Introduction by Dr. José Ramón Cabañas, director of the Center for International Policy Research (CIPI) on May 8, 2026
Emilio Cueto Suarez, Foto: Ismael Francisco/ Cubadebate
Regular readers of materials produced by Cuba’s Center for International Policy Research (CIPI) will recall that issue 013 (New Era) of the journal Cuadernos de Nuestra América was dedicated to scientific exchange between Cuba and the United States. This volume is the only one to date that has been translated in its entirety into English. Given the success of that project, we at the center decided to prepare a similar one dedicated to cultural exchange between the two countries. We were in the process of reaching out to potential authors when the current U.S. administration took office, which has sought, among other impossible goals, to sever and disregard all ties between the two nations and peoples.
In that context, it was not possible to secure all the contributions we had hoped for. Other thematic editions related to events recently held by the center have been completed, so the aforementioned project will be resumed at a later date.
However, among the contributions we did receive on time and meeting the required quality standards is this text by author Emilio Cueto Suárez, which we are making available to our readers on its own due to its timeliness and relevance.
Emilio’s personal work in the research, collection, and promotion of Cuban cultural expressions would alone be enough to fill several anthologies. He is among the Cubans living outside the island who have distinguished themselves most in this field and who have had the rigor to document nearly all of his findings. A former official of the Inter-American Development Bank, he devoted practically all his personal income to tracing Cuba’s footprint around the world and to filling his home in Washington, D.C., with books, paintings, tableware, silkscreen prints, stamps, and all manner of cultural artifacts, which he explains with passion to visitors.
An intelligent and constant interlocutor of great Cuban figures such as Eusebio Leal Spengler and Miguel Barnet Lanza, among his greatest attributes is the ability to back up every word with years of research and to never try to please by distorting reality.
On a personal note, I have had the pleasure of knowing him since 1994, when the First Nation and Emigration Conference was held in Havana, and of having developed a friendship with him over the years during my visits to or stays in the United States and his travels around the island. For several decades, he has been an active observer of Cuba’s relations with its emigrants and a consistent critic of the opportunities we have failed to seize to go further in each endeavor.
To the immense amount of information presented in the text you are about to read, one might perhaps add that in recent years Emilio has taken special care to bring to Cuba a sufficient number of copies of his newly published books to distribute them to virtually all provincial libraries on the island and to present his findings to groups of students, administrators, or culture enthusiasts.
People-to-people exchange undoubtedly builds indestructible bridges between nations. Emilio has also built a cathedral of knowledge, a space conducive to broad encounters among Cubans from every corner of the globe.
The text describes the author’s migration experience, which, rather than distancing him from his Cuban roots, served as an incentive to study the cultural expressions of his country of origin, its symbolism, and its impact around the world. It is the unique experience of a scholar who does not specialize in these topics as part of his primary occupation, but for whom this pursuit has become, by vocation, one of the main reasons for his existence. To the extent that the author acquires more information about his subject of study, he becomes a leading promoter of Cuba’s influence across the globe. It also reflects the uniqueness of the fact that his work is recognized and respected both in Cuba and in the largest communities of Cubans living abroad, particularly in the United States.
The text explains the author’s migratory experience, which, rather than distancing him from his Cuban roots, served as an incentive to study the cultural manifestations of his country of origin, its symbolism, and its impact on the world. It is the unique experience of a scholar who does not specialize in these topics as part of his primary occupation, but whose vocation makes it one of the main reasons for his existence. As the author acquires more information about his subject of attention, he becomes a major promoter of Cuba’s influence throughout the world. It also reflects the uniqueness of his work being recognized and respected both in Cuba and in the largest settlements of Cubans living abroad, particularly in the United States.
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SIX DECADES OF STUDYING AND PROMOTING CUBAN CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES
By Emilio Cueto Suárez
Introduction
Like many others of my generation, when I left Cuba at the age of seventeen in April 1961, I thought I would soon return to my home in Havana, where my mother, aunt, and sister would be waiting for me. That was not the case. I have lived my entire adult life outside of Cuba, although, starting in 1977, when I was first allowed to return, I have visited my homeland many times.
When I left Cuba, I already held a high school diploma in Liberal Arts (from the Colegio de Belén and the Instituto Pre-Universitario de Marianao) and was in my first year of law school at the University of Villanueva.
I settled in Washington, D.C., where I earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science (CatholicUniversity) and later obtained a Master’s in Political Science and a Certificate inLatin American Studies from Columbia University in New York (on whose grounds stands the original Alma Mater statue, later replicated on the steps of the University of Havana). Later (in 1974), I earned a Juris Doctor from Fordham University, also in New York. I practiced law for 30 years.
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in learning about our history and culture, and to that end I have devoted countless hours. Once in the United States, I became an avid reader of Cuban books and have always kept abreast of events related to Cuba and all expressions of its culture, both on and off the island, tracing our footprint everywhere. For decades, I have been collecting all kinds of materials related to our country (the “Emilioteca”) and have made the motto “Nothing Cuban is foreign to me” my own. I believe I should begin by explaining that, in 1969, at the invitation of the Santiago-based professor María Cristina Herrera (1934–2010), I attended a Meeting on Cuban Studies in Washington, D.C., which marked the beginning of the Institute of Cuban Studies, which remained active until shortly after the death of its founder. The Institute’s biennial meetings were attended by the most prominent scholars of Cuban studies (Cubans from both sides of the strait and foreigners), and I never missed them. I have always considered the IEC to be my great Cuban university.2
Moreover, its members, led by Dr. Carmelo Mesa Lago (1934), began publishing the Anuario Estudios Cubanos (which is still in print), which has been one of the most important reference publications on the island. I have kept every issue, and they have been indispensable companions in my learning about a complex and multifaceted Cuba. And, formore than half a century, I have personally consulted libraries in Boston, Key West, Chicago, Philadelphia, Gainesville, Ithaca, Los Angeles, Miami, New Haven, New York, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.3 The Cuban materials they house are, quite simply, dazzling.
I am also a member of the Cuban Cultural Center of New York, founded in 1971, whichbrings together tireless and valuable collaborators who regularly organize talks, book presentations,musical and dance performances, excursions, film screenings, etc.
In addition, they organize an annual conference dedicated to a specific theme. At these conferences I
1 I have lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C. (1961–1965; 1994 to the present) and in New York (1965–1975; 1977–1994). I have also lived in Argentina (1967–1968), France (1975–1977), and Haiti (2004–2006); and I have studied law in the Netherlands (1973) and Russian in the Soviet Union (1976).
2 See Thirty Years of the Institute of Cuban Studies. Miami, Fla., Alexandria Library, 1999.
3 And, outside the United States, in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cambridge, Mexico City, Florence, London, Madrid, Moscow, Naples, Oviedo, Oxford, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, St. Petersburg, Santo Domingo, Seville, Tampa, and Venice.
In recent years, with the process of digitization, remote access to Cuban materials held by many more institutions has been greatly facilitated.
I have been an audience member and speaker for many years. I was also a member of Cuban American Associates, founded in New York in 1990 by a group of compatriots with the aim of contributing to the restoration of Anna Hyatt Huntington’s equestrian statue of José Martí (1876–1973) in New York’sCentral Park. A replica of the statue has stood in 13 de Marzo Park in Havana, facing the sea, since 2017.
I would also like to mention that I have regularly attended the Conferences on Cuba that the Center for Cuban Research (CRI) at Florida International University (FIU) has been organizing (FIU). The quantity and quality of the speakers and presentations have contributed enormously to my knowledge of a wide range of Cuban topics. I have also attended conferences on Cuba hosted by universities in Baltimore, Boston, Miami, Gainesville, Notre Dame, and Washington, D.C.
For all these reasons, although my professional life has always been in the field of law, not in academia, thanks to my deep and varied interests in Cuban affairsand my many friends who are university professors, I managed to “sneak” into the halls of and there not only learn a great deal, but also regularly present the results of my research.
Development of My Cuban Work5
I believe the best way to document my commitment to Cuban culture is to analyze it by subject area. In the following pages, I will successively address the topics on which I have focused: Visual Arts, Cartography, Music, History, Tobacco, Literature, Cuisine, Philately, José Martí, and La Caridad del Cobre.
But first I want to note that, after much reflection during decades of study and collecting, I have developed a very broad vision of what should form part of the corpus we might call “Cuban” culture: (1) That produced on the island by its residents (citizens and foreigners); (2) that produced off the island by emigrants/exiles, as well as their children, many of whom still maintain ties to the island’s history and culture; and (3) that produced by non-resident foreigners who, through some connection (and these are of very diverse nature), have drawn inspiration from the island for their artistic and intellectual works.6
Visual Arts
In my school history textbooks, I recall many captions under engravings with the simplenotation “contemporary engraving.” Over the years, I became convinced that this information was truly useless due to its vagueness and uncertainty, and I thought it would be beneficial to study this aspect of our colonial iconography in depth.
5 For those wishing to consult my publications within Cuba, I am pleased to inform you that I have donated each and every one of my books to the José Martí National Library of Cuba, as well as to each of the provincial and diocesan libraries on the island. The one in La Caridad del Cobre is also available in allmunicipal libraries. The more specialized books can also be found in other institutions, including the Institute of Literature and Linguistics, the National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Music, the Tobacco Museum, the Ceramics Museum, the Office of the Historian of Havana, the Postal Museum, and the ISA. For those wishing to consult my books in the United States, see the Appendix.
6 See also my work “Cuban thought and cultural identity: The various ways of (not) being Cuban,” in Alan West-Durán (ed.), Cuba. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Vol. 1, pp. 90–93.
After many years of research and collecting, I managed to organize the first exhibition of Cuban colonial engravings ever held in the United States. This took place in 1982 at the Art Gallery of St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the invitation of its director, the Jesuit priest and Cuban visual artist Oscar Magnan (1929–2024).7 Shortly thereafter I published the first article in English on the subject.
A decade later, I was invited by what was then called The Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now the Miami Museum) to present, using pieces from my collection, the first worldwide retrospective of the Cuban pictorial work of the great French lithographer Frédéric Mialhe (1810– 1868), who resided in Cuba between 1838 and 1854. Accompanying the exhibition (October 6, 1994 – January 30, 1995), I published *Mialhe’s Colonial Cuba: The Prints That Shaped the World’s View of Cuba*. Miami, Fla., Historical Association of Southern Florida, 1994. According to WorldCat,9 one hundred twenty-three libraries worldwide, most in the United States, have acquired the book.10
Thanks to the vision of Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, then Director of the National Library of Cuba José Martí, a second, greatly expanded edition of this work in Spanish inaugurated the Library’s “Raros y Valiosos” series in 1994.11 Always passionate about the work of Mialhe, I revisited the subject in 2024 for the magazine Honda, published by the José Martí Cultural Society, which is available online.12
The illustration of Cuban flora and fauna has been a little-studied topic in our historiography, and in 2002, I curated an exhibition of pieces from my collection, once again invited by the South Florida History Museum in Miami. An illustrated catalog with an extensive bibliography accompanied the exhibition.13
On that occasion, I learned of the manuscript work of the American botanical artist Nancy Kingsbury Wollstonecraft, a resident of Matanzas (Félix Varela had first mentioned her in 1826). Her work remained lost until, in March 2018, I found it, online, at the Cornell University Library, in Ithaca, New York. I traveled there to examine it, and in November of that year I gave a lecture at the University of Florida in Gainesville, introducing the work of this extraordinary and unknown artist for the first time. 7 To accompany the exhibition, I published Colonial Cuba through foreign eyes (A selection of old Cuban prints).
Peter’s College Art Gallery, Jersey City, N.J. (November 9–November 30, 1982).
8 “A short guide to Old Cuban prints,” in Cuban Studies (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Winter, 1984, 14 (1), 27–42.
9 WorldCat is a global digital bibliographic catalog, available online, containing references to all the books held by the world’s most important libraries (thousands of libraries with materials in 500 languages).
10 Furthermore, the book has been digitized and can be downloaded from the internet. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00065012/00001/images
11 Frédéric Mialhe’s Picturesque Cuba. Havana, José Martí National Library of Cuba, The book, a true publishing gem, after being distributed to provincial libraries across the island, was presented at the Bildner Center, City University of New York in April 2001, and three libraries in Florida hold a copy.
12 “Frédéric Mialhe in Cuba” , In Honda (Havana), 66. p. 58.
13 Illustrating Cuba’s flora and fauna. Miami, Fla., The Historical Association of Southern Florida, 2002. According to the WorldCat, 123 libraries worldwide have acquired the book, most of them in the United States. The book has been digitized and can be downloaded from the web, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00065011/00001/images
5 A recording of that talk can be viewed on YouTube.14 Later, I gave the lecture again in Havana (National Library) and Matanzas (Office of the Curator).
Other works related to the visual arts (especially Cuban colonial engravings)
include:
2018 (2021). “Havana’s self-employed workers of the 19th century through their commercial invoices,” in Catauro (Havana), 37–38, 2018 (2021), pp. 96–100. Illustrates the engravings.
2019 Inspired by Cuba. A survey of Cuba-themed ceramics. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2019. A Spanish-language version is also available: Inspirada en Cuba. Una visión panorámica de la cerámica de tema cubano, Havana, Ediciones Boloña, 2019. The book accompanies the first exhibition of Cuba-related ceramics in the United States and was presented initially at the University of Gainesville, then at Florida International University (FIU), in Miami, and later at the National Ceramics Museum in Havana.
The talk in Gainesville (January 7, 2019) was recorded and is available on YouTube.15
Forty-four institutions in the United States hold copies of the book. Other copies are located in England, Germany, the Netherlands, Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates.
Polymita, 2019. After being presented at the National Library of Cuba (October 22, 2019) and at the Bacardi Museum in Santiago de Cuba, it was presented at FIU, Miami. Seventeen libraries in the United States hold a copy.
In Jorge Duany, Picturing Cuba: art, culture, and identity on the island and in the diaspora.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2019, pp. 15–29. It was presented at FIU, Miami. According to WorldCat, more than a thousand libraries worldwide hold a copy. An expanded version has also been published
in Spanish: “Los grabados coloniales cubanos: Construyendo nuestra
14 See also, “Rediscovering a pioneering botanical illustrator,” in Cornell Chronicle, February 1, 2019, and Czerne Reid, “‘Lost’ book of exquisite scientific drawings rediscovered after 190 years,” in National Geographic, Apr 22, 2019. I have also given presentations in Havana and Matanzas.
15 See, https: //www.dloc.com/AA00070293/00001/videos 6 national identity through seventeen projects,” in Natacha Moreira Lino, Collection ofCuban Colonial Engravings. Historical Archive of the Office of the City Historian of Havana. Havana, Ediciones Boloña, 2023, pp. 51–63.
Finally, I would like to mention my study on the Cuban work of the Italian goldsmith Oscar Paglieri (1863–1912), owner of the Havana jewelry store La Estrella de Italia (1893–1912). While I was finishing my research in Havana, several journalists from the Univision network interviewed me and aired a segment on television on December 2, 2016, a report that was viewed by millions of viewers in the United States. Sixteen months later, I presented the results of my study at the reopening of the Museum of Goldsmithing in Havana on March 14, 2017, and the text was published in the III Seminar on Emigration and the Italian Presence in Cuba. Havana, November 2017.
Cartography
In 1974, a good friend gave me an important map of Havana from the Mercator Atlas of 1609. For my small and modest map collection, this new piece represented a of great significance. I was living in Paris at the time and began to study the subject of Cuban cartography with greater dedication in the invaluable Map Library of the Bibliothèque de France.
Over the years, I built up a much more substantial collection, and in 1998, I published the first work in English on Cuban maps: ” Cuban Cartography: 1500–1898,” in Cuban Studies (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), 1998, Vol. 27, pp. 140–244.
The aforementioned Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami took an interest in showcasing my collection and, in 1999, sponsored an exhibition of my colonial Cuban maps, accompanied by a major catalog.17 It was the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Cuban maps in the United States.18 Two years later, in June 2001, the exhibition traveled to the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, also in Florida.19
Other works of mine on Cuban maps include: “A Cuban Cartographic Extravagance,” in Herencia (Miami), October 1998), reprinted in Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí (Havana), Year 90, no. 2–3, April–Sept. 1999, pp. 7–9; “Cuba en sus mapas coloniales,” in Herencia (Miami), Vol. 5, No. 2, 1999, p. 11; “Old Maps of Cuba,” in The Portolan (Washington, D.C.), no. 49, Winter 2000–2001. The latter reproduces the text of a talk I gave on January 27, 2000, at the Library of Congress at the invitation of the Washington Map Society; “Ramon de la Sagra and Cuban Cartography,” in Herencia (Miami), Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 2003, p. 36; “Italian Preeminence in the Earliest Geographical Representations of Cuba,” in Cuadernos de italianística cubana (Havana), No. 20 (May 2013), pp. 293–297; and “Cuba in an ostrich egg: news of the oldest globe from 1504,” in Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí (Havana), No. 2, 2015, pp. 189–190.
16 See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxl2pmI-srM&ab_channel=UnivisionNoticias
17 Cuba in Old Maps. Miami, Fla., Historical Museum of South Florida, 1999. One hundred nineteen American institutions hold copies; there are six more in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The book has been digitized and is available online. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00065010/00001/images
18 See Uva de Aragón, “Cuba en sus viejos mapas,” in Diario Las Américas (Miami), August 19, 1999.
19 See Sean Mussenden, “Maps Tell Story Of Cuba,” in Orlando Sentinel, June 17, 2001.
Music
I come from a musical family. My paternal grandmother received a silver medal in 1902 at theHubert de Blanck Conservatory; my mother, my aunt Elisa, and, above all, my cousin Nena played the piano very well (I only manage it by ear); and my uncle Alvaro Suárez (1905–1955) was a composer andwrote the lyrics for several songs by Ernesto Lecuona (1895–1963).
Thanks to the support received from the Cuban Research Institute at FIU in Miami (and I am indebted to the Cuban scholars Damián Fernández, Uva de Aragón, and Jorge Duany who made it possible), we were able to present six pioneering concerts of Cuban music and/or music inspired by Cuba to the public in the Wertheim Auditorium at that university. My task was to selectthe repertoire and providing the sheet music, so that the musicians, under the direction of theCuban maestro Armando Tranquilino (1959), could perform it following my introductory talk.
The first, in 2008, *The Music of the Cuban Wars of Independence*, was a concert of music about Cuba’s wars of independence in the 19th century, a completely novel concept. It premiered on December 14, 2008. Curating the program was very complex, as my research had uncovered more than 800 American musical compositions about the 1895–1898 war.
On June 19, 2010, the concert was performed again at Merkin Hall in New York.
In 2009, we presented “The World Sings to Cuba.” The program featured compositions that foreign composers have written for Cuba over the years. It premiered on December 5, 2009,nand was presented again on March 21, 2010, at the Instituto San Carlos in Key West.
Ida y Vuelta. A concert featuring music that Spanish composers have dedicated to Cuba and by Cuban composers inspired by Spain. It premiered on December 12, 2010.
I have also organized six concerts within Cuba (Camagüey en la Música (2014), Mujeres en la música cubana (2014), Santiago en la Música (2015), Matanzas en la Música (2018) and The World Sings to Havana (2019)). The latter has had a major impact both inside and outside
Cuba because it was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube. To date, around a thousand people have been able to enjoy it.20
Other contributions in the field of music have included:
20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgkYlQifXgU&ab_channel=GabinetedePatrimonioMusicalEstebanSalas
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Cuban Research Center at FIU (May 15, 2015).
2024, pp. 183–197.
In November 2022, I was invited by the Instituto San Carlos de Cayo Hueso to give a talk (during which I sang and accompanied myself on the piano) about some Cuban songs that hadbeen released in the United States in English versions. We were able to verify that, curiously, many of the “translations ” into English had nothing to do with the original Spanish texts.21
More recently, invited by the Arts Club of Washington, on May 23, 2025, I gave another talk in the same format featuring music by Moisés Simons (1889–1945), Gonzalo Roig (1890–1970), Osvaldo Farrés (1902–1985), Joseíto Fernández (1908–1979), and Otilio Portal (1915–2009).
Finally, I’d like to mention that I’m finishing up an extensive bibliography (“The World Sings to Cuba”) of thousands of compositions by foreign musicians inspired by Cuba.
History
In 1987, I had an unforgettable theatrical experience: I attended a performance in Buenos Aires of the play *Salsa Criolla* by the great Argentine actor and playwright Enrique Pinti (1939–2022). It was a satirical take on Argentine history. I thought it would be a good idea to try doing something similar with Cuban history.
And so La Cuba de Antier came about. A one-man monologue, written and performed by me (with more nerve than talent, of course) on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Cuban Studies. It premiered at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) on June 24,
1989 and 1997: Atlanta, Caracas, Miami, New York, Notre Dame (Indiana), San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Washington, D.C. Hundreds of people attended. It was reviewed by the major New York newspapers The Wall Street Journal (May 20, 1991) and The Village Voice (December 1991).
A wide variety of characters and events from our history parade across the stage, including Isabella the Catholic, the indigenous leader Hatuey, George III of England, the military officer Narciso López, Cecilia Valdés, a Chinese coolie, José Martí, the researcher Fernando Ortiz, a Catholic bishop, Fidel
21 For example, the famous cha-cha “Me lo dijo Adela” by Otilio Portal (1915–2009), transformed into
“Sweet and Gentle,” makes no mention whatsoever of the dentist who had a tremendous sense of humor.
Castro, chef Nitza Villapol, ballerina Alicia Alonso, a Russian bear, painter Wifredo Lam…It also contains scenes referring to slavery, sugar, television, prison, and exile. It ends with a call for unity (“Cuba is an endless array of voices/ each singing in its own way/ may no one dare to claim as their own/ what belongs to all”).22
Three decades later, my second major historical project emerged. Published in 2018 by Ediciones Universal in Miami, I presented for the first time, in a hall at the Ermita de la Caridad in that city, my book One Hundred Ships in the History of Cuba or Stories of Cuba in One Hundred Ships.23
The book’s thesis is simple and clear: Cuba is an island, and for centuries, everything that entered and left had to do so by sea. Even after the advent of aviation, communication via ships has remained indispensable and fundamental. In fact, the four major chapters into which our history is divided all begin with the presence of ships: indigenous canoes, Spanish caravels, American battleships, and the Granma.
My other contributions in the field of history include:
Research (New York) on December 11, 2015, sponsored by the Cuban Cultural Center of New York.
22 I have donated a copy of each of the programs from the various performances to the theater archive of the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, where they can be consulted.
23 It can be found in 19 American libraries and one German library, as well as in several within Cuba.
10
2018 (2020). Matanzas at Your Fingertips: A Guide to the Study of Matanzas Province.
Havana, Office of the City Conservator. Matanzas, Havana, 2018. This is a database with thousands of entries and hundreds of illustrations on various aspects of the history and culture of Matanzas.24
My contributions to the study of the so-called “Operation Pedro Pan” deserve special mention. This operation originated from the concern of several parents of students at a private school in Havana (Ruston Academy) in late 1960 who did not want their children to be educated in a socialist Cuba. It was funded by the United States to facilitate the departure of thousands of minors under the age of 18. As originally conceived, the boys and girls would live for a short time in American homes and institutions until they returned to their homes in Cuba.
As I was one of those young Pedro Pan/Peter Pan children, this is a subject of great interest on which I have been able to contribute not only my testimony but also serious research into the literature.
My first contribution, which can be viewed online, took place in the context of a discussion organized at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., on May 3, 2011.25 Much later, in 2024, I gave a talk to students at Catholic University (Washington, D.C.); and my most recent contribution is reflected in my article “ Operation Pedro Pan. Review #2: Operation Pedro Pan: The Migration of Unaccompanied Children from Castro’s Cuba. Author: Professor John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco,” in ElIgnaciano (Miami), Volume 7 / Year 7, #2 – June 2024, which includes an extensive bibliography on the subject.
I would like to mention another topic I have addressed on a couple of occasions (once seriously, once in satirical fiction): the confiscations of property in Cuba during the early years of the 1959 Revolution. In the first, I analyze the legal implications of those measures.26 The second, in the form of a short story, follows the story of the heirs of a father who in 1958 built a three-unit apartment building, bequeathing one unit to each of his three children in his will; they now wish to reclaim the respective properties they had lost.27
I conclude by referring to seven additional works that could be included in this section. In chronological order: My presentation during the conference “The Nation and Emigration” held in Havana in April 1994;28 two videos on the Virgin of the Colegio de Belén (2010
and 2021);29 “My Friend Cardinal Jaime Ortega,” in El Nuevo Herald, June 7, 2012; and my comments on the 2018 Draft Constitution, particularly my references to the contribution of private education to the development of our homeland.30
In addition, I have written about the Cuban legacy in the U.S. capital, including a painting of a Cuban macaw in the Capitol Rotunda, an oil painting at the White House from 24 Outside of Cuba, fifteen libraries in the United States and one in Germany hold this book.
25 See, https://www.c-span.org/person/?9278715/EmilioCueto.
26 See, Property Claims of Cuban Nationals. Paper presented at the workshop on Property in Cuba organized by the law firm Shaw Pittman, in Washington, D.C., 1992.
27 See, “La Cacucoco” in La Crónica (Mexico City), September 1–15, 1994, pp. 11–12.
28 See, “Con todos y para el bien de todos,” in El Nuevo Herald (Miami), May 5, 1994.
29 See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYqjpxMdZrM&ab_channel=RichardPaez. It has been viewed by 4,800 people. A second video about the Virgin and my classmates from the class of 1960 was recorded in 2021. See, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XTh3J64ni84&ab_channel=EmilioCueto.
30 See, https://jcguanche.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/emilio-cueto-comentarios-al-proyecto-de- constitucion-de-la-republica-de-cuba-2018 and “In Favor of Private Education in Cuba Today,” in El Nuevo Herald, November 11, 2018.
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First Lady Betty Ford, painted by our own Félix de Cossío (1913–1999);31 a stained-glass window depicting yellow fever in Cuba in the Anglican cathedral; a sculpture of La Caridad del Cobre by Manuel Rodulfo Tardo (1913–1998) from Matanzas, and the death mask of Calixto García (1839– 1898).32
Finally, I gave a talk, sponsored by the Cuban American Bar Association and FIU, in Washington, D.C., on Cuba’s presence in American legal jurisprudence between 1832 and 2023.
Of particular interest is the case Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S.520 (1993) regarding Santería ritual practices and their protection under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Tobacco
The names “Cuba” and “tobacco” have been inextricably linked ever since Christopher Columbus noted in his Journal (November 6, 1492) that “The two Christians [Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de la Torre] encountered many people along the way passing through their villages—women and men holding a burning ember in their hands, along with herbs for the incense they were accustomed to burning.”
Due to its renowned excellence, many tobacco manufacturers outside of Cuba, particularly in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, took advantage of the fact that in there were no legal protections for geographical indications to give their foreign cigars names associated with Cuba—Havana, Vuelta—and national symbols such as our coat of arms and our flag. Ingenious and misleading advertising, no doubt.
My first work on the subject, *La Habana también se fuma. La huella habanera en las habilitaciones de tabaco extranjeras. Havana is for smokers. Havana’s presence in non-Cuban cigar labels*, was a bilingual joint publication by Ediciones Boloña (Havana) and Ediciones
Polymita (Guatemala) in 2019. Seven American libraries hold a copy of the book. Since that book was published to celebrate Havana’s 500th anniversary, onlylabels mentioning the name or image of the capital of all Cubans were included. Left out, however, were other labels related to Cuba but which did notmention Havana.
With the aim of completing the previous work, five years later I published another book in which I include foreign labels that reference Cuba and other geographic locations outside of Havana, our map, national symbols, and some notable figures. Inspired By Cuba. Cuba On The Labels: A Selection of Cuba-Themed Cigar Labels Printed
Outside of Cuba was published by Library Press @ UF (Gainesville, Florida) and presented at the University of Florida, Gainesville, on January 29, 2025. The presentation was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.33 Further book presentations took place in Miami: at FIU on March 2025, and at the Cigar Lounge El Vecino two days later, on 23 March 2025.
On 14 September 2025, it will be presented at the Cuban Cultural Center in New York. To date, the book is available in ten libraries across the United States.
Literature
Although I am neither a poet nor a storyteller, I have contributed a couple of works to the world of Cuban fiction.
In 1976, I received the Jorge Mañach Poetry Prize awarded by the Municipality of Sagua la Grande en el Exilio (Miami) for my poem “You and I in the Center” (“To forget that I am
31 And which was the subject of a U.S. postage stamp issue in 2024.
32 See, “A Cuban Footprint on the U.S. Capitol,” in Herencia Vol. 28, 2 (Oct. 2022). Pp. 52–65
33 See, https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/9dee1261efc54d998494aab445a903251d
very far away/ that is why, Island, I carry you within me”). It was reprinted in the magazine Jovellanos, (Miami), August 25, 1977, p. 3.34
Two decades later, my black-comedy short story “Bermúdez” appeared in Narrativa y libertad: Cuban stories from the diaspora / selected, with an introduction and notes by Julio E. Hernández- Miyares. Miami, Fla., Ediciones Universal, 1996. Volume I, pp. 321–327.
My first essays on Cuban literature date back to 2009, when I published “Eufemia de Ribera y de Fonseca. A Cuban Woman of the 18th Century,” in *Palabra Nueva* (Journal of the Archdiocese of Havana), April 2009. The following year, “¿Los primeros versos impresos en Cuba?” , also in Palabra Nueva (Havana), No. 197, June 2010, pp. 70–72.
I have recently published a much more comprehensive work. It is Sources for the Study of Cuba’s Presence in Foreign Fiction, in three volumes: Poetry, Prose, and Theater. Havana: Editorial UH, 2025. In the words of its prologue writer, Dr. Leonardo Sarría (1977), “it contains more than eight thousand entries, originating from very diverse regions and languages—Russian, Norwegian, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, Yiddish, Malay, etc.—and in which, as if that were not enough, they span seven centuries of literary production.”
The work was presented during the 33rd Havana Book Fair, first at the Alma Mater Bookstore (February 20, 2025) and then at the José Martí National Library of Cuba (March 4, 2025). I hope to present it soon in the United States. The books have been digitized and can be downloaded for free.35
Cuisine
Although our cuisine cannot compare in age or variety to that of the Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italians, or Mexicans, the truth is that “Cuban coffee”
and the “Cuban sandwich” have traveled the world. Years ago, I dedicated myself to studying our culinary footprint around the world (and I have an extensive collection of menus from Cuban restaurants in various countries), and I was invited to give an illustrated talk at the conference on “Cuban Cuisine: From Casabe to Mojito,” organized by the Cuban Cultural Center of New York on July 14, 2013. My presentation included images of menus, products, and restaurants serving Cuban food in such unexpected places as Alaska, Gibraltar, Malta, Kiev, and Guam.
I have given this talk four more times. On July 23, 2015, I presented it in Havana (“Echoes of Cuban Cuisine Around the World”) at the “Sobre una Palma Escrita” space in the José Martí National Library of Cuba; on October 11 of that year, I repeated it in Arlington, Virginia, sponsored by the nonprofit organization Puente de Amistad, which helps the most disadvantaged youth within Cuba. In 2016, I gave it at the Diocesan Library of Santa Clara; andseven years later, in 2023, to a group of young people from the culinary school organized by the La Fela Local Development Project, in the Municipality of Diez de Octubre.
Philately
It is an ancient custom for a country to tell its story and honor its most distinguished sons and daughters on its postage stamps, and no one finds this remarkable. Far more surprising is that we find Cuban traces on the stamps of other countries. 34 In 1999, on the eve of the Millennium, I wrote the poetry collection Very Free Verses to Greet the Year 2000, which was to be illustrated and published by the Cuban visual artist Ramón Alejandro (1943), but has remained unpublished.
35 See, https://accesoabierto.uh.cu/s/scriptorium/item/2193828
I became interested in the subject, and little by little I began collecting relevant materials. To fill the gap that existed on this topic in our bibliography, I began publishing in Havana works on José Martí and our chess player José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942).36
Many years later, with more information and a much more complete collection of these stamps, I published *Delivering Cuba Through the Mail: Cuba’s Presence in Non-Cuban Postage Stamps and Envelopes (Inspired by Cuba)*. Library Press at UF, 2021. The book, which can be found in twenty-nine American libraries and one British library, contains 1, 196 illustrations of stamps (featuring personalities, flora and fauna, historical and sporting events, international relations,etc.). They were issued by 161 postal authorities worldwide, including Barbados, Burundi, Guernsey, Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Luxembourg, Moldova, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, and Vanuatu. As inconceivable as it is wonderful. Cuba never ceases to amaze.
In addition to presenting the book in several Cuban cities, I have presented it in Gainesville (University of Florida, November 15, 2021),³⁷ Miami (FIU, January 24, 2022)³⁸ and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area (Busboys and Poets, October 19, 2022).
José Martí (1853–1895)
During the centennial celebrations of the Apostle’s birth in 1953, a contest was held at the Colegio de Belén, where I was in elementary school, and I won a medal. I have always been interested in Martí’s life and work, though I confess that, given the vastness of his bibliography, I never thought I could contribute to it with anything that might be interesting and original. But Martí is such a vast subject that I have managed to publish some texts on less-studied aspects of his work. I have already mentioned in the music section my study on musical compositions inspired by the Apostle’s life and writings. I have also noted in the Philately Section to Martí’s presence on foreign postage stamps. Finally,in issue 71 (May 2025) of *Honda*, the journal of the Martí Program, my work “Poets of the World Sing to the Apostle” appears, a bibliography on Martí’s presence in the poetry of foreign authors.
The fact is, Martí is inexhaustible. In November 2022, I accepted an invitation from the San Carlos Institute in Key West to give an illustrated talk on José Martí’s legacy around the world.
I have presented this lecture, each time with greater scope and information, on several additional occasions, including in Havana (the José Martí National Library of Cuba, the Provincial Library, the ISA), Bauta, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, Camagüey, Holguín, Santiago de Cuba, Playitas de Cajobabo, and Baracoa. In the United States, I have presented it at FIU (Miami, January 26, 2024), the JFK Library in Hialeah (January 27, 2024), and, most recently, at the University of Florida in Gainesville (January 28, 2025). This latest presentation, featuring over 500 images, can be viewed on YouTube.39
36 See “Martí en el mundo” in Opus Habana (Havana), Vol. XII, No. 3, Sept. 2009–Jan. 2010, pp. 34–5 [Collectible Philately] and “Capablanca in the World,” in Opus Habana (Havana), Vol. XIII, No. 3, Feb.– July 2011 [Collectible Philately].
37 The presentation was recorded and can be viewed at https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/4313dbdd48ac4fd48580c933cdce08f81d
38 https://www.booksandbooks.com/virtual -event/delivering-cuba-through-the-mail-an-afternoon-with- emilio-cueto/
39 See, Jose Marti Birthday Celebration. https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/1cbf6f89870e4a098afaeddf9322a59f1d
Finally, on May 29, 2025, I will give an illustrated presentation on the presence and legacy of the Apostle in the United States to a group of students from the University of Maryland and other guests at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre Found in 1614 by three young —two indigenous people and a 10-year-old Black slave— floating on a small board in Nipe Bay, the wooden image of Our Lady of Charity (as stated on a sign accompanying it) gradually illuminated the hearts of Cubans from east to west, and in 1916, at the request of the mambises, Pope Benedict XV declared her Patroness of Cuba. My work on her complements the previous bibliography and is distinguished by the abundance of images (over a thousand), a detailed study of her iconography, the Virgin’s footprint in the visual arts, literature, and music, and concludes with a journey tracing the Virgin’s presence across the island and around the world.
The book, *La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre en el alma del pueblo cubano*, Guatemala, Ediciones Polymita, 2014,40 after being presented at the Shrine of El Cobre, the José Martí National Library of Cuba, and other institutions on the island, was presented at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The talk was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.41
The following year, at the invitation of the Cuban Embassy to the Vatican, the book was presented at the Church of Saints Aquila and Priscilla (the parish assigned to the then-Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega (1936–2019)), in the presence of several Cuban and Italian bishops and members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See and Italy.
I have also presented the book several times in Miami (Casa Bacardí, University of Miami, October 15, 2014; Miami Dade College-Hialeah, November 18, 2014; Koubek Center, during the 2014 Book Fair); in New York (Cuban Cultural Center, December 4, 2014); in Washington, D.C. (Catholic University); in Boston (Cuban Circle); in Jacksonville, Florida (Cuban Circle); and in Mexico City (Cuban Circle).
Two relevant articles published in the United States conclude this section: “Fulfilling a sacred promise”/ “Caridad del Cobre,” in Smithsonian Journeys (Washington, D.C.), Winter 2016,
Conclusions
It has been a true privilege to have been able to travel the world discovering the diverse traces of Cuba in so many corners, many of them completely unexpected. And I have been very fortunate to have been able to share the information I have gathered through talks, exhibitions, concerts, and printed texts, not only throughout our island but also in many American cities.
According to WorldCat, at least one of my books is held by one hundred fifty-seven institutions located in eighty-nine cities across 48 states of the United States, all 40 Outside of Cuba, twenty-five libraries worldwide—19 of them in the United States—hold copies.
41 See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLwPHDLwhGE
42 See, https://elignaciano.com/la-mas-universal-de-las-cubanas/
15 except Hawaii and Idaho (See Appendix). Furthermore, several American publications have reported to the general public on aspects of my collection and my work.43 Finally, I have loaned objects from my collection to be exhibited at other institutions such as El Museo del Barrio in New York (2010), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2022), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, also in Washington, D.C. (2024).
I am extremely grateful to all the institutions that have allowed me to share my research and my collection with the American public. And, of course, I am equally grateful to all the institutions in each of the Cuban provinces that have opened their doors to me. I feel very honored to have received several awards for my efforts. Outside of Cuba: the National Heritage Award presented by Facts About Cuban Exiles (FACE, Miami, 2000); an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from St. Thomas University (Miami, 2016); the 2018 Award for Academic Excellence from LASA (Latin American Studies Association); and the “El Titán” Award from the Cuban Cultural Center of New York in 2024.
I am also deeply grateful for the awards received within the island: the Catauro Award from the Fernando Ortiz Foundation (2011); La Puerta de Papel from the Cuban Book Institute (2014);
the Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Award from the Culture Commission of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba (2017);44 Aurora de Matanzas (2018) ; the Espejo de Paciencia from the Camagüey Department of Culture (2018); Honorary Member of the Casa del Caribe in Santiago de Cuba (2024); Corresponding Member Abroad of the Cuban Academy of History (2024); Commemorative Stamp for the 80th Anniversary of Eusebio Leal Spengler (2024) and the National Culture Distinction from the Ministry of Culture of Cuba (2024).
It is very difficult to be any luckier.
43 See,
Vista (New York), September 2, 1989;
Éxito (Miami), March 4, 1992;
El Nuevo Herald (Miami), October 18, 1994;
The Herald (Miami), October 11, 1994, and November 17, 2002;
CUA Magazine (Washington, D.C.), Summer 2006;
The Wall Street Journal (New York), March 14, 2013;
El Nuevo Día (San Juan, Puerto Rico), March 1, 1998, and July 9, 2014);
The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), May 10, 2015, weekly magazine; and Mayra A. Martínez, “Emilio Cueto and His Island of Cuba in the Heart of Washington, D.C.,” in And All for the Love of Cuban Music, Self-published, 2020, 66-74
44 See Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s remarks and my words of thanks on that occasion in Espacio Laical, No. 257, May 2017. https://espaciolaical.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sd_257.pdf
APPENDIX
LIST OF NORTH AMERICAN LIBRARIES (157) THAT, ACCORDING TO WORLDCAT,
HOLD AT LEAST ONE COPY OF A BOOK I HAVE AUTHORED
ALABAMA (2)
Auburn University (Auburn)
University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa)
ALASKA (1)
UAA/APU Consortium Library (Anchorage)
ARIZONA (1)
University of Arizona Libraries (Tucson)
ARKANSAS (1)
University of Arkansas (Fayetteville)
CALIFORNIA (12)
Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles)
Huntington Library (San Marino)
Stanford University (Stanford)
University of California (Berkeley)
University of California (Davis)
University of California (Irvine)
University of California (Los Angeles)
University of California (Riverside)
University of California (Santa Barbara)
University of California (Santa Cruz)
University of San Diego (San Diego)
University of Southern California (Los Angeles)
COLORADO (3)
Auraria Library (Denver)
University of Colorado (Boulder)
University of Denver (Denver)
CONNECTICUT (3)
University of Connecticut (Storrs)
US Coast Guard Academy (New London)
Yale University Library (New Haven)
DELAWARE (1)
University of Delaware Library (Newark)
FLORIDA (16)
Broward County Libraries (Fort Lauderdale)
Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton)
Florida Gulf Coast University (Fort Myers)
Florida International University (Miami)
Florida State University (Tallahassee)
Hillsborough County Public Library (Tampa)
Jacksonville Public Library (Jacksonville)
New College of Florida (Sarasota)
State Library of Florida (Tallahassee)
Stetson University (Deland)
University of Central Florida (Orlando)
University of Florida (Gainesville)
University of Miami (Miami)
University of North Florida (Jacksonville)
University of South Florida (St. Petersburg)
University of South Florida (Tampa)
GEORGIA (2)
Emory University (Atlanta)
University of Georgia (Athens)
ILLINOIS (10)
Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)
Chicago Public Library (Chicago)
Loyola University (Chicago)
Newberry Library (Chicago)
Northwestern University (Evanston)
Parkland College (Champaign)
Principia College (Evanston)
University of Chicago Library (Chicago)
University of Illinois (Urbana)
Western Illinois University (Macomb)
INDIANA (3)
Indiana University (Bloomington)
Purdue University Library (West Lafayette)
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame)
IOWA (1)
University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)
KANSAS (1)
University of Kansas (Lawrence)
KENTUCKY (1)
University of Kentucky Libraries (Lexington)
LOUISIANA (2)
Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge)
Tulane University (New Orleans)
MAINE (3)
Bates College (Lewiston)
University of Maine (Orono)
University of Southern Maine (Portland)
MARYLAND (1)
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore)
MASSACHUSETTS (6)
17
Boston College (Chestnut Hill)
Brandeis University Library (Waltham)
Harvard University (Cambridge)
Mount Holyoke College (S Hadley)
Tufts University (Medford)
Wellesley College (Wellesley)
MICHIGAN (2)
Michigan State University (East Lansing)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
MINNESOTA (1)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)
MISSISSIPPI (1)
University of Mississippi (Oxford)
MISSOURI (5)
Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint Louis)
Saint Louis University (Saint Louis)
Mid-Continent Public Library (Independence)
University of Missouri (Columbia)
Washington University (Saint Louis)
MONTANA (1)
University of Montana (Missoula)
NEBRASKA (1)
Creighton University (Omaha)
NEVADA (2)
University of Nevada (Las Vegas)
University of Nevada (Reno)
NEW HAMPSHIRE (2)
Dartmouth Library (Hanover)
University of New Hampshire (Durham)
NEW JERSEY (2)
Princeton University Library (Princeton)
Saint Peter’s University (Jersey City)
NEW MEXICO (2)
New Mexico State University (Las Cruces)
University of New Mexico (Albuquerque)
NEW YORK (13)
American Museum of Natural History (NYC)
City University of New York (NYC)
Columbia University (NYC)
Cornell University Library (Ithaca)
Fordham University (NYC)
Frick Art Research Library (NYC)
Hostos Community College-CUNY (NYC)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC)
The New York Historical Society (NYC)
New York Public Library (NYC)
New York University (NYC)
SUNY (Oswego)
University of Rochester (Rochester)
NORTH CAROLINA (3)
St Andrews University (Laurinburg)
Duke University Libraries (Durham)
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).
NORTH DAKOTA (1)
University of North Dakota (Forks)
OHIO (9)
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland)
Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland)
Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland)
Cleveland Public Library (Cleveland)
Cleveland State University Library (Cleveland)
Miami University Libraries (Oxford)
Ohio State University Libraries (Columbus)
University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati)
University of Toledo (Toledo)
OKLAHOMA (1)
University of Oklahoma (Norman)
OREGON (1)
University of Oregon Libraries (Eugene)
PENNSYLVANIA (8)
Commonwealth University (Bloomsburg)
Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster)
Haverford College Library (Haverford)
Lafayette College (Easton)
Pennsylvania State University (University Park)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh)
Villanova University (Villanova)
RHODE ISLAND (1)
Brown University (Providence)
SOUTH CAROLINA (2)
University of South Carolina (Columbia)
Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem)
SOUTH DAKOTA (1)
University of South Dakota (Vermillion)
TENNESSEE (2)
University of Tennessee (Knoxville)
Vanderbilt University Library (Nashville)
TEXAS (10)
18
Abilene Christian University (Abilene)
Baylor University Libraries (Waco)
Harlingen Public Library (Harlingen)
Rice University (Houston)
Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
Texas A&M University (College Station)
Texas Christian University (Fort Worth)
University of Houston (Houston)
University of Texas Libraries (Austin)
University of Texas (San Antonio)
UTAH (3)
Brigham Young University (Provo)
University of Utah (Salt Lake City)
Utah State University (Logan)
VERMONT (1)
University of Vermont (Burlington)
VIRGINIA (4)
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg)
Tidewater Community College (Norfolk)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond)
WASHINGTON (1)
Washington State University (Pullman)
WASHINGTON, D.C. (4)
American University
Catholic University of America
Library of Congress
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
WEST VIRGINIA (1)
West Virginia University (Morgantown)
WISCONSIN (1)
University of Wisconsin (Madison)
WYOMING (1)
University of Wyoming (Laramie)
Introduction
Like many others of my generation, when I left Cuba at the age of seventeen in April 1961, I thought I would soon return to my home in Havana, where my mother, aunt, and sister would be waiting for me. That was not the case. I have lived my entire adult life outside of Cuba,1 although, starting in 1977, when I was first allowed to return, I have visited my homeland many times.
When I left Cuba, I already held a high school diploma in Liberal Arts (from the Colegio de Belén and the Instituto Pre- Universitario de Marianao) and was in my first year of law school at the University of Villanueva.
I settled in Washington, D.C., where I earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science (Catholic University) and later obtained a Master’s in Political Science and a Certificate in Latin American Studies from Columbia University in New York (on whose grounds stands the original Alma Mater statue, later replicated on the steps of the University of Havana). Later (in 1974), I earned a Juris Doctor from Fordham University, also in New York. I practiced law for 30 years.
For as long as I can remember, I have been interested in learning about our history and culture, and to that end I have devoted countless hours. Once in the United States, I became an avid reader of Cuban books and have always kept abreast of events related to Cuba and all expressions of its culture, both on and off the island, tracing our footprint everywhere. For decades, I have been collecting all kinds of materials related to our country (the “Emilioteca”) and have made the motto “Nothing Cuban is foreign to me” my own.
I believe I should begin by explaining that, in 1969, at the invitation of the Santiago-based professor María Cristina Herrera (1934–2010), I attended a Meeting on Cuban Studies in Washington, D.C., which marked the beginning of the Institute of Cuban Studies, which remained active until shortly after the death of its founder. The Institute’s biennial meetings were attended by the most prominent scholars of Cuban studies (Cubans from both sides of the strait and foreigners), and I never missed them. I have always considered the IEC to be my great Cuban university.2
Moreover, its members, led by Dr. Carmelo Mesa Lago (1934), began publishing the Anuario Estudios Cubanos (which is still in print), which has been one of the most important reference publications on the island. I have kept every issue, and they have been indispensable companions in my learning about a complex and multifaceted Cuba. And, for more than half a century, I have personally consulted libraries in Boston, Key West, Chicago, Philadelphia, Gainesville, Ithaca, Los Angeles, Miami, New Haven, New York, Tampa, and Washington, D.C.3 The Cuban materials they house are, quite simply, dazzling.4
I am also a member of the Cuban Cultural Center of New York, founded in 1971, which brings together tireless and valuable collaborators who regularly organize talks, book presentations, musical and dance performances, excursions, film screenings, etc.
In addition, they organize an annual conference dedicated to a specific theme. At these conferences I have lived and worked primarily in Washington, D.C. (1961–1965; 1994 to the present) and in New York (1965–1975; 1977–1994). I have also lived in Argentina (1967–1968), France (1975–1977), and Haiti(2004–2006); and I have studied law in the Netherlands (1973) and Russian in the Soviet Union (1976).
2 See
Thirty Years of the Institute of Cuban Studies. Miami, Fla., Alexandria Library, 1999.
3 And, outside the United States, in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Cambridge, Mexico City, Florence, London, Madrid, Moscow, Naples, Oviedo, Oxford, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Rome, St. Petersburg, Santo Domingo, Seville, Tampa, and Venice.
4 In recent years, with the process of digitization, remote access to Cuban materials held by many more institutions has been greatly facilitated.
I have been an audience member and speaker for many years. I was also a member of Cuban American Associates, founded in New York in 1990 by a group of compatriots with the aim of contributing to the restoration of Anna Hyatt Huntington’s equestrian statue of José Martí (1876–1973) in New York’s Central Park. A replica of the statue has stood in 13 de Marzo Park in Havana, facing the sea, since 2017.
I would also like to mention that I have regularly attended the Conferences on Cuba that the Center for Cuban Research (CRI) at Florida International University (FIU) has been organizing (FIU). The quantity and quality of the speakers and presentations have contributed enormously to my knowledge of a wide range of Cuban topics. I have also attended conferences on Cuba hosted by universities in Baltimore, Boston, Miami,Gainesville, Notre Dame, and Washington, D.C.
For all these reasons, although my professional life has always been in the field of law, not in academia, thanks to my deep and varied interests in Cuban affairsand my many friends who are university professors, I managed to “sneak” into the halls of and there not only learn a great deal, but also regularly present the results of my research.
Development
Of My Cuban Work I believe the best way to document my commitment to Cuban culture is to analyze it by subject area. In the following pages, I will successively address the topics on which I have focused: Visual Arts, Cartography, Music, History, Tobacco, Literature, Cuisine, Philately, José Martí, and La Caridad del Cobre. But first I want to note that, after much reflection during decades of study and collecting, I have developed a very broad vision of what should form part of the corpus we might call “Cuban” culture: (1) That produced on the island by its residents (citizens and foreigners); (2) that produced off the island by emigrants/exiles, as well as their children, many of whom still maintain ties to the island’s history and culture; and (3) that produced by non-resident foreigners who, through some connection (and these are of very diverse nature), have drawn inspiration from the island for their artistic and intellectual works.
Visual Arts
In my school history textbooks, I recall many captions under engravings with the simple notation “contemporary engraving.” Over the years, I became convinced that this information was truly useless due to its vagueness and uncertainty, and I thought it would be beneficial to study this aspect of our colonial iconography in depth.
5 For those wishing to consult my publications within Cuba, I am pleased to inform you that I have donated donated each and every one of my books to the José Martí National Library of Cuba, as well as to each of the provincial and diocesan libraries on the island. The one in La Caridad del Cobre is also available in all municipal libraries. The more specialized books can also be found in other institutions, including the Institute of Literature and Linguistics, the National Museum of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Music, the Tobacco Museum, the Ceramics Museum, the Office of the Historian of Havana, thePostal Museum, and the ISA. For those wishing to consult my books in the United States, see the Appendix.
6 See also my work “Cuban thought and cultural identity: The various ways of (not) being Cuban,” in Alan West-Durán (ed.), Cuba. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, Vol. 1, pp. 90–93.
After many years of research and collecting, I managed to organize the first exhibition of Cuban colonial engravings ever held in the United States. This took place in 1982 at the Art Gallery of St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, New Jersey, at the invitation of its director, the Jesuit priest and Cuban visual artist Oscar Magnan (1929–2024).7 Shortly thereafter I published the first article in English on the subject.8 A decade later, I was invited by what was then called The Historical Museum of Southern Florida (now the Miami Museum) to present, using pieces from my collection, the first worldwide retrospective of the Cuban pictorial work of the great French lithographer Frédéric Mialhe (1810– 1868), who resided in Cuba between 1838 and 1854. Accompanying the exhibition (October 6, 1994 – January 30, 1995), I published *Mialhe’s Colonial Cuba: The Prints That Shaped the World’s View of Cuba*. Miami, Fla., Historical Association of Southern Florida, 1994. According to WorldCat,9 one hundred twenty-three libraries worldwide, most in the United States, have acquired the book.10
Thanks to the vision of Dr. Eduardo Torres Cuevas, then Director of the National Library of Cuba José Martí, a second, greatly expanded edition of this work in Spanish inaugurated the Library’s “Raros y Valiosos” series in 1994.11 Always passionate about the workof Mialhe, I revisited the subject in 2024 for the magazine Honda, published by the José Martí Cultural Society, which is available online.12
The illustration of Cuban flora and fauna has been a little-studied topic in our historiography, and in 2002, I curated an exhibition of pieces from my collection, once again invited by the South Florida History Museum in Miami. An illustrated catalog with an extensive bibliography accompanied the exhibition.13
On that occasion, I learned of the manuscript work of the American botanical artist Nancy Kingsbury Wollstonecraft, a resident of Matanzas (Félix Varela had first mentioned her in 1826). Her work remained lost until, in March 2018, I found it, online, at the Cornell University Library, in Ithaca, New York. I traveled there to examine it, and in November of that year I gave a lecture at the University of Florida in Gainesville, introducing the work of this extraordinary and unknown artist for the first time.
7 To accompany the exhibition, I published Colonial Cuba through foreign eyes (A selection of old Cuban prints). Peter’s College Art Gallery, Jersey City, N.J. (November 9–November 30, 1982).
8 “A short guide to Old Cuban prints,” in Cuban Studies (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Winter, 1984, 14 (1), 27–42.
9 WorldCat is a global digital bibliographic catalog, available online, containing references to all the books held by the world’s most important libraries (thousands of libraries with materials in 500 languages).
10 Furthermore, the book has been digitized and can be downloaded from the internet. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00065012/00001/images
11 Frédéric Mialhe’s Picturesque Cuba. Havana, José Martí National Library of Cuba, The book, a true publishing gem, after being distributed to provincial libraries acrossthe island, was presented at the Bildner Center, City University of New York in April 2001, and three libraries in Florida hold a copy.
12 “Frédéric Mialhe in Cuba”, In Honda (Havana), 66. p. 58.
13 Illustrating Cuba’s flora and fauna. Miami, Fla., The Historical Association of Southern Florida, 2002. According to the WorldCat, 123 libraries worldwide have acquired the book, most of them in the United States.
The book has been digitized and can be downloaded from the web, https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00065011/00001/images
5 A recording of that talk can be viewed on YouTube.14 Later, I gave the lecture again in Havana (National Library) and Matanzas (Office of the Curator).
Other works related to the visual arts (especially Cuban colonial engravings)
include:
Ediciones Universal, 1999. Forty-three American libraries hold copies. My text “The Picturesque Tour of the Island of Cuba” was reprinted in Herencia (Miami), Vol. 5, No. 2, 1999, p. 11.
2018 (2021). “Havana’s self-employed workers of the 19th century through their commercial invoices,” in Catauro (Havana), 37–38, 2018 (2021), pp. 96–100. Illustrates the engravings.
2019 Inspired by Cuba. A survey of Cuba-themed ceramics. Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2019. A Spanish-language version is also available: Inspirada en Cuba. Una visión panorámica de la cerámica de tema cubano, Havana, Ediciones Boloña, 2019. The book accompanies the first exhibition of Cuba-related ceramics in the United States and was presented initially at the University of Gainesville, then at Florida International University (FIU), inMiami, and later at the National Ceramics Museum in Havana.
The talk in Gainesville (January 7, 2019) was recorded and is available on YouTube.15 Forty-four institutions in the United States hold copies of the book.
Other copies are located in England, Germany, the Netherlands, Dubai, and the United Arab Emirates.
14 See also, “Rediscovering a pioneering botanical illustrator,” in Cornell Chronicle, February 1, 2019, and Czerne Reid, “‘Lost’ book of exquisite scientific drawings rediscovered after 190 years,” in National Geographic, Apr 22, 2019.
I have also given presentations in Havana and Matanzas.
15 See, https: //www.dloc.com/AA00070293/00001/videos national identity through seventeen projects,” in Natacha Moreira Lino, Collection ofCuban Colonial Engravings. Historical Archive of the Office of the City Historian of Havana. Havana, Ediciones Boloña, 2023, pp. 51–63.
Finally, I would like to mention my study on the Cuban work of the Italian goldsmith Oscar Paglieri (1863–1912), owner of the Havana jewelry store La Estrella de Italia (1893–1912). While I was finishing my research in Havana, several journalists from the Univision network interviewed me and aired a segment on television on December 2, 2016, a report that was viewed by millions of viewers in the United States. Sixteen months later, I presented the results of my study at the reopening of the Museum of Goldsmithing in Havana on March 14, 2017, and the text was published in the III Seminar on Emigration and the Italian Presence in Cuba. Havana, November 2017.
Cartography
In 1974, a good friend gave me an important map of Havana from the Mercator Atlas of 1609. For my small and modest map collection, this new piece represented a of great significance. I was living in Paris at the time and began to study the subject of Cuban cartography with greater dedication in the invaluable Map Library of the Bibliothèque de France.
Over the years, I built up a much more substantial collection, and in 1998, I published the first work in English on Cuban maps: ” Cuban Cartography: 1500–1898,” in Cuban Studies (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), 1998, Vol. 27, pp. 140–244.
The aforementioned Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami took an interest in showcasing my collection and, in 1999, sponsored an exhibition of my colonial Cuban maps,accompanied by a major catalog.17 It was the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Cuban maps in the United States.18 Two years later, in June 2001, the exhibition traveled to the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach, also in Florida.
Other works of mine on Cuban maps include: “A Cuban Cartographic Extravagance,” in Herencia (Miami), October 1998), reprinted in Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí (Havana), Year 90, no. 2–3, April–Sept. 1999, pp. 7–9; “Cuba en sus mapas coloniales,” in Herencia (Miami), Vol. 5, No. 2, 1999, p. 11; “Old Maps of Cuba,” in The Portolan (Washington, D.C.), no. 49, Winter 2000–2001.
The latter reproduces the text of a talk I gave on January 27, 2000, at the Library of Congress at the invitation of the Washington Map Society; “Ramon de la Sagra and Cuban Cartography,” in Herencia (Miami), Vol. 9, No. 2, Summer 2003, p. 36; “Italian Preeminence in the Earliest Geographical Representations of Cuba,” in Cuadernos de italianística cubana (Havana), No. 20 (May 2013), pp. 293–297; and “Cuba in anostrich egg: news of the oldest globe from 1504,” in Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí (Havana), No. 2, 2015, pp. 189–190.
16 See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxl2pmI-srM&ab_channel=UnivisionNoticias
17 Cuba in Old Maps. Miami, Fla., Historical Museum of South Florida, 1999. One hundred nineteen American institutions hold copies; there are six more in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Sweden. The book has been ndigitized and is available online. https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00065010/00001/images
18 See Uva de Aragón, “Cuba en sus viejos mapas,” in Diario Las Américas (Miami), August 19, 1999.
19 See Sean Mussenden, “Maps Tell Story Of Cuba,” in Orlando Sentinel, June 17, 2001.
Music
I come from a musical family. My paternal grandmother received a silver medal in 1902 at the Hubert de Blanck Conservatory; my mother, my aunt Elisa, and, above all, my cousin Nena played the piano very well (I only manage it by ear); and my uncle Alvaro Suárez (1905–1955) was a composer and wrote the lyrics for several songs by Ernesto Lecuona (1895–1963).
Thanks to the support received from the Cuban Research Institute at FIU in Miami (and I am indebted to the Cuban scholars Damián Fernández, Uva de Aragón, and Jorge Duany who made it possible), we were able to present six pioneering concerts of Cuban music and/or music inspired by Cuba to the public in the Wertheim Auditorium at that university. My task was to selecthe repertoire and providing the sheet music, so that the musicians, under the direction of theCuban maestro Armando Tranquilino (1959), could perform it following my introductory talk.
The first, in 2008, *The Music of the Cuban Wars of Independence*, was a concert of music about Cuba’s wars of independence in the 19th century, a completely novel concept. It premiered on December 14, 2008. Curating the program was very complex, as my research had uncovered more than 800 American musical compositions about the 1895–1898 war.
On June 19, 2010, the concert was performed again at Merkin Hall in New York. In 2009, we presented “The World Sings to Cuba.” The program featured compositions that foreign composers have written for Cuba over the years. It premiered on December 5, 2009, and was presented again on March 21, 2010, at the Instituto San Carlos in Key West.
Hymn to the Colegio de Belén in 1954.
I have also organized six concerts within Cuba (Camagüey en la Música (2014), Mujeres en la música cubana (2014), Santiago en la Música (2015), Matanzas en la Música (2018) and The World Sings to Havana (2019)). The latter has had a major impact both inside and outside Cuba because it was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube. To date, around a thousand people have been able to enjoy it.
Other contributions in the field of music have included:
Cuban Research Center at FIU (May 15, 2015).
2024, pp. 183–197. In November 2022, I was invited by the Instituto San Carlos de Cayo Hueso to give a talk (during which I sang and accompanied myself on the piano) about some Cuban songs that had been released in the United States in English versions. We were able to verify that, curiously, many of the “translations ” into English had nothing to do with the original Spanish texts.21
More recently, invited by the Arts Club of Washington, on May 23, 2025, I gave another talk in the same format featuring music by Moisés Simons (1889–1945), Gonzalo Roig (1890–1970), Osvaldo Farrés (1902–1985), Joseíto Fernández (1908–1979), and Otilio Portal (1915–2009).
Finally, I’d like to mention that I’m finishing up an extensive bibliography (“The World Sings to Cuba”) of thousands of compositions by foreign musicians inspired by Cuba.
History
In 1987, I had an unforgettable theatrical experience: I attended a performance in Buenos Aires of the play *Salsa Criolla* by the great Argentine actor and playwright Enrique Pinti (1939– 2022). It was a satirical take on Argentine history. I thought it would be a good idea to try doing something similar with Cuban history.
And so La Cuba de Antier came about. A one-man monologue, written and performed by me (with more nerve than talent, of course) on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Institute of Cuban Studies. It premiered at Harvard University (Cambridge, Massachusetts) on June 24, And what I thought would be a one-time performance was followed by 18 additional shows between 1989 and 1997: Atlanta, Caracas, Miami, New York, Notre Dame (Indiana), San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Washington, D.C. Hundreds of people attended. It was reviewed by the major New York newspapers The Wall Street Journal (May 20, 1991) and The Village Voice (December 1991). A wide variety of characters and events from our history parade across the stage, including Isabella the Catholic, the indigenous leader Hatuey, George III of England, the military officer Narciso López, Cecilia Valdés, a Chinese coolie, José Martí, the researcher Fernando Ortiz, a Catholic bishop, Fidel.
21 For example, the famous cha-cha “Me lo dijo Adela” by Otilio Portal (1915–2009), transformed into “Sweet andGentle,” makes no mention whatsoever of the dentist who had a tremendous sense of humor.
9Castro, chef Nitza Villapol, ballerina Alicia Alonso, a Russian bear, painter Wifredo Lam…
It also contains scenes referring to slavery, sugar, television, prison, and exile. It ends with a call for unity (“Cuba is an endless array of voices/ each singing in its own way/ may no one dare to claim as their own/ what belongs to all”).22
Three decades later, my second major historical project emerged. Published in 2018 by Ediciones Universal in Miami, I presented for the first time, in a hall at the Ermita de la Caridad in that city, my book One Hundred Ships in the History of Cuba or Stories of Cuba in One Hundred Ships. The book’s thesis is simple and clear: Cuba is an island, and for centuries, everything that entered and left had to do so by sea. Even after the advent of aviation, communication via ships has remained indispensable and fundamental. In fact, the four major chapters intowhich our history is divided all begin with the presence of ships: indigenous canoes, Spanish caravels, American battleships, and the Granma.
My other contributions in the field of history include:
22 I have donated a copy of each of the programs from the various performances to the theater archive of the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, where they can be consulted.
23 It can be found in 19 American libraries and one German library, as well as in several within Cuba.
2018 (2020). Matanzas at Your Fingertips: A Guide to the Study of Matanzas Province. Havana, Office of the City Conservator. Matanzas, Havana, 2018. This is a database with thousands of entries and hundreds of illustrations on various aspects of the history and culture of Matanzas.24
My contributions to the study of the so-called “Operation Pedro Pan” deserve special mention. This operation originated from the concern of several parents of students at a private school in Havana (Ruston Academy) in late 1960 who did not want their children to be educated in a socialist Cuba. It was funded by the United States to facilitate the departure of thousands of minorsunder the age of 18. As originally conceived, the boys and girls would live for a short time in American homes and institutions until they returned to their homes in Cuba.
As I was one of those young Pedro Pan/Peter Pan children, this is a subject of great interest on which I have been able to contribute not only my testimony but also serious research into the literature.
My first contribution, which can be viewed online, took place in the context of a discussion organized at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution inWashington, D.C., on May 3, 2011.25 Much later, in 2024, I gave a talk to students at Catholic University (Washington, D.C.); and my most recent contribution is reflected in my article “ Operation Pedro Pan. Review #2: Operation Pedro Pan: The Migration of Unaccompanied Children from Castro’s Cuba. Author: Professor John A. Gronbeck-Tedesco,” in El Ignaciano (Miami), Volume 7 / Year 7, #2 – June 2024, which includes an extensive bibliography on the subject.
I would like to mention another topic I have addressed on a couple of occasions (once seriously, once in satirical fiction): the confiscations of property in Cuba during the early years of the 1959 Revolution. In the first, I analyze the legal implications of those measures.26 The second, in the form of a short story, follows the story of the heirs of a father who in 1958 built a three-unit apartment building, bequeathing one unit to each of his three children in his will; they nowwish to reclaim the respective properties they had lost.27
I conclude by referring to seven additional works that could be included in this section. In chronological order: My presentation during the conference “The Nation and Emigration” held in Havana in April 1994;28 two videos on the Virgin of the Colegio de Belén (2010 and 2021);29 “My Friend Cardinal Jaime Ortega,” in El Nuevo Herald, June 7, 2012; and my comments on the 2018 Draft Constitution, particularly my references to the contribution of private education to the development of our homeland.30
In addition, I have written about the Cuban legacy in the U.S. capital, including a painting of a Cuban macaw in the Capitol Rotunda, an oil painting at the White House from
24Outside of Cuba, fifteen libraries in the United States and one in Germany hold this book.
25 See, https://www.c-span.org/person/?9278715/EmilioCueto.
26 See, Property Claims of Cuban Nationals. Paper presented at the workshop on Property in Cuba organized by the law firm Shaw Pittman, in Washington, D.C., 1992.
27 See, “La Cacucoco” in La Crónica (Mexico City), September 1–15, 1994, pp. 11–12.
28 See, “Con todos y para el bien de todos,” in El Nuevo Herald (Miami), May 5, 1994.
29 See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYqjpxMdZrM&ab_channel=RichardPaez. It has been viewed by 4,800 people. A second video about the Virgin and my classmates from the class of 1960 was recorded in 2021. See, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=XTh3J64ni84&ab_channel=EmilioCueto.
30 See, https://jcguanche.wordpress.com/2018/09/11/emilio-cueto-comentarios-al-proyecto-de- constitucion-de-la-republica-de-cuba-2018 and “In Favor of Private Education in Cuba Today,” in El Nuevo Herald, November 11, 2018.
11 First Lady Betty Ford, painted by our own Félix de Cossío (1913–1999);31 a stained-glass window depicting yellow fever in Cuba in the Anglican cathedral; a sculpture of La Caridad del Cobre by Manuel Rodulfo Tardo (1913–1998) from Matanzas, and the death mask of Calixto García (1839– 1898).32 Finally, I gave a talk, sponsored by the Cuban American Bar Association and FIU, in Washington, D.C., on Cuba’s presence in American legal jurisprudence between 1832 and Of particular interest is the case Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. (1993) regarding Santería ritual practices and their protection under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Tobacco
The names “Cuba” and “tobacco” have been inextricably linked ever since Christopher Columbus noted in his Journal (November 6, 1492) that “The two Christians [Rodrigo de Jerez and Luis de la Torre] encountered many people along the way passing through their villages—women and men holding a burning ember in their hands, along with herbs for the incense they were accustomed to burning.” Due to its renowned excellence, many tobacco manufacturers outside of Cuba, particularly in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries, took advantage of the fact that in there were no legal protections for geographical indications to give their foreign cigars names associated with Cuba—Havana, Vuelta—and national symbols such as our coat of arms and our flag. Ingenious and misleading advertising, no doubt.
My first work on the subject, *La Habana también se fuma. La huella habanera en las habilitaciones de tabaco extranjeras. Havana is for smokers. Havana’s presence in non-Cuban cigar labels*, was a bilingual joint publication by Ediciones Boloña (Havana) and Ediciones Polymita (Guatemala) in 2019. Seven American libraries hold a copy of the book. Since that book was published to celebrate Havana’s 500th anniversary, only labels mentioning the name or image of the capital of all Cubans were included. Left out, however, were other labels related to Cuba but which did not mention Havana.
With the aim of completing the previous work, five years later I published another book in which I include foreign labels that reference Cuba and other geographic locations outside of Havana, our map, national symbols, and some notable figures. Inspired By Cuba. Cuba On The Labels: A Selection of Cuba-Themed Cigar Labels Printed Outside of Cuba was published by Library Press @ UF (Gainesville, Florida) and presented at the University of Florida, Gainesville, on January 29, 2025. The presentation was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.
33 Further book presentations took place in Miami: at FIU on March 2025, and at the Cigar Lounge El Vecino two days later, on 23 March 2025. On 14 September 2025, it will be presented at the Cuban Cultural Center in New York. To date, the book is available in ten libraries across the United States.
Literature
Although I am neither a poet nor a storyteller, I have contributed a couple of works to the world of Cuban fiction . In 1976, I received the Jorge Mañach Poetry Prize awarded by the Municipality of Sagua la Grande en el Exilio (Miami) for my poem “You and I in the Center” (“To forget that I am)
31 And which was the subject of a U.S. postage stamp issue in 2024.
32 See, “A Cuban Footprint on the U.S. Capitol,” in Herencia Vol. 28, 2 (Oct. 2022). Pp. 52–65
33 See, https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/9dee1261efc54d998494aab445a903251d
12 very far away/ that is why, Island, I carry you within me”). It was reprinted in the magazine Jovellanos, (Miami), August 25, 1977, p. 3.34
Two decades later, my black-comedy short story “Bermúdez” appeared in Narrativa y libertad: Cuban stories from the diaspora / selected, with an introduction and notes by Julio E. Hernández- Miyares. Miami, Fla., Ediciones Universal, 1996. Volume I, pp. 321–327.
My first essays on Cuban literature date back to 2009, when I published “Eufemia de Ribera y de Fonseca. A Cuban Woman of the 18th Century,” in *Palabra Nueva* (Journal of the Archdiocese of Havana), April 2009. The following year, “¿Los primeros versos impresos en Cuba?” , also in Palabra Nueva (Havana), No. 197, June 2010, pp. 70–72.
I have recently published a much more comprehensive work. It is Sources for the Study of Cuba’s Presence in Foreign Fiction, in three volumes:
Poetry, Prose, and Theater. Havana: Editorial UH, 2025. In the words of its prologue writer, Dr. Leonardo Sarría (1977), “it contains more than eight thousand entries, originating from very diverse regions and languages—Russian, Norwegian, Swahili, Thai, Vietnamese, Yiddish, Malay, etc.—and in which, as if that were not enough, they span seven centuries of literary production.”
The work was presented during the 33rd Havana Book Fair, first at the Alma Mater Bookstore (February 20, 2025) and then at the José Martí National Library of Cuba (March 4, 2025). I hope to present it soon in the United States. The books have been digitized and can be downloaded for free.35
Cuisine
Although our cuisine cannot compare in age or variety to that of the Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italians, or Mexicans, the truth is that “Cuban coffee”and the “Cuban sandwich” have traveled the world. Years ago, I dedicated myself to studyingour culinary footprint around the world (and I have an extensive collection of menus from Cuban restaurants in various countries), and I was invited to give an illustrated talk at the conference on “CubanCuisine: From Casabe to Mojito,” organized by the Cuban Cultural Center of New York on July 14,
July 2013. My presentation included images of menus, products, and restaurants serving Cuban food in such unexpected places as Alaska, Gibraltar, Malta, Kiev, and Guam.I have given this talk four more times. On July 23, 2015, I presented it in Havana(“Echoes of Cuban Cuisine Around the World”) at the “Sobre una Palma Escrita” space in the José Martí National Library of Cuba; on October 11 of that year, I repeated it in Arlington, Virginia, sponsored by the nonprofit organization Puente de Amistad, which helps the most disadvantaged youth within Cuba. In 2016, I gave it at the Diocesan Library of Santa Clara; andseven years later, in 2023, to a group of young people from the culinary school organized by the La Fela Local Development Project, in the Municipality of Diez de Octubre.
Philately
It is an ancient custom for a country to tell its story and honor its most distinguished sons and daughters on its postage stamps, and no one finds this remarkable. Far more surprising is that we find Cuban traces on the stamps of other countries.
34 In 1999, on the eve of the Millennium, I wrote the poetry collection Very Free Verses to Greet the Year 2000, which was to be illustrated and published by the Cuban visual artist Ramón Alejandro (1943), but has remained unpublished.
35 See, https://accesoabierto.uh.cu/s/scriptorium/item/2193828
I became interested in the subject, and little by little I began collecting relevant materials. To fill the gap that existed on this topic in our bibliography, I began publishing in Havana works on José Martí and our chess player José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942).36
Many years later, with more information and a much more complete collection of these stamps, I published *Delivering Cuba Through the Mail: Cuba’s Presence in Non-Cuban Postage Stamps and Envelopes (Inspired by Cuba)*. Library Press at UF, 2021. The book, which can be found in twenty-nine American libraries and one British library, contains 1, 196 illustrations ofstamps (featuring personalities, flora and fauna, historical and sporting events, international relations,etc.).
They were issued by 161 postal authorities worldwide, including Barbados, Burundi, Guernsey, Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Luxembourg, Moldova, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, and Vanuatu. As inconceivable as it is wonderful. Cuba never ceases to amaze.
In addition to presenting the book in several Cuban cities, I have presented it in Gainesville (University of Florida, November 15, 2021),³⁷ Miami (FIU, January 24, 2022)³⁸ and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area (Busboys and Poets, October 19, 2022).
José Martí (1853–1895)
During the centennial celebrations of the Apostle’s birth in 1953, a contest was held at the Colegio de Belén, where I was in elementary school, and I won a medal. I have always been interested in Martí’s life and work, though I confess that, given the vastness of his bibliography, I never thought I could contribute to it with anything that might be interesting and original.
But Martí is such a vast subject that I have managed to publish some texts on less-studied aspects of his work. I have already mentioned in the music section my study on musical compositions inspired by the Apostle’s life and writings. I have also notedin the Philately Section to Martí’s presence on foreign postage stamps. Finally,in issue 71 (May 2025) of *Honda*, the journal of the Martí Program, my work“Poets of the World Sing to the Apostle” appears, a bibliography on Martí’s presence in the poetry of foreign authors.
The fact is, Martí is inexhaustible. In November 2022, I accepted an invitation from the San Carlos Institute in Key West to give an illustrated talk on José Martí’s legacy around the world.
I have presented this lecture, each time with greater scope and information, on several additional occasions, including in Havana (the José Martí National Library of Cuba, the Provincial Library, the ISA), Bauta, Matanzas, Santa Clara, Cienfuegos, Camagüey, Holguín, Santiago de Cuba, Playitas de Cajobabo, and Baracoa. In the United States, I have presented it at FIU (Miami, January 26, 2024), the JFK Library in Hialeah (January 27, 2024), and, most recently, at the University of Florida in Gainesville (January 28, 2025). This latest presentation, featuring over 500 images, can be viewed on YouTube.39
36 See “Martí en el mundo” in Opus Habana (Havana), Vol. XII, No. 3, Sept. 2009–Jan. 2010, pp. 34–5
[Collectible Philately] and “Capablanca in the World,” in Opus Habana (Havana), Vol. XIII, No. 3, Feb.– July 2011 [Collectible Philately].
37 The presentation was recorded and can be viewed at https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/4313dbdd48ac4fd48580c933cdce08f81d
38 https://www.booksandbooks.com/virtual -event/delivering-cuba-through-the-mail-an-afternoon-with- emilio-cueto/
39 See, Jose Marti Birthday Celebration. https://mediasite.video.ufl.edu/Mediasite/Play/1cbf6f89870e4a098afaeddf9322a59f1d
Finally, on May 29, 2025, I will give an illustrated presentation on the presence and legacy of the Apostle in the United States to a group of students from the University of Maryland and other guests at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.
Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre
Found in 1614 by three young —two indigenous people and a 10-year-old Black slave— floating on a small board in Nipe Bay, the wooden image of Our Lady of Charity (as stated on a sign accompanying it) gradually illuminated the hearts of Cubans from east to west, and in 1916, at the request of the mambises, Pope Benedict XV declared her Patroness of Cuba. My work on her complements the previous bibliography and is distinguished by the abundance of images (over a thousand), a detailed study of her iconography, the Virgin’s footprint in the visual arts, literature, and music, and concludes with a journey tracing the Virgin’spresence across the island and around the world.
The book, *La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre en el alma del pueblo cubano*, Guatemala, Ediciones Polymita, 2014,40 after being presented at the Shrine of El Cobre, the José Martí National Library of Cuba, and other institutions on the island, was presented at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The talk was recorded and can be viewed on YouTube.41
The following year, at the invitation of the Cuban Embassy to the Vatican, the book was presented at the Church of Saints Aquila and Priscilla (the parish assigned to the then-Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega (1936–2019)), in the presence of several Cuban and Italian bishops and members of the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See and Italy.
I have also presented the book several times in Miami (Casa Bacardí, University of Miami, October 15, 2014; Miami Dade College-Hialeah, November 18, 2014; Koubek Center, during the 2014 Book Fair); in New York (Cuban Cultural Center, December 4, 2014); in Washington, D.C. (Catholic University); in Boston (Cuban Circle); in Jacksonville, Florida (Cuban Circle); and in Mexico City (Cuban Circle).
Two relevant articles published in the United States conclude this section: “Fulfilling a sacred promise”/ “Caridad del Cobre,” in Smithsonian Journeys (Washington, D.C.), Winter 2016,
64–65, and “La más universal de las cubanas” in El Ignaciano (Miami), Volume 6, #4, September 2023.42
Conclusions
It has been a true privilege to have been able to travel the world discovering the diverse traces of Cuba in so many corners, many of them completely unexpected. And I have beenvery fortunate to have been able to share the information I have gathered through talks, exhibitions, concerts, and printed texts, not only throughout our island but also in many American cities.
According to WorldCat, at least one of my books is held by one hundred fifty-seven institutions located in eighty-nine cities across 48 states of the United States, all 40 Outside of Cuba, twenty-five libraries worldwide—19 of them in the United States—hold copies.
41 See, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLwPHDLwhGE
42 See, https://elignaciano.com/la-mas-universal-de-las-cubanas/
15 except Hawaii and Idaho (See Appendix). Furthermore, several American publications have reported to the general public on aspects of my collection and my work.
Finally, I have loaned objects from my collection to be exhibited at other institutions such as El Museo del Barrio in New York (2010), the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. (2022), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, also in Washington, D.C. (2024).
I am extremely grateful to all the institutions that have allowed me to share my research and my collection with the American public. And, of course, I am equally grateful to all the institutions in each of the Cuban provinces that have opened their doors to me.
I feel very honored to have received several awards for my efforts. Outside of Cuba: the National Heritage Award presented by Facts About Cuban Exiles (FACE, Miami, 2000); an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from St. Thomas University (Miami, 2016); the 2018 Award for Academic Excellence from LASA (Latin American Studies Association); and the “El Titán” Award from the Cuban Cultural Center of New York in 2024.
I am also deeply grateful for the awards received within the island: the Catauro Award from the Fernando Ortiz Foundation (2011); La Puerta de Papel from the Cuban Book Institute (2014); the Monsignor Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Award from the Culture Commission of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba (2017);44 Aurora de Matanzas (2018) ; the Espejo de Paciencia from the Camagüey Department of Culture (2018); Honorary Member of the Casa del Caribe in Santiago de Cuba (2024); Corresponding Member Abroad of the Cuban Academy of History
(2024); Commemorative Stamp for the 80th Anniversary of Eusebio Leal Spengler (2024) and the National Culture Distinction from the Ministry of Culture of Cuba (2024).
It is very difficult to be any luckier.
43 See,
Vista (New York), September 2, 1989;
Éxito (Miami), March 4, 1992;
El Nuevo Herald
(Miami), October 18, 1994;
The Herald (Miami), October 11, 1994, and November 17, 2002;
CUA Magazine (Washington, D.C.), Summer 2006;
The Wall Street Journal (New York), March 14, 2013;
El Nuevo Día (San Juan, Puerto Rico), March 1, 1998, and July 9, 2014);
The Washington Post (Washington, D.C.), May 10, 2015, weekly magazine; and Mayra A. Martínez, “Emilio Cueto and His Island of Cuba in the Heart of Washington, D.C.,” in And All for the Love of Cuban Music, Self-published, 2020, 66–74.
44 See Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s remarks and my words of thanks on that occasion in Espacio Laical, No. 257, May 2017. https://espaciolaical.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/sd_257.pdf
16
APPENDIX
LIST OF NORTH AMERICAN LIBRARIES (157) THAT, ACCORDING TO WORLDCAT,
HOLD AT LEAST ONE COPY OF A BOOK I HAVE AUTHORED
ALABAMA (2)
Auburn University (Auburn)
University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa)
ALASKA (1)
UAA/APU Consortium Library (Anchorage)
ARIZONA (1)
University of Arizona Libraries (Tucson)
ARKANSAS (1)
University of Arkansas (Fayetteville)
CALIFORNIA (12)
Getty Research Institute (Los Angeles)
Huntington Library (San Marino)
Stanford University (Stanford)
University of California (Berkeley)
University of California (Davis)
University of California (Irvine)
University of California (Los Angeles)
University of California (Riverside)
University of California (Santa Barbara)
University of California (Santa Cruz)
University of San Diego (San Diego)
University of Southern California (Los Angeles)
COLORADO (3)
Auraria Library (Denver)
University of Colorado (Boulder)
University of Denver (Denver)
CONNECTICUT (3)
University of Connecticut (Storrs)
US Coast Guard Academy (New London)
Yale University Library (New Haven)
DELAWARE (1)
University of Delaware Library (Newark)
FLORIDA (16)
Broward County Libraries (Fort Lauderdale)
Florida Atlantic University (Boca Raton)
Florida Gulf Coast University (Fort Myers)
Florida International University (Miami)
Florida State University (Tallahassee)
Hillsborough County Public Library (Tampa)
Jacksonville Public Library (Jacksonville)
New College of Florida (Sarasota)
State Library of Florida (Tallahassee)
Stetson University (Deland)
University of Central Florida (Orlando)
University of Florida (Gainesville)
University of Miami (Miami)
University of North Florida (Jacksonville)
University of South Florida (St. Petersburg)
University of South Florida (Tampa)
GEORGIA (2)
Emory University (Atlanta)
University of Georgia (Athens)
ILLINOIS (10)
Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)
Chicago Public Library (Chicago)
Loyola University (Chicago)
Newberry Library (Chicago)
Northwestern University (Evanston)
Parkland College (Champaign)
Principia College (Evanston)
University of Chicago Library (Chicago)
University of Illinois (Urbana)
Western Illinois University (Macomb)
INDIANA (3)
Indiana University (Bloomington)
Purdue University Library (West Lafayette)
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame)
IOWA (1)
University of Iowa Libraries (Iowa City)
KANSAS (1)
University of Kansas (Lawrence)
KENTUCKY (1)
University of Kentucky Libraries (Lexington)
LOUISIANA (2)
Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge)
Tulane University (New Orleans)
MAINE (3)
Bates College (Lewiston)
University of Maine (Orono)
University of Southern Maine (Portland)
MARYLAND (1)
Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore)
MASSACHUSETTS (6)
17
Boston College (Chestnut Hill)
Brandeis University Library (Waltham)
Harvard University (Cambridge)
Mount Holyoke College (S Hadley)
Tufts University (Medford)
Wellesley College (Wellesley)
MICHIGAN (2)
Michigan State University (East Lansing)
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
MINNESOTA (1)
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis)
MISSISSIPPI (1)
University of Mississippi (Oxford)
MISSOURI (5)
Saint Louis Art Museum (Saint Louis)
Saint Louis University (Saint Louis)
Mid-Continent Public Library (Independence)
University of Missouri (Columbia)
Washington University (Saint Louis)
MONTANA (1)
University of Montana (Missoula)
NEBRASKA (1)
Creighton University (Omaha)
NEVADA (2)
University of Nevada (Las Vegas)
University of Nevada (Reno)
NEW HAMPSHIRE (2)
Dartmouth Library (Hanover)
University of New Hampshire (Durham)
NEW JERSEY (2)
Princeton University Library (Princeton)
Saint Peter’s University (Jersey City)
NEW MEXICO (2)
New Mexico State University (Las Cruces)
University of New Mexico (Albuquerque)
NEW YORK (13)
American Museum of Natural History (NYC)
City University of New York (NYC)
Columbia University (NYC)
Cornell University Library (Ithaca)
Fordham University (NYC)
Frick Art Research Library (NYC)
Hostos Community College-CUNY (NYC)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC)
The New York Historical Society (NYC)
New York Public Library (NYC)
New York University (NYC)
SUNY (Oswego)
University of Rochester (Rochester)
NORTH CAROLINA (3)
St Andrews University (Laurinburg)
Duke University Libraries (Durham)
University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).
NORTH DAKOTA (1)
University of North Dakota (Forks)
OHIO (9)
Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland)
Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland)
Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland)
Cleveland Public Library (Cleveland)
Cleveland State University Library (Cleveland)
Miami University Libraries (Oxford)
Ohio State University Libraries (Columbus)
University of Cincinnati (Cincinnati)
University of Toledo (Toledo)
OKLAHOMA (1)
University of Oklahoma (Norman)
OREGON (1)
University of Oregon Libraries (Eugene)
PENNSYLVANIA (8)
Commonwealth University (Bloomsburg)
Franklin & Marshall College (Lancaster)
Haverford College Library (Haverford)
Lafayette College (Easton)
Pennsylvania State University (University Park)
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
University of Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh)
Villanova University (Villanova)
RHODE ISLAND (1)
Brown University (Providence)
SOUTH CAROLINA (2)
University of South Carolina (Columbia)
Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem)
SOUTH DAKOTA (1)
University of South Dakota (Vermillion)
TENNESSEE (2)
University of Tennessee (Knoxville)
Vanderbilt University Library (Nashville)
TEXAS (10)
18
Abilene Christian University (Abilene)
Baylor University Libraries (Waco)
Harlingen Public Library (Harlingen)
Rice University (Houston)
Southern Methodist University (Dallas)
Texas A&M University (College Station)
Texas Christian University (Fort Worth)
University of Houston (Houston)
University of Texas Libraries (Austin)
University of Texas (San Antonio)
UTAH (3)
Brigham Young University (Provo)
University of Utah (Salt Lake City)
Utah State University (Logan)
VERMONT (1)
University of Vermont (Burlington)
VIRGINIA (4)
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Williamsburg)
Tidewater Community College (Norfolk)
University of Virginia (Charlottesville)
Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond)
WASHINGTON (1)
Washington State University (Pullman)
WASHINGTON, D.C. (4)
American University
Catholic University of America
Library of Congress
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives
WEST VIRGINIA (1)
West Virginia University (Morgantown)
WISCONSIN (1)
University of Wisconsin (Madison)
WYOMING (1)
University of Wyoming (Laramie)
Source: Center for International Policy Research (CIPI)