Guantanamera

Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera, Guajira Guantanamera

I was at a street corner with a group of friends yesterday at Fiesta and made a courteous pass (a polite pick-up line, like "your mother made you good" or "you came from a star", piropo in Spanish) to a woman (who also happened to be from Guantánamo) who walked by the group. She answered back rather harshly, offended by the pass. Stunned, I could not take my mind off her reaction while my friends made fun of me; later that day, sitting with my guitar, with my friends near me, I kept singing "Guantanamera, guajira guantanamera"

"your mother made you good"

 

well I did note a few other things at Fiesta yestersday too...I didn't see any celebrities..no celebrity cooks or kooks, nothing! usually celebs only come out when they are getting awards! but where was Cat Cora, why wudn't she behind those booths serving sweet Mexican dishes? I saw her a the Montecito Country Club at the Chowder Fest and her people kept a close watch on her..but she would never wander around State St during Fiesta unless she was DUI, I guess...

while the tone of Fiesta was old Spanish Days in California, I felt like I was in Cuba.. Cuba has a few festivals like International Boleros de Oro Festival, the Guitar Festival and the Cuban Jazz Festival and I think Castro sent some brown-skinned subversives over...once such group was the Young Commies Foundation and I saw them gathering outside the News-Press, which was practically in a lock-down..I looked and looked and saw no signs of life in the News-Press building, not even a sombrero-wearing hombre peering at the crowd from an upstairs window...

Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas.
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas.
Y antes de morir me quiero
Echar mis versos del alma.

but the Young Commies were all dressed in red and about to confront Wendy and her Young Miss America Foundation, which is her non-profit of little white conservative pups...I'm not sure what happened because my attention span was short due to all the other stuff going on..

 
Por los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
Por los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
Y el arroyo de la sierra
Me complace más que el mar



the words mean I am a simple man
from the land of the palm trees

but one of the main things the Cubans did was drop a bunch of multi-colored confetti on the ground..or cascarones as it's called..this stuff really kills the conservatives..they complain about the litter and affects the little bits of paper have on the ocean and fishes....well I don't know about that but I did scoop up a handful and noticed something immediately..if you arrange some of the little bitty pieces of confetti, there's something printed on them..a message, a manifesto...a message to the people United States from Cuba...it's kinda like when we invade poor countries and drop propagandist literature from airplanes to win over the people below..but this is a bit different..

the words I put together from the cascarones  puzzle were the lyrics to a the great old Cuban song, Guantanamera!

your mother made you good