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01/18/13 - TIME - Richard Blanco, Obama's Inaugural Poet: Not Your Father's Cuban Exile

Nico Tucci / Courtesy Richard Blanco

The title poem of Richard Blanco's 2012 book of poetry, Looking for the
Gulf Motel, is a poignantly evocative work about the memory of family. But
its refrain-There should be nothing here I don't remember-suggests more
than Blanco probably intended now that he has been invited to read his
verse at President Obama's inauguration next week. The gay Cuban-American
immigrant's sudden but well deserved elevation to the national stage is a
healthy reminder that demographically, America today is no longer the
country we remember. And that's the very symbolism Obama wants to convey
given the 21^st-century coalition that re-elected him.

But it's also indicative of how much the Cuban community in the U.S. has
changed-and how much more it may change now that the communist government
in [1]Cuba, as of this week, is letting Cubans on the island travel abroad
freely for the first time in more than half a century. Both Blanco's
ascent to Maya Angelou status on this side of the [2]Florida Straits, and
the Castro regime's relaxation of its harsh travel restrictions on the
opposite side-even, it appears, for dissidents-contradict each side's
image of the other. That might eventually help U.S.-Cuba relations move
out of their Cold War mire and closer to the 21^st century themselves.
It's a big "might," but consider nonetheless:

Blanco, 44, is not your father's Cuban exile. He was conceived in Cuba,
born in Spain after his parents bolted [3]Fidel Castro's revolution and
brought to Miami as an infant. But while his work certainly pays homage to
his family's immigrant trials and triumphs, it views the more
conservative, hardline exile cohort of his parents' generation-the
diehards who brought us the 2000 Elián González fiasco, which caused so
much Cuban-American soul-searching-with a skeptical eye. His poem
"América," a reminiscence of the anxieties of a 1970s Cuban-American
Thanksgiving (roast pork or turkey?), takes a momentary but sobering
detour at ".Antonio's Mercado on the corner of 8^th street/where men in
guayaberas stood in senate/blaming Kennedy for everything-'Ese hijo de
puta!'/the bile of Cuban coffee and cigar residue/filling the creases of
their wrinkled lips/clinging to one another's lies of lost wealth/ashamed
and empty as hollow trees."

At least on inauguration day, Blanco will rival the more conservative
likes of Florida Senator Marco Rubio as the new face of
Cuban-Americans-which would also reflect exit polls that showed Obama
winning almost half of Florida's Cuban vote in the November election,
unprecedented for a Democrat. All of that belies Havana's insistence that
every Cuban-American is hellbent on invading the Bay of Pigs again, an
air-raid siren the Castro dictatorship uses to keep a firm grip on power.
If more Cubans visit the U.S. now under the liberalized travel rules,
they'll see for themselves that most Cuban-Americans, and most of the rest
of America, aren't the rabid imperialist fascists Havana tells them we
are, and they'll take that realization back to Cuba's streets, homes and
offices.

They'll also notice that gay citizens like Blanco are no longer social
pariahs in American or even Cuban-American society-or that at least
they're not demonized the way they were in 20th-century Cuba. In recent
years, gay rights have improved on the island thanks in large part to
Fidel's niece, Mariela Castro Espín, the daughter of Fidel's younger
brother and current Cuban President, Raúl Castro, who has worked to
convince Havana that macho gay-bashing isn't exactly the smartest calling
card for a left-wing government.

But the Cuban visitors may well have their own effect on the U.S. No one
is claiming a Cuban Spring right now-basic democratic rights are still
suppressed on the island-but Raúl Castro's recent reforms, from lifting
the travel restrictions to permitting Cubans to buy and sell private
property, stand to challenge U.S. assumptions. If Havana really is willing
to let even dissidents travel out of and back into Cuba, it displaces our
half-century-long picture of desperate Cubans risking their lives to
escape across the sea on rafts. The prominent dissident blogger Yoani
Sánchez tweeted this week that officials there told her that she could
travel - though she added understandably that she'll believe it when she's
actually on a plane out, and then on one back in again.

The more hardline Cuban-American caucus on Capitol Hill is unsettled at
the changes, especially now that a Cuban-American Democrat, Joe Garcia,
who is more moderate on Cuba policy, just got elected to Congress from
Miami. This week, in fact, caucus leaders like Republican Congresswoman
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Miami expressed fears that if Cubans begin
traveling between Cuba and the U.S. like any other foreign tourists, it
could render all the special U.S. immigration provisions for Cubans
unnecessary. Their bigger worry is that this sort of cross-Straits
normalization will strengthen the belief held by most Cuban-Americans,
according to polls, that the U.S. should drop its failed, 51-year-old
trade embargo against Cuba.

But that kind of change is likely a long way off, especially since
disputes like Cuba's imprisonment of US. aid worker Alan Gross, for what
Havana calls espionage, are blocking real dialogue right now. In the
meantime, there's Blanco's superb poetry:

".my father should still be alive, slow dancing/with my mother on the
sliding glass balcony/of the Gulf Motel. No music, only the waves/keeping
time, a song only their minds hear/ten-thousand nights back to their life
in Cuba."

References

Visible links
1. http://topics.time.com/cuba/
2. http://topics.time.com/florida/
3. http://topics.time.com/fidel-castro/


Original Source / Fuente Original:
http://world.time.com/2013/01/18/richard-blanco-obamas-inaugural-poet-not-your-fathers-cuban-exile/?iid=gs-main-lead