The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood

Blanco’s book aptly begins:, “According to my abuela[…]” (1). Abuela, Blanco’s paternal grandmother, is one of the most influential people in Blanco’s life. She represents biological and emotional connections to Cuba, and despite frequent disagreements between her and Mamá, Blanco’s parents often defer to her in matters of discipline. Abuela’s anxiety that Blanco is not acting like “un hombre” is a thread that runsning throughout every chapter, often making Blanco hide his feelings, his interests, and ultimately, his sexuality. As the chapters of The Prince of Los Cocuyos progress, Blanco understands more and more that he is different from other boys. Abuela’s criticism and ridicule help define who he is and are in part what prevent him from acknowledging and accepting his true self.

The first characteristic we learn about Abuela demonstrates a is her willingness to bend the rules of ethics in order to procure money for her family. She sells her baked goods on the black market until she’s saved enough money for her family to leave Cuba. I; in New York, she has “her own business, sort of” (1), reselling goods and Puerto Rican lottery tickets. In Miami, she works as a bookie for “an illegal numbers racket run by Cuban mafiosos” (2). From these earnings, she provides Blanco’s parents with the money for a down payment on a house. ; sShe also pays for their trip to Disney World. When Blanco takes his first girlfriend, Anita, to the homecoming dance, Abuela eagerly gives him money for a corsage and tuxedo (saying she’s “been praying for a nice girl for you” [198]). Abuela hides her money around the house as she did in Cuba and argues with bodega owners over prices, sometimes accusing cashiers of shortchanging her or “riffling through the shelves for dented canned goods, then asking for a discount” (6). Blanco notes that she claims she is lucky, “though she helped her luck along most of the time” (4).

Abuela, like many of Blanco’s relatives, is nostalgic for Cuba and clings to her customs and habits. Preferring Cuban bodegas, she refuses to shop at Winn-Dixie until she’s unable to resist a deal on chicken. She enlists Blanco’s help on her visit, intimidated by the American store and depending on his mastery of English. Once in Winn-Dixie, she is fearful of encountering Americans and declares she will never return after a confrontation results from her language barrier. However, she is intrigued by “the ingenuity of Americans” (11) who fit strawberries in toaster pastries and create flakes that turn into mashed potatoes. She takes American ingredients and makes them Cuban, to the frustration of Blanco, who longs to eat American food.

Blanco helps Abuela count her earnings at the table, and she sometimes lets him keep the change. (Blanco tries to teach her about American history, but she is resistant to learning about the presidents, except that their faces grace her money.) She enlists his help on her visit to Winn-Dixie, intimidated by the American store and depending on his mastery of English. The two work as a team preparing Thanksgiving dinner, which she agrees to prepare after Blanco threatens not to go to Winn-Dixie anymore. Abuela takes American ingredients and makes them Cuban, to the frustration of Blanco, who longs to eat American food.

Perhaps Abuela’s most significant impact on Blanco is her insistence that he only partake in traditionally male activities. She is furious when she learns that Blanco has been to the craft store, Diamond’s; when she discovers he’s bought a rug-making kit with money he’s saved over the course of weeks, she chides, “What’s next—ballet?” (72). She convinces Papá to force him to return it, choosing for him a leather wallet kit, claiming that “[l]eather is for hombres” (73). Abuela forbids Blanco from carrying tía Elisa’s neceser, or makeup case, telling him to “[c]arry a suitcase como un hombre” (119). She suggests he begin working in order to lose weight, warning his parents that “if he doesn’t lose all that fat before he turns thirteen, his pipi will shrivel up—become nada” (153); working at El Cocuyito, Don Gustavo, the owner, teases that he’s eager to “see if you are as soft as your abuela says” (156). When Blanco asks “[w]hy boys don’t have Quinces” (185), Abuela challenges, “Qué, you want to wear a dress now?” (185). Finally, on observing Blanco wrapping art supplies for Victor, Abuela asks “[w]ho those sissy art things [are] for” (213), complaining that “those aren’t gifts for un hombre like him” (213). When confiscating the rug-making kit, she issues a warning that becomes a refrain throughout the book: “it’s better to be it and not look it, than to look like it even if you are not it” (72). Though Blanco doesn’t yet understand what she means, he deduces that “it” refers to “all the things I enjoyed for which she constantly humiliated me” (72). Abuela repeats this warning years later when Blanco is hesitant to take Deycita, the daughter of a coworker at El Cocuyito, to her Quinces, asking, “Qué te pasa, you don’t like girls?” (182). By then, Blanco “understood implicitly” (182).

Abuela’s criticism is ever-present in Blanco’s mind, and the threat of her ridicule makes him self-conscious even at a young age. At Disney World, he refrains from skipping toward Cindarella’s castle, “haunted” by the thought of Abuela asking “When are you going to act like un hombre?” (101). Back home, he worries Abuela will “harass” (106) him for possessing his beloved new Mickey Mouse. Gradually, Blanco begins to realize how devastating an effect these criticisms have had on him. He yearns to confess in Victor how Abuela “had ridiculed and hurt [him]me” (218), in fact confessing to Anita that Abuela “was an awful and mean person” (194). In one of the pinnacle moments of the book, Blanco must decide whether to accept Victor’s invitation to romantic intimacy; Blanco, though desperately attracted to Victor, is not yet ready to “disturb the universe”  (217)in admitting his homosexuality, ,“to accept “the truth that I had always known: I was a gay man, un maricón, just as Abuela had feared” (217). Before the first chapter, in “Acknowledgments,” Blanco writes that The Prince of Los Cocuyos “let me hate her, understand her, forgive her, and thank her for her failed attempts at ‘making me un hombre,’ which indirectly made me a writer” (xv). His wresting with her disapproval is thus established as one of the formative experiences of his life, ending only as he holds her hand as she dies, when in her eyes he sees “the apologies that the tubes down her throat won’t allow her to speak” (248).

In Chapter 7, Blanco writes,: “Though I had always thought of Mamá as the comandante in our family, as I grew older, I began noticing she also had a fairy godmother side—a soft spot for those in need” (220). AlTthough Mamá is a strict disciplinarian, she has many moments of softness.

Exasperated by the droppings left on the terrace by Abuelo’s chickens—she exclaims, “Is this what I left mi madre and sisters in Cuba for—to clean chicken shit?” (41)—she orders him to get rid of them. She reluctantly relents after Abuelo builds the chicken coop, warning, “Bueno, okay for now, but that’s it—not one more chicken in this house—¡ni uno!” (45). She has a similar reaction when she finds Blanco’s bunny sleeping in his bed—crying, “¡Ay caramba! Why didn’t I stay in Cuba?” (49) and insisting Blanco keep it outside. When Abuelo brings a mate for the bunny, he and Blanco deliberately keep it a secret from Mamá; Blanco writes that he’s “sure Mamá must’ve noticed the crowded rabbit cage while watering her potted plants or taking out the garbage, but she must’ve looked the other way” (52). Mamá also relents to Caco’s request for a dog.

In Miami Beach, Mamá disciplines Blanco, Caco, Denise, and Carla for roughhousing, separating them to four corners of the room. She is furious when Blanco doesn’t ask before spending the day out with Yetta; upon his return, she informs him he won’t be allowed to go to the pool or the beach the next day and orders him to write “I shall never disappear again as I did today” (141) five hundred times. However, after catching him playing bingo with Yetta the next day, she “acted as if nothing had happened” (147). She delights Blanco in Disney World by giving him the five dollars he needs to buy a Mickey Mouse doll; Blanco adds that she “kissed me on the top of my head, no questions asked, no conditions demanded” (104). When Julio dies, Mamá cares and comforts for Blanco, who is shocked and devastated. Mamá also eased Ariel’s family’s transition into American society, “helping them fill out job applications and collecting hand-me-downs for them sometimes” (220). Her kindness is greatly appreciated by Ariel, who tearfully calls her “un angel” (223).

As the person who runs the family, Mamá is firm and strict at home. However, like Abuela, she is intimidated and deferential in unfamiliar American situations. At the service area on the way to Disney, she “stepped inside slowly and cautiously scanned the crowd like a dumbfounded señorita Dorothy in the land of los americanos” (82) and relies on Blanco and Caco to translate. She and Abuela often find themselves disagreeing and even competing. Abuela enjoys reminding Mamá that she’s indebted to her for helping the family move to Miami; Mamá, tired of “Abuela’s jabs” (5), decides Abuela must pay for groceries and cook for the family each week. On Thanksgiving, Mamá secretly tells the guests “to bring a dish to sabotage Abuela’s first attempt at a real San Giving” (30).

Blanco describes Mamá as a typical mother who, to the groaning of her family, “insisted on recording every part of our lives with photos” (77), including Blanco’s relieving himself in the woods on the way to Disney World. She famously carries with her an “in case of the flies” (76) tote containing a wide assortment of random items such as food, mosquito repellent, spare keys, and toilet paper. Mamá embarrasses Blanco at Disney by dropping her sunglasses in the water during a ride and brashly insisting the guide stop the ride so she can retrieve them; she calms herself when she remembers she has an identical pair in her tote. Blanco is mortified when Mamá brings her cooking supplies on vacation to Disney and Miami Beach, along with tremendous quantities of Cuban food. She also cuts back on the family’s bills to save money for their Miami Beach vacation; Blanco and Caco are despondent when she restricts their air conditioner use.

Blanco is jealous when Mamá and Ariel bond over making mojo sauce; when Ariel describes her as an angel, he wonders,: “Was Mamá really that special?” (223), for the first time seeing her as “simply a her, full of loss and fear, love and charity—a complex woman, not just the family overlord” (224). In the final pages of the book, when he looks into the future at the events of his adulthood, he describes flying to Cuba with Mamá and sobbing into a tissue she gives him, crying,: “I am all this—I am all that you are” (249). In the final paragraph, Mamá urges Blanco into the car after the picnic at El Farito.; Blanco follows, saying:, “Time to go, indeed, time to go” (249). In this way, Blanco subtly and tenderly nods to his mother’s vigilance and guidance as he’s grown from a boy to a man. His choice to conclude the book with this conversation between his mother and himself suggests her special importance in his life.

Blanco’s relationship with his older brother Carlos, or Caco, is typical of many relationships between brothers. As the boys grow up, Caco relentlessly teases Blanco, often reiterating Abuela’s criticisms regarding Blanco’s manliness. When Blanco returns to the car after relieving himself in the woods, Caco asks, “Did an alligator bite your weenie off?” (77). ; when Caco finally gets a dog, he refuses to let Blanco pet him. Upon noticing Blaco dressed up to see Denise and Carla, Caco calls him “Mr. Pretty Pants” (116).

Their rivalry is perhaps demonstrated best in Chapter 4, when they compete for the attention of Denise and Carla. Blanco is excited to see them, calling them his primas; however, after Caco and his cousins abandon him, he laments: that “M[m]y primas became his primas” (131). Blanco attempts to regain his cousins’ attention by teasing Caco about his inability to dance—he writes that many nights, Caco “begged me to help him practice his disco steps” (129), and for a time they’d cease to be “bratty brothers”(130) until Caco threatened to “tell Abuela about you dressing up like a girl” (130) if he told. Caco calls him “blubbo” (129) and throws him into the pool, then monopolizes their cousins’ attention, to Blanco’s dejection.

Despite this rivalry, Caco and Blanco act as a team on the trip to Disney, during which their parents’ conspicuousness they are both equally humiliates them bothd by their parents’ conspicuousness. Their hatred of the Cuban music their parents play in the car inspires the brothers, who “didn’t agree on much” (79), to “devise some new act of defiance” (80), finally succeeding in making the music stop by convincing Papá to pull over to clean his car. Later in the trip, they bond over Blanco’s idea to put gum in their ears so they can’t hear the music. Caco had bet Blanco five dollars he’d be too scared to ride Space Mountain, and he goads Blanco by calling him “chicken” (99); however, as they approach the ride, Caco encourages Blanco by assuring him the ride will be fun, and after Blanco rides it, Caco, “a man of his word” (101), dutifully pays him five dollars.

As the brothers grow up, they become friendsir rivalry seems to dissipate. Blanco tells Anita that he “had one brother away at college who wrote me every week” (194) and that he “missed him” (194). At the end of the book, when Blanco reveals the future events of his adulthood, he describes how “Caco will call [him]me about his divorce” (248) and ask when he’s coming to Miami. Blanco realizes that “what has always made us brothers is not blood, but our love” (248).

Blanco meets Julio in eighth grade when he’s seated by him in class. Julio is “a bit nerdy like me” (159) and also “one of the heaviest boys in class” (159). He also hads “guts and gusto” (159) and is known for having been pulled out of the talent show when he dressed as Jimi Hendrix with talcum powder under his nose, suggesting cocaine. He was a “misfit that everyone loved, including me” (159). Blanco writes that his and Julio’s friendship was one of opposites attracting, that Blanco tried “to keep him out of trouble” (160) and thatwhile Julio tried “to get [him]me into trouble” (160). Blanco is thrilled to have a best friend, which gave him “a new sense of confidence” (160). Julio and Blanco shave in Julio’s parents’ bathroom because “Julio swore that the more we shaved the sooner our beards would come in” (160). Indeed, Blanco has no trouble spending as much time as he wants with Julio: Abuela “approved of” (160) Julio because Julio was “un hombrecito” (160).

When Julio receives a new Corvette from his parents and enjoys taking it out for drives when his parents aren’t home. He takes Blanco to a party and introduces him to Anita, encouraging Blanco to get her number and, when told Blanco reveals he hasn’t kissed a girl yet, Julio asksing whether he’s gay. Blanco feels like pretends to be attracted to Anita, then wonders why he felt the need to be “a terrible fake” (217) when he lies. with best friend. Julio frequently talks about the girls he flirts with and dates, and his descriptions of his sexual excitement result in Blanco’s wondering why he, too, doesn’t feel this excitement around attractive girls. With his eagerness for his body to mature and his quickness to pursue sexual relationships, Julio represents emerging adulthood. Blanco’s dishonesty with Julio demonstrates his awareness of being different and of his not following the same path.

When Julio is killed in a car accident, Blanco struggles to make sense of his death. In school one day, Blanco learns about imaginary numbers and “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.””;aAfter, he feels comforted, believing now that Julio, unlike Prufrock, “wasn’t a fearful, doubting man” (202). On the contrary, “Julio dared to disturb the universe” […][and] “had lived every moment to the fullest” (202). Blanco decides that, like imaginary numbers, Julio’s death has no answer; he decides to make up his own, finding solace in the answer he imagines. Blanco’s relationship with Julio thus propels him toward maturity, forcing him to begin to face his sexuality and inspiring him to ponder complex, more adult subjects.

A Cuban exile in his 30thirties, Victor works at El Cocuyito for a short time. At first, Blanco is jealous that someone else may be more important than he is at the bodega; it isn’t long, however, before he begins to sincerely enjoy Victor’s company. Victor is the first man with whom Blanco seriously considers beginning a romantic relationship. Whereas until this point, he has been able to find excuses for his lack of attraction to girls and his eagerness to watch an attractive boy in the locker room, Blanco cannot deny that his “[b]ody tingled” (212) at Victor’s touch.

AlTthough he finds Victor “sexy,” ” (204),Blamncohe “couldn’t admit it” to himself (204). Victor teaches Blanco to smoke, laughing when he coughs and telling him he has a lot to learn. Victor tells Blanco stories of Cuba, surprising him by saying “Cuba was hell” (205) and that he “can never go back” (205). The two hang out in a second-story loft, eating lunch together and talking; Victor paints a mural in the loft and introduces Blanco to opera. One day, Victor prepares lunch in the loft and tells Blanco a story about his friend Omar, how the two were imprisoned in Cuba and how they haven’t seen each other since; Blanco later wonders if Victor is gay but can’t gather the courage to ask him.

Blanco writes that, over time, “[w]hat I[he] felt for Victor was something more than just a brotherly kind of love” (209), and his feelings appear to be reciprocated. Victor confesses he was married but that marriage wasn’t for him, and Blanco admits he doesn’t want a girlfriend. When Victor initiates a sexual relationship at his house one night, telling Blanco he adores him and kissing his cheek, Blanco is tempted, but pulls away: “He knew I was petrified—incapable—of acknowledging” (217).  that he is gay. After Blanco declines, Victor discusses his own life, how he’d known he “was different since I was un niño” (217) but was “too scared most of my life to admit who I really was” (217). He says he fell in love with Omar and could no longer “deny who I was anymore” (217). Victor then tells Blanco that Blanco will “know when the time is right” (217) and that “[u]ntil then you just need to be yourself as much as you can” (217). The next day, Blanco finds that Victor has quit and ; he left a portrait of him, along with a note, telling him to “[k]eep listening to the mermaids” (218).

Victor is the first man with whom Blanco seriously considers beginning a romantic relationship. Whereas until this point, he has been able to find excuses for his lack of attraction to girls and his eagerness to watch an attractive boy in the locker room, he cannot deny that his “[b]ody tingled” (212) at Victor’s touch. By not pressuring Blanco—Blanco writes that he feared Victor would “become peeved or even angry with me, but he didn’t” (216)—but rather kindly encourages ingBlancohim to come to his realization in his own time, Victor showings Blanco that acknowledging one’s sexuality is a process and that Blanco will “hear the mermaids” when the time is right.

Ariel is a Cuban exile Blanco’s age; the two met when they were 12twelve and don’t meet again until years later. Mamá helped Ariel and his family when they arrived from Cuba, and Ariel feels indebted to her. When he visits the Blancos to deliver a pig for the picnic at El Farito, he confounds Blanco by simultaneously knowing how to make mojo sauce and enjoying American music. Blanco can’t understand how someone “very Cuban” (222) like Ariel also can have American interests. He grows jealous of Ariel and Mamá’s easy relationship, seeing for the first time his mother as an individual instead of only “the family overlord” (224). At the picnic the next day, Ariel encourages Blanco to dig a pit for the pig and even dance salsa; Blanco, perhaps for the first time, begins to feel that he “was one of them—a cubanaso!” (240). Ariel again inspires Blanco’s jealousy when the men of Blanco’s family ask him for news of their family back in Cuba, for Ariel “could love and understand [his]my family and their country in a way that [he]I probably never could” (237). By forcing him to immerse himself in Cuban tradition, Ariel makes Blanco wonder why he’d “never bothered to ask” (237) questions about his family. He also makes him consider that he would, in fact, like to visit Cuba. Blanco suggests that the stories of his family suddenly were able to “come to life” (237) with Ariel because Ariel is his own age: Blanco can easily imagine himself in Ariel’s situation.

After navigating sexual tension all day, Blanco nearly kisses Ariel in the ocean. ; however, Ariel’s anxiety at being in the water—he’d nearly drowned on the voyage from Cuba—forces them to emerge, and the moment passes. Though Blanco wonders if he “could admit to [Ariel]him what [he]I couldn’t admit to Victor” (248). However,  and that maybe Victor “would be the one” (248), they never see each other again. When they part, Ariel has given something important to Blanco: the motivation, and the confidence, to embrace his Cuban heritage.

Yetta is one of the “old and broken” (111) looking residents of the Copa who sit on the veranda “as if glued to the ground” (111). When Blanco feels abandoned by his cousins and brother, he sits on the veranda beside her; she begins a conversation with him, telling him she’s “a little from everywhere” (126). Blanco learns that she and her husband Harry used to live in a large house in old, glamorous Miami—in the days before the Copa, like the rest of Miami, was “falling apart” (127). She tells him she’s from Poland and that she and her husband used to travel frequently to Cuba. When Blanco tells her that his parents are from Cuba, he was born in Spain, and that they live in America, Yetta asks him:, “So what does that make you?” (127). This question , inspiresing him to wonder where he belongs. Yetta invites him to go with her to the beauty parlor, where she tells her friends he’s her “Jewban” grandson, and for lunch at Wolfie’s, where she reminisces about the glory of old Miami. Feeling lost, not quite American and not quite Cuban, Blanco begins wondering “if [he]I truly belonged where she belonged—wherever that was” (145). ; sShe assures him that being “a little from everywhere […]”[is]“not so bad” (145). Yetta helps Blanco see that people can be from more than one place and that different kinds of people are the same in many ways. She also makes him feel important and needed at a time when he feels isolated both from the kids and the adults.

Blanco meets Anita at a party he attends with Julio; Julio introduces them because he wants to try to “hook” Blanco “up” (190) after hearing Blanco hasn’t yet kissed a girl. Blanco and Anita get along well and even dance together; Blanco tries to feel the excitement Julio describes when he dances with a girl, but feels nothing. Blanco asks for her number, and the two begin a close friendship, each confiding in the other about their hopes, interests, and family. When Julio is killed in a car accident, Anita comforts him. Despite their frequent contact and comfort with each other, Blanco still feels no physical attraction to her. He continues to find excuses for his lack of attraction, first telling himself he’s too nervous to feel attraction, then that he hasn’t kissed her because the mood hasn’t been romantic enough. When he finally kisses her at the homecoming dance and still feels none of “the passion that Julio had described,”” (199), he realizes with certainty that he “wasn’t, and never would be, like other boys” (199). Anita is Blanco’s first experience with physical intimacy. , and his lack of physical connection with her—tThe fact that he “couldn’t feel what I[he] was supposed to feel” (194) with her i—is his first real indication that he is simply not attracted to girlshomosexual.

When Blanco writes of Papá, it is frequently in relation to his car, el Malibú, the car he worked twelve12twelve-hour days as a butcher to be able to afford. He had  and drivenove off the lot “teary-eyed,”” (80), marveling: ,“What a country” (80). Papá “was in love” (80) (80) with his car. , forbidding anyone to eat in it, waxing and washing it weekly, and “stand[ing] back to admire its metallic copper finish glittering in the Florida sun” (80). Mamá complains that “[h]e pampered el Malibú more than he did Mamá” (81). When Blanco’s forgotten crayons melt in the backseat, Papá orders him to scrape the mess off with a knife.; h He stoodands “over [Blanco]me with the belt trembling in his hand” (107). and says,Nnot looking at his son him, he said: “Everything is ruined, cojones—everything” (107). Papá’s Malibu is his achievement of the American dream, his tangible evidence of having made it in America. Papá representsis every immigrant who works hard to build a life for his family in a new, unknown country.

As with Mamá, Blanco is sometimes embarrassed of Papá’s obvious Cubanness. In Disney World, he is impressed with his parents’ intent attention duringinterest in the Hall of Presidents presentation, until Papá “let out two sharp whistles for his favorite president” (96), Richard Nixon, “the first ‘decent’ president after the ‘damn democrata’ Kennedy who had betrayed ‘us’ at the Bay of Pigs” (96)—and after whom Blanco is named. However, Blanco suggests sympathy for his father in Chapter 7, as Ariel informs Papá that he believes his house in Cuba to have been torn down.