Cuban Culture Comes to Cheshire

One thing is clear after hearing award-winning author Carlos Eire discuss his childhood. He is impatient with those who have opposing views of Fidel Castro's 50-year regime.

The Cuban-born author read excerpts from his new biography Learning to Die in Florida, at the recently. In the book, Eire describes his experience as a child who was airlifted from Cuba to Miami in 1962. 

"I had to have the Cuban part of myself die to become an American," Eire told the audience during the "Cheshire Reads" event on Nov. 3. "Immigrants lose themselves, they lose their culture," he said.

Subtitled Confessions of a Regufee Boy, Eire's book is the second non-fiction work he's written about his childhood experience. His first; Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, won the National Book Award in 2003.

The author was airlifted to the United States in a little-known effort called "Pedro Pan." The program resettled about 14,000 Cuban children to the United States in the early 1960s. The children lived with foster families or relatives.

The children were sent out of the country, Eire said, because their biological parents believed they would soon join them in the United States. However, Eire said, Castro prohibited the parents from leaving.

Eire's mother did follow, more than three years later, but he never saw his father again. "We're all exiles from childhood. We all must learn to die gracefully several times and then have a rebirth," he said.

Eire said he will attend the 50th anniversary reunion of the Pedro Pan airlift this month in Florida.

Now a Yale professor of history and religious studies, Eire said he's lived in Connecticut longer than any other location. "It has a soft spot in my heart," he told the crowd at the library.

During a question and answer session, Eire was insistent that misinformation abounds about health care sevices and other programs of the Castro regime. He said school isn't free as many reports portray.

"Kids go to 'free' school and spend every summer doing agricultural slave labor. Teens are sent on revoluntionary errands to teach reading in villages," Eire said. "I revealed hurtful things in the book as an educational tool," the author added.

"I tried to learn English from TV," Eire said about his early life in the United States. But, the characters in the shows he watched, the "Beverly Hillbillies" and "Andy Griffith," had such thick southern accents, Eire said he still retains some of those speech patterns.

The Cuban-inspired evening began with a performance of Cuban-inspired jazz by four members of New Haven's Mikata. The quartet performed Salsas, Soneros, Descaras and Africando selections to a crowd who obviously appreciated the musical style.

Mikata saxaphonist Jeff McQuillan said Salsa musicians have a responsibility to the audience each time they play. "The main obligation of (Salsa) music is to provide the dancer with a reliable carpet for a rhythmic grove underneath."

The group performed Descaras, which are improvizations of Cuban jazz. Also on the playlist were Cuban folk songs called Soneros and Afro-Cuban songs that inspired mambos which gave rise to Salsas.

The Spanish and Cuban inspired music which influenced bebop was often referred to as "cubop," McQuillan explained.

The quartet members were David Yih, piano; Will Bartlett, saxophones; Jeff McQuillan, bass and Richard Hill, percussion.

The evening ended with a sampling of Cuban appetizers which were provided by Zafra of New Haven. An art show called "Picturing Cuba" by Maryellen Considine of Cheshire and a photography exhibit by Hank Paper of Best Video in Hamden were on display as a complement to the night's entertainment.

The "Cheshire Reads; One Book, One Town," event was presented by the Cheshire Reads Committee. It was funded by a $1,200 grant from the Connecticut Community Foundation.