Uncle Armando’s Valentine

• By Zoyla Candela

Maybe the most expensive thing in my living room is a humongous oil painting of a glamorized, sexed-up “peasant” boy in a carved, gilded frame. Painted by my great Uncle Armando, it was my maternal family’s pride and joy. Indeed, it was the first thing you saw, hanging in the foyer, when you walked into my mother’s house in South Miami.

We assumed the pouting subject had been one of Uncle Armando’s paramours whose identity got lost in the  swirling mists of time in our native Cuba.

 When my mother died, we, her three children, fought over the painting because none of us wanted it. 

  Then we held a garage sale to dispose of my mother’s possessions, and all of the Cubans who came ooohed and aaahed over the painting. Even asked if it was for sale, so of course, we decided on the spot we couldn’t possibly part with such an fabulous heirloom. But my younger brother’s new gringa bride, the very same woman who’d bought a plastic lemon tree for their living room, thought Uncle Armando’s painting too tacky for her. So I ended up taking it back to New York City.

Now my cousin Mario thinks he should have it, since he has more of a claim to it by blood, but the painting has grown on me since. There it hangs, in my living room, an oddly comforting presence—like a beloved old relative. This, even  though I’ve seen Uncle Armando maybe a grand total of 3 times in my life.

I recall him sitting at Abuela Ñeca’s  massive dining room table, while my mother hollowed out cigarettes and stuffed them with $100 bills, for Armando to smuggle through customs. They were to be a crucial part of his flight to freedom—not only from Fidel Castro, but from his own family too.

My mother’s folks were a brash, cantankerous lot, always in each other’s business. They disliked and distrusted outsiders, didn’t even accept my two brothers and I ( Uncle Willy called us “these people”). My great grandmother ran a Cuban version of The House of Bernarda Alba, in reverse. She would not allow her five male children to marry and they didn’t, until she died.

Of course, Armando had no intention to marry, and it beats the hell out of me why his family couldn’t figure out he was gay. After all, he was the one who designed the Versailles Shepherdess and Harem Girl outfits my mother wore to the costume balls of her youth.

Lavish parties aside, life in Cuba could be oppressive.

Armando had to stay in the narrowest of closets, so he wouldn’t bring shame upon his family. His mother lived only to make her kids miserable: she scared off Uncle Willy’s bride, who fled back to her native Colombia. He never remarried. My great aunt Beba chose to stay with her mother over marrying a Venezuelan suitor who wanted to take her away—and also stayed single at a time when it was a social calamity for women (in later years, Beba and Willy would move in together) .My Uncle Josie was shot to death during a student protest against the Machado regime, which made my great grandmother even more anxious about her male children.

So later on, when it was time to leave Cuba to the Glorious Revolution and its acolytes, Armando saw a chance to make his big break. He moved to New York—NOT Miami like the rest of his family—took a job in textile design,  bought a big, shaggy dog, and didn’t give out his address.

The first time I moved to New York, I tried to track him down, to no avail. He didn’t want to be
found. Once a year, around Xmas, he’d materialize in Miami, laden with tasteful gifts, parcel them
out to his relatives, then go back to NYC and disappear for another year.

Boy, do I sympathize.

To me, happiness is, in large part, the absence of pain. And pain often comes from people who feel entitled to pressure you, disparage you or tell you what to do because they’re your relatives. I don’t see that as an excuse to hurt somebody gratuitously—I don’t do it to others. But it seems that respect for relatives is a concept alien to the Latino family. They think respect is for strangers, so the better they know you, the less they’ll respect you.

Then there are the adjuncts; the strangers who have married into the group and get in the way of your communicating candidly with your relatives. Sometimes, it becomes ridiculous: my ex husband wants me to be friends with his second EX, as though we were sister wives, or something.He wants us to exchange Xmas presents.

Moving from Miami to New York was the best thing I ever did.

Copla a lo que no fue (o ‘me equivoqué de poeta’)

Por Juana Bimba


 Esta les va en español, pues de otro modo no me sale, como no me saldría la copla si la intentara en inglés: “.,, sin haber sido tu esposa, ni tu novia, ni tu amante, soy la que más te ha querido. Con eso, ¡tengo bastante!”

 Palabras que sentí como desprendidas de algún romancero gitano, pero no eran de García Lorca ( sino de otro señor tan olvidable, que el legado de su llanto varía de blog en blog.)

En fin, eso poco importa, si lo que se alega es otra mentira de macho—¿quién, presa de alguna violenta obsesión, “tiene bastante” con haber querido, y punto? Si fuera así, ¿por qué cuesta tanto despedirse de una ilusión? ¿Por qué sorprende tanto descubrir que los años y la experiencia no inmunizan contra la locura de amar a un perfecto desconocido?

 Al principio es bonito, florecer en pleno otoño: se despiertan los sentidos, resucita la vanidad, un fantasma sensual ronda siempre las cercanías y por un tiempo, basta con verse reflejada en un espejismo de ojos negros que refulgen como azabaches.

Otra gente advierte el cambio. “¿Te recortaste el pelo?”, preguntan. “¿Adelgazaste?”
“¡Qué bien te ves!”

Pero por más que una quiera,  no puede vivir en una burbuja de ensueños.

“¡Goza tu sufrimiento, niña!”, me exhortaba Miguel, y yo me reía, porque no soy de esas. No me gusta sufrir, por eso vivo como vivo—lejos de todo lo que me pueda atormentar. Una es más feliz cuando no le duele nada.

Mi madre, que en paz descanse, me contó que al llegar nosotros a Miami, ella se puso a trabajar en el restaurante de mi Tía Rita en la Calle Ocho.Allí también trabajaba un hombre de mirada intensa y ojos azules—y mi madre se enamoró de aquel extraño. Sólo que vez de engañar a mi padre, ella decidió dejar el empleo.

Aquella noche, le lloró en los brazos a mi padre, quien nunca supo que la consolaba de haber tenido que abandonar a otro.

Ella se forzó a hacer lo debido para apartarse del objeto de una obsesión inconveniente, súbita, desesperada. Pero a veces, no hay que pasar por tanto. La vida interviene de por sí, y sugiere ciertos caminos, y los abre de modo natural.

 Son respuestas que se perfilan como una insinuación: hora de coger (otro) rumbo.

Adiós, alma mía.

Time to Panic for Hispanics?

By Juana Bimba

Atrocities can happen to Latinos anywhere in the US, but here in NYC, at least the facade of interracial civility is a bit less wobbly than elsewhere.

 True, local ethnics sometimes shoot up their own block parties, and the NYPD kills Blacks and maims Hispanics with some regularity. But on the whole, most NYC Latinos have never known the cold dread that comes from facing stark, open, rabid discrimination. That’s not part of our reality—not yet—-as it’s always been out West, where Latinos are like the Blacks of the Jim Crow South.

 Discrimination is subtler on the East Coast.

Growing up among Cubans, I didn’t even know it existed until I joined The Miami Herald as a reporter. I soon noticed that the paper sported an anti-Cuban tone, and that its white staffers treated me dismissively. Me. With my light skin, my college degree and my perfect English. (WTF?)

More recently, I’ve survived attempts to eviscerate me at work under trumped up, contrived accusations of wrongs so slight they verge on absurdity. I even had to hire a lawyer (my real fault likely being that I’m Hispanic and I refuse to eat dirt). And yet  I note that some of my coworkers have been forgiven for things like drunk driving, drug dealing, sleeping around, drinking on the job, etc.

 But these Forgiven Ones are White.

“Don’t ever forget who you are, or THEY will remind you”, someone once told me. Well, it’s not that I’m trying to pass, I just dislike the endless stream of  “holas” ,  “que pasas” and Spanish 101 phrases proffered in friendship by Whites I know.

 I hear them as dog whistle for “We. Are. Different”. It offends me and also makes me feel dumb,
 like some Chiquita Banana Twinkie.

I know such heightened sensibilities might sound petty to a Latino from the West, and no wonder.  I’ve been out there and seen how fear is the local currency. How Latino strangers telegraphed their heritage to me in code, through discreet eye contact and careful pronunciation of my last name. How they warned me of nearby Immigration checkpoints and cautioned me to always carry “mis papeles”, lest I get stopped and deported to a place I’ve never been.

This was all new to me as a New Yorker.

I saw cops gratuitously break up an impromptu meet-and-greet of polite Latino professionals in a hotel lobby. It was a convention of Hispanic journalists in Albuquerque.The next day, some Catholic muckamuck added insult to injury by refusing to officiate at the opening ceremonies. Organizers then called in a curandera (indigenous folk healer) to deliver the blessing instead.

 On the last night, when I stepped outside the ballroom for some fresh air with a friend, a police car circled us until we fled back in.

That was a trip in more ways than one; like belonging to a secret society of outlaws or misfits. It was the first time that I’d sensed any danger because of my ethnicity, the first time I fully realized that in this country, being Hispanic can be hazardous to your health. A rude awakening.

Even so, if anyone had told me what the future held—open season on Latinos at Walmart, kids
caged like animals, babies torn from their mothers—I might not have believed it.

Growing up Cuban with the Rebel Flag

People say that if Germans don't display swastikas over their public buildings, US Southerners shouldn't fly Confederate Flags over theirs. They're both reminders of shameful pasts, right?

But Hitler never got to cloak his infamy in rosy myths; also, Nazis

never benefited from the ministrations of  beloved media apologists, like fiction writers and movie stars, who glorified the memory of antebellum Dixie.

Views on antebellum culture began to transform with this nation's

first efforts to heal by honoring war veterans from both sides at early 20th century parades. Then along came "Gone with the Wind”, and historical revisionism dug in for good.

Subsequent media depictions of the Confederacy were mostly sympathetic.  The Antebellum South became a happy memory-land of singing darkies and the kindly whites who "took care" of them.

For at least a century, the white South's celebration of its antebellum history was considered a harmless quirk. Racism? Slavery? Those pages conveniently flapped loose from the main script to become  anomalies, unrelated to the True Glories of Dixie's Past.

As the child of Cuban exiles, I landed in 1960's Miami amid these historical delusions. Back then, all blacks lived in separate neighborhoods. Florida schools were segregated, so they housed no black sensibilities to offend.

One local learning institution named itself Robert E. Lee, while another, the South Dade Rebels, draped its marching band in Confederate uniforms. Kids carried Confederate flags to football games and waved them whenever their side scored. 

We Cubans snickered at these displays, but they didn’t really bother us; that flag was just a symbol of battle, too bad it got hijacked by the lunatic fringe. 

 Also, back in the 60's, Cubans were oblivious to any considerations of prejudice or bigotry. We even ignored the subtle fumes of apartheid that enveloped us in high school, because we believed they were coming from us, and not from the ones who were excluding us.

Tacitly kept from Anglo American fraternities and sororities, we created our own, or joined honor societies and academic clubs. We flocked together in hallways, classrooms, games, sock hops and the cafeteria. We only dated each other. We had no "American" friends, because acceptance by the larger group would mean suppressing

our ethnic ways.

 And we thought Anglo Americans were boring, anyway. 

The more sinister racial implications of Southern history also eluded us, because we considered ourselves white. So I grew up with the idea of  Former Confederate Glory as a normal ingredient of the Zeitgeist, part and parcel of my adopted background as an American.

And when I moved up North as an adult, I was startled to discover just how deeply the Southern perspective had been etched into my soul. Who knew that a cemetery in rural Vermont could hold nothing but Union Soldiers? That a historic hotel in upstate New York would proudly display Union relics? That anyone could celebrate the same people who had victimized poor antebellum Southerners? 

I've since gotten over those qualms, but I had to wince at the recent outpour of media vitriol against the South, at the hate one segment of the country was directing towards another. To me, that's like stomping on a corpse, or disparaging American war dead.  It's compounding past wrongs.

Yes, slavery was a major disaster and this entire country would have been much better without it and all of its unfortunate ramifications. Just think: we could be Canada! (Kidding.) But no, we're rabid Americans, bent on redressing historical wrongs with violence. On both sides. 

It occurs to me that while we're at it, we could also start trashing the hayseeds who died at  the Alamo, trying to defend Texans' right to lynch Mexicans and steal their land. Instead, we celebrate them, which I’ve always found appalling as a Hispanic.

Why isn't anyone talking about THAT?