Category Archives: photography

Mayari and Miringuita!

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My first trip to Cuba 1993 I lived with a family in the district of Luyano, Havana.
This was the so-called “período especial” and in practice it ment a decade of misery for the Cubans.

Mayari sat at the corner of Municipio and Melones trimming the hair of his dog Miringuita.
Of course I could not resist picking up my camera!

Seventeen years later I stumbled upon a page on Facebook “Solo gente de Luyano”

(Just for people from Luyano) The fantastic thing I realized a little later when I started to
contribute my photos (most of them almost forgotten and deep down in some old analog archive) to the group, is that the responsable person for the site was Reynier Perez.
Reynier was just a kid back in 93 and lived upstairs in the same house where I stayed and I had caught him in my pictures playing with the children of “my” family.  (i´ll post some of this in the future)

Internet, Facebook can sometimes be a fantastic media to reconnect people. Many Cubans have left their country and are spread out all over the world. On “solo gente de Luyano” they can make contact with old friends and neighbors!

The additional information I get referring my photos from these comments in the Luyano page
increases the documentary value a lot. The picture of Mayari for instance no longer just represents an image of an odd character!

Listen to the following quotes (translated from original Spanish)

Yanliet Linares: Sitting outside of what used to be his house. An unforgettable personality from Luyano

El Lachy Pons: A personality from Luyano. He is dead now.. lived a block from my house

Claribel Alvarez Sosa: Mayari was well known? “look at me women, play with me, look here I am single now”. Fantastic personality, a skilled tailor and as you say Reynier he liked sports and he participated in competitions, he was strong

Armando Mandito Valdes: The old Mayary lived beside my house. Sometimes they came and emptied his house. It was filled to the ceiling of stuff that he found walking around. It could be of use to somebody . I lived close by. I moved to the states 1980, never saw him again. HE WAS A GOOD PERSON

 

Eduardo Somoza Rios: He used to whip me when we played chess, the day I beat him was our last match

Yohandra Ramos: He died some time ago, he lived near my house

Grettel Llana: My God whats he doing to the dog????

Grettel Llana: Looks like he wants to cut his tail..

Yanet Viamontes: Por dog!!

Reynier Perez : I can assure you that MAYARI never would cut the tail of the dog because it was his only friend he spoke to him and prepared food for both of them. The hands holding that scissors is hold by an excellent tailor.. a surgeon with his cloth

mayari, the revolution gave him everything ?????? (ironically)

Keyla Roymer Barrientos: mayari, everybody knows mayari, this is great!! What memory’s really this page is really good

”Amalthea-mannen”

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  Baron von Munchausen..?? yeah some similarities perhaps, but no.. this is Anton Nilson. The last man to be sentenced to the death penalty in Sweden. He was born 1887 and goes under the name of “Amalthea Mannen”. This adventurer was one of the responsables of the bomb attack on the Amalthea ship in Malmö, Sweden 1908. Anton was an unemployed construction worker and member of a radical socialist movement.  British strike breakers were staying on the boat. A man died of the injuries from the explosion.

Just before the execution he was pardoned. Nilson got out of jail the year of the revolution 1917.

He got training as a pilot sponsored by a wealthy man, Olof Aschberg  (The Swedes know his younger relative.. Robert)  and ended up in Russia accompanied by the Swedish communist party leader Ture Nerman.
Anton Nilson enrolled for the red army, became member of the Soviet communist party. Several years he flew reconnaissance aircraft during the russian civil war.
As an award for his services the Swedish combatant recieved a leather jacket from the supreme boss Bronstein/Trotskij. He also met with Lenin and Stalin

He seemed destined to stay in the sovietunion but after six years in the air he fell in love with the swedish textile teacher Märtha Hedberg. (folkpartiet, Lottakåren !! far from hardcore communism)
They got married. At the age of 37, Anton and his wife moved back to Sweden.
Anton was affiliated with the whole scale of leftist parties from a-ö during his lifetime.  At 65 he became a social democrat and stayed loyal the rest of his life.

1988 Just before turning 102, Anton died. A pieze of Swedish labor movement history!

Me and the journalist Berndt Norberg met Anton in his Stockholm apartment just a few years before his death. With that particular “Skåne” dialect of his,  he shared his life story with us.

Thank you Mats Parner.  I Borrowed some facts from your article about  Amalthea-mannen

Café Concordia

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    Old friends having a conversation

Where the Concordia and Soledad streets meet in Centro Habana you find Café Concordia.

This is Cayo Hueso, one of the citys most run down quarters. No paint on the walls and many houses collapsed completely. Lots of people moving around “resolving” or searching for food!

In the books Trilogia sucia de la Habana by Pedro Juan Gutierrez you can get a pretty god idea of how the Cubans gets by in the area.

Café Concordia is state runned and the clients are supposed to be the locals of the “barrio”.

A tourist entering here is an exotic creature!  But I felt that this could be a nice place to get to know people and take some  pictures. So I had to give it some time to survive that feeling of being an alien.

I ordered a beer and after a while I had a nice chat about the legendary Cuban mucisian Beny Moré
with another client!

I came back almost every day during a week and the first excitement about
my visits calmed down. Took a lot of photos and got to know some of the other regulars.

When the evening approached they told me to go home because this is not a healthy neighborhood for me with that expensive camera and so on..

Solution for the EURO!

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This photo will not give me any awards, I know that.

It´s just an illustration of an eventual solution to the EURO crisis.

This is Bolivian Pesos 1984. The country was in big economical trouble.
The governments solution was simple… Print more money.. brilliant, the ministers tought.

The only problem is that the prices increased as quick as the printer press
rotated. A local bus fare was 65 000 pesos and if a tourist wanted to change
50 dollar she had to bring the backpack because the peso equivalent was a lot to carry!

(No point clicking on the photo to se full size.. the picture just look more awful the bigger it gets!)

Working the maize field!

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Little boy working hard at the maize field.

Some decades ago I stayed a week in the Andean village of Huandoval in the province of Ancash, Peru.

It’s a small isolated place with no electricity and no telephone. You have to rely on shortwave radio for communication. In periods you can´t reach or leave the area because the road collapses in the rain!

A fantastic horseback ride excursion in the mountains with the shopkeeper of the village is a strong memory from that week!

Click on photo to see full size

Iguazú do Brasil!

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  Iguazú is guaraní and means  “great waters” !

The falls was recently declared one of 7 provisional natural wonders of the world. Borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet here.

Click on photo to see full size.. and take an amazing tour with helicopter over the falls. (thank you luisguzmanpr)

Encuentro con Eduardo!

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Always when I go to Havana I visit Luyanó. It´s the “barrio” where I stayed on my very first trip to the city 1993.

Eduardo is the grandfather of the children in the family I lived with.

He invites you a glass of his home-made wine, and starts telling his story.

It´s more or less the same theme every time.. the Cuban history, the liberation from the Spanish colonialism and of course the revolution.

Eduardo has lived that history since the beginning of the last century!

Siempre cuando voy para La Habana, paso por Luyanó. Es el barrio donde
me quedé en mi primer viaje a la ciudad.

Eduardo es el abuelo de los niños de la casa donde yo viví.

Te invita un vaso de vino de la casa, y empieza a relatar su historia.

Es mas o menos el mismo tema cada vez.. La historia Cubana, la liberación
del colonialismo Español y por supuesto la revolución.

Eduardo ha vivido esa historia desde el comienzo del siglo pasado.

El Condor pasa!

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Some weeks ago I shared the story about the Cuban Tocororo bird.
The bonus in that adventure was the encounter with the zunzuncito, hummingbird the smallest bird on the planet. Weigh 1,6g, length is 5,7cm, Half of that is tail and a beak.

I have also had the honor to meet the worlds biggest flying bird, The Condor!

It weights about 15 kilo and has a 3-meter wingspan.
It was a breathtaking moment to observe two of these giants dominating the sky!
As we are in superlative territory it´s also worth mentioning the Colca Canyon in the Andes, southern Peru, where this picture was taken. It is the deepest in the world (yes deeper than Grand Canyon).

And no.. I am not an ornithologist..  click on photo to see full size