Remembering Pancho

Last Monday night I was with some friends, and they asked me what it is that I love about Cuba. What is it that keeps drawing me back? I'm sure my answer was inadequate, and afterwards I thought about what I could have said. I could have talked about the three trips I've taken in recent months, the generous meals and conversations I enjoyed in forty-seven different homes across four different provinces, how I was blown away in each encounter by the resilience, the heart, the determination and inspiration of people enduring daily trauma. Or, better yet, I could have honed in on one of those homes and described in detail one of those families; I could have told stories about one of those friends. I could have told them about Pancho. 

Our dear friend Pancho died just a few hours after my friends asked me the question and I fumbled for my response. Had I known the news I would awaken to, I could have—and would have—regaled them with many stories. Pancho is the best answer I can think of as to why I love Cuba, and why I am drawn to go back. The forge that is Cuba, or more precisely, the forge that is Matanzas, shaped and refined Pancho; he was the veritable embodiment of the streets and neighborhoods of his city. It was the soil in which he grew and maintained a deep root system. While I know there are extraordinary people in every land, I am sure I could never meet a Pancho Rodríguez anywhere except in Matanzas. He loved his home country, flaws and all, even more his home town, despite all the challenges and crazy-making frustrations. He had his experiences traveling abroad, and could tell you in a heartbeat why it was he would never live in any of those places he had visited. He lamented and joked about the way so many of his fellow Cubans were attracted to the bright lights of Miami, and how he might just end up being the last Cuban in Cuba. He said if that happened he would make sure and turn out the lights, if there were any lights. 

Kim first met Pancho in a theater workshop put on by Doug Berky back in the 90s. I first met him in the early 2000s. It was a summer when we spent about a month there in Matanzas, and I was attempting to learn Spanish. Pancho, unlike my other friends, would not slow down when talking with me. He said I needed to trust my ear, to learn by listening. I would visit him, and start my practice by asking him a simple question with my simple Spanish, and he would launch into a long, rambling answer. Whenever he came to a stopping point I'd ask another simple question and get another long answer. I recorded some of the conversations, and would take them to my Spanish tutor. She helped me decipher what Pancho was saying, as I was only able to pick up about one word in ten. As she helped translate his rapid-fire idiomatic Cuban Spanish into something I could understand, I soon began to see that this clown I was talking to was someone with an amazing intellect, hilarious to be sure, but also passionate, with insights on a wide range of interests such as history, literature, and religion, along with his primary passion, theater. 

In the years that followed, I seemed to have the good luck of timing every visit with one of Pancho's Mirón Theater street productions. Whether I was there alone, or with Kim, or with a group, inevitably someone in the street would flag me down and say, "Hey, Pancho's got a show today, come see it!." It might be in the Pueblo Nuevo neighborhood, or the Marina, or the Old Plaza, or in the Vigia or Liberty Park, and I would get to see shows that had won or would win national and international prizes—Don Quixote, The Old Man and the Sea, or historical shows, one about a tragic racial massacre that took place 100 years ago and another based on an eccentric town character from the 50s. Or it might be a slapstick comedy featuring a motorcycle gang or a clown show for kids in the most marginalized neighborhood. 

I was excited—Kim even moreso—when Pancho agreed to take a play she had written, a stage adaptation of the Lord of the Rings, and work up a scene with his theater company. Some years later, we would be honored again when he and his daughter Rocio asked us and our musical group to play for the final scene of an original play he had written, a production that would move throughout the city and end up on Mirón's stage. And then Kim started training with his clowning troupe, and experienced one of the highlights of her life when she got to clown around with Pancho in a street parade in Matanzas. But the greatest honor was when Kim's original play, a puppet-show called "Mirabella", won the Kairos Center's annual playwright competition, and Pancho and Rocio asked if they could adapt it for Mirón's repertoire. This gave Kim a chance to spend more time with Pancho, which in retrospect was more precious than the production of the play. 

Pancho and his wife Mercedes' home was one of our standard go-to places, whether to eat dinner or to simply visit. It was on our December visit last year, when we had a scheduled Sunday dinner, that I got a phone call from Pancho during church, saying that we'd need to postpone, because they had all been exposed to COVID 19. He eventually tested positive, and my next few visits with him would be in the hospital. Because Pancho had spent over two decades proving to himself and everyone else that he was stronger than the leukemia that he lived with (far exceeding the life expectancy), I think we all thought he would surely be able to survive the pneumonia that COVID produced. He did experience a brief recovery that enabled him to go home, where I last saw him before coming back to North Carolina in mid-March. The recovery would not last long, and over the course of the last week we have read tribute after tribute of the impact Pancho made on the lives of so many.

So, yes, we are continually drawn back to Cuba, and we are getting ready for our next trip to Matanzas, in just a few weeks, when we'll be able to walk the streets and neighborhoods that now embody the spirit of Pancho. As I make preparations, one memory keeps coming to mind. It is when Pancho invited Kim and me to accompany him and his clown troupe to their weekly gig at a fancy tourist hotel, the Meliá at the Varadero Marina. He explained that it was his least favorite thing to do, but it helped pay the bills. We jumped into the back of an old cattle truck for the forty-five minute ride, and the Mirón clowns laughed and joked the whole way (most of it over my head). They got off at the Marina, put on the costumes and makeup and red noses, got on their stilts, and gave the crowd a show, with the same high energy and enthusiasm that I'd seen in Matanzas, but now for a crowd of overly privileged people who didn't seem to care. 

The actors finished the show, took off the makeup and changed clothes, and climbed back onto the cattle truck. It started drizzling rain, so they pulled the tarp down over the windows. There was not much joking on the way back. Every so often, one of them would pull open the tarp and look out, until finally he said, "The flag is out!" They signaled for the driver to stop, and the truck pulled off to the side of the road. Everyone jumped out and ran down to the house which was displaying a large Cuban flag. I followed the group to see what was going on and Mercedes explained. "It's hot bread," she said. The house was a bakery, putting out its flag as a signal to passersby that hot loaves had come out of the oven. 

A happy group of clowns re-entered the back of the cattle truck with bread in hand. Mercedes reached into her pocketbook and pulled out a tub of soft butter and a knife. Someone else pulled out a bottle of sweet wine, and plastic cups were passed around. After enjoying the communion of bread and wine, Pancho confided to us, "This is a weekly ritual. It helps us get home. It's a long ride back from Varadero if we pass by and the flag is not out. But if it's flying, if we get to share the bread and wine, it helps us remember who we are."

Early last Tuesday morning, I can imagine that Pancho saw the flag flying as he made the long journey to his deepest home, where he is sharing hot bread and sweet wine with the communion of saints. I also imagine that they all put on their red noses for his welcome.