Xavier Carbonell – Page 2 – Translating Cuba

Green Day

Melones has shown how cruel Cubans can be when it comes to choosing between the living and the dead

Military service in Cuba develops unparalleled skills, such as dry shaving and equating obedience with survival. / Vanguardia

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 26 January 2025 — Even in politics, one can (should?) be frivolous. For many years I refused to wear olive green shirts. My situation was particularly dramatic, since everyone – from my grandparents to relatives in the Yuma [abroad]– insisted on giving me changes of clothes in various shades of green, from incandescent green to snot green. They wanted me green, green, like Lorca’s clichéd green. My refusal had a simple explanation, and a little family sensitivity would have been enough to guess it: who, having spent time in the Cuban Army barracks, can stand that color?

Military service in my country develops unparalleled skills, such as bathing with a 500-milliliter bottle of water, dry shaving, and equating obedience with survival. Wearing the unforgettable army shirts, changed only once a week despite the tropical heat, also required skill. You put your left arm into the sleeve, then your right; you button it up to the neck; you flap your wings, squat, stretch your arms vigorously, trying to escape the semicircular scab on your armpit.

The lieutenant has his solitary dove on his shoulder and the major a star; the recruit’s rank is that smelly crescent moon

The lieutenant has his solitary dove on his shoulder and the major a star; the recruit’s rank is that smelly crescent, darker than the rest of the cloth, even more disgusting if one becomes aware that others have worn the same stiff shirt, which marches alone, one, two, one, two, in the plaza of the School of Defense.

I suppose that these days, any Cuban man – and some women who voluntarily enter the lion’s den – will have been reminded of his military service by the news of the explosion in Melones. Only due to a metaphysical mistake was it not us — in another time, in another province but with the same clothes — but those 13, a number that is always a bastard for the continue reading

superstitious.

Melones has shown how cruel we Cubans – humans – can be when it comes to choosing between the living and the dead. We have cared more about the messianic Donald Trump, who snatches away millions of Cubans even though he has made it very clear what migrants mean to him: worms, criminals and pariahs, just like for Castro. We have cared more about parole, CBP One, credible fear, asylum, the White House, Melania’s hat, tea with the Bidens. We have cared more about the 553, and how could we not care, if – at least the political prisoners – should not have spent a single day behind bars. Life weighs more.

But who cares about the “heroes,” the “combatants,” those who “died fulfilling their duty,” the sweet Cuban warriors?

But who cares about the “heroes,” the “combatants,” those who “died in the line of duty,” the sweet Cuban warriors? The regime knows well what it does and what it says: a soldier’s job is to die for the Revolution. It is not the same to say that nine children died – they were children: look at their social networks – because children have families; soldiers do not. It is not the same to pronounce a name as to list four officers, with their ranks. We have learned that when a man dies wearing the stinking olive green shirt, his life is lighter. One more casualty in the great struggle against an imaginary enemy – Revolution is fiction – it is not a man who dies, a number dies.

Now I see the photos of the Student Bastion all over Cuba, of Díaz-Canel smiling while the idiot on duty disassembles a Kalashnikov, of a crowd of university students taking photos – in Holguín, the day after the funeral tribute to the 13 of Melones! – of a fire-eater handling a machine gun, posing like a Power Ranger. Here, instead of life, what weighs more is the moral impudence of the Cuban. Does no one feel guilty about Melones? Nor for the Supertankers? Nor for Angola and so many other wars?

Too much blood stains the battered shirts of the Army. Blood spilled by mistake or bad luck.

Too much blood stains the battered shirts of the Army. Blood spilled by mistake or bad luck, by order of an imbecile – we already know that the Armed Forces collect them – or to please the Dracula-like Commander. That blood stains the hands of Díaz-Canel and of every high official, of the deputies of Parliament, who have not had the courage to raise a debate about the service, and of the entire Cuban military ranks, from Álvaro López Miera to the hundreds of drunken sergeants in every municipality.

I will not say goodbye to the boys from Melones with a martial salute or with funeral paraphernalia. I will say goodbye to them as the otaku , the future chef, the football fan, the one who had a girlfriend waiting for him, a friend with whom he wandered the streets, parents. More than ten years ago, when I looked like them and wore the same shirt they wore, we sang songs in English in that dark square of the Santa Clara Defense School.

It was the “music of the pre,” Evanescence, Gotye, Nickelback, Gorillaz, AC/DC, Aerosmith and especially Green Day, which I now play to remember. To remember them. “I walk this empty street / On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams / Where the city sleeps / And I’m the only one, and I walk alone.”

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When Cuba Was On The Goldrush Trail

The very rare ‘Californian Album’, a jewel of colonial lithography, was published in the Havana workshops of Louis Marquier

The illustration, ’A good carriage ride’, shows gold prospectors on board the emblematic Cuban buggy. / Zoila Lapique

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 1 February 2025 – On the 24th of January 1848 General John Sutter – christened Johann August in his native Switzerland and don Juan Sutter in his adoptive Mexico – found some gold nuggets in the river running through his land. He tried to keep the find a secret. Two months later a newspaper published a headline, which we would imagine to be in huge black letters, like those which John Wayne used to read in the Westerns: “Gold Mine Found!”

The news was, in actual fact, presented in just one paragraph, and in a modest font. Three or four rather frenzied sentences which promised seams of gold “in almost every part of the country” and “great chances for scientific capitalists”. And so began gold fever in California, a magnet for all types of treasure hunters and bandits. Very soon the very President of the United States had to admit that on the other side of the continent – there are more than 4,000 km between New York and San Francisco – there were people who were about to get very rich indeed.

For gold seekers, who arrived in California with a pick, a spade, buckets and divining rods, it was the journey of their lives. John, or Johann, or Juan Sutter was eventually ruined by the flood of migrants who arrived on his land (and on the rest of the American east coast) over the following decades, without asking permission. (One of these migrants was, for certain, a German hairdresser named Frederick Trump, who ran away to the United States in 1885 to escape military service. Cured of fever in remote Alaska, he dedicated himself to hotels and real estate… and a president for a grandson… Finally wealthy, he returned to his native village in Bavaria. And was deported). continue reading

For gold seekers, who arrived in California with a pick, a spade, buckets and divining rods, it was the journey of their lives.

One usually arrived in California by boat, via Panama and the Pacific. Other adventurers arrived in Mexico, reaching Sutter’s property overland. In 1850, in Cuba’s golden age, Havana was an obligatory stopover.

The treasure seekers arrived on the island en masse, just as many on their way home as on their way out. It’s undeniable that some of them, more seduced by the mulata women, the tabacco and the climate (coming, as they did, from colder countries, just like Herr Trump) forgot all about their original mission. They crowded into the port and the city squares, the taverns and the walkways, each one having the appearance of a long-bearded beggar, and it’s not hard to imagine their stuttering attempts to beg for a drink, some food or a smoke.

Witness to that invasion were two artists – Ferrán and Baturone (who for me resemble Hernández and Fernández, from Tintin), ubiquitous, with their sketchbooks in hand – who dedicated themselves to record, in a published book, these “types” and their customs, in twelve printed plates. It’s the extremely rare publication, the ’California Album’, an absolute jewel of Cuban lithography, born in the Havana workshops of the French printer Louis Marquier.

The ’California Album’ was sold in instalments, some of them exquisitely coloured and others in black and white. Ferrán and Baturone were not only skilled at creating their drawings, but they were also ingenious at titling them. The titles were translated into English, perhaps to make them marketable to the gold prospectors as a souvenir of their stay in Havana.

The ’California Album’ was sold in instalments, some of them exquisitely coloured and others in black and white

‘A Fortune Made’ – of which there is no version in colour – is the title of one picture which shows a typical prospector, posing formally, standing upright like a biblical patriarch, with a sombrero, a three-quarter length jacket and a beard reaching down to his chest. In another, the same character, along with two colleagues who are clearly hungover, now swigs from a bottle of moonshine, all three now posing in more ’comfortable’ positions. They drink, more and more, as though they didn’t have to leave soon for a new destination – a destination which would be in a place of temperance.

Wearing a neckscarf, and with his shirt open, the traveller goes into the street looking for conquest. He looks like a vagabond, but he has money. He’s in good spirits – like a ’patron of the arts’ -and he doesn’t hesitate to sit himself down in Havana’s Alameda de Paula to peel an orange with a knife, surrounded by habanera women who entertain him with tambourines and a barrel organ. He meets up with other prospectors, all of them just as drunk as he is, and they hire a seven-seater buggy and pay for a good ride.

Gold prospectors are – as the rascally Ferrán and Baturone observe – in favour of letting things just drift along: they are calm, pleasure-seeking, always drunk and never changing. If José Antonio Saco had not already written, in 1830, a report on vagrancy in Cuba, then one would have said that it was these guys who were the first to establish such a thing.

But not everything is rosy for those who have found a little gold. It’s with some discomfort that we observe a pair of friends almost levitating through the effects of cheap and rough alcohol. Two others, perhaps through having lost a bet, or having lost their last gold nuggets, wildly gesticulate their predicament. And there, next to a cannon, his gaze lost somewhere out in the bay, a melancholic prospector with a broken shoe attempts to soothe the corns on his feet.

It would seem that habaneros were not oblivious to these Californian gold nuggets, and it’s likely that these were the root cause of numerous disagreements

It would seem that habaneros were not oblivious to these Californian gold nuggets, and it’s likely that these were the root cause of numerous disagreements. In the engraving, ’Realization’, three prospectors are quarrelling with a jeweller, or a valuer. To settle the dispute, the islander lifts up a pair of weighing scales.

My favourite image from the ’California Album’ continues – naturally – to be: ’What Great Tabacco!’ You can smell it and you can taste it. One miner’s delight with his cigar caddy, and another’s delight in a whole box of them – with its official seal – seems to sum up their fantastical lives: smoke, dreams, frenzy … and ash.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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‘50 Stories of Cuba in Exile’ and an Essay on Sugar Among the January Books

Last month, Azúcar, an essay that compares the history of sugar with that of civilization, arrived in bookstores.

The Ácana mill, in Matanzas, drawn in 1857 by Eduardo Laplante as part of his “collection of views” of colonial sugar mills / Project Gutenberg

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 2 February 2025 – “Azúcar!” It was for decades the battle cry of Celia Cruz, sung in vibrant and honeyed syllables. “Without sugar there is no country” was the mantra of the Republican landowners, which in the light of the current sugarcane debacle sounds like a spiteful prophecy against Fidel Castro. In fact, Cuba owes its opulent nineteenth century – railways, cities, mills – and also its sickly attachment to slavery, abolished late, to sugar.

Manuel Moreno Fraginals, in the prologue to his controversial study on the sugarcane industry on the Island, described like no other the ferocity with which sugar shaped the history of Cuba. The author of El ingenio [The Sugar Mill]- who ended up disgusted and going into exile in Miami, where he died in 2001 – traced “the footprints that start in sugar and manifest themselves in the establishment of a university chair, or in a decree on tithes, or in the characteristic form of the Cuban architectural complex, or in the terrible effects of the razing of forests and the erosion on the soils.”

Azúcar [Sugar] (publisher Ariel) arrived in bookstores this January, an essay of almost 500 pages signed by the Dutch researcher Ulbe Bosma, which equates the history of sugar with that of civilization. For the text, where it is not difficult to find the imprint of Moreno Fraginals, “the rise of sugar speaks to us of progress, but also of a much darker history of human exploitation, racism, obesity and environmental destruction.” continue reading

In an interview, Bosma illustrated the political and economic importance of the so-called Creole saccharocracy

In an interview offered in Barcelona to the newspaper La Vanguardia, Bosma illustrated the political and economic importance of the so-called Creole saccharocracy during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. If today it is the technology tycoons Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who pull the strings of world politics, he said, at that time the influence of the big sugar surnames – Fanjul, for example – was decisive in the United States and Europe.

For Bosma, social networks are just as addictive as sugar, and the key to dealing with both is moderation. He says that he adds sugar to his coffee, but only “a teaspoon.” “Despite everything I’ve found out,” he says, “I’ve gotten used to its flavor and don’t want to lose it.”

Independent Cuban publishers have had a modest production during the first month of the year. One highlight is Como el ave fénix [Like the Phoenix] (Rialta Magazine), 50 interviews published by Cuban journalist William Navarrete in recent months on CubaNet. They are, for its author, “stories of Cuba in exile.” They narrate, according to the life experiences of those involved, the last 100 years of the Cuban nation.

“For years, William Navarrete has had the sense of smell and sagacity to locate many of the protagonists of the politics and culture of the Island of the twentieth century and get them talking about the lost city, the political prison, the purges, the labor camps, the exile or the great names and events of their life stories,” say its editors, who qualify the book as “one of the most powerful collective testimonies” after 1959.

Rialta also publishes, in its ’Files’ section, a recount of Antonio José Ponte’s career in ’La Gaceta de Cuba’

Rialta also publishes, in its Expedientes [Files] section, an account of the career of Antonio José Ponte in La Gaceta de Cuba. What was published by the poet and essayist in one of the most disgusting magazines of official culture gives the measure of how his critical caliber was gestating. This dossier is also a sample of the work of Ponte in Cuba, the attempts at “civic extermination” to which the regime subjected him and his emergence as one of the indisputable voices of his generation.

Ediciones Memoria, a small publishing house in Camagüey dedicated to the rescue of Cuban civic thought, publishes Las conferencias de Shoreham, by Manuel Márquez Sterling. “His prose is a long and subtle examination of both his own and the national conscience. There is no lack of irony, even mockery, but above all, in the sometimes light ease of speech, there is always the seriousness of the duty to be,” explains his editor, Alenmichel Aguiló.

The anthology of poems by the Russian Nobel Prize winner Joseph Brodsky, who died in 1996, translated by Ernesto Hernández Busto for the Siruela publishing house, is already in bookstores. Devoted to the writer exiled from the Soviet Union, the Cuban has written: “With Joseph Brodsky I am always tempted to make different versions, perhaps because in his poetry there is also an effort to communicate a certain universality, a certain transcendence.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘I Breathe Through Memory’, Gastón Baquero’s Letters to Lydia Cabrera

The poet went into exile in the Spanish capital, and Cabrera in the United States. Both were part of a Republic that had gone down the drain.

’Slave Ship’, by Manuel Mendive (1976). / National Museum of Fine Arts, Havana

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 28 December 2024 – How could Lydia Cabrera and Gastón Baquero speak to each other except as two Napoleonic marshals after Waterloo, or as two old gods banished by new gods? Reconstructing at least a segment of this conversation, as Ernesto Hernández Busto has done for the publishing house Betania, is not just philology: it is a profession of faith.

The presence of the exile in any era is silent. One wants to exist quietly and not attract attention. Baquero broke that myth with his correspondence and with the Creole lunches that he presided over in Madrid – “topped off with a tamarind drink” – which ended up becoming a tradition for his disciples.

The poet went into exile in the Spanish capital; and Cabrera in the United States (“a country she never really liked”). Both were part of a Republic that had gone down the drain, not only as a political project but also as a possibility. For Hernández Busto, Cabrera is “the great loner of Cuban literature.” A staunch anti-communist, what place could she have in Castro’s new order? She survived thanks to the jewels she had taken out of Cuba. continue reading

“Both lived long lives, with somewhat sad old ages, which revolved around those two poles of Cuban exile: Madrid and Miami”

“Both lived long lives, with somewhat sad old ages, which revolved around those two poles of Cuban exile: Madrid and Miami,” Hernández Busto sums up in his prologue. The originals of the Letters are among the Lydia Cabrera Papers of the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami library. The book is available for free download at this link.

In the first letter, which Hernández Busto estimates was sent around 1978, Baquero comments on the literary “perversity” that Alejo Carpentier’s The Rite of Spring represents for him . “It is the book that Castro had been demanding for a long time to consider it complete,” he says.

Between anecdotes and gossip about friends and enemies, Baquero outlines several ideas about the past. The first, about the demonization of the Republic promoted by Castroism, is precisely what Carpentier’s book does not forgive. “Scoundrelisms like this one by Alejo help Castro a lot, who justifies all his crimes by painting a country that, according to that painting, deserved to be destroyed,” he writes.

The cult of the frustrated nation takes on, in the letters, an almost religious flight

The cult of the frustrated nation takes on an almost religious dimension in the letters. “Lidia: you did very well to be born on May 20,” he says in 1982. “You are prenatal ready. You were born on the day of the birth of the Republic, and you and I know how marvelous the word Republic tastes, the Republic.”

Another idea is the distinction between the exile and the dissident. “A dissident is, for example, Carlos Franqui, he of Revolución,” he tells Cabrera that same year. “I don’t know how I would feel in that meeting with people, compatriots yes, but at a distance, who are here in Madrid and we have never met. They consider themselves the great democrats, betrayed (very late, in some cases, by the way) by the bonísimo fidelito.”

Years and years of correspondence leave unforgettable scenes and comments. Lydia and Eugenio Florit dancing a danzón; more of Carpentier’s mischief; Lorenzo García Vega’s “son of a bitch”; Nicolás Guillén’s “comemierdería*”; mutual friends, lost, quarreled or dead.

In 1978, Baquero had been in Madrid for almost 20 years, an exile that had not extinguished his “creoleness,” he warned his correspondent. That year he obtained Spanish citizenship, but he remained in the imaginary territory of the Island: “I live in memory, I breathe through memory.”

*Translator’s note: comemierdería: literally (one could say), shit-eating-ness. The dictionary offers: mediocrity, pedantry, stupidity, dipshit.

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November Books: The Mafia in Cuba, Belkis Ayon’s Gods, Sartre and Beauvoir

A novel by Pavel Giroud, an anthology by storyteller Alberto Garrido and a farewell to Juan Manuel Salvat.

Work ’La cena’, painted by Cuban artist Belkis Ayón / Belkis Ayón Estate

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 30 November 2024 — Marked by borderline figures – she died at the age of 32, one year younger than Christ, in 1999, before the beginning of the millennium – Belkis Ayón created a world no less divided between two dimensions: that of color and that of the spirit. Observing her prints and paintings leaves a metaphysical doubt: if Ayon already shows us the other world, the spiritual plane, why does she give the feeling that there is still much more, hidden behind those Abakuá faces?

Ayón’s suicide – she locked herself in a bathroom and shot herself in the head with her father’s revolver – only reinforces the mystery. Her silence makes one despair. During the Special Period, when the country was plunged into extreme poverty, the artist focused on her black, white and gray works. The themes of loyalty and betrayal, of lost paradise and desire, as well as the Abakuá religious worldview – the sacrifice of the goddess Sikán – surrounded her in her last decade.

In 2021, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid dedicated a major retrospective exhibition to her, commissioned by Cristina Vives, her friend. It was the sign that Ayón had awakened the public’s and critics’ interest all over the world. This November, the Spanish publishing house Turner publishes Nkame mafimba, a compelling catalogue raisonné of her work that expands on an earlier version.

Nkame mafimba means “praise, deep conversation.” The phrase synthesizes Ayón’s relationship with her prints and also the ideal reading she demands for her work. With texts in English and Spanish, the book continue reading

explores how the artist delved into the Abakuá universe, the research she conducted and how the symbolic translation of those myths came about.

Ayón was born at the end of a decade of international enthusiasm for Fidel Castro’s Revolution. In 1960, Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir traveled to Havana to see with their own eyes the “hurricane over sugar.” Their impact on the generation of young Cuban intellectuals was enormous. The newspapers of the time were filled with articles about the two visitors.

Sartre and Beauvoir in Cuba. “La luna de miel de la Revolución” (The Revolution’s Honey Moon) (Casa Vacía) reconstructs step by step that visit and the chronology of that decisive year for Castro’s international image. Compiled by Duanel Díaz Infante and Marial Iglesias Utset – author of a fascinating study of the birth of the Republic in 1902, “Las metáforas del cambio en la vida cotidiana”(The Metaphors of Daily Life) – the volume gathers the meaning of the presence of both French intellectuals in a country that, according to Sartre, “had to triumph.”

Filmmaker Pavel Giroud, who was at the center of many controversies last year after the release of “El caso Padilla” (The Padilla Case), makes his debut in novels with Habana Nostra. The story is based on an old script by the director about the gangster Lucky Luciano, a regular in the Cuban capital during the 40’s. Finalist of the Azorín Novel Prize, it was published by Traveler and has already been presented in Spain and the U.S.

An anthology by storyteller Alberto Garrido, “Gritos y susurros” (Cries and Whispers), was published this month by Ilíada Ediciones. Novelist Amir Valle has said of these stories that “they shook in many ways the panorama of national literature. Undoubtedly, pieces of excellence by an authentic Cuban short-story writer on par with Alejo Carpentier, Lino Novás Calvo, Virgilio Piñera and Onelio Jorge Cardoso.”

With the death of Juan Manuel Salvat on November 26, the Cuban exile community lost the man who did the most to bring Cuba’s literary heritage within reach. Born in Sagua la Grande, Villa Clara, he was part of a generation that, without forgetting Cuba, knew how to rebuild his life and think about the future.

El Gordo (The Fat Man), as his friends called him, did not hesitate to take up arms first against Batista and then against Castro. He protested against the visit of Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan and was expelled from the University of Havana. He left Cuba clandestinely and returned by sea. He was imprisoned. He fled again and went into exile in Miami, where he realized he had to change his strategy.

An exile needs books, and Salvat became not only the rescuer of old authors, who also left the island but also the publisher of new ones. From Lydia Cabrera to Reinaldo Arenas, he nurtured his catalog with names of excellence. Thanks to those books, he told me, he could utter the phrase in which his legacy is summarized: “I have managed to live as a Cuban all my life, even though I have been far from the country.

Translated by LAR

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I Left Home on an Adventurous Night

Cuba is still the same at the end of this year, and according to Dr. House, it will continue like this, because people never change

“Chicharrón y frijoles negros” Chicharrón and Black Beans], oil on canvas by Roberto Fabelo, painted in 2016 // Fabelo Studios

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, December 29, 2024 — If you are given the choice between staying at home and watching “Dr. House” – especially that episode in which Wilson asks him not to confuse medicine with metaphysics and he answers that it doesn’t matter, because the truth is the truth – or visiting a place related to Cuba, even if it is the most innocent, always choose the first. And not only because House’s philosophy is always better than nationalism and nostalgia, but because everything that has to do with that country is tired, historical or transcendental. Even more so if it is the end of the year, when every act is a summary, a compendium of what has been lived and an announcement of the future.

But it happens that one chooses both things, and with the promise of returning to television at midnight – tea or cigar in hand – he immerses himself in the cold of Salamanco, zero degrees while I write for the reader’s information, and overcomes the mileage that separates him from the Domus Artium, the monstrous enclosure that houses the collection of Cuban art by Luciano Méndez.

Méndez, an old banker born in Salamanca, is one of the quietest and most famous collectors of Cuban works. Money, more will, more contacts. Residence – I think – in Havana. More than 600 pieces preserved, judging by the explanation of the attentive receptionist of the Domus Artium, in vaults safer than Winston Churchill’s bunker. Of these, the work of several contemporary painters is on display until February. Take advantage, boy, whispers a little devil or a cemí [Taino spirit] on my shoulder. continue reading

Deliciously touristy, very warm, the guide gives her best so that the Europeans can savor the tropical flavor

Well, here I am, eight at night, about to start a tour. I am accompanied by my wife and, together but not scrambled, a tall German woman who looks like Tilda Swinton, a couple of university students – I would say they appear to be stoned if it were not a cliché – two French housewives and the guide, Cuban by the way. It promises to be an immersive experience, so I stay away from the motley group as much as possible.

Deliciously touristy, very warm – did I mention that we are now at minus one degree? – the guide gives it her best so that the Europeans can savor the tropical flavor. The excess of maritime metaphors – the exhibition is called “Log of an Unfinished Journey” – leaves Swinton and company cold, and they soon disperse and contemplate the paintings, turning their necks with the elasticity of those possessed.

So much solemnity overwhelms me, and I begin to see the exhibition from the end to the beginning. If the crossing is unfinished, if the logbook is incomplete, if the sailor has an elegant name for the raft, I will have no problems. Serious mistake. Because of my recklessness, Fabelo assaults me at the start. Fabelo is to painting what Padura is to literature. They no longer surprise us but we like to have them on hand, on the wall, in the shower or on the bookshelf, the better to insult them.

For his ornamental vocation and how good he looks on a coaster or a curtain, Fabelo is a great favorite of collectors

For his ornamental vocation and how good he looks on a coaster or a curtain, Fabelo is a great favorite of collectors. The guide explains to the survivors that the master is not only a prodigy at painting tits – we are facing a great breast observer – but also works with everyday objects of the country, and that the blackened coffee maker, that Celtic cauldron, that toothless fork truly belong to the families of that aboriginal civilization. I am amazed, because Fabelo’s junk enjoys better health than the utensils of any Cuban house.

I come across Alejandro Gómez Cangas’ megalithic lines. Lines that are scary, lines that confirm what we already knew: even after death we Cubans form a line. Faceless faces, broken flip-flops, the eternal string bags. It makes you want to ask who’s the last [in line], but we get to Sosabravo’s paintings. I am bewitched looking at the transparent indigo of “La Soprano Calva” [The Bald Soprano]- death, according to Cabrera Infante – and I pass by Sandra Ramos, Daniela Águila, the photos of Roberto Chile, that Landaluze of Castroism, and Manuel Mendive.

I have always wondered why a country that has Belkis Ayón needs Manuel Mendive and if the Devil would not allow us the metaphysical trick of exchanging him for her. In the Cuban afterlife, Belkis is the queen, and Mendive, if anything, an altar boy. But, according to taste, there are orishas and the Sikanese.

In Cuba artists have to express themselves in allegories, she says, because there may be censorship

Before Elizabeth Cerviño’s El Deshielo [The Thaw] the guide stops. Absorbed in front of the canvas, without sparing opinions, she explains the ideological caliber of the painting and its historical dimension. In Cuba, artists have to express themselves in allegories, she says, because there may be censorship. Tilda Swinton, until now half-dead, wakes up. “Das darf doch nicht wahr sein!” [That can’t be true!] she exclaims. “And critical artists, can they return to their country?” “Of course not!” answers the guide. “As long as you don’t attack the Government head-on, you can return, of course.”

Mein Gott, I think, and I vanish. Ciao, Chano, and thank you for the paintings. With citizens like that who needs counterintelligence? Dr. House says that everyone is lying and I hope he’s right. He also says that the truth is the truth, and that the idea of nation is one of the most stupid and dangerous that the human being has devised.

It’s now the end of the year and every act smells like a summary, a compendium of what has been experienced and an announcement of the future. Cuba is still the same, and according to House’s diagnosis, it will continue to be so, because people never change. Or the change is slow and sometimes life is not long enough to see it. Hope is a narcotic that my generation, unlike the previous ones, never smoked. I go back home and thaw out. My little thaw. Is there more homeland than this sofa?

Translated by Regina Anavy

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His Enormous Sword Affixed There Forever

Fifo. To me, you are the oldest of the old. And in a dictatorship, the leader’s expiration date is the closest thing there is to hope.

The voice of the dictator stays with the child forever. / Cubadebate

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 1 December 2024 — Between sips of coffee, with the faith of a true believer, of a fanatic who has earned his place in paradise, a teacher of mine once told me, “You are incapable of having any feelings for the revolution because you’ve only ever known an old Fidel.” Not old, I thought, without interrupting my interlocutor’s mystical outburst. More like decrepit. A mummy, a zombie, the bogeyman, Nosferatu. The Prince of Darkness reduced to a hunchbacked spine. The translucent beard, the ratty hair, the dark circles of the faithful departed

“What does Fidel have, what does Fidel have?” asks the almost pornographic little ditty. A firm chest, an invincible strength, a frightful steeliness, an enormous sword thrust inside and affixed there forever (oh, for God’s sake, Manuel Navarro Luna!), immense tenderness, a fountainhead of tuberoses, a river of triggers running down his belt. He could teach Homer’s heroes a thing or two. And Don Quixote too! But he hates those rotten dollars (though nothing could be further from the truth). You already know what Fidel has.

But not for me, Fifo. To me, you are the oldest of the old. And in a dictatorship, the leader’s expiration date is the closest thing there is to hope. His sacred presence became ever more sacred until death separated him from the masses, which happened on my way to Varadero — a wonderfully surprising gift of a day — on November 25, 2016. “But there was one thing I couldn’t quite shake,” I told my gentle teacher: “the voice of Fidel.”

“Can a human voice cast a long, depressing shadow,” asked George Steiner in reference to Hitler

“Can a human voice cast a long, depressing shadow?” George Steiner asked himself in reference to Hitler. The philosopher’s childhood in Paris took place amid the soundtrack of the Führer’s speeches on the radio. The commanding diction and accompanying gestures — there are voices that are a whole body — defined the soundscape of his generation. Hitler wanted to sweep away an entire vocal culture — Freud, Mahler, Schoenberg, Wittgenstein — and no one can imagine a silent Hitler.

The voice of the dictator stays with the child forever, dear parents and pedagogues. While a young Steiner was listening in terror to Hitler, a young Umberto Ecco heard Mussolini declare war against France and Britain. For him, the Fascist diatribes were as much a part of his childhood as Flash continue reading

Gordon and Dick Tracy comic strips, the adventures of Sandokan and Professor Lidenbrock, music theory and drawing classes.

Our historic moment was a desperate attempt to abandon history, encapsulated in the voice of the dictator

In school, when hordes of students were forced to swear loyalty to “il duce,” those who came from anti-Fascist families always found ways to make fun of the oath. One of Ecco’s classmates would jokingly shout “Arturo!” instead of “Lo giuro!” (“I swear!”). How many times did we ourselves purposely mangle slogans during military preparation marches? One, two, three, four, eating shit and ruining shoes. First of May, horses’ day. April 1st, it’s the worst. No, the fun never ends, Carlos Puebla.

Revolution is a sense of the historical moment. Our historical moment was a desperate attempt to abandon history, encapsulated in the voice of the dictator. Díaz-Canel not only has no balls, he has no voice. His stutter, his inability to speak other languages, his fear of crowds, all disqualify him as a true leader. Neither did Raúl, who speaks with the nasal voice of a Cuban drunkard, a boozer, the family e’er-do-well. Raúl Modesto reminds us of Francisco Franco in some ways: the mustache, the low volume, the annoying, almost telephone-like ring. They all compensated for this by being relentlessly aggressive. Blood will calm any neurosis.

A sonorous museum of cruelty might include the the staccato voice of Hugo Chavez (“Ah, Mr. Danger, you messed with me, little bird.”); the cretinous voice of Nicolás Maduro (“Sometimes I realize that it is me when I look in the mirror.”); the fawning voice of Evo Morales (“Fidel has not fallen ill, he is just being repaired.”); the guttural voice of Adolf Hitler (“People have never been liberated with humanity and democracy”); the ranting voice of Kim (“Nuclear power is a symbol of sovereignty.”); the monotonous voice of Stalin (“I became a socialist in the seminary”); the tense voice of Putin (“Ukraine is an artificial state that Stalin willed into being.”); the pathetic voice of Ceausescu (“This morning we decided to increase the minimum wage.”).

And, of course, the voice of Fifo. (“I have never been nor am I now a communist… I am not a communist… I am a Marxist-Lenist and I will be a Marxist-Leninist till the day I die… I always admired Christ because he was the first communist… I apologize for having fallen.”)

Anyone who thinks that there are no believers left, that no one cries when a dictator dies, that no one sighs at his absence, is very wrong. Fidel has his mourners, perhaps thousands of them. On November 25, while I was celebrating these eight wonderful years of silence, a couple of “Granma” journalists reached the climax with a disturbing article about the leader.

“Fidel, whose umbilical chord was cut from two wombs — that of Lina, his biological mother — and Cuba, forged with his nation an alliance founded on love. He loved it like a father loves his children… Fidel literally opened his heart to danger and, in the midst of the rain, the mud and the roads destroyed by the combined power of the wind and the water, he was with his people in those distressing moments… The Commander’s love for his people is reborn in our president, [Miguel] Díaz-Canel.”

Honestly, who writes this stuff? And what psychiatrist are they seeing?

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Let’s See If He Has Any

Cuban chess, according to the official press, is played under the effects of ministerial tyranny, scarcity, mental poverty and false mass appeal.

Fidel Castro wrote crookedly on straight lines, but massive chess, a Moscow strategy, was not such a bad idea. / Radio Trinidad

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 20 October 2024 — Salamanca/ Fidel Castro wanted to popularize cattle raising, and the cow ended up becoming an animal as remote and sacred as the bison of Altamira. He wanted to popularize communist militancy, and today – let’s continue with the cattle metaphor – the stampede of leaders is so ferocious that it would annihilate Mufasa again. It is not surprising, therefore, that the popularization of chess had disastrous results. The problem is never Fidel, the faithful will say, but the popularization. But the masses are nothing without their chief popularizer, and as in homes where there is a naughty child, in Cuba he is always the material, formal, efficient and final cause.

To make things easier, let’s say that, like Mephistopheles, Fidel wrote crookedly on straight lines – poor Jesuit schoolboy, more fond of basketball than of the pencil – and that mass chess, a Moscow strategy, was not such a bad idea. It is impossible for all Cubans to be good chess players, but it was not bad that, from childhood, we knew how to defend ourselves on the board. Why? I don’t know, perhaps to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of the infans sovieticus, larva of the bright future.

Here, however, there is very little future and almost no megawatts to enlighten us.

Here, however, is very little future and almost no megawatts to enlighten us. The official press has just published figures on the situation of school chess that must have irritated – if he saw them – Leontxo García, the legendary columnist of El País. The sports media that covered his visit to Cuba in 2022 said that the venerable professor had been “fascinated” by the talent of the players and had asked that the Island be transformed into a “leading country” in terms of educational chess. But we already know that with visitors you have to be polite, offer them coffee and take them to the Hotel Nacional. Leontxo left happy, or so says the State newspaper Granma. continue reading

A member of Randy Alonso’s dream team – those boys from Cubadebate who seduce Ana de Armas and write a pamphlet against the blockade – had the naivety to do his job well and survey 658,771 students and 6,993 teachers. Only 41% of the children and 51% of their teachers know how to play chess. They play “to kill boredom,” say the brave pioneers interviewed. They play very little because there are no pieces or boards. They play badly, under the effects of the “lack of implements” – the Chinese have not sent “pieces” since the pandemic – of the ministerial trick, of scarcity, of mental poverty, of unleavened masses.

In the Third Improvement, chess will not be a subject, as Fidel and Che and other photogenic assassins dreamed.

Things are not going to improve, little Capablancas. In the umpteenth indoctrination plan of the Ministry of Education – what in Mordor they call the Third Improvement – chess will no longer be a subject, as Fidel and Che and other photogenic assassins, who loved to pose in front of the chessboard, dreamed of. It will be, says the national methodologist of Physical Education, a mere “complementary activity.” And every pioneer knows what that means: dancing and enjoying the extracurricular symphony.

The methodologist has ideas whose brilliance should not be wasted by the Electric Union. Possessed of a calm desperation, she calls on teachers “with knowledge” of the game to “facilitate this practice.” She intends to “assess with the National Chess Commissioner to see if he has some support that we could put on computers or on the same phones so that children can play.” There is so much Cubanness, so much revolution in that “let’s see if he has” that it should be the title of our next national anthem.

Like any boy educated under the Battle of Ideas, I learned to play chess as a child. I was taught – by my grandparents, not by my teachers – to be proud of Capablanca, The Machine, and I grew up with the conviction that he was the best chess player in the world. Americans could say the same about Bobby Fischer and the Russians about Spassky or Karpov. But Fischer was a madman and Karpov is Putin’s man – although he criticized him about Ukraine – as he was before the Central Committee. Capablanca was a gentleman. You only have to look at his photos, his classic serenity in front of the board. Always attentive to the pieces, always with a Buddhist smile, to the dismay of his adversaries.

Metaphors need food and electricity, decency and life, and without that there is no head, and therefore no chess.

There has never been another, and the one who came closest – Leinier Domínguez – does not even appear in the newspapers of his country. The country that has no boards or pieces, and where people used to play in the middle of a blackout, sitting on the curb of the sidewalk, illuminated by a small flashlight. Those night games were a metaphor for something, but metaphors also need food and electricity, decency and life, and without that there is no head, and therefore no chess.

You’ll find it hard to believe, Leontxo, that there was so much deterioration in Capablanca’s country, where Fischer and Korchnoi and Tal and Petrosian played. However, those of us who left have some consolation. It’s the same consolation that Nabokov felt when he escaped from Sebastopol on a Greek ship, with the Soviet firefight in the background. There, in front of him and with his back to the horror, were his father and a broken chess board. The bishop had lost his head, the rook was a poker chip. The game was unforgettable. He who flees always tries to do so with a nervous smile, with memory, with a little hope. Let’s see if he has any.

See also: chess

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A Wannabe of Science

For a long time science was conducted in the field notebook – with pencils and watercolours – as well as with the microscope.

One of the ’anthomedusae’ drawn by Ernst Haeckel, which today illustrate the Polish writer Stanisław Lem’s books, published by Impedimenta / Kunstformen der Natur (Artforms in Nature)

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, 17 November 2024 – Salamanca. To draw an object is to understand it. I leave the house with Faber-Castell pencils, a case of Staedtler felt pens and a hard-backed notebook in my jacket pocket. The pencil line forms quickly and shakily. It’s cold. Hardship can determine style: disjointed, austere, or brief – all virtues which one would want to have also for writing. The world moves on quickly and one wants to keep something of it. Snails, spiders, branches, puddles, voices.

To categorise is to capture; to draw is to hunt. “Regrets: not having continued to draw”, wrote George Steiner, “with charcoal, pastels and ink, in order to illustrate some of my own books. The hand can speak truths and happinesses that language is incapable of articulating”.

For a long time science was conducted in the field notebook – with pencils and watercolours – as well as with the microscope. The German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, whose work is as electrifying as the books of Darwin or Humboldt, is the best example. Better known as an artist than as a zoologist, his prints of jellyfish, radiolarias and cephalopods still make you dizzy. They make you dizzy because they seem to be alive and moving beyond the page. continue reading

Better known as an artist than as a zoologist, his prints of jellyfish, radiolarias and cephalopods still make you dizzy

Haeckel called his subjects enigmas of the universe, wonders of life, artforms of nature. Tentacles, spirals, membranes, strange multicoloured clusters, translucent, viscous and retractable. He dreamt of defining a complete morphology of these organisms. After immersing himself off the beaches of Naples and Sicily and investigating the composition of the Mediterranean waters, he painted some 1,000 images. He moved from art to biology and from biology to theology. He claimed to have defined God as a gaseous vertebrate.

Art, science and writing have one necessity in common: imagination. The scientist Carlo Rovelli says that science is, above all else, a visionary activity, and as such it requires sensitivity. Severo Sarduy, however, warns that: “it is possible that, when confronted with science, a writer is never much more than a wannabe”.

Antonio Parra was, to put it like that, our Haeckel, the man who united science and imagination. Born in Portugal in 1739, he arrived in Cuba as part of an infantry regiment after the English had taken Havana. He settled, left the army, and married a creole girl. In 1787 he submitted for publication one (and perhaps the most celebrated) of the 300 Cuban books that still survive from the eighteenth century, and which someone has called ’our incunables’.

’A Description of Different Types of Natural History, Most of them Marine Life’, with 75 copper engraved plates – in colour in some editions – was the first ever scientific work written on the island. If the military engravings of Dominic Serres and Philip Orsbridge mark a new way of seeing Cuba, or at least Havana, then with his Book of Fishes we have a visual discovery of its nature. The eighteenth century, Lezama explains, “shows us the character of Cuba”.

Science was born on the island through thought, drawing and the desire for exploration. Parra doesn’t write a scientific work, but a catalogue, a guide for his cabinet of curiosities. What curiosities? “The multitude of remarkable works of nature that abound on the island of Cuba and in the seas that surround it – in the the three kingdoms of animal, vegetable and mineral – all inspired in me, from the very first moment I set foot there, a great desire to put together a collection”.

With a “remarkable respect” for his adoptive country, Parra, enraptured, describes the nature of the tropics

With a “remarkable respect” for his adoptive country, Parra, enraptured, describes the nature of the tropics. He preserved and varnished specimens of the creatures that interested him, like Haeckel, the most – fish and marine creatures. He was, he says, praised for this work by some of his friends and this gave him encouragement. After a year the collection had grown significantly, and, despite a “scarcity of engravers”, Parra got his son to illustrate the book. The boy posessed, says the father with some irony, “a somewhat superficial style of drawing”, but he was nevertheless up to the job. He may perhaps have had some help, because the 75 plates are not the work of a beginner.

This improvised naturalist explained all of this to no less than the King of Spain himself, to whom he sent various pieces from his collection. With little preamble, the creatures begin to line up: some of his descriptions are poetical, others are almost tender – one fish has “two little arms, from which come two fins, like hands”. Another “eats with some suspicion”. The devil fish has stilettos in the form of horns, “whose use we don’t yet understand”.

There are [amongst others] wreckfish, bonefish, swordfish, hawkshead turtles, loggerhead turtles, furry and toothy crabs, teleost fish, prickly prawns, the mother of all snails: a kind of beehive that engenders an infinite number of molluscs, and a worm that’s a nightmare worthy of the planet Solaris…

Parra ended up being ignored by the King, who denied him Spanish citizenship. He had collected tropical seeds for sowing in Madrid and Aranjuez and had become a celebrity in illustrious circles on the peninsular, but even in the eyes of his admirers he was little more than a mere empiricist, an improviser, a mere artisan of curiosities. No more, as Sarduy would say, than a wannabe.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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Canadian Archaeologists Unravel the Mysteries of the Taínos of Los Buchillones in Cuba

The figures, carved from guayacán and ebony, were created between the 13th and 17th centuries

Los Buchillones is also the most significant archaeological site of Indo-Cuban art

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 26 October 2024 — It took almost 30 years for more than 150 pieces of indigenous art from the Los Buchillones site, in Ciego de Ávila, to be described and dated correctly by archaeologists. The merit, however, does not really go to the historians of the Island but to the University of Toronto, Canada, and the Royal Ontario Museum, who were in charge of the scientific study of the figures.

Despite the importance of the discovery, which greatly enriches the vision of pre-Columbian Cuba, the official press has hardly mentioned it. Last Thursday, however, ’Invasor’ explained the controversy over the pieces found in 1995 in Los Buchillones, which had been incorrectly attributed to “groups of farmers and ceramicists.”

Thanks to the scientists of the Isotrace university laboratory, it is now known that the figures, crafted in guayacán [lancewood] and ebony, were created between the 13th and 17th centuries of our era, more precisely between 1220 and 1690; the community remained there after the Spanish Conquest. That, the specialists add, was the “peak moment for ceramics.”

Nor were they created, as was thought, in Los Buchillones, but rather in another settlement located 500 meters from there, in an old salt flat known as La Laguna. This was suspected by Cuban scholars and fans of archeology, explains ’Invasor,’ since many of the pieces had marks that showed that they had been taken from the bottom of the sea or a river. continue reading

As for the typology of the figures, they correspond to the artistic forms that are known from the Tainos. They are ’cemíes’ – gods, ’dujos’ or ceremonial stools, spatulas and trays. Few of the Greater Antilles have so many representative pieces of indigenous art, and in the Cuban context, it also marks a milestone: Los Buchillones is the most significant archaeological site of Indo-Cuban art.

Ebony bowl found in the deposit / Patrimonio Ciega de Ávila / Facebook

Of the sculptures, eight stand out, whose characteristics help to better understand the imaginary and everyday life of the Tainos. They are dark in color, carved in guayacán and ebony wood, whose height ranges between 10.5 (4.1 inches) and 34 centimeters (13.4 inches). You can see in some of them the head and limbs – with emphasis on the male and female genitals – of a divinity, and others are in the form of sexless animals.

They are, judging by their shape and careful symmetry, idols linked to fertility, and that is the name that the most remarkable sculpture has received, 18 centimeters (7.1 inches) high, and of which ’Invasor’ provided a sketch. In addition to sexual symbolism, it contains elements – the representation of a skeleton and a kind of halo, in the manner of Catholic saints – that refer to the passage from life to death and to the notion of time that the Taínos possessed.

It is believed that the vases and bowls also have a ritual character and were used by the Taínos in their religious ceremonies. According to ’Invasor,’ the Canadian specialists recommended “developing a stylistic study of these objects” and continuing the investigation, headed by Cuban archaeologist Jorge A. Calvera Rosés.

Only fragments of Cuba’s indigenous past remain. The few archaeological studies that have been published in the country have given little clarity about the different groups that formed the Indo-Cuban area, and most Cubans have erroneous or outdated notions about their lives, customs and rituals.

A decisive step to understand the religion of the Taínos was taken, in 1947, by the Cuban ethnologist and polygrapher Fernando Ortiz with his book, ’El huracán, su mitología y sus símbolos (The Hurricane, its Mythology and Symbols). Published by the Economic Culture Fund and impossible to obtain in the the Island’s bookstores – it is rare, even in the libraries – Ortiz’s meticulous study of several pieces similar to those found in Los Buchillones allowed us to understand the sacred universe of the Taínos.

Ortiz’s meticulous study of several similar pieces allowed us to understand the sacred universe of the Taínos / Patrimonio Ciego de Ávila / Facebook

Ortiz focused his research on a set of enigmatic sculptures, formed by a human trunk with a head and another creature in its chest with arms crossed in an X. Although the shapes of the “curious figurines” were variable, these elements were the common factor and pointed to a sacred conception of the hurricane, the Father of Winds for the Taínos.

His conclusion was that the idol of the hurricane was “the most typical figure in Cuba,” since he had not found specimens on any other Caribbean island. To explain it, he composed a work that seeks the traces of the cult of the hurricane from Hindu swastikas to Andalusian dances, describing a mythical itinerary practically virgin in Cuban historical studies.

Despite the shortcomings, the field of Indo-Cuban studies offers the researcher a terrain full of novelties and a whole bibliography of pioneers such as Ortiz, who in his time reached the height of classical mythological studies like James Frazer and Joseph Campbell. His personal collection, absorbed – with little care – by the National Library and other state institutions, is a good starting point for the researcher.

“Every archaeological object is in itself a search for an intelligible expression. It is a dead and unearthed being to which its name and life must be returned,” Ortiz then said, before, effectively, giving meaning to his discovery. The more than 150 pieces of Los Buchillones continue, as predicted 100 years ago by Ortiz, in search of someone who knows how to speak in their “own language.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

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For the Cuban Mind, Terse Questions

’Still life with a pig’s head’, painted in 1968 by Fernando Botero / CC

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 6 October 2024 — Yes, I also got carried away by nostalgia and went to a Cuban restaurant in Madrid. I’m not going to say which one, because the life of an emigrant is hard, and setting up a business – a pitiful one, but I’m getting ahead of myself – is already quite indigestible. But a fish dies by its mouth and so did I. In general, since I arrived in this country I have led a fairly private life. I have gotten together with few Cubans, more out of my unfriendliness than my lack of patriotism, because abroad there is a taste for the national junk that I fight against like hell.

I will never forget that waiter who, idiotic and melancholic, wanted me to give him a box of Ramón Allones cigars that I had brought from the Island. They were limited edition cigars, in green cedar packaging, a farewell gift – I would never have been able to pay for those jewels – the last one of which I burned down a few weeks ago. But look, the lad didn’t want to smoke. He didn’t tolerate the taste or smell, but he inhaled the butt. He wanted the box, the ark of the alliance, to deposit the remains of his Cubanness. I promised him that I would send it to him as soon as I had a chance.

Everyone knows that Madrid is the new Miami. The lycras and flip-flops, the despicable “asere qué bolá” (whasup, dude?) that any Cuban offers as a password of origin, the watering hole and the gossip, have taken possession of Chamberí, Puerta del Sol and Barajas. In the clueless Spanish imagination, Cuba was at first a land of promise, then a communist paradise and now – as in Dian Fossey’s famous book – a good place to have a mojito among gorillas. My newly arrived compatriots fervently cultivate their image of the noble savage, or at least the savage part. They change country, but not what’s inside their heads. continue reading

I paid the price of being waited on in my accent and enjoyed tiny portions: socialist, regulated by the ration book

It is not illogical, therefore, that if someone opens a Cuban restaurant in Madrid, they proceed to recreate our misery on a gastronomic scale. I was – unpleasant journey in time and space – in a Havana restaurant, in an inn with peeling walls, Cuban bric-a-brac, photos of the Capitolio and el Morro. I paid the price of being waited on in my accent, I waited in vain for a glass for the beer – Crystal, packaged in Holguín! – and I enjoyed tiny portions: socialist, regulated by the ration book.

Of course I deserved it. A few blocks away there were two Asturian restaurants where I would have felt at home. Not because Asturias is for me a gastronomic homeland – which it almost is – but because a well-made stew of beans, pork and other ingredients will always remind a Cuban of his origins; a slice of quince with cheese or a rice pudding, grandma’s desserts; a grape liqueur with a cigar, the perfect ending to a lunch.

There was something sumptuous and generous in the Creole, something that the Regime castrated and that the exile should have preserved. Why do Cubans travel to Spain asking for hamburgers and Coca-Cola? Why have they been saving to buy a car the first year when there is so little need here? Why the rush to forget the best of the country and cultivate the most rude, the vulgarity inherent in Castroism, the impudencence of the “New Man“?

I was looking for an experience that would bring me closer to my past, and they made the present bitter

That Madrid restaurant was a perfect summary of all that. Dishes, the basics: tasteless stews, steak, tostones, dry congrí. I was looking for an experience that would bring me closer to my past, and they made the present bitter. It’s useless to ask for explanations or hit the table – plastic, of course, no stools – with your fists. There it was the Government’s fault; whose is it here? To the “lacón,*” laconic questions, Lezama would say.

Where can Cuba find itself? For a long time I thought it was in books, but looking for a country in the library, without a real experience, is an exercise in archaeology. A bolero is heard and forgotten; a cigar is smoked; a language is used; a son lives not on the Island that his parents abandoned but on another continent, under its flag.

I don’t think the Cuban, in his usual light-heartedness, will notice that this gentleness now means very little. Does anyone care? Not me; now you know. Over time one finds grace for oneself if not elsewhere. If I went back, I would be a stranger. If I stay here, there will always be an air of provisionality wherever I am. Almost an act of cheap magic, a snap of the fingers, and I left, as I vanished from that Cuban restaurant in Madrid. Wasn’t that what Martí was referring to before pronouncing, in the swamp, his best spell? “I know how to disappear.” And he did.

*Translator’s note: A “lacón” is a pig’s head; hence, the play on words.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Cartoonists From ‘Mazzantini’ Save August From Editorial Lethargy

The online magazine has had a lot of work since Nicolás Maduro refused to leave Miraflores on July 28 / Alen Lauzán / Mazzantini

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 31 August 2024 — In Cuba there is no more money, even for Martí. It is true that the cult of the man Cubans call ’the Apostle’ in his land always had something of alms, and there was no tribute – from the Civic Square to Martí Notebooks – that did not require passing the hat to the battered popular pocket. But Castroism, or this limbo without a label that came later, always has had its own imprint on misery.

No one forgets the famous 28 volumes of Complete Works with a prologue by Juan Marinello that, in some Cuban houses of worship, still accumulate dust. It was even said that there was a volume 29, the prophetic volume, censored for talking about Fidel, communism, computer science, reorganization and other futuristic subjects. Less memorable – for how little it lasted in bookstores – are the critical editions that, if we pay attention to what the professional martyrologist Marlene Vázquez says, will remain eternally incomplete.

With prose in the style of Martí, the imitation of Martí is always an apostolic parody – Vázquez says that “at the moment, the directors of the Center for Studies on Martí is looking for sources of financing for the printing of volumes 30, 31 and 32, now finished.” And he promises that, “as usual, those who contribute will be recognized on the credits page of the corresponding volume.”

It was even said that there was a volume 29, the prophetic volume, censored for talking about Fidel, communism, computer science, reorganization and other futuristic subjects

Vázquez does not say if he expects dollars, euros or the humble pesos with the face of the Apostle. He limits himself to reminding the Government of the propaganda service they could offer: “In the present, in the midst of the loss of values that we are experiencing, and willing to win it by ideas, that great work is very useful.” This sample of the art of seduction appeared in Cubadebate, but any Cuban knows that it won’t come to anything, much less so in dollars.

In the antipodes of the mendicant Center for Martí Studies is the Havana Historian’s Office. This is demonstrated by the resurrection, after years of lethargy, of Ediciones Boloña, one of the projects that the current deputy director, Perla Rosales, most quickly dismantled, after the death of Historian Eusebio Leal. Reinvented and with money, Bologna publishes in an expensive volume the classic, “La Habana. Apuntes históricos (Historical Notes),” by Emilio Roig.

The presentation was attended by Rosales and the entire general staff – the military metaphor is not exaggerated – of the Office. The “Notes” of Roig, the old republican historian whom Castroism did everything possible to forget, had not been published since the 1960s.

On the decline, the publication of Cuban books in exile also seems to be on a lethargic holiday – it happened in January, with almost no titles and very few that were outstanding. The bad streak broke with a book of drawings and notes, “Cartografía Personal (Personal Cartography),” by Jorge Pantoja. The artist, born in Havana, composes the book that every Cuban should be making: an anthology of his school notebooks, correspondence with his mother and doodles.

The publication of Cuban books in exile also seems to be on a lethargic holiday

Personal cartography is a return to Pantoja’s childhood brought to light, the chronicle of the birth of his imagination. It raises the tension between feeling and doctrine, the precocious and the unknown, the rigid and the adventurous. In the end, the trajectory described is the foundation of his own experience as a creator, which is found in those remote notes.

The return to mythology – one of his favorite themes – defines Roberto Méndez’s new book of poems, “Descenso de Alcestes” (The Descent of Alcistis), (Casa Vacía). With a whole arsenal of books in tow, Méndez now summons Hercules and Orpheus, who traveled to hell and returned, and Mozart, who faced death but did not return.

The ones who do not rest – the real cartoonist never does – are the cartoonists of Mazzantini.* The “magazine of bulls, goats and horns, genetic or hybridized” has had a lot of work since Nicolás Maduro refused to leave Miraflores on July 28. The cover of number 52 shows the dictator’s floating head in a dystopian museum of old tyrants. Puzzled, Maduro is Castro’s neighbor, who looks at him crosseyed.

The metamorphosis of the Grand Master Mason Mario Urquía Carreño into a major of the Ministry of the Interior, the stampede of leaders, the blunders of Cuban Television and the pranks of State Security complete the edition. And at the end, a quote from Manuel Marrero that could well be the government’s response to Marlene Vázquez’s request for money: “We never promise our people,” says the chubby prime minister, “what we know we won’t be able to give.”

*Translator’s note: Mazzantini was a bullfighter, considered “muy guapo,” which means he was very courageous, like the subversive cartoonists of the magazine.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Pacharán Through My Life

Reynerio Lebroc was many things: he was a priest, a professor, a patriot, a conspirator and a chaplain of the invading troops in the Bay of Pigs.

Lebroc, center and wearing a gabardine coat, next to the current vicar of Santa Clara (on his left) and a group of priests in Rome / Gaspar El Lugarareño

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 25 August 2024 — It is depressing that the same political dog bites you twice. The situation in Venezuela, a country crushed by my country – I say all the time that we have almost always been villains – has made me think of the Cubans who, fleeing from Fidel, sought refuge in Caracas and were surprised decades later by that moronic nephew of Castroism, Chavismo. I think especially of a couple I met in Madrid. They had left Cuba in the 60s and Caracas in the 90s. I think he was a doctor or a businessman; she offered me a rich pacharán from Navarre and could not resist making fun of Buesa: pacharán through my life without knowing that you pachaste*.

That day we talked about Carlos Alberto Montaner, who was already very ill and few knew that he had come to Spain to die. With Montaner we were losing the dream of a first president in democracy, a dream that Venezuelans are now living and that we – from afar, with envy – admire. He also spoke of the fate that awaits the library of an exile. “My children are not interested in my books,” he confessed to me. I suggested that he send them little by little to the Cuban bishops, who would find a way to nourish their libraries. Libraries are dynamite for the regime, I said, and if I didn’t say it, I thought it.

That day there was talk about Carlos Alberto Montaner, who was already very ill and few knew that he had come to Spain to die.

If it had not been for a library made of banned books I would not have been able to read Cabrera Infante, Arenas, Sarduy, Montaner, Rojas, the people of Encuentro and many others. Dazed by the pacharán and the drowsiness, I asked them if they had never come across Reynerio Lebroc in Caracas. I owe so much of my sentimental education to that bombastic name that I feel he is like an old relative. Every book in his vast library – he managed to send it from his exile to Santa Clara – ended up passing through my hands. continue reading

Lebroc was many things. He was a priest, an expert in colonial history, a professor, a conspirator, a bit of a spy and a bit of an adventurer. There is a photo in which, being less than 30 years old, he is seen descending the stairs of an Iberia plane. He is skinny and balding: he has just been released from prison. Castro put him in prison in 1961 along with three priests. They were to be the chaplains of the invading troops in the Bay of Pigs.

Castro put him in jail in 1961 together with three priests. They were to be the chaplains of the invading troops in the Bay of Pigs

The copy of the book “Religion and Revolution in Cuba” by Manuel Fernandez that I read was Lebroc’s. He underlined a sentence with a hard line: “The release of four priests arrested in 1961: the Spaniards Francisco Lopez Blazquez, Jose Luis Rojo, both diocesan, and Jose Ramon Fidalgo, dominican, and the Cuban Reynerio Lebroc.” I remember some angry phrase in the margin, perhaps a bad word, but I no longer have the book handy.

I can say that I know how the reader-machine that was Lebroc worked. From him, I took a liking for making small analytical indexes at the end of each book. He had a system of signals – one or two curls next to the line, underlining the minimum, annotating in the margin – which I adopted, with few variations. He liked to correct and make fun of the author’s blunders. He marked each book with an Ex Libris: an R and an L, capped by a star. He had collected the thousands of volumes of his library from Madrid, Rome, Paris, Bruges, Berlin, San Juan de Puerto Rico, Bogota, Mexico, Miami and Caracas. He had the most portentous collection of chroniclers of the Indies that I have ever seen, including reproductions of documents photocopied by him in the Archive of the Indies in Seville.

To annoy Castro – but I don’t think he took notice – the Cuban bishops gave John Paul II in 1998 a copy of the biography Lebroc wrote about Antonio María Claret. The Pope greeted Castro with one hand and with the other he held the book by Lebroc, the chaplain of the Bay of Pigs!

The Pope greeted Castro with one hand and with the other he held the book by Lebroc, the chaplain of the Bay of Pigs

Lebroc’s library did not travel to Santa Clara by chance. The vicar of the diocese, Arnaldo Fernandez, was his best friend since school – Arnaldo was a lively mulatto with slanted eyes; Lebroc, a scatterbrained guajiro from Ciego de Avila – in Rome. They used to see each other at least twice a year in Venezuela and that’s how the books arrived on the island. I remember that the vicar would get rejuvenated when talking about Lebroc and I, who was not able to meet him although he died in 2018 in Caracas, would get closer through the conversation to my secret benefactor, the man whose library had saved me.

Lebroc lived in Madrid and Rome for some years. He became a Doctor of history and wrote biographies of the first Cuban bishops, published by Juan Manuel Salvat in Miami. He left several unpublished manuscripts, which I was also able to read. He started a new life in Caracas, where a good part of the Cuban exile – including Bishop Eduardo Boza Masvidal, his friend, who died in Los Teques in 2003 – had settled down. He was the parish priest of La California Norte for 40 years and founded the Centro De Estudios Cecilio Acosta. Almost all the young bishops of Venezuela were his pupils.

Lebroc was remembered by his friends wrapped in his gabardine coat, chatting with the bouquinistes [antique book sellers] of the Seine or rummaging through bookstores in Seville. The fact that he chose Caracas for exile means that there, as nowhere else, the Cubans found a kindred country (Carpentier wrote there, as it happens, Los pasos perdidos (The Lost Steps) and El siglo de las luces (The Century of Lights). I cannot imagine what the rise of Chavez and that grotesque creature Maduro meant to Lebroc. To see the adopted country torn apart by the same people who ruined his native country must be devastating. Lebroc, the pacharán marriage, so many friends, how did they survive that? We owe too much to the Venezuelans. We stake our freedom on their freedom.

*Translator’s note: This is a pun on words using the word “pacharán” (a sloe-flavoured liqueur commonly drunk in Navarre) and Buesa’s poem “Pasarás por mi vida sin saber que pasaste…” where both words sound similar. The translation in English would be something like ” You will pass through my life without knowing that you did…”

Translated by LAR

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Titivillus In culpa Est (It Was All Titivilo’s Fault!)

Most people who dedicate themselves to being an editor do it to earn a living and not as a vocation, but how could paranoia be a vocation anyway?

The devil with an ice cream cone, in Salamanca cathedral – an anachronistic figure added during the 1991 restauration / Xavier Carbonell

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 30 June 2024 – Burgos, the city where El Cid and Miguelón are buried, is two and a half hours by train from Salamanca. It’s a cold place. To enjoy it well you should eat some hot beans in one of the taverns on Calle San Lorenzo, but not before devouring at top speed a couple of cojonudas – bread, sausage, peppers and quail’s eggs. Then, all prepared and wearing a scarf, one should head for the Museum of Human Evolution, where there are human remains more than 400,000 years old. It can change your life seeing the sharpened stone axe which they’ve named ’Excalibur’, or the ’pelvis Elvis’ (bones), both thousands of years old.

Having completed this part of the journey, one follows the course of the river Arlanzón as far as Las Huelgas monastery. There have been nuns living there since the eleventh century. Very powerful nuns actually, who used to own a large part of the land surrounding the convent. The king had to travel to one of their chapels, where a strange automaton that represented the apostle Saint James brandished a sword and declared him a knight.

To earn some income the nuns opened up part of the monastery to visitors. The floor is solid oak, the tombs are white and in one room hangs an enormous Muslim banner – supposedly used by the Arabs in the battle of the Tolosa flatlands in 1212. And in one of the galleries, under very dim light, hangs the picture of … the character I’m looking for. continue reading

You have to imagine Titivilo as a cat which prowls around the scriptorium, wets his paws in ink and climbs up onto the desk where the monks are working

Black and furry paws, tight pants, hunched, shirtless, a bundle of books on his back, he doesn’t have wings but he does still have his horns. He’s a bignose, he smiles – or grimaces. This is Titivilo, the patron demon of editors, writers, librarians and others whose business is in paper. Next to him is a devil with miniature wings attached to his arms, which gives him the airs of a reveller. Both are trying to torment the nuns and the royal family, protected by the Virgin’s cloak. It’s one of the few times that Titivilo, invisible lowlife bastard, has let himself be caught.

You have to imagine Titivilo as a cat which prowls around the scriptorium, wets his paws in ink and climbs up onto the desk where the monks are working. Today, the same mischievous animal trips over ballpoint pens and two-tone pencils – crucifixes against errors – and passes his tail over the keyboard, introducing malware into the autocorrect of the computer. ’Titivillus in culpa est!’ pleaded the monk when his manuscript contained errors. And the excuse has passed from generation to generation, right down to today’s editors.

One will never have enough indulgence in that profession. An editor is payed – almost always badly – to develop textual paranoia to pathological limits. Victims of professional deformation, they look for ’erratas’ in the TV’s scrolling-news summary, in the adverts, in the words of politicians – those producers of verbal inanity – and they can’t bear to be around when a child is speaking.

The Academy defines ’errata’ as ’material equivocation in the final print or in the manuscript’. Nothing more than that. An ’errata’, for the obsessive editor, is a mental sin whose echo goes on multiplying in the walls of the brain. ’Errata’ is the title of George Steiner’s wonderful autobiography, and also the name of an odd Spanish publisher. There are ’erratas’ that are notorious milestones among the editors of our language [Spanish] – ’el coño fruncido’ (the furrowed pussy – ’coño’ instead of ’ceño’, ie ’brow’), ’the fire behind’, ’the multiplication of penises and fish’ – traumatic erratas, erratas of ETA, bitch erratas, of burials, of thieves.

How does one learn to edit? There isn’t a school for it, although someone did charge for teaching the craft in my university faculty

How does one learn to edit? There isn’t a school for it, although someone did charge for teaching the craft in my university faculty. The classes turned into a delicious war against time, because there was no way to fill up the term time exhausting variations on one single theme: make sure the other guy writes well, be your brother’s guardian or they’ll punish you. The other, second patron demon of editors, after Titivilo, is the author himself.

There are so few authors who deliver their manuscript with even the minimum of honesty, that, for the reader, there will always remain some suspicion about who is the real, true person responsible for the book. Herralde or Bolaño? Divinski or Quino? De Maura or Kundera? ’Paradiso’ is famous for its linguistic bloopers (it actually starts with “Paradiso 1″ instead of “Chapter 1”!) and, in his copy, Cortázar noted: “Why so many errors, Lezama?” Critical editions usually print photographs of the original manuscript, in which the reader comes to realise with horror that the majority of novelists know nothing about punctuation, ignore accents (on letters), confuse meanings and mess up the rhythm. Not to mention bad handwriting or the celebrated joke made by García Márquez, who said “ditch the proper-spelling thing”.

There have been many chasers-down of bloopers among Cubans – from José Zacarías Tallet to Fernando Carr Parúas. Books about language, such as
’The Dart in the Word’ by Fernando Lázaro Carreter, or the most recent ’Measure The Words’ by the lovely Pedro Álvarez de Miranda, were the best preventative exorcism against Titivilo. Among the current members of the Cuban Language Academy there are few who have the capacity to write text at the level of their predecessors. I’ve just looked at the list and was only impressed by Margarita Mateo.

My ideas for a personal catalogue are so chaotic that they will never find any finance, unless I provide it myself.

Editing is a thankless business. The majority of those who do it, do so only to earn money and don’t do it as a vocation. But how could paranoia be a vocation anyway? Another thing – and this really is a profession that is becoming more and more rare – is ’editor as cultural thinker’, such as one who selects catalogues, or is advisor to an author and a craftsperson of books, whose presentation, obviously, he will have to look after, without this being the core of his work. I’ve known very few editors who were like that – four or five? – and I don’t even dare to say how many of them were Cubans.

For my part, I’m not an editor, although I do edit almost every day. My ideas for a personal catalogue are so chaotic that they will never find any finance, unless I provide it myself. I detest looking for funding, I prefer to produce it myself.

I’ve come to experience true depression when someone else’s text is badly written. It hurts to read a book rotting away with errors, but it hurts more if I’m the one who has to correct them. Life is cruel, we live under the implacable fire of Titivilo and we don’t always have some of those cojonudas to lift our spirits. As enemies of the literary devil, we are also poor devils ourselves.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The ‘Friends of the Cigar’ and the Cuban Regime Make Millions of Dollars With the Cigar Business

Five distributors, chosen by Fidel Castro himself, monopolize the world market. They organize auctions with the promise of sending the money to the dilapidated Public Health system of the Island.

In the center of the photo are Jemma Freeman, manager of Hunters & Frankau, and Luis Sánchez-Harguindey, co-president of Habanos S.A.

14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 4 August 2024 — Escorted by two British red coats and surrounded by millionaires from all over the world, the managers of the Hunters & Frankau house had some news: last month during the cigar auction to promote the Trinidad Cabildos, whose organization had been invited by the Havana regime, 5,150,000 euros were collected in a single night. The president of the cigar company, Jemma Freeman, promised to send the money – most would be missing – to the dilapidated “Cuban Public Health system.”

Hunters & Frankau, the exclusive distributor of the Cuban monopoly Habanos S.A. in the United Kingdom, thus closed the first face-to-face edition of World Cigar Days. Similar – but much more luxurious – at the Cigar Festival of Cuba, the event was hosted by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Between Rafael’s Renaissance canvases and a humidor signed by Fidel Castro in 2002 – which was not for sale – the aficionados bid on limited editions and numbered boxes of Trinidad, a brand that turns 55 and is “loaded with symbolism” for being the favorite of the Cuban dictator.

It is enough to explore the official website of Habanos S.A. to verify that premium cigars continue to give great benefits to the regime. The news section attests to the luxurious network of Cuban cigars internationally and its distribution partners. From Russia to Beirut, from Madrid to Geneva, from Havana to Qatar, the “friends of the cigar” network has been consolidating its power with millionaire sales for decades. A Cuban tobacco planter would need a lot of mental effort to process that a single cigar made by his hands is auctioned for thousands of dollars in the great capitals of the world.

Luis Sánchez-Harguindey, co-president of Habanos S.A. and head of the Cuban cigar empire / Cigar Aficionado

Habanos S.A. would be nothing without Spain. The ethnologist Fernando Ortiz wrote that whoever rules in Cuba rules over the cigar. That phrase is illustrated like no one else by Luis Sánchez-Harguindey, co-president of the monopoly since 2012, although on his social networks he describes himself simply as a president and an expert in “international business management.”

Premium cigars continue to give great benefits to the regime

It is Sánchez-Harguindey who calls the shots for Habanos S.A. and who presents his results annually during the Cuban Cigar Festival. His counterpart in Spain is Fernando Domínguez, president of Tabacalera S.A., which distributes Cuban cigars to every tobacconist in Spain. Sánchez-Harguindey and Domínguez’s dream was to take the American market by storm, but Cuban cigars were banished. In 2015, in the midst of the thaw in diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington, both businessmen salivated over a commercial opportunity that never came.

Heinrich Villiger, director of 5th Avenue Products Trading, exclusive distributor of Habanos S.A. in Germany, Austria and Poland / Cigar Aficionado]

Habanos S.A. soon recovered from its disappointment and strengthened its sales in Europe. The key man of that expansion was Heinrich Villiger, director of 5th Avenue Products Trading, who is in charge of the distribution of Cuban cigars in Germany, Austria and Poland.

At the age of 94, Villiger, a member of one of the most prominent families in Switzerland – his brother Kaspar was president of the country – opened factories in Nicaragua and Brazil this year. He boasts of directing his “empire” – he employs 1,700 people – based on letters that come out of his typewriter. As a young man, Villiger traveled to the United States and then to Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico to gain experience. When the Cuban cigar business collapsed in the United States after the Missile Crisis – before which, supposedly, President J.F. Kennedy bought all the cigars available – Villiger took the opportunity and approached Castro.

One of the least known sales niches of Habanos S.A. in Europe is Andorra. One company – Maori Tabacs – takes advantage of the tax exemptions offered by that country, advertises as a paradise for “luxury hunters.” José María Cases and his son Ricardo, who preside over Maori, know it well. Cases is famous for initiating the practice of wrapping cigars in cellophane so that, in the absence of tropical humidity, they survive the European climate.

Mohamed Zeidan, president of Phoenicia Trading and partner of Habanos S.A. for distribution in the Middle East, Africa and part of Europe / Beirut Duty Free

Using that “trick,” José L. Piedra began to import cigars and developed his business. In 1975 he opened an office in Cuba and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he began to help Castro by sending him products that the country requested, not necessarily linked to the world of cigars. He befriended Villiger and Nicholas Freeman – father of the current manager of Hunters & Frankau – who were already close to the dictator.

Millionaire and decadent, Cases has a collection of 400 humidors and imports more than 200 cigar bands from the Island. In addition, he is a cigar cop: Maori Tabacs’ monopoly prevents counterfeit cigars from entering Andorra and France, where he is also in charge of the market.

On the American continent, Max Gutmann has been selling Cuban cigars in Mexico for almost 40 years

Castro met the Lebanese Mohamed Zeidan, president of Phoenicia Trading and partner of Habanos S.A., in the Middle East, Africa and part of Europe, in 1999 during a Havana Festival. Castro “became fond of him” after the auction of a signed humidor for which he gave $230,000. Zeidan, whom he nicknamed “the Phoenician,” re-auctioned the humidor on the spot to win over the dictator even more: the money was used to pay the lawyers who represented Havana in the dispute over the custody of Elián González.

On the American continent, Max Gutmann, president of Importer and Exporter of Cigars and Tobacco, has been selling Cuban cigars in Mexico for almost 40 years. Of Austrian origin, Gutmann bought the first humidor signed by Castro and opened the first Casa del Habano in Cancún in 1990.

When a group of businessmen with no connection to Cuba opened a store of the same name in Paris, Gutmann received a call from the president of Cubatabaco – the name of the Cuban state monopoly at the time. They asked him to give the Cuban regime the “Casa del Habano” brand completely free of charge. In return, they would give him the exclusive rights to distribute cigars in Mexico.

Max Gutmann, in the center, with two of his partners at the Casa del Habano de México / Cigar Aficionado

Gutmann accepted. Castro admitted him into his circle, and he managed to be one of the 200 guests at the first cigar gala dinner – there were still no festivals – in 1995. He returned to his country with a humidor signed by the caudillo and the writer Gabriel García Márquez for which he paid $5,000. Gutmann believes that his company also captures the U.S. market, which cannot negotiate with Habanos S.A. That Americans and Canadians travel to Mexico to buy Cuban cigars, he says, was the idea of Castro, who allied with Gutmann “knowing that they would surely end up there,” he said in an interview.

Domínguez, Villiger, Freeman, Cases and Gutmann, considered the pentarchy of the Cuban cigar worldwide, were summoned by Fidel Castro during the Special Period to stir up their clientele before the first Cigar Festival.

Called to the international cigar event par excellence, the millionaires who meet in Havana once a year – and also personalities such as Jeremy Irons, Paris Hilton and Tom Jones – also travel to the “twin” events that the five houses hold around the world, and which have been joined by other potential tycoons from Russia, the United Arab Emirates and – the client of the future – China.

Each dinner is more exclusive than the last, and more and more expensive and extravagant cigars are being sold. As an afterthought that, for any Cuban, is more than ironic, the millions collected are promised to Cuban Health. Without the slightest modesty, Habanos S.A. publishes the photos of each event.

At the end of the night, the “friends of the Cuban cigar” are photographed with the humble Cuban farmers, and they give a toast – cigar in hand and dressed in a tuxedo – for the dictator who made their businesses prosper.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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