‘Jesus Christ was Cuban’
By Aurelio Pedroso
GUATEMALA CITY – Daniel Piñol is a Guatemalan boy who has just celebrated his seventh birthday. He can feel pride in the fact that his father is a descendant of one of the heroes of Guatemalan independence, Mariano de Aycinena y Piñol.
His mother, born in Central America, is the daughter of a Cuban couple who lived almost half a century in the land of the quetzal. His parents have neither lost nor forgotten any of the customs of the land of their birth.
Cuba is rarely news in that sister nation, despite the strong historical ties that join them. Not many Guatemalans know that a Cuban, the poet José Joaquín Palma, wrote the lyrics of the Guatemalan national anthem. And it would be hard to find someone who can contribute some detail of José Martí’s stay in Guatemala, tell about his troubled sojourn on horseback from Puerto Barrios on the Atlantic to the capital city, more than 1,400 meters above sea level.
In these days prior to the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to the island, the local newspapers mention Cuba more frequently, reporting on the various activities of groups that oppose the authorities that govern the island. But that’s all. Little is known about today’s Cuba because Cuba is associated with a word with a satanic sound in this part of Central America – communism.
Guatemala, where Catholicism bears the imprint of attitudes and interpretations typical of the 19th Century – attitudes that the Cuban Catholics abandoned long ago – looks at Cuba through the eyes of the big media. And it does so because of the planned arrival of the Holy Pontiff next Monday, March 26.
I must confess that few times in my life have I seen a boy so alert and intelligent, with an incredible ability to process the words of an adult and rephrase them in the language of a precocious child.
Daniel lives under two somewhat different cultural influences. Two idiosyncrasies that stay a distance apart yet have converging points, such as education, respect, and love of family.
Asking questions a bit out of the ordinary for a boy so young, he engaged me in conversation one afternoon on the topic of crab fishing and the precautions a fisherman must take on a stormy sea.
He wanted to know the differences or similarities between the warm waters of the Cuban Caribbean and the nearby Pacific Ocean, where many Guatemalans travel, because the distance from the capital to the Pacific is shorter than to the Atlantic, to Puerto Barrios, where the Apostle landed.
Little Daniel closest confidant is his father. To him, the boy said that he felt more Cuban than chapín (as Guatemalans are known) because he preferred bread to the classic and traditional corn tortillas that are ever present in the lives of Guatemalans, either for daily meals or special celebrations.
One of the latest surprises of this prodigy was to conclude that the Son of God may very well have been Cuban, a conclusion he reached after listening to catechism in school. He explained it succinctly: “If Jesus managed to live 40 days in the desert on bread and water – not on tortillas – then he was Cuban.”
God bless him because that bright concept is clearly a prize-winner. Let’s hope that Benedict XVI hears about it, because this child carries in his veins an important share of Cuban blood.
