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“... to make sense of this slogan during the Cuban revolution cost both these outstanding men – Franqui and Infante – their country. One of Fidel Castro’s closest comrades in the war against Batista, Carlos Franqui, came down with him from the Sierra as the bearded men took power; for the first five years after ...”

“... is still Victor Serge’s novel, The Tulayev Affair, about the Moscow trials. More recently Carlos Franqui, Cabrera’s former boss at Lunes de Revolución, told his own story in Family Portrait with Fidel. But for all its essential rectifications, Mea Cuba is so overstated, so patently inflamed by spite and thwarted ambition, that it forfeits its ...”

“... 1958 Castro stayed the night at the Oriente Sugar Mill, at Palma Soriano, near Santiago de Cuba. Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, the secretary-general of the Cuban Communist Party, was also in Palma Soriano; Castro was annoyed – ‘it was bad for his image’ – and would not receive him. A third visitor was Errol Flynn: perhaps at that juncture his contribution ...”

“... to go first to a cemetery in London. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘You want me to go visit the tomb of Carlos Marx!’ ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I want you to see Mosiey’s tomb.’ ‘Mosley who?’ How could I explain? A throwback, an ancillary avatar, a freak of history – Oswald Mosley, the English Caudillo. Everything began to turn sour for us Cuban writers ...”

“... the Latin American specialist at Chatham House. He thought it would be a suitable present for Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, the éminence grise of the Cuban Communist Party. Latin American Communists of that generation appreciated the finer things in life. Later I discovered that Pablo Neruda liked to receive homage in the shape of crates of whisky and tins ...”

“... and Alejandro Garcia Caturla, probably better composers than Brazil’s Villalobos and the Mexican Carlos Chavez. Both died too young to be known abroad, except in such recherché musical circles as the coterie around Nadia Boulanger in Paris or by John Cage’s epigoni everywhere. Roldan, also a remarkable conductor, died of a skin cancer in the face in his ...”