The Prince of los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood by Richard Blanco Page B

mass for one low price; no Virgin of La Caridad bumper stickers or Cuban flags hanging from rearview mirrors; and no bodegas or cafeterías at which to stop for café cubano, though Mamá had packed a thermos full of café , in case of the flies. The last thing to disappear was Papá’s favorite Cuban station from Miami, Radio Mambí, playing static-laced Cuban songs between hourly anti-Castro jabs and fist-pounding rants delivered by men whose every fourth word was la Revolución . . . la Revolución . . . la Revolución .
    Speeding in silence along the edge of the Everglades, past stands of cypress trees rising from the plain like the buttresses of cathedral ruins, I felt we had entered another country. Papá broke the spell when he announced, “I have una sorpresa, ” which usually meant gum or candy or money. But not this time. “Close your eyes,” he instructed all of us. We heard him click off the dead radio, followed by the sound of Papá sliding back his car seat, fidgeting with something, jamming something, then clicking buttons. Suddenly, the car speakers blared with the voluptuous voice of Celia Cruz belting out her Afro-Cuban hit: “Quimbara, Quimbara Quimba, Quimba-ba, Eh mamá, eh mamá . . .” “ ¿Cómo? How could this be? Where is the music coming from? We’re nowhere,” Mamá said. Papá explained he had bought a used eight-track player at the Tropicaire Flea Market and had it installed under the seat.
    Caco and I didn’t agree on much, but we did agree on one thing: we both hated Cuban music. We thought it was tacky, especially when our parents really got into it. Mamá poured herself and Papá the last bit of Cuban coffee and they sang along to a cheesy bolero by Olga Guillot, glancing at each other and dueting like Sonny and Cher. Mamá had a pleasing voice and would often singwhile doing the dishes or hanging the laundry on the clothesline; you couldn’t make out the difference between her singing and Olga Guillot’s singing. But Papá must have been tone-deaf; he sounded like someone was pulling at his sideburns, the way Sister Mary Jane did to me during hymn practice when I didn’t sing loud enough. Annoying us further, he played air bongos on the steering wheel. We couldn’t take it anymore.
    “Papá, put in another tape—pleeez,” Caco begged. With a tinge of shame in his voice, Papá said that after buying the eight-track player, he didn’t have enough money to buy new tapes. So we were stuck with the same old Hoy como ayer— the compilation of Cuban hits from the fifties and sixties played at every family gathering for years. Unless we did something, we’d have to endure it yet again for the rest of the trip. Caco and I looked at each other, silently trying to devise some new act of defiance, but instead we resorted to the same old tactic: Caco stuck his index fingers in his ears and hummed, and I followed, both of us blathering bla-bla-bla-bla . It was the best we could do, but not enough to drown them out. Those songs were unstoppable.
    There was something bizarre about Celia Cruz’s soulful rhapsodies and Julio Iglesias’s crooning as we sped past billboards advertising Motel 8s and Shoney’s All-You-Can-Eat buffets. The sound track in the car didn’t match the names on the highway signs—Johnston, Brooksville, Lehigh—which conjured images of general stores and bowlegged cowboys. Miles away from Miami, everything felt so exotic, so American; but inside el Malibú everything was still as Cuban as ever. “Come on, Papá, let’s stop here,” Caco and I pleaded with him as we passed the sign announcing the Fort Pierce Service Plaza ahead. We wanted a break from the barrage of bongos and congas. We swore we had to pee, but he wasn’t quite persuaded. Then Caco added, “And we can wash the dead bugs off the windshield.” “ Verdad, good idea,” Papá agreed.
    It had taken Papá two years of twelve-hour days as a butcher at El Cocuyito to save for the down