Among the flood of refugees leaving Cuba in the
wake of Fidel Castro's 1959 seizure of power were the residents of two U.S.
company towns, expats who had been living like aristocrats in the eastern
province of Oriente. Brought in to run the U.S.-owned nickel mine and the cane
fields of United Fruit Company, the men of Nicaro and Preston overstayed their
welcome, as one United Fruit executive realizes when he discovers his workers
have set the cane on fire and fled ahead of the harvest. The rest of Rachel
Kushner's temperamental historical debut Telex from Cuba doesn't contain enough
mood-setting to distract from the towns' ignominious end, as foreshadowed in
that cloud.
While native Cubans toil
six days a week, the plant supervisors and their wives drink cocktails and
complain about the appliances they were promised for their homes, and the
native foods their servants cook. K.C., who was born in the United Fruit company
hospital, struggles to understand why his family never mixes with the poorer
farmers; his older brother will resolve this internal dilemma by running off to
fight alongside the Castros in the mountains. Everly, whose father moves the
family to Nicaro for a lucrative job offer, becomes obsessed with her father's black
Cuban errand boy and covets what she sees as his freedom to pass between worlds.
Meanwhile, a French turncoat named La Mazière arrives in Havana
hoping to smuggle arms to the revolutionaries like he does for dictators in
Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but falls in love with a Polish-Cuban burlesque
dancer named Rachel K who has the ear of current president Fulgencio Batista.
Kushner weaves her
narrative around an ever-increasing quantity of voices, but this diverse approach
turns cacophonous by the time a party scene explores the perspective of
virtually every guest, in dizzying detail. Even without that multiplicity of
voices, it's impossible to enjoy the depictions of idyllic town life given the
insularity of the enclaves and the rapidly approaching turmoil. Clearly the
only reason these Americans aren't fiddling while Rome burns is because it's
too hot to pick up an instrument, with the children sensing the unrest their
parents ignore. Telex
From Cuba's
assault on their character, while hardly unjustified, is so thorough that only
the Havana lovers and profiteers seem sympathetic at the end; at least they can
be honest with themselves.