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Saturday, August 31, 2013


                                                              Pablo at LAX


                                                           Pablo and Housemates


                                                         Pablo on th4e Beach at Malibu

Pablo at Home


Pablo at Home

I love the story of Pablo and his rescue from Havana's Central Park.  Maybe that's why I've devoted three previous blogs to his saga.  I thought I had written the last about Pablo, but Amanda, his new adoptive mother, spurred me into action once again when I opened a new email from her.  Three appended pictures from that email are shown above the text of this blog.

One pic shows Amanda's living room and Pablo's companions in Amanda's home.  You can tell from the neat, stylish furnishings that Amanda is a good homemaker, and her other healthy-looking dogs suggest Pablo will get really good care in his new home in Los Angeles.

The pic in the car is Pablo as he appeared on arrival at the Los Angeles airport after his 2500 mile trip.  His noble long nose is especially evident in this photo.

And finally, Amanda's and my favorite shot, Pablo romping on the beach at Malibu.  After months of living in a foster home without a chance to run free in a park or on a beach, Amanda lost no time in getting him to the beach.  And, if we never get a message from another dog, this picture clearly communicates that Pablo loves his new existence.  It's as close a depiction of pure joy as we could have.

I'm so happy for Pablo and Amanda I could cry.

Les Inglis

Monday, August 19, 2013

                            
                                                       19 Century Military Hardware


Point of View

The last years of the 19th century were filled with exercises of power for the United States and its Caribbean neighbors.  Above all, Cuba was affected by strong US colonialist leanings.  While many would resist calling the US a colonial power, that era had the effect of spreading US power for the benefit of the US nation.  It seemed as if the US, through application of gunboat diplomacy, was set on a course of acquiring and maintaining hegemony over foreign lands.

In the late 1890's, the Spanish colony of Cuba was fighting its third war of independence against its Spanish rulers.  This war was going better for the Cubans than the first two wars.  While Cuba made gains on the ground, in 1898, the world was shocked by the sinking of the US battleship Maine in Havana's harbor with the loss of 268 lives.  It seemed most likely the Maine was sunk by the Spaniards, but some felt the Cubans did it to bring the US into the war.  To this day, there is not universal agreement on who did it, despite many investigations.

But the US entered the war, and that entry spelled defeat for Spain.  Spain had once been among the most successful colonial powers in the world with huge holdings in North and South America and in the Pacific.  By the late 19th century, it had fallen on hard times, and their former success had devolved into a hodge-podge of rebellious colonies and former colonies.  They had already lost all of South America, stripping the continent clean of their influence.  In the Western Hemisphere Spain was left with only Cuba and Puerto Rico under the Spanish fist.

The most famous part of the Spanish American War was surely Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders taking San Juan Hill, but the decisive naval victories really won the war.  Spain's navy was old, poorly maintained, short on coal, preoccupied with European rivalries, and completely overmatched by the modern US fighting ships.  Beyond Cuba, decisive US wins in Puerto Rico and The Philippines settled the fate of Spain as a colonial power.

The US occupied Cuba for five years for five years after the Treaty of Paris, which stopped the war.  Finally the US used its power to exact a new treaty called the Platt Amendment.  That treaty gave the US the right to intervene militarily in Cuba if it (the US) took a dim view of foreign or domestic events.  Cuba could not contract debt to a foreign country without US approval.  Also, we compelled the granting of perpetual occupancy of a naval base on the island.  That occupancy continues to this day as the naval base at Guantanamo.

Thus the 20th century began with Cuba free of Spanish rule but with severe new restrictions giving the US say so over foreign relationships.  In the decades after the end of the war, the US saw fit to intervene with troops at least three times.  A late as 1917, the US intervened with troops sometimes after corrupt elections had installed Cuban leaders not to US liking.

Recently, when I started reading about the Spanish American War, I began with my standard high school American History class's understanding of the war and its aftermath.  Needless to say, my high school teachers didn't devote much time to how we got into the war or what happened after the war.  They surely didn't lead my class and me to an appreciation of how all this looks to Latinos all over the Caribbean, Central, and South America.

In my view as an American schoolboy, we had really helped the Cubans.  We ended the Spanish mistreatment of Cuba.  On the sinking of the USS Maine, we entered the war on Cuba's side and made short work of "freeing" the country.  Also on Cuba's behalf we punished Spain not only by "freeing" Cuba, but also by kicking the Spanish out of Puerto Rico and Guam, and we forced them to sell the Philippines to us at a bargain price.  We drove the final nails in the coffin of Spanish colonialism in the Western Hemisphere

The war and the win were the stuff of Teddy Roosevelt's dreams, and his popularity, along with William McKinley's assassination, propelled him into the White House and to a place on Mount Rushmore.  Toward Cuba, the US assumed the role of kindly old Uncle Sam, guiding Cuba on a path we prescribed.

However in a typical Latino's view, the US entry into Cuba's third war of independence was not really gratuitous.  The Latino would note that we waited three years after the start of the war until Cuba had almost won the fight.  We allowed the Cubans to do as much of the heavy fighting as we could, and then we applied naval power to finish the war off in our favor.  We used this war to start the US on a plan of colonial domination, and evidence of this is the huge percentage of Cuban businesses owned by Americans.  Even in 1959, when Castro's Revolution triumphed, US interests owned over 70 percent of Cuban enterprises.  Finally, our Latino observer would say, when the fighting stopped, we occupied the island for five years and then forced the Cubans to let the US intervene whenever it liked.  We also took, apparently in perpetuity, the 46 square mile Guantanamo naval base.

So what one thinks is colored by one's point of view.  A patriotic US kid would be justified to see the US involvement in the war as a friendly rescue mission, while  a Latino kid of the same age would see something far more sinister in Uncle Sam's trying to keep peace in the world.  If such opposed views can happen here in our own backyard, it's easy to imagine why large numbers of people in Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, and Iraq don't subscribe to our present day self-appointed role as world policeman.

Les Inglis


Monday, August 5, 2013

The Pablo Saga

                                                                              
                                                                      Pablo


The Pablo Saga

What makes a story into a saga?  Well, I guess it's the length.  In the case of Pablo, a Cuban street dog discovered in Havana's Central Park last October, the story of Pablo has been a saga for some time now.  I started a file on Amanda and Pablo last fall when Amanda found The Aniplant Project through our website, theaniplantproject.org .  Today that file contains 175 email messages—all about Pablo.  Pablo's story would be a common rehoming tale of a Cuban street dog if it weren't for a plethora of twists and turns, reverses and disappointments.  As I like to eat desert first, I'll tell you Pablo finally arrived safely at Amanda's home yesterday, August 3, 2013.

Pablo had been the subject of another blog in this series—one titled, "Pablo," in early November 2012.  That blog told the story of Amanda finding a vet in Havana to help the sick little dog, a mix up in meeting the vet to receive Pablo, Pablo's being given to a stranger, and Nora's search for him nailing up posters all over Central Havana.  By the time Nora found Pablo, Amanda had already flown back home to Los Angeles.

A group of regular bench sitters in the park seemed to be Pablo's custodians when Nora found him.  You just don't take an apparently stray dog until you're sure it doesn't have a human who cares about it.  This group of young men liked Pablo and tried to care for him, but they couldn't buy him food, and medical care was unattainable for them. Nora, using her widely known public persona as a radio lecturer on animal protection, was able to convince the park sitters that Pablo had a better future with her than loose in the park.

The next step was to find a foster home for the young dog, who needed lots of rehabilitation.  Fortunately a long time family friend (La Señora) wanted to care for him.  The downside was she was 95 years old and couldn't get out and about in Havana.  For Pablo's entire stay in the foster home, Nora brought him food from the Aniplant headquarters' dog kitchen every day.  That was no small task, as it required a bus ride to and from her visits with Pablo and La Señora.  Also, Nora took Pablo to his vet appointments.

For some rehomed strays, vet visits during their foster care are straightforward affairs—rabies shots, tests for diseases, parasites, inoculations, etc.  Not so for poor Pablo who had a terrible case of kennel cough.  Weeks dragged into months as the vet tried to fight off Pablo's infection.  It was taking so long, I was afraid Amanda would give up hope of adopting him.  But Amanda, Nora, and the vet were persistent, and at long last he was healthy, and we could begin planning his travel to California.

Enter Davis Hawn, a friend of mine who loves dogs and has a Master's Degree in training service dogs.  Davis has been to Cuba twice and is planning to establish a service dog training center in Cuba.  To that end he had granted two scholarships for young Cuban adults to take a six week summer course in training dogs at Bergin University near Napa Valley in California.  June 24 was the date the two students were supposed to travel to the US for their course work.  Nora suggested that one of the students, Betty, could bring Pablo from Havana to Miami in a carrier with her baggage.  It seemed ideal.  In Miami, Amanda who was returning from a trip to Paris France, could unite with Pablo, and, after a day or so of getting to know each other, they could fly on to Los Angeles to begin Pablo's new life.  (Other blogs in this series are: "Man's Best Friend" of January 2013 and"The Booster center" of June 2013.)

So, on June 24, early in the morning Nora, Pablo, the students, and their families gathered to see them off at Jose Marti International Airport when the airline gave Betty and Nora an onerously worded release form to sign where the airline would take no responsibility for Pablo's safety.  Briefly conferring with the airport vet, a friend of Nora's, they found out there had been "mishaps" with some dogs shipped as baggage with Cuban travelers who were planning to return later to Cuba.  Perhaps it was a way to persecute Cuban travelers who might be trying to defect to the US by simply staying there and not returning to Cuba at all.  After all, why would a short term visitor to the US need to bring his or her dog along for the trip?  Sensing danger, the group of students and family members unanimously decided Pablo was too valuable to risk possible political shenanigans, and Nora kept Pablo in Cuba.

Poor Amanda, after 8 months of waiting, she's at Miami Airport where she never sees Betty and finally gets the word she has to go home without Pablo.  In addition to all the arranging, the wasted money was a blow.  I knew Nora would at once begin a plan to get Pablo here, but Amanda must have been beginning to wonder if we were all a bunch of incompetents.

It wasn't very long until Nora told us Pablo would travel to the US on August 2.  This time I knew there would be no disappointments, as she let me know Pablo would be accompanying the wife of Spain's Ambassador to Cuba and their daughter.  As the reader may know, diplomats travel much better than regular people.  Their tickets, their baggage, their clearances through Customs and Immigration are efficient, perfunctory, without waiting in lines, and deferential.  Thus, Pablo would arrive in the US as a VIP.

Davis offered to meet Pablo in Miami so Amanda wouldn't have to fly clear across the country twice to get him home, and Amanda happily agreed.  Davis had been in constant contact with several airlines as he made plans for The Booster Center—the new Cuban training facility.  He had to fly specially selected pups into Cuba for the Center, and now he was planning for Pablo's flight to the west coast.

Airlines are often difficult to deal with, and, with regard to dogs, they are especially idiosyncratic.  Some embargo moving live animals in the hottest months.  Midsummer in Havana is especially hot.  Some allow very small dogs in the passenger cabin, and they are all afraid of a mishap harming someone's loved companion.  All have health certificate requirements, and some in the US require these to be in English.  The vet in Havana made the original certificates out in Spanish.  To make matters worse. It's hard to talk with live people in authority in an airline.  But Davis had to know the rules to make travel plans.  A few days before Pablo's flight, Davis sent two Golden Retriever pups back to Cuba with Betty who graduated from Bergin University's summer program.  Davis' tolerance for abuse is higher than mine, and he eventually pinned down all the requirements for Betty's flights and for the ongoing flight of Pablo.  That required picking up Pablo at midday in Miami, and getting him to a vet in Ft. Lauderdale to redo his health certificate in English for his 7 am flight to California.

So the Ambassador's wife was at a ticket counter with Pablo and another dog traveling from Aniplant to Tampa when Davis spotted her about two hours sooner than he had expected (Being a VIP, she had skipped all the lines for Customs and Immigration.)  Davis took Pablo to the vet and then his hotel, and at 4 am he arrived at Delta's cargo office in Fort Lauderdale, where Pablo went to sleep for his  5 hour flight to LAX.

We were in sporadic phone contact with Amanda as she waited for Pablo's flight.  The plane had left Florida 50 minutes late, so we were all beginning to imagine problems, but other than landing about an hour late, it was a routine flight and Amanda and a robustly healthy and happy Pablo were reunited ten months after she fell in love with a sick little dog in a Cuban park.

Les Inglis