kellee's blog

My other strong candidate for a thesis proposal was an interactive documentary about my father's side of the family. I am now using it as material for my assignments in Business of Interactive Media, as way of exploring the practicalities of taking on this project after I graduate. I find the subject matter extremely compelling, and I am lucky enough to be related to it, which drives my passion.

Currently, I am titling the work simply, Santiago. I plan on continuing to blog my currently limited research on it(hard to do with so many other third year projects to accomplish), but I would love feedback and, of course, to inspire participation in others who might also be interested.

Yesterday, an article was published in The Chicago Tribune about the restoration of the beautiful modernist homes in Cuba that were abandoned by the families that originally owned them when Castro came to power. My father's(Jose Santiago) childhood home was featured, and he was interviewed for the article. Below is a caption from the article, which I think gives a pretty good introduction to the story:

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Jose Santiago remembers the day in early 1960 when a young Che Guevara, dressed in fatigues and trademark black beret, came to his family's new home for dinner.

Like many wealthy Havana residents, the Santiago family had recently moved into its dream home, designed by a hot young architect and featuring shiny terrazzo floors, geometric stained-glass windows, floor-to-ceiling shutters and a whimsical, wing-shaped roof.

Baccarat cognac glasses rested on a living room partition, and outside, in the carport, sat the family's 1959 Cadillac Fleetwood and a Chevrolet Impala.

Guevara was there to speak to Santiago's father, a powerful businessman who headed the Tobacco Exporters Association of Cuba. Santiago, now 62 and living in Midlothian, Va., remembers Guevara sitting at the dining room table and bluntly telling Santiago's dad, Mardonio, "The mission of this revolution is to get rid of people like you."

Several years later the Santiago family was gone, having joined hundreds of thousands of Cubans who fled into exile and left behind scores of magnificent modernist homes.
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Read the rest of the article.