The Greed and Revenge That Makes Her Cry
Updated for April 5, 2013
Ramona de Saa {above} is a sweet, world-class lady who has shed a plethora of sad tears the last couple of days. She is the director of Havana's National Ballet School, the largest such school in the world with over 3,000 students {according to Wikipedia}. Since shortly after the Cuban Revolution, first the legendary Alicia Alonso and then Ms. de Saa have scoured the island in search of talented children who are then offered free ballet scholarships in Havana. A testament to its remarkable success is found in top ballet companies around the world in which Cuban graduates have starring roles. Cuba has continued funding the program even in face of highly sophisticated and financed efforts to get the Cubans to defect, mostly from U. S. sources much more concerned with hurting Cuba than with helping the defectors or benefiting American ballet companies. In that wake are waves of unabashed tears.
In the last few days, seven of Ramona de Saa's top ballet stars defected while performing in Mexico. Because of the U. S. Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot law that, of course, pertains only to Cubans, all they had to do was prove they were Cubans and then they freely crossed over into the U. S. Ranging in age from 20 to 24, six of them -- Annie Ruiz Diaz, Luis Victor Santana, Ariadnni Martin, Jose Justiz, Edward Gonzalez, and Randy Crespo -- have already arrived in Miami and the 7th, Alejandro Mendez, is expected to arrive shortly. A tearful Ramona de Saa told Andrea Rodriguez, a top journalist at the AP bureau in Havana, "It really pains us." Ms. de Saa said she considered one of the defectors "like a daughter." It is believed she was talking about Annie Ruiz Diaz. But Ramona anticipates such pain. Annie said, "It is the most difficult decision I have made in my life, but we're not thinking about the past but rather the future." That past includes Ramona.
The BBC did a nice 50th anniversary story on Ramona de Saa's National Ballet School, pointing out that young students like those above were the best trained in the world although, after long and intense instruction, defections to other companies around the world were regular occurrences.
Carlos Acosta, for example, has long been England's top ballet star after defecting from Cuba.
Ramona de Saa has an identical twin sister, Margarita de Saa {above}. They have been separated for going on five decades because Ramona stayed in Cuba and Margarita defected to the U. S. In the above photo Margarita is instructing her students at her Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet.
The identical twins -- Ramona and Margarita de Saa -- are shown on a happier day when they were both still in Cuba. The U. S. - Cuban conundrum since the 1950s has been an apocalyptic sadness for most so it can be an astringent windfall for a few. The saga of these twin sisters is a product of that inexcusably salacious ignorance and cruelty. The fact that it cannot be corrected remains a very salient reminder that sometimes a few criminals and benefactors are simply smarter or stronger than all the rest.
This Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP photo shows a Cuban dancer with Ramona de Saa's National Ballet of Cuba. Is she thinking about performing or...defecting? One thing is abundantly sure: The enormous cottage industry in the United States that makes money and sates revengeful appetites on such decisions is anxiously concerned with what the dancer decides. It's been that way since January of 1959.
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