Excitement / Regina Coyula

My uncle Fernando Pérez-Puelles is 99, and save for some thick-lens glasses because he doesn’t want to have cataract surgery, he is divine, with a vitriolic personality but a great nostalgia for Cuba. Fernando has lived in Miami since 1961 and yesterday he called on the phone, very excited; a little cryptically, he said he understood that he’d be coming back here soon, because according to the news in Miami, the fall of the government was a matter of weeks.

Not as soon a my uncle would like, nor a long as I myself calculate, but beware. Fernando, from Young Cuba, saw the government of Machado fall, from the 26th of July Movement he saw Batista’s government fall, who knows if his longevity will allow him to see the fall of the current government.

Meanwhile, Fernando is making plans to buy the house in Manatí where the Pérez-Puelles spent their childhood. A wooden house that only exists in Fernando’s nostalgia, because successive cyclones passing through the country have done away with it. As I see it, it could be Fernando who rebuilds it.

September 12, 2010