Word: che
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...Havana to help alleviate tensions between the U.S. and the Castro regime, Blackford begins a series of negotiations with Che. The Commandante is a sardonic figure who sometimes talks like William F. Buckley in fatigues and beret: "Disappointing . . . is a distinctively English, meiotic expression." Wherever Oakes settles in, a pair of alluring hazel eyes cannot be far away. This time they are blinked by Catalina Urrutia, a Cuban translator, moralist and flirt. After the requisite tango, the CIA man and the beautiful bilinguist end up in the percales. Heavy breathing leads to weighty revelations, and the smitten Catalina shows Blackford...
...this thriller about Cuba at the time of the 1962 missile crisis, Buckley, the archetypal conservative, presents a Che Guevara who turns out to be a humane and tragic figure; even Fidel Castro, between bouts of egomania, is a | fully developed antagonist. The least satisfactory character, curiously, is Blackford Oakes, a CIA soloist whose IQ seems to be only a couple of digits higher than James Bond...
...Bondage fantasy, hero and bimbo attempt to defuse the situation, only to get captured, manacled and headed toward annihilation. But Dr. Castro is not Dr. No, Che is not Goldfinger, and the Cuban missile crisis was not some apocalyptic fantasy. It is to Buckley's credit that within his fiction, actual events are made as urgent and terrifying as they were in the bad old days...
...final element in this year's pageant was a crèche, an assemblage of near life-size figures around a manger scene representing Christ's birth. The display included painted representations of Joseph and Mary, the gift-bearing Magi, two angels and assorted animals-20 pieces in all. It would have been wholly unremarkable, similar to thousands of others, except for one thing: this particular Nativity scene was reappearing in the festival after an enforced and highly controversial absence of eleven years, the hostage in a legal dispute involving the constitutional separation of church and state...
...scenes this season also adorn the public parks and buildings of some municipalities that had ceased putting them up while the issue was in dispute. But the Supreme Court's ruling, permitting the city of Pawtucket, R.I., to erect a creche, failed to settle the matter. Crèche critics, insisting that many of the displays still represent unlawful government sponsorship of church activity, are seeking to severely limit the court's ruling. As a result, the jingle bells of the season once again were interrupted by the jangle of legal discord. Items...