PUROS and PRISONS

Caf Antigua is pleased to announce the opening of PUROS and PRISONS during the month of May. The exhibit features black and white, and color photographs by A. G. Gonzalez, who is a recently released detainee at the Guantanamo naval facility in Eastern Cuba. Gonzalez is the only known detainee at Guantanamo who has no known provenance. He refers to himself in the third person as The A.G.. At the time of his apprehension he was wearing a sports jersey with Gonzalez printed across the back. His subsequent secret rendition was only recently disclosed and acknowledged by the U.S. Special Interests Section as a grave error.

In an act of reconciliation he was allowed to vacation in Cuba at government expense before returning to the States. His fellow detainees, with some money contributed from the boot polishing concession they operate at Gitmo, purchased a Pentax IQZoom 120 as a going away gift and urged Gonzalez to keep a photographic record of his travels across the island. He was to have returned from the clandestine Siempre Comandante Repatriation Lounge, a little known wing of Havanas Jose Marti International Airport where Cuban and American soldiers gather to drink rum, swap embargo stories and play dominos.

An excellent traditional band plays there most afternoons ahead of scheduled flights bound for Miami. It was no surprise that Gonzalez was a no-show for his scheduled flight out of Marti. His exposures were subsequently smuggled out of the country but Gonzalez sightings continue to be a hot topic on the street in both Cuba and the U.S., and even in Amman, Jordan, where that country's first salsa club has recently opened for business. Rumor has it that he operates a hole in the wall business on the outskirts of Mariel (scene of the 80's boatlift) patching old inner tubes, and that he has become a creditable tresero.

Steven Woodruff
May 2007