Rebirth

Her gorgeous deathbed!
Her rich pyre Burnt up with aromatic fire!
Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!
Her birthplace when self-born again!

-From “The Phoenix” by George Darley

Welcome to the newest incarnation of Cuban-American Pundits. Without getting too deep into nostalgia it bears mentioning that site was founded almost exactly three years ago. Over time it has evolved, authors have come and gone and come back again. You could say that this is version 3.0.

As the de facto editor of version 2.0, I was faced with a dilemma. I had joined another blog, Babalu, where I still contribute on a daily basis and there was simply too much overlap between that blog and this one. I had no way of compartmentalizing what I wanted to post over there and what I wanted to post here. Over time I simply stopped posting here and left the place in the hands of Michael Pancier. When Michael joined me at Babalu I came to the sad realization that this blog, which gave me my start, was essentially dead. I hung up a “closed” sign though my heart was heavy about it.

A few days passed and the somber feelings did not fade. Then one day I received an email notification that a comment was awaiting moderation. I clicked on the link to approve it but something was wrong, I couldn’t sign in. When I looked into the problem I noticed that I was no longer an administrator. Someone had changed my privileges. It was late at night and I was worried. Had my account been hacked? I sent an email to John Roche, the original Cuban-American Pundit, asking him if he altered the settings. I hardly slept that night. The next morning I was relieved to find an email from John, with whom I had not communicated with in months, telling me that, in fact, he had made the change.

I was surprised to learn that despite the fact that he hadn’t posted anything for a long time that he had been lurking and knew about my decision to close Cuban-American Pundits. He felt the same way I did about the blog, that perhaps it didn’t have to end. He explained that when he began blogging, he a vision for a blog about Cuba with multiple authors and multiple viewpoints and that although success didn’t happen here, he was glad to see his vision flourishing at Babalu. We exchanged a few emails and decided that perhaps instead of being the end, this was simply a new beginning for Cuban-American Pundits.

Now knowing that we both wanted to carry on with this project, we decided that we needed a mission of sorts, something that would keep us on track and would ensure that we would not duplicate what was being done elsewhere. We decided to turn this place into a collection of essays on various topics. Each author would write about areas in which had expertise or passion.

There will be no nicknames on version 3.0 and no dates on the posts. That’s because these posts will be essays that aren’t necessarily time sensitive. In short, we decided that Cuban-American Pundits would no longer be a blog. Not that we don’t like blogs but the posts you will find here will be longer than your typical blog post and therefore they will made with less frequency. We’ll try to compensate for the lack of quantity with quality and passion for the material. Whether its politics, the law, music, photography, economics or philosophy, our thoughts will be shaped by our unique Cuban-American perspective and published in a journal format.

We encourage our readers to submit essays as well. If we like what we see we’ll post them with attribution and links to the author’s site or blog. The archives will remain intact because a new beginning does not erase the past.

We hope you will join us as we embark on the latest leg of our journey as Cuban-American Pundits.

Thank you.