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Emmanuel Martín

Emmanuel Martín

Leona Ford. Photo: Emmanuel Martín.

Leona Ford, a life in cricket

At the beginning of the 2000s Cuban TV showed an Indian film, maybe the one that most of our TV viewers liked. Coming from the country of Gandhi and Ray, Lagaan (which means Tax in Spanish) lasted for three hours, similar to Titanic (1997) and The Godfather II (1974). It is a film about cricket, and the promoter of that showing was none other than Leona Ford Miller (Guantánamo, 1943), the president of the cricket association in Cuba, the representative before the International Cricket Council. “My father, Leonard Seon Ford, is from Barbados, and my mother, Lilian Miller, from Jamaica. I, and my five other siblings were born in Guantánamo," says Leona, after having eaten a plate of rice with corn, chicken fricassee, ripe bananas, French fries and boiled potatoes, avocado and a mango and spinach juice. This woman from eastern Cuba has not adopted the habit of eating light fast food of the people who live in Havana, even though she has been living in the capital for 40 years. “My father, and others from Barbados, came to Cuba through Banes, and then settled in El Guaso, because at the Guantanamo Naval Base they were looking for labor force...