A Private Family Matter
A Memoir
Chapter 1:sancti spíritus (1955-1957)
The multitude of palm trees of various forms, the highest and most beautiful I have ever met with, and an infinity of great and green trees; the birds in rich plumage and the verdure of the fields; render this country, most serene princes, of such marvellous beauty that it surpasses all others in charms and graces as the day doth the night in lustre. I have been so overwhelmed at the sight of so much beauty that I have not known how to relate it. -- Christopher Columbus, on Cuba,
to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, 1492
Olga Angelica Lopez Ibarra was born prematurely on September 21, 1929, at 3 P.M. in a hospital in Havana. She was the size of a small Coca-Cola bottle, all of four pounds. With no neonatal units or incubators to nurture her into life, she began her existence much as she would live it -- in struggle.
My mother, to me, was the embodiment of Cuba. She was a natural beauty, dark, exotic, proud, intelligent, opinionated, ironic with a sense of tragicomedy, but unspoiled; ... read full excerpt from A Private Family Matter: A Memoir ebook
