Word: havana
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...figures: Gregorio, a bloated writer captive to nostalgia, and Julio, a translator locked inside a squabbling relationship with an apparatchik named Luisa. In a society founded on unity, all three characters remain friendless and utterly disconnected; they see informers everywhere, and, they are sure, informers everywhere see them. All Havana, in fact, seems out of sorts and in a state of delirium tremens...
...hand of the state fell with particular heaviness on homosexuals. There came a time when a man could be arrested for wearing tight pants on the streets of Havana. Or long hair. One female guardian of the faith would pick a piece of scrap paper off the pavement, swipe it across the face of a suspected homosexual and, if it came away bearing traces of makeup, solemnly file it in his dossier. Taking a page from A Clockwork Orange, officials would show gay men nude photos, administering drugs to make them ill when the subjects were male. The prisoners, naturally...
...office. On the agenda at a New York City meeting: resumption of talks, stalled early in 1981, concerning the return of some 1,000 criminals and mentally ill individuals who were among the 125,000 refugees who arrived in a 1980 boat lift from the Cuban port of Mariel. Havana wants to discuss U.S. acceptance of up to 15,000 Cubans who have Fidel Castro's permission to emigrate...
Most of the Americans had spent one to four years in jail, charged by Havana authorities with drug trafficking; typically, they became Castro's prisoners by accident, after equipment failures on boats or airplanes brought them into Cuban waters. In contrast, most of the Cuban nationals had been jailed for more than 20 years; some were kept in prison without explanation for months or years after their promised release dates. The political prisoners called themselves plantados, those planted firmly in opposition to Castro...
...Little Havana, the staunchly anti-Castro, Cuban-American neighborhood on Miami's southwest side, many supported Jackson's effort on purely pragmatic grounds. As one freed prisoner's relative put it, "Those people complaining about Jackson don't have relatives in prison. They don't care." More typical was the view of Banker Luis Lauredo, who had given Jackson a list of political prisoners in advance of the Havana trip. Said Lauredo: "I will stand up anywhere and tell Jackson publicly, 'Thank you for freeing the prisoners. But in the very next breath...