• Complain

Tom Miller - Cuba, Hot and Cold

Here you can read online Tom Miller - Cuba, Hot and Cold full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. publisher: University of Arizona Press, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Tom Miller Cuba, Hot and Cold

Cuba, Hot and Cold: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Cuba, Hot and Cold" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Tom Miller: author's other books


Who wrote Cuba, Hot and Cold? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Cuba, Hot and Cold — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Cuba, Hot and Cold" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
PRAISE FOR TOM MILLER TRADING WITH THE ENEMY Miller gives the reader a vivid - photo 1

PRAISE FOR TOM MILLER

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY

Miller gives the reader a vivid sense of Cubans endurance and inventiveness in dealing with surviving.

The Nation

May just be the best travel book about Cuba ever written.

Lonely Planet, Cuba

Tom Millers book is written with wit and grace and is chock full of information that few, if any, know about Cuba. A wonderful book.

Jim Harrison

THE PANAMA HAT TRAIL

Part reportage, part travelogue, and all pleasure; it is written with enthusiasm and wit... filled with lively anecdotes, pungent asides, vivid scenes... a pleasure on every page of the journey.

Washington Post

Among the best travel books ever written.

National Geographic Traveler

REVENGE OF THE SAGUARO

[Miller is] a superb reporter and slyly funny stylist. This is a compulsively readable book by one of our best nonfiction writers.

San Francisco Chronicle

OTHER BOOKS BY TOM MILLER

Revenge of the Saguaro: Offbeat Travels Through Americas Southwest

Trading with the Enemy: A Yankee Travels Through Castros Cuba

The Panama Hat Trail

On the Border: Portraits of Americas Southwestern Frontier

Writing on the Edge: A Borderlands Reader (ed.)

How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life

Travelers Tales Cuba: True Stories (ed.)

The Assassination Please Almanac

Arizona: The Land and the People (ed.)

The Interstate GourmetTexas and the Southwest (co-author)

The University of Arizona Press
www.uapress.arizona.edu

2017 by Tom Miller
All rights reserved. Published 2017

Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3586-6 (paper)

Cover design by Leigh McDonald
Cover photos: Taxi in Trinidad [top] and Sounds of Cuba [bottom] by Bud Ellison

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Miller, Tom, 1947 author.

Title: Cuba, hot and cold / Tom Miller.

Description: Tucson : The University of Arizona Press, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017002332 | ISBN 9780816535866 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: CubaDescription and travel. | CubaSocial life and customs. | CubaHistory. | Miller, Tom, 1947 TravelCuba.

Classification: LCC F1788 .M477 2017 | DDC 972.91dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017002332

Picture 2 This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

ISBN-13: 978-0-8165-3746-4 (electronic)

To the next generation of Albarrns:
Noel, Lucas, Marcos, and Lola

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The following have been wonderfully helpful throughout: the Albarrn family here, there, and everywhere; Mike Miller; Paquito Vives; my compaero literario Jess Vega; Janis Lewin; and Joann Biondi.

INTRODUCTION I want to get there before it changes If I heard that once I - photo 3

INTRODUCTION

I want to get there before it changes.

If I heard that once I heard it five hundred times. The speakers were invariably middle-class Americans who, having learned that diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States were warming, hoped to see Havana and the rest of the country in its pre-McDonalds mode. In short, before capitalism overran communism.

Before it changes? You dont understand. You are the change, dear reader, you are the change.

Nostalgia for old American clunkers? To get misty-eyed for classic American cars is to long for the embargo, because thats the only reason those cars are there. When you see chauffeur-driven vintage American convertibles tooling down the Malecn with smiling tourists in the backseats waving to impoverished Cubans on the nearby sidewalk, well, thats only one step away from occupiers acknowledging the occupied.

Take your time, chicos and chicas. The change you want to precede isnt going to take place anytime soon.

My travels through Cuba, lasting from a few days to many months, took place during the Special Period in a Time of Peace, a euphemism for the islands economic free fall. Although the Cold War was over and done with elsewhere, U.S. foreign policy ensured years of convolutedchange when nothing in Cuba was available all the time. I wrote occasional accounts of Cuban life in that era, and now, looking back on it, I see a pattern. Without realizing it, I was there before the change.

In those days, right-wing first-wave Cubans in America discouraged visits and even phone calls between the two countries. Isolation was the attitude of the day.

Back in those dark ages, communication between the United States and Cuba was extremely difficult. Few Cubans had home phones, and fewer of those functioned adequately. Neighbors used neighbors phones all the time. When I wanted to arrange a call to Cuba Id either send a telegram a few days early suggesting the time and number Id call, or Id use a gray-market operator in Canada who, at an agreed-upon time, would link my phone line with a Cuban line, allowing a third-country conversation to take place. The Canadian would bill me for both calls and add a service charge. And mail service? Ha! It often took four or more weeks for a letter to get to Cuba, and you were lucky if it actually reached its destination, To add insult to injury, because there were no relations between the two neighbors, mail had to go through a third country (i.e., Mexico). Is it any wonder that the only safe and secure way to send a letter to Cuba was to have a traveling friend hand-deliver it?

I had breakfast one morning in 1990 with a Miami-based journalist who had to leave for the States early. She handed me a short stack of envelopes, all neatly addressed; could I deliver these letters? A day or so later I found myself in Barrio Chino and realized that one of the letters was addressed to a woman there. I knocked on the door, Regla Albarrn answered it, and two and a half years later we were married.

The Cold War carried on, and the U.S. government hoped to learn what it could about Cubas economy through old-fashioned spying. They wanted to know the availability of crops at neighborhood mercados and how the day-to-day produce supply was holding up. Most workers at the U.S. Interests Sectionour embassy that wasnt an embassylived in Miramar and discussed the availability ofhousehold goods. Diplomats were allowed to shop at the Diplotienda, a supermarket for foreigners; even U.S. Marines who lived in a complex on Seventh Avenue were allowed to shop there. Because I was integrated into Cuban society and traveled through the country with some ease, the CIA tried to recruit me.

But not for the first time. That was back in the winter of 1968 when, at age twenty-one, I worked for a news agency in Washington, D.C. We covered college news, the antiVietnam War movement, and occasionally student movements overseas. Now and then wed get phone calls from readers wanting details beyond the stories. One man who expressed interest invited me for dinner at a walk-down Dupont Circle Chinese restaurant. He explained that his organization was looking for a young American journalist to travel through Latin America filing reports about student movements. Theyd cover my expenses, Id be enrolled in Spanish courses, I could visit my brotherthen a Peace Corpsman in South Americaand I would be free to sell these stories to any publication I wanted, as long as I faithfully filed stories on Latin American student movements with him and his unnamed organization. The fellow was very suspect. He operated an African art gallery but asked that I not meet him there. Once he paid for our dinner, I never heard from him again.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Cuba, Hot and Cold»

Look at similar books to Cuba, Hot and Cold. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Cuba, Hot and Cold»

Discussion, reviews of the book Cuba, Hot and Cold and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.