Thoughts on Cuba on hearing about a Cuban Art Exhibition in KL

Cuba, whatever its political and economic shortcoming, was at least, for Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a moral triumph.

It is not Colombia, GGM's birthplace, whose own cachaco military officers plotted to assassinate him. He quickly sought asylum at the Mexican Embassy and was flown out the next day in the company of the Mexican Ambassador to Colombia.

It is not the Peru of the self righteous Vargas Llosa whose international fame has not bettered a little the lives of Peruvians or himself for that matter. Peru did have Shining Path of Guzman and Fujimori.

Fidel has been the shining light for Lula, Tabare, Morales, Chavez, Bachilet, Kirschner, Correa, Funes...

The ghosts of other latin america lives among their migrants to north america,only those dinosaurian latin americans would listen to Vargas Llosa or Plinio Mendoza or Montaner...

Here is a poem by Pablo Neruda, the greatest poet of the 20th Century, who died soon after the rape of his country on the other september 11th in 1973..

the poem well known in Latin America is called the United Fruit Company.

When the trumpet sounded
everything was prepared on earth,
and Jehovah gave the world
to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, and other corporations.
The United Fruit Company
reserved for itself the most juicy
piece, the central coast of my world,
the delicate waist of America.

It rebaptized these countries
Banana Republics,
and over the sleeping dead,
over the unquiet heroes
who won greatness,
liberty, and banners,
it established an opera buffa:
it abolished free will,
gave out imperial crowns,
encouraged envy, attracted
the dictatorship of flies:
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies sticky with
submissive blood and marmalade,
drunken flies that buzz over
the tombs of the people,
circus flies, wise flies
expert at tyranny.

With the bloodthirsty flies
came the Fruit Company,
amassed coffee and fruit
in ships which put to sea like
overloaded trays with the treasures
from our sunken lands.

Meanwhile the Indians fall
into the sugared depths of the
harbors and are buried in the
morning mists;
a corpse rolls, a thing without
name, a discarded number,
a bunch of rotten fruit

thrown on the garbage heap.

AND AS ANOTHER FAMOUS LATIN AMERICAN SAID

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE..