Au delà d'une Aventure

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 six 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 intesively 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 

 

 

 

Drugs: evil behavior

Legalizing marihuana or any other drug should be considered ignoramus

 

When a society is unable to indirectly take care of its idols like Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, and others, mainly making these symbols aware of what they represent for people or their admirers, it's a society to be revaluated. When these loved Americans died, it seems that they were under a state of frustration rather than depression!

Drug and prohibit substance trafficking must be treated more severely while information on drug and alcohol abuse’s consequences in humans must be part of everyone's general knowledge from primary school instruction because many people are not aware of drug and alcohol abuse’s effects leading to psychological disorders and deviant behavior. 

No one likes to die even though wanting! Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston belonged to us! It's a little sad that now we continue enjoying their music and legend after their passing away when they rather should have been protected and saved without violating their constitutional rights!

These three loved singers died being still young and quite famous, and their death was related to drugs; unfortunately, it was too late to safe none of them because they were already alienate and disturbed, and under that situation, rather than feeling death, they enjoyed going into ecstasies. They felt that they needed the drugs! They had already lost the capability to keep their inner control.

The different between humans and animals lies just in the intellect and inner or self control along with the cultural environment.

According to psychologist Sigmund Freud, humans have three psychic levels, the id, the ago and superego. While the id is the psychic level that relates to instincts in humans and animals, including to sex drive for pleasure, the ago is the power of the psyches to prevent the id from surpassing its limits and bursting. It’s the human inner control. By good luck, there is the superego, Freud states, the interpretation of social morality, values, laws, institutions, and others, including the family, i.e. the cultural environment that would ultimately help or rather prevent humans from braking or violating social norms, values and laws by behaving improperly.

When disruption occurs in neuron’s interaction, we say that a patient has minor or severe mental disorder.

In fact, drugs have the power to affect neuron’s interaction leading to deviant behavior or misconduct. Even rapes in most cases occur when inner control and the interpretation of cultural environment cannot prevent animal instincts or sexual drive (id) in humans from bursting.  So, drugs are the persuasion to do evil behavior and to forget about social norms and standards. Even to cannibalize!

Lamentably, many people are not aware of drugs’ effects, and when a person is already a drug addict, it becomes harder to dissuade him or her from quitting or stopping consuming drugs. Thus, the importance to teach children on drugs at schools is more and more imperative, and the sooner the, the better for the society.

Angel R. Almagro

 

Re: San Valentino

Cuando estoy cerca de ti

No siento el tiempo pasar

Porque eres para mí

Lo que me haces soñar

 

El deseo y la felicidad

De Sentir tu suave fragancia

De Canela y  lirio

Y ver en ti tanto candor y gracia

Invade mi alma el delirio

De vivir contigo en la eternidad

 

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