The May 28 New Yorker has a fantastic (and long) story on the extraordinary exploits of William Alexander Morgan, the American ne’er do well and wanderer who became the only American Comandante in the Cuban revolution (there was, apparently, only one other foreigner with that title).
We likely forget that there was a coalition of forces united behind Castro thanks to the excesses of Batista’s regime. Morgan joined a band of revolutionaries who were also ardent anti-communists; his star fell as Fidel moved to the left and the same sort of totalitarianism that doomed Batista, with predictable results, but the man’s story reads like something Hemingway could’ve written.
(Know anything about this cat, Gar?)
By “star fell”, you mean shot to death by a firing squad, right?
Don’t know much about him. However, neither Castro nor Che were Cuban born so technically there were 3.
My uncle, the product of the revolution, is now a EU citizen as is his wife. Both are in town for about a month in late July-early August. If you find yourself extradited from the desert, perhaps you would like to meet another notable Acosta for a drink. You can have access to a former block kid who was educated in Kiev and was eventually in the Castro cabinet, just like his father. My grandfather eventually lost favor for following Trotsky who apparently was not commie enough due to crazy ideas about free speech. You can read about how Che rescued him from prison here http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/2384. Sorry about the link. I believe another Acosta is coming into town as well who is a professor in Literature at the Univeristy of Habana. He is a half uncle, who also happens to be a master chess player and the only member of my family who can beat me, though, Ill beat his ass eventually. He speaks mostly spanish but I could translate if you like. Not sure of his schedule, but if you want some verbal history I will gladly facilitate. Hope you are drinking a lot of scotch in the desert like the miscellaneous infidel you most certainly are.
Exactly the sort of awesome reply I was hoping for! Man, I’d love to meet both of them. Most American families aren’t quite as full of eyewitnesses to history as yours…