Take A Trip to the R. W. Norton Art Gallery for the Great Masters of Cuban Art Exhibit

Steve and I took a drive over to the R. W. Norton Art Gallery this afternoon to check out the Great Masters of Cuban Art exhibit.  It features rare paintings from the Cuban Colonial period (1800-1898) and the Republican period (1902-1958).  I highly recommend it if you're in the area.

The Norton has 85 paintings that have not been available to the public for over a half a century.  The brochure that we picked up explained that Roberto Ramos and his brother, many years ago in Havana, helped an elderly neighbor move.  To thank them, the elderly neighbor gave them "a small piece of artwork by an artist that the elderly man claimed was quite famous."  It was by Carlos Sobrino y Rivero (1909 - c.1980).  The brothers were fascinated by the painting but their attempts at research were futile because Sobrino had left Cuba after Castro seized power.  Because of this Sobrino and his work "had been baned by a government whose ideology and laws penalize those who wish to seek exile."

The Cuban government squashed all mention and documentation of this artist who had won the National Prize for Painting in 1959.  Many other artists of the Republican era suffered the same fate, according to the brochure.

In fact, "the Cuban communist system banned all individual liberties soon after its inception in 1959, and the purchase, sale, or collection of art was declared illegal."

According to the literature, by the end of the 1980s, the Ramos brothers had collected ten paintings.  In 1990 they decided to leave Cuba.  They got a twenty-four foot wooden boat and hid their small collection of paintings in the ceiling:

They sailed for two days without land in sight.  Then, they ran out of fuel and were left to drift.  Two more days passed and they found themselves without food or water.  To make matters worse, a storm broke, causing turbulent seas with waves reaching fifteen to twenty feet, which threatened to capsize the small vessel.  With little hope of survival remaining, they were finally spotted by the US Coast Guard and brought to shore as immigrants.

According to this site, the Ramos brothers were taken into custody and their paintings disappeared.  When the brothers were released they tracked the paintings to a gallery in Coral Gables which had sold them.  Mr. Ramos tracked down the buyers and convinced them to return the paintings.

In America the Ramos brothers were finally able to study Cuba's true history and were shocked to learn of the liberties in Cuba before Castro.

In the 1990s the Cuban government needed cash so they finally established galleries where tourists could buy some of these old masterpieces.  Eventually they ended up in Europe, America and Latin America.  "Artworks from the colonial period were scarce because of their deteriorated condition."  Many of the paintings from the Republican era were similarly degraded but the Ramos brothers worked to restore what they could.

They based their criteria for collecting these works on the historical significance of each artwork and how each piece fit within the development of art and painting in Cuba.  Also considered were the contributions that the artists had made to Cuba's cultural advancement as well as to the establishment of its national identity.

The huge painting, Finlay's Triumph, greets you as you walk into the museum.  It's over 15 feet high, I'd guess.  The painting had "originally been attached to the wall of the Cuban Presidential palace" and Castro ordered it destroyed.  The man who was to do the deed couldn't make himself destroy the painting, however, and he hid it.


"Fragments of the Cuban Presidential Palace wall are still adhered to the back" of the canvas; it took over two years to restore the painting which depicts Dr. Walter Reed and men from the US Military Yellow Fever Commission as they visit Dr. Carlos J. Finlay in Cuba.  "Finlay was the Cuban doctor that discovered that the mosquito was the transmitting agent for yellow fever." 

It's a stunning painting.  Castro was offended by the military uniforms, however, and thus his order to have it destroyed.  Luckily, it wasn't.

I liked this portrait; the lady isn't named but is only identified as a likely member of the aristocracy:

Steve liked this one by Hernandez Giro from around 1920 which depicts Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders:

I thought this one of a wedding was whimsical and fun:

And I liked this one which is supposed to be "a country retreat":

This is another huge canvas, although not as large as Finlay's Triumph.  It's called La Rumba by Antonio Sanchez Araujo:

This one is called Yumuri Valley by Antonio Rodriguez Morey.  It's dated 1919.

And finally this one, Guateque by Angel Valdez, dated around 1940:

The only thing that surprised me was that there weren't more seascapes or coastal images, but I guess that's my own stereotype or expectation...I was expecting Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea sort of images.  Primarily the paintings depict the way of life in their appropriate time periods and the way people lived.  They're colorful, whimsical, fanciful, serious, and introspective.  Some are strange and mystical while others are more traditional.  All in all, they're all worth a trip to the Norton to see!


(Quoted information in this post comes from the literature obtained at the exhibit which cites Great Masters of Cuban Art:  Ramos Collection / Grandes Maestros del Arte Cuba- no:  Coleccion Ramos by Zeida Comesanas Sardinas)

Related:  More from the SIGIS Take a Trip ... series.

Gitmo North

The Obama administration will announce today that they intend to "acquire" Thomson Correctional Center and will begin transferring Gitmo detainees there as soon as feasibly possible. This is supposedly "good news" as it will bring jobs to the prison and to the area, but as the editors at NRO point out in this excellent post today, national security should not be a "shovel-ready" project.

To refit Thomson for Gitmo detainees will be exorbitantly expensive but that is of little matter to this administration which simply prints money at will:

This exorbitant “injection” of funds would be necessary because TCC is not ready to accommodate international jihadists, who are prone to riot, savagely attack their custodians, attempt escape, and plot terror attacks while in U.S. prisons. The jail would have to be hardened before it could become the new Gitmo. So even if financial considerations were the first-order priority here — and they should not be — the administration’s plan would be inexcusably wasteful. Gitmo has already been hardened, at a cost of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars. It is now a state-of-the-art, Geneva Conventions-compliant detention center. It makes no sense to sink those expenditures down a black hole, spending another fortune on a project that won’t generate sustainable growth. Illinois found that out when it built TCC in the first place.

And, as NRO points out, how long before the ACLU and Human Rights Watch start jumping up and down and protesting the "inhumane" conditions of Thomson? After all, at Gitmo these men are accustomed to specially prepared diets, sensitive handling of the Koran, soccer fields, daily calls to prayer, art and language lessons, and so on. How long before we've recreated the exact same thing at Thomson?

And then what will actually have been accomplished? If you move terrorists from point A to point B and nothing changes, what was the point, except that you spent a lot of money? Does this administration still believe he will gain the "goodwill" of hostile nations by moving these prisoners out of Cuba?

Naive.

And worse, how long before activist judges start releasing them? Most of them can't be tried in regular courts anyway as they are being held under laws of war, not as the result of some criminal investigation?

This is yet another outrage from the Holder Justice Department. It is just shocking to me how destructive this man's policies are. While I recognize the huge differences, this move has echoes of the Mariel boat lift to me, at least the part where Castro emptied his jails and mental asylums and sent his undesirables over here. Yes, there were hardworking Cubans in there as well who just wanted a better life, but there were killers, murderers, terrorists and criminals of all sorts in the mix.

Be very clear about this move - he is importing terrorists onto American soil. Period.

Jake Tapper has more here.

Ray Nagin Visits Cuba to Learn About Disaster Preparedness

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is on a field trip to Cuba, on a State Department sanctioned expedition, in order to learn about disaster preparedness.

One might think that after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Ray Nagin would know just about all there is to know about how to prepare for a hurricane. Trial by fire, as they say. However, it seems as if Mayor Nagin believes he can learn something from Cuba.

Marco Rubio has a response at NRO's The Corner:

"In Cuba, it doesn’t take a hurricane to cause power outages; government rationing of electricity has been doing that for some time. The destruction of the agricultural economy didn't begin when storms destroyed crops; it began when the regime took control of the means of production. The country's infrastructure didn’t start crumbling because of hurricane-strength winds; it’s been deteriorating for decades, along with many aspects of Cuban life, because of a regime obsessed with using its limited resources to maintain power, deprive its people of fundamental liberties and close itself off from the free world.

But perhaps the worst part about the regime’s hurricane-mitigation program is its routine, cruel, and inhumane rejection of American aid."

Port of New Orleans president and CEO Larry LeGrange is all for the Nagin trip, however, and says that Nagin is exploring future trade opportunities with Cuba. He says when the trade embargo with Cuba is ended, Nagin's efforts can only help New Orleans.

Some NOLA residents are getting a little testy over Nagin's little jaunts, however. Earlier this summer, Nagin, his wife, and other city officials went to Shanghai and to Sydney which cost the taxpayers over $28,000. Nagin had promised a "sponsor" for that trip that never materialized. Part of the problem there is the possibility that someone with business ties to the city was footing the bill, which of course, would be unethical.

Nagin is not the first mayor to travel to Cuba for disaster preparedness; the mayor of Galveston, TX traveled to Cuba earlier this year.

Not everyone is impressed with Cuba's hurricane preparedness skills. Besides Rubio, another dissenting voice is George Fowler, a Cuban-American who is also the Vice President of the Cuban American National Foundation.

Fowler said, "we have very little to learn from Castro. It is a country that is embargoed by our own policies because it's been run by a dictator for 50 years. It is also one of four countries that our state department has declared to be a state sponsor of terrorism." While various news articles tout Cuba's success in hurricane preparedness, Fowler said it's communist propaganda, and he doesn't buy the delegation's explanation that New Orleans can learn valuable lessons in disaster readiness from Cuba.

At any rate, Nagin and company are in Cuba. At the very least, maybe Nagin can learn that when a hurricane hits your city, you don't barricade yourself in a luxury hotel "awaiting the federal cavalry." When he came out, he declared that New Orleans would once again be a "chocolate city."

Yes, maybe the Cuba trip isn't such a bad idea, after all!

Obama Makes More Concessions to Castro

I am stealing this video from Gateway Pundit. It's of Cuba in the 1930s before the Castro regime destroyed it. It's eight minutes well spent! What a lovely place it was!


Reuters is reporting this morning, "The United States and Cuba have agreed to resume direct talks on migration, last held in 2003, and open discussions on establishing direct mail service between the two countries, a U.S. official said on Sunday.Cuba presented a diplomatic note to U.S. officials on Saturday agreeing to a U.S. request made last week to resume the migration talks, which President George W. Bush suspended."

George W. Bush defended his position on Cuba when he was in Canada at an appearance with Bill Clinton on Friday. Asked about Obama's Cuban policy changes, Bush said, "Holding that embargo in place is important," he said. By easing it, "you're propping up a regime who puts people in prison based upon their political views. So my view is, if they empty out the prisons and give people a voice, then we change our strategy with Cuba — but not until then."

I'm not sure what Obama thinks he's going to gain by his recent moves on Cuban policy. Everything he's done so far will only serve to help the Castro regime. It's hard to argue with Bush's point on leverage, and the Castro regime has made no moves to release any political prisoners. In fact, in April Fidel Castro said that Obama misinterpreted any signs that Raul may have given as to releasing prisoners or cutting taxes on dollars that people send to Cuban relatives.

It seems that Obama is making all the concessions here and it's the people of Cuba who get to suffer. It's time to ask for something in return from the Castro regime before giving in to their tyranny any further.

Update: The NYT adds this: "Cuba also agreed to cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism, drug interdiction and disaster relief efforts" but no word on the political prisoners who continue to be held or the continual squeezing of the Cuban people.

And Bablu Blog is not impressed: "Who knows -maybe this new round of talks will magically turn all refugees trying to escape the totalitarian regime into migrants and will have the US Coast Guard patrolling the Cuban coastline to prevent any would-be escapes from the island concentration camp?"

(Photo: The Real Cuba)

On the Cuban Embargo and Sanctions

* Scroll down for updates *

One of the things we are likely to start hearing a lot about this week as the Summit of the Americas approaches is the administration's Cuba policy.

There is a lot of debate on this issue and Obama, so far, has made cautious overtures to making some changes. One of the proposed changes is calling for easing restrictions on travel to Cuba as well as removing caps on money transfers to family on the island. He has not yet called for the end to the embargo, which many say has not worked.

With regard to the embargo, Nestor Carbonell, writing for Foreign Policy, suggests that the "embargo is the only leverage the United States has to ensure a democratic transition." Yes, the Castro brothers still remain in power, but Carbonell contends that they are "exhausted and weaker." And less wealthy, I might add. Carbonell points out that the European Union lifted diplomatic sanctions against Cuba but so far human rights improvements have not occurred.

In an excellent piece for the WSJ, Maria Werlau writes:

"Sales of medical and agricultural products have been long exempt from the embargo. But Cubans are forbidden from importing those goods or owning businesses to distribute or sell them. Instead, the ruling elite enjoys privileged access to food, consumption goods and premiere medical services, while the population does without. Many pharmacies and hospitals lack even aspirin. The obligatory food ration book is pitiful and provides insufficient calories. The latest, much hyped, "reforms" consist primarily of allowing citizens to buy cell phones and enter tourist facilities. But the cost of a cell phone or one hotel night exceeds the annual wage of the average worker ($16 a month). "

In other words, the Castro regime is still fully engaged in supressing the rights and the lives of the Cuban people. So Cubans can buy cell phones now, but the cost puts them out of reach. They can buy compters, but no internet access.

One common argument is that since the end of the Cold War, Cuba is no longer a threat to anyone. Some say that the only ones being affected by the embargo and the restrictions are the Cuban people.

Carbonell reminds us that "Its biotechnology capability, developed in conjunction with Iran, and its close relationship with North Korea pose serious concerns. Cuba continues to harbor terrorists from ETA, FARC, and ELN, as well as U.S.-convicted criminals and fugitives." FARC is a particularly nasty group responsible for many Columbian kidnappings, airline hijackings, and assassinations.

With regard to the open travel issue, the general argument is that tourist dollars from Americans will help the average Cuban. What we must realize is that under the current Castro regime, the average Cuban would never receive any of that money or benefit. Go back to Werlau, who writes:

"Over two million tourists from all over the world travel there annually, including U.S.-based visitors (an estimated 1.3 million in the past 10 years). Yet strict laws still govern labor relations with the foreign sector. Workers are selected for political allegiance and must be hired from a state enterprise that retains over 90% of their wages plus all tips. The state still owns the tourist industry, so billions in revenues continue to pour straight into its coffers or into overseas bank accounts."

European and Canadian tourist dollars have not helped the Cuban people at all, but have only filled the coffers of the Castro brothers. To assume that American dollars would help any more that other tourist dollars is naive. As long as the Castro regime isolates those tourist areas and keeps regular Cubans from them, nothing will change.

In Cuba, the regime still determines where you will work, live and how much income you will receive. If you step out of line, speak to the wrong people, indicate any dissent, or attempt to buy some necessity from the black market, you will likely be imprisoned. Cuba is ranked as one of the world's most repressive countries and that has nothing to do with an American embargo or sanctions. Babalu Blog wrote this week of one restaurant that was closed for being "too successful".

The words of the CBC after their visit to Castro were especially incredible given the harsh repression of the Cuban people, which incidentally, they were forbidden to see.

"It was quite a moment to behold," Lee said, recalling her moments with Castro. “It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), adding that he found Castro’s home to be modest and Castro’s wife to be particularly hospitable. “In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor,” Rush said.

I think that it is admirable that Obama wants to address the Cuban problem, and it might be an area in which he will find some success. I'm being optimistic here, but the issue involves skills he has that he could use for some good. But it can't come from America alone; he will have to engage the aid of other nations in dealing with Cuba. Throwing American dollars to Cuba will not solve the problem, it will only fuel the coffers of the already bankrupt Castro brothers.

A diplomatic engagement with them will best be achieved by a unified approach that involves other nations of the region. Cuba is a concern for the entire region, in fact, is an international concern, not just a concern for the United States.

Update 11:36 : As per NYTimes: "Obama will lift some U.S. restrictions to allow Cuban Americans to travel more freely to the communist-ruled island and send financial assistance to family members, a U.S. official said."

Update 2, 12:26: More specifics from Breibart. Also another WSJ article, which reminds us that "A significant segment of the 1.5 million Americans with relatives in Cuba are resolutely anti-Castro and oppose easing relations. In Cuba, the government has staked much of its legitimacy for nearly 50 years on casting the U.S. as an enemy and may be unwilling to make significant changes." In fact, most Cubans do not blame the American embargo on their hardship but the "internal government blockade" (Carbonell).

Update 3, 2:00: Reaction from The Hill Blog (via Memeorandum): "While increasing the amount of funds Cuban-Americans can send to their loved ones is also a welcome measure, a Cuban’s average salary is about $25 per month. The unlimited sending of dollars to Cuba will help Cuba’s National Bank in its money laundering efforts. Years ago, a Swiss bank was fined millions of dollars by the United States for processing deposits worth millions from Banco Nacional de Cuba. Havana maintains close links with narco-guerillas in South America’s mainland.

"Havana also refused to accept millions of dollars in humanitarian assistance offered by the United States last year to help thousands of Cubans affected by several killer hurricanes. The regime also confiscates medicine, food, etc. which is brought by travelers to the island, and it has broken into the US diplomatic pouch to stem the flow, among other things, of such items."

Related post: Our Old Friend Fidel

Our "Old Friend" Fidel?

The Congressional Black Caucus has been to visit Fidel.

"It was quite a moment to behold," Lee said, recalling her moments with Castro.

“It was almost like listening to an old friend,” said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), adding that he found Castro’s home to be modest and Castro’s wife to be particularly hospitable.

“In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor,” Rush said.

Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Ca.) said Castro was receptive to President Obama’s message of turning the page in American foreign policy.

"He listened. He said the exact same thing" about turning the page "as President Obama said," said Richardson.


This is quite incredible. It's like they'd met freakin' Eric Clapton or something!

Seriously, Castro is like an "old friend"? I don't think the folks at Cuban blog Babalu would agree with that. Unless your old friends are Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, or maybe Hitler, I can't see much resemblance.

Since we've decided to alienate Britain and our other traditional European allies, now Cuba is going to be our friend? This is a shaky path. Frightening.