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Life had been hard for the old wolf Eliades from the hard-scrabble, farm province of Camaguey his entire life. His early years were filled with subsistence farming as were many other poor citrus farmers in the region when the despotic ruler Fulgencio Batista underneath the tropical heat and sweat of the hot Cuban sun. Eliades' father Marco would tell him stories of how the "President" Batista had betrayed the rural parts of the country for Havana in building casinos for the adinerado (wealthy) and the turista. The wolf could still remember with clarity, the day young revolutionaries led by a charismatic law student came to his village and recruited him and the other farmers. The leader of the revolutionaries was a man by the name of Fidel Castro. The Revolution he was leading would be the dominant force in Cuban history for years to come.

As his father had done before him, the young wolf played an active role in la Revoluccion including the attacks on the Moncada Barracks, where la Revoluccion started. Both Eliades and Marco were present and rejoicing on December 31st, 1958 when Fidel Castro's ragtag army assumed control of Havana. It was such a moment of victory and defiance of los Americanos that the people of Cuba, Eliades included felt that in defeating an American-backed government that their beloved island would be independent. Fifty years ago, those same Americans had saved the Cubans from Spanish atrocities but they had backed the most corrupt government in history now and deserved what was coming. The Marxists were to take control of the island and give Eliades' family a "workers' paradise on earth". There were parades and music and drinking for the new government which had on New Years' Eve declared "Hacia fuera con el viejo en con el nuevo" to the outsiders' putas who had ruled the island for far too long.

But three years after Castro's victory over the malo Capitalistes, they struck back. The largest buyer of Camaguey fruit struck back with "El Bloquero" on February 7, 1962, which cut off Cuba from its major financial supporter, the United States. No longer would the wolf's fruit make it to American shelves and the entire region suffered the loss of revenue. The promise of a "workers' paradise" soon proved too difficult for the Marxists to give and many fled the countryside for Havana seeking work. When they couldn't find work there, many including Eliades' brother, Jose fled for Miami. The last letter Jose sent from Miami was sent in 1996- Eliades could only assume that Jose had passed away. The method of death mattered not to the poor farmer.

And so the old wolf Eliades found himself on New Years' Eve, 2008 waiting for the sun to set so the 50th anniversary of Castro's victory could begin. But he did so with a heavy heart- Eliades' friends were still growing fruit to feed themselves and their families with profit out of the question. The subsistence farming had unfortunately come full circle with a new leader- one who had ruled the country no questions asked for the past fifty years.

"Hace el tabajo de Communism?" Eliades thought out loud as he looked over his fields. From January to January, he worked the fields for the government providing for his close-knit pack of farmers, really a commune, the allotted amount of money they could be given merely to survive. With a ceiling of profit, some of the farmers didn't work once the government quota was reached- no reason to work any harder without any reward. But in spite of all this, Eliades was not a capitalist either because he would soon become a greedy monster for whom money was the sole purpose of living- he thought back to the excesses of Batista from his childhood.

The only light in the darkness of subsistence farming was the extra money and adulation Eliades and his family earned as members of the Estrellas de Camaguey. No Cuban home would be complete without a tres, the guitar so named for the three sets of double strings and a good set of claves, wooden keys whose 3-2 click-click-click click-click formed the basis of son Cubano. Eliades' sons would soon play for the Tropicana nightclub, he hoped. The remittances they sent back would give Eliades and Lupe, his wife enough money so they could retire in happiness, free of the backbreaking work that dominated their lives. The trabajo-cancion (work-song) of Nico Saquito still rang through the wolf's ears.

"Al vaiven de mi carreta nacio esta lamentacion. Compadre, oiga my cancion: no tenemos proteccion. Quandro llegare al bohio? Trabajo de Enero a Enero y tambien del sol a sol y que poquito dinero me pagan por mi sudor. Triste vida le carretero, que anda por eses canaverales. Sabiendo que so vida es sin esperanza, se alegra con sus canciones."

Soon, the midnight hour would come and with it, the twin celebration of Nuevo Ano and Dia de la Revoluccion Cubano but Eliades the wolf and his wife Lupe sat on the chairs overlooking their farm overwhelmed by the events of Cuba's blood-stained history. No matter what happened, the two wolves were old enough to accept it whatever happened. They could look at all that the world could make and simply say "Y su punto es...?"

Whatever happened, happened and the old pair of Cuban wolves would simply accept it. As the clock struck midnight, the two would forget all that regrettable history and all the mistakes of the past- they held paws together sitting on the veranda over the plantain fields and simply said "Feliz Ano Nuevo" as music and joy filled the air over their country, all over the world.