As with most good mysteries, it all started in the fall of 2003 with a question that did not have an answer — at least for the moment. Both of us were independently teaching a poem canonical in Cuban, Cuban American, and Latino literatures, generally known as “Para Ana Veldford,” by the exile writer and activist Lourdes Casal.1 As we had done in past semesters, we offered students some contextual elements to consider Casal’s life and political trajectory: That she was born in Cuba in 1938, moved to New York as an exile in 1962, and dedicated most of her adult life to reestablishing the links between Cuba and its exiled community, a process commonly known as el diálogo. We also noted that “Para Ana Veldford” has become one of her most quoted poems, and that the volume which includes the text, Palabras juntan revolución, was the first book by a Cuban American to receive the highest honor that the island government can bestow on a poet: the Premio Casa de Las Américas for Poetry in 1981. Then something unexpected happened to one of us.
