For Xmas: A Trojan Horse named Joe

These days, about the best thing I can say for current US President Joe Biden is that he's not former US President Donald Trump.

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Requiem for a Brother

Despite my most desperate prayers,my brother Alfredo passed away recently in Atlanta, Georgia, of natural causes. He'd been

born in Havana, Cuba, on a November 26. He was only two years older than I--perhaps for the first time ever, I was staring mortality right in the face. I could feel its breath, I'd wake up to its presence. How could this be happening? During almost 3 months, my brother had been hanging on to life, going in and out of rehab centers and hospitals in Atlanta. For me, each day became an emotional roller coaster ride, as he showed signs of doing better or getting worse. I'd cling on to any excuse for hope, but it was tough to come by. The hospitals in Atlanta allowed no visits because of Covid. Every evening for almost 3 months, I'd call to hear doctors and nurses drone on about this or that, and suddenly it horrified me to realize what they were saying: that they were doing everything they could, but my brother was dying. His systems were shutting down and toppling one by one, like a house of cards. It was soul-wrenching to stand by as he drifted away, to see him onscreen briefly in one last virtual visit, to hear his last, barely conscious stammers over the phone,then, one night later, receive pained condolences from the hospital staff. At our age, Alfredo could have lived several more years, but he never stopped smoking and he had a bad heart (that he chose to ignore). In the end, it just gave out. I thank the fates that Alfredo enjoyed a rich and varied sojourn on this earth. He had a PhD in languages. He worked for nearly a decade at CNN in Spanish as a producer and on-air talent, then went on to a busy and diverse career as an independent Spanish-language broadcaster. He also spoke Russian fluently and interpreted for former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young on city trade missions to Russia. His personal existence was at least as meaningful. Many now call to tell me how much they miss him and how in their hearts, they're honoring the memory of this kind, joyful, generous and outgoing man. Alfredo liked to entertain and bring people together on special occasions, or gather with them at the various Atlanta restaurants he favored. His dry intellectual wit engaged and delighted his friends. Although he never had children,he touched many lives, serving as moral support and inspiration to those who needed it, leading groups of young Cuban exiles who sought to explore their roots in Cuba, educating me, his sister, in the literature of our native culture, even serving as a surrogate father to the progeny of a deeply troubled single mother he'd befriended. I'd often hear him complain about her with loving exasperation--and I understood that he'd come to view her as another sibling. They both lived in Atlanta and I was way up in New York, so it heartened me that he had found a second sister in this woman, who was also a writer and about my age. Over the years,he helped mentor and raise her two girls to successful,independent adulthood as cinematographers, and today they consider themselves his beloved god daughters. But perhaps the most important life he touched was that of his lifelong partner, Jose "Riqui" Alonso, the love of his life for over 50 years. Riqui, a school friend of mine, met Alfredo at my parent's home in Miami, while visiting me. Both men were in their early 20's and never separated from that date until the present. They were officially married in 2014, in another Deep South State where gay marriage was sanctioned at the time. Sadly, their last few years together brought a measure of estrangement. It happens. They'd each suffered heart attacks and become partially disabled, their routines turned considerably harder, tinged with bitterness and recriminations. Today, their story comes full circle: the widower plans to go back to Florida and spend his remaining years closer to his own relatives. The little house in the woodsy neighborhood of Northeast Atlanta, the one they inhabited for over 40 years will no doubt be sold,

its many memories folded, packed and removed to make room for new lives and hopes and tears. So it goes. Alfredo is survived by me,by a younger brother, and by my son, who is also his godson and bears his uncle's proud name.

No-kill shelter

Two days ago, our beloved cat Shadow started stumbling around in circles, head turned to one side. We spent a small fortune on the vet only to be told we'd have to spend thousands more to learn what's "really" wrong with him. Finding out would cost an additional $5,000. Alas, the poor creature had become inconvenient and I, selfish wretch that I am, considered putting him down-- but my son won't hear of it. "You wouldn't do that to a relative,would you?", he asked. So we're nursing the animal, medicating him, hand-feeding him, and changing his pads when he soils them. We try to give him physical therapy. We've become a regular no-kill animal shelter.At 16,he's a brave little soul, obviously fighting for his life. He's alert, he eats, seems to have a fair amount of strength, and is slowly regaining his sense of balance and direction. We're hoping for the best, but he's not our only problem. These days,I'm dealing with the same kind of end-of-life scenarios I went through with my parents 20 years ago, and my grandparents before that. Only now it's my own generation's turn to get sick and die, and I'm just hoping I'll live long enough to help out contemporaries in dire need. A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from a hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. My older brother had suffered a stroke, and they were searching for his relatives. He is suffering from dementia and we still don't know whether he'll be able to return home or have to go into long-term care. His next of kin is his husband, who himself had suffered a stroke a few years ago and can barely communicate. My brother had been his caretaker, now both men are adrift, incapacitated. Now I have two brothers to worry about. It saddens me to remember what full and happy lives they've led, and I have to wonder what God would want them reduced to their present state.My younger brother, my son and I flew down to Atlanta to see how we could help. Atlanta, which I hadn't visited in decades, turned out to be an unpleasant surprise, a third world shithole of a city with ugly corporate architecture, kamikaze drivers and the smell of menthol cigarrettes everywhere. There are vagrants all over the place, they live in tents on median strips within major highways. Nothing works as it should. Nobody comes to the phone, returns calls or gives out information--not even direct numbers.They make you go through switchboards that invariably put you on hold. The ubiquitous recordings tell you to leave a message and expect a callback in 3 o 4 days.Maybe. (It's not a "Southern" thing, either. We're also dealing with Miami on an estate issue, and everyone there seems to be on their game.We ordered some legal documents from North Carolina, and actually got them within a few short days.)

Once in Atlanta, in a darkened little house, we sifted through the wreckage of lives that had been descending into squalor for years,without our realizing it (we had all been estranged when we had to regroup as a family and rush to the rescue). I think that things started falling apart when both men began to have health problems. Now there was filth, clutter, unpaid bills

and overgrown weeds everywhere. Their poor dog had a skin infection and was not being walked, so she had defecated throughout the house.I tried turning the dog over to Animal Rescue, but my brother in law refused to give her up, and in Georgia,go figure, you can't rescue abused animals without permission from the abuser (whereas in New York, abused animals can take their abusers to court).We cleaned up,took the dog to the vet, and are now looking into legal and financial issues.Almost miraculously, a squad of Good Samaritans has emerged to help us out. We're daily in touch with a group of well-meaning friends and neighbors who take turns checking up on my brother in law and the dog. The dog's still not being walked, but she's let out in the evenings and makes her bathroom run of the neighborhood before returning home. Nobody interferes with her. Some of these neighbors didn't even know my brother and his husband before all of this happened. Meanwhile, my brother languishes in rehab, cut off from external contact by Covid precautions within the facility. We check in by phone every day; he appears to be getting better. We're hoping he'll be able to return home. I've decided that now that I'm retired, I can dedicate myself to look out for my brother.I have the time, and it's needed.

Amazingly, I seem to have taken my brother's place with his friends, who speak to me as though they've known me my entire life. It's very moving, I find comfort in their voices and I am perfectly at ease with them, as though they were my old friends, too. All throughout the ordeal, I only cry whenever I speak to my brother and realize he's having a bad day. This is new. I'm ashamed to confess that in my life,I have shed more tears for cats I have lost, than for estranged relatives, including my own mother. Maybe now I'm being given the chance to atone for my intransigence of the past. Maybe this whole episode, with its wonderful cast of characters, has restored my faith in humanity.

Organic Hispanics

(Art by Stacey Torres, Etsy.com) Well, here we are, and it's Hipanic Heritage Month again. Time for ethnic dance troupes to put on their garish costumes and go hopping around in public, while spectators snicker under their breath. Time for Professional Hispanics, non-profit types who profit from government funding as self- proclaimed community leaders, to come out and promote themselves on local news shows. Time to be reminded of Hispanic role models who raise the bar so impossibly high for the rest of us, they might as well not exist. (Sonia Sotomayor? Really?). To me, Hispanic Heritage Month is about underscoring US Latinos' status as Other. People who whites are comfortable with as long as they can laugh at us, our accent or our appearance. As long as they can remind us that we are different. And they will, often. You can be light-skinned, educated and accentless, and some white

person will always greet you with a hearty "HO-LA, A-MI-GA"! Being categorized as "other" means you're not really equal, that you're not allowed to compete on an even footing with people whose gifts you may exceed. It reduces the arena to work related to your ethnicity, so you end up trying to out-Hispanic each other for crumbs off the mainstream table. And then there's capitalism, the drive to turn Latinos into commodities that form a huge consumer market within the US. So there are powerful forces at work keeping US Latinos as "other". Worse,too many Latinos buy into the stereotype. I've found that in New York, if you're not short, dark and manifestly ignorant, other Hispanics look at you askance -- never mind that you can curse in Spanish and shake your ass with the best/worst of them (while also knowing about your literature and history and speaking and writing the language correctly because you didn't learn it second-hand in some ghetto). It's a reverse discrimination of sorts. But we're not all bookies and churro ladies, so deal with it. Somewhere between Carmen Miranda and Cameron Diaz,there are millions of people like me: educated, integrated Hispanics who grew up in the US., who retain their ethnic identity but feel no neeed to flaunt it. They are a "market", too, why won't anyone here see it? While there are plenty of black and brown pundits on English language news TV, I notice a dearth of Latino spokesmen. That's because Latino viewers are supposed to be watching Univision and Telemundo, right? WRONG! Many of us find it boring, embarrassing and, yes, primitive--largely produced in countries that are foreign to us.

That's why I was overjoyed to see Jose Diaz-Balart get his own show on MSNBC this month. Jose, a second generation Cuban exile, is exactly what I'm talking about. He speaks with a trace of an accent. He wears his ethnicity lightly, like a second skin. He comes off as refined, professional. Unlike Black pundits, who take every chance to trumpet their Blackness to guests and viewers, as if it were not obvious, Jose is never heavy-handed in his projection. He treats his Latino guests with understated familiarity,like they're all members of the same, exquisite, secret society. Every now and then, he'll drop in a quick Spanish phrase to underscore this. His presence gives me hope that finally,someone is bothering to go beyond stereotypes in order to appeal to a segment of the public that's been ignored for way too long. Felicidades, Jose.

No symbols, no problem?

When we first moved to Miami from Havana, I was enrolled in Catholic school and my two brothers went to public. For us kids, integration to the zeitgeist came easily; there were few Cubans in Miami back then--not enough to be targeted for prejudice. Granted, it wasn't all smooth sailing. I spoke near perfect English, but was still viewed as different--weird--by my classmates and even teachers. (Mrs. Mongelia disliked me for no discernible reason).And a few days ago, my brother Jorge told me a childhood story I'd never heard before. As adults, we three siblings have scattered along the Eastern Seaboard, and,as too often happens in the US, we're reunited only by family tragedies. It is on these occasions that reminiscences emerge from the vault of time, and sometimes, you're surprised by what people closest to you hide deep in the recesses of memory. Miami in the 60's was still very much segregated. Signs designating drinking fountains as "white" and "colored" could be found in schools. My brother remembers an open discussion between two of his teachers about which drinking fountain he should use. Is a Cuban white or colored? "Look at him... Just ... LOOK at him!", one teacher kept yelling, without specifying what should be looked at. My brother felt confused; he'd never had to consider his racial identity before. The truth is that Cubans come in all colors, from pink, to yellow, to black, but mostly in varying shades of tan. Moreover, the Cuban take on race is quite simple: you are what the mirror dictates. If you look white, that's what you are. And if your fraternal twin sister happens to look black, well, she's black. And you're still white. There's no arguing with optics; no wrestling with one-drop rules. My brother was one of only two Cubans in that school at that moment.Much to their credit, school administrators did the right thing,perhaps figuring, correctly, that more of these nondescript, olive-skinned creatures might soon arrive to further confound their notions of race. They removed the signs from the drinking fountains.Problem solved. Oh, if only everything was that easy... Recently, a gigantic statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee was hoisted off its pedestal in downtown Richmond, Va. where it had been since 1890. This was greeted with much fanfare; removal of Confederate symbols all over the South has become a way to make white Southerners face the truth of their violent racial past and all the pain they inflicted n others, to strip away their cover story of the Civil War as a lost but noble cause. Nurturing illusions of past greatness was how Southerners consoled themselves in defeat and how the rest of the country finessed them back into the fold. For over 100 years, the memory of soldiers on both sides was honored,the Civil War remembered as a generic catastrophe that affected the whole nation---much like World War I--instead of an act of treachery by one segment of the population.Growing up in the South, this is how I assimilated history, but now it seems the time for finessing is over and the brass knuckles are out. And while I understand the downpour of long-supressed rage from those who've had to suffer the glorification of slavery for so many years,it still shocks me to hear war veterans described as "traitors". They were products of their time and place,they thought they were doing right-- most didn't even own slaves. You could say they didn't know any better, though their descendants arguably should. But should we now ask these people to remove from their walls all those yellowed photos of ancestors in Confederate garb? That's a part of their history, and you can't erase it--you can only try to cast shame on it through public acts. Unfortunately, ripping Confederate statues off pedestals won't yield the same quick beneficial results as removing "white" and "colored" signs off drinking fountains.People can be coerced to immediately say and do what's considered right at the moment, but it always takes longer to truly change hearts and minds.

NY’s Disgraced Gov Cuomo: Let’s Not Pretend He Did Any REAL Good

After being made to resign by official accusations of sexual harrassment,NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is finding nuggets of forgiveness among some prominent Democrats. They claim that, except for,you know, the sex thing, he wasn't all that bad.In fact, he was kinda good. In fact, he did "a helluva job" , to quote President Biden.

The majority (though not all) of these semi-sympathizers are men. Most prominent women won't dignify with any kindness the governor's thuggish,piggish behavior towards his female staff and acquaintances. Even if some of these accusations had been fueled by spite, I believe most are genuine. Otherwise,how could so many ladies have stepped forward at once, telling the same horror story? Still, I can see how Cuomo apologists might believe that the sex thing didn't matter that much in the end. Because in the end,it might have just been the best pretext to pry a cynical despot off his ironclad perch. Notice how the impeachment drive evaporated once Cuomo quit. Now his female enemies claim that he got off too easy; the men are more philosophical: he's gone, no need to crucify him. Getting rid of him has been hard enough. There are no term limits for governors in New York and Cuomo seemed well entrenched. Previous attempts to primary him out the door had failed. Meanwhile, he was doing a lot of harm and very little good. He was reputedly ill-tempered, rude and vindictive, arrogant and vain,more interested in polishing his image than in governing fairly. He neglected state business but worked hard at his public relations, surrounding himself with famous people who sang his praises, staging televised lovefests with admirers, but no reporters to question him. He excelled at grandstanding--empty political gestures to fool constituents into believing something great had been achieved on their behalf. His famous "infrastructure" projects were like facelifts for patients with organ failure. Cuomo built flashy cosmetic additions to the mass transit system, but neglected its real problem: trains and buses running poorly due to severe technical, budget and staffing problems. Cuomo rebuilt the Tappan Zee bridge, then renamed it after his own father and rushed to inaugurate it before addressing its structural safety concerns. His "good" moves were invariably offset by nastiness performed on the sly. His handling of the pandemic was marred by lowballing nursing home deaths, and then illegally using staffers to write a self-congratulatory book. The press reported all of this and yet, the beat went on. Nothing happened. Only NY government workers complained about this man who tried to balance the state budget on their backs by screwing them out of their modest yearly raises,by threatening them with layoffs, by publicly blaming them for the state's financial shortfalls... even though these shortfalls were manufactured by Cuomo himself, who held on tightly to government purse strings while asserting the state was broke. That was his way of flipping the bird at labor unions and dodging contractual agreements with his own employees. But alas,if NY state workers were wise to Cuomo, NY voters were totally blinded by his posturing. New Yorkers LIKED their rugged, swaggering macho governor, who claimed to be "New York Tough". Never mind that he disbanded a state commission tasked with investigating him, that he jealously pushed out a popular, competent head of mass transit,setting adrift a system that had been on the mend,never mind that he refused to work with the progressive mayor of NYC, that he consistently sided with Republican interests although he's a Democrat, that he cut public funding for health and education while refusing to tax his rich friends and that, despite all of this, he had the gall to masquerade as a liberal-- none of it seemed to matter. But the sex thing did. He'd done all kinds of horrid things--did I mention he abandoned his dog at the Governor's Mansion as he was moving out? Or that he dumped his longtime girlfriend after she had a mastectomy? Deplorable acts, but it took a sex scandal to turn public opinion against him. Fine. If that's what it took, so be it; the result was beneficial in the end. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Now on to the next governor--let's see what SHE does...

Apartheid comes to Paradise

I moved to Roosevelt Island in 1994,at the suggestion of an enterprising realtor. I was fed up with Queens (too blue-collar ethnic) but couldn't afford Manhattan, and this seemed like a good compromise.Roosevelt Island lies on the East River, between the two boroughs. At the time,it was New York City's best kept secret, with gorgeous river views, roomy apartments and state-controlled rents. There are green spaces everywhere, a riverwalk lined with cherry blossoms, open air markets on weekends. Its previous incarnations as the site of a prison and an insane asylum must have left their essence behind; the modern inhabitants were quirky and colorful. It was sort of a colony for artists, weirdos, and people from the United Nations, which is close by. In the 1970's,developers had repackaged Roosevelt Island as a utopian experiment, where people from different income levels would live happily side by side. To that end, they furnished it with a public assistance building,two buildings for seniors, several middle-class buildings and one co-op. The mix worked, and still does. Roosevelt Island is considered one of the safest neighborhoods in NYC. There is no friction among neighbors; everybody knows, or knows of, everybody else. The races coexist with no glitches. Muggings are unheard of; vandalism, rare. In the summers,I'm never afraid to walk past the groups of juveniles hanging out on street corners because I've seen them grow up.Entertainment is always at hand, with concerts, receptions and free movies on offer. Or you can head for the local diner to greet others and catch up on gossip. This is home, and I love it. But alas, it was only a matter of time before gentrification reared its ugly head and brought the class struggle that is wrecking America to our doorstep. Almost overnight,million-dollar condos and $4,000 rentals sprang up in the 'hood.The older buildings have wriggled out of government rent control and are trying to price their middle income tenants off the premises. With the new housing has come a new population: yuppies with attitude. They're now entrenched on either end of the island and they never set foot in the middle, where we original settlers live. On one end, these oligarchs are clustered near our transportation hub and they zip back and forth to Manhattan without ever visiting the rest of the island. On the other end,they board a special bus that sweeps them past us peasants and straight to the train, ferry, or aerial tramway. It's apartheid by design.It's also happening in Queens, in the neighborhoods that border Manhattan: the new yuppy enclaves have their own buses that take them shopping or to the ferry, to avoid contact with old-time residents. You can ignore this kind of bullshit until it smacks you in the face. One day,we decided to try a new restaurant near the yuppy colony by the train station. Although the place was only half full, the hostess seated us all the way in the back, where we couldn't be seen from outside. As if to confirm my suspicions,across the aisle from us,also hidden from public view, was a table full of Arabs. White yuppies were seated all along the front and middle of the restaurant, fully visible through the glass windows. To boot, the food was mediocre and the servers petulant, like they were doing us paying customers a favor. I couldn't believe it. I have NEVER in my life experienced such a blatant show of contempt and prejudice, particularly not in New York, specifically not on Roosevelt Island,and certainly not at a place that's little more than a glorified diner.Fine restaurants don't mistreat their customers.If this dump plans on surviving exclusively on the local yuppy clientele, I wish them luck. Those people prefer restaurants across the river, in Manhattan. But in case anyone's wondering, and just for identification's sake, the place is called Grannie Annie's Bar and Kitchen. Apparently, there's an establishment by the same name in Belfast, Northern Ireland, a region with its own history of intolerance and discrimination. If it's the same ownership, that might explain a lot.

BUILDINGS THAT SWAY, BUILDINGS THAT FALL

When I lived in Miami, I worked near the airport at a building which was fairly new back then. One day I felt something like a dizzy spell and I gripped the sides of my desk, waiting for the bad moment to pass. It did within seconds, but as I'd find out later, there was nothing wrong with me. It was the BUILDING that swayed whenever an airplane flew by. Putting a building so close to an airport is not a good idea, but nobody in there ever mentioned the swaying out loud, so of course, nobody on the outside knew about it. They probably still don't. The building had been designed by the yuppy sonny-boy of the company's general manager. It was a South American company and in true indentured banana republic fashion,when the building shook, the employees kept quiet. It's still standing, as far as I know. But now we hear that another building, a high rise condo, actually collapsed on itself in Surfside, a subdivision of Miami Beach. Miami-Dade County has done an impressive job of handling the catastrophe, but the death toll is in the dozens--and nobody knows exactly what happened. How did an entire building go pfffttt! in a matter of seconds? Was it because of a sinkhole? Faulty infrastructure? Lack of timely inspection and certification? All of the above? They say that years ago, tenants could feel the building vibrating from construction activity nearby, and that there was some evidence it was gradually sinking, before it went and sank

in one tragic shot. So who's to blame? Lackadaisical tenants? Maybe nobody wanted to hear that their costly, oceanfront pied a terre was seriously damaged and required even more money in repairs. Or was it the powerful Latino developers who practically run Miami? They have deep pockets, and rumors of past bribery attempts are afoot.Yet there had been plenty of warnings before the catastrophe. Three years ago,an engineer had reported structural weaknesses in the building, but was ignored. And only hours before the collapse, tenants reported hearing strange creaking noises. All signs of impending doom were shrugged off. And here we are. Ethnic resentments and finger-pointing are bubbling to the surface. The mayor of Surfside, all pale, tight-lipped indignation, declared that buildings don't normally collapse in America, only in Third World countries. The guy obviously needs to get a better grip on his bearings. (This is Miami, after all.) However, I do hope that on top of everything, we won't soon discover that someone's nephew designed or built the fallen structure and was allowed to cut corners while everyone else looked away.

In the Hype

After much inaugural hoohah at New York's Tribeca Film Festival, "In the Heights", a musical about Gotham Latinos,ellicited a monumental yawn in the provinces. Opening day revenues were flat in the rest of the US. New York critics and media were stunned, the way most elites are stunned by any serious questioning of their criteria. What happened? Everyone can see that the photography unfolds as gorgeous, love-letter views of Manhattan, the score is rousing, rollicking salsa, the voices are thrilling, soaring, melodic, the dancing kicks butt. Oh, and "In the Heights" can also tug at your heartstrings with the sweet longing and tenderness that imbue its narrative. SO WHAT HAPPENED? Huh. Maybe we should ask: why should the rest of the country be interested in a movie about an ethnic subgroup in New York City? More specifically, we're at a moment where white nativist ideas struggle for dominance everywhere between the coasts. So why would nativist types watch a musical about brown people's struggles and aspirations? Other issues hinder "In the Heights'" national debut. Through the movie runs a subtext that few have cared to note. It's the threat of Washington Heights, an old Latino neighborhood in Manhattan,succumbing to gentrification, to affluent whites moving in, driving up rents, and obliterating local color. It's a protest against encroaching white influence--against the same yuppies and hipsters and tourists who flocked to Tribeca to see the movie and came back with breathless reviews. This particular set of New York whites has overlooked the movie's subtle indictment of their kind, but I'll bet that whites elsewhere get the message and they reject it. Anything else? Well, yes. "In the Heights" details the trials and triumphs of two young urban couples-- and ALL of their family, neighbors and friends. It's a cluttered story line. Even so, it almost disappears within a maelstrom of noise, color and movement, a gaudy song-and-dance marathon assault on the senses. Singers and dancers perform in cinematic mobs worthy of DeMille. Worse, you're expected to countenance over two hours of this manic-operatic display, which manages to be exhausting, boring and enervating at once. I hear that Latinos haven't taken to "In the Heights", and I can guess at a few more reasons why. The two male leads are slight of frame and mild of manner, not believable as the red-blooded macho love interests they're supposed to be. The two female leads are skinny, pale and flat, not the lush Latina babes one would expect. Both couples' frantic musical cavorting evidences no sexual attraction. (Surprised?) Also,I suspect that the movie's portrayal of Hispanics as ghetto dwellers who like to squawk, shake their asses and wear tacky rags hasn't gone over well with real Hispanics. A local Puerto Rican wunderkind is being hailed as the thing's "creator" by New York critics (who no doubt had some nudging from his well - connected daddy, a veteran public relations operative.) And the young "creator" DID create the music and lyrics and what he calls the"concept", whatever that means. But let's not dwell on him ad nauseam,the way half of New York has done. If you ask me, he's already taken too much credit for this enterprise--virtually pushing aside the woman who wrote the book. Who knows? Maybe some day, she'll thank him.

Dancers go in through the back

When he worked for El Mundo newspaper,my great uncle Victor Munoz popularized the idea of Mother's Day in Cuba in the 1920's. I know very little about the guy, except that he was my great grandmother's brother, that he managed to get his face on a Cuban

postage stamp, that he was a lector (reader) in the legendary cigar factories of Key West when they were hotbeds of revolution against colonial Spain,and that he enjoyed a considerable measure of popularity and influence in his Havana days. He died 99 years ago in New York. Unfortunately, sportswriters seldom make a lasting dent in the annals of literature and much of Uncle Victor's legacy seems to have dissipated within the mists of time. But he's still the Founder of Cuban Mother's Day,still my maternal kin's biggest claim to fame and was definitely a point of pride for me when I decided to become a journalist.

Needless to say, our careers were to follow very different paths. I first broke into writing at Cosmopolitan in Spanish, as "La Chica Cosmo", with a piece about what it's like to be a professional escort. But I chickened out of going on real "dates" and quit, two days after being hired by some pimp with a jewfro. Instead, I spoke to several male friends who had used escorts, and I wrote the piece based on their input. (So there,my first published article was a fake.You read it here first.)

My editor, a corpulent fairy, loved it,and I doubt he would've cared that I made it all up. Subsequent endeavors at Cosmo would be legitimate, mostly interviews with Latin American singers. I arrived at empty theaters before showtime, carrying my little tape recorder, and invariably, security guards blocked me, saying: "Excuse me, miss, but dancers go in through the back." And I had to explain that I wasn't a dancer, but a JOURNALIST, thank you. It annoyed me; I felt demeaned. That was, of course, many years and many pounds ago, and I was too young and full of myself to realize that I was being paid the best kind of compliment: an unwitting one. Nobody mistakes me for a dancer now, nobody would hire me as an escort, but that's okay. I'm still a woman. Una mujer completa, as we say-- I even gave birth and get congratulated on it at least once a year. So from myself and Uncle Victor, wherever he may be, Feliz Día de las Madres to you all.

Mami, dearest

In my earliest memories from Cuba, my mother appears like something from a Bryce Echenique novel: enveloped in clouds of perfume and organza, sweeping up the stairs to kiss me before disappearing into the night on my father's arm. Until the next festive evening, when she would put in another cameo, and again, leave me questioning the point of the whole exercise. No words were ever exchanged,no affectionate delays tolerated. She was always in a hurry. But why? Don't worry, she'll be back tomorrow,offered my nanny Victoria, left to fill in as best as she could. Maybe my mother thought she was performing an important maternal duty;the cliche of upper crust kids being raised by servants happens to be true. Victoria, a modest spinster from a Cuban country town, was my real mother almost from my birth until I turned 15, when she died of cancer in Miami. In between, there were some rough times. When we moved to Florida, Victoria stayed behind in Cuba for a few years. My parents,my two brothers and I crammed into a tiny garage apartment in Coral Gables until my father got back on his feet.

My mother had to learn how to cook; clean and do laundry. She was already 40 and had a tough time adjusting to the lack of servants, the vanishing of an ecosystem that catered to her every whim. She reacted by lashing out at those around her; she turned into an emotional wreck--or was she always? Maybe. I really don't know, she'd always been a stranger. At age 11, for the first time ever, I made my mother's acquaintance with no cooks or nannies--or anybody else--to mediate. It was a rude awakening; gone was the seductive creature out of a Peruvian novelist's fantasies, replaced by someone given to temper tantrums and cruel remarks. My brothers and father practically stopped coming home. The boys moved out and dad spent much more time with a longtime mistress who was like a second wife and, I suspect, his refuge from the first one, his way of avoiding divorce. In reality, he was using her. Only now do I understand that this woman inadvertently saved us from a childhood of divorce-induced poverty, and I sincerely hope that stolen moments with a man she could never truly have were enough for her in the end. It's an old story in our culture. As Hispanic males, my father and brothers got away with doing whatever they wanted, but girls were kept on a much shorter leash, so I stayed home and became the sole recipient of mami's regular outbursts of rage, frustration and vitriol. She wasn't just ornery; I could have handled THAT, but it was much worse. My father stopped taking us on family nights at nice restaurants because she'd get drunk and cause scenes. On these occasions, she could not be controlled. No amount of discreet begging, pleading or reprimanding worked; she just became wilder, more violent, louder in her defiance. Whenever this turbulence turned on me,it had overtones of spite and jealousy too ugly to expand on here. Suffice it to say she viewed me as a competitor, not a daughter. She punished me physically until my late teens, she insulted me, she'd humiliate me by grounding me on the spot at the last minute, when my friends came to pick me up for an outing. I stopped having other kids over. Sometimes she gave me presents, but took them back if I didn't do her immediate bidding, so I learned not to accept gifts from my own mother--how fucked up is that? She ruined my early youth, I really had no life until I moved out at age 24. Back then, nice Cuban girls didn't leave home unless they were married, so I made a disastrous marriage with an unlikely groom, and 3 months later, I was divorced and living by myself. My father, alone with my mother for the first time in years, begged me to come back, to continue serving as a human lightning rod for him. I refused; she was no longer my problem and anyway, he had never intervened on my behalf whenever she abused me. He'd just step aside, probably relieved that for the moment, someone else was the target of her rage. Well, I was done with all that-- and surprised that only now did he realize what I'd been saving him from, albeit against my will. Five years after I moved out, he was dead of a heart attack. She didn't attend his funeral or his burial ceremony. I've always thought she helped kill him; I'd seen him clutch his chest after blowouts with her. Despite all this, I spent most of mom's life attempting to develop our relationship, only to get pushed away whenever I came close. I'd keep trying mostly because I'd always wanted a mother,but also because I realized that maternal estrangement equals social blasphemy. Officially, mothers represent everything good and noble, generous and loving, and if you have a horrid mother, you'd better keep it to yourself or risk being reviled by the world. Almost everyone I know would rather ignore that toxic mothers exist (though headlines trumpet the horrors of children abandoned, starved, abused, beaten, or dumped in trashcans at birth). But the "mami dearest" syndrome may even be a generational thing. Too many Cubans of my age and social class were raised by women trained to be decorative objects, women who had kids and then dropped them off with the help until Fidel Castro forced a change of plans. Of course,some ladies took better than others to their new, scaled-down lives in the USA. My aunts, for example, became terrific mothers. My mother became an alcoholic. I believe that alcohol doesn't defile character, it brings out its true nature. Yes, I should be more compassionate, but it's hard to feel compassion towards a tormentor. And yes, the 60's Cuban diaspora and its accompanying changes of status were traumatic for her and for many others, but people ADAPTED. Suffering makes some better;it made my mother worse. To my credit, it weighs upon my conscience that I've had such a hard time forgiving her, even though she's been gone for a long time now, and even though

I now partially understand what made her the person I had the misfortune to know.

Infrastructure good. GOP bad.

For those of you who have been living in a closet, Joe Biden is working on a bill that would renovate this country's crumbling bridges, roads, water works,power grids, public buildings, etc. while creating the millions of jobs required for the task. Who'll pay for all this? Why, taxes on the rich, of course. This is something very similar to FDR's New Deal,which created jobs for millions of Americans and pulled the US out of the Great Depression. It worked back then and it'll work now. In fact, it makes perfect sense. So why don't Republican legislators like it? First, because it wasn't their idea. Second, because there's nothing in it for THEM. Republican legislators' version of infrastructure is: they would allow the individual state governments to handle it (a piecemeal approach and a recipe for disaster: how many corporations would be involved in renovating highways that cross several states?). Middle income taxpayers like you and me would foot the bill and the rich would get off the hook. As usual, private companies would bid on government contracts for these projects--which would run a bigger risk than usual of NOT being awarded on merit.Because companies offering GOP politicians the biggest bribes and kickbacks would be the ones winning the contracts. Unregulated, they would pay their workers poverty wages and use procedural shortcuts and shoddy construction materials to save money, thereby endangering the public. THAT is infrastructure, GOP style. Support the Biden bill.

KIDS IN CAGES

TOP PHOTO,FROM LEFT: My brother Alfredo, me, and my cousin Teresita, in Cuba. Back in 1960's Cuba, a rumor began to ciculate that the Castro government planned to turn all kids over 3 into wards of the state.The Cuban middle classes reacted by launching Operación Pedro Pan (Operation Peter Pan), in collaboration with the Catholic Church and the US government. Over 14,000 unaccompanied minors were sent from Cuba to the US, to live in orphanages,convents, group homes or these rural "camps" in the middle of nowhere, until their parents could join them in exile. About half of them had no friends or relatives on arrival and horror stories of abusive teachers and foster parents abound. By the time these kids were reunited with their families in near-adulthood, they had become strangers.Add to this the resentment many felt at what they saw as being abandoned to their fates by selfish parents, and you could say that Operación Pedro Pan destroyed families. My folks did it in reverse. They moved to the States and left my younger brother and I with relatives, until they could send for us.That was unpleasant enough;we were treated like orphans by dismissive adults and my uncle, a drunkard, once pinned me to a wall because I'd gotten into a fight with my cousin.I never forgave him.My aunt tried to "console" me by explaining that my uncle was like Fidel Castro, he had a quick temper but his heart was kind. Even as a child, I didn't understand how that was supposed to make me feel better. So, if THAT situation was bad, I can only imagine what it's like for children who are being sent into the desert alone, to become another country's problem. That is morally wrong and it constitutes political and public relations blackmail. People send their babies into the desert and then try to tug at American heartstrings to bypass immigration laws. Same with the famous DACA "dreamers";they were encouraged to step forward as illegals, no guarantees,then they were threatened with deportation. Then the American public was flooded with all these sob stories about why they should stay, because after all, it wasn't their fault that their parents had brought them here illegally. Well, let them go prove their elegibility and get their green cards. Get in line, like everyone else, go through the process. We who came before you did just that. My parents did everything right.They moved here, waited their turn to become, first residents, and then citizens,they paid taxes, bought a little house,sent their kids to college. Nobody gave them anything. Nobody gave ME anything. It annoys me when strangers think they're entitled to shortcuts, based on the tragedies they have created by themselves. If you can't care for your kids;don't have them. And if you do have them, keep them by your side at all costs.

Retirement II—a Parting Shot (by Juana Bimba)

Our comrade, who was lying, mortally ill with COVID, in a hospital ICU, has died.It's been a shock on many levels. But now that I am retired and can express myself more freely, if I may somehow speak out to help put an end to the kind of management abuse that can lead to the illness and death of my former coworkers, I will.

I decided to retire when I realized that my fate was exclusively at the mercy of an inept, whimsical supervisor, who gave me an assignment that could jeopardize my health.She forced me to report to the building where our operations are located, when my work could be performed virtually just as well, and most of our department was working virtually, anyway. People in other departments had contracted the virus at the work site already; several had died. These are not the poor, illiterate, huddled masses yearning to breathe free at some chicken-plucking factory and being abused because they don't know their rights. These are middle managers with college degrees, and they still have to toe a murderous line or face losing their jobs. I was being punished for a minor transgression--more of a mixup--caused by a connectivity problem that I was able to resolve on the spot. In reassigning me,my supervisor did not take my age or underlying conditions into account. She did not listen to those who tried to intercede for me, including the president of our labor union. I had no recourse of appeal; HER supervisors favored her, she was practically bulletproof (the HR Department dictated that you couldn't refuse an on-site assignment just for fear of getting sick). She finally pulled me out of that risky assignment in her own good time, when she felt that her point, whatever it was, had been made. Towards my retirement date, she assigned me once more to work in person and I had to use my remaining free time to stay home and avoid the risk of getting sick during my final days on the payroll. During the same time period, she had sent my aforementioned colleague to work on site--he was a union guy and she didn't like him--and he dutifully went. When he arrived,a manager told him his physical presence wasn't needed.He could've filled in virtually. A few days later, he was dead. It's hard to determine when and where he contracted the virus or whose fault it was; you just look at the timeline and draw your own conclusions. I feel as though I dodged a major bullet by retiring when I did. Making people report to work when they can do their jobs virtually and when working in person isn't really needed (as it wasn't in my case, or that our deceased coworker) shouldn't be allowed. By law.

Update:The offices at the State Ministry of Circumlocution, where I labored for years until fear of COVID drove me to retire last January, are fully open. Everyone is now posted on the premises--no more working virtually, from the prophylactic safety of home. The Ministry is a place with constant walk-in traffic from all levels of society, so even if all Ministry workers get vaccinated, there's that. But, besides wrapping a handful of its key bureaucrats in clear plastic barriers, the Ministry hasn't set up discernible safety protocols for anyone else. Needless to say,employees are freaking out. I sense panic and confusion in the voices of former colleagues, whenever they call. The ground has shifted under their feet. Again. There was a time, for about 5 minutes, when we all thought things were about to improve.But now there's a new Covid variant,there's an upsurge in cases, now even the vaccinated are getting sick--and still, on some fronts, health precautions are being rolled back, "celebrations" are being held, as if the virus were retreating instead of advancing. It's a dangerous kind of collective wishful thinking, it bodes ill. Me,I had planned to look for a little retirement gig, now I'm not so sure about the safety of working outside my apartment. I hope that smart, compassionate administrators and capitalists will let their staff return to the virtual workplace, at least for the time being.

Retirement (by Juana Bimba)

Friday was my last day of work, and I'm happy. Work is highly overrated. To paraphrase King James:at work, the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet favor to men of skill, but time and chance happens to us all. I say, forget time and chance: evil assholes happen to us all. At work, you'll always have to suffer someone who has their foot up your ass, just because they can put it there. It doesn't matter if you're good at what you do, in fact, it's worse, because the more competent you are, the more of a threat you'll be to some insecure wretch.If you work in government, being college-educated will be held against you, because government jobs are the passageway to middle classdom for all the unwashed masses of mouth breathers.Ethnicity doesn't matter; you'll encounter trash of every color in government work. Worse, people there generally get promoted on the basis of race, so you might find yourself working for someone who dislikes you just because your skin color doesn't match theirs. And so, the whole work system encourages mediocrity--why bother to stand out, when your best efforts will only bring you more grief? Better to call in sick. You'll only get ahead if you're willing to practice the most abject of sycophancies--God forbid you should have a spine, or some measure of dignity, that just won't do; you'll become a target. Throwing people under the bus, not letting them solve their own work-related problems or stepping aside to let them be gored by some random injustice are common practices among managers, and union bosses can't be bothered to defend union members against the nasty whims of management, who happens to pay the salaries and stipends of union bosses.The two routes of escape from all this misery are to run your own business (and most people aren't comfortable with that level of insecurity) or to love what you do so much, that the work will be its own reward. (It happens. I was once there, when I worked for a major daily newspaper and didn't really care whether I got paid.) But now I'm finally retiring and I'm happy, even if I'll no longer have money to throw around, and even if it's only for a few years before I plotz. I'm now free and at liberty to say/write whatever I want, whenever I want. I'm only sorry that my poor son still has to go through a lifetime of that shit.Now, after venting, I must mentearion at least two good things about working (in this order):1.You make money 2.You make friends.This Friday, I'll be leaving behind the most charming bunch of people I ever met under one roof and I will truly miss them. Too bad they're supervised by two worthless shitheads.

The hippies are back (by Juana Bimba)

Watched the Inaugural events all day, and all day, like a fool, I was crying tears of happiness and relief. The whole thing was infused with a kind of cautious joy which I found moving in its steely wisdom, and yet, hope was the theme of all the presentations, from Bon Jovi's "Here comes the Sun", to Justin Timberlake's heartfelt message about better days ahead.(And say, who knew JLo could sing? Her clear, high, delicate lilt blew Lady Gaga's soaring belt out of the water.) There was not a single misstep to the whole thing, nothing tacky or inappropriate, nothing that made you want to roll your eyes or cringe.But the best thing was its overall message of love and reconciliation, in stark contrast to all the ugliness of days past. It was like watching the hippies of old,inserting flowers in the barrels of the cops' guns. Who can resist such a barrage of good will, good wishes and sweet words? How can anyone try to combat the loving pull of open arms, of extended hands, with shows of spite, hatred and violence? Next time someone insults your brand of liberal politics, hand them a flower. And tell them the hippies are back

A Somewhat Bilingual Letter to Mike Pence (By Juana Bimba)

Dear Mike Pence: To present yourself NOW as a normal, decent human being by comparison to the monster you've served so abjectly for 4 years is not a commendable feat. It's way too easy and no, you don't deserve any credit for refusing to commit a federal crime. At least not in my book. What WOULD constitute a commendable display of cojones,which most Republicans lack, would be to invoke the 25th Amendment and send that hijo'eputa on his way. And why not? Turnabout is fair play. Just consider: that marica humiliated you publicly, then sent a mob of locos anormales to kill you and endanger your family. So what are you waiting for? You got a bull's eye on your back, anyway. Democrats still don't like you and Republicans hate you, especially now that you're attending Joe Biden's inauguration. Your political career is over,cabrón! You'll be lucky if after this, you end up as dean of students of some community college in Wyoming, or maybe as a lobbyist for an obscure brand of suppositories. So man up,hombre. Invoke the 25th. (Not)tu amiga, Juana