Saturday, July 14, 2007
Memories of Tocororo
I didn't realize how much I loved my crazy little brother-in-law. For years we argued -- family stuff, his behavior, dropping out of high school. Well, in his typical fashion he told me that he wasn't going to learn anything (he used less clean words) in american schools because he'd already learned more in Cuba. He was 16 when he arrived and he thought he knew everything. I told him to at least learn english and if he couldn't manage that, he'd never be anything here or do anything important. Within a year he was speaking spanglish, just the way he wrote it. I tried to challenge him to speak only english, and he could, but he just didn't want to. He wanted his own style. He loved the United States, but he loved his Cuba. He could never forget his homeland. Most people his age after 5 years here are pretty much adapted to the culture. In a way he was, but not completely. And he loved it when my husband told me I'm not cuban enough because I came here too young and don't know as much about my homeland as they do. He had a great laugh too.
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TOCORORO LIBRE DIED A HERO
When I wrote my tribute to Tocororo, I asked two things: that is name be made known and his work conserved. We owed, I thought, no less to such a man who exemplified in his short life an ennobling and selfless love of country.
Well, we have learned his name and the circumstances of his death. His name was Hugo Valdes, a resident of Union City, NJ. And he drowned saving the life of his 10-year-old son, in Myrtle Beach, SC. on July 4th. Add to that the fact that Tocororo suffered from glaucoma and was nearly blind and the picture is finally complete of this moral giant.
It is said that the elements of our death are found in our lives. Tocororo loved the ocean and all its creatures. For him, it was the ocean that connected him to our lost country and it was through that passage that he returned to it, much, much too soon to satisfy any sense of justice, but at the time and place where the sacrifice of his life was the most meaningful.
I actually read the story of his death in the local newspaper and was deeply moved by it even without making the connection that the hero was Tocororo. What really can one say? It is a Greek tragedy and also the Christian story of redemption. The greatest, purest love in life calls forth the greatest sacrifice. Can there be a death more natural and more human? Can there be a greater vindication of man's innate nobility or more convincing proof that man, created in God's image, like God is capable of perfect love?
http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com
TOCORORO LIBRE (1974-2007)
I remember with a sweet and sour feeling the day that plane took to the sky and me with tears in my eyes as I was finally realizing that I was breaking away from the oppression that tortured my life for so many years. I said good bye to my beloved island not knowing when I was going to able to walk again under that sunshine that gave me life. I'm still waiting for that day to come by. A big thank you to Uncle Sam for giving me the opportunity to be free.
My first day of freedom was December 31, 1989. Celebre el [Año] Nuevo en tierra libre. — Tocororo
Tocororo Libre, a fellow Cuban blogger known to all who comment here or anywhere in the Cuban-American blogosphere, has died at age 33. When he left Cuba he was just 15 years old, yet, as his words attest, his love of country was already an integral part of who he was and so it would remain for the rest of his all-too-short life.
Character is not something that can be coined; it exists or does not exist. Unlike personality which is subject to change, character is immutable. Tocororo's personality, as reflected in his writings, was generous and expansive, boisterous but not boastful, prototypically Cuban in the best sense. But his character was as integral as his personality was variable. His ideals, which are also our ideals, were newer and brighter because he was. It is in the young that ideals are most pristine. We who from the illness of living have grown cynical and morose could refresh our own spirits in the untramelled enthusiasm of the young which rarely outlasts youth. It is a terrible thing to see the few green leaves on a withered tree die but natural to see the seared leaves fall. Killcastro rightly asked how such a collection of fetidity as still breaths and poisons the atmosphere for everybody in Cuba, should have been spared and one so young and blameless as tocororo had his life cut short just at the very age when that demonic presence first cast his dark shadow on our national life 48 years ago; a shadow yet to be dispelled.
But let us not define his life solely in relation to that cloud; for here he grew and built a life outside it. Tocororo was a naturalist and conservationist, and especially a fish lover (he would have had a field day if anyone had called him an "ichthyologist"). He knew that the Cuban Revolution, besides all else and above all else, has meant a 48-year natural catastrophe for our country, and that it has devastated its ecology even more than its infrastructure. The latter can be repaired and will be; the former will take centuries or millenia to regenerate if it ever does. This good man felt every scar in our island's natural beauty personally and made the preservation of what remained his especial concern. Killcastro and Charlie Bravo have written much and well on this aspect of tocororo's life.
We should like to recall another aspect of it where we have some competence to speak. Tocororo's take on the English language was uniquely his own; or, rather, he made a full conquest of English on his own terms. In that paragraph quoted above his talent is well-displayed. No native speaker would say "I remember with a sweet and sour feeling." Writers by rote would have said "bittersweet" but tocororo had his own recipe and his "sour and sweet" is more evocative than their "bittersweet." Multiply that instance by a thousand and you see that what was lost today cannot be replaced. I have tried all day to access tocororo's blog Spanglish a lo cubano without success. It seems to have disappeared from the cyber-ether. Does anyone know how it can be recovered? We owe him that much at least. I hope also that his real name will be made known; for there is no reason any longer to conceal it.
We extend our condolences to his family and friends; and, in particular, to Killcastro and Charlie Bravo, for whom tocororo was like a younger brother.
Rest in Peace.
Beyond The Stars
Three days I heard them grieve when I lay dead,
(It was so strange to me that they should weep!)
Tall candles burned about me in the dark,
And a great crucifix was on my breast,
And a great silence filled the lonesome room.
I heard one whisper, “Lo! the dawn is breaking,
And he has lost the wonder of the day.”
Another came whom I had loved on earth,
And kissed my brow and brushed my dampened hair.
Softly she spoke: “Oh, that he should not see
The April that his spirit bathed in! Birds
Are singing in the orchard, and the grass
That soon will cover him is growing green.
The daisies whiten on the emerald hills,
And the immortal magic that he loved
Wakens again—and he has fallen asleep.”
Another said: “Last night I saw the moon
Like a tremendous lantern shine in heaven,
And I could only think of him—and sob.
For I remembered evenings wonderful
When he was faint with Life’s sad loveliness,
And watched the silver ribbons wandering far
Along the shore, and out upon the sea.
Oh, I remembered how he loved the world,
The sighing ocean and the flaming stars,
The everlasting glamour God has given—
His tapestries that wrap the earth’s wide room.
I minded me of mornings filled with rain
When he would sit and listen to the sound
As if it were lost music from the spheres.
He loved the crocus and the hawthorn-hedge,
He loved the shining gold of buttercups,
And the low droning of the drowsy bees
That boomed across the meadows. He was glad
At dawn or sundown; glad when Autumn came
With her worn livery and scarlet crown,
And glad when Winter rocked the earth to rest.
Strange that he sleeps today when Life is young,
And the wild banners of the Spring are blowing
With green inscriptions of the old delight.”
I heard them whisper in the quiet room.
I longed to open then my sealèd eyes,
And tell them of the glory that was mine.
There was no darkness where my spirit flew,
There was no night beyond the teeming world.
Their April was like winter where I roamed;
Their flowers were like stones where now I fared.
Earth’s day! it was as if I had not known
What sunlight meant!… Yea, even as they grieved
For all that I had lost in their pale place,
I swung beyond the borders of the sky,
And floated through the clouds, myself the air,
Myself the ether, yet a matchless being
Whom God had snatched from penury and pain
To draw across the barricades of heaven.
I climb beyond the sun, beyond the moon;
In flight on flight I touched the highest star;
I plunged to regions where the Spring is born,
Myself (I asked not how) the April wind,
Myself the elements that are of God.
Up flowery stairways of eternity
I whirled in wonder and untrammeled joy,
An atom, yet a portion of His dream—
His dream that knows no end….
I was the rain,
I was the dawn, I was the purple east,
I was the moonlight on enchanted nights,
(Yet time was lost to me); I was a flower
For one to pluck who loved me; I was bliss,
And rapture, splendid moments of delight;
And I was prayer, and solitude, and hope;
And always, always, always I was love.
I tore asunder flimsy doors of time,
And through the windows of my soul’s new sight
I saw beyond the ultimate bounds of space.
I was all things that I had loved on earth—
The very moonbeam in that quiet room,
The very sunlight one had dreamed I lost,
The soul of the returning April grass,
The spirit of the evening and the dawn,
The perfume in unnumbered hawthorn-blooms.
There was no shadow on my perfect peace,
No knowledge that was hidden from my heart.
I learned what music meant; I read the years;
I found where rainbows hide, where tears begin;
I trod the precincts of things yet unborn.
Yea, while I found all wisdom (being dead),
They grieved for me … I should have grieved for them!
By: Charles Hanson Towne (1877-1949)
http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com
[When I heard the news of Tocororo's death, my first reaction was to search the internet for his blog. But Spanglish a lo cubano had disappeared without a trace, as if it had never existed. Killcastro and Charlie Bravo were also searching on their own, but encountered the same luck as me. Killcastro explained that Tocororo had deleted his blog in a moment of despair, thinking perhaps, as Bolívar did, that he had ploughed the seas. It is not surprising that such a humble man should think so little of what others valued highly. His death, however, made the recovery of his writings a debt of honor for all who cherished them and their author. Nothing ever dies in cyberspace and I believe that eventually it will be possible to unearth and preserve his entire legacy for all Cubans and particularly for his own children. As they grow older his writings will become a passage way into the mind and heart of their noble father.
This is what remains: one of a dozen posts, saved by the Web Archive (or Wayback Machine) as it crawled cyberspace. One of many pages but all that remains for now. Sadly, Tocororo's words are all to true today and hold valuable lessons for us. We have reproduced it exactly as we found it:]
Thursday, December 15, 2005
the plague
Since the beginning of civilization we always had plagues, many plagues had torture the earth, many have come and go, and others come and go and reappear again to cause more trouble.
The only plague that has managed to stay with us and disguising herself as a truthful human is the snitch plague.
I have suffer at first hand the destructive power of the chivatos,the lingering battle between the good and the evil in Cuba can’t never be won until that plague comes near extinction.
The chivatos are responsible for most of the cubano suffering, in fact; the old cock sucker will have fall long time ago without the help of los chivatos.
I picture him with out the chivas a marionette with broken strings.
The snitch has no friends, no family, and no morals.
Thousands incarcerated and murdered due to the chivatos sneaky activities.
Many more of the chivatos penetrate the resistance; they become leaders to their fellow fighters, and when they strike, the whole cell ends up in jail doing 20 years or plus.
That is why my friends Cubans are so mistrustful, paranoid and afraid.
Many of the chivas sometimes change their minds and decide they have cause enough damage or le han pisado un callo y brincan and next thing you know, the chiva is living in the states.
Rats nothing more than rats, when they don’t find that piece of cheese, they move to the next door basement.
http://web.archive.org/web/20051216135613/http://spanglishalocubano.blogspot.com/
http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com
This is the complete URL for accessing Tocororo's Splanglish a lo cubano:
http://web.archive.org/web/20051216135613/http://spanglishalocubano.blogspot.com/
Cut & paste.
For whatever reason Blogger does not allow me to give the full URL, but crops it (the first time I've ever encountered this problem).
For the complete URL to Tocororo's vanished website, please visit:
http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com
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