Cuba and Guatemala

Giving up the Bull
Three years ago, Agapito was alone on a pilgrimage to give up The Bull, and drop the weight of the Earth that he had shouldered for so long. His 1992 Ford Taurus sedan was the symbol of this burden.

He drove his Taurus to the navel of the Americas and tried to rid himself of it, both in Chiapas and Guatemala. He plied and pleaded and even offered to pay a Mayan woman in the highlands of the Cuchamatanes Mountains of Guatemala to take it. He tried to convince her that she would be able to drive her children to school and soccer practice. She looked at him amazed and sold him tortillas, mumbling “Hail Mary” in her Mam tongue. Agapito could never have imagined that she lived inside the goal of the soccer field and that her one living child had lost his feet to the war along with his father, three sisters and two brothers.

In San Ignacio, Belize the Taurus found a proper home with a cab driver who bought it as a gift for his large Afro-Belizean wife. She was tending the fryer when they met and responded to her husband’s gift, “Dat be kine, bootzo ah!” There the car must be to this day, with its name changed to “Too-razz” and Belican beer cans molded to the brake pad.

A Brief History of Cuba
Agapito took the money and bought a ticket to Cuba where he happened upon Fidel in the Plaza de la Revolucion. Fidel was a poet. He told him that Cuba was a ship in the Sea of Babylon, and that his forefathers founded Atlantis. He told him that he was the messiah and that he wears his beard to buffer the blinding light that permeates from his face, “so as not to frighten anybody.” Fidel told Agapito that he cuts up hand grenades to put with his cassava and uses cyanide as mouthwash. He lit a cigar.

“No shit?” Agapito replied.

He then pulled Agapito aside and pointed with his cigar to the silhouette of Che Guevara on the Department of Industry building that sits on the northern flank of the plaza next to his famous quote, “Hasta la victoria siempre!” Always to victory! “Che Guevara,” he whispered, “was a Taurus. Although a saint, he was not a savior. You know why?”

“No”

“He had no poetry!” Fidel shouted as a crowd of Germans scurried frightened to the far side of Jose Marti’s monument which stood as a phallic monolith reminiscent of Washington’s Monument, only Cuba’s icon was “terribly communist,” as then President L.B. Johnson proclaimed.

“No shit,” Agapito concurred.

“Che is dead. He left fire, but no poetry. He left ideas, but no melodies. He could never dance, and could barely swim,” Fidel finished, exhaling a plum of smoke.

Fidel then walked out across the waters of the Caribbean for an important meeting with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, “Down south.” When Fidel reached Hispañola he stopped and shouted back to the bewildered group of Germans gathered near Agapito, “At least Cubans can drink their OWN damn rum in their OWN damn country!” He was right. None in the group that witnessed this had any desire to ever visit the Dominican Republic or any other country that lived on its knees to imperialism.

For Agapito’s return from Cuba to Cancun, Fidel had commanded his Minister of Foreign Relations to allow him to ride on the spine of the sacred feathered serpent named Quetzalcoatl. Quetzalcoatl was a bearded and pale-skinned shape-shifter who had taught the ancient people of Central America art, architecture, math, agriculture and peace before fleeing from the Yucatan over three thousand years ago. He often shifted shape to a feathered serpent and left behind bewildered Teotihuacán, Olmec, Aztec and Mayan cultures to ponder his words, “I’ll be back” before he was chased off the coast of the Yucatan by an the evil god Tetzcaltipoca.
Cortez was mistaken for Quetzalcoatl and landed in the New World the exact date that had been prophesized for the God’s return, thus allowing him a swift upset in their invasion. Agapito realized that the feathered serpent is the trump that Cuba had up its sleeve! Rumor is they will reveal this secret to the world in 2012 on December 23rd: that Quetzalcoatl had tried to make it to Europe 3,000 years ago to teach the ways of true mathematics and peace, but had been hung up in modern-day Cuba where he fell in love with the women, created rum and cigars and invented salsa music. He was the devil in Fidel’s ear and if he had made it to Europe then they and their offspring would better understand peace. Agapito thanked him and promised, “I won’t tell anyone of this but will tell them your word.”