Word: julio
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Coast Guard radio station at Pungo, Va., picked up a nervous call. Speaking in broken English, the caller said that he was aboard the 26 de Julio, a small (943 tons) Cuban cargo vessel that normally hauls freight and cattle between Havana and Montreal. Would the Coast Guard al low the ship to put in to port at Norfolk "to discharge people who are seek ing political asylum...
That request, recorded in the Pungo radio log, began the small and unhappy saga that official Washington soon called "the Julio incident." Four members of the Julio, determined to escape from Cuba, had taken guns, seized control of the ship and locked the captain and the rest of the crew in the brig. When the four asked for asylum, the Coast Guard consulted the State Department, then advised the Cuban ship to "approach no closer than the three-mile limit." It dispatched two ships-the cutter Point Brown and a seagoing tug-to investigate...
...water about ten miles offshore, with its anchor dragging and the four crewmen on deck. When they sighted the U.S. ships, three of the men immediately jumped into a lifeboat and began rowing toward the cutter. Suddenly, a dozen men burst onto the deck of the 26 de Julio. With the ship's anchor still dragging, they got up power and headed the ship toward the lifeboat. They missed on the first pass, but swung around again and came close enough to dump two of the lifeboat's occupants into...
Late Orders. The U.S. cutter's skipper, Chief Boatswain's Mate P. W. Caviness, radioed Coast Guard headquarters for permission to intervene, was soon told to prevent the Cuban vessel from overrunning the lifeboat. The orders were too late. Before the cutter could move into position, the Julio made its third pass, and Caviness heard a shot fired from its deck. By the time the lifeboat came into sight again, both it and the sea around it were empty...
Like the best of Fuentes' earlier books, Where the Air Is Clear (1960) and The Death of Artemio Cruz (1964), this one shows the influence of just about everyone the ambitious Mexican ever admired. There are echoes of Dos Passes, D. H. Lawrence, Faulkner, Mailer, Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges. This time Fuentes also works in some sarcasm about the Mexican ethos, particularly his country's lively relationship with death and all its trappings. Mythology and symbolism are planted in conspicuous places for those readers who relish those forms of mental exercise, and there is enough...