[On March 2nd,
the great Cuban-American
actor and entertainer Desi
Arnaz would have celebrated his 100th birthday. So for Arnaz’s
centennial, a series on a handful of Cuban-American figures and histories!]
How the
pioneering entertainer helps us remember a different side to Cuban American
history, and why that matters.
For
understandable reasons, including the sheer percentage of the current
Cuban American population that have entered the United States since Fidel
Castro’s 1959 revolution (as well as the numerous, prominent historical events
over that time, from the Cuban
Missile Crisis and the Bay of Pigs through the Mariel boatlift and Castro’s
death late last year), many of our contemporary narratives and collective
memories of the Cuban American community focus largely if not entirely on the
last half-century. Yet as Monday’s subject José Martí (among many other figures
and histories, including the
1854 Ostend Manifesto) reflects, Cuban American history goes back much,
much further than that. Moreover, better remembering those longstanding histories
isn’t just a matter of gaining a more accurate sense of both this particular
ethnic community and the United States as a whole; it also helps us think about
what particular histories and stories each
stage and era of Cuban American identity featured, and how each of those
stages likewise contributed distinctly to our collective society and culture.
Desi Arnaz, born
(100 years ago today) Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III in Santiago de
Cuba, experienced a very particular such stage and history. As Arnaz details in
his autobiography
A Book (1976), he was born into a multi-generational family that was very
prominent in both the region and nation: his maternal grandfather Alberto
de Acha was one of the three founders of Bacardi Rum and thus one of Cuba’s
wealthiest citizens, and his father Desiderio
Alberto Arnaz de Alberni II was a rising political leader and the youngest
mayor in Santiago’s history. When military officer (and future strongman
dictator) Fulgencio Batista led a
1933 revolution (backed by the United States) to overthrow President
Gerardo Machado, however, Desi’s father was jailed for six months; upon his
release, the family (including 16 year old Desi) fled to Miami, where Desi
finished high school and then began his career in show business (with the 1939 musical Too Many Girls; the 1940 film adaptation
of which also starred Lucille Ball, with whom Arnaz would elope). While that family
exile of course foreshadows and parallels in many ways the Cuban families who
would similarly flee the island after Castro’s revolution (which overthrew
Batista), it also includes a number of distinct elements, many focused on a
1930s Miami and Florida that were both far less defined by a Cuban American
community and in the midst of the Great Depression when Desi and his family
arrived.
While these will
be of course speculative points, I certainly think it’s possible to see how
such specific details influenced Arnaz’s life and career. To cite one example,
when he and Ball proposed the initial idea for the sitcom I Love Lucy in 1950, studio
executives balked at featuring this interracial couple on television; so
Arnaz and Ball organized a summer
vaudeville tour (with the help of the clown
Pepito Pérez), proving that this cross-cultural comic combination could
work and work well (much of the sitcom’s pilot episode
was drawn from the vaudeville show). Later, with the show already one of the
first true TV mega-hits, Arnaz had the idea of re-airing episodes; he is
credited as the inventor
of the concept of the rerun, and this strategy for capitalizing and
building on success seems to me quite possibly related to the experience of
entering the U.S. and show business in the midst of the Depression. Another
CubanAmericanStudier might, of course, interpret the influence of Arnaz’s
particular personal and family and cultural experiences differently—but in any
case, we’d be remembering not only one man’s life and career, but a far different
moment in Cuban-American history and community. Sounds like a good way to honor
Desi’s centennial to me!
Last
CubanAmericanStudying tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other Cuban American stories or histories you’d highlight?
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