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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Jose Delarra, sculptor of Guevara monument,
dies
Posted on Thu, Aug. 28, 2003
HAVANA - (EFE) -- Cuban sculptor Jose Delarra,
whose giant statue of Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary
Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara is in central Cuba, died
of a heart ailment. He was 65.
The impressive monument by Delarra, who died
Tuesday, is in Villa Clara province, 186 miles
east of Havana.
The memorial also houses the remains of Guevara
and several of his guerrilla comrades, who were
killed in Bolivia in 1966.
Delarra's work can be found in 40 countries,
including Angola, the Dominican Republic, Mexico
and Spain, where he lived for several years before
1959 and built five monuments.
The artist is also known for his paintings and
drawings, and had recently inaugurated an exhibit
at the Jose Martí Memorial in Havana's
Plaza of the Revolution.
He was born on April 26, 1938, in San Antonio
de los Baños, a small town in Havana province,
served in the Cuban legislature and was awarded
the Order of National Hero of Labor of the Cuban
Republic, the Cuban press reported.
Banking family patriarch was seen as a pioneer
of Cuban-American Bar
By Gregg Fields, gfields@herald.com.
Raul Ernesto Valdes-Fauli, patriarch of a Cuban-American
family prominent in Miami banking and legal circles,
died Tuesday of a heart attack at the age of 84.
Valdes-Fauli, who represented banking and sugar
interests in his native country before leaving
for the United States in 1960, lived in Coral
Gables.
His children include sons Raul J., the former
Coral Gables mayor and lawyer at Steel Hector
& Davis; Jose, president of the South Florida
region of Colonial Bank; Gonzalo, a director of
Knight Ridder who formerly headed Latin American
operations at the Barclays banking organization;
and daughter Teresa Weintraub, president of Fiduciary
Trust International of the South in Miami.
''Raul Valdes-Fauli was one of the pioneers of
the Cuban-American Bar here in Miami,'' Joseph
P. Klock Jr., managing partner of the Steel Hector
& Davis law firm, said in a statement.
"He set a standard for excellence and integrity
that established a very high bar for practice
in this community and bridged the cultural differences
as Miami moved from a sleepy Southern town into
an international business community.''
Valdes-Fauli, whose family traces its Cuban roots
back four centuries, graduated from Havana's Belén
School in 1936. He earned his law degree at the
University of Havana.
His law practice was established on Havana's
Aguiar Street, considered that city's Wall Street,
and he served as deputy of the Havana Bar Association.
Among his noteworthy clients was the Cuban Bankers
Association, which he served as general counsel
before moving to Miami.
Valdes-Fauli also represented the island's economically
vital sugar industry, Raul Jr. said.
He sent his family into exile shortly after Fidel
Castro came to power, then left Cuba himself in
1960.
But the prosperity he enjoyed in his homeland
didn't follow him to Miami, at least not at first.
Initially, he made a living selling Wajay biscuits
door-to-door before finding work as a legal assistant.
His wife, Margarita, who had previously lived
the life of an affluent Havana housewife, got
a job in a toy store. She died in 1985.
Eventually, he returned to the legal practice.
In the 1970s, Valdes-Fauli was among the first
class of Cuban exile attorneys to pass the Bar
exam under a special program administered by the
University of Florida.
He later teamed with Raul Jr. -- a Harvard grad
-- specializing in real estate transactions.
''It was wonderful,'' his son recalled. "He
was a very good lawyer.''
Besides being a good lawyer, the father was also
a good cook -- the best in the family, he liked
to tell people. He took particular pride in a
tomato-based concoction of crab and cornmeal.
He learned his culinary skills from his own father,
who had cooked private meals for his friends and
fellow members at the Havana Yacht Club years
before.
The elder Valdes-Fauli remained an active lawyer
until past his 80th birthday. Through the years
he won numerous accolades and honors, including
a human relations award from the American Jewish
Committee in 1985.
In 1994, the Dade County Bar Association honored
him for his more than 50 years as an attorney.
A Mass will be at 10 a.m. today at St. Agnes
Catholic Church on Key Biscayne. Burial will be
immediately afterward at Woodlawn Park, 3260 SW
Eighth St. in Miami, the family said.
Besides his children, Valdes-Fauli is survived
by his wife, Beba, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Exiled Cuban painter to visit Miami
From his California home, Viredo imagines
his mystical hometown of Regla.
By Fabiola .Santiago, fsantiago@herald.com
In a California city not far from the sea --
as he cannot, will not live far from the sea --
Cuban master painter Viredo Espinosa conjures
the images of his Caribbean childhood in brightly
splashed canvases.
Oils, acrylics, linocuts and aquatints depict
the religious and musical themes of his birthplace
of Regla, the mystical port city across the bay
from Havana.
From his neighborhood near the water's edge where
ferries docked, and from his father's barbershop
where storytellers abounded, Viredo had a close-up
view of a multicultural city, a cradle of Afro-Cuban
culture and traditions.
He grew up among stevedores, ship carpenters
and mechanics who worked and lived in Regla, most
of them descendants of slaves who brought their
ancient religions to Cuba.
There were the abakuá, an elite male society
evolved from the Calabar region of West Africa,
the palo monte who hailed from Central Africa's
Congo, and the practitioners of santería,
the popular religion mixed with Catholicism that
evolved in times of slavery among the lukumí,
the Nigerian Yoruba.
''There was so much folklore that it was a direct
influence, and I am still working from that place,''
says the 75-year-old, who is known in Cuban art
circles simply as Viredo.
One of only three living painters from a rebellious
group of artists known as ''Los Once'' (The Eleven),
which evolved during a vibrant 1950s period as
an alternative to the traditional European-trained
mainstream, Viredo has quietly worked in the West
Coast for the last three decades since he left
Cuba on one of the Freedom Flights of 1969.
In exile, he had to take up commercial work to
earn a living, but Regla has never left his artwork,
as the paintings that go on exhibit Friday in
Little Havana illustrate.
THEMES AND SYMBOLS
The stunning mixed media on canvas The Cabildo
is Coming depicts African drummers in a seaside
park setting with Havana's skyline in the distance.
Sometimes in minuscule detail, the background
incorporates characters, symbols and scenes like
a harmonica player, a procession of worshipers
carrying a virgin's statue and the famous Regla
ferry. The cabildos were aid societies organized
by slaves to keep alive ancient traditions.
An oil on linen in striking blues, Iconografía
de la Virgen de Regla, is a portrait of the patroness
Virgin of Regla -- Yemayá to santería
practitioners. Likewise, the painting Irime features
the main dancer in the public ceremonies of the
abakuá. The dancer is dressed in the typical
pointed cloth mask, a colorful outfit, and is
surrounded by religious calligraphy.
Viredo learned the symbols when he was a youth
already gifted in drawing and an elder abakuá
who was losing his sight asked him to copy his
notebooks.
''They are ideographic and they represent a lot
of things,'' Viredo says. "I use them a lot
in my paintings.''
Llabó, an oil on canvas, is the painting
of a woman dressed all in white, an initiate into
the santería priesthood.
Some of his work also depicts African-Americans.
A collection of linocuts, aquatints and etchings
-- portraits of Cuban and African-American jazz
and blues musicians -- are included in The Smithsonian's
traveling exhibit, Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination.
'I've been at exhibits where everyone is looking
for the artist and they say, 'He's not here.'
And I am, but they are looking for a black man
because of the African themes in my work,'' says
Viredo, whose white beard gives him a Hemingwayeske
flair.
For the artist, coming to Miami, where he can
contact friends from his Cuban past, is a special
treat.
For the exhibit at Maxoly Cuban Art Gallery,
Viredo has created a colorful poster commemorative
of Los Once that evokes a time when the penniless
artists met for literary and artistic tertulias,
get-togethers, at Las Antillas, a Havana café
favored because "the owner didn't press us
to order right away and let us go on and on for
hours.''
Just recently, the Cuban government invited Viredo
to participate in a Havana event to mark the 50th
anniversary of Los Once. Two of his paintings
from 1953 and 1957 are being exhibited at Bellas
Artes, the Cuban national museum.
But Viredo declined the invitation.
''The truth is that, for me, it would be very
emotional to go there and I'm too old to suffer
through all that emotion,'' he says. "I don't
travel that much anymore, but Miami, in Miami
I'm home.''
THREE TIMES AN EXILE
He jokes that he's ''exiled three times over''
-- from Cuba, from Miami and from Los Angeles.
When he arrived in Miami in February of 1969,
''they told me they didn't want any more Cubans,''
he says. "They wanted to send me to Virginia,
but it was too cold there in February, so they
asked me if I knew anybody in California, and
I did. I had a friend.''
He and his wife Alicia ended up in Los Angeles,
but he moved to Irvine, looking for a smaller
community closer to the water.
''I should live in Miami,'' Viredo says. "I
visit whenever I can, above all else, because
I love to eat fish from the Caribbean. People
like the fish here in California, but we Cubans
like the snapper and the yellowtail from the Caribbean.
There's nothing like them.''
Acclaimed Cuban joins international ballet
fest
By DANIELA LAMAS, dlamas@herald.com
For 10 years, sisters Lorna and Lorena Feijoó
danced worlds apart -- Lorna earned rave reviews
at the National Ballet of Cuba, while Lorena left
Cuba to dance in Chicago and then San Francisco.
Now, Lorna too has come to the United States,
and recently began her first season as a principal
ballerina at the Boston Ballet.
The acclaimed dancer will fly down to Miami for
her South Florida debut Sept. 6, part of the eighth
annual International Ballet Festival of Miami,
a week of performances, exhibits, film, master
classes in a variety of South Florida locations
that begins Friday.
It's the brainchild of Pedro Pablo Peña,
the founder and director of Miami Hispanic Ballet,
who started the festival to spotlight Latin dancers
in classical pieces. While this initial goal remains
the focus, Pedro's festival has evolved to become
more international and encompass modern dance.
This year, Lorna Feijoó, whom Peña
describes as the ''last generation of the Cuban
ballet,'' joins dancers from 22 companies representing
16 countries -- England, Austria, Spain, Argentina,
Venezuela and Canada among them.
They will all have a turn onstage during the
week's performances, to be held at the Manuel
Artime Theater in Miami and the Broward Center
for the Performing Arts, with gala performances
Saturday and Sunday at the Jackie Gleason Theater.
Each program has a different focus. Those on
Wednesday through Sept. 5 will feature neo-classical
and contemporary dance, while the Saturday and
Sunday lineup returns to the festival's classical
origins. Most companies will bring only two dancers,
but the Dominican Republic's Ballet Nacional Dominicano
will bring 14.
''This is a great, important opportunity for
the Miami audience,'' said Peña, who came
from Cuba in 1980. He saw a hole in the city's
festival schedule -- none were devoted explicitly
to ballet, he said -- and set about filling it.
His success so far reflects Latinos' increased
presence in ballet, with more Latino dancers in
major companies and better quality in South American
classical troupes. . In addition to Feijoó,
Argentine Marianella Nuñez, a principal
ballerina at the Royal Ballet of England, also
will perform.
Peña said he sees the festival's continued
growth to be his personal mission.
''We each have one responsibility in this life,''
he said. "This is my responsibility, and
I want to continue it.''
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