Charla...

Press Releases for my One-Person Performances...

2011-12-13T08:38:00.001-05:00

Below are links to the Press Releases for Menéndez: Claiming La Florida, Charla, A Chat with José Martí, and Yo Solo...

From founding the first European settlement in the United States (45 years before the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock) as Pedro Menendez with his Asturianos did in 1565; to taking back Florida during the Revolution, providing for the final British surrender at Yorktown; to working with the successful, Cuban enclave in Tampa described as an economical miracle in Reconstructed Florida after the Civil War: Hispanics have had a hand in making Florida vital to the world economy. They came as Spaniards, Cubans, and Latin Americans yet quickly became Floridians.

Press Releases

Pedro Menéndez de Aviles (1519-1574)

Click: http://www.scribd.com/doc/75407454/Menendez-press-Release

Bernardo de Galvez(1746-1786)

Click: http://www.scribd.com/doc/75407102/Galvez-press-Release

José Martí (1853-1895)
Click: http://www.scribd.com/doc/75407837/Marti-press-Release

2011-11-24T14:57:00.001-05:00

Following are my program notes for the Rhinoceros, performed in New World School of the Arts in Downtown Miami from 2-7 December 2011. Sophomore Class Project, Chaz Mena directing:

"It is ironic that within one generation after the awful state systems that quashed individuals worldwide was defeated in joy and relegated to the “ash heap of history”, freethinking is again in danger. Post-modernism has called it irrelevant or misguided, a throwback to the “Enlightenment” and nothing more. Orthodoxies of any persuasion condemn it to hellfire, globalism exploits it for economic gain, and consumerism has packaged it and sent it down conveniently monitored channels on the web. Theocracies are in vogue; the idea of a “national character” is again popular, text-book and arbitrary “races” created by the most reactionary elements worldwide are robbing people of the fact that the only race we belong to, the Human Race, (even in the face of empirical evidence proving the human family is a fact) is nothing but romantically inspired, “liberal” spin.

Ionesco gives us an oasis in Rhinoceros, a manifesto for the Individual. At the time he wrote this piece in 1960, Marxism was the darling of western progressives, who turned a blind eye to the excesses of a system that would disallow them the very discourse that they enjoyed in their own countries. Within ten years, from the time between writing Bald Soprano to Rhinoceros, Ionesco had turned from enfant terrible of the avant-garde to the hackneyed purveyor of the status quo and enemy to the working class!

By Ionesco’s own admission, Rhinoceros came to him in a dream, which he wrote into a short story and soon after a play. It is a study in Fascism, under which Ionesco first encountered in his native Romania and then later under the Vichy government in France, when in 1942 he immigrated to live in Marseilles. He was witness to the great fire in the old city perpetrated by the Gestapo and their French lackeys, the Milice française. The play is an extended metaphor, perhaps allegorical, that should be read as a cautionary tale.

Ionesco’s Rhinoceros forces us to consider that there can never be ideological systems or political movements that can minister to the pliability of humankind, the spuriousness of our characters and gloriously chaotic existence that makes us human. The play asserts that there were never any millenarian movements that can rescue us from having to deal with life on a moment-to-moment basis. Ionesco is telling us that all Ethics are situational because people develop in innumerable and infinite ways, and for that reason the Individual trumps all religious, ethical or ideological systems. We are forced to take people on a one-to-one basis-- we must accept that challenge, lest we forfeit our humanity. Enjoy our play."

These are the points that Tyrrany fears everywhere in the world:

2011-11-13T21:30:00.004-05:00

A Universal Code: As rights entail obligations, the Universal Declaration can be translated into a declaration of obligations to be recognized by all people...Those obligations that concern individuals directly can be summarized as follows:

--All human beings are born with reason and a conscience. As members of their community, in which alone the free and full development of a person’s personality is possible, every individual, and every organ of society, has the following obligations:

--Act towards other people as brothers and sisters, born free and equal, in dignity, rights, and obligations.

--Respect and protect the life, liberty and personal security of all people.

--With your neighbors and government, protect each family. It is the foundation of society.

--Prevent anyone from being arbitrarily arrested, detained or exiled.

--Allow all people freedom of opinion and expression without interference. Let them seek, receive and express thoughts and opinions in any way they wish, without regard for frontiers.

--Allow all people freedom of movement and place of residence within your country.

--Allow all people to assemble peacefully and form associations, without compulsion.

--Allow all people freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Enable them to freely choose their religion or belief, or to freely change it.

--Let all people express their choice of religion or belief in public and in private, alone or with others, in teaching, practice, worship or observance.

--Base the authority of government on the will of the people, through periodic free elections by secret vote, with equal and universal suffrage.

--Take part in the government of your country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

--See that everyone has the right to own property, alone or with others. Let it not be taken from them unlawfully.

--Do not arbitrarily interfere with another person’s privacy, family, home, or correspondence. Your laws must protect people against such interference.

--Do not attack a person's honor and reputation. See that the law protects people against such attacks.

--Free people held in slavery or servitude. Prohibit all forms of slavery and the slave trade.

--Prevent people from being tortured or subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

--With the free and full consent of each, let a man and a woman of full age marry and found a family, with no limitation regarding race, nationality, or religion.

--Recognize that men and women have equal rights going into marriage, during marriage, and at the end of marriage.

--Give special care and assistance to mothers and children. Give all children, born in or out of wedlock, the same social protection.

To those who enjoy even a modicum of power over other people, anywhere in the world--that includes you who sits behind a desk and decides if this person get a license to practice their trade, open their shop, go to school or get married!!!--consider these points. Shame yourself, if you still can, into looking back from the edge of your bureaus to see your smug smiles, safe as you are, sitting in front of your state's seal.

Some Online Resources for Eugène Ionesco: Short but Sweet

2011-09-02T22:51:00.011-04:00

*An excellent retrospective of Eugene Ionesco's oeuvre in the form of an interview with the Paris Review in 1984. This is good reading for my cast of Rhinoceros at New World School of the Arts, running in 1-7 December. Click below to read:

Paris Review - The Art of Theater No. 6, Eugene Ionesco

**For the ultimate Eugene Ionesco resource online visit The Official Ionesco Website or take a look at Belgian, Ionesco scholar Søren Olson's
The Eugene Ionesco Home Page

Eugene Ionesco crossing the Atlantic, Westward, after WWII

***Lastly, you cannot beat Wikipedia on entry, "Ionesco, Eugène"

Oh, go to Paris...

2011-08-31T11:51:00.000-04:00

Bought this Postcard on the Champs-Élysées, in Paris...yards from the President's Mansion... There's a man who sells them there, a collector, with over 50,000 post cards stemming back to over 180 years of Parisian life...Daguerreotypes as early as the late 1830 to digital impressions from last week.

This one is taken from a hillside near the Moulin de la Galette, in the Montmartre district, it was in 1895. The Third Republic was governing France and it was soon to be involved in a fight for survival from the invading Germans in 1914. France was the only government in Europe with a republic, without any monarchical figure, though holding colonies all over the world--sometimes very cruelly governed. Paris, however, was the world's uncontested center of artistic and scientific innovation.

"Oh, go to Paris. . . . In the midday gloom

Of some old quarter take a little room

That looks off over Paris and its towers

From Saint Gervais round to the Emperor's Tomb, --

So high that you can hear a mating dove

Croon down the chimney from the roof above,

See Notre Dame and know how sweet it is

To wake between Our Lady and our love."

--"Paris" by Allan Seeger

(American Poet, killed in 1916

during the First World War,

defending the city he adored...)

After Reading Phillip Blom's "Wicked Company, the Forgotten Radicalism of the 18th Century"

2011-08-08T00:06:00.010-04:00

At times repetitive, this book by Austrian social historian Phillip Blom is nevertheless a terrific read. Other times it is seasoned with delicious gossip of these European luminaries, les philosphes, of the 18 Century. Above all it is a necessary read for those who would prefer to live in a country that wishes to keep the wall up between secular government and organized religion. Forgive my unmentionably irritating pun, but this is sacred to me: we musn't go back to the age when people were at best exiled for their religious beliefs, or none thereof and at worst burnt at the stake. Many, many in this country, this fruit of the Enlightenment, would have us recognize a state religion.

There are few things that I would die for, but I would lay my life down to keep my country from adopting a state religion.

Also in Blom's are feminist beginnings, murmurs of what would become the glorious liberation of half of Humanity in the West-- which we are still trying to achieve --were first voiced among the salons of Baron d' Holbach and Denis Diderot. Detailed examination on the Encyclopedie and it glorious restructuring of human knowledge where scholasticism was dealt its first mortal blow--may we be forever saved from its belief-based hierarchy of learning, its cant and its superstition. The Rights of Man were openly discussed in the Paris salons of the 1740' - 1760's and penny (or more rightly, "sou") pamphlets were published and sold days later in the black market. They were vastly popular in Paris, but as Diderot is famous to have said: "the Enlightenment ends at the suburbs". More work needed to be done in recognizing Man as the measure of all things. However these would become precursors to our own sentiments on the subject: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, borrowed from John Locke and Montaigne and facilitated, par-lanced by the Philosophes ...in many ways these men and women are very familiar to us, though gloriously prophetic and influential to the future. I wonder if even with our unprecedentedly developing technology (especially informational sciences) we will have a similar marked change in the perception of future generations...in how we perceive ourselves and our relation to matter, Nature, and the metaphysical (if we can ever free ourselves of that!).

At a time when culture is beginning to go backwards to succumbing to willful stupidity and ignorance in the guise of fundamentalism and evangelism (in the United States, above all) this is wonderfully assuring reading. We may never go back; perhaps these wonderful men and women may have helped imprint the notions of human rights irrevocably deep into our DNA--we can only hope; for those who would rather: we can also "only pray", each according to his/her own conscience.

Why but also WHAT do we Celebrate Today?

2011-07-04T11:29:00.008-04:00

Today is the Fourth of July. This is when we celebrate the beginning of a sense of nationhood in the United States, but also we mark it as a date that represents a watershed moment in political history, a turning of the corner in the way men and women govern themselves.

We all know the scene: after months of political wrangling, the Independency Party of the Continental Congress—they were not a party, per se, not in the orthodox sense, but men who simply had one thing in common, a view that we needed to break from the British Empire—persuaded those representatives that were still dragging their feet in voting “Yea” to declaring independence from Britain. The colonies were a loose confederation of states that felt they had enough in common that they were willing to work in unison for the common aim of throwing off King George’s yoke and risking everything in a war that they had very little chances of winning. That in and of itself is enough to celebrate, the chutzpah of these people from whence we derive our political courage (scant as it is today). They didn’t know that they were “founding” anything, except a total war of annihilation, bringing down upon themselves the ire of the most powerful man in the world: King George III and the Tories in Parliament headed by Lord North. They wanted to wage war against us; they wanted to set a precedent to their other possessions in the world.

Fine. Let’s set that aside for a moment.

July Fourth is also a date that lives famously in the hearts of every man and woman who loves liberty and who is devoted to human rights. July Fourth is a date that unites our country to all Peoples who would govern themselves and risk doing away with a tyrant, or an ideology that foments tyrants, or any other orthodoxy that robs human beings of their “inalienable rights”. You can draw a line between 4 July, 1776’s “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” in Philadelphia to the preamble of the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” of August 26, 1789 in Paris, extending it a century and a half later to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, again in Paris, in 10 December 1948. Human Beings have the inherent dignity deserving equal and inalienable rights as members of the human family, reads the first sentence of the 1948 document. This is a small departure from the first sentence of our declaration in 1776. In a way, in perhaps not too hyperbolic a statement, we can say that Human Beings began the long, slogging march to Human Dignity of 4 July: one still not fully realized, but in a handful of nations.

Why then, are so many people willing to dismiss what happened this past spring in the Middle East? Why are we willing, as a country, as a People to discount their efforts in realizing the very thing that we celebrate today? There are so many who have a “wait and see” attitude about Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Morocco, Tunisia; “well, these People wouldn’t know what to do with civil rights, they’re not deserving of unfettered liberty, they’re creating a monster that may engulf the whole region in war, better to have the devil we know run the show in those places rather than the devil (s) we don’t know,” etc.

This is uncharitable and vaguely racist statements, attitudes that are patently un-democratic and completely at odds with the Spirit of ’76. I do not believe in giving billions to these new countries, or movements. I simply wonder why we do not recognize them, officially. Those that risk everything against the security apparatii of their respective regimes should know that they are fighting for an internationally recognized standard in the way Human Beings should be governed. The simple reason we don’t is that it is risky to alienate a tyrant (usually one that we’ve maintained), which may win against the protestors: one whom we’ll antagonize and who’ll offer aid to those monstrously medieval movements that wish to wipe our democratic ideas off the face of the earth.

Our whole foreign policy, since WWII, has been about bolstering democracy around the world, at least on paper, has it not? In actuality, we have bolstered smaller tyrants to stave off the bigger tyrants: “Batista was a son of a bitch, but he was our son of a bitch.” Same with The Shaw, same with Idi Amin, same with Dien, Minh, Trujillo for a while, Pinochet, Somoza, Franco…the list goes on and on.

I pray we do the right thing before we come upon 4 July 2012. For once. I hope the most ungenerous amongst us who look at brown and yellow Peoples with disdain and fear, will live up to our political legacy: forged by men and women living on the fringes of an empire in 1776, “yahoos” and “half-witted scalawags” in Parliament’s estimation, who lived an antediluvian existence in the hinterlands of North America, upstart apes and mongrels in the British Monarch’s eyes, daring to go their own way. Let us not do as Lord North and his gang did, let us listen to the whispers in our ears of those that risked all to realize the full dignity of human beings then, now and forever.

Thinking about the Civil War lately...

2011-05-25T09:11:00.008-04:00

Thinking about the Civil War a lot lately. We are so similarly divided nowadays. We hear about Southern Heritage, and men in gray reenact their great, great grandfathers. Well, I choose another heritage. My heritage celebrates and honors those who knew why they were fighting in the Civil War. Some figures:

African-Americans constituted less than 1% of the population in the North
African-Americans made up 10% of the Union Army
85% of all eligible African-American men volunteered for the Army
They got paid $10/month, rather than $13/month allotted to whites, so many chose no pay, in protest
180,000 African-Americans fought to free us all from slavery

Yes, it has often been touted that "they fought to free their People", but Black soldiers also fought for me. They helped save the only hope that humanity had at that time, a United States' democracy. Had the Union been dissolved, should slavery continue another couple of decades, should the South have won, the world would have been entirely more enslaved in the 19th and 20th centuries. Democracy would have lost its teeth in the face of Totalitarianism, which appeared only 60 years later in Europe and Latin-America. Democracy would not have triumphed the way it did in the 20th Century. The once-enslaved in our country, the Black man, disproportionally to his numbers, helped to save us all!

To these African-Americans, these erst-while slaves, who by 1863 were Free Men standing on their own two feet with hearts overbrimming with Pride and joyfully exhibiting the length and breathe of their emancipated limbs, I subscribe my allegiance and gratitude to.

That is my legacy. No, not the Confederate or Southern Heritage for me; mine is a heritage of Freedom, of Joyful Liberty! Of remaking oneself in accordance to Nature, of being scoffed at yet dealing with generous love, of being ridiculed yet forgiving, of sacrifice and abnegation, of righting a terrible wrong, of expanding the franchise to ALL PEOPLE, and learning to carve out for oneself a place in the world with nothing but one's two hands and a sense of Justice to guide us. A Republic of Merit, not a plutocracy.

¡Gracias, Señores!

Certainty or Knowledge, We Can't Have Both...

2011-01-14T10:56:00.005-05:00

First of six parts from a televised chapter of Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man. An excellent reminder that Knowledge never ends, there is a "Principle of Tolerance" present in any "certitude". Quite literally, when you're certain of something, there must always be in our minds the sense that perception, refined as in the case with "certitude", or casually observed largely depends upon perspective.

Certainty- incontestable, intolerant of dissension or debate -leads to monstrosities. Implacable "certainty" IS the sleep of reason which produces monsters, as Goya coined in his Caprichos.

El Sueño de la Razón Produce Monstruos by Francisco Goya, 1797-1798

The Ascent of Man was among the first books I ever valued as a guide, a progenitor of ideas. It still sits on my shelf at home, now, in NYC. Of course, raised in Miami and having Cuban parents I would mispronounce it as "The ASS-cent of Man" for years, until I learned at 12, or so, that it was the noun form of the verb ascend: I had ascended.

There are many in our country today that are "certain of their certainties" to borrow T.S. Eliot's parody, his Prufrock..., where he gives us the stilted views, the jingoistic and usually vulgar concerns of orthodoxy. There are those- many, perhaps similar to Europe in the late 1920s -who would make this country follow Ein Gott, Ein Volk, Ein America. It is a seminal feature in most reactionary movements to decry the need for similitude, One-ness, washing away all abstraction with smooth forms and 90-degree angles. They would make us wear maoist uniforms; build Germanias; speak ONE language and with poor vocabulary and basic grammar (Noun, verb, object, please, that'll do) so as to be understood by ALL; they would invoke the name of ONE God over the rights of others to follow their own god or none at all; they would invade Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia or Iraq; they would send the OTHER who in their view selfishly clings to alien beliefs (away from the ONE) to camps and flush his ashes and millions of OTHERS like him into a pond:

Bronowski's "Knowledge of Certainty" ends above, when he stands in a pond where millions of people ended up as slush in the bottom of a river's tributary.

Wherever there is "certainty" (staid, unmoving, unamended, literalist) v. "knowledge" (dynamic, moving, ever developing, inquisitive) there must needs be Tucson Massacres, Krystallnachts, Cultural Revolutions, Jacobites, Trail of Tears and Killing Fields. How else can tyranny of thought and action cope when pitted against the dynamism in live, thinking, observing, feeling and loving Human Beings?

Whence comes Hate?

2011-01-09T12:35:00.005-05:00

…From Thomas E. Chavez' Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift, page 203. Cubans fronted the money needed to send De Grasse to Yorktown to bottle up Cornwallis, half a million to be exact and collected in less than 24 hours.

The French fleet simply couldn’t sail without the necessary supplies, money was needed fast; the British Fleet may have gotten to Cornwallis before the French! Cornwallis escaping guaranteed an even longer war...

Again, just to be crystal clear: Cubans are directly responsible in clinching the last, definitive battle of the American Revolution.

All ye who would attribute to Washington's sole generalship the outcome of the Battle of Yorktown, that is to say the capitulation of Lord Cornwallis in 1781, would ignore Rochambeau's huge French contingent and Admiral De Grasse's fleet that checked British evacuation by sea, which they had long used as a way of getting up and down a largely litoral contest, denies the rightful place our allies held in our Revolution. Our Revolution encouraged a world war, or the continuation of the French and Indian War (known in Europe as the Seven Year's War, 1756-1763), a continuation and an enlargement as many people came to North America from South America, Africa, Spain, France, Central America, and the Caribbean to participate in the actual fighting. They came as individuals but more significantly, they came in contingents: Mexico sent a whole cavalry division to fight in the Gulf, Cuba sent it's famous Havana Militia, The Canary Islands sent an entire infantry division, Puerto Rico sent close to a thousand volunteers, Venezuelan officers, Peruvian captains, countless ships, barges, hundreds of frigates, scores of battleships ("ships-of-the-line")--tens of thousands came from all over the Americas to fight for our liberty!

A concerted effort was made in good faith; (and enlightened interest to be sure as Spain wanted Florida, Gibraltar and Minorca back--which they lost in 1763) the love and gratitude that many Americans felt towards Spain was commonplace and highly publicized. (See "Spain in the Revolution" in www.AmericanRevolution.org for a handy reference.)

The original "Minute Men" welcomed spanish-speakers, they were cosmopolitan and informed: the colonies enjoyed a higher literacy rate than the mother country. From Lawrence Cremin's American Education: the Colonial Experience we learn that in England about 48% of rural people could read; country yeomen, farmers and squires in America touted a 74% reading level.

Our founding mothers and fathers understood that their well-being depended on military and economic ties with the rest of the hemisphere; what accounts for today's so-called "minute men"? Whence comes the hate, the oppression at home for people who were welcomed only 10 years ago but vilified as vermin today? (See East Haven, Connecticut: Citing Police Abuse, Hispanics Fleeing Town)
We've become bad stewards of our inheritance, we would covet our freedom and contradict our assertion that certain rights are inalienable--this is restrictive and curtailing to our own liberties. Quotas for immigration are necessary, no doubt, but mean-spirited expulsions of young people raised in our country, graduated from our public institutions, lowers us to a jingoistic, black-booted, and hateful existence at home.

Our home: one which was helped founded and later developed by many, many hispanics.

Hilos de Memoria

2010-11-19T11:40:00.010-05:00

My first time in Santa Fe happily came with participation in Museum of New Mexico's 400-year commemoration of that city's founding in 1598 by Don Juan de Oñate.

I will quote from Museum of New Mexico's press release for Hilos de Memoria...

The exhibit – nearly 140 documents spanning Ponce de León’s first contact in Florida through New Mexico’s incorporation as a U.S. Territory – will premiere in the museum’s Albert and Ethel Herzstein Gallery from Oct. 17, 2010, to Jan. 9, 2011, before traveling to the El Paso Museum of History and the Historic New Orleans Collection.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Fundación Rafael del Pino and, along with the Archivo General de Indias (General Archive of the Indies), is co-organized with the State Corporation for the Spanish Cultural Action Abroad (Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, or SEACEX), in collaboration with Spain’s Ministries for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and Culture. Most of the documents have never been seen in North America. Their journey to Santa Fe began when Tom Aageson, director of the Museum of New Mexico Foundation, was visiting museums in Spain in 2008 as a guest of the Spanish Embassy. After seeing El Hilo, he urged Dr. Levine to see it, too. Equally impressed, she and Secretary Ashman joined Aageson in conversations with Spanish officials, who were considering which U.S. museums to display the exhibit and liked the idea of staging it during Santa Fe’s 400th anniversary celebration.

“This is truly a national story,” Aageson said. “The University of New Mexico’s library only has copies of these documents, and a retired librarian told me she could not believe they were releasing the originals from Spain.”

Many thanks to Renee Harris, Assistant Director at the Museum of New Mexico, Palace of the Governors who graciously invited me to perform Menéndez: Claiming La Florida at the Palace's theatre. The audience was very knowledgable and understood the nuances of early, Spanish colonization, its aims, failures but also its glories. They are very proud of their Spanish pedigree!

There was a placard in the Museum's permanent exhibit, "Before Jamestown" that called Santa Fe the second oldest settlement in the United States after Jamestown's in 1607. I was appalled that St. Augustine and Pedro Menéndez was completely ignored. It shocked Alberto Prieto Calixto of Rollins College, Dept of Foreign Language who brought it to my attention. Renee Harris kindly indulged me and recognized the flub after my performance. "This placard must come down" she said, "or amended" I added. One has to ask oneself: what is the willful denial in United Statesian discourse to undo the accomplishments of those men and women of 1565? No offense taken, of course--Renee was very gracious and validated the error, but I am curious what makes St. Augustine so neglectful in our national awareness.

(In front of the Pecos Mountains, Nov. '10)

(With historian Albert Prieto Calixto in Santa Fe, Nov. '10)

10 centuries in 5 minutes

2010-11-15T21:56:00.002-05:00

The arbitrary carvings of a continent cannot measure the soul of humankind. History is made up of the small, even anonymous, acts of everyday men and women. There are no borders to humankind, no text-book and arbitrary races in a "good morning" or a "let me help". The accidents of geography hold no sway in the heart of people; reach out to the world and say "I need a hand," and see what happens: all shades and forms, all manners of dress, all customs and all creeds roll up their sleeves (if they have any on), bend down and help you carry your weight.

Geography, nations, races, beliefs, habits, orthodoxies, myths, dogmas, politics, histories...these are all metaphorical commentary to a larger human existence, surely. A willful desire to establish order, nothing else...a ruse, the best we can do...

"En las naciones se ha de estudiar cuidadosamente el animal, y de fomentarlo con ciencia y esmero" /

"Nations should be minutely studied, like animals, in careful scientific speculation."

(La Nación, Buenos Aires, 10 de agosto de 1887).

Dos Passos' Early Work, One Man's Initiation- 1917

2010-11-14T18:48:00.005-05:00

One Man's Initiation: 1917 by John Dos Passos

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Structurally, this condemnation of war (as foreign policy, as practice, as viable course for a nation to take) is among the most poetic to be had.

It strangely seems like a contemporary novelette centered around two main characters, Martin Howe and Tom Randolf, American volunteers in the Ambulance service in World War One. The former character closes this book in a tight and pitched moment, while the latter is lobbed off altogether towards the end of the work leading us to believe he is killed.

There is no muscular Hemingway-like story-line here. Dos Passos' book reads more like a string of sketches intended for a larger work, though the author clearly wanted it published as is. Can be read in two hours and a half. Worthy of study for its structure, one which is episodic and juxtaposes segments into a rough-hewn and thorny whole.

You can download it for free, thanks to Project Gutenberg, here.

View all my reviews

Read McCullough's 1776

2010-11-11T08:35:00.003-05:00

1776 by David McCullough

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I had intended to skim this book to glean what I could about the genuine republican feeling in most colonials in that seminal year, 1776, for my Gálvez project. I couldn't put it down.

McCullough's can spin a yarn so attractively to the uninitiated, as his bailiwick has become the Revolution and our early republic, that we are taken along by the ears to discover that watershed year in world history.

We learn how special we are, and we are also reminded what a tall order we've given ourselves from the outset of our country. At a time when the shrinking middle class is willfully undergoing a radical shift to the right which will inevitably disenfranchise itself, this is a good antidote. McCullough's 1776 is good medicine against Glenn Beck's revisionism. Ellis' American Creation is also a good corrective.

View all my reviews

A Yank in the Trenches, by Robert Derby Holmes

2010-11-10T22:29:00.010-05:00

A Yankee in the trenches by Robert Derby Holmes

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just in time for Veterans' Day:

I found this book to be informative, anti-sentimental, definitely NOT propagandistic as are so many of the personal narratives about the First World War. Holmes wrote his book in reaction to America joining the fight against Germany; he had survived two years in the trenches as a soldier in the British Army, fighting in the Somme. Receiving a "million-dollar wound", as referred to in the war to follow the First World War (The War to End All Wars), he is discharged from the King's Service in 1917.

What I find fascinating is the practical advice given to the parents of the young people who were about to go "over there" from America to fight in the war: what to send the soldiers, how to send it, how often, what did soldiers like to eat, what cigarrettes to send, etc. The reader comes to learn the existential detail, the minutiae that agglomerated into the daily life of a man in the trenches.

This book has the elegance of a survivor's, first-person narrative even if written in colorful, cockney language. I loved it. You can read it for free on Google Books here.

On the 11th minute, of the 11th hour, of the 11th month of 1918, The First World War formally ended. This is a good read to commemorate this seminal event in world history.

Remember our Veterans today!

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Recent Interview as Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

2010-10-26T19:15:00.002-04:00

*Compliments of Ben Brotemarkle and "Florida Frontiers", the weekly Florida Historical Society Online Magazine

Free Copy of "Yo Solo", Bernardo de Gálvez' Diary of the Siege of Pensacola

2010-09-17T00:09:00.014-04:00

No worries, it is public domain. There were a handfull of editions that claimed to have been the "first" edition of this witty and engaging account of the Siege of Pensacola (9 March, 1781 - 8 May, 1781), told by the charming commander of Spanish arms, Bernardo de Gálvez. The depiction to the right is from a contemporary, French parlor book illustrating the major battles of the American Revolution: A collection of engravings of the different events of the war which procured the independence of the United States of America, Nicolas Ponce, Printer & Engraver.

So it begs the question: "Why is the Siege of Pensacola neglected in our studies of the American Revolution?" Growing up, I was never taught Gálvez, admittedly. My father once remarked, "But Cubans were here as early as the Revolution! They even fought for American Independence. Mexicans also! And Puerto Ricans!" I thought him absurd at the time.

Thousands of Latinos fought with Gálvez. Cuban soldiers were brought in by the Spanish to help train the Louisiana Militia as early as 1779. Mexican cavalry men were active throughout the Gulf Campaign. Puerto Rican officers fought side-by-side with Spanish, Irish, and "Free Black" Regiments from all over Latin America.

Are we so ungracious, that we do not teach this vital contribution to our liberty? Of course not; do not think it. Spain was axed from our national myth makers' discourse in the 19th & 20th centuries as that empire was contesting with our west-ward moving Republic (I shy away from saying "Empire", though one could argue its use). Perhaps the Spanish-American War is the culmination of that rivalry...

Look to Gálvez for a while, you can download the PDF I created. Learn what happened. Free of charge: just pass the word, OK? Especially in Arizona...?

Yo Solo

Commissioned to work on Bernardo de Gálvez, (1746-1786)

2010-09-02T11:06:00.000-04:00

August, 2010: Named the John C. Pace, Eminent Scholar at University of West Florida. I have been commissioned to write a one-person show on the life of Revoltionary-era, Spanish war hero, Bernardo de Gálvez y Madrid (1846-1786), pictured below.

When remembering those who helped us to free ourselves: to Lafayette, Kosciuszko, and Von Steuben must be added the name of Gálvez; whenever hallowed places like Bunker Hill, Saratoga and Yorktown are named, so must Pensacola be uttered. I am eager to commit myself to foster that awareness within and without the State of Florida.

147th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg

2010-07-01T13:27:00.008-04:00

One-Hundred and Forty-Seven years ago (7 Scores & 7 years ago) began the battle that would save our country from balkanizing into a cauldron of barbarous racism and slavery: The Battle of Gettysburg began on July 1, 1863.

In my family there are those whom have never enjoyed the full measure of freedom. We are, quite arguably, the freest People ever to have walked the earth. Gettysburg played a huge role in that development. Earn it. Study our past with awe and with a critical eye. Evolve and our country evolves with you. Resolve and your country, which means the people around you, is made more habitable for human felicity and goodness. We can continue to do this. We must: it is the price of Freedom.

"We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

--Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, 19 November, 1863

2010-06-29T21:43:00.001-04:00

If you're in the St. Augustine area, stop by and visit the Admiral. He will hold audience on the 6 & 13 of July, 2010. Simple visit, no gloating or chest thumping...come sit with him for a while, you'll learn more about Spain's hinter-most outpost, and our oldest, continuous city, St. Augustine!

Spanish Participation in the American Revolution

2010-06-15T01:17:00.008-04:00

Take the 10 minutes this Fourth of July to listen to this quick over-view explaining the indispensable role that Hispanics (and in particular Cubans) played in freeing our country from Britain. Thousands of men from Cuba enlisted, along with Spanish Regulars, and came to the aid of Washington, Lee and Morgan. Hispanics safeguarded the Mississippi Delta from British use in the war, negating the British a sought after 2nd front against the Continental Army and preventing the British to navigate its waters. Carlos III, King of Spain, matched France's contribution in men, treasure and materiel. The Spanish King declared war on Britain in 1779. Spanish Field Marshall Bernardo de Galvéz y Madrid raises an army in Cuba to take Florida back from the British, after succeeding in occupying all of the British outposts on the Mississippi River. He generously supplied our army with medical care, foodstuffs and munitions at Fort Pitt, and helps to outfit our forts up and down the Mississippi, as far north as modern-day Michigan.

Remember the sacrifices that Hispanics made this Fourth of July. Be proud of our common desire for freedom and justice.

Have fun this holiday! (For further reading:

Spain and the Independence of the United States: An Intrinsic Gift

)

Review of my Pensacola Performance, underwritten by UWF

2010-03-20T11:52:00.006-04:00

Actor takes on role of Florida's founders

(CLICK HERE to listen to a recent, radio interview on NPR station, WUWF, Pensacola)

FROM Pensacola News Journal, Pensacola's Daily, 20 March 2010

The Spanish boots of Pedro Menendez de Aviles strike the floor with authority as the founder of St. Augustine flows out of La Florida antiquity; a ghostly light sprays a small gathering of guests in his home in Asturias. The year is 1567, eight years after Tristan de Luna y Arellano established an ephemeral colony on what became Pensacola Bay. And a darkly suited, bearded Spaniard greets his guests with prayer, melodious song and claims of Spanish glories that made St. Augustine the first permanent settlement.

He turns sad, remembering long years of fighting the French, his son Juan now lost five years off the coast of La Florida; he suffers Spanish attempts at colonization, including Don Tristan, now in Mexico City, discredited as a failed colonizer whose settlement was withdrawn in less than two years.

But he admits that Luna, his brave countryman, had been first, in 1559, and is now mistakenly maligned for a failure beyond his grasp. Munching on grapes, teaching a young guest the art of swordplay, the feisty Admiral of the Spanish Main and Governor of La Florida enjoys his hour of fame that helped shape his nation's destiny in the New World.

And in the awakening, the professional actor of Cuban ancestry, Chaz Mena of Miami and New York, snatches away his moustache and beard and is jestingly aware that he's a stranger in the old courtroom of the Pensacola Cultural Center. His humor enlightens a realistic portrayal drawn from extensive research. He knows the fierce rivalry of two North Florida cities, both immensely proud of their signature roles in the origins of La Florida.

This Chautauquan-style performance, sponsored by Pensacola arts, preservation and heritage organizations, was arranged by University of West Florida archaeologist Margo Stringfield, a member of the Florida Humanities Council board of directors.

A historian and author, Margo is admired for her devotion to preserving St. Michael's Cemetery. She hopes the film, television, movie and stage actor could expand his performance to portray Don Tristan or Bernardo de Galvez, recognized today in Spain as the heroic commander who led his brig Galveztown into Pensacola harbor against British gunships and defeated the British army in a 61-day land siege across the North Hill heights in 1781. And Mena says he's eager to learn more about the Luna settlement story and Pensacola's Spanish heritage in his quest to portray Florida's opening chapters.

Spanish-born Maria Davis is delighted that a shipyard in Galvez' birthplace, Málaga, Spain, is building a replica of the governor-general's flagship Galveztown as a floating museum in celebration of the often overlooked Spanish-American alliance. Researchers of the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum donated 25 trunks of Florida live oak for ribbing the replica brig. The Spanish national treasure is expected to visit Pensacola in 2011.

And Davis hopes to organize another "Galvez Celebration" for the floating museum that will highlight General Galvez's defeat of British forces in Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida during the American Revolution.

The Galveztown visit can continue Pensacola's national recognition that grew with the Spanish royalty visit and the Luna 450th celebration. Maybe actor Chaz Mena will be Don Bernardo, standing at the helm, Yo Solo (I alone), bravely entering British Pensacola harbor and helping American colonists win independence.

The Man behind Menendez | StAugustine.com

2010-02-26T17:01:00.006-05:00

The Man behind Menendez | StAugustine.com

By Maria D'Adamo

St. Augustine's founder and Spanish Florida's first governor, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, will be brought to life by television actor Chaz Mena. On Feb. 27 at the Lightner Museum, Mena will impersonate the Spanish admiral to spark Noche de Gala, commemorating the 491st birthday of the founder of the nation's oldest city.

Cuban-American Mena has an extensive theatrical background and is best known for his recurring and guest roles in "Law and Order," "Miami Vice" and "Third Watch." On the stage, Mena has been versatile, assuming a wide range of characters from the comedic Tevye of "Fiddler on the Roof" to the radically idealist Valentin in "The Kiss of the Spider Woman." "Ace Ventura" with Jim Carrey and "Miami Rhapsody," starring Sarah Jessica Parker, are among his film credits.

Mena is enthusiastic about his presentation in St. Augustine.

"I feel privileged to incarnate the intense personality of Pedro Menendez, and I'm grateful to the City of St. Augustine for this opportunity," he said.

Q. It is said that each character touches the life of a performer. How does St. Augustine's founder influence yours?

A. Being raised in Miami, to me it's like making a pilgrimage. In St. Augustine, the Spanish settlement had a most singular quality, different from the way colonies were conducted in Central and South America with conquerors who subdued natives and slaughtered entire tribes.

The way Menendez dealt with the circumstances he faced in St. Augustine was unprecedented. He was a more humane conqueror, and ahead of his time, in a way. I read letters that Menendez addressed to the king of Spain at the onset of the settlement in St. Augustine, and it was fascinating to discover the different facets in the character's personality. He was driven by the Catholic, universal belief of the conquest that led him to exterminate the French Protestants at Fort Caroline outpost, and yet he was compassionate toward the Indians and wanted them to be part of the "new order." He faced a completely new situation, which he handled with resolution and without constraints.

Q. It seems like a conflicting perspective.

A. Not for Menendez. He could discern between the French troops (enemies of Spain who settled in America where they didn't belong), and the Native Americans, who were dwellers of the land and with whom he was to build the new town.

The slaughter of the French soldiers in Matanzas was an atrocity, but from the Spanish Catholic perspective at that time, Protestants were regarded as almost satanic people, out of God's realm, and that's one reason their extermination was justified.

But on the other hand, unlike the British and the French, the Spanish conquered Florida in a different manner. They established a relationship with the land and its people. They married aborigines and strove to give the Indians protection under God. In fact, Menendez would negotiate the peace with the different tribes he encountered in his journey across Florida.

Q. How would you judge the interest of the American public towards Hispanic themes and culture?

A. American audiences are beginning to understand that the Latino culture is eclectic, with different experiences, culturally varied, and politically pluralistic. Even Hollywood is reacting to the demographic reality, is slowly incorporating more Hispanic actors.

Q. Your Latino heritage seemed to have helped you bond with Pedro Menendez, hasn't it?

A. The Hispanic heritage is not essential. Anyone with courage who embraces the essence of the character can play the role. In my particular case, since I speak Spanish, I could produce a more thorough investigation and study the role by reading letters and documents firsthand from the original. That got me more in touch with Menendez.

Q. Did your role of Judge Montaldo in "Law and Order" also benefit from your Hispanic insight?

A. Law and Order tries to reflect reality, and in a way, meritocracy. Latinos are dedicated and work hard to reach their goals. I haven't seen many Hispanic judges on the screen, and when I was offered the role, I thought it would be interesting to portray Montaldo as a Latino who achieved his position on the basis of his abilities and accomplishments. The character also reflects my own personal struggle during my college years, when in spite of a scholarship, I even worked at construction sites to pay for my tuition.

Q. You were nourished by three schools of theater: the Russian, the American and also the Hispanic academia. Which would you say impacted your career the most?

A. What impacted my career the most is having grown up in a family where my mom and dad would tell stories about their country ... an infusion of culture, language and people. Back in Miami, we had theater in the street every night. In fact, my first theatrical appearance was there, playing Charles Chaplin to make my dad laugh. We would get out to the front porch, my mother would make coffee, and my father, uncles and aunts would tell stories about Cuba. At that time, Cuba was just in my imagination. This is who I am. Everyone is a recollection of stories ... In my case, stories of a country I only recently visited.

Q. What's the toughest aspect of your career?

A. The challenge of being a family man, an actor and a husband. I've been married to Ileana for 14 years, and she is my perfect soul mate. We are trying to have a child now. Sometimes I have to perform and rehearse in different cities and I'm away from home for months at a time. She travels to where I am to see me just for a day, and I do the same. I can't complain -- Pedro Menendez was often forced to be away from his loving family for years on end.

Come one, come all to St. Augustine's "Noche de Gala" 491st Jubilee!!

2010-02-15T17:05:00.012-05:00

Today, on 15 February, 1519, Pedro Menendez de Aviles was born in Aviles, Asturias, Spain! The founder of St. Augustine, scourge of pirates in his native Asturian waters, Admiral of the Spanish Main, Governor of Cuba and La Florida! Viva el Adelantado Menendez!!!

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés 491st birthday party from: Historic City News,February 15, 2010

The City of St. Augustine invites all Historic City local news readers to join in the 16th Century Noche de Gala Celebration honoring the founder of our nation’s oldest city.

The celebration begins on Saturday February 27th at 5:00 p.m. on the north end of St. George Street at the city gates.

A grand and exciting procession through the city will announce the arrival of don Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, Adelantado of Florida, and his colorful entourage. From the city gate to the Lightner Museum, Menéndez will lead the way engaging the town folks as he inspects his colony and prepares to enjoy his birthday celebration, Noche de Gala.

The arriving procession will find the Lightner Museum and grounds immersed in 16th century entertainment, actors, dancers, musicians, and colonial artisans, all anxious to greet Menéndez and wish him well. Don’t be surprised if Menéndez joins in the playful atmosphere.

The exquisite Lightner Museum Grand Ballroom is the setting for cocktails at 6:30 p.m. and dinner on the Mezzanine at 8:00 p.m. Entertainment features Menéndez, his entourage, strolling musicians, heralding horns, magicians, and swordsmen. Anything can happen. Following dinner, revelers dance to the contemporary sounds of The Company band, and the evening culminates with national anthems of Spain and the United States and shouts of “Viva Avilés, Viva St. Augustine!”

This year the Gala is proud to present Chaz Mena portraying Menéndez. An award-winning actor of stage, film and television, Mena has conducted research on Menéndez; consequently, Mena’s presentation is clear and captivating.

Don’t expect Mena to present Menéndez all by himself. He will need your help; he will ask questions, and bellow answers. This Menéndez wants to know your opinion of the New World in the first settlement of this new continent, La Florida.

Menéndez was not a quiet man; we find him robust and exuberant, fond of music and a fine dancer. Chaz Mena’s outstanding interpretation of Menéndez will enlighten you, and you will get to know your city’s founder as never before, up close and personal.

Attire for guests is 16th century costume or black tie. Tickets are available for $185 per person for the full evening celebration or $50 for the cocktail reception only. Proceeds will benefit the City of St. Augustine’s historic preservation efforts.

For reservations and information call Catherine Culver at 904.825.5033

2010-01-17T18:12:00.001-05:00

✬ 19 February at 7:00PM, Tampa, FL at the Historic Cuban Club: unveiling the short film, Ybor city and the Cuban Club as José Martí.

Unveiling "Ybor City and the Cuban Club" February 19, 2010, 7:00 PM

2010-01-17T16:52:00.016-05:00

José Martí in Ybor City, 1891.

Same hallowed spot in 2009, the day we shot Ybor City and the Cuban Club

Mark I. Greenberg, MLS, Ph.D. Director, Special Collections Department and Florida Studies Center, USF, will officially open Ybor City and the Cuban Club to the general public on February 19, 2010. This is an introductory film which will be part of a permanent exhibit at the Tampa Bay History Center. The film, written & directed by Joe Costa of Costa Creative, will be shown in the Cuban Club in Ybor City and will then be made available on the internet via links from the History Center web site as part of their permanent exhibit. José Marti´ is played by your's truly. Ybor City and the Cuban Club will be inaugurated on February 19, 2010, 7:00 PM, at the Cuban Club, 2010 Avenida Republica de Cuba in Ybor City, FL (National Register of Historic Places since 1972).

The Youngest Martiana I Know

2009-12-10T14:16:00.005-05:00

A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself.
-José Martí

Much love to one the youngest Martianas I know: the wonderfully talented Ally Greenberg. We love Ally: she is a soccer star, a grade-A Student, inherited the prettiest blue eyes you have ever seen. She lives in Phoenix Arizona and takes care of her Mommy & Daddy & Big Sister. Her favorite poem may be "Los Zapaticos de Rosa" by Martí.

"I had to write a report for Spanish Heritage, I chose José Martí...I got an A+ in Spanish. Love, Allison" reads her note.

No one knows what makes up the loving fibers in the tender heart of a child like Ally. Talking to her inspires me towards Love and Empathy...what Martí really meant when he called for a Republic of Love in Cuba...

Dios te guarde, Ally.

"Menéndez: Claiming La Florida for King & Cross" Opens in St. Augustine!

2009-11-25T16:34:00.012-05:00

Timucuan artifacts, Pedro Menéndez outline city’s story

By PETER GUINTA, for St. Augustine's newspaper, The St. Augustine Record

A reflective yet self-justifying “Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles” took the stage Monday at Flagler College Auditorium and recounted details of his founding of St. Augustine in September 1565, his successful attack against Fort Caroline and his massacre of 150 shipwrecked French sailors.
Television actor Chaz Mena portrayed Menendez as passionate, noble, ambitious, callous and devout.
“I am not a conquistador,” he told the packed 800-seat auditorium. “I want to be your founding father.”

Photo by Ed Dreher
The presentation was the second of seven in the Discover First America: Legacies of Florida series.
Just before “Menendez” spoke, Kathleen Deagan, the University of Florida’s distinguished research curator of Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, described the search for archaeological evidence found in scores of digs at the Fountain of Youth and the Mission of Nombre de Dios.
She said he arrived here in five ships of 11 he started with in Spain.

However, the location of his first fort has not been determined, she said.Two accounts contradict one another. The first says the Spanish soldiers dug a trench quickly to act as protection against the Timucuan. The second says Menendez was offered a large house in the Timucuan village of Seloy.
He arrived with 800 people — 300 soldiers, 200 sailors and several hundred “useless” people, he reported. But by November of that year, the colony was down to 200 people.

“It was a hard beginning,” Deagan said. “There was hunger and the Indians were becoming hostile.”
In 1566, Menendez moved the city to Anastasia Island for seven years, she said.“No trace of that settlement has ever been found,” she said, adding that high tides, storms, seasonal floods and soil erosion may be the reason both sites have not been located.

She did show photographs of the very few Timucuan artifacts uncovered by her digs.

In 1572, Menendez moved the city back to the mainland, to where it is today.When he first arrived, Menendez held the first Thanksgiving in the New World.

“There wasn’t turkey, but garbanzo beans, ham, olives and fish and small game,” she said. “There were very few deer.”

“We are fairly certain that the first fort was somewhere near the area of Hospital Creek,” she said.
The energetic Mena acts in movies, such as “Miami Rhapsody” with Sarah Jessica Parker, plays a judge on Law & Order and performs in off-Broadway plays.

His research and performance were so thorough that one might think Menendez had been channeled.
“There is an old Asturian saying, ‘Once you have a reputation, especially a bad one, go to sleep, you cannot change it.’” he said.

photos by Jackie Hird

He had been a merchant with his own ships when Phillip II, king of Spain, asked him to go to the New World to counter the French, who were already there, he said. He had been with his wife for only four of his 20 years of marriage, he said. He called the Gulf Stream “a river given to the Spanish people by God.”

Trying to explain his sometime cruelty, he said, “I was reared in violence and governments depend on people like me.”

photos by Jackie Hird

Discover First AmericaThe Discover First America series celebrates the city’s 450th commemoration, 2013-2015. All programs are free and are held in the Flagler College Auditorium beginning at 7 p.m. The series continues with the following programs:

* Tuesday, April 13 — “Palaces in Paradise: Flagler’s Age of Opulence,” with Tom Graham, professor emeritus of history, Flagler College; John Blades, executive director of Flagler Museum; and a special “Conversation with Henry Flagler,” with Flagler played by Tom Rahner and Mayor Joe Boles as himself.
* Tuesday, May 18 — “Road to Freedom: African-Americans in Florida,” by Derek Hankerson and James Bullock, both actors and creative directors.

At Academy of Urban Planning in Brooklyn, NY

2009-11-06T18:24:00.017-05:00

Early, at about 6 AM, along with the saintly breed of men and women who armed with their well-oiled hand tools and well-worn leather tool bags, I trained to Brooklyn, NY on the holy L train. Though in costume, dressed as Marti, sans mustache, I was one of them: a craftsman getting to work.
I was going to bring Jose Marti to the young men and women of the Academy of Urban Planning in Brooklyn, NY--not two miles from where Marti lived with the Mantillas in the 1880's.
They are beautiful children; children I call them but all were seniors who would soon graduate. I was very moved by their questions, though felt bad for them as most were sleepy: we started at 8:30AM!
Their reading list is impressive, their understanding of Latin-America is palpable, and their place in its history discussed openly. The Latin-American Studies at AUC maintain a blog, see for yourself!

I consider the work done at AUP absolutely vital. Thanks to Professor(s) Jorge Sandoval and Diana Isern for their help this morning: they are true heroes, another example of Latinos dedicated to the development (and well-being) of the students entrusted to them. I was struck by their love and dedication at every interaction with their kids--the joy with which these teachers sanctify their good work!

A good worker is a saint, to work well is holy; what a privilege to have been asked to visit these beautiful young people!

My parting message:
"It is necessary to make virtue fashionable."
-José Martí

Astonished by Yoani Sanchez being denied a visa...

2009-10-26T09:10:00.011-04:00

"Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom."
-José Martí

I cannot understand the short-sightedness of the Cuban Government to resist granting Yoani Sanchez a visa to receive the Maria Moors Cabot prize from Columbia University (she had already won a coveted Prémio Ortega y Gassét for journalism). I don't get it, admittedly.

It is the desire of every government, no matter what its ideological means or ends, to stay in power. That is plain. Yoani is highly critical of her government which appears to be doggedly unresponsive to the plight of its 25-50 year-old demographic. "A good government is one that offers jobs, peace and security to its citizens," to quote Silvio Rodriguez, Cuban artist and PCC party functionary. It may be that from the Cuban government's point of view freedom of movement is not a guaranteed right but a privilege. We in the U.S. have been guilty of the same in the past. But Cuba, like the U.S. is a signatory of the U.N. charter where article 13 stipulates freedom of movement as a right, not a privilege. (Not that the U.S. government has ever trampled upon the UN Charter--oh, no, that has never happened...well, not this year anyway.)

Seriously, to deny one of its celebrated citizens, even if she is critical of her government, is too great a risk for Cuba in the eyes of the world community. The present government in Cuba withholds its right to deny or to grant freedom of movement to any of its citizenry, that's clear, but it is a member of the world community and must also commit to the first line of its own constitution--directly inspired by Martí--

"WE DECLARE
our will that the law of laws of the Republic be guided by the following strong desire of José Martí, at last achieved; "I want the fundamental law of our republic to be the tribute of Cubans to the full dignity of man"

Please watch this video. I apologize, the video is not translated into any other language but in its original Spanish. You can read the transcript, in English, on Yoani's blog here.

200 yrs late: Poe's grand send off; Martí translates "The Raven"

2009-10-16T19:14:00.012-04:00

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
--José Martí

Martí owed much to the decadent and symbolist movement in french poetry, who in turn revered Poe as a direct influence to their work. Martí translated & published two poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Annabelle Lee and The Raven. Below is Martí 's translation of the latter poem, one which seems to be more of a transposing to the Spanish, than a translation. Enjoy:

El Cuervo
-por Edgar Allan Poe

Una Medianoche fría, mientras yo triste leía
Sobre mucho tomo viejo, tomo añejo anos ha,
Cabeccando, dormitando, oí de pronto alguien llamando
Suavemente, alguien llamando a la puerta de mi hogar,
Es sin duda alguin amigo, que me viene a visitar:

¡Eso es y nada mas!

Bien recuerdo que fue en una noche de frío importuno
Y con [SIC] la sombra en la alfombra iba a formar.

Yo tenía sed de dia: yo quería hallar consuelo,
En mis libros, a mi duelo por aquella
Que los ángeles llaman Eleonor.
Leonor pura, la doncella de hermosura singular.
Y el sedoso y vago ruido, del cortinaje tupido
Me aterraba, me llenaba
Me llenaba de un...no sentido jamás:
Y, acallado mi oculto corazon, dije resuelto:
Es sin duda algun amigo que me quiere visitar,
Un amigo retardado que sin duda quiere entrar.

Con el animo robusto, dije, fuera susto
¡Señor mio! Dama mia, vuestra excusa he de implorar,
Pero estaba adormecido, y llamastéis con un ruido
Tan sauve, tan dormido, a la puerta de mi hogar
Que creía que no oía: abri pues de par en par,

¡ Ah, sombras, y nada mas!

Alli estuve tantas horas, tantas hora, en la sombra aterradora

Soñando un sueño que el hombre nunca se atrevío a soñar.

Pero nada se movía; pero nada aparecía
Pero sólo se entreoía la palabra "Leonor mía".
Que yo hablaba, y el eco se gozaba en murmurar:

Eso es, ¡y nada más!

-Obras Completas, 17:336

October 10: ¡Grito De Yara!, Cuba first rises against tyranny

2009-10-10T22:19:00.000-04:00

I wonder how wise it would have been to have titled this entry "Cuba's Concord & Lexington", as I first intended; the rank and file of Cuba's first significant act against tyranny were erstwhile slaves, not free yeomen as in Massachusetts in 1775.

The Ten Years' War, (1868-1878), began on October 10, 1868, when planter-patriot Carlos Manuel de Céspedes precipitated the agreed date for the uprising, citing revolutionary exigencies. (Actually Cespedes wanted the revolution to begin in his province of Oriente, not in neighboring Camaguey, as the secretly assembled parliament agreed upon. )

Martí made countless speeches on three continents to observe this key event that started a sea-change in the hearts of his countrymen and women. As he made clear 25 years later, after Yara, there was no going back. If it were to have taken 100 years to extricate Cuba from the Spanish Empire, Martí reminds us that ever since Yara, Cubans had vowed to do just that.

Click Here to read the Manifesto, signed by Cespedes amongst others, published on 6 October 1868, four days before Cubans rose at Yara.

1978 Memorial Jose Marti, Havana, Cuba

2009-09-04T21:16:00.001-04:00

1958 Memorial Jose Marti, Havana, Cuba

Shared via AddThis

An interesting account of the largest memorial dedicated to José Martí. I first saw it in 1994, cycling with my wife's cousin, Lydia Rodriguez. She is a very attractive woman and when she cycled past the same memorial, the honor guard yelled out "Mamita, what an ass!" I yelled back "thank you sweetheart", as if he meant me ( I've never understood "chuchería"). The guard retorted by screaming "¡Maricón!"

In that little urban moment, lies a typical Cuban love triangle, complete with homophobia and misogyny.

A Great Summer Read, A Primer to Aléjo Carpentier

2009-08-21T12:24:00.001-04:00

Carpentier incarnates the perfect example of a Cuban intellectual. Eclectic in their authorities --baileywicks, really-- as people come to consult with them to better understand arcane subjects like, for instance, 18th century typography.   Cuba is an island that begs, borrows and steals from all over the world; its demographic reflects the full spectrum of the world's diversity. It's music, ideology, its patois-like Spanish, diet, art, all human creation in short is imported, masticated, and spat out--and this is the miracle-- "a la Cubain". Havana's architecture, to name one example, is an amalgamation of thousands of years of varied architectural orders, all neatly packaged into little bourgeois homes and facades.   

Havana's architecture is given a protagonist's role in Carpentier’s in short novel, The Chase, that can act like a primer to his longer works.   (Carpentier)

Incidentally, when I have visited Havana, I have liked to visit his grave in the Necropolis there (Cementério de Colón). This man who was a leading musicologist and aesthetic is buried under a nondescript headstone, deprived of any ornamentation. I wouldn't put it past Carpentier to mock his own vastly important body of work--typically Cuban!

Viva Sotomayor!

2009-08-14T08:21:00.000-04:00

Where is the Algerian, Corsican, Vietnamese in France's highest court? Where is the Chechen in Russia's highest court? The Mayan in Mexico's, the Kurd in Iraq's, the Armenian in Turkey's, the Nigerian in England's, the Native American in Canada's, the Aboriginal in Australia's HIGHEST COURT????

For all our shortcomings, we're slowly moving towards a meritocracy.

¡Viva Sotomayor! ¡¡Séamos Sotomayorístas!!

Comments from a Radio Hate Monger from Boston

2009-07-08T10:47:00.000-04:00

The last legitimate war will be the one against Hate.
--Jose Marti

This is nothing new. The America For Americans Movement became almost institutionalized after the U.S. 's industrial growth spurt at the turn of the 19 into the 20 century. While we're in need of CHEAP LABOR we have played the "give us your tired, your poor, etc." card. The financial growth of the 90's (unprecedented in U.S. history, let's remember) begged for cheap labor, easily exploitable, with no watchdog whatsoever. Well, we don't need them now, do we? Suddenly Mexicans are untermenchen, vermin, leeches.

Please listen to this Goebbels-like transmission. "Millions of leeches from a primitive country coming to leech off you," says Jay Severin on WTKK Radio in Boston (no this is not from a middle American city, nor southern red state, ok?). He goes on to blame the Mexicans for the Swine Flu, never minding that the Swine Flu seems to have originated in the U.S. READ THESE LATEST REPORTS ON THE SWINE FLU ORIGINS.

As the economy worsens, prepare yourselves for more...

An Early Florida Adventure Story: The Fray Andres de San Miguel Account

2009-07-02T10:05:00.000-04:00

Another of the European castaway accounts that became a new literary genre in the 16 century. Reading a few of these now, I realize that by the time Defoe writes Robinson Crusoe, the genre is so well-known, well-read, accessible and acknowledged as a legitimate genre, it begins to become used as extended allegory--secular versions of Pilgrim's Progress, where the protagonist depends upon his own resources (reason, initiative, will) to save himself, not by the Deity. By the 18 century, marooned European sailors become hackneyed literary devices for use in both metaphorical/philosophical, humanist works as well as adventure stories.

With his account, Fray Andres de San Miguel comes across as an intelligent and compassionate young man --though written later in his life while he was living in Mexico City as a Carmeline friar. A ship-wrecked Andres de San Miquel promised the Almighty to devote his life to God should He deliver him from the wilds of La Florida. So is this a religious' look back to his younger days,to the seminal chapter in his life that led him to find God? Not solely, no. There is intriguing anthropological information on aboriginal Florida, a long-lost people, with nothing left to us of their lives but for these accounts (also see Hernando D'Escalante Fontaneda's account , 1575).

As a side note of interest, I should mention that Fray Andres was a skilled engineer that helped fix the botched, first attempts to dredge out the lagoons around Mexico City. By the 17 Century, Mexico City city becomes the most populated city in the Americas--a cultural and political hub of inestimable value.

Dispelling Myths in re-telling "La Conquista"

2009-05-18T14:52:00.000-04:00

Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest by Matthew Restall

Above all, what one may profit from reading this book would have to be a clearer understanding of the surreptitiously and higgedly-piggedly way in which the conquest was achieved. The Monarchs of the new country called "Las Españas" were not bank rolling the efforts but granting individuals who headed, remarkably similar to corporations, groups of kinsman, bondsmen, and slaves into the newly discovered lands for profit. The Church was both an ally and a justification to spread their culture, by force if necessary, and acquire lands for Spain and the "saving of souls" languishing in ignorance and neglect. Sanctified conquest, "the truth" being administered by the entrepreneurial spirit. Sound familiar?

Eye-opening were the freedmen, erstwhile slaves, who actively participated in the land-grab. Informing was the fact that the majority of "the conquest" was nothing other than an allied effort MANNED by warring tribes fighting to rid themselves of Empires like the "Aztec Mexica" and "The Inca" in order to become subjects of an empire that was, at least, farther away. Hundreds of thousands of natives allied themselves to hundreds of aliens from across the seas in epic battles that would grant them their "freedom". To what extent they were proved right and/or wrong is also discussed in Restall's book--perhaps not enough, actually. Anyone wanting to understand the actual way the conquest was achieved ("conquest" becoming a misnomer as you read along) must consult Restall--give it a read, have at it!

View all my reviews.

Martí Disembarks & Papi's Birthday

2009-04-11T13:33:00.001-04:00

Today is my Dad's birthday. He is 77 years old, bless his soul through and through!

When I called him this morning to wish him a Happy Birthday--as I'm NYC and he's back in Miami--I asked him if he knew anything else about his birth date. He says: "uh...Simon Bolivar lost his virginity today"? Uh, no dad. He asked for a clue. "Row, row, row your boat..." I sang to him.

Ah.....well, then it must be the date that Martí and Maximo Gomez landed in Cuba to start the last and succesful revolutionary war against Spain!"

Yes!!!

On this date in 1895 José Martí and Máximo Gomez, along with Brigidiers Francisco Borrero y Ángel Guerra, Marcos del Rosario (later Colonel Rosario) and César Salas' (later made a Captain) disembarked from a german boat skippered by Henrich J.T. Lowe. In a terrible tropical squall, the men were lowered into a dingy 3 miles off the coast of Cajobabo beach in Oriente Province (eastern-most province of Cuba). They rowed and baled for 3 miles in an open boat guided by the mountains they could barely make out ahead of them. Gomez's diary describes Marti's reaction upon first making out the mountains of Cuba and later the shore, pelted by the rain in huge goblets, under a dark squall, becoming more and more discernible with every oar's stroke:

"Marti, stunned, could only say: 'Cuba.' "

From Marti's Diary we read:

11 Abril. - ... Capitán conmovido. Bajan el bote. Llueve grueso al arrancar. Rumbamos mal. Ideas diversas y revueltas en el bote. Más chubasco. El timón se pierde. Fijamos rumbo. Llevo el remo de proa. Salas rema seguido. Paquito Borrero y el General ayudan de popa. Nos ceñimos los revólvers. Rumbo al abra. La luna asoma, roja, bajo una nube. Arribamos a una playa de piedras, La Playita, (al pié de Cajobabo.) Me quedo en el bote el último vaciándolo. Salto. Dicha grande. Viramos el bote, y el garrafón de agua. Bebemos Málaga. Arriba por piedras, espinas y cenegal. Oímos ruido, y preparamos, cerca de una talanquera. Ladeando un sitio, llegamos a una casa. Dormimos cerca, por el suelo.

11 April.-...the Captain emotional. The boat is lowered. Raining hard from the start. We make bad progress. Diverse and mixed impressions in the boat. More squall. We lose the tiller. We set a course. I take the oar at the prow. Salas oars behind me. Paquito Borrero and the General helps at the bow. We fix our revolvers. Inlet ahead. The moon peeks at us from behind a cloud, red. We raise a small, pebbled beach, La Playita, (at the foot of Cajobabo). I stay behind uloading the boat. Jump! What joy! We turn the boat over and empty the water bottle. We drink Málaga brandy over pebbles, thorns and mud. We hear sounds and we're at the ready by a sea wall. Bypassing apace, we near a house. We sleep nearby on the ground. (My Translation)

Gone is the oratorical prose, the ornate sentences, complex and floral. No more aphorism. This becomes a War Diary, like Caesar's Gallic Wars. Lezama Lima will call Marti's diary from 11 April - 19 May, 1895, the greatest poem ever written by any Cuban. The only English translation can be found in Esther Allen's wonderful, Penguin Edition, Selected Writings of José Martí .

Happy Birthday Papi, thank you for teaching me to be a good man!

Eres mi Rey.

2009-02-12T14:04:00.000-05:00

“Who is thinking of Lincoln’s Birthday, which was yesterday?” / Quien pienzara de Lincoln, en su anniversario, que fue ayer?” --Martí, Dia de Inauguración

In 1809, two-hundred years ago today, Abraham Lincoln was born on 12 February. Today, he's all over TV, YouTube, the internet, with events planned in Springfield and D.C.-- people pausing all over the country today, not a majority but enough of us --especially as the Great Emancipator’s fruits are plainly visible to even the most callous, the most recalcitrant and hateful of our countrymen and women.

If you come across this entry, today especially, please ask yourself: would he be pleased with his country, with what we've become? Are we “post-racial” as is commented lately? Have we become the meritocracy Lincoln thought he was ensuring in 1865? (Is there anywhere on earth that can happen?)

Do we have a government “of the people, by the people, for the people?” We must ask ourselves, “who” are the people?" Is “the people” a certain economic class, a particular ethnicity? Do they speak "English Only?" The People: must they believe in G-d as a prerequisite, or can they strive to separate any mention of a deity from political discourse? Can an openly atheist politician survive any election in our country; can a Muslim? On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower approved a joint resolution declaring “In God We Trust” the national motto of the United States. Are you only one of the people if you believe this to be a “Christian” or a “God-conscious” state?

Are we a democracy or are we an empire? Do we believe in a Jeffersonian State, where the pursuit of happiness is to be unencumbered by the state or any aristocratic class, keeping a close watch on our civil liberty, the people (that word again) giving by their assent in an orderly rule of law? How many of us want the United States to become a Napoleonic State: exporting our “ideals” as a cover for economic (and military) domination of far-away continents? Is this an Augustan State, unapologetically maintaining “Pax Americana” over the face of the world – calling any group that dissents “the bad guys”? We hunt the “bad guys” with glee and bathe our heroes in their blood. Are we sure we're right; do we have the answer for Humanity?

Lincoln believed America had a special place in world history, an unprecedented place: a vibrantly ambitious democracy on a continent for the taking (unless you're indigent), there is no question about that. With a strong sense of righteousness, Lincoln felt burdened with saving the Union for generations to come, we all concur--but to what purpose?

So, if remembering Lincoln today you come across this entry—today especially—please ask yourself: “to what purpose”?

Martí and Darwin / Martí y Darwin

2009-02-04T09:46:00.004-05:00

**A Mountain’s Promontory

Marti was in Havana after the Pact of Zanjón, amnesty being given to all political exiles by the Spanish in Cuba. At that time, Marti was working for Miguel Viondi’s law firm in Havana. Another employee of the firm, a simpleton, remarked that a certain José Antonio Cortína was to speak of Charles Darwin that night at the Lyceum in Guanabacóa (a township outside of Havana). He mockingly referred to Darwin as “an Englishman who suggests that he came from a monkey!”

An explosion of laughter followed with only Martí silently dissenting. When the others probed to see what Martí thought, he exclaimed indignantly:

“That man, Charles Darwin, whom you speak of, has a forehead like a mountain’s promontory.”

He continued lecturing the office —keeping the same angry tone—attempting to explain Darwin’s work, until he realized the futility of relating the same to that boisterous and unintelligent group.

Linked below is Martí's obituary on Darwin, published in La Opinion, a Venezuelan weekly, writing for which Martí becomes world famous.

Darwin ha Muerto

Remembering the BRONZE TITAN, General Antonio Macéo y Grajáles

2008-12-07T10:35:00.004-05:00

“Quien intente apoderarse de Cuba, recogerá el polvo de su suelo anegado en sangre, sino perece en la lucha.”
--Antonio Macéo

Antonio Macéo y Grajales was killed one hundred and twelve years ago. We will never fully appreciate this man, his five brothers José, Miguel, Julio, Marcos and Dominga de la Cazada (his only surviving brother at the end of the war), and their mother Mariana Grajales y Macéo until Cuba is delivered from its incipient racism. Any cursory, “Googled” search of this brilliant man will be compromised with “but” or “if only”—I mean that the greatness of this man seems always tertiary and never fully celebrated. On top of this, Cubans themselves only seem to emphasize his grit and almost super-human faith and force of arms in the struggle against colonialism. Never is there a fully-rendered appreciation of his letter-writing, strategy, or his intellect.

It doesn’t help that Martí himself referred to Macéo, repeatedly, as his “right arm.” A subservient appendage? Not really, no, Martí was speaking as the First Delegate of the Cuban Revolution Party—an umbrella organization representing all political persuasions of the Cubans around the world, especially noted for its egalitarian methods and philosophy. Article 4 of the PRC’s Nine Bases read as follows:

El Partido Revolucionario Cubano no se propone perpetuar en la República Cubana, con formas nuevas o con alteraciones más aparentes que esenciales, el espíritu autoritario y la composición burocrática de la colonia, sino fundar en el ejercicio franco y cordial de las capacidades legitimas del hombre, un pueblo nuevo y de sincera democracia, capaz de vencer, por el orden del trabajo real y el equilibrio de las fuerzas sociales, los peligros de la libertad repentina en una sociedad compuesta para la esclavitud.

In other words, the PRC promised to found a society where the true measure of a man and woman (I generously mention the other sex; here, its language is undoubtedly patriarchal) would depend upon relations completely new and unprecedented in Cuba: eradication of races, per say, “Man” as the only race and dependent upon his qualities to prosper in a democratic arena.

Well, this did not happen—not by half. By 1912 disillusioned veterans—99% of them Afro Cubans--rose up against the corrupt administration of President Jose Miguel Gomez (propped up by a second American Intervention of 1906-09). Upwards of three-thousand Afro-Cubans were hunted down, and in one embarrassing event the only legitimate son of José Martí—Jose Francisco Martí, the subject of the former’s delectable “Ismaelillo”—headed a search and destroy mission against men who were promised the civil rights that they themselves had won against Spain.

I suggest that the little-discussed taboo, to this day, of palpable racism in a country that always saw its society as “post racial”—to quote the ridiculous, if well-meaning contemporary claim in American Society today—has caused immeasurable harm to the Cuban psyche. Harm beyond reckoning. We live with it today. Afro-Cuban historians feel the need to stretch exegetic proof of Martí’s patriarchy in his writings. Ibero-Cubans feel the need to tout the republic as a color-blind society!

In my own family, I am sad to confess though not surprised at all, to recall having heard my grand aunt, who was 7 years old the day Macéo was felled by the Spanish, describe a ball she attended celebrating the death of Antonio Macéo y Grajales—“that uppity mulatto with an eye for white women.” Her words.

We need concise and expansive biographies of this inimitably courageous man, one whom I would like to emulate in my life but for the fact that there is so little material at hand. Here is a complex intellect that never got a chance to flesh out his philosophical talents (which his letters more than suggest), or literature, commerce, or any other peaceful pursuit. Here is a man who subscribed to the idea of creating a republic of love, where ethnicity is manifold emissions of a universally objectified humanity. I am African as much as I am Iberian.

¡General Antonio Macéo y Grajales, aqui estoy a sus ordenes!

Podcast with Duncan Crary, Humanist Network News

2008-11-28T18:44:00.002-05:00

"I would rather live in a country that prefers to save a drowning man over going to Mass...God exists in the idea of goodness that watches each and in every one of us...Death is a lie if you have lived well...Death is not to be feared, rather fear living like a dead man."
--José Martí

I have been listening to the Humanist Network News' podcast for over a year. Duncan Crary and Jessica Constantine meet every month and with their irreverent banter interview leading Scientists, Philosophers, Artists and Skeptics , all who advocate creativity, reason and compassion as a way of life. The podcast is only one of the many programs patronized by the Institute for Humanist Studies in Albany, NY. The Institute for Humanist Studies (IHS) promotes Humanism, advancing human rights, secular ethics and the separation of religion and government through advocacy, innovation and collaboration.

To say that it was a privilege to be on this podcast is too understated. I was thrilled, yes, but more so felt as if I had to do right by Martianos everywhere as well as introducing José Martí to people who may never have heard of him, or minimally, doing it with an emphasis on Martí 's unique humanism. Please enjoy this podcast--let me warn you, it's an hour long!--and if you like it, subscribe to it. It inspires, I promise you.

This Month's Podcast
In this month's Humanist Network News podcast, we devote this entire program to one conversation with New York City-based actor Chaz Mena. A Cuban-American humanist, Mena is currently touring the country performing his one-man play, Charla, A Chat With José Martí. Martí, the subject of Mena's play, was a 19th century Cuban revolutionary, poet and humanist. During this interview, Mena describes the life and times of Martí and performs excerpts from Charla. He also addresses the need for the humanist movement to incorporate more literature and art. Listen Here! (Quicktime)

1871: Eight Cuban medical students [from executedtoday.com]

2008-11-27T21:23:00.000-05:00

On this date in 1871, eight first-year medical students, aged 16 to 19, were shot in Havana's Place de la Punta by Spanish colonial authorities in one of the most notorious episodes of that island’s independence struggle.

Cuba was three years into the Ten Years’ War, the first of three major 19th century insurrections that would eventually throw off Spanish rule, but popular support for independence was far from universal.

This book is the English translation of the classic Cuban text written by their schoolmate.

A vocal pro-Spanish element opposed the rebels to the extent of mobilizing right-wing volunteer goon squads to rough up demonstrators and menace the government into dealing with them only at bayonet-point … proto-brownshirts, albeit from a more well-heeled class position.

Mostly middle- or upper-class peninsulares, they were able by sheer force of numbers to cow [liberally inclined Captain-General Domingo] Dulce into acceptance of their views … Their journal, La Voz de Cuba, accused Dulce of working for the rebels …

The volunteers were a foretaste of those twentieth century lower middle-class mobs of young men who often protest violently against the end of empire. Shouting Viva Espana! in the Villanueva Theatre, foreshadowing the pieds noirs of Algeria, they bridge the gap between Carlism and Fascism. (Cuba, Or, The Pursuit of Freedom by Hugh Thomas)

The Volunteers would make themselves felt this day.

The editor of that Volunteer paper La Voz de Cuba was assassinated in 1870. The fatal accusation against the students was that they had desecrated the grave of that editor.

In Cuba in 1871, vandalism with the wrong politics was good enough to get you shot … four days after the supposed crime. In that environment, it’s practically beside the point that one of the eight wasn’t even in town at the time and the “desecration” was so exaggerated (the link is a Spanish backgrounder) as to be essentially fabricated.

The procedural rigging dignified with the word “trial” wasn’t going to get hung up on that detail, but it was also on the verge of an acquittal or a light sentence when a Caribbean Brooks Brothers riot steamrolled it (Spanish again) into sentencing eight to death and most of the others to significant prison terms.

Defense attorney Frederico Capdevila alone distinguished himself (more Spanish) at this circus with an indignant and energetic defense, despite being attacked at one point by the Volunteer mob. At its appalling conclusion, he drew his sword and theatrically broke it over his knee — a gesture of contempt for the military tribunal that cost him his military career and made his reputation to posterity.

Radical writer Jose Marti, 18 years old at the time of this execution, summoned the image frequently and helped raise 27 Noviembre de 1871 into an enduring emblem of the worst of colonialism.

Che Guevara would say of the martyrs, “El único delito era el de ser cubano” — “Their only crime was to be Cuban.”

Un-American vs. Anti-American

2008-10-23T08:47:00.001-04:00

"Anti-American", "Liberal" and even more vague and obsolete, "Leftist" are now catchphrases which are meant to bristle our feathers and make us descend into the streets armed with pitchforks to scare out those who do not agree with the present administration--those who would enjoy a respite from nation-building, deregulation, trickle-down economics reminiscent of the Hoover administration, classicism, infringement of civil liberties, unilateral military aggression, and the monopolization the truth which censures and determines what is permissible for discussion in the public arena.

We pride ourselves as a country of pragmatic people, square-dealers who are unafraid to bring anything into focus. Why do we call it treasonable to correct our present course, or to review our policies? This is patently un-American. What is happening is that "anti-American" means any measure that would obstruct this administration's imperial designs and disdain for our Bill of Rights. It is un-American to listen in on people's telephone conversations, un-American to doctor evidence for invading another country and then selling those lies to The People, to torture our enemies in captivity, to give succor to one class of people over another and hoping the former will invest in the latter, to turn our backs on our disabled veterans, to drown minority dissent on any argument with ape-like cries of "treason". We need to study the difference between "un-American" and "anti-American". Shouting "anti-American" to an elected official doing The People's business is "un-American". We've got to choose between un-American and anti-American; we can't have both.

Here's Martí describing the oratory of a Republican political spin master in 1888, James G. Blain:

He feigns thunder, makes his rival put up his fists, and falls on him whenever he sees an opening, without giving him time to adjust his armor...Free of scruples and not overly attached to the truth--for truth is offensive to those who are lacking in virtue--Lies? Well, then he lies. False statistics? Well, then let's falsify them, and say that it's the other side who are the falsifiers! And what if they call us on it? Well, then, what was the word jackass created for? Let's make people laugh, with a snappy anecdote, well worded and guaranteed to please, in which we'll call them jackasses! For what could be more necessary for political strength than participation in the defects of one's fellow men? Men will have their revenge on the one who dares to be unlike them.

--José Martí, "Blain's Night", translated by Esther Allen in Selected Writings, 235-236.

By the Waters of Babylon at American Stage in St Petersburg, FL

2008-10-10T13:02:00.000-04:00

"To live in Exile is to sculpt with clouds" is one of the more well-known of Martí's maxims--especially to a Cuban-American.

Last night was a particularly moving performance of "By the Waters of Babylon" , a play that I am working on at American Stage in St. Petersburg. In it, Pulitzer Prize winner author Robert Schennken manages to capture the essence of living in a marginalized state after leaving one's country--voluntarily or forcefully.

Martí lived in six countries during his brief life, after having been banished from Cuba TWICE. His work, his oeuvre, are the fruits of exile: writing in a foreign language in New York, ironically the one place where he achieved uninterrupted success as a writer. New York would be the city where he would live the longest in, capturing in his chronicles the most panoramic view of the city during its Gilded Age.

After the performance, a young lady (also an actor) approached me, visibly moved. I won't say it was because of how exceptionally "brilliant" we were that night, but because she is starting a new life in the U.S.--similar to the person I am depicting in the play. We spoke briefly and agreed that the last century was the century of the Exile. It seems as if the 21st century will witness even more people uprooted from their cultures in order to achieve economic well-being, as we acclimatize to the "global economy" --assuming we ever will.

We'll have to learn how to carry our people with us, wherever we go.

To see an interview I gave at a local television station regarding this same topic, click: http://wm.wtsp.gannett.edgestreams.net/studio10/200809/15/amstage.wmv

2008-10-04T12:22:00.000-04:00

Quema y arroba. Pensar en el, asomarse a su vida, leerle una arenga, verlo deshecho y jadeante en uan carta de amores, es como sentirse orlado de oro el pensamiento. Dicese Bolivar, y ya se ve delante el monte...En calma no se puede hablar con una montana por tribuna, o entre relámpagos y rayos, o con un manojo de pueblos libres en el puno, y la tiranía descabezada a los pies….! / He burns. He delights. To think on him, to peer into his life, read his speeches, to see him undone and winded in one of his love letters, seems to frame the page in gold. Say "Bolivar" and before you, there will appear a mountain! Calmly, one cannot speak to a mountain, capped with thunder and lightning, holding in the palm of his hand a plethora of free peoples, at his feet the decapitated heads of tyrants...!
--Martí (Obras Completas, 8:239)

There are as many Simon Bolívars as there are José Martís. Ask anyone in Central and South America to opine about these two luminaries and you’ll get educated and passionate eulogies, heart-breaking anecdotes, damning accusations, shameful recriminations, lamentable “what-ifs”. A Cuban will complain that Marti’s death left a power vacuum in the Independence Movement impossible to fill. Another may say that by the time the revolution began, his work was done. Others contend that he is not dead but very much alive in the Cuban Revolution of ’59, the Revolution’s intellectual author. Similarly, one Venezuelan will complain that after Bolivar’s death succeeding governments, dictators of the right and the left, felt the need to invoke the name of Bolivar in order to legitimize its particular ideology. Bolivar is seen as a proto-socialist by the present Venezuelan administration, for instance. Another Venezuelan may say that he should be relegated to history, as no one has or ever will come close to achieving incomparable glory.

What a great thing, then, is it to read the balanced and impeccable scholarship of John Lynch’s Simon Bolivar: A Life! Bolivar is seen as a prescient figure who would have a Unites States of South America, but not aping the North American model, not at all: “It may be appropriate for the people of North America, who were raised on liberty and political virtues, but it has never for a moment entered my mind to compare the position and character of two states as dissimilar as the Anglo-American and the Spanish American. It would be more difficult to apply to Venezuela the political system of the United States than it would be to apply to Spain that of England.” (loc. 1945-48, Digital Ed.).

I don’t know about you, but I was always taught that there was a teleological relationship between Philadelphia’s constitutional assembly and the Cartagéna Assembly, which instituted Colombia´s first constitution. Teaching simplistic, derivative history is dangerous. For one thing it leads to our present day jingoism: “we’re number one!!”

But the most astounding point that Lynch makes in his biography is how the Spanish-American revolutions were not inspired by Bolivar’s enthusiastic (thus, simplistic) reading of the French Philosophes, or of Hume, or any other Enlightenment text. His revolution was weighed, measured and realistic—therefore, very American:

He could quote from Voltaire, Rousseau and the philosophes, but he did not follow them into purely intellectual speculation and he could be scornful of theories. Place, conditions, circumstances, these set the limits of theories and the limits of Bolivar's enlightenment. His realism always held back the full flow of ideas. Liberty had to conform to the history and traditions of a people, and purely abstract concepts of liberty drew his scorn. (680-82, ibid.)

This is a magnificent read. A must to anyone who would speak on our Hemisphere's experiment with representational democracy. Have at it!

PS. Please click me to listen to the following “In Our Time” podcast, recorded at BBC Studios, Channel 4, for an interesting if somewhat rushed introduction to Simon Bolivar.

What it may have been like...

2008-08-23T22:08:00.000-04:00

Very touching extract from a Cuban film called Diario de Martí which told the story of Martí 's last days...Music from Pablo Milanes, lyrics from Versos Sencillos.

Our Civil War Dead

2008-08-06T10:46:00.000-04:00

"Who does not remember the battles that held the world in suspense...the sanguinary battles...the bridges of corpses on which the Union soldiers crossed..."
(trans., Esther Allen. José Martí, Selected Writings, 172-3)

Just finished Drew Gilpin Faust's This Republic of Suffering.

This is a monumentally important work which explains the genesis of America's attitude towards its war dead--this is the book's more facile reading.

In my view, the more provocative reading is how our Civil War dead became a constituency in the Post-War Republic which tacitly (they couldn't otherwise, could they) spoke in favor of Manifest Destiny and the expanding American Empire in the late 19th century.

Yet another reading hints at American Individualism: observed even after death.

All-in-all a treasure trove of ideas about who we are with relation to death--specifically, violent death in the name of defending our republic.

Not easy summer reading but sobering--important to anyone trying to understand the birth of the American Empire.

Along with energy policy, political and economic systems must also evolve.

2008-07-30T09:49:00.000-04:00

At a time when we are all jonesing for some good news, here's some from Michael Shermer, founder of The Skeptics Society and editor of Skeptic a magazine which deals with claims of the paranormal. He feels that all will be ultimately well if we match our genius for alternative fuel technology with governments that will learn to reform resourse distribution. Free markets are necessary but they must not be left on their own: some engine to correct excess and abuse is not beyond our imagination--or our jurisprudence.

I highly recommend Shermer's books Why Darwin Matters and How We Believe which demystify (without ridiculing) the ever-present desire in us to look to the metaphysical for answers to life's questions--as if the realm of the physical wasn't enough! Again, here's Marti on that subject: Marti addresses his young readers in La Edad de Oro, a children's quarterly he edited in 1889.

"Les hablaremos de todo lo que se hace en los talleres, donde suceden cosas más raras e interesantes que en los cuentos de magia, y son magia de verdad, más linda / We'll discuss all that is done in workshops, where more rare and fascinating things are made, much more than are found in fairy tales--that's real magic, and even more beautiful."

Unfortunately, Marti's faith in science has never been fully discussed: only by orthodox materialists, or ideologues of the right and the left. Below is Shermer's full text which was published in the LA Times, 22 July, 2008.

Toward a Type 1 civilization
Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium. We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization. Let me explain.In a 1964 article on searching for extraterrestrial civilizations, the Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev suggested using radio telescopes to detect energy signals from other solar systems in which there might be civilizations of three levels of advancement: Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy. Based on our energy efficiency at the time, in 1973 the astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that Earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization on a Type 0 to Type 1 scale. (More current assessments put us at 0.72.) As the Kardashevian scale is logarithmic -- where any increase in power consumption requires a huge leap in power production -- we have a ways before 1.0. Fossil fuels won't get us there. Renewable sources such as solar, wind and geothermal are a good start, and coupled to nuclear power could eventually get us to Type 1.Yet the hurdles are not solely -- or even primarily -- technological ones. We have a proven track record of achieving remarkable scientific solutions to survival problems -- as long as there is the political will and economic opportunities that allow the solutions to flourish. In other words, we need a Type 1 polity and economy, along with the technology, in order to become a Type 1 civilization. We are close. If we use the Kardashevian scale to plot humankind's progress, it shows how far we've come in the long history of our species from Type 0, and it leads us to see what a Type 1 civilization might be like:

Type 0.1: Fluid groups of hominids living in Africa. Technology consists of primitive stone tools. Intra-group conflicts are resolved through dominance hierarchy, and between-group violence is common.
Type 0.2: Bands of roaming hunter-gatherers that form kinship groups, with a mostly horizontal political system and egalitarian economy.
Type 0.3: Tribes of individuals linked through kinship but with a more settled and agrarian lifestyle. The beginnings of a political hierarchy and a primitive economic division of labor.
Type 0.4: Chiefdoms consisting of a coalition of tribes into a single hierarchical political unit with a dominant leader at the top, and with the beginnings of significant economic inequalities and a division of labor in which lower-class members produce food and other products consumed by non-producing upper-class members.
Type 0.5: The state as a political coalition with jurisdiction over a well-defined geographical territory and its corresponding inhabitants, with a mercantile economy that seeks a favorable balance of trade in a win-lose game against other states.
Type 0.6: Empires extend their control over peoples who are not culturally, ethnically or geographically within their normal jurisdiction, with a goal of economic dominance over rival empires.
Type 0.7: Democracies that divide power over several institutions, which are run by elected officials voted for by some citizens. The beginnings of a market economy.
Type 0.8: Liberal democracies that give the vote to all citizens. Markets that begin to embrace a nonzero, win-win economic game through free trade with other states.
Type 0.9: Democratic capitalism, the blending of liberal democracy and free markets, now spreading across the globe through democratic movements in developing nations and broad trading blocs such as the European Union.
Type 1.0: Globalism that includes worldwide wireless Internet access, with all knowledge digitized and available to everyone. A completely global economy with free markets in which anyone can trade with anyone else without interference from states or governments. A planet where all states are democracies in which everyone has the franchise.

The forces at work that could prevent us from making the great leap forward to a Type 1 civilization are primarily political and economic. The resistance by nondemocratic states to turning power over to the people is considerable, especially in theocracies whose leaders would prefer we all revert to Type 0.4 chiefdoms. The opposition toward a global economy is substantial, even in the industrialized West, where economic tribalism still dominates the thinking of most politicians, intellectuals and citizens. For thousands of years, we have existed in a zero-sum tribal world in which a gain for one tribe, state or nation meant a loss for another tribe, state or nation -- and our political and economic systems have been designed for use in that win-lose world. But we have the opportunity to live in a win-win world and become a Type 1 civilization by spreading liberal democracy and free trade, in which the scientific and technological benefits will flourish.

I am optimistic because in the evolutionist's deep time and the historian's long view, the trend lines toward achieving Type 1 status tick inexorably upward.
That is change we can believe in.

2008-04-10T16:56:00.001-04:00

La independencia vino cuando Washington; y la revolucion cuando Lincoln / With Washington came independence; with Lincoln the revolution. --Martí (II, 196)

For those of us who believe that depression should be dealt with as if it were an infection, believing that its symptoms should be addressed solely with medication, observation, re-calibration and more prescribing, Shenk’s Lincoln’s Melancholyis not for you.

This is a very rich book, the result of over 7 years of studying Lincoln. I can attest that one of the benefits in researching titans like Lincoln or Martí is in all the residual knowledge gleaned about the subject’s epoch. Shenk’s supplies us with a portal to that time of upheaval in American politics, the so-called (named in hindsight, a nostalgic look back after the terrible conflict) Era of Good-Feelings up to our Civil War.

This being said, Shenk has not written a history book, per se, and certainly not an orthodox biography. Shenk was able to filter through libraries of anecdotal accounts, 19-century hagiography, correspondence, tertiary sources, and the countless references made to Lincoln in his colleagues' diaries—as well as 20-century psycho-biographies that submitted Lincoln to the therapist’s couch—to document Lincoln’s pathology.

In a very readable—the book is blissfully entertaining—and accessible manner, Shenk provides us with the history of Lincoln’s disease. He breaks Lincoln’s well-known but rarely studied depression into three stages: fear, engagement, and transcendence (cf., 212). The first part describes Lincoln’s dark episodes as a young man in New Salem, Kentucky (Chapter one is entitled “The Community Said He Was Crazy”), through his struggle to pass the bar and to be recognized as a real asset to his new community in Springfield, Illinois. Engaging his fear by turning it inside-out towards the world, the needs of his community and later to the country itself led Lincoln to transcend his “malady” and to achieve a sagacity which belonged to the ages—lasting knowledge given only to those who have painfully birthed it, the Aeschylean conceit. Throughout, the reader is encouraged to consider what would have happened to Lincoln without his sometimes debilitating, internal struggle. Shenk is not suggesting that depression is a mark of greatness--obnoxiously promoted by ancient biographers like Plutarch with regards to epilepsy—but he gives us a Lincoln who was able to use his “melancholy” (even in the archaic, poetic sense) as prima materia to become what Martí—a voracious Lincoln reader—called "the re-creator of the nation". Shenk writes

The qualities associated with his melancholy—his ability to see clearly and persist sanely in condition that could have rattled even the strongest minds; his adaptations to suffering that helped him to be effective and creative; and his persistent and searching eye for the pure meaning of the nation’s struggle—contributed mightily to his good work. (189)

Not for nothing does Martí refer to Lincoln—hundreds of times in personal and in published articles—simply as "he who saw with both eyes". Twice, Martí tells us, was he shaken to his core, breaking out in sobs: once was when he learned that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. He was twelve at the time and along with most of Havana observed a week-long period of mourning, wearing black arm bands. The Spanish, seeing this as a provocation, began arresting people and fining them for “inflammatory, abolitionist expression.” Those who were fined later pinned their fines on their lapels.

But let Shenk have the last word, excerpted from this invaluable work for both Lincoln enthusiasts—to be sure—but also for those who suffer from a potentially debilitating disease affecting 18 million Americans every year. You don’t have to know about Lincoln, or even like history, to benefit from Lincoln’s Melancholy.

The hope is not that suffering will go away, for with Lincoln it did not ever go away. The hope is that suffering, plainly acknowledged and endured, can fit us for the surprising challenges that await. Searching and struggling with the real records of his life, we try to see him as a real man. As we ruminate, finally, on the lesson of his life, we try to remove it from the airy realms of myth and bring it onto the reality of our lives. I have struggled do this. ( 216-217)

2008-02-25T08:48:00.000-05:00

“El oficio de un pueblo es crear. La fuerza del mundo está en los que producen.” / “The task of a people is to create and those who create wield world-making power.” –José Martí

A young Hispanic woman chooses to attend an affordable university, nothing notable in that: it happens every Fall throughout the country. Though accepted to New York University or Yale, she couldn’t afford to live near those schools—even at half or full scholarship. See, her parents cannot afford to underwrite her college education, not to mention meeting their daughter’s living expenses in New York City, Boston, or San Francisco.

That being the case she stays home, goes to a respectable college like Florida International University or SUNY in Stonybrook, NY or John Jay in the city. She earns her degree in only three years at 20 credits a semester, working in a bookstore or as a waitress in order to give her mom and dad a break.

So where is she now, our proud and enterprising young Hispanic? She's out of the film school where she double-majored in creative writing, allowing her to write her own scripts. Where can she take her film for which she’s maxed-out her credit cards to make? She’s shot it in HD format, naturally, and worked with actors in the same position—just out of school and owing $80,000 in student loans—sneaking into buildings and shooting quick street scenes without the requisite licenses from the city.

Her first film is finished and but for a few snags like inconsistencies in continuity, sound glitches, lighting issues due to budgetary constraints, it’s finally done!

Let’s pretend that her film tells of a young Hispanic girl like herself but one who took the wrong road—one that she herself might have taken so easily if she’d succumbed to the low expectations that people assigned to her. Would she have chosen to join the Army, or would she have gotten pregnant?

She has shot the story of what her life could have been. How many times did she look into people’s eyes—you know, white people, “regular people”—and seen the way she was perceived by them: a bit too wide in the hips, too girthy, her eyes are too almond-shaped or indigenous-looking? There was always the fact that her bronze skin betrayed who she was, what she is: Latina. “Hey mami,” someone might have yelled out to her at one time, or “oye, mira, where’s your papi? Donde está el bling-bling, chica?”

She learned to ignore those taunts; she had other plans for herself. But what of those who don’t, those who accept the tenor of these insults? The legion of young women, especially in urban settings, who accept and even adopt these monstrous depictions themselves? How different a life would it have been for our hypothetical filmmaker if those descriptions had sunk in? With her film, she now has a testimony in the form of a narrative where we can witness the uniquely bestial characterization of a first-generation Hispanic woman coming from a family of little or no means. Great!

Now what?

OLA FEST—where I had the privilege of performing my piece, Charla, a Chat with José Martí and where a film that I was in was shown, “Muñeca”—will offer any budding Hispanic filmmaker in the U.S. a platform on which to launch his/her project. The ever-increasing marginalization of Hispanic culture, even as the growing number of Latinos is inflating, may be historically unprecedented in our country. It is a fact that in most places now Spanish is the language of servility, spoken in hushed tones whenever an “Anglo” is standing a safe distance away. Otherwise, Spanish speakers are looked askance, treated rudely or charged with the ugly epithet: “illegal.”

One people, one language, one Gott has been invoked elsewhere in history and we needn’t go there, but there is no dearth of suspicion (if not antagonism) towards things “Latino” in places like the southwest and even in Florida itself. Let’s be honest about this. People disparagingly call a visit anywhere below Broward County in Florida “going south of the border;” they choose to “live in America” by residing above the Miami-Dade county line. (Never considering the fact, as is empirically shown with clear-cut figures, how important—if not vital—Miami-Dade is to Florida’s economy. Florida would not be held in international esteem were it not for its burgeoning and affluent Hispanic population. It would never be able to amass similar tax revenue without its Hispanic population.)

Instead, at OLA FEST last week there was a celebration of not only Hispanic voices but of Latin-American perspectives, narratives and filmmaking. Our stories were told for all and for the good of all, to paraphrase José Martí, the great Americanist. Can you imagine the effect that a festival like the Orlando Latin-American Film Festival would have on our young filmmaker characterized above? Suddenly, she is not isolated in a larger culture that ignores her input that cannot afford to listen to her, that will not brook her point of view. She is heartened. She participates in the most important of our democratic traditions: namely freedom of expression, freedom to dissent, and the freedom to congregate without arousing any suspicion of sedition—something felt by many today. (If you think I exaggerate, I beg you to venture to Southern Arizona and California, or to New Mexico. Speak Castilian aloud in a crowded mall or anywhere with a large group of people. There is terror; a line will have been crossed, a tacit rule will have been broken which is becoming more and more vocally and intolerantly warned: “English ONLY!”)

Our culture is expressly eclectic, which is another way of saying that our reality is patently disparate. Any attempt to create an officially sanctioned American Culture is doomed to fail for lack of dynamism. We are who we are. That’s plain to anybody willing take his head out from under the flag and look around. Our young filmmaker is no longer a minority: she is a player in a forum which with other forums amass to create our “reality” (what a loaded word that is!) as best as we can possibly tell. To try to subscribe to an artificial and worn-out “United Statesian” culture is base kowtowing, fawning to hackneyed images, and ultimately harmful to our country.

OLA FEST was a great way for Hispanic screen writers, directors and actors in the United States, (i.e. “Americans”) to meet their Latin-American counterparts. This way, by creating forums such as these, we continue to develop our Hemisphere’s culture and well-being.

About My Uncle, Luciano

2007-12-07T23:15:00.001-05:00

When my uncle died—a beautiful man, one of the first practicing Buddhists in Cuba—I inherited a family heirloom.

Luciano was a gentle soul who dedicated himself to Loving-Kindness. The product of a romance between a Cuban senator and one of his constituents, he was marginalized from birth, hidden away by his mother who was herself forced to live at the edge of town so as not to infect the other young ladies of the burgeoning township of “Camaguaní” in central Cuba. With few friends to play with, he devoured the ancient copies of “Harpers Ferry”, newly published National Geographics but above all, the many books found in the old Spanish Colonial home made from dark “caóba” (SWIETENIA MACROPHYLLA). By the time he was eight, he had read everything in the house twice over—including the family Bible.

It was then, around the age of eight as he would tell me in his Miami Beach apartment many, many years later, that his father relented and agreed to recognize the young boy and gave him his surname. “Lucio” became “Luciano Vidal”— famous patrician family name in Cuba, amongst the first colonizers to have arrived from Spain—overnight and was given a monthly stipend by the senator.

It is a tribute to his mother, who by then was allowed to teach elementary school (social snobbery giving way to the real need of educating the growing number of children—immigrant and native), that she allowed her son to use his allowance on anything he wanted. He wanted books, desperately so; the books came in by the dozen. Luciano’s fascination with books now underwritten, he fell headlong into this passion for the rest of his life.

With manhood came the opportunity to move to the capital after his father was able to secure a job for him at the National Treasury in Havana. The books stayed back home, as he knew he´d be able to visit the National Library after work. He visited the library almost daily, either in the morning or in the late afternoon. Luciano never attended college, relying instead on his reading to become one of the most cultured and informed people I’ve ever met.

His goals were not material, not measured nor weighed, at least not palpably so. Luciano wanted to live well and he did. By living well, I mean living a life completely devoted to learning and I don’t mean it in a Faustian or hubris-driven way but "the examined life" in the Socratic sense--marked by kindness to all he met, quick to give-up what was unnecessary or burdening to a life of study. He was also fearless, like when he refused one of Batista’s henchmen, who lacked collateral, to be given a loan. When threats were intimated, from the general towards Luciano, he said: “Surely you don’t suggest, sir, that I would arbitrarily create rules or norms that would impose my will above the rule law. I am not that type of man.” The inference was lost on the general.

He chose to leave Cuba as the Castro Brothers were centralizing their rule, solidifying all the revolutionary fronts by adopting some and disintegrating others. These were the early sixties and the hated Batista was long gone. Out of his enormous library, he chose only two books to take with him: La Rousse’s Illustrated Dictionary in Spanish and a commentary on Martí, Homenaje a José Martí—both of which I now possess.

I have taken those two books everywhere I’ve lived but I take Homenaje with me whenever I’ve gone away for a while. It’s a companion: well-thumbed, marked all over, charged with and emitting Luciano’s loving-kindness.

For my uncle Lucio, a good life meant doing good work—consistently and as lovingly as possible. Whenever I am allowed to approach my work this way, almost as if by a strange law of Nature, I flourish. Altruism is ultimately pragmatic. Here, I paraphrase two men very, very dear to my heart: José Martí and Luciano Vidal. ¡Gracias Lucio!

Stereotypes vs. Humantypes

2007-10-09T23:30:00.000-04:00

Don't miss the Schomburg Center for Black Culture's Stereotypes vs. Humantypes: Images of Blacks in the 19th and 20th Centuries on view until October 28. It will shock you--note the image to the left.

The willfully hateful caricaturing of people well beyond slavery (an economic system which depended upon de-humanization) is a cultural phenomenon in North America and in the Caribbean. Too ingrained in us are these images. I can think of many, many anecdotes in my own life where people--white, black and brown--submitted others or even themselves into becoming caricatures (I will ask you to watch some past shows UPN and tell me that they aren't cake-walk portrayals of African-Americans.) While at the exhibit, I met a young lady visiting from Texas with her aunt. After viewing the collection she lamented, deep from within her: "THE HARM'S DONE. WE'RE POISONED!" My heart broke.

I think about Cuba's contribution in dehumanizing the African. I remember how white actors worked in black face up until the time of the '59 revolution. On live television shows like "El Negrito y el Gallego" ( The Black Guy and the Spaniard) where the Creole was a dapper ne'er-do-well who lived off the hard work of his Spanish counterpart, cheating him out of house and home with his street-wise, home-spun wit and bravado. (see Caribbean Negritos: Ramón Rivero, Blackface, and "Black" Voice in Puerto Rico" Television New Media.2004; 5: 315-337 or visit http://www.lajiribilla.co.cu/2001/n13_julio/346_13.html) . You may explain this as a way of getting one over on the colonizer, “the man”, something that all Cubans would celebrate, but I wonder if there weren't any subtler messages being broadcast. I believe there were. What about the pornographic, Havanese phenomenon called “Superman”? This was a black man made to act like a beast, performing sexual acts upon white men and women for the titillating delight of people—white and black, but mostly white. His prodigious sexual appetite and attributes were known by all. He was made to act as a racial leveler, a place to dispel white hegemony for a spell and for whites to “see how the other half lived” as they would put it. This is what the Republic degenerated into. Lastly, I believe that when a middle-aged man in Cuba would set up a "mulata" in an apt. in Havana—well away from his family in the interior—to enjoy monthly romantic trysts with, that man was exploiting cultural myths and was profiting from an unjust economic system.

Let's see what Martí said about race:

"...to insist upon the racial divisions and racial differences of a people is to obstruct both individual and public happiness, which lies in greater closeness among the elements that must live in common. It is true that in the black man there is no original sin or virus that makes him incapable of developing his whole soul as a man, and this truth must be spoken and demonstrated, because the injustice of this world is great, as is the ignorance that passes as wisdom, and there are those who believe in good faith that the black man is incapable of the intelligence and feelings of the white man” ("Mi Raza," Patria. April 16, 1893).

This article is called "My Race" and it was published in the organ newspaper of the Cuban Revolutionary Party two years before the beginning of the final war of liberation against Spain. Martí rejected race in toto, it being an arbitrary sub-classification of humanity. Rather, interests and talents are what divide people and assign them into categories. He was not being pollyannaish but purposefully applying this as a check against "the ignorance that passes as knowledge"--the willful dissemination of racist mythology. Modern biology and geneticists have proven his theories to be, in fact, the truth and not a convenient revolutionary discourse intended to rally the masses against Spain. Marti was able to make virtue fashionable—and virtue rejects “race” as a viable category of humankind.

NO! My dear young lady from Texas: WE ARE NOT TOO FAR GONE! We must not allow the spreading of ignorance or hate anywhere near us. We must study the way that was done in the past, the better to crush racism whenever we see it practiced in our inter-personal relationships, or with others in public. Stereotypes vs. Humantype…, at the Schomburg Center for Black Studies is a good place to start.

Martí and Valley Forge

2007-10-08T23:46:00.000-04:00

Se combatió, se padeció frío, se venció el hambre, y con largo y doloroso cortejo se cautivó al fin a la gloria…y Washington sereno…La grandeza serena había vencido la tradición insolente: a Jorge III lo había vencido Washington./It was a hard fight and it was cold. Hunger was beaten and with long and arduous duty, at last, glory was won--and serene Washington? With grace and serenity he conquered audacity: Washington defeated King George III. –José Martí

José Martí was looking back to describe the conditions under which our patriots won our soverignty. Pity it was, as they themselves recognized, that many were not yet freed—there would be another war to assure the nation that “all men were created equal.”

I visited the Valley Forge National Park last week. Valley Forge, on the banks of the Schuylkill River. Washington had decided to winter there—his third winter at war—and I am sure that he was happy that he still had an army in the field to command. Fact is that as long as the Continental Army existed and was fighting, the Revolution was alive. Many have spoken about the poor performance of the Continental Army at Germantown, PA in October 1777, but they forget to mention how when British General Howe decided to destroy the army and end the Revolution at Whitemarsh that December, 12 miles west of Philadelphia, we stood our ground: in this case the higher ground, and the famed British Army decided to high-tail it back to Philadelphia to gloat and sit on their laurels. Washington decided to winter at Valley Forge, the better to keep an eye on and conduct reconnaissance missions against the British Army, who thought they had won the war because they had taken our supposed capital. The resilience of a democracy is such that we are malleable. We can create another capital: as long as men and women, elected by us to represent our interests, are allowed to freely speak their minds and legislate, we have a govt.

Maybe we should assign a different, federal capital with every new congress elected.

Our republic: as soon as I returned from Valley Forge, I heard about Libby Scooter’s sentence being commuted. Mr. Bush: remember the men and women of Valley Forge; I wonder if you know what happened there. Sir, you hold the same office that Washington founded. Shame on you, sir.

FIU's performance

2007-10-03T00:35:00.000-04:00

To all of you who made it: Thank You. For all its clunkiness, I think that last Thursday at FIU was an important step in developing "Charla..."

I admit to have been very nervous before the performance, thinking about all those Cubans "de la vieja guardia" (of the old school) out there judging me. "Oh really? This is supposed to be José Martí "? I also knew that I did not agree with their particular brand of politics. I was wrong on both counts. They seemed grateful that someone was telling, in English and therefore a wider range of audiences, the story of the one luminary that all Cubans can rally around. Afterwards, I spoke to a great many of them who were in agreement that one way out of this stupid stalemate with respects to the exile community and the present regime in Cuba is through culture. Why shouldn't we have cultural exchange? What are we afraid of? Well, maybe we're afraid of having our views and by extension our politics change. What do all of us (on both sides of the Florida Straights) hold on to so obstinately, so selfishly?

Afterwards, I was interviewed. I know that this was heard in Cuba and I hope that, in a minuscule way, last Thursday night was a good event for all Cubans everywhere.