches the area where the pigs are soon to be roasted. There, the Guajiro in charge of the food asks him, “Hey Flaco, the extra pigs are $12.50. Are you going to pay me now or later?” “El Flaco”, looks at him and says, “I’ll pay you after the party, and make sure everything goes well.” As he walks off he turns and says to the same Guajiro, “I told all the “Muchachonas” to be nice to you tonight!” The Guajiro shyly smiles with great satisfaction.

After double and triple-checking every minute detail, “El Flaco” goes over to the generator, which had been running since 4:00 o’clock, charging a dozen 12 volt automobile batteries, and tested the charge to assure himself that his most important party making apparatus would work that night. Satisfied with the charge, and now carefully followed by “Epifanio” and one of the “Muchachonas” he makes his way to a table with a record player, a microphone, and a radio like control panel. “El Flaco” turns on the switch, and a loud high-pitched squishing noise comes out of all the loudspeakers requiring that he adjust the control knobs until the high pitched noise disappears. Bringing the microphone to his mouth he repeats a few times, “Radio Ocho Jovenes Felices, en prueba, CM8JF, Oriente, Tierra Caliente”. (Radio Eight Happy Young Men, testing, CM8JF, Oriente, the Hot Land). Since “El Flaco” was a Ham Radio operator, he always used his call letters when testing his equipment. Satisfied that the public address system was working well, he turned to the others and put on a big grin while making a victorious fist. “Listen Epifanio” he says, “tell one of the tall guys to setup another loudspeaker over there pointing out towards the train station, then start playing records at full blast until I return at 7:30”. All of “El Flacos” parties started at 8:00 PM.

The object of these parties was simple. Stay sober, play lots of music, sell lots of liquor and food, and earn a profit the equivalent of at least three to four months worth of an average office workers salary. At that time the average monthly wage of an office worker was about $280.00.

In his retail radio shop my father sold and repaired Emerson, Phillips, and General Electric radios, and record players. He also custom built two-way Ham radios. With his two employees he later developed his own private label line of AM radios called “Los Vociferosos” which became very popular, and were sold mostly on credit to both city people and the Guajiros of the region. In order to “relax” when at home, my father converted a room in our house into an “electronics” laboratory. During his rare moments at home, my father would grab a quick bite from the kitchen, exchange five or six words with my mother, and then he would float into his laboratory where all the switches always seemed to go on automatically when he entered. My earliest memories of our house are not visual but acoustic. Most evenings and weekends our house was full of the sounds of Morse code, strange foreign languages that emanated from quadraphonic loudspeakers, and that weird Martian like sound that comes out of a Ham radio when it slides between frequencies. My father took tremendous pride in building the most complex, exotic, and powerful Ham radios technology allowed at that time. He kept meticulous logs of his international radio contacts and kept memorized the call letters of perhaps hundreds of Amateur Ham Radio operators, who like him judged the quality of a man not by mortal standards, but by whether they communicated via the 20 meter range of the radio spectrum, or the 40 meter range, while using a double key high frequency non undulating oscillator. The guys who used the 2-meter or 10-meter bands were considered wimps. My father belonged to a group of about six or seven men who were, as my mother used to say in frustration, thoroughly addicted to technology and gadgetry. This group was considered by the virtue of their work and “Nerdyness” or “Geekness”, the technology elite of our region. All business entrepreneurs like my father, these “Radio Aficionados” always gave the impression that if they had to choose between having sex with a gorgeous willing naked woman and building a new Ham radio, the naked woman stood no chance. As a little boy, I recall how my father and his friends overjoyed the day a small package arrived from Havana with two-dozen transistors, representing according to them, the first transistors to ever arrive in Oriente. They spent half the day reading the accompanying technical manuals, and theorizing how this new technology was going to transform the electronics industry. Then they rolled up their sleeves and built a variable frequency Ham radio that ended up being one quarter the size of the typical radios they used to build using old clunky transformers and tubes. After making contact with a Ham radio operator from Bogota, Colombia, one of the guys promptly got a bottle of rum, and they all toasted to, “the New World of transistors.”

My father’s taxi company comprised of five cars, and I never quite understood all the details of how that business worked, aside from remembering my mother say that if my father was not managing a party, or tinkering with radios at the store, he was probably lost in some obscure town while training a new taxi driver. Family friends told me that my father used the taxi business to promote his radio shop and everyone who rode on one of those taxis always got some kind of flyer or discount coupon for some new electronic gadget he was trying to sell. I also remember that the cars were mostly Chevrolets and always looked very big to me.

During the late 1950’s, the Cuban revolution did not stop my father from working and following his workaholic behavior. After closing shop for a week after the triumph of the revolution, he reopened for business as usual. His plans for 1960 were to expand his Taxi business by acquiring more cars. His expectations were that after years of turmoil, Cuba would finally enter a period of tranquility and economic growth.

Late In 1960, while the fever of revolutionary enthusiasm was still high, and the streets were filled with crowds chanting, “Cuba si, Yanki no,” we received a surprising visit by Mr. Hiram Hilty, and a delegation of four American Quakers mostly from North Carolina. Hilty, a loved figure among Cuban Quakers, had acted as a liaison between Cuban Quakers and American Quakers since he was a young man in the late 1930’s. Following a long established tradition among traveling Quakers, the visitors were given accommodations in the home of the “weightiest Friend” in town (the person whose home had the space, and whose material resources would not be strained by the act of charity). His official reason for the visit was to, “evaluate the conditions of Friends in Cuba, in light of recent changes.” One of the Quakers traveling with Mr. Hilty was an elderly woman whose dress, demeanor, and gentleness created the impression that she was a Quaker angel. She was introduced to my family as “the Aunt of the former Vice President of the United States, senor Richard Nixon.” As word spread among the Quaker community that Hilty and his delegation was staying in our house, people began to arrive from the surrounding towns hoping to speak to him. According to my father during his three days in Chaparra, Hilty met several hundred people, and asked them the following questions. “Do you feel comfortable with the recent changes that have taken place in Cuba?”. “If Cuba becomes communist do you think your life here as a Quaker is likely to change very much?”. And, “Do you feel the need to leave Cuba and start a new life in another country?” During this period most Cubans, including us Quakers, could not imagine that the new idealistic government of Fidel Castro would turn into the nightmare it later became. So, out of the several hundred Quakers Mr. Hilty met while in Chaparra, about 20 expressed a desire to leave the country, while the majority, including my family, expressed no sense of discomfort with the changes taking place, and had few concerns for the future. As Mr. Hilty prepared to leave our house he told my father and grandparents, “if you ever want to go to the United States, just let me know.” Then, Richard Nixon’s aunt kissed my seven month old brother Jose Luis on the head, said something in English and got into one of my father’s Taxis for a drive to Banes where they were to visit the famous Quaker school before returning to the US.

A year and a half after Mr. Hilty’s visit, Fidel Castro’s government had changed the political and economic structure of Cuba to the extent that entrepreneurs like my father could no longer operate their independent small businesses. The government viewed people like my father as avaricious capitalists whose practices went against socialist ideals and the welfare of the Cuban people. All bank accounts and private businesses were confiscated. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis my father’s only means of earning money was reduced to his seasonal job as payroll manager at the sugar mill. The fact that my father was an apolitical person, had never supported the government of Fulgencio Batista, and his workaholic behavior was actually creating jobs and wealth for the Cuban economy, had no significance. Castro’s government, in its socialist program to make everyone equal, immediately lowered our standard of living, and made it clear that the inspiration to succeed in life, based on profit, private property, or entrepreneurial work was considered anti-revolutionary. Soon after this political policy became clear, my father said to us during dinner, “this government, with the excuse that it is getting rid of all the rich people in the name of equality, is going to make us all equally poor.”

For the simple reason that my father was a Ham Radio operator, a nerd, and an electronics technician, he was arrested early in 1962 and charged with conspiring against the government and assisting the CIA in some unknown covert operations. During his arrest, all electrical engineers and communications workers in Oriente province were also arrested and sent to prison for almost two weeks, charged with “suspicion to harm the fatherland by utilizing covert communications systems whose complex operations can only be managed by individuals with high levels of technical skills.” Several days after his release, our house was surrounded by armed soldiers with machine guns, who came in without warrant or explanation, and smashed every radio in the house and tore down our TV and radio antennas. Then they went to my fathers’ electronics lab and took every transformer, battery, soldering stick, nut, cable, and bulb they could find, loaded it on a truck and told my father that all his radio equipment had been confiscated by order of the “State”. My father’s once neat laboratory and his source of pride was left in shambles and wrecked. As the truck with the soldiers left, one of our neighbors walked by the front of our house and shouted towards us, “Viva la Revolucion, abajo con los Yankis” meaning Long live the revolution, down with the Yankees. After sitting in a swinging chair in the veranda of our house for several silent hours, my father told my mother that the only way for us to survive was to either become communists ourselves, or leave the country.

Although, my father never felt comfortable with Fidel Castro’s government, he was never involved in anything illegal to oppose the government, and was never involved in anything like the CIA plot he had been accused of participating in. His only guilt was distaste for the government manipulation and the brainwashing of the people, which he clearly saw take place on a daily basis. The regular jailing of people who expressed this discomfort, simply increased the sense of disappointment in most who could have instead been won over to the revolution, had their undecided views been nourished by positive experiences.

When the ferocious winds and rains of Cyclone Flora hit eastern Cuba in 1962, it left a dark shadow of death, flooding, hunger, and diseases. The town of Chaparra was flooded and our house was under water for eight days. We took refuge in the giant Chaparra sugar mill, which was located on high ground, and from where our neighbors and we sadly watched a sea of mud cover everything we held dear. When the rains stopped, we descended from the sugar mill only to find the streets littered with dead bloated animals, overturned cars, large trees ripped from their roots, pieces of furniture and mattresses on rooftops, and a terrible rotten stench emanating from everywhere. There was no drinking water, or electricity, and the only food available were cans of condensed milk and crackers that where stockpiled in the sugar mill. Couples with children walked the muddy streets crying aimlessly, old people sat in front of their ruined houses staring into space. The shock was so intense that even soldiers walked the streets in anguish and perplexed at not knowing how and when to begin helping people. Many people’s homes were irreparably damaged, so when we saw our house standing we were overjoyed. But, when we entered our house we found the watermark at six feet. After days under water and mud, our mattresses, furniture, books, family pictures, clothes, electrical appliances, and food were all destroyed. A trunk containing letters, documents, and family memorabilia dating back to the 18th century when the Font’s arrived in Cuba from Catalonia, was found in our yard. When we opened it muddy water gushed out, and all the documents inside were either destroyed or had partially disintegrated. When word of the loss of the family trunk reached my grandfather Pedro in Velasco, my grandmother said he went to his office, sat down and quietly wept.

In the midst of this disaster, people came together and helped each other regardless of political, religious, or racial background. It was spontaneous and non-coordinated by the government, it was strangely methodical, and there was no looting, vandalism, or expressions of collective despair. The old Cuban character, which came together in the face of adversity, and was challenged by hard work and the need to beat the odds, expressed itself magically during this time. This grass root self help effort let us survive during the first few days after the disaster, but it wasn’t enough in light of the overwhelming devastation. In the weeks that followed, international aid began to arrive in Cuba from Europe, the socialist countries, and even the United States. Then the Cuban government took control of the aid distribution process, and the military stepped in to enforce “socialist discipline”. The few supplies and medicines that became available, where rationed off to members of the Communist Party, members of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, and the militia. Whatever supplies were left were sold in a government store, where people had to stand in line and wait five or six hours to buy a bottle of Aspirin or Milk of Magnesia. Soon the grass root efforts of neighbors helping neighbors gave way to a centrally planned distribution system designed to reward “people with a socialist conscience”, and give less “priority” to those with different points of view. This condition enticed many greedy socialists to set themselves up in business creating a black market in much needed products that sold at exorbitant prices.

The American Quakers collected tons of medical supplies for Cuba, and Mr. Hilty was selected to be among those bringing the supplies by ship directly to Oriente province. Word reached us that Hilty was once again coming to Cuba, and that those of us who wanted to leave the country could do so with him. We were ecstatic. But, it never happened. Hilty’s ship was never allowed to land in Cuba. Cuban authorities stopped it as it crossed territorial waters, it was unloaded of its precious cargo, and the captain was told he did not have permission to land. We found out about this event weeks after the ship had returned to the US and all kinds of rumors circulated in Cuba about the why and how’s of this “Yankee imperialist ship.” None of the stories we heard were true, along with most of the clearly fabricated reports put out by the government, which basically said that Cuba had been saved from disaster and famine, by the good will and generosity of the “communist proletariats from around the world”. Nothing about American “imperialist Yankee Quakers” bringing food and medicines as an act of charity, ever appeared in the news.

By hard work and improvisation, which took more than a year and a half, my parents managed to rebuild, barter, or buy from the black market enough household items to re-establish a semblance of a normal house. We slept on the floor for months, suffered from stomach problems repeatedly, lost weight due to lack of food, and wore ripped clothes and shoes with holes on the soles. Cyclone Flora left us with misery, and a clear sense that Cuba was not heading towards a socialist paradise full of equality as promised by Fidel and the communists. The experience showed us without doubt that the system was a farce. Keywords like, the “interests of the people,” “the equality of the masses,” “the fight against exploitation,” and “the need for unselfish hard work for the future of the fatherland”, were all double talk designed to brainwash docile people into unquestionable loyalty by calling on their most primal of human fears and desires. My parents clearly realized that by not having freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to have private property and by lacking the freedom to travel overseas, Cubans were in essence prisoners in a huge island penitentiary. Cuba had indeed reached a high level of equality, but the equality was among socialists, not the rest of the people.

As a family we tried to make the best of the constant harassment we began to encounter wherever we went. It became clear that we where blacklisted, and the list had wide circulation. The simple fact that we were Quakers, my father was a businessman, an Amateur Radio Operator, and my grandfather Pedro Font had held a high position in the old American Sugar Mill, made us clear targets. Social and political harassment against us started early every day. My mother was harassed when she went to the store; my father was harassed when he walked to work, at work, and on his way back home. I was harassed on the way to school, in school, and on the way back home. My brother was spared because he was too young. The harassment was consistent and on message. The black Cubans accused us of being racist pigs, and threw sexual innuendoes at my mother, the white Cubans accused us of being capitalist imperialist pigs, and together they accused us of being traitors, enemies of the people, and worms (Gusanos). Sometimes when we entered a public building, or a gathering of people, someone would point us out and all eyes would focus on us. On the weekends, when I played in the park I often had to run home because groups of kids would pick fights with me while calling me a “traitor”, or a “white faggot”.

During this time, there was great insecurity in the air, and most people were afraid to speak their minds about politics and the government. It was well known that the government was setting people up, and manipulating circumstances in order to entice frustrated individuals into expressing disapproval of communism. Once this took place, the individual was harassed, their ration cards slashed, and eventually they’d be fired from their jobs. Others were actually imprisoned, or sent to hard labor camps. Each neighborhood had its spies, or “chivatos”, who reported every move made by young and old to the dreaded Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, or the CDR. I remember hearing a visitor to my house, whom my parents did not know very well, say while having coffee, “now that Socialism has managed to make Cuba into a paradise for the poor, it will soon make it into a paradise for idiots who can’t think for themselves. If this keeps going, in the future the grandchildren of these docile mulattos will beg the rich capitalists to return, so they can bring back the ideas needed to run a successful country. In the mean time, we will have to become well acquainted with misery.” My mother clearly in agreement with his comments, but in fear that he was a government informer, instead lied and said, “you’re crazy, socialism is the only way to move ahead, what we are experiencing now is a short period of adjustment. You’ll see how in due time things reach a good balance.” The visitor laughed, but it was not clear if he laughed from frustration, anger, or surprise. Soon, he left our house and we never saw him again. Unplanned, my mother’s survival instincts, and her peculiar family background made her adept at lying to communists, with a serious believable face.

My father brought up with the Quaker belief that one should always tell the truth, found it frustrating and difficult to keep his mouth shut, to publicly agree with what he didn’t believe, to straight out lie if needed, and to applaud speeches he felt were idiotic and manipulative. So, because of my father’s virtues, or weakness, our attempt to maintain a low profile was unsuccessful. When asked what he thought of socialism, even by strangers, my father’s response was, “Esto es una mierda”, or “Esto no sirve para nada”, which means, “this system is a piece of shit”, or “this system is good for nothing.” Needless to say, my mother’s second biggest fear during this time was my father’s mouth, or as she more accurately described it, “his uncontrolled mouth.” Thanks to his honesty during this time, my father landed in jail about five times. It was always the same, he would be arrested by heavily armed militia while walking home from visiting a friend or relative, held for one to three days on “suspicion to aid the counter-revolutionaries”, given a talk on the virtues of socialism, or the need to develop a socialist consciousness, and then he was released. The strategy of harassing people like my father was sometimes crude. Once, a young militiaman decided to arrest him for a day, for wearing his pants too baggy, saying that baggy pants were worn by counter-revolutionaries who used them to smuggle contraband. My father would come home and say to us, “if socialism is so good, why do they have to arrest me, to give me a speech on how good it is?”

As a result of these experiences my father began to view the Quaker belief in unblemished honesty with less fervor than before. In an argument with my grandfather he said, “viejo, in Cuba to survive, the Polacos (Jews) will have to eat pork, and we will have to learn to lie!”

In 1963 my father traveled a thousand kilometers to Havana with the excuse that he had to visit his sick Uncle Juan Ferraz. His trip was really to inquire whether a family friend who had a contact in the Swiss Embassy could help us leave the country. The hope was to somehow obtain visas to leave Cuba. The destination was insignificant, but it was expected that it would be Mexico, or Spain. His attempt was not successful, and he returned to Oriente depressed. In 1964 word reached us that a friend had made contact with a man who for a fee, could smuggle us out of Cuba via the Guantanamo Naval base. Two weeks before we were supposed to meet with this man to find out the details of how this escape could happen, we learned that he had been captured and shot by the G.2 (the secret service) while preparing a boat to smuggle another family out of the country. The news of this mans’ death shook us, and clearly indicated to my parents that our chances of leaving Cuba as a family were slim, and that the risk of death was too high to pay for trying to do it illegally. If the man had been captured and interrogated after meeting with my father, he may have been tortured into giving out the names of people he planned to smuggle out in the coming months. This would have landed both my parents in jail since evidence of any involvement in an illegal attempt to leave the “socialist paradise” carried an automatic jail sentence of five years. My brother and I would have been sent to a government work camp away from our relatives for the same period of time. This is the closest my parents ever came to contemplating leaving Cuba in a boat.

My father continued working at the sugar mill, but it became increasingly difficult especially when he was asked to join the voluntary work brigades, and the militia. Every weekend without exception, a member of the CDR and a militiaman would knock in our door and inform my parents that they were there to “invite” them to perform “voluntary” work for the “betterment of society, and the Cuban people”. Or they would say that my father should come along and learn about the “positive role of the militia in our society.” Each time my parents would decline the invitation with a variety of excuses. Each time, the good socialists would enter the date, the request, and the excuse for non-compliance in a little ledger book. After their ledger entries they would say, “we’ll see you next week. Patria o Muerte” (Fatherland or Death), and they’d leave with serious looks on their faces. In school I faced a similar environment. I was asked to join the young Pioneers, which was supposed to be the communist version of the Boy Scouts, but has always been the first point of indoctrination for the “New Cuban Man” which then leads to full membership in the “Union de Jovenes Communistas”, or the UJC. (The Union of Young Communists). Like my parents, I became very creative at finding excuses for not joining these organizations. By this point, we hated Fidel and socialism so much that it gave us pleasure to irritate them in whatever little ways we could. During this time I also became aware of my parents concern for me regarding compulsory military enrollment. Although, I was not of age yet, all fourteen year olds had to register, and upon registration the young person was denied the right to leave the country.

In 1965 the Camarioca boat lift took place and my parents learned that my aunt Anna Pupo (then living in Brooklyn, New York) had made arrangements for us to sail to Miami. When the list of names indicating the families from our town who had been petitioned to leave became public, and we were on it, it changed our status from “potential enemies of the fatherland”, to “confirmed enemies of the fatherland”. My father was fired from his job the same day the list appeared, and by the third day, soldiers and officials from the Ministry of Defense surrounded our house. A soldier went through each room in the house and inventoried every item and possession we had, informing us that these things now belonged to the State, and we had no rights to remove, sell, or give them away. He said, “when your permission to leave is granted, you will have to account for every item inventoried today. If there are any discrepancies, you will not be allowed to leave!” Hearing this announcement made my mother erroneously believe that our departure from Cuba was immanent. A few days later we learned that the Camarioca boatlift had been cancelled, and new flights out of Cuba had been arranged with the United States. Those who could not leave from Camarioca were to leave this way. These were called the “Freedom Flights”. Several months later we received official documents, including our petition numbers. Again, my mother rejoiced at the hope of a quick departure, until my father pointed out that our petition numbers were 214,186, 214,187, 214,188, and 214,189. Meaning that, 214,185 people needed to be processed and had to leave Cuba before we could!

This dilemma made my father step up to the plate and transform himself from a middle of the road Quaker capitalist entrepreneur, to an expert and highly successful Black Market entrepreneur under socialism. Communism showed us that pure unadulterated religion, ethical living, and respect for others with differing points of view, is a luxury that is best practiced when conditions allow. When conditions don’t allow, survival sets the rules.

Knowing that Fidel Castro was only allowing several hundred people to leave the country each week, we quickly figured that it was going to take us years before we actually left for exile. This posed a problem. The dilemma, the question, and the tension in the minds of people like my parents was, how to eat, support young children, and survive in a hostile society for two to five years without the hope of receiving much help from anyone. No welfare, no social security, no insurance, no unemployment checks, no charity, no food stamps, and if you had an uncle Pepe, he’d probably not help because his wife, or daughters were likely communists, or he didn’t want to be viewed as a collaborator! This problem caused many people to attempt suicide, leave the country floating on an inner tube towards the shark infested Bermuda Triangle, or publicly declare that after consideration they had realized communism was the best social, political, and economic system in the world! For my parents there was little to consider. Socialism, Communism, the people’s democracy, or liberal humanism, which were labels freely interchanged by the same zealots whose harassment we had to endure, was a system whose heart was controlled by a tyrant. A government whose maintenance depended on fear, brute force, and lies, and whose supporters were generally less astute, more close-minded, less industrious, and less educated than those, who like us, were waiting to leave the country.

My parents took stock of the few things we could do to survive. It was simple. Barter was allowed, personal services were allowed, and due to its inefficiencies, socialism opened the door to a Black Market economy. Thanks to my father’s personality, now fully challenged by the circumstances, we ended up doing very well. Miraculously, in a relatively short time we quietly but joyously surpassed the depressed and rationed dietary standards by then achieved by the good communists, who on a daily basis tormented us. While we ate steak, they had to endure rationed cans of Russian mutton. Whenever we had a bad day due to some humiliation or harassment, my father at the table, looking at our nice fresh black market food, would say, “don’t worry, just remember that tonight they’re eating platefuls of Karl Marx, with Che Guevara for desert.”

Within the first three months of being out of the closet “Gusanos”, my parents setup a home-based Tamale factory. All four of us made tamales from corn my father purchased from nearby farmers. We used to make about one hundred tamales per day, which my father then sold to government restaurants whose menus had dwindled to three or four items, due to rationing. This business was good for about four months, until one day he came home to tell us that no one was buying any tamales from him because the CDR had forbidden it. For about three months we lived from the money my mother made as a clandestine seamstress, and my father bartered his technical skills, like fixing radios, in exchange for food, usually a chicken, a pound of beans, some rice, or coffee. While fixing someone’s record player and radio, he asked to be compensated with an old broken down refrigerator instead of the chicken originally offered. So one morning, he brought the old refrigerator into our backyard while my mother criticized him for bringing junk in the house. But, my father had an idea. He had noticed that all the old American appliances left in Cuba were breaking down, and no one had any spare parts or repair skills to maintain them. When these things broke down, people were abandoning them. Without any decent replacements from the socialist countries whose governments viewed such “luxuries” as frivolous, Cubans would soon run out of these domestic necessities. My father crudely fixed the old refrigerator, and quietly let word out that he had a refrigerator for sale. To everyone’s amazement the head of the local CDR showed up at our door asking to see the refrigerator. My father showed it to him, then the guy turned to my father and said, “I can only give you $550.00, will that be OK with you?” Thinking for a second, my father said, “look I’ll give it to you for $300.00 if you promise to find me a buyer for the next one I fix?” With great satisfaction, the guy shook my father’s hand and said, “just let me know when you have another one ready.” Thus, my father entered the world of bribery and socialist deal making. Within a few days my father teamed up with another “Gusano” who had refrigeration repair skills, and experience working with Freon gas, and both setup a small refrigeration repair shop in our back yard. Word soon spread from Puerto Padre to Holguin that my father’s shop was the only place where old refrigerators could be fixed, sold, or exchanged. Within a month, my father’s new semi clandestine business had a huge backlog of orders, with most clients being staunch communists. Government trucks would drive up to our house to drop off broken refrigerators, and soon my father was making five times more money this way than had he remained as a government employee at the sugar mill. The routine for success was simple and based on Cuban tradition. Every month, when a canister of Freon needed to be refilled, my father would send six black market steaks to the wife of the head of the CDR, and another six to the wife of the head of the militia. The steaks always carried the message; “these steaks are a symbol of appreciation for the hard work your husband continues to do on behalf of Cuban workers.”

The very protectors of communist purity, the defenders of socialist egalitarianism, the watchdogs against counter-revolutionaries, the followers of Che Guevara’s struggle against Yankee imperialism, were eating our “capitalist” steaks, and creating bureaucratic loopholes so my “degenerate Gusano” father could provide them with a simple service they could not organize themselves.

At a time when the average person lived on a monthly ration of four pounds of rice, ten ounces of beans, three pounds of sugar, four ounces of coffee, three fourths of a pound of beef or pork, bones included, two pounds of chicken, carcass included, half a pound of oil, three small cans of evaporated milk, and one pack of cigarettes, women began sleeping with men for one steak. Our bribes were very generous. My father became so adept at manipulating the system that by the time we left in 1968, I felt that every communist functionary in our region had received, or was receiving bribes from our “capitalist anti-revolutionary” business. So, although we were harassed and humiliated regularly, for three years we thrived economically thanks to the rigidity of socialist central planning, and Fidel Castro’s corrupt “companeros”.

On the last day we were in Chaparra, one of the nephews of the head of the CDR, who was a “Gusano” like us, came by to say goodbye. He told my parents that his uncle thought my father was so slick, he often referred to him as, “Ese Joel se le escapo al Diablo”, or that Joel escaped from the Devil’s grip!

From a survival and business point of view, “El Flaco” did the right thing. He kept the family together, we ate well, wore the best clothes and shoes available under communism, we felt a sense of pride in having outwitted our tormentors, and in the end we achieved our goal, which was to leave the country together. But, from a moral, religious, and ethical perspective, my father received deep wounds from which he has never been able to recover. That creative happy young Quaker entrepreneur who believed in the intrinsic good nature of people, and held the belief that the road to success was always found in honest hard work, died in Cuba sometime between 1963 and 1968.

Today, the Chaparra sugar mill, the largest and most technologically advanced in the world in 1959, lies in ruins and no longer produces sugar, and Cuba is no longer a major sugar producer. The town of Chaparra, now renamed Jesus Menendez, in honor of a socialist hero, cannot lift itself from a chronic state of economic depression and high, but unofficial unemployment. The beautiful wooden houses that once graced its spacious tree lined streets and park, are falling down and have not been painted or repaired in more than forty years. Today, all the entrepreneurs who once thrived there and made it a dynamic place are gone. Socialism has triumphed; everyone now is equally poor.

(c) Copyright by Joel Font
All Rights Reserved
For Usage Rights Contact the Author
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There was nothing special about that night. My family had gathered around our television set and we had watched an interesting episode of the “Vikings”, followed by a documentary on the “Internationalist Brigade’s Sacrifices for the Valiant People of Algeria”. These programs were followed by the news, which showed the usual footage from the United States, where German shepherd dogs handled by blonde police officers seemed to eat poor blacks and Hispanics on a daily basis. Then we saw a special report from the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Peoples’ Republic of Vietnam expressing solidarity with the people of Cuba. Several short reports on the ever-increasing standard of living of the Cuban people were shown, with statistical charts comparing Cuba with the rest of Latin America. At 11:00, the announcer ended the day’s programming with the national anthem, and the poetic recital, “Cuba, el Unico Territorio Libre de America”, (Cuba, the only free territory in the Americas) a shot of the waving Cuban flag, and then, “Patria o Muerte, Venceremos” (Fatherland or Death, we will Win) would scroll on the screen. When everything faded to snow, we got up, washed our faces and went to bed.

But for me this was not a normal night. Sometime during the middle of the night I dreamed a wonderful boys’ dream. I dreamed that I was flying over Chaparra on my bicycle. Sort of a flying bicycle dream. The long rectangular park in front of my house with its beautiful marble bust of Jose Marti was my airport. After pedaling fast midway through the park I would pull on the handles and began my glide through the air. I flew over the bakery towards the giant sugar mill, across town to the Quaker Meetinghouse, back over the aqueduct, all the way up to the Lopez dairy farm near the river, and back again towards Luis Cuza’s house past the department store and railroad tracks finally landing in front of the post office. After stopping home for a glass of milk, I then found myself wearing a cyclist uniform and riding a sleek ten-speed bike instead of my fat wheeled 27-inch Columbia. Now in a racetrack, I was racing with about a dozen other cyclists, and after about ten laps, I won the race. Then it dawned on me. I didn’t know how to ride a bicycle. The dream ended with me saying to myself, “it doesn’t matter, tomorrow before noon you’ll learn”.

That morning I woke up before my parents, got dressed, went to the storage room were my bicycle had been kept for the past three years, cleaned off the cob webs and dust, moved it to the living room, and waited for my parents to awake. Finding it unusual that I was up at such an hour, my father asked me, “what are you doing up so early?” I looked at him and said, “today, before noon, I’m going to learn to ride my bicycle!” My mother, with slight disbelief said that perhaps we should wait another six months since my legs were not long enough to reach the pedals, and perhaps then it would be easier. I looked at her and said, “we’ve been waiting three years for me to grow enough to get on top of this huge bike you bought me. I know today is the day I’m going to do it.” I then said to her with determination, “you are going to lower the seat all the way down, and to get on top of it, I’m going to stand on top of a milk crate.” My father then said that my mother should help me, but only after breakfast. He then looked at her and winked.

Being that it was vacation time from school, some of my friends were up and playing in the park in front of my house, by 9:30 that morning. My friends Mario Tolosa and Rodolfo Lopez came over and I announced my goal for the day. Together with my mother, and my bicycle, we went to our backyard, which was about 300 feet long, found a milk crate, and I clumsily climbed on top of the bike. After falling down dozens of times, crashing against fences and trees, scraping my knees, arms, and almost castrating myself, I was riding the bike with confidence before noon that day. By 2 o-clock, I had learned how to give my little brother sidebar rides and was cruising up and down the park like an expert. In about a week I had learned to navigate around every street and back road in and around Chaparra.

As a proud energetic young cyclist I got to meet every other cyclist in town. Every milkman, mailman, and vegetable salesman who rode a motorcycle, horse, donkey, or three-wheeled cart also knew me by first name. I began to find excuses to go on pleasure rides around town. I volunteered to run errands for our neighbors, I found a barber on the opposite side of town, I visited friends from school who lived on the road to Velasco, whom prior to my bicycle adventures I hardly knew existed, and I rode around the sugar mill waiting for railroad cars to come, so I could steal one or two sugarcanes to bring home to my brother. It was this way that I became a young entrepreneur and admirer of seagoing vessels.

One day as I waited for a haircut from a barber whose shop was by the outskirts of town, another boy around my age stopped by and we started to chat about bicycles, school, and his main interest, tropical fish. Not knowing anything about tropical fish, he made it his cause to teach me. Explaining about their breeding, eating habits, and best way to keep them, he told me that his older brother was a marine biologist and kept dozens of fish tanks by their backyard. After the haircut, we both biked over to his house and, just like he said, the place was filled with fish tanks with all kinds of tropical fish. He explained that his job was to help his brother keep the adult fish from eating the newly born ones, and that he was having a difficult time because everyday hundreds of new baby fish were being reproduced. I asked him if I could take a few in a bottle, and he said I could have as many as I wanted, and that if I stopped by on a regular basis I’d be doing him a favor by taking more baby fish back to my house. Shaking hands on this deal, I told him I’d come by at least twice a week. He then showed me his hobby, a collection of model boats that he, his brother, and father had built in their spare time. The boy explained that his family descended from a famous Spanish sea captain from Cadiz, and they had always loved the sea and nautical things.

Arriving home full of excitement, I showed my mother the tropical fish in the bottle, and she immediately got a large glass cookie jar where we transferred the fish, and placed it on top of our television set. Several days later and as a result of some breadcrumbs, the fish had grown and no longer looked like baby fish. As I prepared to eat a mid-day snack of guava paste and a cracker, the head of the local “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution”, the CDR, a neighbor called, “Companero Silverio”, stopped by our house with his son, on his almost routine bi-weekly house inspection. This man would show up whenever he pleased, engaged my mother or father in some small talk, go into every room of the house to see if anything was “irregular” made notes in a little book, and after asking questions like “why did you move the commode from the left side of the room, over to the right side?” he would then leave. If he was in a bad mood, which was often triggered by reports of US bombing over the Ho Chi Mihn trail, he’d return fifteen or twenty minutes later, with our opened mail from the post office and would announce, “the fatherland has no room for counter-revolutionaries”. Or, “what was the purpose of your visit yesterday to the Rodriguez family at 2 P.M.?” That day at the end of the inspection, his son noticed my tropical fish. The boy, a member of the “Pioneers”, and a promising young communist, pointed at my fish and said, “dad can you get me fish like that?” Being that the only pet store in the region was owned by a family that had left the country for exile in Venezuela, after their business was confiscated, and the government appointed pet store operators had killed every pet in the store due to their inexperience. There was no place to “get” tropical fish. So, “Companero Silverio” asked my mother if she would sell him two of the fish. Explaining that the fish were mine, she asked me if I wanted to sell some of them. Calculating price based on the cost of a bag of peanuts and a glass of cold sugarcane juice, which I always asked my parents to buy for me on Saturdays, and I now felt uncomfortable asking for, since my father had been fired from his job. I said to “Companero Silverio”, “I’ll sell two fish for $1.50, but, you have to bring a glass jar to put them in.” At this announcement, both father and son found huge smiles and told my mother that they would return in a few minutes with a jar. My mother took the $1.50 and patted me in the head. After they left, I asked my mother, “do you think they would have paid $2.50?” She though for a minute and said that $2.00 was a better price. It then dawned on me that if these people were interested in buying fish, so would others.

Later that day I had sold the remaining six fish to neighbors for $2.00 a pair, for a total profit of $7.50. Not realizing that I had a good source of fish, my mother said, “I guess the business is over.” Looking at her with the look of a man who knows the location of a hidden Pirate treasure chest, I said “I can get 12 to 15 fish a week, more if we want!” After explaining to my mother the favor I agreed to do for my new friend, she told me that Tropical fish don’t live very long in captivity and people who bought fish from me would be upset at this after a while. Thinking about this problem led me to a solution. I told my mother, “If the fish die within two weeks after they buy them from me, I’ll sell them a replacement at half price.” My mother thought this was a good idea. During the next three months I had sold more than $175.00 worth of tropical fish, with clients coming not only from Chaparra, but from several surrounding towns. The half price offer helped me build a steady clientele. Then, the harsh hand of socialism put an end to my childhood experiment with free enterprise.

Word of my successful business, with both communist and capitalist clients spread, and one day “Companero Silverio” (a good client) accompanied by a strange man stopped by and asked some serious questions about how I ran the business. He wanted to know how many fish per week I was selling, and where I was getting them from, and whether I had any helpers besides my mother. Having answered all these questions honestly in front of my mother, the men wrote down the answers in their book, and took the name and address of my friend from across town. When “Companero Silverio” and his friend left, my mother turned to me and said, “I think your tropical fish business is soon going to end”. I didn’t really understand why, since there were so many clients. Then my mother explained that “Companero Silverio” might bother my friend from across town, which made me very uncomfortable.

The next day I biked over to my friends’ house eager to learn if the “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution” had visited him. My friend was not very happy, and actually did not want to be my friend anymore. This eight-year-old boy told me, another eight-year-old, “you and your family are counter-revolutionaries. You’re enemies of the fatherland, and my brother told me never to give you a fish ever again!” Surprised at his accusation, I asked him if I had ever done anything bad around him, or if I had said anything against the fatherland in his presence. Thinking for a minute, he said, “It doesn’t matter, last night there was a meeting in my house and the people from the committee explained to us about your family and how we have collaborated with you in setting up a counter-revolutionary business.” Nothing that I said beyond that point saved our friendship.

Pedaling home with both anger and pain, I threw the bike in a ditch, ran in the house, took the jar with tropical fish from the top of the television set, ran into the back yard and smashed it against a guava tree. Walking back into the house, my mother waited for me with a big hug, seeming to know what had happened, and said, “Mario’s mother came by today, they received their visas to go to Spain next month. They waited three years. Perhaps our time will come soon. We need to be strong and patient.” Looking at her I asked, “are the people in “El Norte” like these people here?” My mother after thinking about my question for a long time, responded with, “In El Norte, the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution does not exist, and Fidel can’t tell the people there how to live”. I then asked her a question that had been on my mind for several days. “Mima”, I asked, “why do people call Fidel “El Caballo” (The Horse). She laughed and said Fidel had earned that nickname because he was a hard headed brute that stomped on people, and in Cuba that was a good nickname for a leader. She then said, “but you should never repeat that to anyone”. I spend the rest of the day thinking how lucky my friend Mario was, that he was soon to leave Cuba.

Because some of my tropical fish clients did not have money to pay for the fish, we bartered. I ended up with bars of soap, boxes of guava paste, bottles filled with colored beans, an electric toy car, a kite, several spinning tops, and other things that kids find tradable at that age. I readily accepted boxes of guava paste, because it was my favorite snack. These boxes were made of a pliable balsa wood. One day not long after I smashed the jar of tropical fish, I was hit with the idea of building a toy boat out of the balsa wood I had accumulated. I had a schoolbook that had drawings of sailboats, powerboats, and large vessels from different countries, with descriptions on which boats were better for the ocean, rivers, or lakes. This was a time when all the stores in Cuba no longer carried luxuries like toys. I remember thinking to myself how neat it would be to build my own toy and what a surprise it would be to show it off to my friends.

Using my schoolbook, and the memories of the nice toy boats I had seen by my ex-friends house as guidance, I sketched a speedboat on a notebook, trying to keep the layout simple, but allowing for a motor, and a string controlled ruder. The entire boat was to be about 2 feet long. I carefully gathered the required materials over a period of about two weeks, finding glue, small nails, bees wax, oil based paint, several tin cans, a 6 inch long metal shaft, and a tiny aluminum propeller. After installing a small battery powered motor from an electric car, and clamping two batteries on the floor of the small craft, I painted it navy and white. Instinctively knowing that no other boy in the city of Chaparra had ever made such a beautiful speedboat, I spend hours admiring my masterpiece of naval engineering from every angle that the human eye could focus. When the paint had dried, I tested the boat in my bathtub to my father’s amazement and pride. My plan was to make sure the boat worked flawlessly prior to taking it to the small pond in the park in front of my house, and to keep my project a secret from my friends in the neighborhood until the day of launching. At my father’s suggestion, I named the boat “El Veloz”, the swift one, and carefully painted its name on both sides with white paint.

So, when “Companero Silverio” of the CDR came by for his surprise inspections, it turned out that I always had my “secret” project hiding under my bed. Little did anyone suspect that “El Veloz” was about to cause unforgettable pain and hardship for our family, especially for my father.

Having “El Veloz” ready and tested by that Thursday, I then anxiously waited for the coming weekend which arrived with a thunderous rain on Saturday morning, lasting only about an hour, but almost flooding the pond in the park. By early afternoon the park was full of kids and strolling adults, and the brilliant sun was out, drying out most of the remaining surface rain. This was the perfect time for my speedboat launch. Quietly, and unceremoniously, in order to maximize the impact that I wanted to make to my friends, I went home and took “El Veloz” under my arm and headed for the pond. Once there I started the motor and placed the now roaring speedboat on the water, holding the control strings carefully so I could stir with ease. The boat cruised through the pond with its bow slightly lifting as it broke the water. I turned it left, and then right, and it reacted flawlessly. Within a minute, and as I expected, there were about ten kids around me freaking out at this unexpected event. I let some of my friends steer the speedboat for a while, and while we were enjoying this moment, I started to see and hear some older kids from my school approach, but instead of appearing happy or exited like my friends, they were directing insults at me. They described “El Veloz” as “El Bote del Gusano”, or the boat belonging to the worm. “Gusanos” (Worms) was the derogatory term used to describe a person who was leaving Cuba for political reasons. The black kids said that all the “Gusanos blanquitos de mierda”, or shithead white worms, from Chaparra should get on my speedboat and get out of Cuba. “Companero Silverio’s” nephew asked me where I had gotten the boat. Telling him that I had build it myself, he looked at his friends and in an incredible show of spontaneity several of them grabbed the boat from the pond and started examining it. While this was going on, several adults gathered around our group, and I could hear a few explain to each other that the boat was definitely “suspicious” because it looked like a scale model of the type of boat used by many rich “Gusanos” to escape to Florida. And, in order to build a full size one, the “anti-revolutionary capitalists” would have to “steal all kinds of parts from the people!” One of the boys examining the boat declared that there was “definitely more to this boat than he is telling us”. One of the adults took the boat and said that he was turning the boat over to the “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution”, for proper action. I was told by a woman wearing a militia uniform and a big pistol, a “miliciana”, who came from nowhere, to stay put while other “comrades” from the militia made their way to us. Soon three militiamen and the “miliciana” were walking me home. As we approached the house I ran ahead to warn my mother.

Stunned, and stuttering I told my mother what had happened. “They just took El Veloz” I said. They said we should all get on it and leave Cuba. They said it’s a little boat from which a big boat is going to be built so we can escape to Florida. I told her that the CDR was coming right away. My mother trying to calm me, began to realize the severity of the problem, and said, “oh, no. Your father is not home.” At this point the militia woman and the armed militiamen appeared in front of the house. My mother and I simply stood by our front door in fear waiting for the unknown. From the left side of the park we could now see “Companero Silverio” holding “El Veloz” under his arm, with several other people heading towards our house. With a stern face, the militiawoman said to my mother, “Companera, you know why we are here. We intend to do this quickly. These “milicianos”, (militiamen) will now search your house. Tell your husband to come out.” Two militiamen with Czechoslovakian machine guns at the ready entered the house. My mother explained to the militiawoman that my father was not home, and this agitated the other two militiamen who looked at each other and decided to run to the side of the house and jumped the fence into our backyard. Before my mother could react, “Companero Silverio” arrived with his entourage. The “milicianos” from within the house yelled out, “everything is secure inside”. Then a voice came from the yard, “the yard is clear”. Turning to “Companero Silverio” the “miliciana” then said, “the man is not home. Send word to find him, and call Puerto Padre and inform the G.2 (Intelligence service) of the situation.” Lifting an arm and signaling to another man, “Companero Silverio” gave the orders. Then looking at me, he said, “I have some questions for you.”

“Companero Silverio” with great calmness explained to my mother that we were being accused of involvement in a counter-revolutionary plot of serious proportions. And, that given the circumstances and my fathers’ obvious “escape”, things did not look good for us. My mother clearly nervous, said to all present, “Esto es una locura; aqui nadie ha hecho nada de lo que ustedes dicen”. (This is insanity; here no one has done any of the things you have described). Then she added pointing to “El Veloz”, “eso es un juguete de nino, por dios”. (For god’s sake, that’s a child’s toy). With disinterest in my mothers’ words, and with that great calmness of a revolutionary bureaucrat, he simply said, “Senora de Font, we now have to begin our interrogations”. He then signaled us all to enter the house and we headed for the dining table, where he told us to sit. The “miliciana” and “Companero Silverio” sat facing us, each taking out their little notebooks where they made notes. They took turns with the questioning. I was asked where I got the boat. My mother was asked where my father was. I was asked the name of the people who worked on the boat. My mother was asked for the location where the big boat was being built, and for the names of the leaders of our counter-revolutionary band. I was asked if I knew when the group was planning to escape to “El Norte”. My mother was asked if we had any helpers from the sugar mill. I was asked if I knew who had the plans for the big boat. After answering all of these questions, and denying all the false accusations, my mother explained that my father had gone across town to visit his cousin and pick up some cooking oil. “Companero Silverio” looked at us and said we were lying. He said that my claim to be the builder of the speedboat was preposterous because he knew every move our family had made in the last year, and he did not have a record of me building anything like a boat during that time. The militiawoman turned to my mother and said, “for the sake of your children, I hope your husband is found with a bottle of cooking oil in his hands, otherwise he’s going to get 20 years of hard labor. If he resists arrest he may get shot.” My mother ran her hands over her face as if trying to wash off some invisible dirt that would not come off.

About ten minutes after our interrogation ended, heavily armed militiamen arrested my father, as he innocently walked home with a canvass bag containing some bananas, a bottle of coconut oil, and a pound of black beans. No reason was given for his arrest, and no word was given to him of what had happened at home. He was taken to the old “Cuartel”, army headquarters, where he underwent two days of interrogations, humiliations, accusations, and threats inside a small dark cell. Operating in a state of surrealism, and as my father later accounted, “left over from the time of the Inquisition”, the defenders of the socialist fatherland tried to implicate him with incredible plots and terrorist conspiracies. On the second day, after my mother, my little brother, and I, had slept only four hours that night, with two militiamen standing guard in front of our house at all times, the bottle of coconut oil and my mothers’ creative thinking saved him from a sad ending.

Realizing that my father was probably under arrest, and that the only way to help him and us all was to somehow prove that “El Veloz” was really a toy. She asked me to collect any left over parts, the notebook with my original sketch, my schoolbook with the pictures and descriptions of ships, and any other thing that I could think of that would help us convince “Companero Silverio”, and his friends that we were not plotting the overthrow of the government, or to illegally abandon the “only free territory in America”.

I then remembered that I had asked a vegetable vendor who rode a donkey around town, to help me get bees wax for the boat I was building. I had met this old man on one of my first bike rides, and I would sometimes help him load bags of vegetables that he sold to grateful housewives around Chaparra. He was the only person besides my parents who knew of my boat construction efforts, and also knew that I was building the speedboat in secret partly to surprise my friends. “El Viejo Yayo” (Old Man Yayo) as some women fondly called him, had actually stopped by my house several times during the previous month, to sell my mother fresh Yucca, and Pumpkin which were by then already difficult to buy in government stores without a ration card. This old man with his brown like suntanned wrinkled skin and white hair was gentle and liked by everyone who came into contact with him. It quickly became clear to my mother and I, that “El Viejo Yayo” was a critical key in our efforts. The problem was how to contact him in a way that would not arise suspicion, or make “Companero Silverio” think that “El Viejo Yayo” himself was implicated in some crazy counter-revolutionary conspiracy.

The solution to contacting “El Viejo Yayo” walked in our door almost as soon as we began to worry about how to do it. It came in the form of our neighbor, “Juana” who was also a member of the “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution”, but enjoyed exchanging recipes and cooking ideas with my mother. “Juana” was allowed in the house by the militiamen, and immediately started to tell my mother that she was sure that our problem was all a big mistake, and that we should understand why the “committee” was so vigilant during these times of international tensions. After some more small talk, which was meant, at least from her perspective, to relieve our tension, she looked at my mother and said, “I have a new lover”, and turned on a happy face. My mother could not help but giggle, and then she said, “You are the most dangerous woman I know. How do you do it, and where is Miguel?” Juana said that her old lover Miguel was away in Havana, and would not be back for three months. The new lover was a sugar chemist visiting Chaparra, and his job would end in three months, so everything would work out fine. She then said that she wanted to prepare a nice “fricase de chivo”, (goat fricassee) for her new lover and wanted some hints on side dishes. After talking for about a half hour on the subject, and realizing that many of the ingredients discussed were difficult to find, or were no longer available in Cuba, they both settled on some basic vegetables like Yucca and Yams as side dishes. Then my mother made the move. She told Juana that the best vegetables in Chaparra were sold by an old man named “El Viejo Yayo”. To our pleasure she said, “I know, I buy from him all the time”. My mother then said to Juana, “if “El Viejo Yayo” is in town today, you’re all set”. Thinking for a minute, Juana responded with, “Today is Monday. I think he comes to town on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.” My mother then said, “Juana please, if you see “El Viejo Yayo” today bring him here, we have run out of food, the children are hungry, and we can’t go out to get anything. A few bananas, or yams to make “fufu” would be like a gift from heaven”. Juana looked at us, and then said, “why didn’t you tell me before. I’m going to find him right now. I hope he has Yucca today.” My mother gave Juana a hug, and she left. In silence for several minutes after Juana left, my mother and I just looked at each other almost in disbelief of what had just happened only to be snapped back to reality by my little brother making a ruckus with a toy drum.

About an hour and a half later, we heard the yard door open, and then a knock on the kitchen door. When we opened the door, there was Juana, “El Viejo Yayo” with three donkeys loaded with vegetables, and a militiaman, in our backyard. When “El Viejo Yayo” saw me he smiled and said, “young man, this lady here tells me that you and your family are hungry and in need of some fresh vegetables”. Before I could answer him, my mother said to him, “Yayo, seeing you is like seeing an angel on earth”. Handing me a ripe banana, he said, “Senora, how can I help you?” My mother without any concern for the others present quickly described to him what had happened in the last 24 hours. Then I said to him, “they think my boat is part of a counter-revolutionary plot”. At which he started laughing and asked who was accusing us of such a thing. My mother explained that she thought “Companero Silverio” was behind the whole thing. Thinking for a minute and turning to Juana and the militiaman, he asked, “do you think that this family is involved in any of these things?” Rolling their eyes and shrugging, they could not find any words to respond. The militiaman finally said to “El Viejo Yayo”, “the boat is the evidence.” This caused “El Viejo Yayo” to look at the militiaman somewhat angry and say, “I helped this boy build that boat. Go right now and bring “Silverio” and whoever is at the “Cuartel” over here. Go and make it quick.” The speed and authority in which “El Viejo Yayo” talked to the militiaman was out of character with the kind hearted vegetable vendor I knew, and my mother looked unsure and did not know what to make of it. With frustration in his eyes, the militiaman left saying to Juana, “make sure no body moves from this house until I return.”

While the militiaman was away, “El Viejo Yayo” asked Juana, who lived two houses away from us, if she had ever seen any strange occurrences in our house, such as meetings late at night, or perhaps my father leaving late at nights and returning home in the mornings. Answering in the negative, he then asked if she had been reporting this to the “Committee” and she said she had. He then asked my mother if she knew where my father was, and she explained she guessed he had been arrested. “El Viejo Yayo” then looked at me and said, “how are your grandparents. Did you know that when I was a young boy I used to play with your grandmother and her brothers in El Vedado?” Before I could respond, the yard gates opened and about seven or eight people came in, including “Companero Silverio”. Walking directly to “El Viejo Yayo”, “Companero Silverio” said, “Tio Yayo, (Uncle Yayo) what is this all about?” After “El Viejo Yayo” had a chance to explain how he had provided me with the bee’s wax for the construction of the boat, and how he knew I had spent two weeks gathering parts for my secret project, he then said to his nephew that no one could positively attest to any counter-revolutionary activities in or near our house. “El Viejo Yayo” then told his nephew that he was an idiot and should be spending his time chasing real counter-revolutionaries, not little boys. Stunned, and a little ashamed in front of the militiamen, and us, “Companero Silverio” left our yard without a word. One of the militiamen asked “El Viejo Yayo” to stop by the “Cuartel” so they could write up a report and “reconcile” their records. As everyone was leaving, “El Viejo Yayo” gave my mother several “Malangas”, and a small “Calabasa”, and asked me, “how it was that I was able to hide the boat from “Silverio”? I explained that I always had the boat “hidden under my bed”. Turning to the militiamen, he made a waving gesture with his hand and said, “it was under his bed!” When the men and donkeys had left, Juana turned to my mother and said, “you see, I told you this was all a mistake”. Juana then left saying she was going to the “Cuartel” to see what she could find out about my father, and she would return as soon as possible.

About an hour after Juana had gone, the two-armed militiamen who were guarding our house informed us that “evidence pertaining to your innocence has been found,” and we were to report to the “Cuartel” by 3:00 o’clock to sign some papers. They then left our house, discussing the details of some recent baseball game. Feeling tired, scared, and insecure, my mother and I could not stay in the house a minute longer, and headed to the nearest “Gusanos” house, which was about four houses away. The Tolosas, the family waiting to leave for Spain welcomed us with an “Ajiaco”, (a Cuban stew) and warm milk for my little brother. It seemed that everyone in town had learned the “official story” and the “Gusanos” were all harassed. In the schizophrenic style of the socialist paradise, they had been taunted to leave, but at the same time, anyone caught planning to leave, or in the process of leaving, risked arrest or being sent to a labor camp. Most of the “Gusanos” of Chaparra believed that our case was lost. The word was that “Compenero Silverio” was out to win the notice of the new regional chief of the “Committee for the Defense of the Revolution”, and nothing would do that better than “cleaning out” Chaparra of some pesky counter-revolutionaries.

At 3:00 o’clock my mother showed up at the old “Cuartel” and was read a long report on the clandestine operations of counter-revolutionary groups operating in Oriente province, and was told that there was evidence that most “Gusanos” in Cuba were directly or indirectly implicated in these activities, and were receiving support from the CIA. Because of my fathers profession as an electrical engineer, and former ham radio operator, the possibilities of our involvement in support of “imperialism” was very likely, and they were just waiting for the right time to catch us “with our hands in the dough”. She was then given a release document that stated that my father had been held for questioning under humane and “decent” conditions, and was being freed. My mother signed it and my father was freed. My father was so psychologically drained from this experience that when he reached home, he took his shoes off, fell into bed, and without saying a word, fell a sleep for six straight hours.

Several days after my father was released, my grandmother, Abuela Lina, came by to see us, and my mother explaining in detail what had happened, asked her if she knew a man named “Yayo”. With a smile on her face my grandmother said that her father had saved “Yayo’s” father from a Spanish firing squad during the war of Independence. For many years, “Yayo” and his father used to visit her father in the farm. While the old people talked and played dominoes, “Yayo” and my grandmother’s brothers used to play in the fields.

The next time “Companero Silverio” came by our house for his surprise inspections, he went to each bedroom and looked under each bed, carefully. When school started again, my relationship with all the kids had changed, and every other day I was called a “Gusano”, a traitor, and often a faggot. I walked around wanting to fight back, but didn’t dare knowing that anything of that sort could be misconstrued or used against my parents, or even as an excuse to deny us our exit Visas. I was a good student and teachers praised my work. But, often after their praises, these teachers would go into lengthily discussions to the class on how to be vigilant against “counter-revolutionaries”. Following the Stalinist model, my classmates were told that in order to defend the fatherland, children had to be strong enough to turn their parents in to the authorities if they suspected them of “imperialist” activities. One day as the whole school stood in military attention in the playground waiting for a visit from some high ranking member of the revolutionary government, and we saluted the school’s director while the “Internationale” (the communist anthem) played over a loud speaker, I noticed that all the “Gusanos” and I were in a separate lineup in the yard. After an hour and a half of speeches pertaining to the glorious sacrifices needed from young people in order to “build” the “new man” in Cuba, the director dismissed everyone and invited all the kids to form a queue for refreshments. Somehow, by the time the “Gusanos” got close to the sugared water and bread being given out, everything ran out. Coincidences like these where the norm.

As for the "free education" we received, it was provided via "revolutionary" text books that professed the superiority of Marxism, atheism and the need to spread socialism around the world based on the cult of Che Guevara. We where tought about the "evils" of the free market system, the "fascist" racist Americans and the duties we Cubans have in liberating the oppressed peoples of the world. It was not unusual for classes to stop in the middle of the day in order to hear Fidel Castro’s two or three hour speeches on the radio, telling the nation how important it was to fight for “the equality of the masses, and the dignity of the oppressed,” while we "Gusanos" who disagreed with him lived in a state of constant fear and in danger of losing our lives to his regime. In order to appreciate this kind of "free education" you have to experience it.

The next three years we spent in Cuba waiting for permission to leave were very long years. As a Cuban exile, in the late 1980’s I learned that “El Viejo Yayo” had died of old age and it saddened me. I also learned that his nephew “Companero S