Confederate Cuba? Nicaragua?
Have you ever had a recurring phrase drive you half nuts because you don’t know what it means? Like “too clever by half”? Or “too much sugar for a dime”?
Me, too.
I got tired of seeing and hearing the word “filibuster” and letting it lodge in my brain for years without a resume. It was just some vague kind of thing they did in Congress, right? Long speeches to keep members from voting. Nobody ever told me where such an odd word came from. I got curious.
And I was surprised to discover that “filibuster” originally meant an American military adventurer engaged in fomenting insurrections in Latin America in the mid-1800’s.
Yes, you heard it right. Fomenting insurrections!
This odd word comes from a Dutch word vrijbuiter, later adopted into French (flibustier), English (fleebooter), and Spanish (filibustero). The word,as if you hadn’t guessed, translates to English as freebooter, meaning pirate.
But insurrectionist?
Good Grief! Why didn’t I know that? All those teachers in grade school and high school and college never said a word about any of that. I mean they gave us whole reams of mind-numbing nonsense about the murderous kings of England and the rotten royals of France and the Czars of Russia and meaningless treaties and even more meaningless dates but spared me a shred about freelance American “guns-for-hire” down Mexico way. I mean this is real interesting stuff. Why’d they leave it out?
Part of our American history was the habit of the government in 1845 to expand its sovereign territory by making brand new states out of wide open spaces for the purpose of obtaining new tax revenue. This was after they had run the people off who were there already and who couldn’t pay any taxes
The problem was the Southern politicians wanted any new state to be a slave state and the Northern politicians wanted any new state to be a free state so that one side could out-vote the other side. All efforts at compromise failed which ultimately led to the Civil War
But before we got to that extremity, we got a Venezuelan fellow named Narciso Lopez, who wanted to raise a guerilla force to invade Cuba and wrest it from Spain. Narciso went from New York to New Orleans raising troops of mercenaries, adventurers and disgruntled husbands for just that purpose.
And guess what? They were called “filibusters”. They gathered on some offshore islands in the Gulf of Mexico, loaded for bear, eager to invade Cuba and make it a new American slave state. As fate would have it, this was stopped by President Zachary Taylor before they got to Cuba.
But that didn’t stop Lopez. He regrouped and headed back, expected to be embraced by a welcoming populace who would treat him and his adventurers as heroes.
Except it didn’t work out that way. The populace did not treat them as heroes. They treated them as invaders. They had 51 of them lined up and shot. Lopez himself was strangled to death by public garroting in the town square.
In spite of the failure of Lopez and his filibusters, that expedition prompted other filibusters to launch armed expeditions all over Latin America. One of these was led by a Tennessee doctor of medicine and freelance weirdo named William Walker whose aim was to take over the State of Sonora in Mexico and then make Nicaragua part of the U.S. He wound up making himself President of Nicaragua, legalizing slavery and then in 1860, making himself dead when a contingent of the British Navy turned him over to authorities in Honduras who promptly had him dispatched by firing squad. Walker was deludional but he was also serious.
Think about it: had any of these bizarre forays actually been successful, politics in the Americas would have been profoundly altered by giving the U.S. (and especially the South) a powerful Caribbean foothold and expanding slave states’ votes in Congress. Instead, hot-headed Southerners gave up their failed ideas of expansionism and began focusing on secession which, ultimately, led to the Civil War.
My Cuban friend from college days, Roberto Delgado, used to swoon over black beans, which he called by their Cuban name “Frijoles Nigros” and which he could rarely get anymore because it was a dish largely unfamiliar to Americans outside of maybe Creole Louisiana at that time.
Native Americans had been growing and cooking these beans in Central and South America for roughly 10,000 years before the arrival of Columbus. Roberto’s family had escaped Castro’s dictatorship but they hadn’t escaped a longing for their beloved Cuban food, especially the frijoles nigros, so popular everywhere on the island.
There are all sorts of plans to make these black beans and rice and you won’t have trouble finding them online. I no longer soak my own beans overnight, however, because I have become lazy and no-count in my advanced age but do that if you like. In fact, my plan would be considered a sort of culinary sacrilege to Roberto. But here it is anyway:
You Can Do This
Two cans fully cooked black beans, (I use Goya) rinsed in a colander, put in a pot with water to cover and brought to a slow simmer on medium-low heat.
One large sweet onion chopped up and fried in bacon fat (3-4 slices). Drain the bacon and chop it up. Then add it back to the skillet along with
Two seeded and diced jalapeno peppers and two cloves crushed garlic.
Add the fried vegetables to the beans along with two bay leaves.
Add one heaping tablespoon of chicken base paste.
Add a teaspoon of sugar or honey.
Add a tablespoon of chili powder, red pepper and black pepper to taste.
Add as much cut up smoked sausage or kielbassa as you like.
Simmer for about 45 minutes. (add a little water if needed).
NOTE: If you prefer soaking your dried beans, put a 1-pound package of them in a pitcher of water in the refrigerator overnight. Then drain and rinse and get on with it.
Serve the beans on a bed of cooked white rice, garnished with chopped green onion tops and a dollop of sour cream. (Don’t forget to remove the bay leaves). Sorry, Roberto, old amigo, but this is comfort food even if it ain’t a hundred percent Cuban and, well, sacrilege or not, I like it.
I don’t know who the person was who first used the word “filibuster” in a legislative sense but the practice of “filibustering” in Congress started in the early 1850’s. Somebody may have concluded that the behavior of delaying legislation by running off your mouth in Congress recalled efforts of the disruptive filibusters south of the border. In any case, there have been over 2,000 Congressional filibusters since 1917, leading to a lot of hair-pulling and name-calling by Republicans and Democrats who wouldn’t recognize a real filibuster if he walked up to them with a cartridge bandoleer on each shoulder and waving a “Join Lopez” poster.
Incidentally, Walker was called “The grey-eyed man of destiny”. He died at the age of 36, the only American to be inaugurated President of another country. Yes, president, even though recognized as legitimate by no one but himself.
By the way, “too much sugar for a dime” is generally thought to mean “too good to be true”. “Too clever by half” is an English phrase meaning “too smart to be understood.” You can thank me later.