Miami Wendigo*

By Varela

Some days ago, I noticed that The Herald grew afraid of Miguel Saavedra, the CD smasher, leader of that pack of unemployed militants called Vigilia Mambisa that intimidates half of Miami, after the newspaper published an ad about The Cuban Five (and later asked the recalcitrant ones for forgiveness for its sin.)

So, I must tell you a personal experience I had with Vigilia Mambisa and its leader.

During all of 2008 and until late 2009, I went to local television programs and collected $75 for contradicting others for 45 minutes, which in Miami is the same as effing the right-wingers.

The example I cite deals with an appearance on María Lara’s show “Arrebatados,” on Channel 41, a station with low rating and worse quality.

Its producers used to call me every time a brouhaha was stirred involving Cuba. The main thing was the ratings, so I always was at a numerical disadvantage and was given less time to prepare than the others. That’s why I tried to prepare strong and precise statements for when my time came (the hosts always cut me off, claiming they had to go to commercials, because that’s how controversy is handled here.)

I remember that, at the time of Juanes’ concert in Havana, I tangled with a gang of experts led by the former second-rate boxer (turned third-rate writer) Enrique Encinosa, seconded by other right-wing drones who made background noises.

So the producers would contact me, sent a car for me, and after the shows paid me in cash, in crumpled five-dollar bills.

When I was on, the ratings went up a few points, because the people couldn’t quite guess when I might get pissed, tear my lapel mike off and leave the studio … or leave the studio with the mike in my lapel, without getting pissed.

Or maybe the viewers hoped that, after listening to my diatribes, my interlocutor would stand up and beat the bejeesus out of me (although the producers never brought me the right adversary; the closest to it was former boxer Encinosa, by then fairly elderly.)

Once, on a live program, they sent the security guards in because they feared an imminent scuffle. That was during a confrontation with a fellow named Aldana, who passes himself off as a dissident deported from the island. Says he was a cousin of Fidel’s former aide de camp.

But I digress.

One day, the program announced an encounter between me and Miguel Saavedra, in the wake of an incident at a Publix supermarket on Coral Way, where he had confronted the little old lady and criticized her for her book. The supermarket manager threw him out.

I accepted, and when I showed up at the station (I’m talking about America Tevé 41) the notorious Miami picketeer was there already, wearing a suit and tie. He recognized me.

There’s still 10 minutes before air time. And let me tell you that Saavedra, despite the urban legend, is an intelligent man who plays well his role as a fool. Remember that he is a refrigeration technician.

So Saavedra invites me to a cup of coffee in the station’s cafeteria and we ask for two cups of American coffee, not the Cuban brew. It tasted like swill, so we added cream and saccharin and toasted with it.

Saavedra assures me that he doesn’t want any confrontation on TV, least of all with me. And jokingly tells me that he even pays NOT to be paired with me. That he is there only to explain his struggle and he respects mine but I shouldn’t make fun of him because he might lose his cool.

Then he reminds me of the favor he did for me at the time of my incident at The Herald, when he brought demonstrators and drummers to the street to criticize the newspaper.

I thank him for his previous support and tell him that I don’t have to agree with his actions just because he supported me that once. The only thing I’ll criticize him for, I say, is his tussle with Juanita Castro. By raising a ruckus over the book she wrote, the only thing he accomplished was to sell 10 more copies at Barnes & Noble, I tell him.

Saavedra accepts my comment stoically but acknowledges that that’s the way he wages his struggle.

So, to release tensions and end the conversation, I ask him to confess how much the Diaz-Balarts pay him for each picketing job. If they pay well, I’ll carry a placard or denounce the next CD by Silvio Rodríguez, I tell him. He laughs and says they don’t pay him a cent and we end our little chat.

Back in the studio and on the air live, María Laria asks Saavedra about my criticism and he answers that he respects my position but that I need to respect his.

When my turn comes, I return the favor. I respect Saavedra’s actions (they’re almost a tradition) but I reserve the right to disagree.

Pure rhetoric between us.

María Laria senses a void that she can’t fill (all afternoon she has been touting ‘the clash between Saavedra and Varela’) and, after reading a couple of pages from Juanita’s book and fielding four phone calls from intelligence-challenged viewers, she signs off.

One of the show’s producers comes to me, clearly annoyed, and whispers: “You two gave us a bummer of a show. Next time, I won’t let you have coffee together, because you were in cahoots.” She was right. But what Saavedra and I did was the only way to demonstrate peaceful coexistence in a city like Miami.

Some months later, when I attend Carlos Varela’s concert, Saavedra’s Vigilia Mambisa is lined up on the sidewalk across Gusman Center, berating the rafters who line up at the box office. They call them communists and remind them of the sinking of the 13 de Marzo tugboat and the downing of the Brothers’ planes.

Saavedra is shouting into a megaphone. When he sees me coming, he hands it to an assistant and points at me. His henchman begins to spit insults at me over the loudspeaker. I say something in reply and a Miami Police gorilla standing between the pickets and the theater entrance ushers me inside.

Once inside, I understand Saavedra’s reason not to shout at me himself – he’s returning the favor I did for him on television.

But that’s not the oddest part. Inside the theater, I run into a Herald photographer who’s taking pictures of the event. After greeting him, I ask: “Did you photograph the Vigilia Mambisa picket line?”

“No,” he responds, “I have orders to ignore them.”

Then I realize that a struggle, remunerated or not, is meaningless if it doesn’t have press coverage.

The Herald may be afraid of the recalcitrant ones but knows how to deal with them – and neutralize them when it wants to.

* The Wendigo is a mythical creature. It is a malevolent and cannibalistic creature that can possess a human being or become a human being.