I decided to go over to ground zero for Miami's Cuban hardliners today, Calle Ocho. But it was to attend something called a Tertulia which is a coffee talk of sorts. The venue is a coffee shop called Tinta y Cafe, Ink and Coffee and it's a little oasis of rationality in an otherwise backward part of Miami. I mean, what do those old men playing dominoes know about geopolitics, international law, and social justice?
It was very refreshing to hear my like-minded comrades go on and on. I really feel that we are making headway against the illegal and imperialist American policies vis-a-vis Cuba.
It was great meeting up with the whole gang that I haven't seen since our training at the DGI compound in Havana. Oh Marifeli Perez Stable was there, Max Lesnik, Francisco Aruca, Oscar Corral, you name it. It was like a Castroite dream team.
I had to tell Lesnik how much I love El Duende!
Oh well, I have to go. It's time for me to do my rounds and post disinformation on various blogs of the empire. I also have to get the shortwave radio warmed up so I can file my weekly report.
Until next time,
Waaaaaaaaa!
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6 comments:
Is Tinta y Cafe going to close today in protest of the Federal sentencing of FIU Professor Carlos Alvarez and his wife Elsa Prieto, who were forced by the FBI to plead guilty to being Castro spies for three decades?
The Cuba campaign for "The Five" spies should now be renamed "The Seven."
You forgot to mention my good friend Magda Montiel Davis. She like the other you mentioned, are the true purveyors of decency and morality in a town filled with so much filth and lies.
WAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Hey rosados, pinkos, y rojos rojitos, are you guys having fun? You pretend to show you're intellectually superior to the decent "gusanos" of the real Cuban Exile, and you act like Tokyo Roses, and you have "lenguetea" sessions with each other and with the big comrades down in Cuba, and then you misrepresent yourselves as innocent victims of American Imperialism. Wow! My heart bleeds for ya'll, except we know who you are: The Big Bad Wolf. Spies!!!! The mere mention of names like Aruca, Lesnick, et al makes more than 600,000 Cuban exiles want to puke. Keep trying. I guess you get paid for what you're doing. One day, instead of The Five or The Seven, there maybe the Fifty or One Hundred. You guys are betraying every ounce of decency there may have existed in any Cuban lineage. You guys want to apologize and negotiate with a corrupt, criminal regime for your own purposes and benefits. And there we have, even the "distinguished (?)" journalist from the Miami Herald, using her freedom of expression and all the privileges given her by Imperialists and Their Constitution. I guess she left Cuba for two reasons: she probably fell in disgrace with the government down there, and she came here, to the USA, to make good for whatever she did wrong down there.
Why, guys, isn't there a democratic constitution, liberties of expression, observance of human rights in Cuba? Never mind the rest of the world. Let's talk about the indecent world of Fidel Castro, jineteras, pingueros, apartheid against Cuban citizens, and spies all over the USA trying to do damage to Cuban Exiles and to America.
I congratulate you for inaugurating the first openly dishonest blog dedicated to the defense of Fidel Castro and disparagement of Cuban-Americans. Certainly it has been a long time in coming. Fidel Castro has legions of sincere followers in the mainstream media, as innocent as babes-in-arms when it comes to pappa Fidel. But you belong to a higher order of cynicism. You make no pretense about actually believing any of the propaganda yourself, which you don't, obviously. Instead you uphold the position that Castro is bad for everybody else but good for the Cuban people. Such open dishonesty (or is it openness about dishonesty?) is a welcome change. Once more: kudos and godspeed on your mission to make Castro's barbarity palatable to Cuba and the world while fully acknowledging that such barbarity is not your own cup of tea. We need more apologists for barbarians like you. Hate the barbarity; love the barbarian. This is the new gospel and you the new evangelists.
Don't forget that upstairs there's the studio of a Granma photographer.
Hace semanas fui blanco de un bombardeo electrónico contra un establecimiento tildado de “quintacolumnista”: Tinta y Café. No hay nada que provoque en mí tal curiosidad y admiración como la frescura de la rebeldía. Allí me personé con mis Belgian Shoes de Park Avenue y una recién confeccionada Thomas Pink, vamos, como para desentonar. A los rebeldes de salón, poca soga ha de dársele. Pensé encontrarme a Max Lesnick en uniforme de cuero, maceítos en cadenas, a Andrés Gómez repitiendo consignas revolucionarias y a Paco Aruca en orgiásticos placeres. Me imaginé, en fin, un Bosco vivant. ¡Qué chasco!
El lugar, hélas, resultó perfectamente civilizado. Que quede claro mi compromiso pluralista: ¡lo visité con un amigo republicano! Bien pensado e ideado con gusto, Tinta y Café ofrece magníficos batidos de frutas, pasteles, bocaditos, bocadillos, sopas y postres que por su valor calórico pudieran estar vedados por el MINFAR y esas organizaciones anacrónicas que caracterizan el Parque Jurassic a noventa millas: raison de las tertulias e iracundia . Ningún afiche del homofóbico Che aparecía por aquellos contornos. Cualquiera de mis amigas de Swifty's o Payard's se sentiría a gusto en Tinta y Café.
Conocí a la dueña, Nelí Santamarina. Graduada en ciencias políticas por F.I.U., de conversación fácil, dice estar "consciente del sacrificio de mis padres para traerme a un país de libertad". Sus tertulias abren la posibilidad a dialogar sin temor sobre otras políticas vis-a-vis la problemática cubana, teniendo claro que no está de acuerdo con el régimen de Fidel Castro y que ha sido testigo de la miseria que atraviesa el pueblo de la isla. La Santamarina lleva a nivel popular lo que la profesora María Cristina Herrera realizó durante décadas con sus tertulias del Instituto de Estudios Cubanos para estudiosos, políticos y periodistas. El rigor académico de la Santamarina como politóloga se queda en la cocina, con los bocadillos, cuando compara los campos de concentración UMAP (producto estatal) a la Moral Majority (poderosa minoría afiliada a la corrupta administración Bush). La restauranteur parece olvidar que el cuarteto Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Gonzáles crearon campos de concentracion (Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib) con fines cosméticos: para musulmanes fundamentalistas que resultaban desagradables a la vista.
Santamarina habla con tristeza de su hermano, el recién fallecido Rafael, su único socio. Muchos le achacan al ex editor de Réplica, Max Lesnick, como socio capitalista. La figura que data de un caduco activismo histriónico en Miami ha visitado el establecimiento en una sola ocasión y jamás ha asistido a las tertulias. “¡Tampoco es para tirarle la puerta en la cara!” La cara de Santamarina se ilumina, al referirse a la cooperativa artística que surge desde el segundo piso de Tinta y Café. La apertura que sigue en sus tertulias del primer piso se extiende al ofrecer espacio a artistas visuales emergentes en el espacio de su segunda planta.
No fue un chasco total. Mi zumo de melón estuvo fresco y refrescante, la conversación chispeante y resultó reafirmante descubrir que una mujer empresario tiene un lugar abierto al pluralismo. ¿Se utilizaría aqui el viejo artilugio del nexo con la izquierda como ardid publicitario para lograr acceso gratuito a las redes de la ultraderecha y una campaña publicitaria gratuita? La curiosidad se impone a los ideales. ¿Sería acaso la competencia en un intento por aniquilar a una arriviste?
No me encontré el cuadro del Bosco que esperaba ni el infierno dantesco. Mi gran amigo republicano estaba feliz: entre la cooperativa de artistas está la hija de un matrimonio amigo “de allá del Cayo [léase Key Biscayne]”. Ahhhh, el dulce encanto de la burguesía.
Justo J. Sánchez
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