I have a dream, and it is in its way a modest but exciting dream. It involves Fidel Castro, which may sound surprising, but there are lots of people who spin dreams around the elderly Cuban dictator on this side of the Florida Straits. Their dreams tend to be rather more grandiose than mine. They dream of his death and free access to a capitalist Cuba for North Americans, including Cuban exiles.Its a Cuban paradox this time but the revolutionary leader who spoke passionately about Cuban freedom in the 19th century until his early death in battle, was the man shown here in marble: Jose Marti.
The paradoxical Marti is venerated by both the Communist Government in Havana and by the freedom loving far right wing capitalists in Miami who "Radio Reloj" From Havana always refers to as the "Miami Mafia" in their propaganda headlines on 950AM, perfectly audible in Cayo Hueso, which is the Spanish speaker's name for Key West.
I mean who doesn't love a revolutionary, right? He strikes quite the posture in the pre-dawn, a man with a mission: freedom!
The Cuban exile community in Florida gained steam after the revolutionary attempt in the 187o's, when their exiled socialist leader Jose Marti landed in Key West to lead the fight from this flowered isle that stood side by side with the struggle for a new Cuba, as mentioned in more or less poetic, incomprehensible Spanish at the Jose Marti monument in Key West's Bayview Park:
Key West being a Paradoxical Paradise, Bayview Park is a park that has no view of any Bay; its all blocked by 21st century capitalist development, in all its cement glory. Jose Marti shares his corner with dozens of less fortunate "residentially challenged" local residents who huddle and drink and squabble behind his roccoco home in the corner. It has the flavor of huddled masses yearning to breathe free, but he is silent on that and they are more like chickens than revolutionaries, as they scrabble in the sun for alcohol and oblivion, not redemption and freedom.I dream of the same thing writ small: freedom. My dream is of me boarding a high speed ferry with my Vespa, similar to the one currently in servce between Italy and Croatia, just four hours across the Adriatic Sea...
...and landing at Mariel three hours later with a weekend of riding Cuban mountain roads ahead...winding roads, leafy forests, empty extended beaches, cold beer and hot pork. Modest stuff I say but enticing, tropical twisties a short hop from my Florida home.
The winds of change are blowing through the Cuban exile community as the older, stronger memories of the exiles are fading and the younger generation settles into a migrant's view of the "home country," a place to be enjoyed on vacation, to be marveled at as the locus of a life spent away from but always tied to it by history. That locus, or focal point is no longer the center of one's daily life, for the younger generation of Cuban exile/emigrant. Unhappily Castro has to die before relations can be normalized because feelings in US political circles run high, and Cuba's exiles vote early and often. So we are stuck with this iron curtain between us and the delights of the other flowered isle.
And then there is the unfortunate violent history of the "Miami Mafia," a long bloody history of terroistic violence against anyone who supported dialogue with the Bearded One. And those of us Anglos, even immigrant Anglos who are puzzled by the need to focus on Cuba while enjoying the American Dream in gorgeous South Florida, we earn the withering scorn of oppressed middle class suburbanites in Spanish accents who would yes, go and take up arms in the Sierra Maestra, but you know they have careers and dental appointments and payments on home and Mercedes Benz, and the next best thing to the revolutionary struggle is to pretend Cuba doesn't exist. Truly a miracle of Latin American magical realism in the style of the Communist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Strange bedfellows all.
The paper reports today that a big voice in the exile community was in Key West yesterday to sing some songs about this political paradox, to sing these songs for the first time ever in public. The new album is called Noventa Millas, and anytime you mention ninety miles in Key West you are talking about the gap, the chasm perhaps between the Keys and Havana. Gloria Estefan sang for free for Key Westers on the waterfront of this multicultural little town. One day she will perhaps do the same in Havana.I was put in mind of all these thoughts yesterday when a rumor blazed through Key West's Cuban community, and the word was that Castro was dead. Unlike 1959 when he came to power its easy enough to confirm such a rumor today. I for one wouldn't call the Key West Police Department for confirmation, because all the dispatchers will do is Google their favorite news websites. No word there of the Bearded One's passing. 
In my uncomplicated world I look forward to varied Vespa rides, that will come with the re-opening of this unnecessarily closed border. Even on my wife's 150cc ET4 if my 250 isn't working!
Two generations is quite long enough, for Cuban exiles to martyr themselves, and limit my weekend rides.
