Family History

I was born August 18, 1981, in Rosewood Hospital, Houston, TX.  8:15 am.  My birth father is Carlos Gustavo “Chicho” Antelo Tarradelles, a Bolivian national who studied at UH.  My mother is Elvira “Viruchy” Delgado Rosello.  My real father is Mark Giambi, “real” in the sense that he raised me and had a significant role in who I am today.

My mother left Cuba at a young age — precisely what age no one can be sure; it’s a secret my mother has said she’d take with her to the grave.  It was late 1962.  My grandfather was involved with a counter revolution to oust Castro, who’d declared his Communist intentions only after gaining popular support and toppling the corrupt Batista regime in 1959.  No Cuban thought their country would turn to what it is today.  Many feared the worst, but most were in denial or disbelief until the moment the left their home for good.

The Delgados — my mother’s side of the family — had originally settled on the island around 1800.  Speculation says that they originated from the Canary Islands, off the coast of Spain.  Over a century and a half they accumulated much wealth as sugar farmers, and had survived the wars of independence from Spain by “vacationing” in the US, near Poughkeepsie, NY.  My great-great-grandfather became an American citizen at this time, around 1875.  He and his family returned to Cuba in 1902.

Cuba was a Spanish colony until the turn of the 20th century.  After independence was won, it did not have much experience with self-governance.  It was the most economically successful of the Latin American states, due to its dominance in sugar and tobacco production.  (The Delgados were among the wealthiest families on the island — founding towns, establishing railroads, donating to schools and churches.)  But in terms of politics, it was easier to rely on her wealthy neighbor to the north.  Havana became the playground of millionaires.  Sinatra performed there, and American gangsters built casinos and hotels.  The drug trade was in its infancy.  The poor got poorer, the rich got richer.  President after president, supported for a while by the US, came and went, each worse and more corrupt than the last.  The whole system of government was just a way to make money rather than to implement laws and sustaining infrastructure.  Most of the rich families outside of the capital wanted no part in it.  They only wanted the land they owned and the money they made in honest work.  The Delgados were no different.

Corruption became so rampant in the 1950s that even the wealthy grew tired of it.  Redemption came in the form of a young revolutionary by the name of Fidel Castro, aided by his younger brother Raul and a fiery, contemptuous young doctor named Ernesto Guevara, known as “Che” because of his Argentinian birth.  From the mountains of the Sierra Maestra they would broadcast guerrilla radio extolling their victories in small skirmishes and battles against Fulgencio Batista’s soldiers.  Support for the guerrillas swept the country like wildfire.  On January 1st, 1959, Castro rode into Havana victoriously.  The country has been his for 50 years.

Castro was now a Communist.  In the decade that followed, thousands of people who spoke out against him were placed against a wall and shot.  Propaganda, that powerful tool of despots and dictators, replaced billboards and advertisements.  Being gay was a crime.  Being an artist was a crime.  Fishing was a crime (imagine living on an island where fishing is a crime.  That’s like saying breathing is a crime).  The US was now a foe and the sole culprit to all the malfunctions Cubans had endured.  Some Cubans followed Castro like the Apostles followed Christ; he could do no wrong.  Most did the smart thing, and the most painful:  they left home.  The Delgados, again, were no different.

My grandfather, Armando Francisco, was a doctor.  He used much of his family’s money to help a small insurgency trying rid the country of communism and Castro.  He became public enemy number one for a time being.  Eventually he would flee to the US, sending for his family a few months later. My mother told me about how the military police came to the Delgado farm looking for him in the middle of the night.  They rounded up the family and farmhands, cooks and nurses (about 40 people in all), shone their jeep headlights at them as well as their Kalashnikov rifles.  Had Armando Francisco been found in the house, they would’ve all been shot as conspirators for housing a criminal.  He had fled two days before.

The Delgado diaspora spread widely in the last 47 years.  Most came to the US: Miami, Chicago, New York, and Houston.  Some ended up in Venezuela, Chile, and France.

The Southern US was a different place than it is today.  Being mostly rural and agrarian, the South in the 60s was in need of doctors.  After a brief stint in Miami my grandfather Armando Francisco found work in Vicksburg, Mississippi.  Most would think that at that time a Cuban family moving to a historically Confederate town would have faced racial hardships, but quite the opposite occured.  They were treated more like celebrities.  They had escaped Communism and embraced American liberties and capitalism.  They were hard workers and good students.  My grandfather commanded all the respect of a local doctor.  A clothing drive was organized by the area church when they first arrived with only what they wore.

Afterwards they moved for a short while to Jackson, Tennessee.  But the real lure was Houston.  With its burgeoning Medical Center and vast amount of land on the cheap, doctors invaded the city like miners to a gold rush.  My grandfather set up private practice in the west end of the city around 1970.  The practice is still there, run by his son Alejandro.  Their house is still in the same location it was off Westheimer road close to Beltway 8.  My grandfather turned 89 on April 5, and with the health problems he faces, we’re afraid he won’t be with us for much longer.  He never returned to Cuba.

I look up to my grandfather.  I see him as a hero in an epic.  Nothing makes me prouder than when people compare me to him, by way of looks or temperement.  I knew him as a very proud man, stubborn, only the slightest bit cocky, but strong and very much a family man.  And I see myself “returning” to Cuba, settling in my ancestral land, reclaiming the houses and properties lost half a century ago.  It’s a nice dream.

Carlos Giambi

Bolivia in need…

Published in the Daily Cougar April 8 2009…
http://www.thedailycougar.com/bolivia-in-need-of-restructure-1.1648684

Know thy Enemy, Obama

After a whirlwhind tour of the globe, meeting with nearly 90 world leaders in the last three weeks, President Obama has come home to his political rivals calling him weak.

Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president and the Summit’s version of the playground bully, shook hands with Obama and extended his intention of becoming friends with him, something which made Obama’s rivals irate.  Former Vice President Dick Cheney went on the air to call Obama’s apologies to the people of Europe for past mistakes the US has made “disturbing,” as well as saying that he sent a message of weakness to the people of Latin America with his actions at the Summit.

Does Cheney really think that Latin Americans liked it better when his old boss George W. Bush was being stubborn as a mule towards any diplomatic progress with our southern neighbors?

Between Obama’s appearance at the Summit and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s work with Mexico on the drug violence bordering our country, more progress has been made in a few months of leadership than the eight years of political spooning on the “war” on terror between Bush and former Mexican president Vicente Fox.

A direct quote from Cheney to Fox’s Sean Hannity: “You have millions of people all across South America who are watching how we respond. And if they see an American president sort of cozying up to somebody like (Nicaraguan President) Daniel Ortega or Chavez, I think it’s not helpful. I think it sort of sets the wrong standard.”

Cozying up?  Hardly.

For a quick photo-op Chavez handed Obama a book on European and US imperialism in South America during the 19th century and how it ruined the continent.  Ortega blasted the US for nearly an hour during his speech, in which Obama wryly let him off the hook with a joke.

As in his campaign for the presidency, Obama has done what has worked for him so far: research what Bush did, then do the opposite.  Diplomacy can have positive affects.

This last Summit of the Americas, hosted by Trinidad and Tobago, could very well be the last one excluding Cuba, which has been absent by American impetus since 1962.  Brazilian president Ignacio Lula da Silva all but lauded the US, who during the summit said that a new era could be developing between the US and South America.  Raul Castro, brother of Fidel and current leader of Cuba, has publicly stated: “We have sent word to the US government in private and in public that we are willing to discuss everything — human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything.”

While Cuba is famous for saying one thing and doing another, current President Castro is not as politically strong as his brother Fidel.  Nor is he as stubborn.  If the US opens up lines of communication to Cuba, the ball lies in their court to start the reforms their country needs.  Castro (both Raul and Fidel) have said that the US needs to lift the ancient embargo that has strangled their people.  So Obama is talking of doing so, if Cuba therefore lifts the absurdly high taxes on the few monies and goods entering that country from ours.

If it seems that President Obama is being weak, or is “cozying” up to his opponents and critics abroad, fear not: he’s taking a different, some would say radical, approach to diplomacy.  He’s studying his enemies, Sun Tzu style.  Maybe he should study his own enemies here.

Carlos Giambi

O&E Original Draft

So my last post was a link to TDC of my film review of Observe and Report.  I thought there were some mistakes edited in, so I’m posting my original.  CG

Observe and Report:  regrettable and forgettable.

A warning: enter Observe and Report with an open mind.  Really open.

It’s barely what the trailers depict.  It’s nothing like Seth Rogen has ever done before.  It’s an exploration of the darker side of comedy by director Jody Hill (The Foot Fist Way, HBOs Eastbound and Down).  But when one enters the movie expecting to leave a bellyful of laughs behind, the cringing violence and rampant drug abuse can leave a sour taste in the palate.

Ronnie Barnhardt (Rogen) is the head of security at the local mall – calling him anything less isn’t a good idea – who takes on his responsibilities with a little too much gusto.  Besides bullying the skater kids in the parking lot and haranguing dark-skinned kiosk owners, his life is pretty lame – until a chubby roaming flasher in the standard pervert-issued tan trench coat lets the customers get full frontal in the parking lot.  When a store in the mall gets robbed and trashed a few days later, Ronnie sees both offenses as his big chance to do something great in his life.

The elements are all present for a decent movie at best.  Anna Faris plays Brandi, a bimbo behind a cosmetics counter – a role Faris has perfected throughout appearances in Lost in Translation and Waiting.  Everyone loves to hate Ray Liotta, especially as the low-tolerance detective Harrison.  There are a couple of laugh-out-lines delivered.  Yet these elements are all supporting characters to the real leads: violence, mental deficiencies, delusions of grandeur, even date rape.  Not quite the typical gags Hollywood tends to churn out.

It’s easy to weave the thread through Hill’s three character creations so far: Foot Fists’ Fred Simmons and Eastbound’s Kenny Powers (both played by Danny McBride), and Rogen’s Ronnie.  Respectively, a tae kwon do instructor, a former baseball star, and a mall cop.  All three think bigger than themselves, all three think they’re worth more than they really are.  In Eastbound it’s Powers’ ego which causes his downfall and keeps him from bettering himself.  In Observe, it’s Ronnie’s bipolar disorder.  But while it’s fun to make fun of such an over-the-top sense of importance that Powers’ has, it’s less so to rag on an illness that causes the main character to break skateboards over a kid’s back and go on drug binges for the hell of it.

There are some qualities that are worth noting, even if they don’t exactly redeem the movie.  Seeing Seth Rogen take on a role like Ronnie Barnhardt, although sometimes hard to watch, is a relief from the self-imposed typecast he’s made of himself in The 40-year-old Virgin, Knocked Up, and Monsters vs. Aliens.  He shows range and that he can stand on his own without a great supporting cast with which to exchange improvised one-liners.  It’s also good to know that Hollywood can put out a movie, even on Easter weekend, that isn’t afraid to offend.

But that’s about it.  By the end of the movie you’ll be pining for that great supporting cast for the one-liners, you’ll yearn for the old Seth Rogen.

O&R Review

http://www.thedailycougar.com/film-brings-few-laughs-falls-short-1.1652497

Freedom v. Equality in S.A.

A professor last week posed a question I was all too eager to jump over:  “Is socialism all that bad?”

As the son of a Cuban exile mother and a Bolivian father, my instincts were to raise Ol’ Glory in the classroom and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to capitalism.  However, I decided to let the question stew in my brain over the weekend, simmering with some other tasty ingredients: my upbringing, the Red Scare, runaway consumerism, failed drug policies, etc.  A cornucopia of flavors that, like any intrepid culinary creator, I was savoring.

The country of Bolivia right now is in a critical state.  Its president, Evo Morales, of Aymara Indian descent, has siezed control of the country’s oil and natural gas reserves, is attempting to control all private lands for redistribution among the poor indigenous peoples, and has thumbed his nose towards the US and its attempts to curb narcotraffic and the scourge of drug abuse here.

As the former head of Bolivia’s coca leaf grower’s union, he published an op-ed piece in the New York Times defending his and his people’s rights to chew coca, basically cocaine in its natural state.  He defends its purity and its properties, both of which have the same effects as cocaine, minus the addiction.  What he doesn’t defend, in fact he fails to mention altogether, is how in the last 4 years since his election and his loosening of coca leaf regulations, the rise of cocaine use in this country has prompted drug wars on our borders with Mexico, and a scourge of paco which has been ravaging the poorer portions of Argentina and Brazil.  Paco is comparable to crack; it is smoked, it is highly addictive, and it’s polluted with some of the harshest chemicals found.  I drove the streets of Santa Cruz, Bolivia, and spoke with the locals.  They told me how in two years time there has been an influx of crime and drug dealing, something that was scarce in one of the nation’s wealthiest departments (provinces).

Back to socialism: is it that bad?  Inherently, what it strives for, one could say no, it’s not that bad.  While capitalism favors freedom, socialism strives for equality.  The Aymari and Guarani people of Bolivia are treated as second-class citizens by the whites.  The whites blame (accurately) the Indians for electing Evo into office and threatening their property.  Certainly a sense of equality for all people, white and Indian, should be a goal.  But in Bolivia, the elimination of racism cannot come through the government, it has to come through the people.  Nationalizing private wealth for redistribution among the poor will not cure social problems affecting the country.

Socialism also doesn’t help when you alienate your country from parts of the world.  Refusing to work with foreign states to make the world a better place and addressing the problems of drug abuse does nothing except hurt ties with potential allies.  The US cannot assume that a country, merely for having socialist leanings or tendencies, is automatically a threat, an enemy, or a failed state.  But it can assume that a nation who uses political idealogies for ill towards ANY people a threat.  Recently, President Obama met the Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.  It became fuel to the Republican fire and their tirade against the president.  He played it cool, however, cracking jokes and smiles with one of the most fervent critics of the US.  It’s a different approach, one that is clever and not weak.  US involvement in South America has to be diplomatic, and it should tread carefully.

Eye Opening Spring Break

Ignorance towards the emergence of Socialism in South America

While hordes of spring breakers headed for fun-in-the-sun destinations like South Padre Island, Destin, FL, even Cancun, Mexico, I embarked on my first trip to South America.  I would be meeting a half of my family, one that I never even knew existed until about ten years ago, for the first time, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. There were huge lunches, nights of drinking, feasting, singing, laughing.  Everyone was concerned for me and my sister in the times of the economic crisis here in the States.

And everyone had one thing to talk about:  Evo Morales.

I’d only heard about this “Evo” character through the recent communique I’d established with my family in Santa Cruz, thanks to the internet (young cruzeños are crazy about Facebook).  Elected in 2005, Evo (as he is known throughout South America) became the nation’s, and actually the world’s, first purely indigenous head of state, although that fact remains in contention.  See Ethnicity.  He’s also a socialist.

The fact is this:  an ignorance towards the goings-on politically in South America could spell trouble for the US.

Here, close to everyone has heard the name of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s dictatorial president.  He’s allied himself with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and considers himself a close friend of Fidel Castro, all but called for war with the US, and controls the largest oil reserve in South America.  But nearly no one can name the leftist and socialist-reaching leaders of Chile (Michelle Bachelet), Brazil (Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva), and of course, Morales.  What confounded me was, why?

I don’t want to rabble-rouse, be accused of being McCarthy-like, or revert to the days of the Cold War.  But if an entire continent is turning over towards a place for discontent towards American policies, can the US afford not to give it some attention?

Morales leads the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party in La Paz, Bolivia.  He’s also the head of the largest union of coca growers.  Coca, the leaf, is the base of cocaine.  It is legal in Bolivia, although US diplomats have urged the eradication of it.  Coca is how Morales is financed, and although it can be used raw, in teas, or in other forms, the money being made is from its sale to narcotraffickers.

In Santa Cruz, the city and department (the Bolivian equivalent of a province), the wealthy are almost all involved in oil and natural gas, the latter which is second to Venezuela in amount.  So there is a region in South America that is wealthy and embraces the US, actually implores the US for assistance.  They seek autonomy from the rest of Bolivia, but they are outnumbered.  While the US mired itself in the Mideast, we could have been aiming for a foothold in a vast area with promise of commerce.

Like most of South America, Bolivia is a country with an incredible divide between the wealthy descendants of Spanish colonists and dirt-poor native Indians (I’d aim for a more PC term, but apparently that’s about as PC as it gets down there).  Racial tensions in Bolivia, especially in Santa Cruz, are common.  Although nowadays people are dumb as to who fired the first bullet, so to speak, there is no denying its existence.  There is also no denying that the native Indians also outnumber the “europeans” (again, a loose term that flies down there).  It’s this great number of Indians that turned out to vote in Evo as president, as well as more than a few leftist whites who have more faith in ideologues than in reality.

There is much to consider for South America, if only more people had access to what happens there.

Carlos Giambi

JAN 20!

Inaugural Ballin’:  I Have Something in Common with Spike Lee?

Jan. 20 was a new day.  Challenges were being presented, obstacles overcome, and fresh faces were beaming with the bright possibilities of the future.

It was the first day of the spring semester, of course.

So there I was, 50 or so of us watching the flatpanels in the CTC, laughing as the Honorable John Roberts fumbled the phrasing (is it “execute faithfully” or “faithfully execute”?), clapping when Mr. Obama said “So help me God”, wincing at the cutaways of former President Bush, and wondering, are we all happy for the same reasons?

I watched news report after news report (after news report) of the African-American community in tears, happy just to have lived to see this day.  First black president of the US.  He is black, isn’t he?

Let’s see, his father was Kenyan, his mother was white.  He was born in Hawai’i, raised in Kansas, educated in Massachusetts, and made his career in Illinois.  He practically transcends race: he’s American.  Really American.  That should make all of us happy.

The Jordan Times ran an op-ed that basically was glad for the change in administration.  “Now that President Obama is in the White House, Americans, like many other peoples of the world, look to him to deliver on his promise to bring about the much-needed change. And there is plenty of room for that in Washington!”  I think that’s a good indicator of how some parts of the world feel, especially the ones in current (if not constant) crises.  They’re happy, mindful, but not holding a collective breath.  He’s not the Messiah.  He’s an ambitious man with a lot on his plate.

–Carlos Giambi