Ethnic Christmas

Us old Cubans make a big deal about having a family Christmas.

Like salmon, we all return to our spawning ground, Miami. This year my trek was by way of Ft Benning and Tampa. Last year we included Mobile and Jacksonville. Despite the work, bother and overload, deciding to attend was good and the family reunion was wonderful. It was fun seeing the family, retelling old stories and making new ones for our kids to tell later. For instance, my aunt told us that, as a young kid, I used to eat earthworms, a new revelation my daughter delighted in.

Family reunions are good mental health. And the bakery goods were delicious.


- text © 2010 by Willy

Lock Up?

"We lock up more of our citizens per capita than brutal dictators like Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro," wrote Cynthia Tucker in her request to end the War on Drugs.

I've got news for her. In the early 1960's, Castro's Cuban revolutionaries shot the entire previous party dead... up against a wall. No going to see a judge. It was televised, day in and day out. "Paredon!" they chanted. Thousands and thousands died, so there was no locking them up in the hoosegow. And many of the ones that were lucky enough to get to jail ended up dead anyway, due to starvation and sickness. Rape, murder and looting (in that order) were wholesale and only deterred by hefty walls and demonstration of defensive gunfire. No getting caught and going to jail for that, since the murderers were the new revolutionary party. Then in the 1980's, Fidel sent his prisoners here via the Mariel Boatlift and emptied his jails.

Since then, news and pictures have appeared of dissidents being beaten to death at the US Special Interest Section in Cuba ("the embassy")... no need to lock them up either.

Yes, Cynthia, brutal dictator Fidel Castro doesn't lock up the citizens... he kills them instead. Your statement is an insult.

"Tijuana authorities found 275 pounds of marijuana and a half-completed tunnel under the border," quipped Jay Leno, "Wonder why the tunnel was only half completed?"

Dahhh! Is it better to laugh with Leno and be ignorant like Tucker, or be stressed with the truth?


- text © 2009 by Willy

Open Your Eyes

Pepito tells his teacher late one afternoon that his cat just had five kittens and that all of them believe in Fidel and the Cuban revolution.

The following morning the proud teacher takes Pepito to see the principal.

"Pepito, tell the principal what you told me yesterday."

"My cat had five kittens, and two of them believe in the revolution."

"Pepito! Yesterday you told me that all five kittens believe in the revolution. How's that?"

"Oh, yes, teacher... but this morning three of them opened their eyes."


[This anecdote was popular in 1959]


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Past and Future

I did not perceive it the same way my parents did, when, as a kid of 10, my family left Cuba for Miami in 1960, a year after Fidel Castro took over.

Like many other countries, Cuba had been governed by one dictator after another and many people were poor and ready for a change.

A young leader came out of nowhere promising change. A young leader that spoke eloquently and passionately. Compared to previous despot, he was the knight in shining armor that would literally take us away from all this. Everybody was in love with him.

Nobody questioned who put him there... where he got his money, who his friends were or what he really believed in. He said he would bring justice and equality to all. He said he would help the poor, bring universal free medical care, and clean up our tarnished reputation.

Everybody wanted change but nobody thought exactly what these changes would be, do and cost. So by the time the opposition went silent, the people's guns had been taken away and there was no liberty left for any. Disagreement ended against bullet-ridden walls in local neighborhood "street court." Everyone was equally poor and hungry, except for Fidel and his committee. Free health care had no doctors and thus was worthless. There was no free press to publish anything but propaganda. There was no real church left either, just a facade. Cuba had been knocked down even below Third-World status, a million were killed and millions left.

Our election-year rhetoric in this country has reminded me much of what happened in Cuba.


Would we in this marvelous country fall for young charismatic leaders with unknown backers who promised change? Would we think about it and ask what kinds of changes? How will they be carried out? What will it cost us? What would they do to us?

Would we?

We have. Two years ago we went for change and elected a Democrat majority congress. Have the last couple of years been good for you? And for the country? Vote for more change this November and we're REALLY going to get it!

We’re not a Third-World country, you say? It happened in Germany, too.

- text © 2008 by Willy
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Cultural Conflicts

The fish out of water gets eaten. A foreigner out of his culture clashes. And although he might not reach as tragic an end as the fish, his tragedy lasts a lifetime. Nobody adjusts completely.

The bottom line is that to properly develop ourselves, we must develop proper communications... and to do that we must know each other well.

Its amazing how much of what we do is based on culture... from how we wake to how we sleep. Most other cultures wake naturally to daybreak. Here we get up in the middle of the night to an annoying alarm clock and possible heart attack (although the Yankee work ethic is obviously more efficient). At night, other cultures bring out the wine and talk around a table, bonding, but here we eat Doritos and hush the spouse to watch TV.

Occasions are completely mind boggling to foreigners. A Valentine's Day card seemed as committal as a diamond ring when this 11-year old boy got a certain smile from a little girl named Jo.

Putting down the foreigner has been a staple of TV for a century. It's amazing too how much bias there is against other cultures, and how little we care about it. Instead, we laugh at the jokes and thus put down others. There are an awful lot of bigots out there... and most of them don't look like bigots, or admit being one.

The Dairy Association's huge success with the campaign "Got Milk?" prompted them to expand advertising to Mexico. It was soon brought to their attention the Spanish literal translation read "Are you lactating?" Did somebody not explain that translations must carry culture? Evidently not.

It happens the other way around, too... Scandinavian vacuum manufacturer Electrolux used the following in an American campaign: "Nothing sucks like an Electrolux."

Foreigners truly do end up in the melting pot, but the sadness is that by then much permanent personal damage is done by ignoring culture... both coming and going.

-©2007 by Willy
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