Lili Bernard, Photo Bio

BIOGRAPHY

In February of 2007, through no effort on my part, I mystically acquired a wonderful studio in the premiere art gallery district of Chung King Road in Chinatown, Los Angeles, where the names of streets are the sir names of my grandparents (Chung, Figueroa and Bernard). The spirits of my ancestors anoint my work there. People who witness me work at my studio, while my children zip around my easel, often remark that they are surprised to see how prolifically I paint. By far, the most productive period in my life has been the ten years I spent giving birth to my six children. My children are my greatest earthly inspiration. They offer invaluable criticism of my artwork, to which I pay much attention. My children are a fundamental force in my artistic productivity.

I am the fourth of the six children born to José Rodríguez Bernard and Georgina Pallerols Thompson (Chung). My family's heritage is Indigenous-Afro-Cuban, Jamaican, Spanish, Chinese and British. Like my parents, I was born in Santiago de Cuba. When I was a toddler, my family left Cuba for Spain. We ultimately ended up moving to New Jersey, via Brooklyn.

With my husband and our six children in September 2008 at my opening in the William Grant Still Arts Center of the Los Angeles City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Fine arts, theater and music thrived in our native-Cuban American household and played an integral role in my upbringing. I was four years old when my mother gave me my first lesson in drawing in our little Brooklyn brownstone.

With great focus and joy my mom showed me how to arrange circles and triangles to create a beautiful bird. I was utterly fascinated by the living form that my mother was able to create, via the combination of two mere shapes. That moment was pivotal in my becoming an artist.

Later, In our New Jersey home, where aromas of fried plantain and apple pie and the sounds of Celia Cruz and Bruce Springsteen filled the air; I began, at an early age, to exhibit fine art and thespian inclinations. As a child, I wrote, produced and starred in a plethora of wacky plays and used my artistic capabilities to create fancifully painted backdrops, curtains and theatrical posters. My theatre was my backyard and basement. The audiences were my neighbors who all paid a nickel for a hand-crafted ticket.

Since I can remember, my mother used to always say that she knew I was going to grow up to be a famous artist one day. She and my father instilled in my siblings and me the knowledge that we could achieve any and every goal. Consequently, two of my siblings earned PhD's from prestigious institutions, my sister Alicia in multi-cultural education and my brother José in Physics. As teenagers my sister Alicia and I were star athletes, she a basketball and field hockey MVP and I a martial artist and regionally-ranked USGF gymnast. Our brother José was an Eagle Scout, our brother Gabriel a phenomenal child equestrian, our sister Georgi danced flamenco on stage.

We all played a variety of musical instruments, some of us in the first chairs of our high school jazz bands and orchestras. My brother Dan grew up to be a professional musician, singer and song-writer. All of my siblings and I had a knack for drawing well. As a teenager, I earned income making portraits and paintings for neighbors and teachers. My brothers and sisters and I excelled in the arts and sciences as a result of my parents' nurturing.

My parents, my siblings and I in our New Jersey home in 1986

An electrical engineer and former professor of Electrical Theory, my father used to bring home discarded blueprints. My brothers and sisters and I squealed euphorically as he unrolled the huge papers on the kitchen table and spilled crayons on top of them. For hours we drew and colored on the back of those discarded blueprints. My father categorically saved our childhood drawings for each one of us to enjoy in our adulthood. In the beginning of my junior year of high school my dad's job with Mobile Oil took our family to Tokyo, where I graduated from the American School in Japan. As a teenager, The uplifting nature of my teachers in both Tokyo and New Jersey, coupled with the self-sacrificing love of my parents and their wonderful lessons in art, propelled me to enter the bachelor of fine arts program at Cornell University. At that time, my family had moved to Saudi Arabia where, for two years, I spent my college breaks.

At Cornell University, my painting professor, named Patrick Webb, taught me invaluable lessons on the derivation and arrangement of colors. Today, in my painting, I continue to incorporate many of the methods that I learned from Professor Webb as well as from many of the dynamic art professors at Cornell University. Along with fine arts, I also studied the sciences, German and acting at Cornell. My theatre professor, Bruce Levitt, encouraged me to consider pursuing a career in acting and recommended that I study in New York City. After three years at Cornell, I left and started an acting career in New York, where I studied theater for three more years, under the tutelage of the legendary Sonia Moore, whose books were required reading at the drama department in Cornell. My fine art continued to develop, alongside my thespian life. I used to come home from rehearsals and performances and paint. At my parents urging and with their support, I completed my bachelor’s degree at the City University of New York. I received a BA in German and incorporated my acting and painting into my thesis which was on Germany's legendary renaissance man, Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. I also ran a grassroots mentoring program for disadvantaged youth in my Harlem neighborhood.

		In New York City, I enjoyed some success in acting, doing lots of Off-Broadway theatre, co-staring on "The Cosby Show" and "Stephen King's Golden Years" and starring in a BBC film with Eric LeSalle and Ving Rhames. In 1993, I moved to Los Angeles where I continued doing theatre and played Kramer's Black girlfriend in an episode of "Seinfeld." I married civil rights attorney, Franklin Ferguson in 1995. Two years later, I gave birth to our first of five sons. In 2001 I founded and chartered the City of Angels Little League (an all-volunteer run organization) which successfully continues to serve children in the central Los Angeles region. I am also a PTO board member at my children's school. Today, as a mother of five young boys, my vocational focus has naturally shifted on my career as a fine artist. Outside of parenting, painting is one of my most
My husband Franklin Ferguson, Esq. and I in 2007

delightful daily activities. It's an out-of-body experience for me. I don't think much when I paint. Everything just comes out of me, just happens. It's as if I'm a vehicle driven by a great force within me. One of the most time-consuming and yet therapeutic aspects in my painting is the mixing of colors on the pallet. I paint in oils, sans thinning agents and tend to derive hues that are brightly colored, that reflect, rather than absorb, light. The subjects of my paintings range from the spiritual, through the natural, to the ancestral.

I look at every venue to display and sell my work as an utter blessing. This is particularly true in the context of relatively few women and people of color being represented in the art world. It is therefore that I recently incorporated a charitable nonprofit organization, entitled ¡HABLA! Harvesting Asian, Black, Latino Artists. The purpose of ¡HABLA! is to provide a platform for the voices of Asian, Black and Latino fine artists in the mainstream art world, where artists of color are grossly underrepresented. ¡HABLA! achieves this goal through its all-inclusive youth mentoring programs and through its providing of scholarships for artists of color to graduate and undergraduate art schools. I donate a portion of my studio space for the use of ¡HABLA! and contribute a percentage of every sale to the nonprofit.

I inherited my artistry, my love for God and my social activism from my father's father, José Rodríguez Figueroa. My Abuelo José was a teacher, a pastor, a widely published author, a painter and a Mambi. The Mambises were the insurgent soldiers in Cuba's War of Independence from Spain. My Abuelo was a war correspondent. His writings are housed today in Cuba's national libraries. The tragic story of his Siboney (indigenous Cuban) mother's passing, during the war, was exhibited in the National Museum of Cuba. You can read more about my Abuelo José in the page for my "El Mambi en la Manigua" painting. As was my Abuelo a strong influence on my father's life, so has my father been a strong influence in my life.

My father was a student at the University of Havana during the same time that Fidel Castro was. My dad recounts a campus life that was politically tumultuous. Fidel lead on-campus demonstrations, like the one to the right, protesting Fulgencio Batista's dictatorial reign over Cuba. After graduating from the University of Havana, my father became a professor of electrical theory at the La Universidad del Oriente in Santiago. Concurrently, my father was also the electrical engineering supervisor of the Texaco Oil Refinery in Santiago de Cuba. After the revolution and the instituting of communism, the refinery became nationalized and assumed the name of "La Refineria Hermanos Diaz."

Ernesto Che Guevara (who had abetted Fidel Castro in the revolution) was appointed as Cuba's Minister of Industry. Che oversaw the newly-named Hermanos Diaz oil refinery, which my dad continued to supervise. My father, wanting nothing to do with communism, presented to Che Guevara a resignation letter. Che denied my father's resignation and required my dad to continue on the job, stating that my father was needed to run the oil refinery. Meanwhile, my parents appealed to the Cuban government for a leave from the island. Resultantly, the Cuban government labeled our family as "traidores" and

"gusanos" ("traitors" and "maggots"). They declared that everything my parents owned was now a possession of the Cuban government. If we were granted leave from the island, we would be required to flee with absolutely nothing but the clothes on our backs. My parents devised a very clever plan to clandestinely forward our necessary documents and some sentimental belongings to my father's sister who had emigrated earlier to Brooklyn, New York.

My mom and dad cut square holes of identical size and location on every page of the back portion of three books. The result was three seemingly innocuous books that each contained a secret, hidden compartment. In one book, my parents placed their marriage certificate, all of our birth certificates, their educational diplomas and other important documents. In another book they placed cherished family photos. In the third book, my parents placed their wedding bands and whatever gold and silver jewelry that they owned. On the inside of each book, my father wrote his sister's name and mailing address in Brooklyn, New York.

		My father inconspicuously took one of the books with him to the refinery where he worked. During his lunch break, my dad introduced himself to an Italian Sea Captain of an oil ship which was docked at the refinery. The ship had arrived from Venezuela to supply Cuba with crude oil. Its next stop was Cabo Verde, Africa. My father shared with the sea captain his efforts to remove our family from Cuba. He explained the resultant restriction upon us that the Cuban government had imposed and confided in the captain his secret plan to forward our necessary belongings to the United Stated, via three revamped books sent in the mail to the US from countries outside of Cuba. It was prohibited to mail packages of such content from Cuba, where all outgoing and incoming packages are opened and perused, items confiscated. My father asked the sea captain if he would, upon his arrival in Africa, be so kind as to mail the book to my aunt's address, which was written on the inside of the book. Empathetic, the sea captain obliged. Relying on the kindness of a complete stranger, my father entrusted the book and all it's secret contents to the sea captain. Several weeks later, my aunt in Brooklyn received in the mail a package from Cabo Verde, Africa. Inside was my father's book with all its secret contents in tact. My father risked his life two more times in the same manner, entrusting the other two books to two more sea captains who were also complete strangers.
My father is pictured standing to the right with his electrical engineering classmates at the University of Havana, where Fidel castro was concurrently a classmate of my father's.

The other two books also arrived safely to my Aunt in Brooklyn. One book arrived from Greece. Had my father been caught, he would have been incarcerated and severally persecuted. It was a tremendous risk which my father had taken. He had heard testimonies of Che Guevara having been "trigger-happy" and having murdered a multitude of innocent accused Cubans, without having afforded them the process of due cause.

The Comité de Defensa de La Revolución (the Committee for the Defense of the revolution) sent a representative to my parents house. On orders from the government, the representative menacingly made an inventory list of every item in our home, echoing that everything we owned was now a possession of the Cuban government. The representative stated that if we wanted to leave any of our belongings to our relatives, our relatives would have to buy them from the government.

The representative warned my parents that if a single item were missing, upon our departure, my parents would be considered thieves, imprisoned and denied exodus from the island. It was made clear that we would be allowed to leave Cuba with no possessions, no

Papi & Us

My dad, my siblings and I in Spain, shortly after we had left Cuba.

wedding rings, no birth or marriage certificates, no photographs, no bible. By that time those items had already safely arrived in the US, via my parents successful scheme.

My parents finally received permission to leave the island, but Che had still not signed my father's resignation letter. Che's signature was necessary for us to be able to leave Cuba legally. Che had agreed that he would sign the paper on my dad's last day on the island. My father arranged an appointment to meet with Che in Havana, just before our flight out of the country.

Prior to our leaving our house in Santiago, for our plane to Havana, an official from the Comité de la Defensa de la Revolución came to check if all of our inventoried possessions were still in our home. The official made note that one of my sister's dolls was missing. My parents explained to the official that one of their young nieces had inadvertently taken the doll and that the doll was at our Abuela Princesa's house. We were not permitted to leave, until the doll was accounted for. My Abuela retrieved the doll, gave it to the official and we stepped out through our front door for the last time. As my parents, my siblings and I left our home, we watched the authorities stretch yellow tape across our front door, upon which they tacked a poster reading, "Ill-Gotten Goods." We were permitted to take with us only our passports, our visas, our plane tickets, the clothes on our backs, and one extra change of clothes for each of us four children. My grandmother, aunts and uncles purchased our furniture from the Cuban government.

		We made our connection to Havana. About an hour before boarding our plane to Madrid, my father met one-on-one with Ernesto Che Guevara in Che's office. My dad said that Che arrived very late for their appointment and then circled around my father as my father sat in the chair in front of Che’s desk. My father’s thoughts were on my mother, my siblings and me. We were waiting anxiously for my father at the airport terminal. I had a bad case of the measles. My mother tried to keep my pocked face concealed with her hair, so that the immigration officers would not notice that I was ill with a very contagious disease and prohibit us from embarking the plane. Back in Che’s office, still seated, my father sweated while Che blew his cigar smoke and then sat down. Che rested his military boots on top of his desk. After a long moment of silence, Che said to my father, “So you really want to leave us, José?”
My mother, siblings and I are pictured here in Spain shortly after our exodus from Cuba.

Without a word, my father nodded. Che chuckled and signed the papers necessary for our family’s legal exile from Cuba. Che Guevara was one of the last people with whom my father spoke, before we boarded our plane out of Cuba.

Having been denied a visa to the US, our family went first to Spain (from where my mother's father hailed). Arriving in Spain with only the clothes on our backs, we were very grateful for the assistance which the Spanish church, our Spanish cousins and my father's sisters (who had immigrated from Cuba to the US) had provided. We lived in Spain for a couple of years before moving to Brooklyn, NY.

I remember coming on the plane from Spain to JFK, and blabbing in gibberish with my siblings, pretending that we were speaking English like the Americans. In the US, my parents later birthed two more boys.

To the left is a photo of my parents, my siblings and me, during our first Christmas in the US. I'm the smallest one, in my father's lap with the stuffed animal in my hands. We had arrived in Brooklyn in the middle of December. My toes froze in those blue rubber rain boots which my resourceful mother had lined with plastic bread bags to keep our socks dry and provide some insulation from the cold snow. My parents were creative in their resourcefulness. "Necessity is the mother of invention," my parents used to remind me. In Cuba, my relatives refer to these little inventions as "inventos."

My family endured many trying scenarios in Cuba, which resulted from my parents' decision to leave the island. I am so very grateful for the many sacrifices my parents made in the realization of their dream to provide for us a life of freedom and abundance here in the United States. I did not fully understand how my parents decision to leave Cuba had so dramatically impacted our lives, until I had returned to the island (for the first time) in the fall of 2002 to visit my ailing Abuela Princesa and to sit at the death bead of my Tio Carlos. It was then that I witnessed, first hand, the despair of my many relatives' impoverished lives in Cuba. After my visit, upon my return to the Miami airport, I wanted to fall on my knees, kiss the ground and shout "God bless America!" With all her problems, her shortcomings and injustices, God bless wonderful America. God bless my parents for having made it possible for me to know a better life and to have traveled the world.

In October of 2006, I spent nine days in Bangalore, India with my family for my brother Dan's week-long wedding to Anupama, his wonderful Indian wife. My family and I agreed that if India is a third world country, then Cuba is a tenth world country. Compared to Cuba, the very poor India seemed materially rich. I found India's affluence to be in her abundant joyful spirituality, despite her poverty. In Cuba I felt a doom looming over a most desperate destitution, where religion is a stranger. In Bangalore, a rainbow of saris, accentuating beautiful brown skin, echoes brilliant smiles donned by the average Indian pedestrian. I saw free enterprise in India, Bangalorians busy at work, selling commodities on the street for their livelihood. In Santiago I saw no street vendors, rather a lot of idle unemployment.

Colorful vesture flashed fantastically against illustrious ebony skin tones in Santiago. It provided a reprise to my eyes from the austere expression of the average Santiaguero who passed me by. I photographed these colorfully-clad Cuban girls (left) in front of my Abuela's house. I wondered if tourists who surrealistically frolic in Havana resorts are privy to the circumambient despair of Cuban citizens. When tourists twist their ankles, sauntering down jacuzzi steps in their Havana resorts, they get to be mended at luxurious tourist-government hospitals, where Cuban citizens are forbidden entry. I witnessed an apartheid in Cuba which is not widely discussed. In 1994, my youngest brother Gabriel (who was born in America) visited Cuba. He was denied entry into a Havana hotel in which he was booked to stay. The doorman blurted to my brother, "No Cuban's allowed, tourists only." My brother had to show him his American passport.

My cousin took me to a local fancy hotel in Santiago to meet his friend who was getting off from work at the hotel. His friend said that my cousin would not have been permitted to enter the hotel lobby, if it weren't for me by his side, with my American passport in hand. My cousin looked nervous, so we stayed outside.

I photographed these cows (to the right), sauntering down the street with us in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Santiago. There I met a Guajiro (Cuban hillbilly) who said that they were "cash cows." He went on that his uncle was a herder of "cash cows." "Cash cows?" I asked. "Cash cows," he retorted, "That's what we call them, government-owned cows, slaughtered for tourist consumption." He said that once, one of the cows was hit by a truck and killed. His Uncle notified the government that the cow had been killed so that they could come and retrieve the corpse for butchery. The government did not show up. Before the meat spoiled, the herder cut off the dead cow's legs and fed the thigh to his family. One of his neighbors informed the government and the herder was imprisoned for seven years. "No one is permitted to eat beef in Cuba," said the incarcerated herder's nephew to me, "except tourists and government officials." When the herder's nephew spoke to me about the government, he stroked an

Cuban Cash Cows

imaginary beard in lieu of uttering the word "Fidel." He did this while looking from side to side.

My brother José took an excursion to Havana, during our homecoming. In Havana, he stumbled upon a birthday party which was being thrown for one of Fidel's sons, whom he saw present in the crowd. They were roasting, on giant skewers, a whole cow. I forgot to ask my brother if it was a skinny cow. All of the cows I saw in Santiago, which were few, were emaciated.

In Santiago, while canvassing her ravaged streets, I saw very few tourists -- perhaps one or two in the nine days that I was there. As I walked, I thought to myself; this city of my birth who's been the bosom of so many revolutions, including that of Fidel and Che, lies rotting in neglect. My cousins, many who are doctors, lawyers, professors and engineers live lives in Santiago of indescribable indigence. In one month, they earn (in pesos) the equivalent of nine or ten US dollars. Yet a pair of shoes costs 15 dollars, and they must be purchased in US money only. To the left is a house across from my Tia's house. We quipped that it was the "Casa de Tula, que cojió candela," from the popular Buena Vista Social

Club song about "Tula's house which caught on fire." I remembered that there are places in America where people live in such dilapidated buildings.

In Santiago, supermarkets, like the one to the right, across the street from my Abuela's house, display bare shelves and empty antique, working cash registers. It was apparent by their behavior that most of the people whom I photographed weren't used to being photographed. Cameras are a rare commodity. When I toted my camera around, pedestrians gawked at me. Inquisitive ones asked if they could examine the unfamiliar digital apparatus and expressed delight, through restrained smiles, when they saw their image

Cuban Gas Line

suddenly appear on the LCD screen. Some pedestrians seemed afraid to be photographed. Camera's are forbidden in buildings such as schools and hospitals. Our bags were checked when I entered a local hospital and a remote nursing home. At each place they refused my camera entry. My relatives warned me to be careful with my photography. I was courteous with my lens, tried to show compassion. Prior to shooting, I asked people for their permission to photograph them. I wanted to shoot intimate pictures of a Cuba that is not readily known to tourists ,photos that would help me bring a sense of reality to my paintings of current life in my birth island.

To the left, I photographed Santiago city dwellers lingering in a long

line. They tote mustard-colored empty tin tanks, which they hope to fill with monthly rations of gas. Toilet paper maintains an elusive face in Cuba. A dribble of water down the back, from a small bottle that rests on the toilet tank, is used instead. Toilets are sparingly flushed. A pot of cold water and cup are all the resources for an occasional "shower." Water shouts, "Turn off my damn faucet you spoiled American!" Once, when my cousin stood beside me at the bathroom sink, while I washed my hands in considerate haste. My cousin uttered anxiously to me, "¿Prima, que estás tratando de hacer -- quitarte el piel?" ("Cousin, whaddaya tryin'a do -- take off your skin?") I apologized and quickly turned off the faucet. Another cousin rejoiced in the coming of Hurricane Lili, because she was able to wash her hair clean in the turbulent rain and take a very long shower. To the right is the cup and sparingly-filled, small pot of cold water that served as my bath in Abuela Princesa's house. Water is

Lili and Pig

such a scarce commodity on the island of Cuba where liquor is so plentiful. I saw waves of drunken men, flooding streets, squatting idly in the middle of week days, while un-harvested fruit lies rotting in lush red soil. Prostitution and infidelity run rampant, though there's no paper with which to write a lover's phone number, no phone of which to write a number. My cousin who lives in Santiago said that Homosexuality is illegal in Cuba. I don't know if that's true, but my cousin's lover said that he spent a night in jail on charges that he was gay.

Pedestrians pack into vintage trucks like lambs morphed into sardines, paying a peso for their fare. Makeshift bicycle rickshaws and old fashioned horse-and-buggies meander through occasional 1950's American automobiles on empty streets, lined with bony, brown people who

Street in Santiago de Cuba

stared at my plump, camera-toting arms. Only three of my hundreds of relatives in Santiago de Cuba own vehicles. One relative owns an old red truck which dozens of us piled into on the way home from my arrival at the airport. The other two cousins own barely-functioning, antique Russian automobiles. One night when one of my car-owning

cousins became too drunk to take us back home, he gave me the keys of the car and said, "Aprovechate, prima!" ("Go for it, cousin!"). We had left during daylight, so I had no idea that the car had no lights. Nor did I know that the car had no brakes. I prayed the "Our Father" over and over again as I breathlessly drove us home through the dark Santiago streets in my cousin's forty year old Russian automobile with no headlights and no brakes. Our safe arrival back to Abuela's house was a sheer miracle. It was one of the craziest experiences in my life. I screamed at every intersection and narrowly missed a horse-and-buggy, like the one I photographed to the right. I kept thinking how we should have squeezed our bodies into one of those

vintage trucks, or hired a make-shift bicycle rickshaw, like the ones my little cousins wished they could afford to ride on the way to their schools to which they walk for miles in their tattered and only pair of shoes.

The un-trodden spirits of unknowing happy school children on Santiago streets provide a reprise from the gloom I felt radiate in the city. Grammar schools, like the one I visited (right) where one of my aunt administrates, are filled with beautiful

rainbow children in uniforms of red, white and blue. Bright smiles on young faces illuminate shabby classrooms and dank halls, through which students skip past peeling pink paint. I sneaked my camera into the building. The children were delighted to be photographed. On the streets, mustard-colored uniform mini-skirts on exotic high school girls

provide a welcomed distraction for heavy-burdened adolescent school boys. Skinny chickens clandestinely dwell in rooftop cages, coveted swine in kitchen corals. I kissed a pink pig in her pen inside of my cousin's apartment. She grunted at me. It made me laugh. Her nose was very wet. My Abuela's neighbors

posed proudly for me with their beautiful blue pig whom they had taken outside for fresh air (below). During my 2002 Cuba homecoming, I slept every night with my mother in the same bed upon which I had been conceived more than three decades prior. Every few days, my mom and I awoke gagging on poisonous fumes that drifted through our

Cuban Men and Pig

glassless window above our bed, from the cacophonous trucks that sprayed insecticides throughout Santiago's germ-infested, well-swept streets. My mom closed the wooden shutter of our bedroom window and the sun peeked through the cracks of the weathered wood. It was the same window I looked out of, when I lived in the house as a toddler. In a flash, the smell seemed vaguely familiar. Did they do that back then when we lived in this house?" I asked my mom. "They've been doing it forever," she answered.

I wondered if that's what had caused me to develop post partum Acute Graves Disease. Was it that or was it the farmer's biplane that frequently sprayed DDT on the corn fields tangent to our New Jersey

backyard, in which I played hide-n-seek all summer long. My endocrinologists had repeatedly asked me if I had ever been exposed to large doses of insecticides as a child. I was very young when I left the island, but, upon my return, my sense of smell and my sensory memory recalled what my conscious could not.

	I cherished the time I was able to spend with my relatives in Cuba, during my 2002 homecoming; particularly with my Abuela Princesa (my mom's mom) with whom I had maintained a close relationship, via frequent letters and rare phone calls. I felt terrible for my many relatives who have remained on the island, but I was grateful that I did not have to suffer life-long poverty, as have they.
Abuela & I hug upon my return.		My cousin and I hug goodbye.

Every morning, during my homecoming, before placing my feet on the cold tile floors upon which I had learned to walk as a child, I thanked my mother for the risks that she and my father had taken in getting us out of our beloved Cuba.

Cuban School Kids

Never in my life, had I seen such rampant, abject poverty as I had in Santiago de Cuba.

I thought about what my life would be like now, if we had never left Cuba. I imagined my children, frolicking among those red, white and blue-clad students, like the beautiful ones my mother photographed to the left and like my many young cousins, who serve as beacons of hope for ever impoverished Cuba.

During my 2002 homecoming, my relatives' daily plight was made more dire by

natural calamity. My plane had landed in Santiago, in the midst of Hurricane Lili. Below is a picture I took of Cuba, through the clouds of Hurricane Lili, from the window of our very small airplane. It was an emotional flight. Most of us on the plane were Cuban exiles. Many of us, like myself, were returning to our birth island for the first time in decades. We were all so rapt in conversation about what it would feel like to be back home and to look in the eyes of close relatives whom we had not seen for so many years, that we gave no attention to the ominous clouds outside of our airplane windows.

Earlier, my mother had arrived in Cuba from my parent's home in Spain. She and dozens of our relatives were waiting for me at the airport terminal. I melted in tears when I saw them. Some relatives cried with me, others quipped, "Here comes Hurricane Lili."

My Uncle Carlos died the day after I had arrived. I was grateful for having been able to have spent so many hours at his bedside, getting to know him. He was conscious and very alert until the end. My brother José arrived the day after Carlos passed and my sister Alicia arrived the following week. She landed at the airport as I was leaving. I saw her get off the plane from the gate where I was leaving.

As a consequence of Hurricane Lili, during Tio Carlo's passing, for two whole days, there was no running water and no electricity in the whole city of Santiago, including in the hospital where Carlos passed. When the water finally arrived in the trucks that fill the rusted barrels on the rooftops where Cubans store their water, it was full of mud. Below is a picture I took with my video camera of the ubiquitous, rusted rooftop barrels in which Cubans store their drinking, cooking, washing and bathing water.

Tio Carlos' passing was a very emotional and spirit-filled experience. I was postpartum and in the beginning of recovery from a very critical post-partum-induced Acute Graves Disease (Hyper Thyroidism). My health was still frail. Having recently been at death's door myself, I returned to Cuba at a time when I was very closely connected to the spirit world. Consequently, through intimate intercession, I was able to comfort Carlos, during his transition into eternity.

The hospital where my Tio Carlos died was considered to be the "best" hospital in the whole city of Santiago. I would not have taken my dog to die there. It resembled a medieval dungeon. It was dank, dark and ridden with cockroaches. There were no sheets, no hospital gowns, no

paper of any kind, not for the toilet, not for writing upon. There was no glass on the windows, no IV's, no heart monitors, no medical equipment whatsoever. There was simply a series of sparsely lit rooms, with peeling paint on empty walls and neglected, dying patients, lying atop worn, bare mattresses. It was not like the notoriously luxurious high-tech hospitals of Havana where only tourists and government officials are permitted entry.

In this best hospital of Santiago, where I watched my Tio Carlos die, doctors and nurses were elusive. For the many hours that I sat beside Carlos' hospital bed, I did not see a single medical personnel enter the room to attend to to my Tio and the many other patients who lied suffering in the dank, desolate room with him.

It was hard to see my beloved and very handsome Tio Carlos agonize for his dying breath, under such dire circumstances. Like most Cubans who've lived for decades under a government which has oppressed religion and the expression of spiritual faith, my Tio Carlos' knew very little about the promise of God's love and mercy. During his passing, he expressed a lot of fear for his soul in his unknowing. He kept breathlessly imploring me to teach him about God's mercy. With his trembling, beckoning hand in mine, I recited over and over again the Lord's Prayer and the 23rd Psalm, neither of which he nor the bulk of my relatives knew.

Together we fought Carlos’ and everyone else’s fear of where the soul goes after death. I had translated into Spanish, a Richard Smallwood gospel song which ends in an angelic Amen chorus. When Carlos’ began to panic and proclaim that he was feeling hot, that his bed was on fire and that he was seeing Satan leaning against the side of the door, I began leading our large family, who was frightfully encircled around Carlos’ bed, in the Amen chorus. An elusive nurse bolted into the room and chided us to stop, blurting that we were disturbing him. I retorted that he wanted us to sing to him. The nurse authoritatively insisted that we stop, so we stopped.

To the left is my Tio Carlos, less than two weeks before he died.

In the last few moments of his breath, Tio Carlos muttered to me,"Están aqui! ¡Mira, están aqui!" (“They’re here, they’re here! Look, they’re here!”) "¿Quien?" I asked. "¡Epe y Catalina!" he whispered forcefully in a raspy voice. "¿Catalina?" I said surprised. "La hermana de tu papá," Carlos reassured me. He was referring to my father's departed sister Catalina, and to his own departed sister Esperanza (my Tia Epe), whose souls, I came to see, were present with us in the hospital room.

Epe and Catalina were the first and only of my parents' many siblings to have passed thus far. My father came from a family of five children and my mother from a family of ten children. Since my mom is still the only member of her family to have ever left Cuba, we have a plethora of close relatives on the island. The majority of those relatives were hoarded in the hospital, as my Tio Carlos was dying, dozens, encircling his bed. There was an apparent fear of uncertainty that radiated from their eyes. They knew no religion from which to seek comfort.

Tio Carlos' temperature began to drop. More and more, his body began resembling an empty shell. I pressed my forehead against the beads of sweat that trickled from my uncle’s cold brow and laid my hand upon his heaving bony chest. My Tio looked at me with frightened eyes. I sang to him a gospel song which I had learned in my days as a choir member at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem and had translated for him in Spanish, “Yes Lord. Yes Lord. From the bottom of my heart, to the depths of my soul, yes Lord, completely yes. My soul says yes.” One by one, Carlos began calling the names of his siblings to emerge from the crowd around him and come close to him. Trembling, my aunts and uncles neared themselves to their baby brother as he labored to whisper something in their ears. “Quiero ver a mi mamá. Traime mi mama. ¿Porque no me traien mi mama? (I want to see my mother. Bring me Mommy. Why don’t they bring me my mama?), he uttered desperately.

My mother had been poking at me, reminding me that I was an hour late in taking my anti-thyroid medicine. Worried, for my health, my mom nudged me to go quickly back to Abuela’s house and take my pills. I excused myself and left with my Tio Juan, for a quick ride around the corner to Abuela’s house.

As I was leaving, several of my cousins, who were congregated on the hospital porch, asked me how Carlos was doing and what, if anything, was he saying. I mentioned that he was seeing the spirits of Miss Lou, Catalina and Epe in the room with him. Suddenly, one of my cousins who suffers from Parkinson’s and who was about to have brain surgery, started jumping up and down emotionally. Shaking her hands as if filled with the Spirit, she began crying and saying in Spanish to the other cousins there, “See, I told you, I told you!!!” Everyone’s jaws dropped and I said, “Que pasó?” (“What happened?”). My relatives communicated to me that just prior to my coming out of the hospital; my cousin had alerted everyone to "look over there!" She had just told them that she was seeing our

My mother sneaked her camera into her brother Carlos' hospital room so that she could have her picture taken with Carlos and two of their sisters, before Carlos died. This picture was taken two days before he passed. My mom is standing on the left.

departed Tia Epe, walking on the sidewalk, outside the hospital. We all cried and my skin went cold as it does, during my spirit encounters.

Epe was my mother’s eldest sister, the first and only of Abuela Princesa’s children to have died. Abuela was 90 years old at the time of her son Carlos’ passing. When I returned to Abuela's house to take my medicine, Abuela was rocking in her chair with two of her daughters at her side, Lucinda and Trini. Abuela had been battling heart disease. My mother and her siblings had decided that it was in their mother’s best interest to not see her baby son agonize painfully in his dying breath. They were afraid that she wouldn't withstand it and would die herself.

I hugged and kissed Abuela when I saw her. In her sweet Jamaican accent she spoke to me in Spanish and said, “Has my son died yet? Is he dead yet?” I said, “No Abuela, he’s still alive.” She gasped a sigh of relief and asked me if her son was still talking. I said, “Yes.” “What is he saying?” she asked. “Oh, Abuela,” I smiled, “he’s saying a lot.” “Is he asking about me?” “Oh yes, Abuela.” “What is he saying?” she implored. “I’ll tell you when you feel better, Abuela.” “Is Carlos asking for me?” she repeated. “Yes and he’s saying lots of beautiful things, Abuela. His spirit is well.” Abuela began crying and moaned, “Hay que dolor, que dolor, ver un hijo murir. Hay que dolor.!” (“Oh what pain, what pain, to see your child die. Oh what pain!”)

A gold crucifix, dangling from a chain around my Abuela’s neck, glimmered on her chest which rose and fell profoundly. Abuela’s heart was so enlarged that you could see it beating through her bony ribcage. I had bestowed the crucifix to Abuela upon my arrival. The family was so surprised to see how Abuela consented, when I asked her if I could place the necklace on her. That's my Abuela to the left with her new crucifix necklace and me in 2002 in Santiago de Cuba.

Abuela, a staunch communist, had always boldly proclaimed that she did not believe in God. Once however, in 1984, when Abuela came to visit us in our home in Spain (Spain was from where her husband, my Abuelo Julio hailed), she confided some uncertainty to me. During a conversation, when I was challenging Abuela about her professed atheism, she confessed, “I don’t know if there’s a God, Lili. You know we’re not supposed to believe in God, if we’re communist,” she quipped. “But I’ll tell you something, I do believe in Jesus Christ, because he stood for the freedom of people, just like Fidel Castro.”

I chortled, “Not like Fidel, Abuela. No, not like Fidel!” We debated the concept of freedom in Cuba and whether or not it was possible to believe in Jesus Christ and not in God. We also discussed whether or not Cuba was any better off after the revolution. Abuela said, "Well we were poor before the revolution and we're poorer now. But that's because of the embargo," she said, "but we're educated," Abuela continued. Ending our friendly dispute, we began singing Guantanamera together on the guitar. My mother took a picture of it (below right).

Back in Abuela’s house in 2002, during my reprise from Carlos' deathbed to take my medicine, I hugged Abuela and told her that I had to hurry back to the hospital to be with Carlos. Abuela reached for the crucifix on top of her heart. She clasped it in her fist, smiled through tears and said, “¡Alabado sea Jesucristo, Lili! ¡Alabado sea Jesucristo!” (Praise be to Jesus Christ, Lili! Praise be to Jesus Christ!”) My aunts’ and uncle’s jaws dropped as they craned their necks to stare are at each other with wide-eyed amazement. “¡Alabado sea Jesucristo!” my Abuela kept proclaiming as my Tio Juan, Abuela’s eldest son, whisked me out the door.

As soon as I stepped foot on the hospital porch, Carlos’ son-in-law came running through the doors, dramatically swiping his hands together as if trying to brush something off of them.

Abuela and I in Spain, singing Guantanamera, 1984

He cried, “¡Se acabó, se acabó!” ( “It’s finished! It’s finished!”). Vivacious and a central figure of joy in the family, Carlos' going was greatly mourned.

At that instant, the hordes of my relatives came pouring out of the hospital doors with their arms flailing in the air. Reverberating wails of distress emanated from their throats as they ran out of the hospital through the dark, empty hospital halls.

My Tio Juan and I swiftly maneuvered ourselves through the crowd to find only my mother sitting beside her dead brother with his hand clasped in hers. My mom was crying gently, quietly, her face looking pale. Through her steamed glasses, she looked over at me very sweetly and told me everything with her eyes.

On cue of the cacophony, two elusive female nurses and one male doctor slipped into Carlos’ room. My mother left. The nurses were completely clad in white, wearing spotless polyester mini-dresses and tights, and old-fashioned, starched, pointy high hats upon their heads. The doctor wore a pristine white robe and circular glasses. I watched as the peculiar trio surrealistically disrobed my dead uncle and methodically clamped his open mouth shut with a long strip of gauze. They wound the gauze taught under his chin and around the top of his head, where they tied the strip into a very neat bow. My Tio Juan dutifully helped the busy nurses wash his brother’s naked body in preparation for the morgue.

In my peripheral view, I noticed the emergence of a host of bright balls of light. I saw my Tio Carlos' soul, which I saw as also a bright ball of light, humbly ascend into a host of spirits and angels which lingered lowly and euphorically in the dim light of the hospital room. "'Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," rolled off my tongue in whispers as I witnessed the celestial phenomenon.

		I began walking out of the hospital room, ululating softly, with my palms raised gently upward, toward the reflection of the heavenly glow I was seeing. As I was leaving the room, family members of other dying patients asked me with wide, wet eyes to come and pray over their ailing loved ones. "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah," we cried together. "The soul never dies. The soul never dies," I assured them. They looked at me as if they had never seen someone pray before and asked me if I would write down for them the words I kept repeating to my uncle (the Lord’s Prayer and the 23rdth psalm). But there was no paper upon which to write and no bibles to be found, no water with which to dribble a libation or with which to anoint a dying forehead. We all immediately meandered over in the dark to the funeral parlor around the corner. There being no resources for embalmment; funerals in Cuba occur immediately upon the death.
Here we are at my Tio Carlos' grave, a few days after Carlos had died. The flowers had wilted quickly in the tropical sun.	.

At the very dimly lit funeral parlor, my uncle Carlos looked like an angel in his coffin. His face appeared very youth-like. Juxtaposed against the serene expression of Carlos' dead face, the dramatic display of grief continued, this time augmented. Dramatically, my cousins and aunts fell to their knees from the rocking chairs upon which they sat, circumambient to the coffin. Arising from the floor, they slivered over to the coffin and pounded against the glass which shielded Carlos' peaceful-looking face. They wailed "¡Hay que Dolor, que Dolor!" I thought of my Abuela in her rocking chair, clasping the crucifix.

One by one, my grieving relatives came to me from the coffin and beseeched me to lay my hand upon their hearts and say and sing those things to them that I was saying and singing to Carlos at his deathbed. "Cantame, como le cantaste. Dime lo que le dijiste. Hagame esa cosa que haces con la mano," they implored. One by one, I laid my hand on dozens of my aunts', uncles' and cousins' hearts, whispering healing hymns in their ears, assuring them of the angels I saw and Carlos’ soul ascending. I placed glow-in-the-dark rosaries in their hands that I had purchased for them back in Los Angeles, and repeated to them mantras of how the soul never dies. The soul never dies. I did this until I couldn't hear any more began feeling faint.

Fearing that my heart was going into rapid atrial fibrillation again, as it had so many times, a few months prior, when I was very critically ill; I began seeing floating balls of bright light. I warned my mother, who was at my side, that the angels were coming again. “What angels?” my mother asked me in panic. “The angels from Los Angeles,” I murmured, “They’re here. I see them.” “Hay no, Lili!” My mother gasped. “Tell them to go away!” I went unconscious. My family quickly moved my limp body away from the circle of rocking chairs around the coffin and sat me down on a distant pew. When I opened my eyes, I saw the spirit of my Tio Carlos again, as bright ball of light, interceding on my behalf. He pushed the eager angels back and, without words, told them, “Leave her alone. Don’t you know? It’s not her time.”

I became giddy at the sight of my uncle’s resilient soul and began singing a verse from the song made popular by the Buena Vista Social Club. ”La Casa de Tula, que cojió candela, se quedó dormida y no apagó la vela.” Elated, my female cousins, with tears in their eyes and glowing green rosaries around their necks, began singing with me. I looked over at my mother who was sitting beside me at my left and whispered to her, “Mami, I don’t feel well. I need to get out of here. I need to see a doctor. Please don’t take me to that hospital. I need to go to Cedar Sinai. I need to go home.” As I slipped out of consciousness again, several of my male cousins whisked me up and carried me out of the funeral parlor. When I awoke, I was in big bed, with my mother and one of my female cousins and her mom.
		I took this picture of my mom in front of her brother Carlos' house.

The three ladies fed me and took care of me until I felt better. The four of us missed the burial. My mother expressed relief. “It’s just too much,” she said, “too much.” We would have had to witness or to have helped the family gather the bones of the last departed loved one from the single crypt which services our very large family in Cuba. As I rested in bed, my mother explained to me how they have to scrub and scrape the remnants of decayed flesh from the bones of the last departed relative and move them aside into a small bundle, to make room for the next (in this case Carlos’) dead body.

Never in my life had I seen such an emotional display of grief, as I saw at my Tio Carlo's deathbed and funeral. It was as if Carlo's passing were a portal through which my relatives (who had all stayed in Cuba) could cathartically empty the pain of so many years spent in poverty and despair.

The very physical and loud display of sentiment, surrounding my Tio Carlo's passing, echoed the heavy spirit which I felt looming powerfully over of the entire city of Santiago, during my stay. It was as if the whole city reverberated with silent moans from the souls of so many citizens who, for so many centuries, have suffered oppression on that beautiful tropical island of Cuba where I was born.

The following morning, my brother José, our Tio Juan, my cousin Jaime and I went together to the Cathedral del Cobre in Santiago's Sierra Maestra Mountains, where the statue of the compassionate Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre (Cuba's Patron Saint) is enshrined. I offered prayers for Carlos' soul, for our ancestors, for our grieving family in Cuba, and for all of Cuba's citizens.

Here I am with La Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre