an American Dream in Cuba

Photo by Vlad Podvorny | CC BY 2.0

Like all island nations, Cuba is a hybrid of so many things that have drifted upon its shores, crashed upon its reefs, or found shady refuge among its fertile, verdant land. Despite the greed and Godly paranoia that rationalized Spanish genocide against its original inhabitants, the country seems steeped in an indigenous shroud of patience and stoicism, with dialects as old as the Mogotes. Cultures never completely disappear no matter how total the conquest or long and layered the history.

My verse is light green
And it is flaming red
My verse is a wounded stag
Who seeks refuge on the mountain

But everything from the coffee and rum to tobacco and livestock—even the horses—are mixed breeds combining the Spanish and French and British and American influences with the DNA of indigenous souls and native soil. In the countryside—which dominates the island—time still follows the flow of nature like the underground streams carrying fish and human flotsam under the always changing yet never changing stalactites. If one can breathe slowly enough and not blink—you miss nothing and everything. Such is the inherent contradiction of Cuba’s history, present, and future.

Of course, the western gaze is set on Havana where the modernity of commerce and trade, moneyed desperation and retail communication dominates the landscape and the imagination. The combustible color and mechanical optimism of Bel Airs and Buicks, Ford Fairlanes, Pontiacs and…

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