pt at large

Cuba Chronicles: An All-Star Cuban Pitcher and the Hot Corner

Rolando Macías, All-Star Cuban Pitcher
Guest Speaker at lunch at Restaurant/Paladar La Moraleja
Calle 25 n.454 e/J e I, Vedado, Havana, Cuba
October 2, 2015 on the road with Road Scholars

Late breaking development: Tampa Bay to Play in Cuba for Obama and Castro March 21, 22, 2016

Some of the best baseball players we’ve never heard of play in Cuba. Our Cuban guide Yohandra (Jo) has told us several times, with pride, that the Cuban baseball team is a perennial winner of the Baseball World Cup. Of the 15 teams that have competed over the years, Cuba has won 15 Gold Medals. The next highest? The USA with 4. Ironically, America introduced Cuba to baseball in the 1860s.

 

The guest speaker at today’s lunch is Rolando Macías. A little stout now, the 5’10” 74 year-old with the strong shoulders and big biceps still looks like he could throw some heat.

Rolando Macías started to play baseball at 12 years old. At 15, major-league scouts took notice. He played in the Cuban leagues for 15 years, his record was 100 wins and 67 losses between 1958 and 1979.  He once won 31 games in a row, pretty remarkable in any country.

An All-Star by any standard, Rolando played in the Pan-American games and the World Cup. “My best pitches were a sinker and a screwball,” our interpreter Jo relays to us.

Rolando Macías Rodrigues was a winner and a coveted prospect that US scouts tried unsuccessfully to land.

At age 18, he was offered a contract by the Cincinnati Reds. In 1967, the New York Giants came calling and in 1969 the Brooklyn Dodgers. He declined them all. Macías retired in 1978,  began to mentor young players in 1990, coached a Cuban team in 1997, coached in Italy in 1999 and Venezuela in 2003. In 2006, an automobile accident ended his coaching career. “I still do some advising,” he says, as Jo continues to translate.

Why decline the offers? “In 1958, the contract wasn't good enough. In 1969, I wanted to stay with my wife and children.” In 1967 he said that he felt like part of the revolution and wanted to stay in his home country.

"Cuban teams were the best in the Caribbean - always,"  Macías says with conviction. He said that after Cuba went under the embargo in 1959, players from the Dominican Republic became more popular. I’m not sure where he gets his information but I believe him when he says, “Fifty players from Cuba may be drafted for USA teams next year.”

To Jo’s extreme distress, the sport of soccer is making inroads in Cuba.  The World Cup men’s and women’s championship games have been popular the world over, apparently in Cuba as well.

“Nooo!” she exclaimed when we rolled past athletic fields and saw kids kicking a white soccer ball around. “We have the best baseball teams, we win the World Cup all the time, they should be playing baseball!” In more calm moments, she considers the fact that playing baseball requires gloves, bats, and balls and they all cost money. For soccer, one ball is good for dozens of kids to play with.

(For one young man's cross cultural journey to connect with his family history and to donate baseball equipment to young players see the film HAVANA CURVEBALL by Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider)

In the past month, there’s been talk of American and National League teams coming to play exhibition games in Cuba. If Cuban players are offered contracts in the future, they will be much better than the ones Rolando Macías rejected.

Jo says that Cubans are proud of their athletes like Yasiel Puig and Yoenis Cespedes, even though they defected from Cuba.

Yasiel Puig Valdés is a Cuban professional baseball right fielder for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Puig played for the Cuban national baseball team in the 2008 World Junior Baseball Championship, winning a bronze medal. The 25 year-old outfielder made 4.5 million dollars in 2015. In later research, I find that in addition to Puig, who plays for the Dodgers, José Abreu, who plays for the White Sox, and Kendrys Morales, who plays for the Royals, all got their start with Macias. There are 16 Macias protégés currently playing in the minor leagues.

Yoenis Céspedes Milanés is a Cuban professional baseball outfielder who is a free agent. He has played in Major League Baseball for the Oakland Athletics, Boston Red Sox, Detroit Tigers, and New York Mets. He made 3.73 million dollars in 2015.

When this happens, the athletic fields will again be alive with kids playing baseball.

 

Rolando Macias, bottom left of page 2; Rolando's fancy autograph

Rolando Macias's many honors

Parque Central and the famous "Hot Corner"

Parque Central in Havana a block from the Capitolio Building is good for the usual themes in Havana: people watching, admiring vintage American cars, finding a shady spot to relax for a few minutes

“See those men around the benches over there,” Jo says. That spot is called ‘The Hot Corner’. They are former baseball players. They hang around the benches and argue baseball all day long.” It is said that this is one of the only places where Cubans can say whatever they want, as long as it’s about baseball.

My guess is that the conversations are going to heat up this year when professional teams from the USA play exhibition games here.

The Estadio Latinoamericao was built in 1946. In 1971 it was renovated, increasing its capacity from 31,000 to 55,000. Like tickets to the ballet, Jo says that ticket prices are affordable for everyone. Outsiders have differing opinions about Cuba's politics but regarding this,  I wish tickets for American ballet and sports events were as affordable as they are in Havana.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. reporting from Road Scholar trip to Cuba

 

Cuba Chronicles: Cigars and Rum

“Cuba Today: People and Society—Havana and the Countryside” (#20610)
September 28-October 6, 2015

On The Road With The Road Scholars

Politics aside, mention Cuba and two items come to mind: cigars and rum. No right-minded tour of Havana would be complete without visiting a rum and cigar emporium. As of January 2015, American tourists can bring back $400 worth of merchandise, which may include up to $100 worth of tobacco and alcohol products, for personal use only.

Fellow Road Scholars and I put a dent in the allocation Wednesday September 30. Cheers erupted in the bus when our fearless tour leader Carole Cloonan announced the stop.

I made two friends very happy when I picked up a few Montecristo and Cohiba Robusto cigars, requests made about ten seconds after learning I was heading for Havana. The Cohiba style was created in 1966 and is a favorite of Fidel’s.

Cuban cigars are hand rolled, have dozens of lengths, shapes, and ring sizes (the width of the cigar). Cigars also have a distinctive colorful paper band that is wrapped around each one with the logo of the cigar. Cuba's climate and soil make it ideal for growing tobacco leaves perfect for rolling into cigars and packing inside them. I’m way over my head when my cigar-smoking pal waxes on about the three components of cigars – the wrapper, binder and filler.

Columbus saw Cuban Indians smoking a form of cigars way back in 1492. Factories in Cuba began hand-rolling cigars in the late 1800s.  

How did the Montecristo cigar get its name?  Our Cuban tour guide Yohandra (“Jo”) explains. “In the old days, in order to keep the cigar makers engaged, the company hired someone to read to them while they rolled cigars. One of the stories being read was ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ and that is how that cigar got its name. Same thing with the Romeo and Juliet cigar.”

While it was rare to see anyone smoking a cigar (or even cigarettes) in Havana, every lunch and dinner we had was accompanied with a couple rounds of mojitos – Cuban white rum, sugar cane juice, lime juice, sparkling water, and mint…instant gratification.

Accounts that it was Ernest Hemingway’s favorite concoction at La Floridita in Havana are probably apocryphal. It doesn’t make a shot glass of difference to tourists who have flocked to La Floridita for an icy mojito or daiquiri and a photo opp with the bust of Papa in the corner seat at the bar.

Cuba in perspective: Cuba is the 136th largest export economy in the world. In 2013, Cuba exported $2.43B and imported $6.72B, resulting in a negative trade balance of $4.29B. The top exports of Cuba are Raw Sugar ($419M), Refined Petroleum ($356M), Rolled Tobacco ($306M). Habanos S.A. owns the trademarks of every brand of Cuban-made cigars and cigarettes in the countries they are exported to. The only nation to which Habanos S.A. doesn't sell cigars is the United States, which has had a trade embargo against Cuba since 1962. Before the revolution, Cuba was a one-crop economy, and 90 percent of the country's raw sugar and tobacco exports was exported to the US. There was no trickle down benefit to the populace.

Hard to say how Cuba will manage exporting cigars and rum to the United States if and when the embargo is lifted.  Not hard to say that the best place to sample either one is in Havana.

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Decisions, decisions, decisions...a toast to our newly acquired mementos.

Dazzling stock pile of cigars of all kinds.

 
The "rings" for cigars were formerly printed on lithography presses like this ancient machine at El Taller Experimental de Gráfica in Havana. http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2015/11/cuba-chronicles-el-taller-experimental-de-grafica.html

  
La Floridita...a visit here is on the top ten places to visit in Havana for tourists from all over the world. We were the only Americans in the place. After a couple of mojitos or daiquiris everybody is in the mood to celebrate and world peace seems possible. And the little band just inside the door is a fabulous mood setter.

Note the book and eyeglasses on the counter and the photo of another famous Cuban on the wall. Also note the DAIQUIRI on the bar.

Jennings Cox, an American mining engineer who is said to have invented the rum based daiquiri during the Spanish-American War, is buried in this cemetery in Havana. After getting seated on the bus after our visit to the emporium, our tour guide Yohandra ("Jo") passes around a pint of fine white rum. It's empty by the time it gets back to the front of the bus – a record says tour leader Carole Cloonan. I think that was a compliment.

Cuba's reputation with rum is complex and dark. In the 1930s, the Mafia took control of the rum business. When Al Capone visited Havana, he camped out in two floors of the Hotel Sevilla Biltmore (photo above), owned by other mob bosses. The mafia's influence in Havana politics ceased after January 1, 1959 when the Revolution triumphed.

The Art Deco Bacardi building was completed in 1930 and was the largest building in Havana at the time.

The battle for control of Cuban rum production continues to this day. Bacardi and Havana Club were the two biggest rum makers in Cuba and friendly competitors when Fidel Castro took control. Castro regime confiscated the Bacardi family’s Cuban assets in October 1960.

Bacardi now makes Havana Club rum in Puerto Rico and sells it in 19 states. Because of the U.S.-Cuba trade embargo, Pernod Ricard of France, maker of  Havana Club rum of Cuba has not been able to sell its rum in the U.S. but markets the product in Cuba and elsewhere. If and when the embargo is lifted, Pernod Ricard will sell its rum to U. S. customers under the name "Havanista".

French drinks giant Pernod Ricard is poised to sell its Cuban-made rum in the United States once a 53-year-old trade embargo is lifted, going head-to-head with Cuban-founded Bacardi which dominates the world's biggest market.

Pernod's Havana Club will have to change its name to "Havanista" for U.S. customers, because Bacardi International, now Bermuda-based after its founders fled the communist island in the 1960s, has the U.S. rights to the "Havana Club" name.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Cuba Chronicles: El Taller Experimental de Grafica

October 1, 2015
Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside"

El Taller Experimental de Gráfica de La Habana
Callejón del Chorro #62, Habana Vieja

The smell of ink and fresh paint fills your nostrils as soon as you walk into the gallery. If creative energy had form, it would be handing you a cup of coffee and saying, "Have a seat and look around."

A dozen young student/artists are up to their elbows in acrylic paint and ink. Intensely. Occasional chatter and bursts of laughter interrupt the silence as they follow their instincts, intuition, and training.

If the pope had dropped in during his visit to Havana last month, the young student artists might not have noticed unless his robes brushed against their paint trays. The paintings on dry paper and the monotypes they’re making on wet paper and acetate will soon be ready to be printed and tucked into their portfolios.

 

The 9 established artists who work here produce a prodigious number of lithographs, etchings, wood and linoleum cut prints. The artists pay the gallery a fee when they sell their work. Printmaking in Cuba dates back to the 1700s. Print making got a boost in the 1800s when the circular bands around cigars began to be printed on flat stones. To give you the idea of the status of art and artists, printmaking became a subject in the education system and an independent specialty in 1959.

When this workshop was created in 1962, some of the stones and presses that printed those cigar wrappings were brought here.  The "rings" that used to be wrapped around cigars were printed from designs made on stone and lithographed, are now done digitally. Nevertheless, the presses are still in use. Cuba feeds off its traditions in order to embrace its past and use it as a point of departure into the future.

The Galería del Grabado (Printmaking) upstairs has an astonishing variety of prints for sale. Trust me, when trade becomes easier, the value and recognition of Cuban art is going to go through the roof.

I smile when I think of what Che would think of this. When Orlando Suarez was looking for support to open a gallery in 1962, he got it from Che Guevara, then the Minister of Industry. The revolution realized the value of the arts to be a backbone of culture and national pride. It must be said that freedom of expression only goes so far in Cuba but here, on paper, the sky’s the limit.

Sold! A Road Scholar purchases a print made by Dairan Fernandez de la Fuente

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. rolling along with the Road Scholars

Cuba Chronicles: La Coppélia - The People's Ice Cream

La Coppélia
September 30, 2015
La Rampa Street in the Vedado District, Havana, Cuba
Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside"

America has Ben and Jerry…Cuba had Fidel and Celia~

It may not surprise you that Habaneros love ice cream. It will shock you who started the craze - the Maximum Leader himself, Fidel Castro!

He wanted to introduce Cubans to his love of the dairy product and put Celia Sánchez (May 9, 1920 – January 11, 1980), one of the first women to assemble a combat squad during the revolution in 1956, a confidante of Castro’s and appointed to Secretary to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in the 1960s, in charge of making it happen.

Oh, boy, did she ever. The La Coppelia building, constructed in 1966, is shaped like a flying saucer that can seat 1000 customers. The Havana Times reports that it serves 12 thousand clients during the week, a figure that can reach 15 thousand on Saturdays and Sundays.

There are mercifully no Wal-Mart’s in Cuba but this is the biggest ice cream store on the planet and probably the largest store in Cuba. It takes up a whole city block and is surrounded by ground cover and shaded by banyan trees. La Coppelia is to Havana what the Statue of Liberty is to America - a landmark to see for tourists and a beacon to the sweet tooth to just about every Cuban on the island.

Our Cuban guide Yohandra (Jo) Perez says that people wait in line for hours to get 4, 8, 12 scoops of ice cream for a few pesos. She says that La Coppelia was featured prominently in one of Cuba’s most popular films, “Strawberry and Chocolate.” With ice cream as a background, the film explored, in a sympathetic way, the Castro regime’s unfavorable attitude toward the gay community at the time (film set in 1979, made in 1990).

Jo says Cubans never know what flavors will be available. Today it was almond and vanilla. And rather than go inside, which might have taken the rest of the morning, our group leader Carole somehow got this tiny satellite shack just outside the La Coppélia park to open for us. I later learned that foreigners with CUC’s (Cuban Convertible Pesos) pay about four times what Cubans pay. It's worth it!

You don’t want to leave New York without having a bagel and cream cheese, or Philadelphia without trying a Philly Cheese Steak sandwich.  In Havana, it’s a few scoops of ice cream at La Coppélia.

The name? Coppelia was Celia Sánchez’s favorite ballet. The logo, a red, white and blue line drawing of a ballerina’s chubby legs, red dance shoes and tutu, is as recognizable as a Dunkin’ Donuts sign. Dance and music are venerated art forms in Cuba. The Ballet Nacional de Cuba has produced some the world’s leading dancers.

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The Vedado district, home of La Coppélia (note Russian car). Our tourist group is served at an outside kiosk. Everyone else waits in long lines to get inside. This street, La Rampa, runs from the Malecòn (the road by the seafront) to Calle L, and passes by airline offices, cinemas, nightclubs and office buildings.


Two scoops, the custom is to put one cone atop the other. The ice cream is not as rich and flavorful as some premium US brands but it's sort of like hot dogs. They taste better when you eat them in the ball park. La Coppélia ice cream is sweet, cold and you're wolfing it down in Havana, an act of solidarity with ice cream lovers the world over. The well-known logo of a ballerina's legs, red toe shoes and tutu, behind me at the entrance to the park.

 

People at an eatery in the park. Uncomfortable custom: tourists are given a green light to buy ice cream at the front of the line and Cubans step aside for a few minutes. 

 

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr. rolling along with the Road Scholars

 

Cuba Chronicles: A Visit to Casa de Abuelos La Milagrosa Senior Center

September 30, 2015
Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside"

Casa de Abuelos La Milagrosa Senior Center founded by Father Jesús María Lusarreta, Havana, Cuba

After meeting Father Jesús María Lusarreta, our group of Road Scholars walk to the Senior Center next door. A lively place, with seniors from the neighborhood and a handful of volunteers.

One way or another, connections are made.

The Road scholars bring postcards of home towns or photos of family to give to the seniors who hold onto them as if they were wafers of communion, pleased to have such a tactile and visual memento from the United States. Many of them trace their fingers over the pictures, and show them to anyone who walks by, a warm touching response.

Even though the language barrier is there, smiles, handshakes and exchanges of mementos breaks down barriers and makes the day special for the givers and the receivers. St. Vincent de Paul would indeed be happy to witness this exchange and the sense of community it created.

 

Dominoes is popular game in Cuba. VIDEO The seniors serenade the Road Scholars who, in turn, respond with a chorus of "You Are My Sunshine" (not recorded).

A retiree with a great story!

I sit with an alert fellow and gesture with my camera to ask if I can take his picture. He smiles and says yes. What happens next blows my mind. Yohandra "Jo" Perez comes to sit with us and acts as a translator for this incredible story. The man is 87 years old. When he was young he was raised by a priest, who later moved into the country to serve the men who were organizing the revolution. He built  a portable altar and took it around the Sierra Maestra Mountains to say Mass. One of his first congregants was Fidel Castro.

My new friend spent 35 years working in a factory that made cleaning materials including sponges. During that time, he wanted to join the priest, who had become a commander. The priest/commander told him to stay home. The factory worker made Molotov cocktails with the sponges from his work and sent them to the commander priest in the Sierra Maestra Mountains to be used in service of the revolution. 

Father Guillermo Sordinas Menendez was 30 years old when he joined and died when he was in his 40s.  Yolanda Portuondo has written a book about the priest. How amazing is that!
Yolanda Portuondo El Sacerdote Comandante Guillermo Sardiñas
http://www.abebooks.com/GUILLERMO-SARDIÑAS-SACERDOTE-COMANDANTE-Testimonio-Portuondo/7571466557/bd

  Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Cuba Chronicles: Father Jesús María Lusarreta, Church Stalwart, Community Organizer

September 30, 2015
Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside"
La Milagrosa Catholic Church, Casa de Abuelos, Havana, Cuba

 

The visit to this church is my first clue that Havana is more than a city romanticized for its glorious past as a playground for the rich and famous. And it is one of several encounters that shape my experience of the city and its people.

The Road Scholar itinerary read, “Meet members of either a Senior Center or Down Syndrome Community Center to share conversation and perhaps exchange a song or two.”  It didn’t mention Father Jesús María Lusarreta, a shaker and mover in the mold of St. Vincent de Paul.

The tour bus pulls up to a well-maintained Catholic church in what appears to be a poor neighborhood. Down an alleyway and into a side entrance we go, passing a sign that reads Casa de Abuelos La Milagrosa. We sit quietly in the middle pews in the warm confines of the sparsely adorned interior.

In walks a short fellow with thinning white hair, a white shirt with a crucifix hanging from a lanyard around his neck and a pair of black reading glasses stuffed into his shirt pocket.

It takes five short minutes to understand how Father Jesús María Lusarreta has transformed his church into a charitable entity another fellow named Jesus would applaud.

The Casa de Abuelos La Milagrosa serves everyone from teenagers who are pregnant to seniors in need of company and a good meal. Lusaretta’s religious order, St Vincent de Paul, is dedicated to serving the poor and disadvantaged. The man is a vigorous example of the spirit of the order.  

He embodies a marvelous mixture of conviction, serenity, and a practical understanding of bureaucracies with just the right dash of charm and levity necessary to absorb the ironies and incongruities of navigating life in Cuba.

”God loves you whether you like him or not. He will always welcome you when you come back,“ he says, as our Cuban study guide Yohandra "Jo" Perez translates. The man isn’t interested in proselytizing. He’s here to serve the people in this neighborhood. I get the feeling that he’s welcomed back many a parishioner who’s left the fold for a time.

Charming and charismatic with a twinkle in his bright blue eyes, he’s a wonderful storyteller - humorous, empathic, a man born to do this kind of work. Just being in his company, even though listening to translation, I get the feeling I would go to war for him.

“I’ve been here for 25 years but I’m still not considered Cuban!” the Basque priest by way of Argentina says with a grin. I pegged Father Lusarreta at 65 years old. I’m stunned to learn he’s 78.

I find out later that he arrived in 1993 during the time Cuba was in the midst of its “special period” after Russia collapsed and its financial support of Cuba went with it. The country was close to the brink, food was scarce.

Never a country of abundance, it had to survive in years that were probably like the depression era in the United States. Coincidentally it was the year that Fidel Castro abolished thirty years of state mandated atheism and, being a practical politician, allowed the church to take on social welfare programs he knew the government could not.
 
In Cuba, the concept of family is nearly sacred, a social sacrament and tradition centuries old. In 1996, Lusarreta began a soup kitchen for elderly people that had no family to support them and pensions barely enough to squeak by. From about the number of people who attended the Last Supper, the number grew so large that they didn’t have enough food to serve the people who came.

I am astonished to learn later that, undaunted, Lusarreta wrote to Fidel Castro. Castro granted his program a regular subsidy. Say what you want about the leader’s politics, his decision here was Castro-style Cuban. It met people’s basic needs. Today other Spanish religious institutions also subsidize the program.

The beauty of the man’s work is how invested his parishioners are in the outreach and how enthusiastically they’ve embraced and enlarged the program.  As Jo, our Cuban guide (in photo with Lusarreta above) translates, we learn that the church has a day care center that serves 168 seniors. Many of them live alone. Here, they play dominoes and other games and enjoy the gift of each other’s company.

It gets better. Three social workers work here and live in the neighborhood. And 160 people volunteer to help, many between 6 and 8 PM after they finish work.

“People are living in dignified poverty. God is helping 107 seniors here. People in the neighborhood are vigilant and recommend people they think should come here. At this time 30 or 40 people are incapable of getting here so the church sends people to their houses to help them. Some people die lonely. This should not happen,” says the priest. And won’t as long as Lusarreta has anything to do with it.

We learn that the church organized a center across the street for people with Down Syndrome. It is Wednesday and today they are on a field trip so we don’t visit them.

Lusarreta didn’t mention it but I learn later that they distribute food and clothing to single-parent families in need, give job training for professions like hair dressing, cooking and carpentry. An online news story says that the center also offers medical and dental care, education programs, excursions, clothing, a laundry service and a hairdresser.

In a country known for bureaucratic inefficiencies and a tenuous relationship with the Catholic church, it’s seems like a miracle that this place could become such a powerful nexus of activist social work.

 Cuba's position toward religion has changed over time. The Catholic church was in the pocket of politicians who were deposed in 1959 and not sympathetic to the revolution. In 1978, three years after the Cuban (communist) government declared Cuba to be an atheist state, it allowed people to worship as they pleased. In 1992, it declared itself a secular state. Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Protestants, Africa-Cuban Senteria openly practice their religion.

A 2004 report indicated that 40–45% of the population was nominally Catholic but only 10% were active members. Parochial schools and other religious schools were abolished (and still are) after the Revolution. Fidel Castro's visit to meet the Pope in 1996, John Paul II's visit to Cuba two years later, and this year's visit to Havana by Pope Francis signaled significant thaws in the church/state relationship.

This charity-minded little church offers sustenance to the needy and a sense of community to its parishioners in a tightly knit neighborhood of people looking out for one another. If this is socialism, sign me up.

La Milagrosa means ‘the miraculous’. Pretty much true when you think that what’s going on here is a blend of religion and socialism that mix as well as the bread and the wine at Sunday mass.

Part 2 Next post:  Road Scholars visit the Senior Center on the second floor of the church.

 

 Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Cuba Chronicles: A Morning at the Market

September 30, 2015

Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside

Today's itinerary: two hours at a local outdoor market - groups are given an "allowance" similar to what an average Cuban has to spend on food; visit The Milagrosa Church and meet Father Jesús María Lusarreta; visit the church's outreach program in the Casa de Abuelos La Milagrosa (a senior center run by Father Lusarreta, a visionary priest); visit  La Coppelia ice cream stand on La Rampa in the Vedado district; meet a retired Cuban All-Star pitcher at lunch at La Moraleja Paladar; shop at a cigar and rum store; tour The-Merger, a thriving art gallery; and at 6:30 PM, by popular acclaim, bus to the Buena Vista Social Club for dinner and a spectacular floor show.

pt at large stories:Father Lusarreta and the Milagrosa Church; La Milagrosa Senior Center; ice cream at La Coppéllia; lunch with a retired Cuban All-Star pitcher; shop at a Cigar and Rum Store; tour The-Merger Art Studio; great dinner show at the one and only Buena Vista Social Club! (stories to follow for the last two)

A Havana neighborhood market

The farmer's market is a compact area, half the size of a football field, filled with vendors selling vegetables, onions, garlic, sweet peppers, yucca, papaya, sweet potatoes, cassava, and several fruits and vegetables I don't even recognize. The air sings with the chatter of vendors promoting their food, banter between vendors and buyers, with a good helping of joking between the vendors themselves. Each small group given an "allowance" to shop for basic fruits and vegetables, we learn how thrifty an average Cuban has to be while shopping.

It is 9:30 AM. The vendors are doing a brisk business.

 
The smell of newly turned-over soil hangs like an omnivorous cumulus cloud under the canopies covering the market. Vegetables and produce, some still coated with soil, lie in huge piles in front of each vendor. Some people line up at a small stall to pay a few pesos for plastic bags in which they fill their purchases.

 

The desire to eyeball the food and pick out your own produce is a universal sentiment.

  

   
As in the USA, many shoppers bring their own cloth bags. There are several of these kinds of farmers markets around Havana, this one is typical and very lively. Customers range in age from 20s to 70s. Their faces show the nearly universal heritage of Cubans of African and Spanish descent.

   

   
Today's lesson: Our group leader Carole Cloonan divides us into four groups, each in charge of buying certain types of fruits, vegetables, seasonings. Each group is allocated 60 pesos. The monthly pension of a retiree is about 240 pesos. The food we're able to purchase would require judicious daily rationing to last. The food we purchase will be donated to the church we'll visit later today.
 
There does not appear to be much bargaining, the price is the price. Several stalls display squash, papaya, yucca plants and large root vegetables cut in half to show their quality. Everything appears to be a few hours removed from the tree or the ground. No packaging,  no cellophane, no plastic wrappings or containers. This is shopping at Whole Foods Cuban style. Fresh food, set out on sturdy wooden tables, once removed from its source.

 
Jo says that Cubans do not like spicy foods but do like tasty foods. The favorite ingredients in Cuban cooking are garlic, onions, sweet peppers, which she calls "the three musketeers of Cuban cooking."

A fellow Road Scholar remembers that "the "farmers who raised the crops were young men serving their national service or mandatory military service. The people selling are hired to sell the crops and are not serving their required military time. Military service here is strictly that, there it sounds like they use military service as WPA... Not all markets have food grown by the military. There are markets that true farmers bring their produce. Rates are set by the government in the markets but the small vendors on the streets with the carts have no such constraints. They can charge whatever the market will bear. They purchase their products from either a farmer direct or from the central exchange and can then sell at whatever price they can get. If you remember most of the cart people had onions which is a staple in Cuban cooking."

 
Street vendor a few paces from the market selling onions and garlic

All the food in the market is organic. Yohandra says that farmers cannot afford pesticides.

Over the course of these posts, I'll try to get a better grip on the following:

• Each Cuban receives a monthly ration book for food staples. How much, how does it work? I don't know how it works in the market today. Later this week, we will visit one of the government stores at which citizens can pick up rice, beans, sugar.

• Currency: There are two legal currencies, the CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso) and the CUP (Cuban Peso). One CUC is approximately equivalent to $1.00. One CUC is equivalent to about 24 CUP. In the market today, we used CUPs, the local currency. Outside of market environments like this, tourists generally use CUCs. Trip advisor has a helpful explanation.

• Living expenses - housing, electricity, water - cheap and almost free are heavily subsidized by the government.

• The government provides free education and free health care. Students in urban secondary schools must spend at least seven weeks annually in rural labor.

• According to InterNations Worldwide, "As is the case with healthcare in Cuba, education is public and free for all citizens and literacy is at 99.8%." Life expectancy and literacy are the highest in Latin America and among the highest in the world.

• Fifteen facts about education in Cuba

UPDATE: I was surprised to read this May, 2015, story in the Havana Times that reads "Cuba: An Overweight Country"  Statistics from the Ministry of Health in 2011 show that 43% of Cubans are overweight. Reasons? Fresh fruits and vegetables that have high nutritional value are relatively costly. The food industry peddles low cost, high fat/high sugar alternative products, mostly "fast foods", that have low nutritional value, taste good and give the sensation of satiety. The comment section under this news story is anecdotal but revealing. According to the CDC, 34.9% of American adults are considered obese. Not the best statistic for Cuba to have higher than the USA.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

Cuba Chronicles: Touching down in Havana

September 29, 2015

The World Airways jet from Miami to Havana touches down at the José Marti International Airport at 2:30 PM. An hour later, I board a tour bus - the adventure with Road Scholars, “People and Society - Havana and the Countryside,” is underway in Havana.

NOTE: Our plane is the ONLY plane on the tarmac this afternoon. Point of reference: a total of 8,314 flights departed Miami in September this year with 859,028 passengers aboard.

American Airlines recently announced plans to fly to Havana. According to the Dallas Morning News, "U.S. and Cuban officials said they reached an agreement Wednesday — the day before the anniversary of detente between the two Cold War foes — to allow as many as 110 regular airline flights a day to the communist country. This year, U.S. travel to Cuba has risen more than 50 percent, and the island has seen an even bigger influx from other countries, overwhelming the country’s outdated tourist facilities. The airport in Cuba’s capital, Havana, can barely accommodate current demand, and nearly all hotels are booked well into next year."

The present José Marti International Airport is not built to manage such a dramatic influx of flights.

Havana is a city with the pace of an American city in the late 1950s. Sections of the city's once elegant architecture are crumbling but retain a haunted look of its heyday. More about that in future posts. If you come here to tour, get a feel for the people, the culture and the history, you'll do fine. If you need to check your email and post on Facebook or conduct business over the internet, you're not going to be happy. Given our rich tour schedule, I was happy.

Havana's future, with a possibly abrupt infusion of outside commercial interests and its effect on Cuban culture, is anyone's guess. The lesson: savor this week.

++++++++++++

More stories and photos coming soon. Some posts will be revised as I recall more information...would be more detailed if I hadn't lost my trusty notebook a few minutes before checking through customs at the Havana airport as I departed with my group of Road Scholars on October 6.

2:30 PM Group leader Carole Cloonan sets a robust pace and we’re off. For the next four hours, our tour bus drives through the heart of Havana as Yohandra "Jo" Perez  (photo below), our on-site Cuban guide, points out significant architectural and historic sites. Jo is a font of knowledge. She weaves together the woof and warp of Cuban history and culture with anecdotes that help explain everything from music to the education system, the housing and health systems, and the importance of family in Cuban life.

 
Think of Havana as Washington, D.C., Boston, and Philadelphia rolled into one. It’s the country’s capital city and is loaded with landmarks that speak to its history and is filled with statues and commemorative public squares that honor its heroes.

First stop - The José Marti Memorial (upper right) and the Plaza de la Revolución (below). Both were completed by President Fulgencio Battista in one of his last acts before he fled as Fidel Castro seized control of the government in 1959. Originally named Plaza Civica, it was renamed "Plaza de la Revolución" or Revolution Square.

José Marti (January 28, 1853 – May 19, 1895) is a national hero in Cuba. His writings and political activities railed against Spanish rule of the country and helped ignite the War for Cuban Independence in 1895. One of Marti's fears was that the United States would annex Cuba, again putting Cuba in the thrall of another country.

Verses from Marti's poem "Simple Verses"  are lyrics to the song "Guantanamera" that some consider the unofficial national anthem of Cuba. Pete Seeger sang a version of Guantanamera during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963. Progressive activist that he was, he intended it to be sung as a symbol of unity between the the USA and Cuba.

 
The Plaza de la Revolución is the 31st largest city square in the world. Pope Francis addressed the Cuban people here in September. Before he stepped down in 2008, Fidel Castro addressed as many as a million Cubans here many times.

Flanking the square opposite the Marti Memorial are the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Communications, emblazoned with metal portraits of men with heroic reputations who died in Cuba's fight for independence: Che Guevara with his quote "Hasta La Victoria Siempre" ("Until Everlasting Victory" and Camilo Cienfuegos with his quote "Vas bien, Fidel" ("You're doing fine, Fidel").  For a darker view of Che Guevara status as a hero, check here.

We roll past the Quinta de los Molinos (Botanical Garden of Havana and the Museum Maximo Gomez), then the Ministry of Energy and Mines then pass The Grand Lodge of  Cuba Freemasons on Avenue Salvador Allende. Several Cuban leaders are said to be Freemasons.

On to Calle Riena in Habana Vieja (Old Havana), a long avenue lined with colorful two and three story buildings. Many seem to have been rebuilt recently. "Jo" points out the porticos, covered walkways, supported by detailed columns, designed so people can shop and walk protected from sun and rain. (Note the Russian style cars.)

Change is in the air. Havana appears to be rejuvenating itself after years of neglect. Many of the cars are decades old, skillfully maintained and appear to run well. The area seems largely residential. Spanish style wrought iron balconies adorn most of the second and third floors.

 

The biggest surprise is the stately beauty of the Capitolio Nacional built in 1926 when Havana was flush with cash from the sugar trade (and, Jo says, money from the Mafia who smuggled rum from Cuba into the USA during Prohibition 1920-1933). It was modeled after the US Capitol Building and The Pantheon in Paris.

Formerly the seat of the Cuban Congress, since the revolution in 1959 it has housed the Cuban Academy of Sciences and the National Library of Science and Technology. Like scores of other buildings today in Havana, scaffolding is erected to refurbish it after years of neglect. With news of the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy, this seems to be an acknowledgement of things to come.

Home of the National Ballet of Cuba (Ballet Nacional de Cuba). The arts have standing in Cuba and it comes right from the top. In 1959, Fidel Castro gave the ballet school $200,000 with the charge to make the arts accessible to everyone. Cuban ballet dancers have the status of pop stars and are among the world's best. Competition to be accepted into the program is fierce. Tickets to the ballet are affordable, minuscule compared to US prices. Much of Havana's architecture is crumbling but the ballet company flourishes. Given Cubans love of dance, the fact that the ballet is wildly popular should surprise no one. Government funding continues to this day.

The school, now undergoing renovation, has outreach programs across the island and has been producing some of the best dancers in the world for decades. Days later in Matanzas, we will meet a teenage dancer who is taking rigorous training and has unsuccessfully applied twice to be accepted into the ballet school in Havana.

  

Roll past the Hasta La Victoria Park and through the tunnel under the entry channel to Havana harbor and  up to the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana, also known as "La Cabana" or “El Morro.” It has a terrific view of the sprawl of Havana. In 1762, the British took control of Havana by shelling it from this hillside. In 1763, Cuba was ceded to Spain in exchange for Florida territory in the Treaty of Paris. The Spanish king vowed to protect the seaway entry into Havana by constructing this fort and placed cannons control the harbor entrance.

View across the channel into Havana harbor from Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana. The castle gives us a breathtaking view of Havana and the Malecón, the five mile-long thoroughfare protected by a sturdy concrete seawall with the Atlantic Ocean lapping at its edge. The history of the city's architecture, smaller, shorter buildings to the left, taller. more modern buildings to the right.

 

Tourists from all over the world visit this landmark.I wonder what the view from here will look like ten years from now.

 
The Malecón, a five mile long roadway and seawall (photo L above), runs along the harbor across from the fort. Originally built to protect Havana from the sea, it's a popular evening destination for lovers, family gatherings, and fishermen who hope to hook a meal. And safe. Yohandra said that when she wanted to hang out there at night with friends as a teenager, her parents had no problem allowing her to go.

First glimpse of The Malecón (seawall barely visible on R of first photo: faded and crumbling elegance, reconstruction after years of neglect. Moisture from the sea erodes concrete over time.

On a walk from the Nacional Hotel de Cuba to the Melia Cohiba Hotel on the first night, I passed fishermen, teenagers in groups and pairs, and one multi generational group who'd piled food and drink on the seawall and were being serenaded by a man playing guitar. The temperature was in the mid seventies, a warm gentle breeze headed offshore. The fact that there are sizable potholes in the sidewalk and places where the sturdy cement of the wall is crumbling did nothing to dampen the spirits of one and all.

    
    

The fort, used by former President Fulgencio Batista then Che Guevara as a prison, has a bloody history of being used to torture and execute dissidents.

 

Cruelty to the native Indian population of Tainos, Arawaks and Siboney by the Spanish is acknowledged. Jo says the Indians preferred suicide to becoming slaves of the Spanish, who considered them beasts and treated them as such.

"Where are you from?" Dolores (above right photo) asks. When I say Boston, she says that José Marti, famed Cuban considered a patriarch, spent time in Boston raising money for the Cuban War of Independence in the late 1800s.
   
As in tourist destinations across the world, vendors ply their trade. I take some photos of a few friendly vendors, one of whom gives me a trinket with the Cuban colors on it. I offer to pay, he refuses. "What do you like about Cuba?" he asks. "It's the people like you who are very friendly," I answer...and that remains a constant during the entire trip.

Heading back to the Melia Cohiba, our great hotel on the Malecón, we pass the statue of General Máximo Gómez. Gómez was a general in Cuba's 1895 War for Independence from Spain, which led to the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Jo says that a photo of El Morro is in many a home of Cubans who left the  country, that it reminds them of home.

Informal dinner at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba, built in 1940, renovated in 1992. The walls of one of its bars is covered with photos of celebrities who've stayed there over the decades...pretty impressive list. And a reminder that this island was a playground for the rich, the famous, and the Mob.

Today has gone by like a blur. I feel like a Cubano sandwich filled with names, numbers, facts, history, and anecdotes. Like my fellow Road Scholar travelers, I'm thinking this is gonna be great.

Meliá Cohiba (built by a Spanish company in 1994)...home base for the next six days.

UPDATE: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
GUIDANCE REGARDING TRAVEL BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND CUBA

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS RELATED TO CUBA

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Allen Toussaint: A Tribute To An Iconic Singer/Songwriter

November 11, 2015

Allen Toussaint, age 77, died yesterday in Spain where he was touring, still entertaining audiences the world over.

The New Orleans Advocate obituary/remembrance by music critic Keith Spera gives you an idea of Tossaint's place in that city's musical hierarchy. If you're unfamiliar with the man's name, it's a safe bet that you've heard his music covered by singers for decades. His songs have been performed by dozens of New Orleans most celebrated artists and covered by musicians from Paul McCartney to Elvis Costello.

A towering figure in New Orleans style music since the 1960s, Toussaint played at Scullers Jazz Club on the Boston/Cambridge, MA, border in 2009. The way the audience responded, you'd a thought you were in a club on Frenchman Street in New Orleans, not the more staid confines of a Boston jazz club. As a salute and farewell, I re-post two reviews of that performance. I imagine he was having the same effect on an audience in Spain the night he died of a heart attack after a performance.

Re-post story 1 below: http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2009/08/allen-toussaint.html

Allen Toussaint: New Orleans Roots, American Music
Scullers Jazz Club
400 Soldiers Field Rd
Boston, MA 02134
August 20, 2009

Allen Toussaint. You may not know his name. You know his music. Music that was born in New Orleans and grew up in America.

Perhaps you’ve heard of The Pointer Sisters, Boz Scaggs, The Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt, Manhattan Transfer, Ringo Starr, Gladys Knight and the Pips, B.J. Thomas, Otis Redding, Little Feat, Three Dog Night, Jose Feliciano, Dr. John, Robert Palmer, Sam and Dave, Johnny Winter, The Judds, Lee Dorsey, Al Hirt, Aaron Neville, The Band, Warren Zevon, Irma Thomas, Alison Kraus and Robert Plant? They’ve recorded his songs.

Toussaint produced and arranged for Paul Simon, Patty LaBelle, Paul McCartney and Wings. Joe Cocker and Maria Muldaur traveled to New Orleans to record in Allen Toussaint’s studio.

I knew Toussaint’s name was long associated with New Orleans. I had no idea his musical footprint was so deep.

Last Thursday, Allen Toussaint graced Scullers Jazz Club with a performance that transcended music. A package of dignity, genius, and humanity, he can light up a place as small as Scullers or as big as a few acres at The New Orleans Jazz Fest.

Lights dim. To the stage walks a man in a dark suit, purple and black striped shirt, lavender and rose paisley tie and pocket square. Right away you see the man with the nappy grey hair and salt and pepper mustache isn’t afraid to mix and match in fashion or music.

“All my life I’ve waited for the red light to come on so I could play my music, ” he says after bantering with the audience over our Haavaad Yaad accents. He hasn’t been on stage for more than three minutes and he has us in the palms of his strong key-striding hands.

Toussaint opens with “There’s A Party Goin’ On” and by the time he gets to “You got nothin’ to lose but the blues…” his fingers have pounded or feathered practically every one of the 88 keys on the baby grand.

Toward the end of the song, Toussaint stops, grins impishly at the audience, and says “Your turn…” The surprised silence that ensued for three seconds was the last time this audience would be caught flat eared. “Well,” he says before the next song, “I heard a lot of silence out there when in was your turn.”

He launches into a medley of his songs beginning with “What’s Her Name.” Every time he pauses and nods our way, the audience roars, “What’s her name, what’s her name!” I’m not talking about a subdued, let’s be cool about this, effort, either. This was as unbuttoned Boston as I’ve ever heard. Toussaint kept it up during “Mother In Law” and ‘Working In A Coal Mine” and the Boomer to Slacker-aged salt and pepper audience nailed every chorus.

First, I had no idea he’d penned those songs (and most of the ones that followed) and second, I was blown away by the crowds unfettered collaboration. I mean you practically have to pay a Boston audience to participate in music of any sort.

Maybe part of it is that rollicking sound that’s been called a rhythm and blues rumba crossed with a second line parade. New Orleans’ French, Spanish, Cajun, Caribbean, African heritage is concentrated in Toussaint’s music and he spins it out in his musical centrifuge.

When Toussaint invites tenor saxman Amadee Castenell, a Katrina displaced New Orleans friend who now resides on the North Shore, to the stage for a soulful medley of  “Saint James Infirmary" (Anonymous), “Just Can’t Take It" (Toussaint), “Dirty Water" (Toussaint), and  “Riding On The City of New Orleans" (Steve Goodman), Castanell proves his New Orleans credentials are for real.

“Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky From Now On” (Toussaint) a swampy boogie rhythm ‘n bluesy song with lots of pedal morphed into quotes from Edelweiss, Chopin, a Christmas carol, show tunes, pop songs of his own, Grieg, to “Chattanooga Choo Choo’, “Tea for Two”, Jelly Roll Morton quotes, Irish jigs, Polish polkas -yes, polkas as in “Roll Out The Barrel”! - , “My Foolish Heart” with a New Orleans rumba tempo and back again to “Everything I Do Gonna Be Funky From Now On” all so fast your head hurts from trying to keep up and your jaw is slack with awe and your brain is slapping its knee in joy.

After that, Toussaint settles everybody down again with “So Far Away From Home,” Paul Simon's song built on the architecture of J. S. Bach.

Toussaint often pairs “We Are America, (unknown composer)” a history lesson wrapped in a ballad, with his original of “Yes We Can Can,” (and I couldn’t help thinking of Obama’s campaign slogan) and he does tonight. The piano bench may as well have been a pulpit. The man is preaching what he believes.

When he gets to “The Sweet Touch Of Love,” music used in hot Axe Body Wash commercials, you realize how deeply his music has penetrated the culture.

Toussaint’s “Get Out Of My Life Woman,” a hit by Lee Dorsey in 1966, re-recorded more times than any of his other songs, is an up-tempo song with echoes of Jelly Roll Morton, Scott Joplin, Professor Longhair and the steeped New Orleans tradition. Toussaint’s thin singing voice has never been his calling card but it delivers his songs with infectious energy.

What happened next is spellbinding, and it isn’t even music. Toussaint quietly talks us through a reverie, a tone poem, about childhood trips in which his father packs the family in a 1936 Buick for a trip to visit relatives far far out into the Louisiana countryside.

Toussaint remembers his father saying, “You need to know where you came from so you know where you’re going.” His richly detailed, extended description of the trip is filled with a rootsy sense of place and of belonging.

I’ll bet Toussaint has played softly on the keys and retold this story a thousand times and I cant imagine it feeling any more authentic, heartfelt, and spontaneous than it does right now. By the time he sets to playing “Southern Nights,” the song it inspired, my companion is in tears.

If you’re old enough, you might remember Joel Chandler’s "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" which Walt Disney made into the film “Song Of The South.” Toussaint’s final song, “Southern Nights,” is a true Song of the South.

The audience is on its feet cheering. Toussaint shakes hands with patrons in the first row and doesn’t head back to the piano. Sustained cheering could not possibly have produced an encore that could top "Southern Nights". Allen Toussaint slowly exits the room, shaking hands all the way out.

One vignette: at the merchandise table, Mr. Toussaint, still perspiring, stood up from his chair every time a new person came up to ask him to sign an album or CD.

Like I said, dignity, genius, and humanity.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Re-post story 2: http://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2009/08/toussaints-southern-nights-tone-poem.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Toussaint

 

 

Allen Toussaint: A Tribute To An Iconic Singer/Songwriter Part 2

November 11, 2015

Allen Toussaint, age 77, died yesterday in Spain where he was touring, still entertaining audiences the world over.

The New Orleans Advocate obituary/remembrance by music critic Keith Spera gives you an idea of Tossaint's place in that city's musical hierarchy. If you're unfamiliar with the man's name, it's a safe bet that you've heard his music covered by singers for decades. His songs have been performed by dozens of New Orleans most celebrated artists and covered by musicians from Paul McCartney to Elvis Costello.

A towering figure in New Orleans style music since the 1960s, Toussaint played at Scullers Jazz Club in Cambridre, MA, in 2009. The way the audience responded, you'd a thought you were in a club on Frenchman Street in New Orleans, not the more staid confines of a Cambridge jazz club. As a salute and farewell, I re-post two reviews of that performance. I imagine he was having the same effect on an audience in Spain the night he died of a heart attack after a performance.

Re-post: Toussaint's Southern Nights Tone Poem

Toussaint's Southern Nights Tone Poem
Scullers Jazz Club
400 Soldiers Field Rd
Boston, MA 02134-1805
August 20, 2009

At the close of the raucous “Get Out Of My Life Woman,” approaching what I thought was the end of the set, Allen Toussaint began feathering the keys and talking softy. The room’s energy, having pegged the needle from the crowd’s lusty participation with the choruses of the last song, was brimming with energy.

Toussaint’s tone was reflective. It settled the room down as a parent would calm an excited child at the end of a long day. It took a moment to register that this was not Toussaint tossing off some patter. He’d begun to tell a story in which he spun specific childhood memories into an extended reverie, mesmerizing, deeply personal, about family trips deep into Louisiana sharecropper countryside.

What followed was what amounted to a tone poem filled with  love and a rootsy sense of place and belonging. I'll bet Toussaint has retold this story a thousand times and yet I cannot imagine it feeling any more heartfelt, spontaneous, and veined with pride as it was at that moment.  It really deserves to share a space on a future CD.

I began to scribble as fast as I could. I couldn’t write fast enough to get all the details but here’s what I got. Close your eyes and imagine this being told to you by a gentle man softly fingering the keys on a piano while unfolding a story that goes something like this…

“Sunday mornings my father
whose name was Clarence
would pack all of us
my mother Naomi Neville
my sister Joyce and my brother Benson
into the car
a 1935 Buick
'You need to know where you came from
so you know where you’re going…'
he would say to us

we drove on and on
past old weathered gray houses
unpainted, never new
close together
and as we drove farther and farther
into the country
the houses were farther and farther
apart

it seemed like every house had a porch
that seemed to wrap all around
each one
and people were sitting on the porches
sometimes waving
as we drove by

we saw cows, horses, chickens…
(he pauses)
with all their parts intact
wells with water in them
and frogs
and we’d finally get to our porch
all the uncles and aunties there
and cousins running out to greet us
and I’d listen to the language
of the old folks
the patois, the Creole so thick
I could barely understand it
(Toussaint mimicks some Creole conversation)
but
if I saw an eyebrow raise up
it meant I better listen because
it was going to be important

aunties on the porch
always wearing aprons
even to church
would pick you up and
hug you to their bosoms
and some of them were
quite well endowed
and I’d struggle to breathe
in the soft mass
with the scent of
talcum powder
maybe that’s where the expression
love you to death comes from
(Toussaint chuckles)

after eating we’d all sit on the front porch
the old folks told old stories
an auntie would say
I know that old John
died on his mule
but I heard him jabberin’ and cursin’ out in the dark last night
and an uncle would say
you must be hearin things
and she’d say well he say he gonna pay a visit to you next week
so you find out for youself
and over in the corner by the left side of the door
was the matriarch in her  chair
never talkin

once in a while she’d get real still
and we’d get to worrying
then slowly her arm would move and her hand would reach down
to the floor and she’d pick up a small bottle in a sack
bring it to her lips and slowly put it down
and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief

and I knew that I was in the right place
and everything important
in the world was right there
on that front porch
if there was something wrong with something
there was someone there who could fix it

it was dark out there at night
no light no electricity no gas to light anything inside or outside
and quiet
so very quiet outside
pitch black
but I knew that nothing would ever happen to me on that porch

when it was time to drive back home
I sat in the back seat
looking up at the only light
light that was coming down from the moon
as it filtered through the trees
that lined the road

the moonlight turned the leaves silver
and that’s where the next song comes from….”

He began to sing and play “Southern Nights.” I don’t think anyone in the audience could help but think of the ties that bind us, or we wish would bind us, to our kith and kin.

Southern Nights lyrics (written by Allen Toussaint in 1975, it sold over one million copies when country-pop singer Glenn Campbell covered it in 1977)

Southern nights
have you ever felt a southern night?
Free as a breeze
not to mention the trees
Whistling tunes that you know and love so.

Southern nights
just as good even when closed your eyes.
I apologize to anyone who can truly say
That he has found a better way

Southern skies
have you ever noticed southern skies?
It's precious beauty lies just beyond the eye.
It goes running through your soul
Like the stories told of old
Old man
he and his dog that walked the old land
Ev'ry flower touched his cold hand.
As he slowly walked by
weeping willows
Would cry for joy
Joy

Feel so good
feel so good
it's frigth'ning.
Wish I could,
stop this world from fighting.
La da da da da da la da da da da da da da da

Mysteries
like this and many others in the trees
Blow in the night
in the southern skies.

Southern nights
they feel so good it's fright'ning . . .
Wish I could stop this world from fighting
La da da da da da la da da da da da
da da da da da da da da da da da

Dispatches From Chile2015: A Crisis On The Horizon-H20 Part3

November 7, 2015

I’ve been visiting ChileFarms for two weeks every January since 2006. The activity on fields around the farm have worked the way agriculture has worked for centuries: plow, plant, irrigate, cultivate, harvest, plow under, start again.

Water has always flowed like clockwork into the canal that passes through ChileFarms property once a week. Farm hands have diverted water from the canal to replenish a small reservoir and into the fields of alfalfa, corn, honeydew and cantaloupe melons, and occasionally potatoes, broccoli, and carrots.

I knew the flow of water into the canal came from the Aconcagua River x miles west of the farm.  I knew that the canal ended in Nogales x miles east of the farm. Even a city boy like me could tell that the valley owed its success, nay, its very existence, to the silty water that filled the canals every week of the growing season.

Over the past five years, reliance on the annual snow-melt from the mighty Andes in the east has gotten dodgy. Less snow pack on the mountains was bad enough.  A nearly five year drought has spurred farmers like Ricardo Ceriani and Susaan Straus toe enlarge the reservoir on their property, and consider drilling or digging new wells, or finding efficiencies with their irrigation practices.

But what about those canals? During my stay, I peppered Ricardo with questions. Are there other canals? Who controls the water after the snow-melt descends from on high? Who maintains the canals in this valley? Who built them? And why?

https://books.google.com/books?id=_a1EAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA85&dq=who+built+the+irrigation+canals+in+central+chilee&hl=en&sa=X&ei=hTXMVMnSL9HhoAT9joHYAw&ved=0CCEQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=who%20built%20the%20irrigation%20canals%20in%20central%20chilee&f=false

Government subsidized irrigation canals were proposed in 1915 when a drought resulted in a scarcity of water in the spring and summer growing seasons. Canals diverting water from the Aconcagua River in the central valley had already been dug years before by wealthy landlords who had time and cheap labor. A few canals had been built by loosely organized groups of farmers but many poor or small farmers could or would not participate.  

The outbreak of World War I shut down Chilean nitrate plants. Unemployment ensued. A canal project would solve several problems. A government plan to construct irrigation canals was subsidized by the issue of bonds to finance construction of four canals.  The law required farmers to organize irrigation districts if the owners of over 70% of the land subscribed to the irrigation project.  

In March 1915 a department was created to supervise contracting for and digging the canals. The first canal completed, the Manco Canal, was 45 miles long and diverted water spring and summer from the Aconcagua River to about 8000 acres of land. The land served today is exponentially larger. Local administration of water distribution is organized by Canal Users Associations. ChileFarms is a member of the Nogales association.

https://books.google.com/books?id=7iaPvbZ3iKkC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=construction+of+irrigation+canals+in+chile+aconcagua+valley&source=bl&ots=_UmFTVjUHf&sig=5pZK-9usa6GE5CuIfUO-8tQr6bw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ljPMVNKQMI7SoATL8oLADQ&ved=0CEoQ6AEwCA#v=onepage&q=construction%20of%20irrigation%20canals%20in%20chile%20aconcagua%20valley&f=false


Further research is necessary to determine if the canal passing through ChileFarms from the river to Nogales was part of that first project or had been dug previously.

https://books.google.com/books?id=x4JFjuIfdQQC&pg=PA42&dq=canal+users+association+chile&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PzTMVP-ICYewogT_k4GoCQ&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=canal%20users%20association%20chile&f=false

Policies about water rights were a mess before Augusto Pinochet rose to power in 1970 and didn’t get any better afterward. Wading through this document is a mind boggling exercise. Public vs private ownership of water rights had been debated since the mid 1950s and no clear and enforceable policy had been agreed upon. From the late 1970 to early 1980s, economists and engineers argued about market incentives vs. government regulation. Policies about of agricultural water use, problems about river basin management, economic and environmental concerns were left unresolved or referred to the ill defined Water Code written in 1981.

Currently, powerful landowners in Los Andes, the first area through which snow melt from the Andes flows, control the release of that water into the central valley. The central valley is one of the largest exporters of ‘’off-season” fruit to the United States.

Between the current drought and the increasing practice of planting and irrigating avocado trees on previously unused mountainsides in the valley it is taxing the valley’s water supply to its limit. Something has to change soon. The future of every farm in the valley is in the balance.