Magic City Mania

By Carlos Miller
The green-eyed gringo had fallen in love with Havana. Its casinos. Its rum. Its music. And more importantly, its women.

It was 1958 and my dad was 37 years old. A World War II veteran. A University of Miami graduate. And a confirmed bachelor with a taste for Latinas. And who could blame him?

The Virginian native had immersed himself into Cuban culture to the point where he could maintain an in-depth conversation about Cuban politics in Spanish, even if he did it in a strong gringo accent. It was from these conversations that he developed a deep resentment against President Fulgencio Batista.

So on New Years Eve that year, when it was announced that Batista had fled the country, my dad was partying on the streets with the rest of the Cubans. And he continued to celebrate on the streets with hundreds of Cubans when Fidel Castro rolled into Havana eight days later.

But as history shows, the party was short-lived. It wasn’t long before Castro started wielding his iron hand against the Cuban people. And it wasn’t long before Castro wielded his iron hand against my dad, deporting him out of the country at gunpoint.

The way my dad told it years later, as we sat at his kitchen table sharing a bottle of Bushmills Irish Whiskey, he knew things were changing for the worse when he landed in jail one night after chatting up a Cuban woman, whose boyfriend turned out to be a “Fidelista”.

Once he was in jail, he learned that the Fidelistas had taken on an extreme anti-American sentiment, which was surprising because it was only a few weeks earlier that he befriended a bearded Castrista at el Floridita, the nightclub that was reputed to have invented the daiquiri.

Not only was the Floridita said to be Hemingway’s favorite bar, Esquire magazine listed it as one of seven of the world’s most famous bars in 1953.

My dad, second from right, partying in the Floridita with a Fidelista and other Cubans in 1959

My dad was released from jail the following morning, but when they handed him back his wallet, all of his money had been removed. He protested to no avail, but Castro’s police force claimed the wallet had been empty when he was arrested.

My dad was never one to bite his tongue; a trait he passed to his only son. He spent the rest of the day and night telling everybody that “Castro es un ladron”. It was still early in the Revolution so many Cubans had not yet learned this. But many were beginning to see it for themselves.

Before the crack of dawn the following morning, my dad was jarred awake by loud banging on his door. A group of armed uniformed and bearded Fidelistas entered his room and ordered him to pack up his bags because he was being deported.They didn’t even allow him to shower.

They whisked him into a car and drove him to Jose Marti International Airport. Still holding their guns on him, the Fidelistas walked my dad to the stairwell of the airplane, ensuring he stepped on that plane. Once seated, my dad looked out the window and noticed that they were not about to leave until the plane left the ground.

The forced deportation from Cuba did nothing to quell my dad’s wanderlust; another trait he passed to his only son. A few years later, he started making frequent trips to Colombia, where he eventually met my mother; a Bogotana who was more than twenty years younger than him.

They married and settled in West Miami, a working class municipality that eventually became a Cuban neighborhood. I was born a few years later, hearing the stories about Cuba from my dad and los viejitos in my neighborhood. I learned about Castro about the same time I learned about George Washington.

My dad shared many traits with the Cuban exiles in our neighborhood. He was stoutly anti-communist. He appreciated good rum. And he loved picadillo.

Once, when I was a child, he told me that JFK was a communist. I repeated his opinion to my third grade glass the following day, only to be berated by the teacher.

I spent the first two decades of my life clashing with my dad. He was a conservative, I was a liberal. He wanted me to join the Marines, I wanted to join an acting troupe. He listened to the Andrews Sisters. I preferred Twisted Sister.

It wasn’t until I was in my twenties that we both realized he had more similarities than differences. We both shared a disdain for authority. We both shared a skepticism about organized religion. And we both shared a global curiosity.

After graduating college, I pursued my own wanderlust to Europe, where I stayed for two years, visiting various countries and gaining my own travel experiences, which I will eventually share on this blog.

Then I returned to the United States, settling in the Southwest, where I stayed for eight years, writing for newspapers in New Mexico, Arizona and California.

Meanwhile, my father had passed away. He was 83 years old. A life fulfilled. By that time, he was the only Anglo living in the neighborhood.

And the neighbors loved him because he always would talk to them about the old times in Cuba. Like them, he vowed to return one day. Like many of them, he never made it.

And after ten years away from Miami, I returned to my native city on a cross-country road trip that lasted three weeks, enabling me to see a part of the United States I had never seen.

But I knew my travel experiences would not be fulfilled until I had visited Cuba.

So in 2006 when I learned that an activist group from New York was planning a trip to Havana in order to restore old pianos, I jumped at the chance. After all, I had not only spent a lifetime hearing about Cuba from my dad, I spent a lifetime hearing about Cuba from los viejitos.

It was barely my father’s Havana, but the Floridita was still there. I even went inside and looked around, wondering what part of the restaurant sat my dad that night.

At first, the bartender eyed me as if I were a Cuban, but then he noticed my camera. For in this restaurant, the only Cubans who were allowed were the workers. I scanned the menu to see if I could afford a beer, just to say that I drank at the same bar that my dad and Hemingway did.

But there was no way I was going to pay six dollars for a Bucanero beer when it cost only one dollar at the Cuban joint only a few blocks away. And there, at least, I could talk to real Cubans instead of English and German tourists.

So I walked back outside and snapped a photo of the sign displaying the famous name. And made my way to the corner joint where Bucaneros were a dollar and the jukebox never stopped playing.

Considering that I was the only foreigner in the place, it wasn’t long before I was talking to a family of Cubans. And it wasn’t long before I was immersed in an in-depth conversation about Cuban politics.

And it was here that I found my dad’s Havana.

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