Our House in Havanna

[rwork]

Has anyone seen this documentary on Link TV?A Cuban woman who left when Castro took power, returns to Havanna after 37 years.Shows her trying to visit her birth home, but isn't allowed to by Cuban officials.The most touching event in the documentary was her meeting with a poor Cuban farmer.His clothes were hanging on his body by a few threads.He looked to be about 70 years old.He made charcoal in his spare time to sell to his neighbors.He said he liked to read and remembered reading some Readers Digest magazines years ago.He quoted Abraham Lincoln saying "If a man looks down to the ground he can't conceive of God,but if will look to the stars he will see proof of Gods existence".

[Bridget Burke]

1. The film sounds better than your description....

After 40 years, Silvia Morini returns to the palatial house of her youth in Cuba, where her nostalgia for a pre-Castro world confronts modern Cuban reality. Filmmaker Stephen Olsson presents Silvia's tapestry of rose-colored memories, history, culture, and tragi-comic encounters, contrasting sharply with recollections from working-class Cubans. Yet as Silvia discovers an evolving Cuba, she herself undergoes a surprising change-not entirely altering her political outlook but becoming, as she puts it, "more human."

www.pbs.org/pov/pov2000/ourhouseinhavana/

There are some interesting comments at the site.

The Revolution would not have been successful had not most of the Cuban people supported it. Most of them did not live in "palatial" homes.

[UTUSN]

2. Sorry, I Found Her More Touched Than Touching

I detest CASTRO, but moreso the wingnut oligarchs he threw out. I saw this a month or two ago, and what I remember is that this Scarlett O'HARA-wannabe spent the whole time trying to impress somebody besides herself with how charmed her life had been, the long afternoon tea parties, meeting CHURCHILL, the cotillions in the ballrooms, and on and on. Her photographer/wannabe-wastrel son was all goo-goo about how rich people "don't carry cash, don't think about money."

But her most profound insight was saying that the reason there was trash on the beach was because THESE PEOPLE had just been GIVEN something without WORKING FOR IT---HAH! Not like her!

If Shrub manages to topple CASTRO as a side-jewel in his crown, these parasites will doubtless demand to have their estates back.