247 p., Discusses the diasporic origins of Palo Mayombe, a Kongo-Cuban religious tradition, while seeking to analyze how it fulfills, in a new transplanted setting, the spiritual needs of a given segment of the Cuban immigrant population in the United States—designated here as the “strangers in a new land”—“serving not only as a healing mechanism but also a vehicle towards the preservation of ethnic and cultural identity.”
Blacks have accused Cubans of taking advantage of their White complexions while simultaneoulsy being "minorities" when it is convenient for them. When opportunities for government contracts and grants for "minorities" are created, Cuban's apply as "minorities." When affirmative action policies are enacted for "minorities," Cuban's are also the beneficiaries. But somewhere down the line these police officers forgot they were "minorities." It took the two retired white officers, who cooperated fully with the FBI, to remind them.
An editorial asserts that petty politics and diplomatic one-upmanship should not play a part in a stated request by Dr Juan Carrizo Estevez, the director of Cuba's two-year-old Latin American School of Medical Sciences, to obtain a visa to the US to meet with black college officials and the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss a grandiose, gratuitous offer from Cuba of a free medical education to US students.
Shunning warnings that Cuban Pres Fidel Castro was using them for propaganda purposes, eight US residents have taken Castro up on his offer to grant them free medical education, provided they return to poor communities in the US. On Apr 4, 2001, the eight African-American students took part in welcoming ceremonies hosted by Cuba's Latin American School of Medical Sciences.
Reviews several books on Cuban history before 1959. American Sugar Kingdom: The Plantation Economy of the Spanish Caribbean 1898-1934, by César Ayala; Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868-1898, by Ada Ferrer; Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba, by Rosalie Schwartz.;
