Abuelo

Vicente was mi abuelo, my grandfather born in ~1892. He was a handsome, very tall man (over 6 ft tall) with grey-green eyes and the typical beaked nose of the family. He was very strong probably because he had been a farmer.

This is abuelo in his 80's being careful where he steps as he comes into our apartment in Ft. Lauderdale with abuela behind him circa 1974. There he is sited with mamita and me behind him.

When we lived in Habana and he was in his early 70's, he would carry the large containers of water (5 gallons) slung over his shoulder up 3 flights of stairs as if it was a feather pillow and make several trips this way without breaking a sweat. He could wrestle with 3-5 of the medical students who lived with him and Isabel and fling them around like puppets.

I admired abuelo for his strength and because he was a quiet, hardworking, gentle man. All he wanted out of life was his tacita de cafe. (The cups are very tiny but he liked to drink them often. Here's Newt having a cup as an example).

One thing about abuelo is that, when he sat to eat, he liked to see a very full table. When I visited them en Calle I sometimes I got to help abuela serve him lunch. The large table would be half covered with dishes just for him. A typical almuerzo would be a dish brimming with rice, a large bowl of black beans, a dish full of fried plantains, another full of yucca, several fried eggs, maybe meat or fish, platter of sliced tomatoes and cukes (or whatever there was) and a whole flan. I could not believe how much he ate! Being a child, I asked how he could eat so much. I was told that, when he had been in prison as a 5 year old he had starved and that, afterwards, he had always needed to see a lot of food.

When I researched it yesterday, I found out that the "prison" he had been in was the infamous Weyler "re-concentration" camps and these are photos of the results of Weyler's genocide. Abuelo survived the Cuban Holocaust but not his mother, Indalecia. About a quarter million Cubans died of starvation and plagues behind barbed wire in an 18 month period in 1896-97. Pobre abuelo que perdió a su madre! Gracias a Dios que sobrevivió!