We only have this, “said Fernando Gonzalez Cuesta, a pensioner in the municipality of the city of Miami. What we have here no longer exists and will never be regained. For me it is the way of making sure that my grandchildren have a real image of the country where I lived. Cuba Nostalgia More Than An Event, Its A Cuban Experience: Celebrando las Generaciones Cubanas (Celebrating Cuban Generations), is proud to be hosting of. “People have told me that this is a bit ‘picúo’ (ridiculous). But besides returning to the past, for many Cuban parents and grandparents, the fair is an opportunity to show their children and grandchildren what the Cuba that they left behind was like, to familiarize them with their images, objects and souvenirs. The organizers of Cuba Nostalgia say that it is an event for Cubans and for all those who want to understand a little of Cuba. It was the dawn of the Bay of Pigs landing and the counterrevolutionaries made mischief in the streets of Havana. According to the Cuban government, the fire was caused by many of those individuals who over the years have sighed before wood and cardboard reproduction in Cuba Nostalgia. The reproduction is the only thing left for the exiles’ memories, because the Havana store El Encanto disappeared in a raging fire in the early hours of April 13, 1961. “It has a history that dates back to July 15, 1960, when I got married,” she recalls. The dress belongs Ana Mari White Miyares, 70. There was nothing like them throughout Cuba,” said Eloisa Dominguez, pointing to a wooden stage and cardboard, which recreates a window from El Encanto, which includes an authentic wedding dress. “At that time all the well-positioned individuals bought wedding dresses in El Encanto. Be it coins and banknotes that have been out of circulation for decades, rare books taken from the island at the bottom of the exiles trunks, disappeared magazines, medals and uniform of an army that no longer exists, or pictures of deceased artists and even old recordings of the clearest Cuban music which, in the words of writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, was the great contribution of the island to world culture. Because the show is big business, you can buy everything there. The Cuba of abundance only exists in our memories,” said Mariano Lopez, a naturalized Cuban, who left his country in 1960 at one of the fair’s editions.Īt the bottom of it all, Cubans flock every year to Cuba Nostalgia to face their past and if the budget allows, to buy it. “The Cubans always criticize us because we think that life in Cuba was better than anywhere else. It is when recovering the past becomes a necessity before dying.Įvery year in Miami, the Cuba Nostalgia show opens its doors, and meets precisely this need of the Cuban exile – especially those of the older members of the community – who are losing from the back of a memory that fades slowly, all landmarks of a past life that, they say, ‘was always better’.

And nostalgia can become an industry, when the exile has been pining for the land left behind for over fifty years, without the certainty of seeing it again.

Cuba nostalgia