There is a scene in the movie Guys and Dolls where Marlon Brando takes his lady to Cuba for dinner. Music floating through hot, visibly perfumed air. You can taste the salt, the paprika, every hint of ropa vieja braised in the night breeze. The dark seduction of a square, the vibrant infectiousness of a restaurant.
Hemingway wrote through the lilting sunlight of Cuba. Looking through humidity and rain, recording the world around him with each clack of a typewriter. The cocktail of people, ocean's perfume and cuisine.
What is left of 1940's Cuba, besides Fidel Castro and his brother? Pulling back the embargo curtain, would the smiles depicted in fiction, memoir, prose, film still blossom through the saffrons, hibiscus red, coconut tan splashes of backdrop?
There is a soft, warm, vital flavor running through the cuisine and laughter of Cuba. Southern Florida provides home to a large population of people who fleed Cuba one way or another. We become embassadors immediately upon meeting new people. What face, in our own country, do we present the people who fought to come to our country? Would we fight to get to theirs?
Breeze upon waves that rush past children playing on a bright beach. The scent of mojo chicken, pulled pork, the extended hand holding a perspiring beer. Whispery hints of the sway a broom skirt used to dance across warn boards to sunset. Half smiles that recall former glory, do with what is at hand, and relax into the cool night with dancing, music, sweat, satisfaction.
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