Interview with Ivan Acosta

Iván Acosta (b. 1943) has dedicated his life to preserving and fostering Cuban and Latino culture as a playwright, filmmaker and publicist. Based in New York City since leaving Cuba in 1961, Acosta was a founding member, and long-time director, of the Centro Cultural Cubano. He studied film at NYU and theater with Alejandro Jodorowky, The Living Theater, and New York Theater of the Americas. His play El Súper (1977) is a canonical text of Cuban-American and Latino drama and is the basis for the successful film of the same name directed by Leon Ichaso and Orlando Jiménez Leal in 1979. In 1989 he created Latin Jazz, USA, which promotes Cuban and Latin Jazz concerts all over the United States.  His latest feature film, Rosa and the executioner of the fiend, is available on DVD at Amazon.com. Acosta has directed several documentaries on Cuban music and continues to write and direct theater. His play Cuba, Punto X (2012) won several Ace Latin Awards and he received the Hola Award for Excellence in Theater for best director for 2013. He is currently securing funding for an ambitious film project thirty years in the making that will be shot in both the US and Cuba: Guantánamo. In the following interview, Acosta talks about his first full length film project as director and screenwriter, Amigos (1985), which traces the tragic comedic experiences of marielito Ramón as he arrives in Miami, reunites with family and friends, and attempts to rebuild his life in a foreign, and in many ways inhospitable, environment.
 Ramón escaped from Cuba as a “marielito” refugee. In the USA, he found freedom, abundance, confusion and deceit…but he also found, “Amigos”. 

1)      In many ways, Amigos could be the El Súper of that wave/generation of Cuban immigration in that it touches on many different aspects (both positive and negative) of the Cuban community, this time in Miami. How would you describe the film? What inspired you to write the screenplay and make your directorial film debut on this (¿unpopular?) topic? How long did it take to film the movie and how did you get it financed?   

Let’s see. I happened to be in Miami when the Mariel exodus started. Early May 1980. I went to direct my play, No son todos los que están. I was having un cafecito cubano, at 2AM at Versailles cafeteria, when a car parked in front of me, and these three Cubans toasted by the sun in worn shorts and T-shirts exited the car and came to have some Cuban coffee and pastelitos de guayaba. With them was Mr. Bernardo Benes, a gentleman who played a very important role orchestrating the Mariel boatlift, between President Jimmy Carter and Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. That’s where the Mariel story began for me. The next day, all radio stations and TV networks started transmitting the BIG NEWS.  I was supposed to return to New York, but I decided to stay a few more days in Miami. Everything sounded unreal. I knew about the 10,000 Cubans that jumped the fences of the Peruvian embassy in Havana, asking for political asylum. The whole world was watching. The Cuban dictator, mad and frustrated, in order to camouflage the un-controlled event starting shouting on National Cuban TV that any Cuban who wanted to leave the island, would be allowed to do so through the port of Mariel. We don’t want them, let them go to hell, they are traitors, worms and scums, etc. In less than 5 months, more than 128,000 Cubans: men, women, children, whites, blacks, Chinese, professionals, workers, students, ex political prisoners, homosexuals, and artists arrived at Key West marinas.[i] And there were 7,000 or 8,000 of the worst criminals hand picked from Cuban jails by government agents and thrown into the boats that went from Miami to rescue their Cuban families. I visited two of the refugee camps and had the chance to talk to several of the recent arrivals. At that time I was starting to write Guantánamo another film screenplay that we wanted to shoot in the Dominican Republic. Speaking with my friend Marcelino Miyares, who was the C.E.O. of WBBS Channel 60 in Chicago, I told him it would be great to film a documentary about the Mariel experience; Marcelino asked me, why not a movie instead? I set Guantánamo aside and started writing Amigos. By summer 1983, we started looking for investors in order to produce the film. We formed a company, Manicato Films, and by spring 1984, we already had some committed investors. We started preproduction in May and started filming in July. It took us 8 weeks to film Amigos. We filmed 80% of the film in Miami; the rest was shot in South Carolina, Washington DC, Union City, New Jersey, and New York City. 
 To me, it was very important to tell the human story of the marielitos. The Cuban community in Miami had a very negative attitude towards the new refugees. So in Amigos, that was what we tried to clarify, in El Súper’s style. In El Súper, I had Roberto Amador Gonzalez expressing the Cuban exile experience of those days. In Amigos, I have Ramón Goizueta Fernández, telling the stories of many Cuban refugees that decided to leave everything behind, to escape through the Mariel boatlift.  I wrote the script as a bittersweet comedy drama. That’s the style I use in all my theatrical plays: El Súper, Cuba: Punto X, Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend, and in my latest play, La ventana de los Chévere. Of course, the Cuban ultra conservatives or extreme right of Miami that didn’t like certain things I portrayed in El Súper, also didn’t like some of the things that are said and denounced in Amigos.  In both films, music plays a very important role.  

2)       In one of the first scenes, Ramón describes the horrors of the Mariel immigration to Cecilia, actos de repudio, and the uncertainty at the Peruvian Embassy. Also, on several occasions throughout the film Ramón also attempts to relay his traumatic experience while in prison for eighteen years to various other characters that tell him to just forget about it. Why did you decide to characterize Ramón in this way? Is he based on a specific person or does he incarnate several stories that you encountered or heard about at the time? Could this film be a defense of marielitos and a chance for them to tell their own story?

 Yes, Ramón represents various characters; I tried to communicate different marielito’s horror stories, through the characterization of Ramón. I happen to know some ex-political prisoners that spent several years in Cuban jails and concentration camps, and their stories are very sad and touching; it is amazing all the human right violations they had to suffer while in prison.
 I do think the film tries to show a just face of the new Cuban refugees. In the Miami Herald a critic mentions that Amigos “may help atone for Scarface”.[ii]  The movie Scarface was becoming very popular with Al Pacino and Steven Bauer. Scarface had a budget of over 30 million dollars. Amigos was produced with less than $340,OOO dollars. But at least, that’s what we were trying to portray, the positive face of 95% of marielitos, “the other face of Scarface”. As far as I know, Amigos is one of the only feature film based on the Mariel exodus. There are 4 or 5 documentaries, but nobody wanted to touch the theme, in the humorous way we handled it. Thanks to executive producer, Marcelino Miyares, we were able to gather a group of investors that believed and supported the project. 

3)      The film seems to celebrate an exaggerated Cuban masculinity as the Amigos constantly talk of, and stare at, women. However, some of the more humorous parts of the film are when this machismo and its participants are ridiculed. I think of the scene when Mirta is the one who seduces a nervous Ramón, and many others.  The same happens with the scenes from the weekend training camp where Gavilán is preparing some of his compatriotas for invading Cuba (a la Bay of Pigs). However, their pitiful display of combat instinct makes him say, “Con guerrilleros como ustedes la patria está muy jodida”. Can you comment on the use of humor (even choteo) in this film on order to comment, even criticize, certain aspects of the Cuban exile culture in the US?
 Yes, as I said before Amigos is a bittersweet comedy drama, full of choteo Cuban humor.
We all know Cuban machismo; I have seen it and experienced it all my life. You see, the revolution was the greatest promoter of machismo. All those bearded, sweated, cigar smokers and happy trigger militiaman, impregnated the macho image, the maximum leader always projected and demanded among revolutionary militants. Hundreds of homosexuals were sent to prisons and to hard work concentrations camps, las UMAP, just for not being macho enough for revolutionary standards. Cubans, pro and anti Castro, somehow tried to imitate the Máximo Líder. I have always disliked the extreme machismo, not only among Cubans but among all men: Americans, blacks and whites, Cubans, Mexicans, Central and South Americans. We do know machismo exist, and in many societies it is celebrated and even rewarded. That was what happened in Cuba after 1959. The men wanted to be more man then ever before, and that influence came with the exiles.
I tried to ridicule the absurd machista behavior throughout different scenes in the movie. We had several groups of so called anti-Castro counter revolutionaries that would go to trainings on Saturday mornings, and after the training they would go to have the biggest churrasco on the menu.  There have been small amounts of serious Cubans that thought they could go and start another Sierra Maestra uprising against Castro’s dictatorship. They were very brave, ignorant, and patriotic men. Some disembarked in Cuba and were killed in less than 48 hours. The Cuban army became the third largest and best-trained armed force in the American continent. How could a group of 20 cojonudos Cuban patriot combatants dare to think they could start an armed uprising against the master organizer of subversive armed uprisings in Latin America? Queriendo bailar en la casa del trompo. If you remember, in Amigos Ramón and Olmedo, the funeral man, get lost and frightened at the training camp and end up almost eaten by crocodiles.  In real life, after the training, they would probably go to have the big churrasco on Calle Ocho, and start telling the story from a different angle: “Oh man, if you see the big 15 foot crocodile that came to attack us, Olmedo and I emptied our machine guns on them, and forget it,  ‘I’ll see you later crocodile’”.  That’s very typical of Cubans: exaggeration. There you can see the different tonalities of machismo. To me, machistas, racists, and homophobic go hand and hand. Unfortunately, that mentality exists among some Cubans, in exile and in the archipelago.

 4)      It seems that Amigos both pays homage to the best of Cuban culture and the city of Miami (you film in several recognizable locations throughout the city) and, at the same time, exposes the many contradictions in the Cuban exile community. In fact, it is a delicate balance that you manage to attain in the film between these two perspectives. What did you hope to accomplish by showing all these sides of the city and Cuban community?   

I love Miami. I have never lived in Miami, although I visit it at least once a year. I have produced several Latin Jazz USA concerts, plays, and a large number of TV commercials in the city. In Amigos I tried to do that; pay homage to the Cuban Miami without being panfletario or caricaturist.
 You see, I’ve lived all my 50 plus years in exile in New York City. They always say Cubans in New York think different than Cubans in Miami, even than Cubans across the Hudson River in New Jersey. It is true, Cuban Newyorkers think and have a different perspective of the Cuban situation in general. We always hear about “Cuban Success” which is real for some, but we never hear about the majority of Cuban exiles that work harder than any other immigrant community: in factories, restaurants, mechanical shops, construction, farms, etc. Those represent the real Cuban exiles, the working men and women that in several cases risked their lives to escape from Cuba to live and work in freedom. But some people consider successful those that accumulated several millions of dollars and have a luxurious yacht, a big mansion with 5 or 6 expensive automobiles. In Amigos, I tried to show that balance; without criticism; the gap between the Cubans that have a lot and the unsung heroes that built the Cuban Miami and have little. I think the last scene of the movie is very symbolic, when Ramon’s friends give him the key for the humble little coffee shop next to the Domino park, on Calle Ocho, while the popular celebration of carnival is taking place. I’m sure some sociologists, historian, and anthropologists would find more hidden messages than the general audience.[iii] However, at the end, all Cubans are Amigos. 

5)      It has been thirty years since Amigos was made and thirty-five since the Mariel boatlift. What continues to make the film worth watching after so many years? How does Amigos fit into your trajectory as a filmmaker and playwright?
 As I mentioned, Amigos is one of the only fiction feature film about and around the Mariel boatlift historical event. Audiences identify themselves with the protagonist Ramón, they laugh and feel sad at some of his pathetic situations. For 30 years, since the film was made, every year, on Mariel anniversaries, it is shown at different universities or cultural centers, even at some cinemas, to celebrate the event. The film has been shown in several countries around the world, including Spain, Israel, Italy, Egypt, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Venezuela, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil.  As a filmmaker, Amigos represents an experience I will never under estimate. I am very happy we were able to create and produce it, and contribute to the Cuban exile’s history.
 Now that Cuba is turning pages, I know Amigos will be shown in Cuba, and hopefully it will serve as another granito de arena to show our Cuban brothers and sisters on the island another chapter of our long last 56 years.    

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[i] The actual number of refugees was 124,779.
[ii] Horn, Laurie. “Amigos May Launch Hispanic Hollywood” The Miami Herald March 8^th, 1985.
[iii] At the end of the film when Ramón is given the keys to a humble coffee stand by his amigos, Pablo gives a speech where he says that Cubans ”hemos trabajado muy duro al igual a nuestros hermanos latinoamericanos que hayan inmigrado a este país”.

The inside scoop on the ICCAS scandal at the University of Miami

Tomado de Babalú Blog: 

The inside scoop on the ICCAS scandal at the University of Miami

By Carlos Eire

For many years, José Azel was a senior scholar at UM’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.

His role at that institution ended abruptly this summer when UM’s president Julio Frenk fired everyone at the Institute.

Yes, Frenk fired everybody.  It was an academic massacre.  And it’s clear he wanted to shut down the Institute.

When news of Frenk’s autocratic execution orders caused a stink in the Cuban exile community, a UM vice-president denied that Frenk had tried to shut down ICCAS, and that the “retirement” announced by director Jaime Suchlicki had been “misunderstood.”

As the uproar increased, Frenk named an interim director who has close ties to a cruise ship company that takes American tourists to Cuba, and who actually leads such tours himself, on a luxury vessel.

This information comes straight from someone on the inside, who was summarily fired, along with everyone else.

See for yourself how Dr. Frenk, aided by Harvard’s Castrophilic professor Jorge Dominguez, a Cuban exile, tried to to get away with murder — metaphorically speaking, of course…

Below is José Azel’s full exposé.

ICCAS-gate at the University of Miami: It’s the Cover-up that Gets You

By José Azel

The Watergate scandal of the Nixon administration and President Clinton’s forcefully claiming “I did not have sexual relations with that woman…” are two of the most infamous examples of the “it’s the cover-up that gets you” dictum.

The suffix “-gate” has become synonymous with presidential scandal and cover-up. I introduce it here to expose the ICCAS-gate cover-up by University of Miami President Dr. Julio Frenk. The buck stops with the President, and I seek to show, responsibly and factually, that Dr. Frenk intended to dismantle ICCAS, and is now engaged in a cover-up of those intentions.

My association with the University of Miami dates back to the late 1960s when I was a business student. Over the years, I earned bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees, becoming a three-time UM alumni. I am also a former adjunct business professor, and a member of the ICCAS team. This is to say, I wish only the best for my beloved Alma Mater and my community.

But, whether Dr. Frenk intended to dismantle ICCAS is, as Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist No. 23, “one of those truths which, to a correct and unprejudiced mind, carries its own evidence along with it.”

The controversy surfaced with a July 10 Miami Herald article citing Dr. Jaime Suchlicki as having been instructed to effect the cessation of ICCAS operations. In June, Dr. Suchlicki wrote to his staff:

“This is to inform you that as of August 15, 2017, I will be leaving the University of Miami. I have been instructed by the Office of the Provost to effect the cessation of operations for the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, consequently your position has been eliminated and you will be placed on layoff status as of August 15, 2017.”

I respectfully complied by vacating my office, returning my keys, and retiring in sad silence. Now, compelled by the cover-up, I speak publicly for the first time on ICCAS-gate.

As instructed by Dr. Frenk the entire ICCAS staff was fired in June. Yet, the July Miami Herald article quotes Jacqueline R. Menendez, UM’s Vice President for Communications, caustically refuting Dr. Suchlicki: “the only thing that has happened is that Jaime retires on Aug. 15 there are no plans to close ICCAS.”

I will generously assume that Ms. Menendez was misled by her boss, President Frenk. Her statement that “there are no plans to close ICCAS,” when, in fact, ICCAS had already been effectively closed by the firing of all its personnel is patently false.

I hope Ms. Menendez would not be as callous as to consider the firing of the entire ICCAS staff a non-event as implied by her statement that “the only thing that has happened is that Jaime retires on Aug. 15.” Is the firing of all ICCAS personnel not a “thing”?

I have verified that Dr. Suchlicki’s termination agreement explicitly requires him to “…effect the cessation of operations for the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.” Similarly, Ms. Menendez should have sought the truth from her boss to avoid misleading our community. She has now been made complicit in the cover-up.

Those are the facts as I know them. Now we can ask: If Dr. Frenk’ did not intend to dismantle ICCAS, why did he find it necessary to fire, without the courtesy of an explanation, the entire ICCAS staff? Were they incompetent, or were they an impediment to the implementation of his plans? What were those plans?

Dr. Frenk had been formulating his Cuban studies ideas for many months, and he had commissioned a comprehensive study of options to his friend, Harvard Professor Jorge Dominguez.  Given this careful advanced planning, if there was no intention to dismantle ICCAS, the announcement of Dr. Suchlicki’s departure would have been accompanied with the announcement of the new interim director, or perhaps even the new director.

That was not the case, and the untimely appointment of an interim director appears to be an improvised, disingenuous cover-up to placate the community’s outrage. Dr. Frenk has been untruthful with our community, and now, under pressure, he will meet with community representatives on 18 August. I pray he uses that opportunity to come clean about his designs.  Our community deserves honesty, not an ICCAS-gate cover-up.

Exile demonstration in New York, 1969

In November of 1968, hundreds of Cuban students members of the youth anti Castro organization, ABDALA, supported by other organizations, marched from Jose Marti's statute at Central Park to the United Nation Organization building in New York City, to denounce human right violations in Fidel Castro's concentration camps in Cuba.
Ivan Acosta's three songs (Guerrillero sin arma, Hay un pueblo oprimido & Corre cubano y empuña el machete) Paul Radelat, musical director; Ileana Fuentes, Coordinator; were recorded at a recital at U.N.O.'s Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium, on Friday, December 9th, 1977, celebrating Human Rights Day in the world.

APRIL 17TH 1961 THE BAY OF PIGS INVASION.

[From the book, A CUBAN SONG IN MY HEART]

By Iván Acosta

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The mercenaries and traitors have landed, but our glorious revolutionary army is winning. Fatherland or death was the slogan that proclaimed a Cuban victory. It was broadcast repeatedly on national radio all over the island. It was April 17, 1961. Accompanied by the Riverside Orchestra, Tito Gomez was singing “Vereda Tropical.” They played the song more than ten times that day. Around 10:30 a.m. I went with Uncle Nené to the bus terminal, for he was returning to Santiago de Cuba. That was the last time I saw him. The streets looked empty early in the night. Only military vehicles and buses full of detainees were in the streets. I returned to the restaurant where I worked, on Carlos III and Infanta Avenues. Bonifacio was a bus inspector who always stood on that corner; he came close to me and literally whispered: "The boys are here." I could see the inner turmoil reflected on his face, although no one let their feelings show for fear of being arrested. We were in the midst of very difficult times. Two minutes later, two militia trucks stopped in front of the restaurant. They went in with a belligerent attitude, and one of them yelled: "No one move!" Everyone remained silent. The militiamen arrested all the restaurant employees at gunpoint. I was hiding under the counter from where I could see what was going on. Suddenly, I felt a pistol in my face and heard its owner, a black miliciano, say: "Get out of there, worm!" The weapon was a 45 caliber pistol. They loaded us unto a meat truck that smelled rotten and was full of flies. The truck stopped after a twenty-five minutes, and we heard people yelling: "Down with communism, the invaders are here.” They forced us off the truck still pointing the machine guns at us, as if we were the invaders.

I was scared and confused. They searched us one by one, and brought us into the sports arena, a huge stadium built for the people. Ironically, the people in there were kept under lock and key: women; rebel soldiers stripped of their weapons; bus drivers; clergymen; even children with their mothers. An evangelical minister stood up and started to pray out loud. A soldier struck him down hard with the back of his machine gun, silencing him. An engineer who had been a rebel commander now also under arrest- made a fast assessment of the situation, and told us we were among twenty thousand innocent souls imprisoned in the arena.

THE YOUNGEST IN THE MORRO CASTLE MOATS

At seventeen, I was the youngest among the six thousand men detained in the ditches that made up Morro Castle's moat, across the Havana skyline. April 20^th marked the third day without food. By then, three of the men had died from thirst and sunstroke. Over the fortress loud speakers, authorities kept repeating military reports such as: “The Yankee imperialist invasion with the help of its mercenary worms has been defeated by our heroic naval forces, under the leadership of our Commander-in-Chief, our top leader…” More than 150,000 soldiers and militia were deployed to fight the thousand or so invaders that were left to their own fate by orders from the White House. By April 24th, the invasion had been totally defeated. They began releasing prisoners slowly. Five men had died without medical assistance. We had slept on top of stones and sand for eight days. Some of us managed to eat twice in all that time.

We had to push hard against one another to get a sip of water from a watering hose that was turned on thirty feet above us. One of the corners of the moat that became an improvised toilet, showed blood stains from all those killed at the fateful firing wall. I found a piece of charcoal and jumped to a reef to write on the old wall a line that came to mind: “Since the precarious situation I'm under doesn't allow me to prove that God exists, that is proof in itself that He does." I didn't know if the applause that followed, coming from a few prisoners, was for me or for my heroic deed. They let me go the next day. My fathers was among the hundreds of faces that waited outside for the release of their loved ones. Two restaurant employees, my dad and I took a taxi back home. En route, we saw several milicianos putting the final touches on a huge poster on one of the fortress walls. It read: Death to the Invader - Cuba, First Socialist Country in America. With a pained look on his face, the driver said: "We have to leave Cuba, or we have to stay and die fighting." No one uttered a word. He refused payment, but kept on driving. We traveled the rest of the way in silence, listening to the radio. First the “Queen of Guaguancó”, Celeste Mendoza, followed by Colombian, Nelson Pinedo, singing with the Sonora Matancera Orchestra I'm Off to Havana and Ain't Coming Back.

A school founded by a Cuban novelist in New Jersey in 1865

By Enrique Del Risco
Translated by Margarita Garcia, PhD

In almost all the brief biographical summaries of the most famous Cuban novelist of the XIX Century, Cirilo Villaverde, there is a short line that seems somewhat mysterious. It says: “In 1864, he founded with the collaboration of his wife, a school in Weehawken”. But the mystery comes neither from the act of founding a school, nor from the strange name of the place where it was founded. The mystery is that such a fact appears in the middle of nothing, without antecedents or consequences. The mystery deepens in my case because it was in Weehawken, a New Jersey town located on top of a cliff, across the Hudson River in front of the island of Manhattan, where I spent my first weeks in the United States.

I lived in those days in a house located a few dozen meters from the exact place (if one can be sure of it) in which Alexander Hamilton died in a duel with the then Vicepresident  Aaron Burr. These days, Hamilton has become famous again thanks to a popular Broadway musical, but in Weehawken there is no sign indicating that the novelist who inspired the best known of the Cuban “zarzuelas”, had founded a school there.

The lack of evidence was indeed mysterious. All my efforts to find some trace of it in the municipal archives of Weehawken or in its library had resulted in a perfect nothing. And yet, upon reviewing the correspondence of the wife of the writer, the famous patriot Emilia Casanova, I found a few lines that gave me back – together with the certainty that it was not a mirage – the impulse to continue investigating the traces that such a school could have left. In any case, Emilia Casanova’s lines were hardly more explicit than the biographical notes about her husband. She wrote to a friend on August 17, 1870: “I distinctly remember the night in which he came to visit us, in the company of his brother Juan Francisco, on the other side of the Hudson, in a school that Villaverde had in Weehauken (sic) around the years 1865 and 66”.

Searching in a monstrous database that includes newspapers from the entire American continent, finally unraveled the mystery. Some ads attested to the existence of the school. The oldest one, published by the New York Herald on February 12^th, 1865 announced a Polytechnic Institute at Weehawken Heights, New Jersey as “the best school to learn languages”. “The new term commences on the first Monday in February” it says although that year the first Monday was on February 6^th, six days before the ad was published.

The New York Herald (New York, New York) • 02-12-1865 • Page 7

In another ad, from the Havana newspaper “El Siglo”, there is a notice of an “English-Spanish Polytechnic School” under the direction of C.P. Villaverde with the “cooperation of American and foreign professors”. It adds that this school is “mounted on the plans of the best schools in Europe, and it offers a scientific and practical instruction that meets the needs of our time”.

The New York Daily Tribune published on February 6th, 1866 another ad announcing, again, that the “new term commences on the first Monday in February”.

It probably did not work very well or receive enough students, because just two months later, the “New York Herald” publishes on the 10^th of April, 1866 two ads offering accommodations to a couple as well as to a few gentlemen.

No exact address was given. It must be kept in mind that Weehawken was only a few years old, having been founded on March 15, 1859, and hardly had any buildings in the middle of nowhere.

The only concrete reference to its location is that “it is located in the beautiful estate that belonged to the celebrated Daniel Webster, on the heights of the Weehawken”. Although in none of the consulted biographies of the representative, senator and Secretary of State of three different presidents it is mentioned that he either lived or had properties in Weehawken, several histories of the County of Hudson allude, in passing, to this fact. In one of them, when referring to the entrepreneur John Hillrich Bonn, German émigré and founder of the Hudson County rail system it is said that he and his wife, after moving for a while to neighboring Hoboken, “they returned to Weehawken in 1867 and made that city their permanent home, settling on the spot formerly owned by Daniel Webster, the statesman”.

Elevator and train system built by John Hillric Bonn for El Dorado Amusement Park, Weehawken 

In another history of Weehawken it is further stated that Bonn was “one of the pioneers of North Hudson, who settled in Weehawken in 1857, had a large estate in the heights section (2nd Ward) and lived in a large house at what is now known as #530-Gregory Ave. There is a story told that one time Daniel Webster owned”. 

Partial airview of Weehawken msrkrd with 530 Gregory Ave address.

Once the exact location of the school is established, there still would be a lot to find out: exact dates of foundation and closure, names of “American and foreign” teachers who taught there, the size of the enrollment, the subjects that were taught. Based on the ads found, it can be deduced that it was a language school, focused on a fundamentally Cuban student body, to prepare them to enter the North American higher education, an increasingly frequent destination among young Cubans in those days. Between the decades of 1860 and 1880, up to a quarter of the students at the Rose Hill Campus of St. John’s College (Fordham University) had Spanish last names. The majority came from Cuba.

However, the school did not seem to be able to succeed: the year after its opening it was trying to complement its income with the rental of rooms, and it would close its doors soon after that. It is, however, relevant for Hudson County -- the sixth most densely populated county in the country – with a visible Cuban Presence (28,900 people of Cuban origin in 2013) and 42% of the population of Latino descent, that it had in such an early date this project of bilingual education (possibly the first in the entire state), precursor of other private schools founded by Cubans in the XIX Century.

According to historian Louis A. Pérez: “In 1885 Tomás Estrada Palma founded a college preparatory school, Instituto Estrada Palma [initially as Instituto Cornell in 1883] in Central Valley, New York. Eduardo Pla directed an elementary school in Sussex County, New Jersey. Also in New York, Carlos de la Torre established El Progreso elementary school, Demetrio Castillo Duany opened a business school, Inocencio Casanova organized the Instituto Casanova, and N.A. Carbó and J.R. Parras operated the Academia de Idiomas. In Tampa Cirilo Pouble founded the Academia Pouble". 

The current educational system of Hudson County, New Jersey, with a large majority of Hispanic enrollment, may take this school as a historical background.

Bibliography

Apuntes biográficos de Emilia Casanova de Villaverde. [Escritos por un contemporáneo] Nueva York: 1874.

Harvey, Cornelious B. Genealogical History of the Bergen and Hudson Counties. The New Jersey Genealogical Publishing Company, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, 1900

Kirk, Edward J. Weehawken History, 1932. 

Nueva York (1613-1945). New York Historical Society

Winfield, Charles. History of the Hudson County. NEW YORK: KENNAUD & HAY STATIONERY M'FG AND PHINTING CO.No. 89 Liberty Street.1874.

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

                                       

By Gustavo Pérez Firmat

            One of the landmarks of Cuban Miami is a restaurant called Versailles, which has been located on Eighth Street and Thirty-fifth Avenue for many years. Just about the only thing Versailles shares with its French namesake is the mirrors on the walls. One goes to the Versailles not only to be seen, but to be multiplied. This quaint, kitschy, noisy restaurant that serves basic Cuban food is a paradise for the self-absorbed:  the Nirvana of Little Havana. Because of the bright lights, even the windows reflect. The Versailles is a Cuban panoptikon:  you can lunch, but you can't hide. Who goes there wants to be the stuff of visions. Who goes there wants to make a spectacle of himself (or herself). All the ajiaco you can eat and all of the jewelry you can wear multiplied by the number of reflecting planes – and to top it off, a waitress who calls you mi vida.

            Across the street at La Carreta, another popular restaurant, the food is the same (both establishments are owned by the same man) but the feel is different. Instead of mirrors, La Carreta has booths. There you can ensconce yourself in a booth and not be faced with multiple images of yourself. But at the Versailles there is no choice but to bask in self-reflective glory.

            For years I have harbored the fantasy that those mirrors retain the blurred image of everyone who has paraded before them. I think the mirrors have a memory, as when one turns off the TV and the shadowy figures remain on the screen. Every Cuban who has lived or set foot in Miami over the last three decades has, at one time or another, seen himself reflected on those shiny surfaces. It’s no coincidence that the Versailles sits only two blocks away from the Woodlawn Cemetery, which contains the remains of many Cuban notables, including Desi Arnaz’s father, whose remains occupy a niche right above Gerardo Machado’s. Has anybody ever counted the number of Cubans who had died in Miami? Miami is a Cuban city not only because of the numbers of Cubans who live there but also because of the number who have died there. The living can always move away; it’s the dead who are a city’s permanent residents, for once they stop living there, they never stop living there.

            The Versailles is a glistening mausoleum. The history of Little Havana – tragic, comic, tragic-comic – is written on those spectacular specular walls. This may have been why, when the mirrors came down in 1991, there was such an uproar that some of them had to be put back. When the time comes for me to pay for my last ajiaco, I intend to disappear into one of the mirrors (I would prefer the one on the right, just above the espresso machine). My idea of immortality is to become a mirror image at the Versailles.