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editor
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 Posted: Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:20 pm Post subject: Cuba Libre |
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Cuba Libre:
Fidel
The Untold Story
DVD
Directed by Estela Bravo
| Quote: | Narrator: In 1952, now a practising lawyer, Fidel ran as a candidate for the Orthodox Party, an anti-corruption coalition. Cuba's hero of independence, Jose Marti, inpsired the movement. The election never took place. General Batista, who had been in power before, staged a coup to prevent an Orthodox Party victory.
Max Lesnick: Back then, with Batista, there was widespread corruption, gambling, prostitution and violence. The country was on the verge of disaster.
Harry Belafonte: I went there. It was the playground of the mafia. We had all the big jazz nightclubs that Nat King Cole and myself were petitioned to perform in. I did not see democracy in Cuba. As a matter of fact, if anything, I saw blatant racism and corruption. |
No shots of armed guards patrolling the streets and not much blood despite a revolution, but plenty of CIA infiltrators in this one and bear hugs from one of the few world leaders who could say with a certain degree of confidence as he did before a 15-year sentence was pronounced against him:
"Convict me; it doesn't matter. History will absolve me."
We'll see.
Link to this entry
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Last edited by editor on Wed Apr 23, 2008 5:01 pm; edited 8 times in total |
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Nov 30, 2005 1:07 pm Post subject: |
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The Motorcycle Diaries
DVD
Twenty-four-year-old asthmatic medical student and soon-to-be revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevera with his 30-year-old biochemist buddy, Alberto Granada, motorcycle noisily through an often unforgiving and occasionally magnificent South America, meeting its indigenous people, the real stars of the show. A surprisingly low-key film that takes one of its more exciting turns with a game of Blackjack aboard ship as our heroes make their way alas! sans moto to a leper colony in Peru:
| Quote: | (Players surround the table, shouting out bets)
Player: Eight soles.
Dearler: Ten soles.
Alberto: One sol.
Dealer: Sir, this for men, not school children.
Alberto: I didn't know that in Peru a man's balls are measured in soles.
Dealer: Very well, let's play.
(Not surprisingly, perhaps, our hero manages to hold his own and then some)
Dealer (to everyone): How much do I owe you?
Alberto: Gentlemen, once again, Blackjack!
Dealer: That's impossible! How much do I owe you?
Alberto: Thirty soles, (taking the money). See you later. Thank you. I'll be retiring. I think we know who's got the biggest balls at this table. |
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Jul 10, 2006 10:52 am Post subject: |
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Of Love and Other Demons
Hardcover
By 1982 Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Translated by Edith Grossman
| Quote: | An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its foreheard burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday in December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened to cross its path. Three of them were black slaves. The fourth, Sierva Maria de Todos los Angeles, the only child of the Marquis de Casalduero, had come there with a mulatta servant to buy a string of bells for the celebration of her twelfth birthday.
They had been instructed not to go beyond the Arcade of the Merchants, but the maid ventured as far as the drawbridge in the slum of Getsemani, attracted by the crowd at the slavers' port where a shipment of blacks from Guineau was being sold at a discount. For the past week a ship belonging to the Compania Gaditana de Negros had been awaited with dismay because of an unexplainable series of deaths on board. In an attempt at concealment, the unweighted corpses were thrown into the water. The tide brought them to the surface and washed the bodies, disfigured by swelling and a strange magenta coloring, up on the beach. The vessel lay anchored outside the bay, for everyone feared an outbreak of some African plague, until it was verified that the cause of death was food poisoning. (Opening paragraphs of Chapter One) |
Then later...
| Quote: | | Curfew in the cloister was in effect from the singing of Vespers at seven in the evening until the hour of Prime and six-o'-clock Mass. All lights were extinguished except for those in a few authorized cells. Yet never before had life in the convent been so agitated and free. There was a traffic of shadows along the corridors, of intermittent whispers and haste held in check. They gambled in the most unexpected cells, either with Spanish decks of cards or weighted dice, and drank furtive liquors and smoked the b=tobacco rolled in secret ever since Josefa Miranda had forbidden it in the cloister. The presence inside the convent walls of a girl posessed by demons had all the excitement of an extraordinary adventure. (-- p. 70) |
Two extraordinary artists at work here - the author and his equally famous translator.
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Thu Aug 10, 2006 11:01 am Post subject: |
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Executive Action:
638 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (Secret War)
Hardcover
By Fabian Escalante
Hoy! Talk about impossible odds. The book purports to document the number of CIA attempts on the life of Cuba's 80-year-old leader.
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Fri Aug 11, 2006 4:35 pm Post subject: |
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The New Yorker
Castro's Last Battle
Can the revolution outlive its leader?
By Jon Lee Anderson
July 31/06
| Quote: | | Fidel wasn't there (a rally in Havana last March to denounce a protestor who had waved a 'Down with Fidel' sign in front of a TV camera at a baseball game the night before), although, like most Cubans, he takes baseball very seriously. (For years, there was a popular myth that as a student he was scouted by an American major-league team.) Castro, who will celebrate his eightieth birthday on August 13th, appears less and less frequently in public, and only rarely at events where foreigners are present. For decades, Castro's legendary stamina served him well. He was thirty-two when he overthrew Cuba's dictator, Fulgencio Batista, in 1959, with a guerrila army of bearded fighters that included Ernesto (Che) Guevera. Castro presented himself as a nationalist, determined to eradicate Cuba's gangster-run casino culture and end its reputation as "the whorehouse of the Caribbean." Once in power, he moved quickly to the left, nationalizing large plantations (his mother's was among those seized) and foreign-owned businesses, and moved closer to the Soviet Union. In 1961, the CIA, with the help of Cuban emigres, organized the Bay of Pigs invasion to remove Castro from power. The invasion was ignominiously defeated, and since then, despite a U.S. trade embargo and numerous assassination attempts (see previous post), Fidel Castro has outlasted nine American presidents. He is the world's longest-serving ruler. (-- p. 46) |
More about the Cuban missile crisis at the excellent ThinkQuest site from rockin' San Fran by the Bay.
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Nov 12, 2007 10:28 am Post subject: |
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Smithsonian
Magazine Subscription
Hemingway's Cuba
Cuba's Hemingway
His last personal secretary returns to Havana and discovers that the novelist's mythic presence looms larger than ever
By Valerie Hemingway
August, 2007
| Quote: | The director of the Museo Ernest Hemingway, Ada Rosa Alfonso Rosales, was waiting for me in her office, which had once been Finca Vigia's two-car garage. Surrounded by a staff of about half a dozen, a team of especialistas with pencils poised, tape recorder and video camera rolling, I fielded a barrage of questions about the finca and its former owners. Did I remember the color of the walls? Which important people had I met in the spring and summer of 1960? Those notations on Ernest's bathroom wall - could I identify who wrote the ones that aren't in his handwriting? After a while, I began to wonder whether it was my memory or my imagination that was filling in the gaps.
... Inside, I felt distracted, not by the objects I was trying to identify, for I had taken little notice of them when I lived there, but by my memories. My Finca Vigia is not a museum but a home. Looking at the chintz-covered chair in the living room, I saw Hemingway's ample figure as he sat holding a glass of scotch in one hand, his head slightly nodding to a George Gershwin tune coming from the record player. In the dining room, I saw not the heavy oblong wooden table with its sampling of china place settings, but a spread of food and wine and a meal in progress, with conversation and laughter and Ernest and Mary occasionally calling each other "kitten" and "lamb." In the pantry, where the seven servants ate and relaxed, I recalled watching Friday-night boxing broadcasts from Madison Square Garden. For these matches, every household member was invited, and Ernest presided, setting the odds, monitoring the kitty, giving blow-by-blow accounts of the action. (-- pgs. 70-71) |
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 10:32 am Post subject: |
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Our Man in Havana
Paperback
By Graham Greene
| Quote: | 'Do you believe they intend war eventually?' the Chief asked.
'Your guess is as good as mine.'
'They've become very active in Cuba - apparently with the help of the police. Our man in Havana has had a difficult time. His best agent, as you know, was killed, accidentally of ocurse, on his way to take aerial photographs of the constructions - a very great loss to us. But I would give much more than a man's life for those photographs. As it was, we had given fifteen hundred dollars. They shot at another of our agents in the street and he's taken fright. A third's gone underground. There's a woman too, they interrogated her, in spite of her being the mistress of the Director of Posts and Telegraphs. They have left our man alone so far, perhaps to watch. Anyway he's a canny bird.'
'Surely he must have been a bit careless to lose all those agents?'
'At the beginning we have to expect casualties. They broke his book-code. I'm never happy with these book-codes. There's a German out there who seems to be their biggest operator and an expert at cryptography. Hawthorne warned our man, but you know what these old merchants are like; they have an obstnate loyalty. Perhaps it was worth a few casualties to open his eyes. Cigar?'
'Thanks. Will he be able to start again if he's blown?'
'He has a trick worth two of that. Struck right home into the enemy-camp. Recruited a double agent in the police-headquarters itself.'
'Aren't double agents always a bit - tricky? You never know whether you're getting the fat or the lean.'
'I trust our man to huff him every time,' the Chief said. 'I say huff because they are both great draughts players. Checkers they call it here. As a matter of fact, that's their excuse for contacting each other.' (From Part Four, London Interlude, pgs. 148-150) |
| Quote: | Our Man in Havana
Audio CD
BBC 4 Full Cast Recording
Haven't heard this one yet but probably quite good - if the musical interludes are carefully selected and edited. |
| Quote: | Our Man in Havana
DVD
Featuring the great British character actor,
Sir Alec Guinness
A spy classic, no doubt, but one we haven't yet viewed. Please check back soon for our review. |
Link to this entry
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editor
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| Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:53 pm Post subject: |
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Nada
DVD
Cheerfully directed by the celebrated
Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti
| Quote: | Cesar: Do you live alone?
Carla: Yes. My parents left when I was 15.
Cesar: What a nice present!
Carla: They went to Mexico and then to the United States. They crossed the Rio Bravo. They call me every month and send me money. That's how I get by. They signed me up on the list for an entry visa to the USA. They think I've got a good chance to get picked.
Cesar: Do you want to go?
Carla: I don't know. Getting picked is like winning a prize. If they give it to me, that's fine. But I don't really care that much. It's a longshot. |
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editor
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| Posted: Sun Feb 01, 2009 10:18 am Post subject: |
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From Loaded Dice:
Open Veins of Latin America
Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
Hardcover
By Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano
Translated by Cedric Belfrage
| Quote: | ... The United States crisis of 1929 could not but have a fierce impact on so dependent and vulnerable an economy as Cuba's: the price of sugar sank well below $.01 by 1932, and in three years the value of exports fell by 75 percent. At that time the unemployment index would have been hard to match in any other country.
What happened to prices was repeated in volume of exports. The United States lowered export duties on Cuban sugar in exchange for similar privileges for the U.S. exports to Cuba, but such "favors" only consolidated Cuba's dependence. By 1948 Cuba had recovered its quota to the point of supplying one-third of the U.S. sugar market, at prices lower than U.S. producers received but higher and more stable than those in the international market. Sugar production was arbitrarily limited by Washington's needs. The 1925 level of some five million tons remained the average through the 1950s; dictator Fulgencio Batista took power in 1952 on the heels of the biggest harvest in Cuban history - over seven million tons - with the mission of tightening the screws, and in the following year production, obedient to the demand of the north, fell to four million tons.* When Batista fell in 1959, Cuba was selling almost all its sugar to the United States. As Marti said and Che Guevara quoted at the OAS Punta del Este conference in 1961,
"The nation that buys commands, the nation that sells serves; it is necessary to balance trade in order to ensure freedom; the country that wants to die sells only to one country, and the country that wants to survive sells to more than one." ...
... By 1850 the United States was absorbing one-third of all Cuban trade, selling it more and buying more from it than Spain, whose colony it was; the Stars and Stripes fluttered from more than half the ships arriving at the island. A Spanish travelerfournd U.S.-made sewing machines in remote Cuban villages in 1859. The main streets of Havana were paved with New England granite.
At the dawn of the twentieth century one could read in the Louisiana Planter: "Little by little the whole island of Cuba is passing into the hands of U.S. citizens, which is the simplest and safest way to obtain annexation to the United States." (From King Sugar and Other Agricultural Monarchs, pgs. 82-83) |
| Quote: | | * Note: The director of the United States Department of Agriculture's sugar program declared soon after the Revolution: "Since Cuba has left the scene, we cannot count on that country, the world's largest exporter, which always had enough reserves to supply our market when need arose. |
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editor
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| Posted: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:55 pm Post subject: |
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From Impossible Odds:
The New York Times Magazine
Magazine Subscription
The End of the End of the Revolution
Castro's Cuba is turning 50. It's been dying for years. What can Obama - or anyone else - do to help bring the island into the 21st century?
By Roger Cohen
Dec. 7/08
| Quote: | ... Looking out on the ocean, I searched in vain for a single boat.
It was not always so, 90 miles off the coast of Florida. In 1859, Richard Henry Dana Jr., an American lawyer whose “To Cuba and Back” became a classic, sailed into Havana. He later wrote: “What a world of shipping! The masts make a belt of dense forest along the edge of the city, all the ships lying head into the street, like horses at their mangers.” Over the ensuing century, Cuba became the winter playground of Americans, a place to gamble, rumba, smoke puros and sip mojitos, the land of every vice and any trade. Havana bars advertised “Hangover Breakfasts.” They were much in demand. The mafia loved the island, the largest in the Caribbean; so did the American businessmen who controlled swathes of the sugar industry and much else.
Then, a half-century ago, on Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro brought down the curtain on Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship. America’s cavorting-cum-commerce ceased. Miami became Cuba’s second city as, over the years, hundreds of thousands fled communist rule. ...
... A repressive society long under a single ruler — the ailing 82-year-old Fidel still holds Cubans in his thrall even if he formally handed the presidency to his younger brother, Raúl, in 2006 — develops a secret lexicon of survival.
Through a labyrinth of rations, regulations, two currencies and four markets (peso, hard currency, agro and black), people make their way. Stress is rare but depression rampant in an inertia-stricken economy. Truth is layered. Look up and you see the Habana Libre, the towering hotel where Fidel briefly had his headquarters after the revolution: it began life as the Hilton. The seafront Riviera hotel, now so communist-drab it seems to reek of cabbage, once housed the rakish casino of the mobster Meyer Lansky. ...
One official stop was with Elena Álvarez, who was 15 when Fidel’s revolution came and now, at 65, works as a top official at the Ministry of Economics. She tried to make sense for me of the voodoo economics I’d seen.
Here’s what she wanted me to grasp. Cuba, at the time of the revolution, was “one of the most unjust, unequal and exploited societies on earth.” Illiteracy was running up to 40 percent, a quarter of the best land was in U.S. hands, a corrupt bourgeoisie lorded it over everyone else. Fidel’s initial objective was a more-just society, but U.S. pressure radicalized his revolution and pushed it toward all-out socialism within the Soviet camp.
Álvarez reeled off some numbers. There were 6,000 doctors in Cuba at the time of the revolution; there are now close to 80,000 for a population of 11.3 million, one of the highest per-capita rates in the world. The U.S. embargo has cost Cuba about $200 billion in real terms. When the Berlin Wall crumbled, 80 percent of Cuba’s international trade was with Soviet-bloc countries. About 98 percent of oil came from them. Back to the Communist bloc states, at inflated prices, went Cuba’s sugar and rum.
“We’ve had to reinsert ourselves in the global economy twice in 30 years, once in 1960 and again in 1990,” Álvarez said.
O.K., I said, that shows some resilience, but when the Soviet Union collapsed, why didn’t Cuba do what Moscow’s other satellites did: take down totalitarianism, become a market economy and set people free? The real totalitarianism, she countered, was Batista’s. Cuba now has different values. Despite scarcities, attributable in large part to the embargo, it’s a society that wants to protect everyone. The rationing system guarantees that all citizens have a minimum. Everyone gets low-cost food at work. Free health care and education mean a $20 monthly salary is the wrong way to view the quality of Cuban life. Going to a market economy in 1990 would have meant wholesale factory closures, as in East Germany, and 35 percent unemployment. “We decided we had to protect our workers,” Álvarez said. “We have another philosophy.”
That “philosophy” has produced results. According to the World Health Organization, life expectancy for men and women in Cuba is 76 and 80 years, respectively, on par with the U.S. The comparative figures in Haiti are 59 and 63, and in the Dominican Republic they are 66 and 74. The probability of dying before the age of 5 is 7 per 1,000 live births in Cuba — nearly as good as the U.S. figure — compared with 80 per 1,000 live births in Haiti and 29 in the Dominican Republic. Illiteracy has been eliminated. United Nations statistics show 93.7 percent of Cuban children complete high school, far more than in the United States or elsewhere in the Caribbean. (emphasis added)
That raises the question: Why educate people so well and then deny them access to the Internet, travel and the opportunity to apply their skills? Why give them a great education and no life? Why not at least offer a Chinese or Vietnamese model, with a market economy under one-party rule?
Álvarez said there was some “space for the market.” She insisted, “We are not fundamentalist.” But the bottom line, of course, is that the authorities are scared: opening the door to capitalism on an island 90 miles from Florida is very different from doing that in Asia. (-- pgs. 44-51) |
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