When do you write an obituary for a man who's still alive? When, for all intents and purposes, that man might as well be dead. That's why I'm writing this obit for Fidel Castro. By stepping down as El Jefe and turning the helm over to his brother, Raul, after ruling Cuba for 49 years, Fidel Castro has retired from history. The only thing to do now is to throw sand over him.
Because Castro was such a controversial figure, it is difficult to write a dispassionate obituary of him. The mere mention of the name "Fidel" is enough to bring out the shape-shifter in Cuban-Americans. Though I thought that the few Cuban-Americans that I have met were nice and agreeable, I thought it wise to hold out a silver cross the next time I wanted to talk politics with those people. The way the Cuban community acted during the Elian Gonzales affair was downright bizarre.
So let's address first why anti-Castro Cubans are, well, so anti-Castro. The obvious answer is that he was a brutal dictator, what the Latin Americans call a caudillo. You could enjoy the benefits of Cuba's "people's democracy" if you agreed with him completely. But if you were even mildly critical of him, you could find yourself in the moldy old dungeon of a Spanish fortress built in the 1500s. As well, you don't get elected by 99.99 per cent of the vote year after year by allowing any opposition at the polls. El Cuba libre wasn't so libre even by Latin American standards. Castro was the little tail(el caudillo) that wagged the dog.
That being said, Castro didn't liquidate all of his perceived enemies within the Communist Party of Cuba like Joseph Stalin did with the old Bolsheviks in Russia; he was much smarter than that. He merely told Che Guevara to go start a revolution somewhere else in Latin America, and Guevara ended up being shot by a Bolivian firing squad in 1967. (The Bolivians sent Guevara's hands back to Castro to confirm that reports of Che's death weren't exaggerated.)
But to get a more well-rounded picture of this scraggily bearded, cigar-chomping generalísimo in cammies, you have to examine his appeal as well. I mean, why put up with this guy for nearly 50 years? Why listen to him rant and rave for nearly four hours every time he spoke in public (or on the telephone)? Answer: a four-hour break from chopping sugar cane all is better than no break at all.
This writer still subscribes to the theory that angry farmers with pitchforks can make a difference, once they have had enough. Look at what those people who stormed the Bastille and the Tuileries accomplished during the French Revolution: they accomplished regime change. Marie-Antoinette doesn't fit anybody's definition of a survivor, political or otherwise.
Personally, Castro had a charisma, with women to the right of him and women to the left of him. Foreign reporters found him engaging, despite his tendency to "talk your ear off." When US President Dwight D. Eisenhower told his vice-president, Richard M. Nixon, to check this guy out while he was in the US on a fundraising tour in 1958, Nixon concluded that Castro was for real, "naïve but sincere." Nixon had only intended to talk with Fidel for about 15 minutes, but ended up talking with him for two hours, because they ended up on Fidel Castro Time, where 15 minutes can go two hours and beyond.
Nixon didn't take Castro very seriously. What's more, Castro's predecessor, Fulgencio Batista, didn't take Castro very seriously either. Just a few months before he roared into Havana on New Year's Day 1959 at the head of a victorious band of rum-swigging guerrillas, he was still hiding out in Cuba's Sierra Oriental Mountains, dealing with malaria and mosquitoes. He once avoided capture by spending three days with two of his comrades, crawling around in his own feces in a flooded sugar cane field. He spent New Year's Day 1958 begging for money in Mexico City, seemingly no closer to achieving revolution than when he started in 1953.
But if Americans have ever cheered lustily for anybody, it's the underdog: that why baseball fans outside of New York hate to see the New York Yankees win the World Series, and pull for the Chicago Cubs. Americans were initially praying that Castro "was on our side" when he first came to power in 1959, only to be disappointed. He didn't want to Ike's "bastard," unlike Batista.
This writer believes that part of what kept Castro in power all these years was a "perverse symbiosis." By placing Cuba "under quarantine," the US gave Castro a scapegoat. "If you're tired and hungry and poor," he could say, "blame it on those yanquis in Washington, DC. Your lot would be better if the Americans only bought our tobacco and our sugar, and sent their kids over to Havana on spring break."
However, there is a perverse symbiosis that has served US interests as well. By treating Cuban sugar and tobacco as contraband, like Colombian cocaine and marihuana, the sugar and tobacco growers in this country have one less competitor. (The US doesn't import very much sugar from Haiti or the Dominican Republic, either.) As well, the hoteliers in Daytona Beach and the casinos in Las Vegas don't have Havana with which to compete for tourist dollars. And if you don't think the agribusinesses and the Hilton chain hotels don't have the ear of the US State Department, then I have some swampland in Cuba that I would like to sell you.
If not for the symbiosis that has kept Castro in power, the Cubans would have gotten rid of him once an alternative presented itself a long time ago. If the Cubans only had the choice of even a benevolent despot like Jesus Christ for 50 years, they would be ready to take on the devil as an alternative toute suite, despite any "accomplishments" of El Salvador.
The fact is that nobody really wanted the change: not Castro and his comrades, and not the nine US presidents who came and went while Castro remained. Castro was always able to mingle freely with Cuban campesinos, as long as there wasn't somebody else to mingle with them as well. As for those anti-castroïstas in Florida, they are of no account anyway — just easy pickings for Republican demogoguery.
Now, the US government could not let go unchallenged Castro's confiscation of over $1 billion in US holdings in 1960. No government can ever allow somebody like Castro to confiscate the property of its private citizens and corporations. If your government just shrugs its shoulders and says "easy come, easy go," it's inviting every foreign government to do the same thing to US businesses and property holders abroad. As well, private citizens wouldn't be safe either: they could be beaten up in the streets or kidnapped and held for ransom at will. It would be very embarrassing for a big country like the US to have to invade tiny Luxembourg because Americans were getting beaten up on the streets there.
That being said, let's look at some of the accomplishments of the Castro regime. Numero uno, nearly everybody born in Cuba since 1959 has gone to school. When Cuba won its independence after the Spanish-American War in 1898, its population was about 95 per cent illiterate, with many of its people recently emancipated slaves. Even in 1959, most of Cuba's children still weren't in school, because dictators like Fulgencio Batista felt no sense of urgency as long as they were propped up by the likes of Lucky Luciano. Dictators like Batista don't want their people to be able to read newspapers, you know.
Numero dos, Cuba has national health coverage — something that the US and Haiti still do not have. Cuban cities like Havana have clinics like cities in other countries have party stores or bars — they're all over the place. While Cuba may not have the latest medical technology, it's much easier for a Cuban farmer to get a broken arm set than it was 50 years ago. As well, Cuba actually has a glut of doctors. Once Cuban doctors found that they could make more money as cabana boys for European and Canadian tourists, Castro started exporting cabana boys (and girls) to Venezuela to vaccinate Venezuelan children. Before that, he sent cabana boys to Angola in the 1970s, as well as some 50,000 troops to fight anti-Marxist guerrillas.
The fact is that no country in the West would have social security today, if not for the threat of communist takeover. Otto von Bismarck gave Germany social security to head off the socialists in 1874, and Franklin D. Roosevelt presented his New Deal for the same reason in 1936. Western Europe and Japan felt no sense of urgency until after World War II, when the likelihood of a communists takeover seemed very real. Women in France didn't even have the vote until 1949, let alone social security.
The fear of a communist hiding under the bed can do a lot of good. We mustn't let those corporate fat cats get too complacent, or they'll be coming to the government with their hands out for money when times get tough.
There has to be a change in Cuba, no doubt about it. It's time for Cuba to join the rest of the world. However, Castro's biggest accomplishment is this: after 49 years, there's no going back for Cuba. Maybe the casinos and the prostitutes catering to a western clientele will return once his brother, Raul, is gone, but Cuba is no longer the backwater that it once was. Now that Cuba's population is 99 per cent literate, Cubans can do more than pick tobacco, chop sugar cane and dance to the rumba. Cuba has doctors, teachers and engineers now, as well as cabana boys for the western tourists and the Venezuelan children. That should count for something.
So here's some sand on Fidel Castro.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Review of "New Horizons" by Ordinary Mile
It was late in the autumn of 2007, and my 1998 Ford Contour was sitting there helpless in the garage, waiting for the mechanic to get to it. (I had to have it put down, folks, but that's another pair of sleeves, my Ford Contour.)
After waiting about an hour for my ride to come pick me up from work, I concluded that I would probably get home faster if I walked. The problem was that I work near Detroit Metropolitan Airport, so let this be a warning to you: If an air traffic controller sees somebody walking down Goddard Road with a guitar case, he or she might call the Michigan State Police and have them pick you up. I know, because that's what happened to me.
Somewhere on Goddard, between Vining and Middlebelt roads, I got stopped by a state trooper in an SUV with the Michigan state seal on the door, who asked me to open up my guitar case and show him what was inside. He was friendly and courteous about it, and gave me no reason to fear going to jail, unless there was a warrant out for my arrest. Since I had no unpaid traffic tickets, everything was cool. He was satisfied that I had a guitar in my case.
After the trooper explained to me why I was stopped, and I explained my situation, he gave me a ride to a British Petroleum gas station at the corner of Goddard and Middlebelt. But before he dropped me off, he left me a copy of a CD from his band, Ordinary Mile, "New Horizons." It turns out the state trooper was none other than Marty Kolakowski, guitarist, keyboardist and drummer with the band.
The personnel of Ordinary Mile at the time of this 2007 release was Kolakowski, Randy Sandusky on vocals, Steve Longworth on keyboards and guitar, and Matt Kubley on bass. Unfortunately, this was a posthumous release for Kubley. I only hope that he wasn't a state trooper killed in the line of duty.
Since I started listening to rock music as a teenager in the 1970s, the level of musicianship in rock music has really come a long way. Circa 1973, people as talented as Alex Lifeson of Rush or Steve Howe of Yes were very rare; now they're all over the place. In a very short time, some kid listening to Metallica now will come along and show that he's as good as Kirk Hammett. These kids always come along.
The challenge that faces bands today is to come up with a sound that sets them apart from the others. Because it seems like everything has been done under the sun, that's going to be hard for bands like Ordinary Mile. Shall we use a sitar? Oops, that was done in the Sixties! How about a fat synth here? That was done by Genesis in the Eighties. As for Brazilian drum ensembles backing rock or jazz bands, that started with Stan Getz in the 1950s. There was nothing new or radical done by the Tom Tom Club of Jerry Harrison and Tina Wertheimer of the Talking Heads.
All that being said, "New Horizon" owes a debt to Rush, right about the time Rush started getting into synthesizers. Ordinary Mile is no Rush clone: drummer Kolakowski doesn't have the all the drums and glockenspiels that Neal Peart of Rush had, nor does singer Sandusky sound anything like Geddy Lee. Though Ordinary Mile has two guitarists, Kolakowski and Longworth, neither of them have the same attack as Lifeson of Rush. As for bassist Kubley, his role was more traditional than Lee's: to provide a "bottom" for the music.
This is not to say that Kolakowski, Sandusky, Longworth and Kubley aren't four very competent musicians, because they are. However, the first time you play this CD, it's like you have heard it before. It's the synths, which give it a noir-ish kind of feel. If you were to think in terms of colour, black and green might be the most dominant: the black of a sky whose stars are obscured by city lights; the green from the streetlight giving off its radiation-green glow on the cover. If this CD took you anywhere (and some people are incapable of being transported anywhere by any kind of music), it might take you to a small town in the USA where the people sit home and watch reruns of "The X-Files" while city and state police patrol the roads and highways. Not much happening here, it would seem. Probably, no security guard will see an Aurora Borealis or his father's ghost tonight.
And yet a lot is happening inside each and every one of us; we just don't talk about it. You might say that "New Horizons" is more of an inward-looking CD rather than an outward one. Who is the one having the "Wicked Dreams" (the title of the first cut)? Everybody. Yet few of us share our "wicked dreams" with others, and those of us who do aren't likely to share them with others all the time. The "New Horizons" of the third cut are probably more of a personal nature rather than the "new frontier" on which President John F. Kennedy invited the whole nation to embark together in his inauguration speech in 1961. And "Marionettes," the title of the fourth cut? Hey, we have all felt like puppets on a string.
With titles like "Crash," "Hide" and "Sanctuary," it isn't difficult to figure out what these songs are about. Likewise with "Crimson Sunrise," "The Rose" and "Remember the Spirit." The protagonist of "Sanctuary" standing on a ledge is invited to "close your mind and fall back into bed," where nothing can harm you — least of all, your "wicked dreams." Because this is a new millennium, post 9/11, the listener is told to "Remember the Spirit" (the title of the tenth cut) rather than "Be True to Your School," the title of a Beach Boys tune. This isn't the Sixties anymore, with television fare like "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" ; this is the world of "The X-Files" and the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsing like dominoes on a poster board.
Will Ordinary Mile change forever the way we listen to rock music? Probably not with this CD. What you will get is well-played music played by four competent musicians. Like a patient on the couch of a psychoanalyist, this CD will probably demand repeated listening to fully appreciate it. That's to say, you won't make a breakthrough with just one listening any more than a psychiatrist will get to the root of your problem in just one session.
This music is not for those who have an attention deficit, but no good music is. However, I would like to thank officer Kolakowski for giving me his band's CD rather than a ticket.
After waiting about an hour for my ride to come pick me up from work, I concluded that I would probably get home faster if I walked. The problem was that I work near Detroit Metropolitan Airport, so let this be a warning to you: If an air traffic controller sees somebody walking down Goddard Road with a guitar case, he or she might call the Michigan State Police and have them pick you up. I know, because that's what happened to me.
Somewhere on Goddard, between Vining and Middlebelt roads, I got stopped by a state trooper in an SUV with the Michigan state seal on the door, who asked me to open up my guitar case and show him what was inside. He was friendly and courteous about it, and gave me no reason to fear going to jail, unless there was a warrant out for my arrest. Since I had no unpaid traffic tickets, everything was cool. He was satisfied that I had a guitar in my case.
After the trooper explained to me why I was stopped, and I explained my situation, he gave me a ride to a British Petroleum gas station at the corner of Goddard and Middlebelt. But before he dropped me off, he left me a copy of a CD from his band, Ordinary Mile, "New Horizons." It turns out the state trooper was none other than Marty Kolakowski, guitarist, keyboardist and drummer with the band.
The personnel of Ordinary Mile at the time of this 2007 release was Kolakowski, Randy Sandusky on vocals, Steve Longworth on keyboards and guitar, and Matt Kubley on bass. Unfortunately, this was a posthumous release for Kubley. I only hope that he wasn't a state trooper killed in the line of duty.
Since I started listening to rock music as a teenager in the 1970s, the level of musicianship in rock music has really come a long way. Circa 1973, people as talented as Alex Lifeson of Rush or Steve Howe of Yes were very rare; now they're all over the place. In a very short time, some kid listening to Metallica now will come along and show that he's as good as Kirk Hammett. These kids always come along.
The challenge that faces bands today is to come up with a sound that sets them apart from the others. Because it seems like everything has been done under the sun, that's going to be hard for bands like Ordinary Mile. Shall we use a sitar? Oops, that was done in the Sixties! How about a fat synth here? That was done by Genesis in the Eighties. As for Brazilian drum ensembles backing rock or jazz bands, that started with Stan Getz in the 1950s. There was nothing new or radical done by the Tom Tom Club of Jerry Harrison and Tina Wertheimer of the Talking Heads.
All that being said, "New Horizon" owes a debt to Rush, right about the time Rush started getting into synthesizers. Ordinary Mile is no Rush clone: drummer Kolakowski doesn't have the all the drums and glockenspiels that Neal Peart of Rush had, nor does singer Sandusky sound anything like Geddy Lee. Though Ordinary Mile has two guitarists, Kolakowski and Longworth, neither of them have the same attack as Lifeson of Rush. As for bassist Kubley, his role was more traditional than Lee's: to provide a "bottom" for the music.
This is not to say that Kolakowski, Sandusky, Longworth and Kubley aren't four very competent musicians, because they are. However, the first time you play this CD, it's like you have heard it before. It's the synths, which give it a noir-ish kind of feel. If you were to think in terms of colour, black and green might be the most dominant: the black of a sky whose stars are obscured by city lights; the green from the streetlight giving off its radiation-green glow on the cover. If this CD took you anywhere (and some people are incapable of being transported anywhere by any kind of music), it might take you to a small town in the USA where the people sit home and watch reruns of "The X-Files" while city and state police patrol the roads and highways. Not much happening here, it would seem. Probably, no security guard will see an Aurora Borealis or his father's ghost tonight.
And yet a lot is happening inside each and every one of us; we just don't talk about it. You might say that "New Horizons" is more of an inward-looking CD rather than an outward one. Who is the one having the "Wicked Dreams" (the title of the first cut)? Everybody. Yet few of us share our "wicked dreams" with others, and those of us who do aren't likely to share them with others all the time. The "New Horizons" of the third cut are probably more of a personal nature rather than the "new frontier" on which President John F. Kennedy invited the whole nation to embark together in his inauguration speech in 1961. And "Marionettes," the title of the fourth cut? Hey, we have all felt like puppets on a string.
With titles like "Crash," "Hide" and "Sanctuary," it isn't difficult to figure out what these songs are about. Likewise with "Crimson Sunrise," "The Rose" and "Remember the Spirit." The protagonist of "Sanctuary" standing on a ledge is invited to "close your mind and fall back into bed," where nothing can harm you — least of all, your "wicked dreams." Because this is a new millennium, post 9/11, the listener is told to "Remember the Spirit" (the title of the tenth cut) rather than "Be True to Your School," the title of a Beach Boys tune. This isn't the Sixties anymore, with television fare like "Leave It To Beaver" and "Father Knows Best" ; this is the world of "The X-Files" and the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsing like dominoes on a poster board.
Will Ordinary Mile change forever the way we listen to rock music? Probably not with this CD. What you will get is well-played music played by four competent musicians. Like a patient on the couch of a psychoanalyist, this CD will probably demand repeated listening to fully appreciate it. That's to say, you won't make a breakthrough with just one listening any more than a psychiatrist will get to the root of your problem in just one session.
This music is not for those who have an attention deficit, but no good music is. However, I would like to thank officer Kolakowski for giving me his band's CD rather than a ticket.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
The Glory Days of Santa Barbara
The Republic of Santa Barbara doesn't really exist, so if any natives of Santa Barbara take offence, I will be greatly surprised.
Edgardo Ortega Romero was a "man of the people," an Indian, pure blood, born in the little village of Dolores in the Santa Barbara mountains of the little Republic of Santa Barbara in Central America. Without the education of priests at a mission school, he would have been like all the other Indian villagers: penniless, illiterate. But he had a mentor, Father Junípero Sierra, and his mother understood that he was different from her other nine children: sensitive, intelligent. However, he couldn't go to university because the country didn't have one. His mother wanted him to go to a university in Europe, but it was too far away and too expensive. He grew up in poverty, you know.
So he was a simple school teacher, well-respected by the other villagers, a religious man. But he entered politics when he realized that the powerful owners of the haciendas cheated their illiterate employees by not paying them all the money that they owed them on pay day. As well, he was in love with the daughter of a landowner, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, who was already betrothed to Don Fernando Valenzuela Valdez.
Then he was forcibly evicted at gunpoint by a rich haciendero who wanted his meagre plot. Because of the death squads supported by the landowners, he had to hid in the jungle, where he became the head of a band of guerrillas. Edgardo Ortega Romero and his comrades became legendary, robbing banks to give money to the poor and support their cause, à la Robin Hood. Santa Barbara was tiny in comparison to Mexico, so he and his comrades often fled to Mexico and hid there, where it was safer.
In a bar in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, Ortega met Hiram Walker, a Yankee who was looking for gold in the mountains. Now Ortega thought that Walker was just a raconteur while Walker thought that Ortega was just a dreamer. However, the two struck a deal: if Walker found his gold and financed the revolution, he would become the Minister of Mines for Santa Barbara. That is, if Ortega successfully overthrew the government of Santa Barbara. Of course, they were very drunk at the time.
Then Walker found a vein of gold in the Sierra Madres. Eureka! He was rich! With the help of Ortega and his comrades, Walker removed the gold from the mine under cover of darkness and deposited it in a bank. Then he financed Ortega's revolution: he bought weapons for Ortega and his comrades, then paid for their railroad tickets to the border of Santa Barbara. It was a small price to pay for their help, Walker thought. Once Ortega overthrow the government of Santa Barbara, he made Walker his Minister of Mines. With the revenue from the mines, Walker built a railroad across the country. So he became the Minister of Railways as well.
In the meantime, Ortega built schools and roads for his people. His beloved, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, became his mistress while her husband, Fernando Valenzuela Valdes, became one of his trusted lieutenants. He even consulted his old mentor, Father Junípero Sierra, from time to time. Though the rich landowners would have preferred that he take land from the church, rather than take it from them, he promised the old priest that he would never take land from the church.
However, the railroad didn't make much money for Hiram Walker. Built through dense jungle, thousands of men died of yellow fever. Many were also bitten by poisonous snakes, and a few were even eaten by jaguars. In the end, the Indians refused to do the work, and he had to hire Chinese workers from Jamaica to finish the job. However, the Chinese didn't want to go back home after the job was finished, so Santa Barbara now had a minority of Chinese who only spoke Spanish grudgingly.
As well, Ortega started to become unpopular among the people, because they were mostly poor and didn't use the railroad to transport their agricultural products to market anyway. So Ortega increasingly became a dictator and turned to the landowners that he once hated for their support; he had his own death squads, you know.
In the meantime, Hiram Walker decided to travel in Europe, where he met two persons of interest: one in London, the other in Paris. In London, he met Benny Rabino.
Now Benny Rabino was an interesting guy. A Jew born in Minsk in the Russian Empire, he was a vaudeville performer in London as a teenager. Then he found his fortune in the diamond mines of South Africa and came back to London a very rich man. He bought an estate along the Thames, married a girl from a good Jewish family, and became the father of a few children. Of course, Benny Rabino was a religious Jew: always the philanthropist, he gave lots of money to the poor in London. However, he was always looking for new ways to make money, because he was a business man.
At the Rabinos, where there was always a big party, Benny Rabino said to Hiram Walker: "Come and taste this fruit."
Rabino gave the fruit to Walker, who peeled it and tasted. Walker didn't like the taste of the fruit very much, whose skin was yellow when it was ripe. He said to Rabino frankly: "The taste is very bland. It doesn't really have a taste."
"I agree, sir," Rabino replied. "It's quite bland."
Then Rabino explained: "It's a banana, sir. It grows in the province of Natal on the eastern coast of South Africa, where it always rains. As I see it, this fruit will grow very well in Central America, where there's lots of jungle and it always rains. If you bought some property there, you could make lots of money. Your railroad, which is barely making money now, will soon begin to make money. You have my word. What do you say, sir?"
"But I don't like the taste of bananas!" Walker protested. "Who's going to buy any bananas if no one likes the taste!"
"But that's the trick, sir," Rabino explained. "If one can persuade you to taste this bland and tasteless fruit at a party, then one could persuade the public to buy this bland fruit en masse. If you sliced this fruit into little pieces, for example, you could put it in a bowl of cereal. The sky's the limit..."
Walker thought it was an intriguing idea. However, he still said nothing.
Then Rabino asked again: "What do you say, sir?"
However, Walker didn't want to make a decision hastily right now, though he was very interested.
Unfortunately, Benny Rabino suffered from severe depression from time to time. One night, under cover of the London fog, he committed suicide by jumping into the Thames and drowning himself. Thus the poor Benny Rabino couldn't be Hiram Walker's first investor.
In Paris, Walker met another interesting guy, another Russian, the Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich Konstantinov. Now the Grand-Duke's country had been ruled by the Bolsheviks now, since the revolution in 1917. As it was the 1920s, there were a lot of Russian exiles at the time, those who preferred to drink vodka and party all night while mourning for their lost country. No matter how much they hated the Bolsheviks, they were in no hurry to return to Mother Russia. No, these beneficiaries of the largesse of the old regime preferred to complain about the "injustice" of being tossed out by their former subjects. (Of course, the bistro owners in Paris didn't like them very much, as they were always drunk and rude to the waiters.)
Now the Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich was really dissolute. He always went out for a night on the town, always got drunk, and was easily moved by great schemes. As well, he was still young, in his thirties, while Walker was over fifty. While he couldn't stand his wife and his kids, his pretty little Parisian mistresses possessed some charm for him, but he was easily bored: he wanted some fun in his life! Walker would gladly provide some fun. Although the Grand-Duke thought that he was learned and wise, a man of the world, he was really simple and naïve.
It bears mentioning that, by now, Walker considered the president of the little Republic of Santa Barbara to be a great nuisance. Of course, Edgardo Ortega Romera had been very grateful for the railroad in his country, because he believed in the material and spiritual progress of his people; this belief was the reason why he had allowed the construction of this railroad in the first place. It was the reason why he had allowed the great cost in human life during its construction: the progress of his people.
However, Walker didn't give a damn about the people of Santa Barbara; he only wanted to make lots of money. So he bought as much land as he could and started to grow bananas. The rich and powerful landowners who sold him the land didn't care; they just moved to the capital city of Santa Barbara and lived in their beautiful chateaux and town houses there. However, the poor Indians who had worked the land of the hacienderos still didn't have land. Neither did the Chinese from Jamaica.
Then President Ortega's former mentor, old Father Junípero Sierra, led a revolt of Indians in the backwoods of San Marcos. From the top of the steeple of the little church in Dolores, Father Junípero rang the bell and shouted: "Long live justice! Long live liberty! Love live the love between our brothers and our sisters all over this land!"
This cry became known in Spanish as El Grito de Dolores: "The Cry of Dolores." However, Father Junípero's revolt was suppressed and thousands of peasants were killed. Ortega then seized land from the Church to gave it to the landless peasants. Father Junípero languished in a filthy prison the rest of his life in the San Marcos mountains, forgotten by everybody, including his church. The President could be very ruthless, you know.
But Ortega was a politician: he approached Hiram Walker and suggested that Walker give land to the Indians. "I don't want you to give all of it," Ortega explained. "Just some of it..."
But Walker refused point blank: "I need a lot of land," he explained. "Otherwise, I will not have enough land to grow bananas. Besides, I bought that land fair and square: I have paid millions of pesetas to your people."
Walker and Ortega had a heated discussion. Walker tried to explain how having him own most of the land in Santa Barbara was beneficial for the economy of Santa Barbara, but the President wouldn't listen; he just didn't understand economics. In the end, Ortega merely walked out, threatening to seize the land if Walker wouldn't give it up voluntarily. It was the end of a beautiful friendship.
There was talk of revolution in Santa Barbara; the people wanted land and liberty. In the capital of Santa Barbara, the President was confronted by a crowd of angry peasants on the grounds of the presidential palace, La Casa Rosada, or "The Pink House." From a balcony overlooking the crowd, the President promised in a grandiose speech to give them what they wanted: land and liberty. Then he concluded his speech with the rousing cry: "Tierra y libertad!" Land and liberty. And: "Muerte a los gringos!" Death to the gringos.
So this was Hiram Walker's plan: the Grand-Duc Igor Grigorievich Konstantinov would install himself at the head of a great army of mercenaries as Tsar Igor I of the former republic of Santa Barbara. The reason why this grotesque idea had an appeal for the Grand-Duke was this: Walker had made him believe that the people of Santa Barbara had really wanted a tsar, though their little country was no bigger than the tiny duchy of Luxembourg.
It was easy for Walker to convince the Grand-Duke of his scheme: a bottle of vodka did the trick. That night, the Grand-Duke found himself aboard a slow luxury liner to Central America, leaving behind his family (and his pretty little mistresses) in Paris.
Since the tiny country of Santa Barbara was only as big as Luxembourg, it would seem easy for the Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich Konstantinov to march at the head of great army like Hernando Cortez, right? However, the march was long and difficult, several months through dense jungle full of mosquitoes and snakes, full of quick sand and creeping vines. It rained all day every day, it seemed, and there were the jaguars. The Grand-Duke lost half of his mercenaries because of mosquitoes and snakes, because of yellow fever and dengue (and the jaguars). Most of the survivors were stricken with yellow fever, including the Grand-Duke himself.
Now the Grand-Duke had been expecting a great welcome and a great parade in his honour in the capital of Santa Barbara, the only city of Santa Barbara. As the city was on top of a great hill that rose out of the jungle, he expected to see the city of El Dorado. He expected a fanfare of trumpets and trombones, but he was disappointed: no one raised even one hurrah. Rather, the city of Santa Barbara was merely a miserable little village in comparison to Paris or St. Petersburg, very filthy, almost deserted, except for a few Indians and a lot of thin and starving dogs. It was really a hole, the inhabitants, lazy and always drunk.
The Grand-Duke couldn't believe it! Where were his loyal subjects? Most of them had fled with their beloved president, Edgardo Ortega Romero, to the jungle, or to the little isolated villages far from the capital. The rest, those who had chosen to stay, stayed because they were infirm or curious (or had gotten drunk the night before and had massive hangovers).
However, the Grand-Duke decided to make a grandiloquent speech nevertheless. He started his speech in broken Spanish: "Since you have asked us to be your Tsar, we have decided to accept. We have come to bring a new era of peace and progress and justice for the whole country. Viva la Santa Barbara!"
The Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich, or rather, the self-proclaimed Tsar, Igor I, couldn't finish his speech. He fainted before the thin crowd of confused Indians, because of yellow fever and dengue. The jungle was already taking its toll.
Because there was no doctor in town (the only doctor, having fled with the President and his entourage), the Indians had to bring their "Tsar" to a shaman, who fed him peyote and took care of him until he recovered. The Tsar Igor I barely spoke Spanish, and the shaman, of course, who looked to be a hundred years old, didn't speak Russian at all.
After some weeks of the Tsar being delirous, however, the Tsar got better. The old shaman, Don Juan, asked the Tsar without recourse: "What kind of madness has possessed you to sail across the sea in a steamship and march through the jungle to this city?"
The Tsar replied simply, in his broken Spanish: "We are your Tsar..."
Sometimes, it is better not to argue with a madman. The old shaman realized that this man was as crazy as a broom, as well as arrogant. Besides, he didn't know what a tsar was. As well, he was old enough to remember the previous dictator, Manuel de Rosas y Violetas, called El Caudillo, who had overthrown the president before him and killed the old president and thousands of his enemies before being overthrown and killed himself. (The assassination of Manuel de Rosas y Violetas was a national holiday, celebrated with fireworks: El día de la muerte del Caudillo, or "The Day of the Death of the Little Tail that Wagged the Big Dog.")
Don Juan was now afraid to speak frankly because the Russian Grand-Duke could have been another Manuel de Rosas y Violetas, a new El Caudillo. He had no way of knowing for sure.
It should have been apparent that the Russian Grand-Duke had every intention of being a benevolent ruler. The first thing, in the spirit of noblesse oblige, he sent a letter to each village in his "realm," asking them to send a representative to the capital so that he could form a parliament. However most of the villages, being very confused, ignored his request. With the advice of some of the representatives who had bothered to come to the capital, however, he promulgated a program of fixing the roads and installing a telephone system to replace the old telegraph system. However, the supporters of the former president, Edgardo Ortega Romero, resisted through acts of sabotage, blowing up bombs in the new roads after their completion and cutting the telephone lines. What's more, Ortega was robbing banks again.
Now the President wasn't really a bad guy. After all, he had encouraged the construction of the railroad, didn't he? However, we prefer our own bad government rather than the good government of a foreigner: Edgardo Ortega Romero could never submit to a Russian-born tsar, a tsar not elected by the people, no matter what. Even when the Tsar asked the President to be his prime minister in a spirit of peace and reconciliation, the President had to refuse. So there was a civil war in the former republic of Santa Barbara, now a monarchy ruled by a tsar. The hatred of monarchies runs strong in Latin America, you know.
The supporters of the President were called Los Colorados, those of the Tsar, Los Blancos. Of course, Ortega and the Colorados were more popular among the Indians and the Mestizos. However, the members of the forty families that owned all the haciendas (as well as the members of the petite bourgeoisie in the capital) supported the party of the Tsar, the Blancos. More importantly, Hiram Walker, who directed the construction of the railroad, also supported the Blancos. However, the Blancos only controlled the capital of Santa Barbara and its suburbs, that was it.
(But one shouldn't have worried about Hiram Walker: he had his own private army to protect his banana plantations, a state within a state. The guerrillas left him alone, because he had the biggest army in Santa Barbara.)
Now the former President had a mistress, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, gorgeous like a Spanish señorita, with a pretty heart-shaped face and hair long and black like a velvet night under the stars. And her eyes, her laughing eyes, she had eyes like two little pieces of chocolate — delicious! She was the wife of one of the president's lieutenants, Fernando Valenzuela Valdez, but it was a marriage of convenience — alas! — the conjugal union between two of the most powerful families in Santa Barbara for the good of the country. (A sense of nobless oblige ran strong in Santa Barbara as well.)
The moment that her souteneur, the President, fled into the jungle, she became the favourite of the Tsar. Although her body belonged to the Tsar, however, her heart belonged to her country. She was therefore a spy for the Colorados while her former lover (along with her husband) fought in the jungle. Through nights of pillow talk, the Tsar revealed his military secrets little by little, which Doña Carlota dutifully passed on to the former President, Edgardo Ortega Romero, her former lover. What a patriot Doña Carlota was!
However, Doña Carlota could never stoop to murdering the tsar, not even for her country: she was a lover, not a fighter.
Although there was a civil war in the country, Hiram Walker started quietly to buy property to cultivate his bananas and sell them in North America. Hiram Walker was getting older, past sixty, but he had a son, Johnny Walker, who was younger and more ruthless than him, who had boundless energy and a love of power. As well, Johnny Walker wanted to be President of the United States. In the future, he hoped to be the first president from the state of Texas. However, it was Hiram Walker who returned to the United States to be a Congressman, leaving his son in charge of his company, Boca Chica Banana.
Unlike the father, the son didn't trust the Russian Grand-Duke, Igor Grigorievich, who called himself Tsar Igor I. It was with justification: Johnny Walker overheard the Tsar say to himself: "If only the people spoke Russian! We must teach them to speak Russian..."
Johnny Walker was now sure that the Tsar was as crazy as a kid with a new electric guitar on Christmas Day. However, it was his mistress, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, whose advice that the Tsar followed. Exasperated, the Tsar complained to his mistress: "What more do the people want that we haven't already done? We build them schools and hospitals, we fix the only highway. It's never enough. So what do we do now?"
Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera replied frankly: "The people want land, Your Majesty. Without land, you have nothing. All of the haciendas are owned by only a few families, that's it. But if we divided the haciendas, then the people would have land..."
"Forget it!" replied the Tsar, shocked. "If we divided the haciendas among the peons, the strong and the sober would only take it back from them again. That's what the kulaks did in Russia, you know. The big fish will eat the little fish, my dear. That's life, survival of the fittest. Most of the peons are worthless as farmers anyway..."
"It's a question of peace, your Majesty," Doña Carlota replied. "There will never be peace if the people don't have land..."
Now the Tsar was capricious, like mentally ill people. Sometimes, he wanted to divide the haciendas among the Indians that worked them, sometimes not. In his more lucid moments, he realized that it was these same hacienderos, the supporters of the Blancos, who supported him against the Colorados in the jungle. Without the hacienderos, no friends. It was that simple.
However, the tsar wasn't always lucid, but was sometimes possessed of a grand and mystical vision of land and liberty for everyone, like some mad prophet out of Dostoyevsky.
Johnny Walker was ready to betray the mad Grand-Duke that his father had installed not very long ago. As Minister of Mines and Railways for San Marcos, he began a series of secret meetings with a general in the service of the Tsar, Edmundo Videla Blanca. Without further ado, General Videla overthrew the Tsar, who was drunk, re-declared Santa Barbara a republic, and threw the Tsar in a filthy prison in the mountains. Then the Blancos and the Colorados made peace while the Walker family quietly bought up all the land. All men were brothers again, except for the Chinese: President Videla sent them all back to Jamaica.
Then there was a presidential election between Edgardo Ortega Romero of the Colorados and Edmundo Videla Blanca of the Blancos. To everybody's surprise, Videla won in a landslide — the Colorados couldn't believe it! The Colorados screamed that the election was a fraud, and Ortega hid in the jungle again, blowing up bridges and robbing banks. The civil war was on again.
Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera tried to tempt the new president with her considerable charms, like Cleopatra with Octavian after the death of Marc Antony, but the new President was cold towards her. Alas, he had a mistress that was only eighteen years old.
There was a brief trial where the former Tsar Igor I was sentenced to death by firing squad by the five magistrates in a unanimous verdict. Before he was shot, however, the Tsar shouted: "Viva la Santa Barbara!"
The soldiers no longer wanted to shoot their beloved tsar, but they had to do it. Now the Tsar's chest was covered with so many medals that the medals stopped all the bullets in their tracks. So what do you do? It was a miracle, right? But they were not ruled by silly superstition even in the tiny Republic of Santa Barbara: the captain of the firing squad merely walked up to the Tsar and administered the coup de grâce. Santa Barbara was a modern and secular republic, you know, not a barbaric kingdom of the Middle Ages.
And they lived happily ever after in Santa Barbara, except for the Chinese, who were deported to Jamaica. Then some communists who were hiding in the jungle overthrew the government and established the People's Republic of Santa Barbara.
Edgardo Ortega Romero was a "man of the people," an Indian, pure blood, born in the little village of Dolores in the Santa Barbara mountains of the little Republic of Santa Barbara in Central America. Without the education of priests at a mission school, he would have been like all the other Indian villagers: penniless, illiterate. But he had a mentor, Father Junípero Sierra, and his mother understood that he was different from her other nine children: sensitive, intelligent. However, he couldn't go to university because the country didn't have one. His mother wanted him to go to a university in Europe, but it was too far away and too expensive. He grew up in poverty, you know.
So he was a simple school teacher, well-respected by the other villagers, a religious man. But he entered politics when he realized that the powerful owners of the haciendas cheated their illiterate employees by not paying them all the money that they owed them on pay day. As well, he was in love with the daughter of a landowner, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, who was already betrothed to Don Fernando Valenzuela Valdez.
Then he was forcibly evicted at gunpoint by a rich haciendero who wanted his meagre plot. Because of the death squads supported by the landowners, he had to hid in the jungle, where he became the head of a band of guerrillas. Edgardo Ortega Romero and his comrades became legendary, robbing banks to give money to the poor and support their cause, à la Robin Hood. Santa Barbara was tiny in comparison to Mexico, so he and his comrades often fled to Mexico and hid there, where it was safer.
In a bar in the Sierra Madre mountains of Mexico, Ortega met Hiram Walker, a Yankee who was looking for gold in the mountains. Now Ortega thought that Walker was just a raconteur while Walker thought that Ortega was just a dreamer. However, the two struck a deal: if Walker found his gold and financed the revolution, he would become the Minister of Mines for Santa Barbara. That is, if Ortega successfully overthrew the government of Santa Barbara. Of course, they were very drunk at the time.
Then Walker found a vein of gold in the Sierra Madres. Eureka! He was rich! With the help of Ortega and his comrades, Walker removed the gold from the mine under cover of darkness and deposited it in a bank. Then he financed Ortega's revolution: he bought weapons for Ortega and his comrades, then paid for their railroad tickets to the border of Santa Barbara. It was a small price to pay for their help, Walker thought. Once Ortega overthrow the government of Santa Barbara, he made Walker his Minister of Mines. With the revenue from the mines, Walker built a railroad across the country. So he became the Minister of Railways as well.
In the meantime, Ortega built schools and roads for his people. His beloved, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, became his mistress while her husband, Fernando Valenzuela Valdes, became one of his trusted lieutenants. He even consulted his old mentor, Father Junípero Sierra, from time to time. Though the rich landowners would have preferred that he take land from the church, rather than take it from them, he promised the old priest that he would never take land from the church.
However, the railroad didn't make much money for Hiram Walker. Built through dense jungle, thousands of men died of yellow fever. Many were also bitten by poisonous snakes, and a few were even eaten by jaguars. In the end, the Indians refused to do the work, and he had to hire Chinese workers from Jamaica to finish the job. However, the Chinese didn't want to go back home after the job was finished, so Santa Barbara now had a minority of Chinese who only spoke Spanish grudgingly.
As well, Ortega started to become unpopular among the people, because they were mostly poor and didn't use the railroad to transport their agricultural products to market anyway. So Ortega increasingly became a dictator and turned to the landowners that he once hated for their support; he had his own death squads, you know.
In the meantime, Hiram Walker decided to travel in Europe, where he met two persons of interest: one in London, the other in Paris. In London, he met Benny Rabino.
Now Benny Rabino was an interesting guy. A Jew born in Minsk in the Russian Empire, he was a vaudeville performer in London as a teenager. Then he found his fortune in the diamond mines of South Africa and came back to London a very rich man. He bought an estate along the Thames, married a girl from a good Jewish family, and became the father of a few children. Of course, Benny Rabino was a religious Jew: always the philanthropist, he gave lots of money to the poor in London. However, he was always looking for new ways to make money, because he was a business man.
At the Rabinos, where there was always a big party, Benny Rabino said to Hiram Walker: "Come and taste this fruit."
Rabino gave the fruit to Walker, who peeled it and tasted. Walker didn't like the taste of the fruit very much, whose skin was yellow when it was ripe. He said to Rabino frankly: "The taste is very bland. It doesn't really have a taste."
"I agree, sir," Rabino replied. "It's quite bland."
Then Rabino explained: "It's a banana, sir. It grows in the province of Natal on the eastern coast of South Africa, where it always rains. As I see it, this fruit will grow very well in Central America, where there's lots of jungle and it always rains. If you bought some property there, you could make lots of money. Your railroad, which is barely making money now, will soon begin to make money. You have my word. What do you say, sir?"
"But I don't like the taste of bananas!" Walker protested. "Who's going to buy any bananas if no one likes the taste!"
"But that's the trick, sir," Rabino explained. "If one can persuade you to taste this bland and tasteless fruit at a party, then one could persuade the public to buy this bland fruit en masse. If you sliced this fruit into little pieces, for example, you could put it in a bowl of cereal. The sky's the limit..."
Walker thought it was an intriguing idea. However, he still said nothing.
Then Rabino asked again: "What do you say, sir?"
However, Walker didn't want to make a decision hastily right now, though he was very interested.
Unfortunately, Benny Rabino suffered from severe depression from time to time. One night, under cover of the London fog, he committed suicide by jumping into the Thames and drowning himself. Thus the poor Benny Rabino couldn't be Hiram Walker's first investor.
In Paris, Walker met another interesting guy, another Russian, the Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich Konstantinov. Now the Grand-Duke's country had been ruled by the Bolsheviks now, since the revolution in 1917. As it was the 1920s, there were a lot of Russian exiles at the time, those who preferred to drink vodka and party all night while mourning for their lost country. No matter how much they hated the Bolsheviks, they were in no hurry to return to Mother Russia. No, these beneficiaries of the largesse of the old regime preferred to complain about the "injustice" of being tossed out by their former subjects. (Of course, the bistro owners in Paris didn't like them very much, as they were always drunk and rude to the waiters.)
Now the Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich was really dissolute. He always went out for a night on the town, always got drunk, and was easily moved by great schemes. As well, he was still young, in his thirties, while Walker was over fifty. While he couldn't stand his wife and his kids, his pretty little Parisian mistresses possessed some charm for him, but he was easily bored: he wanted some fun in his life! Walker would gladly provide some fun. Although the Grand-Duke thought that he was learned and wise, a man of the world, he was really simple and naïve.
It bears mentioning that, by now, Walker considered the president of the little Republic of Santa Barbara to be a great nuisance. Of course, Edgardo Ortega Romera had been very grateful for the railroad in his country, because he believed in the material and spiritual progress of his people; this belief was the reason why he had allowed the construction of this railroad in the first place. It was the reason why he had allowed the great cost in human life during its construction: the progress of his people.
However, Walker didn't give a damn about the people of Santa Barbara; he only wanted to make lots of money. So he bought as much land as he could and started to grow bananas. The rich and powerful landowners who sold him the land didn't care; they just moved to the capital city of Santa Barbara and lived in their beautiful chateaux and town houses there. However, the poor Indians who had worked the land of the hacienderos still didn't have land. Neither did the Chinese from Jamaica.
Then President Ortega's former mentor, old Father Junípero Sierra, led a revolt of Indians in the backwoods of San Marcos. From the top of the steeple of the little church in Dolores, Father Junípero rang the bell and shouted: "Long live justice! Long live liberty! Love live the love between our brothers and our sisters all over this land!"
This cry became known in Spanish as El Grito de Dolores: "The Cry of Dolores." However, Father Junípero's revolt was suppressed and thousands of peasants were killed. Ortega then seized land from the Church to gave it to the landless peasants. Father Junípero languished in a filthy prison the rest of his life in the San Marcos mountains, forgotten by everybody, including his church. The President could be very ruthless, you know.
But Ortega was a politician: he approached Hiram Walker and suggested that Walker give land to the Indians. "I don't want you to give all of it," Ortega explained. "Just some of it..."
But Walker refused point blank: "I need a lot of land," he explained. "Otherwise, I will not have enough land to grow bananas. Besides, I bought that land fair and square: I have paid millions of pesetas to your people."
Walker and Ortega had a heated discussion. Walker tried to explain how having him own most of the land in Santa Barbara was beneficial for the economy of Santa Barbara, but the President wouldn't listen; he just didn't understand economics. In the end, Ortega merely walked out, threatening to seize the land if Walker wouldn't give it up voluntarily. It was the end of a beautiful friendship.
There was talk of revolution in Santa Barbara; the people wanted land and liberty. In the capital of Santa Barbara, the President was confronted by a crowd of angry peasants on the grounds of the presidential palace, La Casa Rosada, or "The Pink House." From a balcony overlooking the crowd, the President promised in a grandiose speech to give them what they wanted: land and liberty. Then he concluded his speech with the rousing cry: "Tierra y libertad!" Land and liberty. And: "Muerte a los gringos!" Death to the gringos.
So this was Hiram Walker's plan: the Grand-Duc Igor Grigorievich Konstantinov would install himself at the head of a great army of mercenaries as Tsar Igor I of the former republic of Santa Barbara. The reason why this grotesque idea had an appeal for the Grand-Duke was this: Walker had made him believe that the people of Santa Barbara had really wanted a tsar, though their little country was no bigger than the tiny duchy of Luxembourg.
It was easy for Walker to convince the Grand-Duke of his scheme: a bottle of vodka did the trick. That night, the Grand-Duke found himself aboard a slow luxury liner to Central America, leaving behind his family (and his pretty little mistresses) in Paris.
Since the tiny country of Santa Barbara was only as big as Luxembourg, it would seem easy for the Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich Konstantinov to march at the head of great army like Hernando Cortez, right? However, the march was long and difficult, several months through dense jungle full of mosquitoes and snakes, full of quick sand and creeping vines. It rained all day every day, it seemed, and there were the jaguars. The Grand-Duke lost half of his mercenaries because of mosquitoes and snakes, because of yellow fever and dengue (and the jaguars). Most of the survivors were stricken with yellow fever, including the Grand-Duke himself.
Now the Grand-Duke had been expecting a great welcome and a great parade in his honour in the capital of Santa Barbara, the only city of Santa Barbara. As the city was on top of a great hill that rose out of the jungle, he expected to see the city of El Dorado. He expected a fanfare of trumpets and trombones, but he was disappointed: no one raised even one hurrah. Rather, the city of Santa Barbara was merely a miserable little village in comparison to Paris or St. Petersburg, very filthy, almost deserted, except for a few Indians and a lot of thin and starving dogs. It was really a hole, the inhabitants, lazy and always drunk.
The Grand-Duke couldn't believe it! Where were his loyal subjects? Most of them had fled with their beloved president, Edgardo Ortega Romero, to the jungle, or to the little isolated villages far from the capital. The rest, those who had chosen to stay, stayed because they were infirm or curious (or had gotten drunk the night before and had massive hangovers).
However, the Grand-Duke decided to make a grandiloquent speech nevertheless. He started his speech in broken Spanish: "Since you have asked us to be your Tsar, we have decided to accept. We have come to bring a new era of peace and progress and justice for the whole country. Viva la Santa Barbara!"
The Grand-Duke Igor Grigorievich, or rather, the self-proclaimed Tsar, Igor I, couldn't finish his speech. He fainted before the thin crowd of confused Indians, because of yellow fever and dengue. The jungle was already taking its toll.
Because there was no doctor in town (the only doctor, having fled with the President and his entourage), the Indians had to bring their "Tsar" to a shaman, who fed him peyote and took care of him until he recovered. The Tsar Igor I barely spoke Spanish, and the shaman, of course, who looked to be a hundred years old, didn't speak Russian at all.
After some weeks of the Tsar being delirous, however, the Tsar got better. The old shaman, Don Juan, asked the Tsar without recourse: "What kind of madness has possessed you to sail across the sea in a steamship and march through the jungle to this city?"
The Tsar replied simply, in his broken Spanish: "We are your Tsar..."
Sometimes, it is better not to argue with a madman. The old shaman realized that this man was as crazy as a broom, as well as arrogant. Besides, he didn't know what a tsar was. As well, he was old enough to remember the previous dictator, Manuel de Rosas y Violetas, called El Caudillo, who had overthrown the president before him and killed the old president and thousands of his enemies before being overthrown and killed himself. (The assassination of Manuel de Rosas y Violetas was a national holiday, celebrated with fireworks: El día de la muerte del Caudillo, or "The Day of the Death of the Little Tail that Wagged the Big Dog.")
Don Juan was now afraid to speak frankly because the Russian Grand-Duke could have been another Manuel de Rosas y Violetas, a new El Caudillo. He had no way of knowing for sure.
It should have been apparent that the Russian Grand-Duke had every intention of being a benevolent ruler. The first thing, in the spirit of noblesse oblige, he sent a letter to each village in his "realm," asking them to send a representative to the capital so that he could form a parliament. However most of the villages, being very confused, ignored his request. With the advice of some of the representatives who had bothered to come to the capital, however, he promulgated a program of fixing the roads and installing a telephone system to replace the old telegraph system. However, the supporters of the former president, Edgardo Ortega Romero, resisted through acts of sabotage, blowing up bombs in the new roads after their completion and cutting the telephone lines. What's more, Ortega was robbing banks again.
Now the President wasn't really a bad guy. After all, he had encouraged the construction of the railroad, didn't he? However, we prefer our own bad government rather than the good government of a foreigner: Edgardo Ortega Romero could never submit to a Russian-born tsar, a tsar not elected by the people, no matter what. Even when the Tsar asked the President to be his prime minister in a spirit of peace and reconciliation, the President had to refuse. So there was a civil war in the former republic of Santa Barbara, now a monarchy ruled by a tsar. The hatred of monarchies runs strong in Latin America, you know.
The supporters of the President were called Los Colorados, those of the Tsar, Los Blancos. Of course, Ortega and the Colorados were more popular among the Indians and the Mestizos. However, the members of the forty families that owned all the haciendas (as well as the members of the petite bourgeoisie in the capital) supported the party of the Tsar, the Blancos. More importantly, Hiram Walker, who directed the construction of the railroad, also supported the Blancos. However, the Blancos only controlled the capital of Santa Barbara and its suburbs, that was it.
(But one shouldn't have worried about Hiram Walker: he had his own private army to protect his banana plantations, a state within a state. The guerrillas left him alone, because he had the biggest army in Santa Barbara.)
Now the former President had a mistress, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, gorgeous like a Spanish señorita, with a pretty heart-shaped face and hair long and black like a velvet night under the stars. And her eyes, her laughing eyes, she had eyes like two little pieces of chocolate — delicious! She was the wife of one of the president's lieutenants, Fernando Valenzuela Valdez, but it was a marriage of convenience — alas! — the conjugal union between two of the most powerful families in Santa Barbara for the good of the country. (A sense of nobless oblige ran strong in Santa Barbara as well.)
The moment that her souteneur, the President, fled into the jungle, she became the favourite of the Tsar. Although her body belonged to the Tsar, however, her heart belonged to her country. She was therefore a spy for the Colorados while her former lover (along with her husband) fought in the jungle. Through nights of pillow talk, the Tsar revealed his military secrets little by little, which Doña Carlota dutifully passed on to the former President, Edgardo Ortega Romero, her former lover. What a patriot Doña Carlota was!
However, Doña Carlota could never stoop to murdering the tsar, not even for her country: she was a lover, not a fighter.
Although there was a civil war in the country, Hiram Walker started quietly to buy property to cultivate his bananas and sell them in North America. Hiram Walker was getting older, past sixty, but he had a son, Johnny Walker, who was younger and more ruthless than him, who had boundless energy and a love of power. As well, Johnny Walker wanted to be President of the United States. In the future, he hoped to be the first president from the state of Texas. However, it was Hiram Walker who returned to the United States to be a Congressman, leaving his son in charge of his company, Boca Chica Banana.
Unlike the father, the son didn't trust the Russian Grand-Duke, Igor Grigorievich, who called himself Tsar Igor I. It was with justification: Johnny Walker overheard the Tsar say to himself: "If only the people spoke Russian! We must teach them to speak Russian..."
Johnny Walker was now sure that the Tsar was as crazy as a kid with a new electric guitar on Christmas Day. However, it was his mistress, Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera, whose advice that the Tsar followed. Exasperated, the Tsar complained to his mistress: "What more do the people want that we haven't already done? We build them schools and hospitals, we fix the only highway. It's never enough. So what do we do now?"
Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera replied frankly: "The people want land, Your Majesty. Without land, you have nothing. All of the haciendas are owned by only a few families, that's it. But if we divided the haciendas, then the people would have land..."
"Forget it!" replied the Tsar, shocked. "If we divided the haciendas among the peons, the strong and the sober would only take it back from them again. That's what the kulaks did in Russia, you know. The big fish will eat the little fish, my dear. That's life, survival of the fittest. Most of the peons are worthless as farmers anyway..."
"It's a question of peace, your Majesty," Doña Carlota replied. "There will never be peace if the people don't have land..."
Now the Tsar was capricious, like mentally ill people. Sometimes, he wanted to divide the haciendas among the Indians that worked them, sometimes not. In his more lucid moments, he realized that it was these same hacienderos, the supporters of the Blancos, who supported him against the Colorados in the jungle. Without the hacienderos, no friends. It was that simple.
However, the tsar wasn't always lucid, but was sometimes possessed of a grand and mystical vision of land and liberty for everyone, like some mad prophet out of Dostoyevsky.
Johnny Walker was ready to betray the mad Grand-Duke that his father had installed not very long ago. As Minister of Mines and Railways for San Marcos, he began a series of secret meetings with a general in the service of the Tsar, Edmundo Videla Blanca. Without further ado, General Videla overthrew the Tsar, who was drunk, re-declared Santa Barbara a republic, and threw the Tsar in a filthy prison in the mountains. Then the Blancos and the Colorados made peace while the Walker family quietly bought up all the land. All men were brothers again, except for the Chinese: President Videla sent them all back to Jamaica.
Then there was a presidential election between Edgardo Ortega Romero of the Colorados and Edmundo Videla Blanca of the Blancos. To everybody's surprise, Videla won in a landslide — the Colorados couldn't believe it! The Colorados screamed that the election was a fraud, and Ortega hid in the jungle again, blowing up bridges and robbing banks. The civil war was on again.
Doña Carlota Ferrera y Rivera tried to tempt the new president with her considerable charms, like Cleopatra with Octavian after the death of Marc Antony, but the new President was cold towards her. Alas, he had a mistress that was only eighteen years old.
There was a brief trial where the former Tsar Igor I was sentenced to death by firing squad by the five magistrates in a unanimous verdict. Before he was shot, however, the Tsar shouted: "Viva la Santa Barbara!"
The soldiers no longer wanted to shoot their beloved tsar, but they had to do it. Now the Tsar's chest was covered with so many medals that the medals stopped all the bullets in their tracks. So what do you do? It was a miracle, right? But they were not ruled by silly superstition even in the tiny Republic of Santa Barbara: the captain of the firing squad merely walked up to the Tsar and administered the coup de grâce. Santa Barbara was a modern and secular republic, you know, not a barbaric kingdom of the Middle Ages.
And they lived happily ever after in Santa Barbara, except for the Chinese, who were deported to Jamaica. Then some communists who were hiding in the jungle overthrew the government and established the People's Republic of Santa Barbara.
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