Cuba Emails: My "Happy Place"

by Manuel Ramos

A Yalie, Manny, not only graduated a year early and magna cum laude, but he won Yale's Wrexham Prize for the best senior essay that became the basis for a January 4, 1976 cover story, advocating an end to the ill conceived War on Drugs, in The Washington Post Sunday Magazine. He is a proud father of four Californian adult children. He was also a La Jolla, California lawyer who sued lawyers for legal malpractice, the profession's dirty little secret, a Tulane law professor of ethics, property and legal malpractice, and he even worked for Obama and the FDIC suing lawyers of failed banks. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, Scientific American, the San Diego Reader and the Vanderbilt, Ohio State and University of Florida law reviews. He co-authored a book, Drugs and the Youth Culture. However, when it came time to publish his first two books on Cuba in 2007, this, his first non fiction book and semi-autobiographical novel, Cuba, Pretty Women and Yumas, he hit the third rail of not only politics, but publishing. Even though recent Gallup polls say that almost 40% and 50% of Americans have a favorable view of socialism and Cuba, respectively, when was the last time you have seen anything positive on Cuba or the Cuban Revolution? Oliver Stone, a fellow Yalie, and one of America's most successful filmmakers told a Cuban television audience in a 2014 Telesur interview that his career never took such a nosedive as when he did his three documentaries on Fidel Castro. So, here you can finally read two e books by the only Cuban American writer who has actually repatriated to Cuba. Manny is currently working on his third e book on Cuba, Cuba Still "My Happy Place" that includes all the emails sent to his family and friends from 7/10/07 to the present, and what could not be said in those emails. When Manny first met Yuliet, 18, in June 2003 she said she was 22, but she did not lie when she said that she was one of the richest Cubans in Cuba. In a country where Cubans still only make $20 a month, yes, a month, that is not a typo, Yuliet was making up to $500 an hour as Havana's most successful "jinetera", literally translated as a jockey, a prostitute. Manny had never been with a prostitute, but Yuliet looked like a Victoria Secret model and was looking for a way out of her profession. Yes, that is her on the cover. Manny and Yuliet are both still amazed that 12 years later they just celebrated their 8th wedding anniversary. Yuliet is now an American citizen, but like Manny, they both prefer to live in their modern fully air conditioned condo they bought two years ago for $25,000 next to the Chinese Embassy in Havana's best neighborhood, Vedado. Anywhere else in the world in a capital city that condo would be worth at least a million dollars. Two years ago Cubans could only buy used rental cars so they bought a "modern" 2008 Renault SM3 with 100,000 kilometers for $30,000. It is worth $40,000 today because the Cuban government, a year ago, started selling brand new cars to Cubans, but with a $100,000 luxury sales tax. Now, you understand why only 2% of Cubans own a car. Yuliet and Manny lived for seven years in Camaguey, Cuba's third largest city. Most of the events in these two books takes place in Camaguey and Havana, both UNESCO World Heritage sites. Incredibly, both America and Cuba are neighbors, just 90 miles apart, and so different, bitter enemies for 56 years, even after the historic December 17, 2014 announcement normalizing relations, but, yet, they are more alike than either Cuba or America would care to admit. The Untold History of the United States begins with Oliver Stone looking straight at the camera saying how "perturbed" he was that his kids were getting the same dishonest view of America he got growing up in New York. America, he said, has not always been the good guy, especially, as you will see when it comes to Cuba.

519 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 14, 2015

About the author

Manuel Ramos, a retired lawyer, is the author of eight published novels, five of which feature Denver lawyer Luis Móntez. For his professional and community service he has received the Colorado Bar Association’s Jacob V. Schaetzel Award, the Colorado Hispanic Bar Association’s Chris Miranda Award, the Spirit of Tlatelolco Award, and others. His fiction has garnered the Colorado Book Award, the Chicano/Latino Literary Award, the Top Hand Award from the Colorado Authors League, and three Honorable Mentions from the Latino International Book Awards. The Móntez series debuted with The Ballad of Rocky Ruiz (1993), a finalist for the Edgar® award from the Mystery Writers of America. His published works include the mainstream novel King of the Chicanos (2010), several short stories, poems, non-fiction articles and a handbook on Colorado landlord-tenant law, now in a sixth edition. He is a co-founder of and regular contributor to La Bloga (www.labloga.blogspot.com), an award-winning Internet magazine devoted to Latino literature, culture, news, and opinion. His latest novel, Desperado: A Mile High Noir, was published by Arte Público Press in March, 2013, and won the Colorado Book Award in the Mystery category.