May 24, 2006
Ana Menendez on Cuba Nostalgia
I opened the Miami Herald this morning, started to eat my cereal, then promptly almost had to spit in back in the bowl when I read Ana Menendez's column trashing Cuba Nostalgia.
What didn't she like about it?
Check it out below, with a few comments afterwards.
Nostalgia is now for sale, and it's costlyBy Ana Menendez
amenendez@herald.comCuba Nostalgia drew thousands to the fairgrounds last weekend, a three-day extravaganza that proves there is no story so worn or threadbare that it can't be repackaged and sold at a profit.
There was old art, there was sad art and somewhere amid the hackneyed paintings of mulatas and their roosters there must have been some authentic sentiment. It was just hard to spot past the shameless shilling.
Well represented in this paean to sentimentality were: Bacardi Mojito, La Bodeguita Goya, Navarro Pharmacy and Southern Chevy Dealers, this last one honoring the heart-warming Cuban tradition of driving.
Yes, the Cuban American National Foundation was there, featuring a video installation that would have been right at home in an edgy Wynwood gallery. The CANF information booth (''Adopt a Dissident'') stood in solidarity alongside Costco Wholesalers, Comcast and Miami-Dade Transit, which was ready to fill the gap for all those not lucky enough to win the 2007 Chevy Cobalt in the drawing next door.
Not to be outdone, The Miami Herald was also there, chasing after the lucrative target audience of octogenarians who consider this paper the mouthpiece of Satan.
THE POSTER
The official posters near the entrance set the cartoon tone for the whole spectacle: Curvaceous Cubanas in frilly cuffs waved maracas while cigar-chomping, congenial-looking fellows strummed guitars. ''Bienvenido a Cuba Nostalgia,'' it said above a prominently displayed logo for Merrill Lynch.
It was downhill from there. After several hours of wandering the space, I was forced to face a series of painful existential questions such as: How many $3.50 magnets of the Virgin of Charity does the average family need? Who buys pillows that say La Habana? Isn't there a better venue for selling boxes of desiccated Gallo Pinto? Is that really a painting of Burt Reynolds with a hat of roosters?
By the time I got to the booth for Memorial Plan cemeteries, I thought I was prepared for anything. But my heart nearly stopped at the sight of dozens of people lined up for some promotional give-away that featured a spinning wheel. Fortunately, this one turned out to be not the Wheel of Fate but the Wheel of Umbrellas and Visors. At that point, I was just relieved that no one was raffling off a free plot.
Cuban Americans have come a long way in this town. Out of the sorrow of leaving family and lives behind, they rebuilt what they could in a new place and struggled through the bad and lean years only to arrive near the end of their story and find it written as farce.
From the sublime to the Bacardi Mojito lounge.
People strolling through the Expo Center Sunday sometimes seemed delighted and sometimes just plain stunned as they gamely powered through the commercial pitches.
''Your roots are your roots,'' said Stella Menéndez (no relation to me). ``Still, it's a shame. It used to be more historical.''
`I FEEL GOOD'
Her brother-in-law, Martin Menéndez, 67, had a simple reason to be there. ''I come because I feel good here,'' he said, browsing through the $59.95 guayaberas.
By a certain age, men like Menéndez have earned the right to their nostalgia. The sad thing is that there's so much money to be made from it.
Saturday marked the 104th anniversary of Cuban independence, a struggle that killed thousands, including Cmdr. Antonio Maceo, who survived 24 battle wounds in his career before dying at the battle of Punta Brava.
That was fortitude in the service of an ideal. Today anyone can sell a T-shirt of Ché Guevara with a bullet hole in his head and call it courage.
As rip-offs go, the $12 entrance to Cuba Nostalgia wasn't nearly as offensive as this notion of an Exile's Bazaar: a place where history is a marketing concept and memory is always priced for a quick sale.
I understand someone complaining about the fact that everything these days seems to be sponsored by some company looking to make a buck. Then again, isn't that the way a free market operates? Ana Menendez, a by-the-book liberal if there ever was one, doesn't seem to understand that. It's one thing to bemoan the prices and heavy advertising, but it totally misses the point of what Cuba Nostalgia is about.
Menendez, as many of us know, is great at missing the point.
I'm not going to say that Cuba Nostagia is the perfect event. It's not. But for many of us who had to leave Cuba, it's an event in which we can look back at the Cuba of old, at our youths, at better times. That's nostalgia. It's a perfectly normal feeling. Perhaps Menendez could have seen that, but no, she's way beyond being nostalgic about Cuba. Apparently, being nostalgic about Cuba is for us dumb, cigar-chomping, Hatuey-swigging, fidel-hating Republican neanderthals who never miss an opportunity to squeeze out a few bucks from our fellow citizens.
Menendez's sarcasm throught the piece is tripe in its purest form.
Right at the end, she couldn't resist a shot at us Che-haters. No Ana, you missed the point again (how could someone as smart as you be so wrong so often?). It's not courage that inspires someone to sell a T-shirt of Che's last moments. It's motivation to spread the truth, to spread justice about a murderer.
Perhaps Ana doesn't understand what Che was really about. Perhaps it upset her to see an "icon" exposed for the farce he really was.
I'll let you readers decide.
Posted by Robert M at May 24, 2006 06:46 AM
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Comments
Obviously, since Ms. Menendez mentioned the Che Still Dead tshirts, she must have passed by the Babalu Exhibit. Wonder why she didnt take the time to come over and ask us a few questions for her "report"?
Well, I dont really wonder, I know why. The word "agenda" comes to mind.
Posted by: Val Prieto ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.babalublog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 24, 2006 07:28 AM
The word "miserablecomemierda" comes to my mind.
Seems to me that the Areito bunch has infiltrated Miami Herald newsroom. I had never heard of Ana Menendez, but she sounds like one cynical, sad puppy. She may have a right to her opinion, but must she ventilate it in a major newspaper?
Posted by: omar at May 24, 2006 08:29 AM
She really seems to have a problem with the free market system, as you mentioned. Who cares about the $3.50 magnets or the $59.95 guayaberas? How about how much she makes per word for her "writing"? Free markets are good, to have freedom (and cash) to buy an ice cold mojito is good, and freedom to choose to wear the "che still dead" t-shirts or not, is good and the freedom to write about something you feel is "shameless" and "hackneyed" without fear and for pay is good. And as for "worn" and "threadbare" stories "repackaged for a profit" she should go see "Motorcycle Diaries." I would suggest she speak with the lady Val mentions in the post "Letters to the tyrant of the Caribbean" or some of the many others you mentioned meeting over the weekend, but it would probably do no good. What I saw at Cuba Nostalgia was a wonderful fair with lots of fellowship, people posing for pictures in front of the many wonderful exhibits, an opportunity for a history lesson, and a chance to remember and to hope for the future.
Posted by: jen at May 24, 2006 08:41 AM
This is a woman who wrote a book called "Loving Che" in which the protagonist's mother had a torrid affair with Che G. during the revolution. She goes to Cuba to learn about her mother and the affair and is told by another character, "There's no police state here; that would at least be exciting."
The Washington Post reviewer said this: "Menendez's strengths are her idiosyncratic, poetic prose and her unsentimental insights about all things Cuban. "Miami seemed to me in those years to be living in reverse," says the daughter-narrator. "They named even their stores after the ones they had lost; and the rabid radio stations carried the same names as the ones they had listened to in Cuba, as if they were the slightly crazed sons of a once prominent family. This endless pining for the past seemed to me a kind of madness, everyone living in an asylum, exiled from the living, and no one daring to say it plainly."
Menendez definitely has a point of view on Cuba and Che.
Posted by: class factotum at May 24, 2006 08:48 AM
She's certainly entitled to her worthless opinion.
It probably grates on her that few care. Another minor MSM "legend in her own mind," she is.
Posted by: Alberto-Q at May 24, 2006 08:56 AM
Pues mira, Yo la pase de lo ma' bien - baile, tome y me encontre con muchas amistades. Perhaps eso es el problema con esta mujer - no tiene muchas amistades por ser tan come mierda y equivocada. Maggie (La Reina), Robert, Val y George - it was such a joy to meet you guys! Besos y abrasos desde Virginia!
Posted by: Tati at May 24, 2006 09:19 AM
Hasn't Cuba been for sale for the last 47 years as well? And not only at Cuba Nostalgia:
Posted by: Scott at May 24, 2006 10:08 AM
"Idiosyncratic prose" a whitewash statement from a fellow member of the MSM that means, basically, crappy writing.
Posted by: Val Prieto at May 24, 2006 11:09 AM
Well, the author of "Loving Che" should definitely be added to the list of self-hating Cubans along side of Max Castro, Lisandro Perez, Alejandro Portes, and la Reina Dirty just to name a few!
Posted by: Ray at May 24, 2006 11:21 AM
Ana also apparently missed the very prominent MIAMI HERALD booth at the convention as well.
How does the saying go? "dont shit where you eat?"
Posted by: Val Prieto at May 24, 2006 11:45 AM
I posted her article to several Myspace cuban pages along with her email. What a castro lover !!
Posted by: FREEDOM4CUBA at May 24, 2006 02:17 PM
Ay,Dios mio. This is probably THE MOST press Menendez has had in her entire loser career ....
Posted by: Gigi at May 24, 2006 08:20 PM
She's not selling any books. She's ranked #536,653 on the amazon.com list. That's not number of books sold. That's how many books are ahead of her on the list.
Her first book ("In Cuba I was a German Shepherd") is #485,359.
I guess there aren't so many people who think Che is so great after all. Ha. She better keep her day job.
Posted by: class factotum at May 24, 2006 08:26 PM
Perhaps her job is to stir things up and make some folks mad. I know there was one in the paper where I live a few years ago. He always had something negative to say about someone, causing folks to write to the newspaper complaining about his method of reporting.
Posted by: apr_47@yahoo.com at May 24, 2006 11:52 PM
"Loving Che"? Classic. The word agenda definitely comes to mind.
Posted by: barrocas at May 25, 2006 12:59 AM
"there is no story so worn or threadbare that it can't be repackaged and sold at a profit."
Wait, is she talking about Socialism? :D
Posted by: mbennett at May 25, 2006 06:31 PM
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