lo que estaba pensando paco

My Cuban friend Paco who once held from Havana the capital city, largest city, province, major port, and leading commercial center of Cuba. The city has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants and it spans 281.18 square miles making it the largest city by area, the most populous city, and the fourth largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean region.

I can’t say I even knew his real name because I don’t ever recall him telling anyone it. Even his girlfriend of 11 years calls him Paco. I’ve known him for 9 years. That was when The United States believed Cuba had started to release prisoners from its jails and suspected that President Fidel Castro was about to send them to join the banana boat people leaving the island for Florida. This immediately escalated the confrontation between Washington and Havana.

During the last exodus of Cubans in 1980, El Jefe (Castro) created a crisis for the White House by sending criminals, drug addicts and mentally retarded people to the US.

Paco would share with me the many stories about how he tried to get to this country. Long before Castro’s “freedom flotilla”.

Once he said that he tried many times to escape from Castro’s egregiously inhumane government dictatorship of Cuba. He talked about something called Operation Peter Pan, I mean Operation Pedro Pan. Operation Pedro Pan (or Operación Pedro Pan) a clandestine mass exodus of over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors ages 6 to 18 to the United States over a two-year span from 1960 to 1962. They were sent by their parents who were alarmed by unfounded rumors circulating amongst Cuban families that the new government under Fidel Castro was planning to terminate parental rights and place minors in communist indoctrination centers. Father Bryan O. Walsh of the Catholic Welfare Bureau created the program to provide air transportation to the United States for Cuban children. Paco said that he was 5 años at the time.

One day out of the blocked clear blue sky, while we were working in the Veteran Administration Medical Hospital in Gainesville, Florida  sub-basement removing asbestos from hundreds of Mesothelioma causing covered pipes.

Amigo he says one time me and Miguel made a raft by connecting two old refrigerators we stole from the Prairie Valley Sanitary Landfill that we tied together with extension cords. We made it about a half a mile out to sea when the refrigerators sank. My friend Miguel who couldn’t swim all that well drowned right before me very eyes. We were only 11 años at the time.

About 4 años later he and another friend would try again to escape the tyranny of Fidel Castro. The rickety raft they made from empty oil drums and a wooden tabletop rolled and pitched with the waves while tied to the side of a 370 foot cargo ship they thought was headed for Miami, Florida. When they realized they were no closer to Florida than going to the Luna (moon). They cut themselves away from the ship. This time they both wore makeshift life preservers made out of old car tire inner tubes. What they did forget was food. He said that they drifted for about two days before the U S Coast Guard returned them back to Cuba.

At 17 he joined The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolutionaries FAR). He said what inspired him to do so was his father always telling him about The Bay of Pigs Invasion (known as La Batalla de Girón in Cuba), an unsuccessful attempt by a U.S. trained force of Cuban exiles like his father tried in vain to invade southern Cuba with support from U.S. armed forces to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Thinking that he would eventually find his way to the U S one day, only to whine up fighting in The Ogaden War a conflict between Somalia and Ethiopa between 1977 and 1978. Fighting erupted in the Ogaden region as Somalia attempted to annex it. The conflict ended with a Somali retreat. He was chosen as one of 15,000 combat troops along with aircraft to support the Derg government and the USSR military advisors in the region. When he returned back to Cuba he was only 20 years old?

He says my Acere. Then smiles at me in that sly way he often does when he’s about to tell a story. If you look up acere in the Spanish dictionary, you'd be surprised to find that it means an assortment of smelly monkeys. However, Cubans employ it to say "friend."

One day me and my encantadora señora Rita was hanging out at the La Zorra y el Cuervo. De repente. I stopped Paco in his tracks right then and there and asked him to please speak in English. Si.

Suddenly a Estúpido fight broke out nearby with me having nothing to do with it. We were just about to share a bottle of rum outside of the club near the Havana’s seawall. But when the Policía arrived to break it up, they detained everyone in the vicinity and patted us down.

Paco said that he froze like a deer in the proverbial headlights and remained paralyzed while seis or so of his friends were being searched in front of him, each one anxiously, surreptitiously trying to toss anything incriminating over the wall and into the bay. But not Paco.

The police found a medicine bottle of Ritalin (Methylphenidate, sold under the trade name Ritalin among others, is a stimulant medication used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and narcolepsy. It is a first line medication for ADHD) in my right pocket and  8 grams of blanquita (cocaine) of  in my left pocket. Ritalin was known as ‘titi’ among us Cuban pill poppers. I was taken to the police station in Havana Vieja for booking. I know that I  should have ditched the pills. I got 3 years imprisonment.

When Castro cleaned out the prisons I got exiled to the United States.

I got to thinking one day either Paco is a very good storyteller or an excellent liar. The jury is still deliberating on door number two.

Paco has been working for me ever since we became friends. I own a small construction company removing asbestos.

Although I don’t know his real name and don’t care if he ever tells me. I pay him up under the table. Now when the day comes when he’s too old to work and hasn’t put anything into the Social Security kitty. That’s on him.

Well in truth he doesn’t have to worry about retiring here in the United States. You would think that someone with all those misadventures and who was so hell bent on getting to this country would lay low.

Paco tries to sneak an ounce of Jamaican weed on a jail visit with and old friend. The dogs sniffed the weed out long before he would see his friend behind that thick glass.

I surmise they have all the time in the world to smoke. I would have helped him but no one knew his real or full name. Rumor surface about 10 months later that Paco in a twist of irony got shipped back to Cuba. What was Paco thinking about?