Big Passions in Little Havana

Last Wednesday, with our playwright as our fearless leader, the When the Sun Shone Brighter cast and artistic team took a field trip to Miami’s Little Havana and got to know the world we'll be presenting on our stage for the next month and a half. The play isn't necessarily set in Little Havana – it takes place in several locations throughout Miami – but the passions, concerns and history of the Cuban exile community permeate the play, and if you want to understand Floridian Cubans, then Little Havana is the place to start.

We started our day, by necessity, with a quick (1.5 hour) jaunt down I-95, and the research started before we even stopped the car. In the little residential neighborhood where we would be making our first stop, we saw a political sign for "Joe Sanchez," who ran for Mayor of Miami in 2009. In a strange coincidence, the protagonist of When the Sun Shone Brighter is a Mayor of Miami-Dade County named "Joe Sanchez-Fors, Jr." There really is no relation, though – the play has been in development since 2006, long before the real Joe Sanchez began his run.

    

The front of the Elian Gonzalez Museum.
Do the flags remind you of any play posters…?

Our first stop of the day was "The Elian Gonzalez Museum," which isn't really a museum, but the house where the 6-year-old Elian stayed for half a year before being sent back to Cuba. Elian's great uncle still lives there and maintains the collection, which is made up mostly of articles, photos of Elian, art inspired by the drama, and items that supposedly belonged to Elian (though I'm skeptical that any 6-year-old could play with that many toys). The most moving sights, though, were the inner tube that Elian was discovered in and the closet where he was taken at gunpoint, and where the most famous picture of the whole affair was taken. The door to the room that contained the closet hasn't been fixed – it still has the dents and holes from where it was smashed in.

The great uncle was a gracious host, but he asked that we not take pictures inside. We had told him we were working on a play (we didn't get into the play's nuanced take on Cuban-American relations), but he told us he had heard people were planning to make a movie about Elian that he wanted no part of, and I don't think he ever really believed that we weren't the filmmakers. If you want to see the museum, though, there are some fantastic pictures already available on flickr.

Next, we went to Versailles, the Little Havana cafe that is a favorite hangout for Cuban-American hardliners and has become a necessary stop for politicians seeking the Cuban-American vote. John McCain stopped there during the 2008 presidential campaign and sampled their famously strong espresso. We tried the espresso as well, plus some croquettes, all while fending off a local musician enthusiastically trying to sell his homemade CD.

The most striking evidence of the Cuban-American hardliners' presence at Versailles is a plaque that was installed on a rock just outside the restaurant in May, 2007. It is dedicated, in Spanish, to "The Peña [a sort of social group] of Versailles … those who meet daily in this restaurant Versailles, patriotic and cultural center of the exile, to contribute ideas and share the dream of return to the waiting homeland."
From here, we travelled down Calle Ocho (8th Street to us gringos) to a little strip called "Cuban Memorial Boulevard." This cool, shaded stretch of road includes several memorials to those who have fought for Cuban independence, including José Martí and Nestor "Tony" Izquierdo, a soldier at the Bay of Pigs. There is also a massive ceiba tree, which has spiritual significance to practitioners of Santeria, an Afro-Cuban religion. Within its enormous, wall-like roots, we saw the carcass of a chicken, a sacrifice that is apparently not an uncommon sight there.

Our director, Lou Tyrrell, also struck up a conversation with a street musician here who was playing a mean guitar. (You can hear it yourself in the video below.) Through translation provided by our cast member Dan Domingues, he told Lou about coming over to the U.S. from Cuba on a raft only three years ago.

The final stop on our field trip was The Bay of Pigs Museum and Library. This museum seemed slightly more official than the Elian Gonzalez Museum – it, too, appeared to have originally been a house, but it had been remodeled enough to make it clear that nobody lived there anymore. We were greeted, among the articles, pictures and other memorabilia, by a veteran of the Bay of Pigs who sat us down and shared with us his personal story. He took our questions and gave us a firsthand account of the training he underwent for the invasion, the unsuccessful attack, and the indignity he suffered as a prisoner until the U.S. negotiated for the brigade's release. The language he used was an intriguing mix of still-fiery passion and the moderation that often comes with the passage of time. He referred to his fallen comrades as "martyrs" and proudly declared that he had fought "until the last bullet," but when asked for his feelings about Kennedy, he took a moderate stance, expressing disappointment in Kennedy's lack of support for the 2506 Brigade but also the opinion that Kennedy was a liberator for Cubans.

After the Bay of Pigs Museum, our playwright invited us into his home for a dinner with enough food for five casts. This was for our benefit, so I'll spare you a description, although it's worth noting that Chris has a charming family.

The primary lesson I took from the day was that the passions expressed by the Cuban-American characters in When the Sun Shone Brighter are very real. When "Manny Arostegui" refers to his homeland as a "lost island paradise," the playwright isn't being grandiose – Manny is. The violence that has plagued the Cuban-American exile community from the 1960s into the 21st century, and which serves as a backdrop for much of our play, is appalling, yes, but it's less surprising when placed in the context of a tight-knit community that still feels the pain of the Cuban Revolution like it happened yesterday. Fidel Castro is not ancient history for the family who lost a 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez; the Bay of Pigs is not an historical footnote to the men who watched their fellow soldiers die there; and the Cubans who sip espressos at Versailles long every day for their “waiting homeland.”

I can’t wait to share a little of this important, uniquely South Florida play with our audience. It’s a hell of a story.

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