What began as a relaxing retirement-type project, to digitize stashes of family photos and documents and convert them into an online photo book, has instead turned into a replaying of the hard times my family went through after the political whirlwind of 1959 and the subsequent installation of the Communist dictatorship in Cuba that survives to …
Tag: Cuba
So close yet so far away
During two recent outings, one a shopping trip a couple of weeks ago to the nearby city of Querétaro and the other a one-day photo safari last Wednesday led by a professional photographer now retired in San Miguel, Stew and I were again slapped on the face with the realities of poverty and economic inequality in Mexico.Querétaro …
Home for the last time
The heat, exhausting, and magnified by constant rain and the lack of even a wisp of a breeze, made our third and last day in Santa Clara a long one. Sweat stuck to our skins, and in turn, our clothes to the sweat.For me it'd been an emotional visit and for Stew a revealing one. He'd …
Revolutionary mechanics
If you think fixing car a is tricky racket, imagine it if you didn't have access to spare parts, manuals or even the proper tools. That's exactly the predicament car owners in Cuba face when their old '57 Oldsmobiles or '49 Plymouths cough, shudder and then glide to a stop with a sorrowful sigh.Due to--in …
Architectural Digest: 1958 Edition
Given that the last time I saw the southern port city Cienfuegos was fifty-one years ago, when I was thirteen years old, my memories of it proved to be amazingly vivid. I recalled that my maternal grandmother and my spinster aunt lived in a traditional home near El Prado, the town's main boulevard, and around the corner from …
Cuba's Age of Invention
Cubans have a knack for pithy descriptions, particularly when referring to economic problems.So, resolver, or "to resolve" or "to make do" refers to the adaptation one makes to get around shortages or other life hurdles. Indeed, shortages, standing in line and rationing cards have been the only reliable staples during the 54 years since the …
Name that relic!
You step out of the airport in Havana and its muggy tropical air hits you. Then as you head toward the city your attention shifts from the stifling heat to the roads and highways filled with impossibly old cars, most of them American from the 1940s and 1950s. If at first the landscape looks like a …
A tale of two enemies
Two good indicators of the surreal lunacy in the relations between Cuba and the U.S. are the "mountain" of flagpoles in Havana and the butter patties we were served with our breakfasts as we traveled throughout the island.The mountain, or more properly, jungle of flagpoles, many of them rusting and no longer operable, stands across …
A two-week magical mystery tour
Though thousands of foreigners visit Cuba every week, for most Americans the island remains a mysterious corner of the family attic where, for the past fifty years, they have been told not to go. They may have heard some reasons why--something about Communism, missiles, bearded revolutionaries and terrorists--but it's been such a long time it's …
Cuba on my mind
Omens and premonitions about my homeland have been tap-tapping on my mind, and also on my heart, for the past several weeks. They want attention, resolution.On Saturday night Stew and I walked through the kiosks of the annual Festival of Cuban Culture in San Miguel's main square. The wares were generally predictable and sad: Dusty books …
El Rancho Santa Clara 