First, I’m not Cuban, not a drop of Cuban blood runs in my veins. However, one need not be in order to understand the concept of Paradise Lost. Indeed, Christianity is based upon that theme, with the caveat of delivering the means to regain what was lost, albeit in the next life. I’m an ex-pat Okie — completely by circumstance and by choice — and I have fond memories of a past life/lifestyle that no longer exists for me, that I cannot ever return to. However, what small amount of this knowledge of loss that I might possess is totally insignificant when examined alongside that felt by the Cuban exiles living here in America.

           Havana today — “City of Ruin”What exiled Cubans, like Andy Garcia, have experienced is the loss of a beloved homeland, with no expectation of reuniting with same until after the death of Fidel Castro. They watched from afar as those they left behind were ground to ruin by the gristmill of Communism, Castro style. They saw cities of light and music become stagnant, rotting shells of their former selves. But always they remember — remember the Cuba that was “lost”, the Cuba of energy, of light, of money freely flowing from the U.S., of mambo, conga and salsa beats heard on the island winds. They remember, and they long to return and remake the Cuba-of-the-past into a glorious Cuba-of-the-future.

The Lost City, which opens today in limited release, is Andy Garcia’s contribution to this dialogue. It was written by the Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante. According to Garcia’s interviews about the film, it is partially autobiographical, as it depicts a family torn apart by the Revolution, with brothers and sisters having to make personal decisions as to whether they will stay, joining Castro in his rebellion against the Batista regieme, or take their families and move to the United States, leaving Cuba behind forever. In Garcia’s case, he was five and a half when his mother took him and his sister and got out. He describes leaving in an interview with MoviesOnline:

Q. How much do you remember from your actual leaving because you were so young?

A. Leaving? Everything. I went through that same thing that my character goes through in the picture.

Q. You were five?

A. Five and a half.

Q. But what specific do you remember of leaving your country?
A. Well, specifically I remember that particular moment. I was there with my sister and they were going to take off her …. She had these little ringlets and she couldn’t get them off her hand because she had grown into them. She was like 12 years old. And they started talking about what they were going to do, and I remember as a young boy looking up because, you know, it was very impressionable when you have people with guns around and stuff and dressed in military fatigues and stuff like that.

And they came in with cutting shears and I thought they were going to cut her hand off to take the rings off. So I remember that was a very strong impression that to this day I remember, and they cut the rings and took them off. And then my mother had a watch, and the guy was going to take the watch and it happened that one of the soldiers that was there was apparently one of her students. She taught English in high school. And apparently my mother used to use the watch to help teach them English and tell time and stuff like that. And the soldier threw her a towel and said, ‘No, that watch is a cheap watch and plus they need it for the kid when it’s his feeding hour. I know those watches. They’re like toy watches. Let her through.’ And that’s the only thing she took out was that watch.

In his New York Times interview for the film, Garcia expands on the feelings of loss that run deep to the core of Cuban exiles.

“Pain, deep pain,” Mr. Garcia says. “It’s the tragedy of exile, when you have to leave the thing that you most cherish.” He speaks of the nightclub owner he plays in the film, who leaves Cuba carrying record albums. “In the movie, they say to him, ‘You can’t take Cuba with you.’ He does. He builds Cuba in exile. That’s what I did. I live with Cuba every day.”

Garcia says that music is an important part of this story, seemingly becoming a character in the narrative. He tells Angeleno Magazine, “Because I can’t go back, Cuban music is Cuba to me. It’s like the needle dropped the day I left, and the records have been playing ever since.” In serving the needs of his film, Garcia features the music of another exiled Cuban, 87 year old Israel ”Cachao” Lopez. Talking with the Miami Herald, Cachao describes his leaving.

In 1962, politics made him drag himself to the Havana airport to leave the island for good. He had to lie to his only daughter about where he was going that afternoon. Maria Elena was only 9. Her mother had left a couple of years before to lay the groundwork to get her family to New York. Cachao had tried to leave Maria Elena behind once before, in 1961. But she had cried so hard at the airport, he turned around and ran back home. Which is why the second time, he left without a word. ”Imagine how hard it was,” Cachao says, staring down at his cortadito. “It was harder for her mother than for me. But I couldn’t stay in Cuba. We knew we had to leave to get her out later. We just didn’t know how long it would take.”

I can’t imaging that, not at all. But if it’s Cachao’s music providing the heartbeat of the film, it is the city of Havana that is it’s soul. As Robert Sanchez writes in his movie review for The Movie Reporter:

Andy has made an effort unlike no other to show world the truth about Cuban culture. “The Lost City” takes you back 47 years and shows like never before why that island was called The Pearl of the Antilles.

For those couple of hours you are transported to 1950’s Cuba, you can smell the coffee, the tobacco, you can feel that cool breeze on the beach and the rhythms of the greatest music of the Caribbean, you have arrived in Havana.

From simple details like white roses to having Benny More and Rolando LaSerie playing in Havana nightclubs, to Yoruba music, this is as authentic as you can get.

I have very good friend who is extremely proud of his Cuban heritage, and due to his influence, every time I travel outside the U.S. I look forward to the pleasure of a fine Cuban cigar. We’ve been emailing back and forth over the last several days and he has offered the following rememberances of his own trips to Cuba as a young man in the late 50’s for me to share with you.

My family had traveled to Cuba on holiday before Castro. We use to take trips to Havana just about every summer. We would drive to Miami from the Midwest and then take a ferry or commuter type ship to Havana arriving in the morning.

As I recall we went to Cuba in 1954, 56, 57, 58 and I “represented” the family in May 1959 when my aunt died. I accompanied my Grandmother to attend the wake and funeral of her daughter, my aunt. So I remember the pre-Castro, Batista days and I remember reading the Havana newspapers about the fighting between the government and the rebels (Castro).

In my opinion, most Cubans are political in that they enjoy discussing and arguing about Politics and History. They are also well educated and articulate. However, during the pre-Castro summers, people were a little concern about talking too much or taking positions because your neighbors could be anti-Castro and staunch Batista supporters. You ready didn’t know. There was this undercurrent of caution.

When I went to Cuba with my family it was great fun. I was in grade school or my first years of HS, so we hung out at the beach a lot. I remember looking out for my little brother so that he would not go too deep into the surf, swimming, snorkeling and, of course, talking to beautiful Cubans girls. Most of them spoke English, but it didn’t matter because I spoke Spanish. Our family was an attraction, especially me because I was big and muscular for my age and also because we were American Cubans who lived in the USA and had US dollars. Maybe we were a novelty.

In Garcia’s upcoming movie his nightclub in the movie is called El Tropico. I think this name is a take off of the real and famous Havana night club called “La Tropicana” which is interestingly enough the place where, in the Godfather II movie, Michael, Fredo and the other guys met prior to going to see “Superman” the porn star. By the way, Superman is for real. In 1958, several of my older cousins took me to see the “red light” district in Havana (strictly a look see without my parent’s knowledge) and we walked down the middle of the narrow streets with the girls calling to us from either side as we walked by. It was similar to Amsterdam. They were selling pictures of “Superman” to the tourists. We looked but did not buy. It was a very safe place. There were a lot of cops patrolling the streets.

In 1959 when my aunt died, the family got together (my uncles, Mom, Dad, aunts etc.) and told me that I would have to take my Grandmother to Havana for her daughter’s wake and funeral. This was because I was fluent in Spanish. My parents could not go because it was a financially tight time, and as opposed to driving to Miami, we flew to Havana from the Midwest. This was an interesting historical time since I remember sitting on the living room floor at our house in the US (January 1959) and watching CBS TV and Walter Cronkite covering Castro’s triumphant entrance into the city. My family was pro-Castro at the time and they were happy to see that Batista had abdicated. I also remember a Batista TV interview with Cronkite BEFORE he abdicated repeatedly telling Cronkite that all things were good and Castro would be defeated. This occurred during the Christmas of 1958, several weeks before Castro’s victory and entrance into the city.

I spent three weeks in Havana. I met all the first, second and distant cousins (a very extended family), friends of the family, old buddies of my Grandmother, etc., even some old guys that had fought against Spain in the Spanish-American War. Boy, did they have stories. This was also the first time I was introduced to real Cuban cigars and Cuban Rum (the best in the world) by my cousins and uncles.

At that time, the wake was held in the home of the deceased. The family and friends would come and visit, be provided food and some even SLEPT in the house. The wake lasted for three days and then a Catholic mass was celebrated and finally burial. I don’t know if this practice of holding a wake in the home was the generally accepted practice. My uncles were architects and owned businesses, so they weren’t poor so a funeral could have been financed. But I through it was very interesting and unusual, especially from my American perspective, but it was educational and informative.

During my three weeks in Cuba (after my aunt was buried), I visited just about every part of the island with my uncles and cousins. It’s a beautiful island with great white sand beaches and constant breezes. I also went to see professional Cuban baseball games.

During the May 1959 period, I played a lot of street “stick” ball, baseball and even American Football with the Cuban kids. I was in great physical shape, a result of lifting weights and was a member of my HS wrestling, football and baseball teams. I taught them American football, and they were going to teach me baseball. Fat chance! I’d been playing baseball since I was five years old. When we played baseball, we played at a fenced-in park. I was awesome. I got the nickname of “EL Grande Americano” because I was hitting the shit out of the baseball in our games. In one game I hit four homers (literally out of the park) which was good and bad. It was good because my team won the games and it was bad because we had trouble retrieving the baseballs.

I also had some discussions with some older kids about Castro and the Cuban revolution. I was “detecting” some anti-American feelings at that time in our discussions and their points of view. Nothing that was a rabid anti-American point of view, just more political and philosophical discussions. Interestingly, two of the guys (Renee and Evan) that I had the talks with and played sports with during my stay later became para-militia representatives for the neighborhood and hard-core Communists. Eventually they were sent to Moscow to study and I think they became career officers in the Cuban army. I often wonder how they’re doing. Cuba was and still is an amazing place with amazing people.

As a follow up, my friend lost his mother this month. Due to the restrictions of the Castro government, his family in Cuba was not allowed to come to the U.S. and pay their respects. “Nobody in Cuba was allowed to visit and attend my Mom’s wake and funeral. No phone calls. No communication other than an e-mail.” As my friend says, “Castro has got to go! No sane person would argue against this!” With that in mind, the most negative reviews that I found of Garcia’s movie (you do the Googling, I’m not gonna link to ‘em) were due to disagreements with the film’s politics — then they would castigate Garcia for the length, the number of edit cuts, yadda yadda — but mostly it was all about the politics. Garcia is not kind to Che, whom Hollywood just loves beyond all reason, as if they would be allowed to make their own films in a Che designed political realm. Not likely! Hey, can’t help myself, here is part of one negative reaction by Los Angeles City Beat’s Andy Klein:

We don’t see much of Castro in the film; Garcia focuses on Che Guevara (Jsu Garcia), who is portrayed as a smirking, evil bastard. On the other hand, as much as the filmmaker seems to loathe him, Batista comes across even worse; the casting of Fernández, who has long specialized in killers and drug lords, assures that.

One of Garcia’s stated goals is to re-create the fabulous cultural life of Havana in the ’50s, and, given Cuba’s musical traditions, I have no doubt that it was indeed that fabulous. No one can be criticized for mourning its passing. But that world was just a portion of the Cuban reality of the period, and the film ignores a good deal of unpleasant truth in its presentation. The Cuba we see may well be true to the memories of the majority of those who fled to the U.S. after the revolution. One can imagine a group of ex-plantation owners and white shopkeepers making an absolutely earnest movie mourning the loss of the antebellum South, as well.

I think our Andy Klein fancys himself as a modern day John Reed. Each to his own, I guess. I’ll take the viewpoint of another Andy, thank you very much!

Andy Garcia directed, wrote the score and stars as Fico in The Lost City. It’s rated “R” — see it anyway . . . I know that I will! (db)

“Borrowed” Lost City pics copyright © 2006 Magnolia Pictures

Technorati Tags: The Lost City, Andy Garcia, Israel ”Cachao” Lopez, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Havana, Cuba, Castro, Che Guevara

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