Sienna Santiago was a brilliant 19 year old Filipino Cuban mixed knock ‘em on their ass beauty and art student in Mexico City when the news of her father’s  murder in Havana hit the headlines the  day after it happened. She was as close to her father as a daughter could get. Her parents met each other when both were journalism students at the university in Mexico City in 1933. He from Cuba, she from the Phillipines. Both shared a passion for the truth….the underlying story...the yin and the yang of an issue. In effect, they wanted to change the world for the better. Champions of the oppressed. Defenders of the Fifth Estate.

 

Through marching in protest rallies and art galleries it was in the cards, fate being in charge of chance, that they would meet two individuals whose impact on them was meteoric. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the point in the art-political universe where art and activism met in a head-on collision. They became close friends and shared similar political views, love for art, and a dedication to educate the masses and stir up revolt. That relationship didn’t last long. There was a crack in the friendship foundation that occurred that would never heal.

 

As 1937 emerged from the womb of time there were changes in the air as Frida and Diego were leaning further and further out on the leftist limb... socialism soon was replaced and embraced by them of Marxist communism.  Santiago and his wife Cierra, though both  ardent leftists, were not ready to embrace the police state tactics of Stalinism that they had been reading about. 

 

Prior to the friendship splitting the emotional atom, Frida and Cierra were very close. So close in fact they had a torrid affair with each other in 1934 that lasted almost two years. Both Diego and Santiago, aware of the heat the two girls generated in each other, sat back, gave them plenty of romping room and   looked the other way. Tolerance was a virtue both men shared along with their wives hunger for each other. As 1937 progressed, more than politics were driving the couples apart from each other. Cierra was now pregnant by Santiago. When not in bed with Frida she performed marvelously hot blooded for her husband. 

 

 

Another change in their lives was waiting in the employment wings. Santiago was offered his first job and hired as a journalist for a small Cuban newspaper where he would work and perfect his his craft for next 10 years covering the politics of the Batista regime. He was also writing articles showcasing the young rebel movement that was growing from the seeds of rampant poverty and discontent among the Cuban people. 

 

The presumed happiest day of his life  arrived in  1938 when his baby daughter, Sienna Santiago made her appearance in the world in the placenta soaked wake of her birth which was complicated. So complicated that her mother died giving life to her daughter….her “angel” she referred to her yet unborn baby for nine months. Santiago was now  a grieving widower and a single parent. The happiest day of his life, was now also the saddest day of his life….but...life goes on...as it must.

 

Santiago was fortunate as he  had many siblings in Cuba and thankfully his unmarried sister Isadora took over the duties of raising  young Sienna and providing housekeeping duties in her brother’s home. He never married again and now devoted his life to his growing activism as well as to his daughter’s education and well being.

 

 

Fate was about to come knocking on Santiago’s door one more time.  In the spring of 1939 Ernest Hemingway came to Cuba in his boat sailing from Florida. He eventually rented a 15 acre property a mere 15 miles from Havana and remained in Cuba for most of the war years. While in Cuba he wrote most of his best known  novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” which was published in 1940. 

 

Santiago was eager to meet this “God of Words” as he jokingly called him in private of course. Getting up his courage, (a shot or two of run helps) he contacted Hemingway for an interview for the small newspaper. As it turns out Mr. Hemingway read the small paper regularly and was a fan of Santiago’s no nonsense journalistic approach. They met, they talked, the became friends for life until Hemingway ate a shotgun for breakfast in 1961. 

 

 

 

Sienna growing  up in a home enriched by literature (she referred to Hemingway as Uncle Ernesto who treated her like a princess when she was growing up) and arts (she had heard much of her parents and their adventures with Frida and Diego) that it was inevitable  that a love of art would prompt her to attend university in Mexico City to study the works of the great Mexican painters, including and especially the works of Santiago’s former comrades Diego and Frida. She never knew or could imagine...that the woman she admired as an artist was also an ardent lover of her mother. Some things a father never tells a daughter about.

 

In 1948 the publisher of the newspaper Santiago was working for was closed down by the regime for being “too honest” in its criticism of the Batista regime. Santiago now out of a job did what any unemployed person would do. With an old printing press he would  start his own newspaper. This time he would bide his time. He had learned a valuable lesson. Don’t go up against a stronger foe until you are strong enough yourself to do battle. That meant balancing the facts and setting a middle course at first then when you had full wind in your sails let her loose. 

 

With little money in the bank, Santiago approached his  friend “Ernesto” Hemingway who already had heard about the newspaper being closed down, so without any encouragement needed, he financed the new operation and even wrote some pieces for it to gain readers quickly and to generate an image transcending Cuba and bringing it notice on the US mainland as well. By 1950, the paper was off and running with editorials and coverage making  Santiago a rising star among the proletariat and the literati of political journalism

 

By 1953 his newspaper had grown, subscribers were devouring it and the Batista regime was content with allowing minor criticism of their system to show a facade of “freedom of the press” as long as it didn’t go too far, and delighted the left was also not without journalistic scars wielded by Santiago’s virtuous and balanced sword. That sword unfortunately had a double edge to it. Left and Right would come under journalistic attack when each crossed the line and human rights were goose stepped on. Santiago gained many friends on both sides who applauded him, but he also made as many enemies. The fuse  was lit...and only a matter of time before it exploded and ended Santiago’s life.