¡Viva la Cuba!
Fun and sex and more fun and sex in Havana.
Our
author is Daniel Chavarría, quite the colorful guy - a Uruguayan
revolutionary, writer and translator who arrived in Castro's Cuba as a
young man with two lifelong passions: literature and prostitutes.
Regarding
literature, Daniel Chavarría spent a career as a professor of Latin and
Greek. As for prostitutes, well, in addition to racking up oodles of
firsthand experience, prostitutes are a prime attraction in his novels.
Which brings us to Adios Muchachos, a novel featuring Alicia, a special kind of prostitute.
It's
the 1990s and Cuba in the post-Soviet Russia era doesn't hold a bright
future, and that's understatement. The entire Cuban economy limps along,
held together with bandaids. What's a girl to do, especially a
beautiful, curvaceous lass who wants to land a rich, foreign husband to
take her far from Cuba?
Alicia devises the bicycle stunt, a slick
maneuver concocted by an actual college student in one of Daniel
Chavarría's classes back in 1994. Here's the trick: dress like a young,
fresh college student complete with drafting paper in a knapsack (ah, an
architecture student!), pedal your bicycle (with the seat raised so as
to display the luscious cheeks of your ass) in front of a luxury car of
what must be a rich foreign guy and just at the right moment put
pressure on the specially constructed pedal so it breaks off and you
take a tumble. The rich guy stops, puts your broken bicycle in the trunk
and offers you a lift. And you're off to step two (getting details of
his background), leading to step three (seduction), step four (bed) and
step five (his offers of lots of material goods now and in the future).
Fortunately,
Alicia has a key ally in her quest for a man holding a pot of foreign
gold: her mother Margarita, a shrewd woman who happens to be a superb
cook and a mom made all the wiser since poor Margarita was forced to
live by her wits and scheming when Alicia's father disappeared soon
after the birth of their daughter.
All goes according to plan;
Alicia has enticed an entire string of Johns who have added to the
family wealth - new refrigerators, new air conditioners, et al. - since
sweet, college student Alicia vehemently refuses to take their cash
(What, sir, do you take me for a whore?).
Out pedaling once
again, Alicia's hoax snares one Victor King, a superwealthy Canadian
businessman. Events move apace but Victor isn't all he appears to be. At
this point the plot thickens and sizzles like the Cuban gourmet steak
specialty Ropa Vieja. Then a certain happening forces Victor and Alicia
to team up to land a phenomenally huge stack of greenbacks. Now as you
turn the pages, you can really savor your spicy Ropa Vieja.
I
dare not say anything more and thus spill the congri (that's beans in
the world of Caribbean cuisine, Gringo). Such an intricately constructed
tale and so much fun to read. Thanks, Danny C!
Adios Muchachos
contains a strong element of mystery. And when it comes to his taste in
mystery novels, Daniel Chavarría reports: "Most mystery novels are junk
while manor-house whodunits like those of Agatha Christie are about as
challenging and relevant as a crossword puzzle."
Adios Muchachos could be used as a case study in Cuban history and sociology, as per this example -
"If
the Soviet Union had not caved in, there would be no Special Period in
Cuba. Alicia would have finished her studies at the university. She
would certainly have gotten herself the right kind of husband: somebody
in the nomenklatura, a technocrat, or maybe an artist, which had been her childhood dream.
But
in 1994, when the crisis was affecting their stomachs, their feet, and
even their minds, Alicia's patriotism could stretch no further, so she
decided to become a whore."
Adios Muchachos - Recoger una copia rápidamente. Te enamorarás de Alicia, un sueño cubano hecho realidad.
Uruguayan citizen and Cuban writer Daniel Chavarría, 1933-2018
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