Unhidden Cuba Few Know

Ask many of today's college students, especially those storming into the political rallies of a certain presidential candidate to disrupt them, who was José Martí or Antonio Maceo y Grajales or what is La Santería and they'd think that you'd suddenly lost your sanity.

Island people are trapped in a perpetually destructive oceanic orbit that carries them all the days and nights of their life through hurricanes, tidal waves, floods, and whatever other misery that the wrath of tons of water can think of to smash animate and inanimate objects with.  In defense, island people have to move fast, requiring them to think fast.  They're impatient with slow thinking, slow moving people; their speech and actions come fast, sharply.

José Martí, Cuban revolutionary leader and poet is considered to be the Apostle of the Cuban Revolution against Spain; was killed in combat on the battlefield.

General Antonio Maceo y Grajales was second in command of the Cuban Revolutionary Army against the Spaniards.  Because of his brillance and heroic fighting on the battlefield -- and being an Afro Cuban -- he was called El Titán de Bronze (The Bronze Titan).  La Santería is the synthesis of features of Catholicism and the Yoruba religion of the slaves from Nigeria.  It is deeply ingrained in Cuban culture and the cultures of countries south of the United States border.

It was encouraging to sense in the body language of the U.S. President and the Cuban President a measure of rapport, grandstanding or sincere, overcoming different political systems; it showed the results of contact  between people of dark and light complexion in Cuba and in the United States after centuries of years,  Knowledge of others is essential in one's offense and defense.