The colors that unite Cuba & USA

United we stand!

Only God knows how many Cubans have died at sea trying to get freedom!

Human Intellect, a social outcome

Humans have been struggling for survival in his biologic and social environment
through natural selection. How they produce and distribute goods is part of natural
selection within human evolution out of an ecological point of view.

Man has been a tribal animal since he first walked erect many years ago.Yet, as he was then a bipedal, he could not climb easily on trees or run faster than predators. Therefore, it was only through tribal mutual cooperation that he could prevent something dangerous or bag from damaging him, his offspring or his siblings.

For two million years, early hominids were primarily herd herbivore animals. During the next two million years, somehow more skilful, they were herd hunting warriors. Furthermore, humans were and still are instinctive animals as all of their social drivers had developed long before they developed intellectually.Thus, instincts as mother/father-love, compassion, cooperation, curiosity, inventiveness, competitiveness and mate are innate in humans.These intrinsic human feelings and behaviors were all necessary for the survival of humans and pre-humans within the environment.

The intellect, what distinguishes humans from other animals, developed slowly during the entire four million years or more of human span as a control over in
stincts to provide adaptable behavior.

In fact, social environment has been shaping humans into behavior and social interaction, and today, due to our intellect and culture, we modify or better our own environment to prevent inappropriate consequences from occurring.

Thus, the process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes.

It's refreshing to say that Darwin's natural selection is the process by which nature rewards those humans who better adapted to their environments, either naturally or culturally (social), with survival and reproductive success.

Unfortunately, drastic social processes such as too long revolutionary events affect negatively human evolution and human natural and cultural selection.

Freedom and Education

 

Freedom and Education

Freedom, something endowed by God, is part of human condition. It is the most important part of it as people need freedom to grow and proliferate unperturbedly.

Many years ago, people came to what is today America, the New World, seeking freedom, the mother of happiness, safety and growth. They were fleeing a land in Europe where they had been oppressed and deprived of religious creed.

As a matter of fact, when people are free, they enjoy of important and less important emancipations, prerogatives or privileges because, in a context of liberty, people are able to establish a sort of compact or social contract, a system of rules and norms, to maintain order and respect on other people's emancipations, prerogatives or privileges; what would guarantee other subsequent rights, such as those to elect their representatives to make sure their rights would not be violated, and their safety and properties would be protected.

Needless to say that under an atmosphere of freedom, people have not only the rights of credo (creed) and aquality, along with those of creating and running business through their own way for growing economically in an environment of free market and investment, but also the rights towards intruction and education for self-potential.

Unfortunetely, however, freedom can be taken away. Therefore, education is an important aspect of freedom that may prevent this latter from being disturbed or disrupted. Thus, education, if it is considered freedom's frame, should be an accessible right for all to guarantee freedom or human emancipation cognitively.


Angel R. Almagro

Love after all

This is a synopsis of a work out of ethnographic (anthropologic) research that I’ve been carrying out for years.

In 1919 some French Nationals came to Cuba to create the Cuban Aviation Company using six planes of French Farman Company, two F-60 planes, called the “Goliath”, and four F-40 planes. These latter F-40 planes had participated in the WWI. The French nationals mentioned above were members of an aerial brigade that combated Germans planes and were engaged in bombing raids with these F-40 warplanes. During that war, three of these French military pilots, Lucien Coupet, Léon Coupet, and Camille Jousse, were engaged in the Battle of Verdun. It was the greatest and lengthiest but bloodiest battle that had ever taken place in earth. It lasted from the 21th of February 1916 through the 19^th of December 1916.
 

          Leon Coupet and Camille Jousse were wounded twice during the war.  Later, Leon was also wounded when he combated as artilleryman from an F-40 warplane. His brother Lucien was the pilot of it.  During the combat, the plane was reached by the German artillery and brought down while it was returning from a bombing raid in the German city of Treves. Both brothers were taken as war prisoners, while Leon was, however, in state of coma as a result of their plane crashing in German soil.  

   

When WWI ended due to the Armistice, these French people were part of a crew who were considered dead as they had lost contact with Paris while they were performing the first long distance flight in history from Paris to Dakar with the Farman giant plane “Goliath”. The Goliath plane had crashed in a shore of a beach where they spent two weeks without food and water under the sun of Sahara desert. Actually, Leon, who was a plane technician, made an alembic from the wreckage of the crashed plane to make drinkable the salty seawater. During that time, lost in the desert, they ate what they could preserve from the Goliath along with the crabs they captured.

         The Goliath’s crew decided to reach Mauritania by foot. The footway by the desert was hard because one of these exhausted former soldiers had thrown away the above-knee prosthesis of his right leg. His leg had been amputated because of war wounds.
The French comrades were found by a Moor and his black slave 

who took them to Mauritania, the nearest population. From there, they went to Dakar in Senegal by train. They returned to Paris by ship where they were received as heroes.
 

        Sometime later, the Goliath Planes of Farman Company were being used as a commercial airline from Paris to London until a Cuban millionaire bought them to create an international commercial airline in Cuba. Then, the Coupet brothers and Camille Jousse, along with other former war combatants were sent to Cuba with two Goliath F-60 and four F-40 planes to create the mentioned commercial aviation.

In Cuba, the French Nationals remained a little more than a year, and the most important location where they stayed was the aerodrome of Colombia in Havana, which became a real aeronautic fair due to the presence of the French planes. For these French people, after the battles of WWI and the testing flight of the “Goliath” to Dakar, their stay in Cuba was like an adventure which took place under relaxing and warming atmosphere with plenty of affection and happiness.

A Cuban woman, who was the person in charge to cook for these French pilots, was the most important woman in that aerodrome of Columbia. Her name was Genevieve. She was married to the owner of a little restaurant located within the aerodrome where the French pilots and other technicians used to eat. The owner of that little restaurant was a black Cuban, and Genevieve was a beautiful woman of mixed race; they had two sons. They were blacks.

While the small planes F-40 were used for short aerial flights in Havana and in other close cities, the Goliath was being prepared to fly from Havana to Santiago with passengers and correspondence. During the first flight to Santiago without passengers due to the bad weather, the Goliath had an emergency landing between two sugar cane plantations. When the weather was better, they managed to take off.

Leon and Genevieve fell in love since the first they saw one each other. As a result of that loving intimate relation, a girl was born. She was not black. Unfortunately, she was born on September 4th of 1921 after the French nationals had left from Cuba. She never met her father. Maybe, Leon never knew that he was the father of Rosa, Genevieve's daughter, one of my sons’ grand-mother.

The most beautiful part of that event was the romantic relation between Leon and Genevieve. They had never loved so intensively in their lives in a so short time, they believed it was an eternity, as they loved so much each other.

Was Leon so ashamed toward Gustavo, then Genevieve's husband, that he never came back?

When you read the novel or see the film, you would know!
 

Angel R. Almagro

Our Mother, God's best love!

You give out our life each day

Not without pain and blood!

Thus, Gratefully I pray,

As I bring you my flowers and nod.

They would be more immaculate

Being you their mistress

As of all you are divine fate,

Womb God does bless!

How to fight obesity

Being natural and having an educated eating behavior are a way to avoid obesity. Thus, I've got accustomed to eat like a wild animal! Have we ever seen an animal obese in the wilderness where they live ecologically?



Without taking a position of sub-estimation on other cultures, what we call ethnocentrism, humans should interact with different cultures out of their own from an ethnographic point of view.


Ethnography is the branch of anthropology which studies particular cultures, what includes, indeed, the social behavior of people living under any of these particular cultures. And social behavior, as a whole, implies nutritional behavior.


As for me, I compare myself to animals_ having similar morphological features such as eyes and skeletal structure_ and to plants with which we share a common habitat from a nutritional and developmental point of view.


Why do I establish such a comparison? I do so because I've never seen such common animals and plants getting overweight while they normally develop through an ecological way; however, we do see animals altering their natural orderly development and getting overweight when they are overfed or fed through growing hormones by humans and plants developing fast when they are purposely kept under fertilization. Consequently, under a natural selection point of view, these animals and plants are less resistant to their environment than those that are fed ecologically by themselves through their own way.


Such a thing occurs in humans when they are overweight. They are less fit and less resistant to the environment. What happens, for example, if an obese person is trapped inside a house or a car in fire and he has to escape through a window too narrow for him because of his obesity? What happens if an aggressive dog or bull runs after him and he has to run fast enough and jump over a fence to escape from the animal? What happens if a lunatic person runs after him with a knife? What would happen if ultimately he has to climb quickly on a tree to be safe from an approaching tsunami?


In addition to this common possible situation that a non overweight person might face better, he should be as natural as possible when getting fed to live better and longer; i.e. he has to have a natural and ecological diet. Let's think about how a baby is fed from birth. S/he is fed with nutrients coming through the mother's breast. Look at the baby! In a few months, s/he has grown up fast, having a weight in concordance with his or her time and stature. Yet, sometimes, the baby becomes overweight when s/he is fed unnecessarily with additional food.


In nature, to develop, a green plant takes its energy using sun light and rains, along with the nutrients it takes from the soil through its roots. And that's it! Have you ever seen tree populations in vast forest in America, Africa, and Australia? Oh, wood, wood coming from trees, how we need you for our lives! Every single house in America has needed wood for its building! How great is divine nature that holds trees only fed with the power of the sun that brings also rains. Rains that also pour plants used to feed humans and keep our rivers and lakes plenty of water, our fishes' habitat. Oh, our sun whose power maintains rain circle, making our rivers flow to our seas, training nutrients and mineral molecules of iodine, potassium, magnesium, cooper, phosphorus, etc., feeding and fertilizing ecologically marine microorganisms and plants, food of sea habitat. And all this process occurs through a natural and ecological way.


Therefore, to avoid obesity, humans should meet their food needs ecologically, i.e. eating in an elegant way; what would help to keep a healthy body and a dynamic attitude. What means an elegant way to eat? Eating in an educated and healthy way; i.e. eating small balanced portions of food which include proteins, vitamins, minerals and carbohydrates.


If you happen to eat in group, do so while you talk with those who share the same table with you and try not to be the first in finishing; otherwise, you are obliging the others to stop eating. Of course, while eating, you should talk when your mouth is empty. And don't neglect to use a napkin to clean your mouth before talking, even if you are eating along with your partner or with your children. Moreover, eating elegantly might help you fight and avoid either anxiety or bulimia nervosa. And, furthermore, you would enjoy your meal better and nicely. Inevitably, it happens that most people devour in minutes a meal that has been cooked in hours! And concluding, what may help you be elegant when you are eating in public and enjoy your meal better, is dramaturgy and impression management, because devouring your meal fast is seen as something awful, tasteless and unmannerly, but ultimately, unhealthy, too.


And remember to have an ecological eating behavior to be healthier and to live longer.

Lord's peace before, now and forever

Since there was only one star, despite the distance, to see the light, we need darkness! When all is darker, more brilliant the light! May Lord's peace be with us!

Havana, Feeding Paradise

The Cuban government has done its best to keep the people with its wellbeing and its feeding and culinary traditions, a clear Spanish heritage. An example of this is that they have maintained entertaining sites like bistros for the people's health and nutrition. It's really nice take a “bit of rum” along with a piece of cheese and sausage. And then, smoke a cigar Partagas, Montecristo or Cohiba in a romantic atmosphere under the light of candelabra.  Oh, Havana!

Let me wish you a Happy New Year, plenty of happiness, health and abundance!