Cuban Ballet

This is an ode to my cousin Leonela Gonzalez Perez with whom I share a great grand mother Leonela Enamorado Cabrera. First something on Leonela Enamorado Cabrera—She was a Mambisa that is a Cuban Independence fighter in the (1868-1878) Cuban Ten Years War for Independence. Her inheritance included much Native American ancestry, presumably from her mother or grandmother captured by Spanish slave hunters at the Palenque de la Cruz, in the Sierra Maestra. There in the heights of the Sierra Maestra Leonela Enamorado Cabrera met and loved my great grand father Cuban Major General, Calixto Garcia I~niguez in the three main wars for Cuban independence (1868-1898). After the first war when to the eastern Cuban port of Manzanillo, where she met and married a Spaniard by the name of Eduardo Perez. They had a son, a half brother to my grandfather Mambi Brigadier General in the last Cuban war of independence (1895-1898) Calixto (G-I) Enamorado, and to other Mambi sons of the Major General. Leonela’s grandfather, Eduardo Perez Enamorado was a great friend of my grandfather and the half brothers got on well. This Eduardo’s daughter Maria-Leonela Perez was mother to Leonela Gonzalez. My mother Leonela Garcia-I~niguez Ramirez also had that original name. I met Leonela Gonzalez only once, in Havana when I was about 19 or so and she about five years older. Her beauty was so radiant it literally left me speechless. I was able to talk to her by phone some years back when she was in Nashville, recovering from cancer. The Castro regime treats Leonela Gonzalez, as any other exile essentially banning her from mention in Cuban histories. Thus, I wish to commend the authors for including her in this book, and thus despite the de-rigueur pro-Castro distortions required of those who live in Cuba, I recommend this book, albeit with the caution such circumstances require. There will be more mention of Leonela Gonzalez in my book in progress “Love and War in Cuba.” Laurence Daley (Garcia-I~niguezRamirez Enamorado etc. …) Professor Emeritus (Biophysics, Biochemistry and Plant Physiology of Plant Germplasm)