Read as leg 5 (Cuba) of the Bookpacking
reading journey.
Pata de Puerco is the village in the Cuban
hinterland that, the narrator tells us, is his ancestral home. His name is
Oscar Mandinga, each element derived from the mismatched pair of friends, Jose
Mandinga and Oscar Kontico, who were early Negro settlers there. Mandingos were
tall and muscular whereas Konticos were pygmies, small but ferocious warriors;
both were involved in the violent struggle to throw off slavery on the island.
From these two firm friends, and the two
sisters they courted, sprang generations whose interactions form the human
chain of the story that interweaves with Cuba’s troubled recent history. Early
generations remain mired in the poverty and ignorance of the rural landscape
before the arrival of education enables some of Oscar’s contemporaries to make
the transition to Havana with all its opportunities and threats.
The narrator is relying on oral history
handed down from grandparents, and much of the prose is reflective of this.
However the narrative is punctuated periodically with outbursts that reveal it
is being told while he is currently under some sort of interrogation. The
nature and reason remains a mystery right to the end.
Familiarity with Cuban history and politics
is assumed, and referred to in passing rather than related; but it is its
impact on the characters that matters. Their personal histories change as the
book progresses, with revelations of hidden relationships and parenthood to
match any TV soap opera.
It is Oscar’s necessity to unravel this
tangled web in order to follow his grandfather’s maxim that no man knows who he
is until he knows his past, his history, and the history of his country.
The author was a renowned ballet dancer, a
principal with some top international companies, but here shows another string
to his creative bow with a story that paints a vivid picture of a country he
seems both to love and despair of.
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