Another Seemingly Meaningless Post By Val Prieto

Another seemingly meaningless post by Val Prieto. No, not the photograph of the curvaceous 1950s Tropicana dancer, that, at least, is historical in nature, or, rather, remarkable in natural history. There is no excuse for a nation filled with such women to have a declining birth rate. Except, of course, the national hecatomb that has rendered everything barren in our country.

The post to which I refer is entitled "Money for Nothing, Chicks for Free - Part Deux." The title does not deliver on its promise, as one might suppose. I thought at first that it might be yet another condemnation of remittances, which, as we all know by now, stifle the revolutionary instincts of the Cuban people by showering them with such luxuries as two meals a day. This time, however, it was not those mendicants who refuse to work for nothing on Castro's behalf that had ruffled Val's feathers.

The offenders this time were Cuban musicians who had settled in New Jersey, and lived "in a tiny, run-down apartment with a tiny, run-down kitchen, a tiny, run-down bathroom and a tiny, run-down bedroom." Now, if one did not know Val, one might suppose that this was a lament for Cubans who had fallen under the bell curve and were struggling to survive in a society that did not recognize their talents or reward them.

No such thing.

The reason these Cubans do not boast modern kitchens (that paradigm of success in this country) is that they prefer to accumulate gold jewelry, loads of it, which they proudly showed off in an old PBS documentary that caught Val's attention and appears to have wounded his sensitivities to the quick.

Ah, those ñangara musicians, even in la Yuma, prefer expensive trinkets to the rudiments of solid citizenship, such as a newly-refurnished kitchen. Of course, with gold now selling at the highest price in history, the Cuban musicians who invested their earnings in gold chains and such have reaped a mighty harvest, while those who remodelled their kitchens are begging for nails.