COSTA RICAN CONNECTIONS

--Fernando

--Fernando, Sun Ra, and me

--ASIBEHU

--Asociacion Agua Buena , the human rights association

When Hitler was told that Costa Rica had declared war on Germany (the first in the Americas), he and his staff pulled down a wall map and searched to see if Costa Rica was a city or a country. Unable to find it on the map, they were later to learn that the tiny Central American country had been covered over by fly shit. Or, that's what the chap on the Riverside Drive park bench -- Fernando Rodolfo de Jesus Vargas Zamora -- informed me the very week I arrived in New York City.

That was in August 1948. We remained inseparable companions until his death in 1989.

FERNANDO RODOLFO DE JESUS VARGAS ZAMORA
(22 Sep 1928 - 20 Feb 1989)

The same week I hitchhiked to New York City from Iowa, I sat in Riverside Park near where I lived at the International House. While I was watching boats on the Hudson River, a chap sat down. I said hello. He said "Allons." I inquired if he was French. He said, "Oui ," thinking I was asking if he could understand French. And before long the two of us figured out he knew about as much secondary school French as I did: un peu!

I asked where he lived, and I walked him home to 103rd Street. Then he asked me where I lived, and he walked me to my temporary home in an upstairs room at 528 West 114th Street. He stayed overnight, I had no food to serve (lost my cherry), he stayed overnight, and the landlady met us the next morning at the bottom of the stairs, growling loudly about no guests! This was the start of a 40-year companionship with Fernando Rodolfo de Jesus Vargas Zamora, who was then 20. I was 27.

After one semester at the International House (which also did not allow guests, and we were met one morning by a Burmese chap who was lookout on my floor) and after his short stay with his mother and sister in nearby Morningside Heights, we moved together into a furnished room, Riverside Drive and 108th-109th, rented by Mrs. Sophie Likar, widow of an Austrian who had helped build the Graf Zeppelin. The two of us were the only ones she let use her kitchen refrigerator, probably because she enjoyed having caught me playfully chasing him out into the hall and to the shared bathroom (while both of us were nude). In retrospect, these were among the happiest times of my life.

Later, with the aid of Major Harold Bonilla, of the Costa Rican consulate's office, we got the apartment adjacent to his at 244 West 103rd St. between Broadway and West End Avenue, which at one time before 1952 was lived in by a Costa Rican president's (Rafael Calderón Guardia ) mistress.  At the time we did not know that in 1899 Humphrey Bogart, the son of Manhattan surgeon Belmont DeForest Bogart and Maud Humphrey, an illustrator, was born just across the street at 245 West 103rd. I had heard that at 875 West End Avenue, just around the corner, Bogart had lived with his uncle, a dentist.  Just down the street, however, we knew the house with bay windows that George Gershwin built for his mother and father - it was just across the street from the MasterApartments, the tall art deco building at Riverside Drive and 103rd Street where Henry Wallace lived when he campaigned from New York to be Vice President of the United States.

In no time, Fernando learned English (had a great teacher; I used Frank Sinatra records to demonstrate articulation!), and we shared this small 1 1/2-room studio for nine years. I was the Don Quixote. He was the Sancha Panza. When once I replaced an electrical fuse in the apartment, blowing all the lights out on two floors, he was the one to fix the damage. When I once threw a radio at him, instead of throwing it back at me he picked it up and started replacing the tubes. How I ever could have fought with anyone who had a Desi Arnaz voice and accent is beyond me! How he could have fought with me except for emotional reasons was equally unthinkable.

My favorite photo of all time (Fire Island, or possibly New Jersey):

While I was getting my MA at Columbia, Fernando (a) worked as a sewer in the garment section; (b) was employed by the eminent and noted Major Edwin Armstrong at REL Labs--Armstrong, later to be pictured on a US postage stamp (!) because of his pioneer work on FM radio, taught Fernando to weld small items and confided to him about his various family and business problems [later committing suicide]; (c) took the engineering course given by RCA Institutes at West 4th and Horatio, my serving as translator and typist for assignments; and (d) becoming a recording engineer at Bob Guy 's Audiosonic Studios in the Brill Building on Broadway. I then taught 5 years at Bentley School (48 West 86th St.), finally taking a job which paid twice as much ($5,000) at New Canaan, Connecticut. But it was 180 days in New Canaan and 185 days in Hell's Kitchen with Fernando, for in 1959 we got (thanks to Max Ferra , an engineer at our studio and later the director of a 42nd Street Spanish-American theatre, INTAR) a bargain 2-room apartment at 425 West 45th (the Cape Man, Salvatore Agron--yes, the one Paul Simon has written about for a Broadway play--had just killed two teenagers in the adjacent playground, so vacancies became quite numerous in Hell's Kitchen, an allegedly dangerous area where sailors were warned to go in pairs when walking down our street from their ship to Times Square. [OK, so it was the area made famous by Dutch Schultz and his gangsters . . . by George Raft , the movie star famous for his portrayal of tough guys . . . and by the mysterious 1930 disappearance of the legendary Judge Crater, last seen when he left Billy Haas's restaurant at 322 West 45th. It also was the neighborhood of US Senator Patrick Moynihan, and Arthur Miller got one of his first jobs in the vicinity of where we lived.]

In 1961 with next to no money Fernando and I arranged to borrow enough from Eaton Factors (at usurious interest) to found Variety Sound Corporation, a recording studio across the street from the 46th Street Theatre and in the Variety Arts Building. Separating the business from Bob Guy's bankrupt Audiosonic Studio, we took its customers (e.g., David Amram, Steve Allen, Dolores Gray, Lesley Gore, Jerry Bock, NY Shakespeare Festival, Paul Simon (a/k/a Jerry Landis), Barry Manilow, etc.) and its engineer Joe Cyr, letting Guy keep his Ad Lib radio jingle company (well, actually I pushed him out because although he had been a good boss to Fernando we both knew he was not pristine in his business dealings). In 1961 when arsonists set fire to the Jewel Box drag show company in the basement of our building (where Joey Dee's Starlighter also had been and where upstairs major Broadway musicals including eight "Hello Dolly"s were rehearsed), we were forced to move to 130 West 42nd. Here, the studio, for which I coined the phrase, "in the heart of showbiz," continued until Fernando's death.

Our first-rate studio manager, José Gallegos, helped turn the place into what was generally considered to be one of the top independent studios anywhere in the area. With Joe Cyr 's help, I kept the studio running despite having no lease toward the last few years, then sold it in 1990 but remained on as bookkeeper. Although the studio had been in business three decades, the new owner went belly-up within one year (and I still have not been paid because of his going into Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Upon suing him for payment of the personally signed notes, he counter-sued me for over a million dollars, charging after over four years of owning that studio and my staying on helping him with the bookkeeping that now he thought I had sold it to him fraudulently, I who had lent the company 100K to keep it going! The suit remains pending.).

1950s Portrait of Fernando and Warren

Fernando (called Fred by most and Nano by me) chose never to return to his country (he faked a love for his relatives, who like good solid Catholics despised his sexual orientation), preferred to remain here as a legal alien, and refused to become a US citizen. The secret of our long companionship? Probably that I wasn't allowed to learn Spanish (in order that he could keep secrets. And, oh, the secrets he had! Oh, the excitement he and I experienced. Oh, the hundreds of sexual escapades he had had. Oh, the joy to have made Who's Who volumes and the acceptance by showbiz VIPs. Oh, the parties, the Broadway openings, the travels [Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, Florida, California], the challenges!) Together, we did it . . . our way!

A typical day at the studio in the late 1980s: Fernando (who worked the night shift whereas I worked days) would arrive at the studio around 8 p.m. with a bottle or two of wine, probably because I'd telephoned for him to hurry, that a customer was already there and waiting. While recording was going on in Studio A (@ $90/hour) or Studio B (@ $55/hour), Fernando would be in his mastering room ready to cut an individual acetate (he was one of fewer than a dozen who had the equipment, and he was the very last to be able to transcribe 78rpm records; I credit our success with our having purchased in Bridgeport, CT, a Scully lathe from Mr. Scully himself, a unique piece of equipment that was then state-of-the-art). Master lacquers and stampers cost $200/set for 7" 45s or $275 for 12" 33s or 45s. Mothers were $85 and $95. Labels were $80 per thousand. The 7" pressings were $725 for 1000, and the 12" pressings were $1,210. In quantity, however, the cost came down to 50¢ and 81¢, respectively. I estimate that I must have designed 500 different LP jackets, and the cost for 1000 finished pressings and jackets was $10,200 for black-and-white or $12,700 for 4-color front and back. In addition we could make real time cassettes or could duplicate 5000 90 minute cassettes near real time @ $1.93 each. The cassette inserts were $175 for black-and-white and $350 for 4-color. Customers kept arriving even after midnight, sometimes after a gig, and Fernando edited tapes, made cassettes or acetates, for dancers as well as Olympic gymnasts, Broadway producers as well as rappers, VIPs as well as unknown strivers.

When I think of our clients, I can only indulge in dropping names:

• Vic Catala, Fernando's and my personal friend who had an insider's view of the entire showbiz scene; his name was associated with the Green Beret group, and he was certainly one who got around the Times Square area;
• Manuel Sanchez Acosta (Tito Puente's physician became mine, and I also became his secretary when he got into major legal problems);
• José Gallegos (Colombian is the son of Carmen Miranda 's accompanist. José's mother was Carmen's wardrobe lady, bananas and all! José was one of the best pianists we ever recorded, and he was easily one of the best pianist-arrangers. Making him our studio manager was a big part of the studio's success, and even when he moved on he was helpful in sharing his technical know-how);
• José El Canario Alberto (delightful to know, and so photogenic);
• Xiomara "Siboney" Alfaro (a Cuban legend, so kind, so talented);
• Steve Allen (who, although previous sessions might run overtime, never created a scene; he did quite a few demos with Fernando)
• David Amram (called me Pops for four decades);
• Paul Anka (came with composer Sammy Cahn during a holiday because all the other recording facilities were closed);
• Danny Apolinar (whose "Your Own Thing" was memorable and even was performed by my Connecticut high school);
• Bobbi Baird ( Maurice Levine's wife was a real beauty);
• Jerry Bock (for whom we worked on "Fiorello" and when he did one demo and I asked him how to catalog it he said the play hadn't yet been named, so file it under Tevye--but this became "Fiddler on the Roof");
• Ray Bourbon (legendary drag queen, funny as hell, loved all of us); click here for more photos: 
• Irving Burgess (a friend for three decades; the unsung composer of Belafonte's major songs such as "Island in the Sun"; the composer who wrote the national anthem of Barbados; who would ever imagine that I would befriend a composer of any nation's anthem!);
• Glen Campbell (Fernando did a remote recording for him; I just lugged the mikes);
• Frantz Casseus (whose "Haitiana" with the song "Méci Bon Die" Fernando and I produced; Frantz claimed the American gal who sang had no discernible accent, but we knew it was his girlfriend, that any Haitian would know better);
• Paddy Chayevsky (for whose "Passion of Joseph D" David Amram did the music; the two didn't get along, and when David (irked at how his union musicians were not being given time off) told Paddy, "Stop shooting the rays at me, man," Chayevsky the famous writer ironically asked Fernando for a translation);
• Chubby Checker (a very first customer whom the engineers didn't much like);
• Celia Cruz (a beauty even in her old age; how I wish I could have spoken Spanish with her);
• The Cyrcle (which was a Tom Dawes group, and Tom was a major jingle maker, completing one of the early "We're American Airlines" tunes with us);
• Jimmy Daniels (a Harlem Renaissance VIP who let Fernando and me get in free some times at the Bon Soir where he was m.c.; at the time I'd not known what a real VIP Jimmy was; I was just impressed by his charisma and appearance; I grope for words when I think of his Bon Soir boite);
• Paquito d'Rivera (whom we recorded; I helped arrange the printing of one of his music books; his son also showed promise as a musician);
• Giora Feidman (the NY Symphony clarinetist who could make the licorice stick cry as well as laugh&endash;once he looked into my office when the diabetic Gilbert Price was using a syringe to shoot insulin into his leg: I'm sure Giora thought the worst);
• Bob Fosse (who got stuck in the building after hours, and we had to let him out although we assumed by his looks that he was a burglar until he said he was, and this was really embarrassing for him, Gwen Verdon's husband; Fernando and I became stockholders in the original "Chicago" company, and it took years before we just barely got our $2,000 back);
• Lesley Gore (whose dad told me he made corsets and women's items; Lesley seemed butch);
• Dolores Gray (our first customer on 46th, and she complained about all the dust);
• John Guare (who was amazed to find the collected poetry of William Carlos Williams on my desk);
• Marvin Hamlisch (who brought Liza Minnelli for her first demo, who enjoyed my calling him Young George Gershwin, and whose father spent hours telling me how much fun he'd had in Hollywood when Marvin took him there during a job);
• Lionel Hampton (whose agent never did pay the bill even when I got a judgment from the Small Claims Court; but I can still see the musical great in rehearsal, pounding away on the vibes; he made sounds when he recorded, a problem for engineers to avoid);
• Ersel Hickey (author of "Bluebirds Over the Mountain" who gave us an autographed copy of his picture, which was on the front of the Rock and Roll Encyclopedia);
• Gordon Thomas , who worked with Fred at Audiosonic, followed Fred to Variety and was one of our steadiest customers over the years. A trombonist (whom unkind people called an "uncle Tom"), Gordon struck many as being an example in music of pure kitsch. He would record one of his original songs, have a 45rpm record made, eventually might even have one hundred pressings made. "Happy Birthday" was one of which he was so proud, he was positively certain that eventually he would be famous, and he paid us from money which we think was made by his working as a building-sitter (protecting a house, building, or apartment until it could be sold, or until its owner returned). A more jovial and friendly person, one could not find; however, no one thought he had any talent. Fred, however, encouraged him over the years and found that most of the pressings Gordon purchased were given away by him for free.
• La India (when I asked who the child was who was with this Spanish singing star, she introduced me to her lady friend, saying, "She's the child's godfather.")
• Sergio George, La India's producer; a pianist whose arrangements were extraordinary; he took a disliking to me when I kept dunning him to get RMM Music (Ralph Mercado's #1 Latin company) to pay up;
• Jay and the Americans (who were happy to give us an autographed photo, which agent Vic Catala had helped arrange);
• Shirley Jones (for whom I dared to cash a check, not knowing how really rich she was);
• Joselito (to whom I could not converse much, but this child star had become a wonderful adult singer);
• Gershon Kingsley (whose "Popcorn" was a big hit);
• Jack Lawrence (composer of "Boston Beguine" etc.; when he asked Fernando to set up his hi-fi system, he prepared dinner for the three of us; later, a theatre was named after him)
• Maurice Levine (the symphony director, Bobbi Baird's husband, Eartha Kitt's director, the YMHA program director, and producer of Cadillac shows);
• Timothy Leary (who never paid for the "LSD" album we recorded on a remote);
• Meadowlark Lemon (the basketball player whom I really helped a lot to get out his 45rpm record);
• Barry Manilow (whom I liked but engineer Joe Cyr didn't);
• Mary Martin (hired an expensive orchestra, sang "Hello Richard" with words to the music of "Hello Dolly," and only needed one record&endash;for her husband on their 25th anniversary;
• Ethel Merman (we did a radio check for her, and she gave us a signed photo);
• Arthur Miller (came to the studio and, very laid back, squatted on the floor with the cast working on "After the Fall," the play in which he skewers his former wife, Marilyn Monroe );
• Liza Minnelli (a high school senior at Scarsdale, and we all hoped her mother would come by to pay the bill but it was her father Sid Luft who sent the check, which also covered her sister Lorna Luft 's and her little brother Joey Luft 's first demos);
• Issachar Miron (who gave us the big American Jewish Committee account);
• New York Shakespeare Festival (a big annual Joseph Papp account brought to us by David Amram );
• Eddie Palmieri (Fernando and I took equipment into the prison to record his "Eddie Palmieri, Live in Sing Sing," and I still remember handing a lethal hammer to an inmate so he could help us secure wires on the stage floor, and having a guard accompany me to the toilet);
• Elvis Presley Music Co . (the office in the Brill Building paid with Elvis's picture [!] on the check);
• Harold Prince (got his first Tony with "Fiorello" and brought us other work thereafter; a truly expert organizer, always with his glasses perched atop his head);
• Tito Puente (a joy to be around, and could he ever swear in English!);
• Doc Severinsen (Ed Sullivan's laid back musician was tops);
• Paul Simon (who was Jerry Landis doing $2/song renditions for Songwriters Contact ( Hal Gordon and Athena Hosey ), then changed to his real name; the last thing we did was an acetate of "Sounds of Silence" in French; once Paul and I talked about the book on semantics by Hayakawa, which he was carrying and which I was teaching);
• Leopold Stowkowski (for whom Fernando explained the echo chamber and was thanked warmly, but he added, "I still don't understand," the implication being that true sound is preferable to that obtained electronically. How true!);
• Rukimini Sukarno (the late Indonesian ruler's daughter, who cheated us out of a very big bill but talked about all the gold she had and worried that her servants were poisoning her; she did, however, give me a front row ticket for her Carnegie Hall recital&endash;I'd have preferred the money from this mezzo soprano, which Fernando pronounced with his Desi Arnaz accent "messy soprano");
• Sun Ra and His Arkestra (Fernando's buddy came at 2 a.m. to do editing; I was his Enterplanetary Koncepts and El Saturn Records bill collector for a time; the book by Yale U's John Szwed reveals some of the secrets I told about Sunny; in 1997 when I told Ornette Coleman about all the hearts Sun Ra broke, Ornette really laughed; about the testicle problem, well, read Szwed);
• Tiny Tim (whose knowledge of trivia amazed me, who was taller than I am, and who according to scuttlebutt was a top);
• Cherry Vanilla (sexy, sexy; commercial, commercial!);
• Sarah Vaughan (couldn't spell ketchup when I asked her to write down what food she'd like to send out for, and her husband Preacher paid the bill&endash;this was long before she shot him);
• Gwen Verdon (a delight, and when I sat in the front row during "Sweet Charity" I could see that, yes, she wore black panties to camouflage the perspiration);
• Harold Wheeler (I got him the apartment on 45th when he became the first black director of a Broadway play, "Promises, Promises"--he once made me a fabulous offer, which I continue to regret not having taken up because my super ego unfortunately won out over my libido);
• Robert Whitehead (who rode his bicycle to the studio, and also brought his wife Zoe Caldwell to do cues for the Tony-winning "Medea"); and
• Stefan Wolpe (composer of intricate electronic music who was so happy when, in a wheelchair, he saw me at a ceremonial of the American Academy, of which he was a distinguished member). Wolpe, one of America's leading avant-garde composers, was married to Hilda Morley , once a teacher at Walden and a poet whose work was shaped by abstract expressionism;
• In addition, there were all those wonderful backup musicians. Both Fernando and I loved the scene and helped make it what it was.

On a 1985 trip to California, we were invited by the new owner of Greta Garbo 's Palm Springs house to stay overnight in John Gilbert's bedroom. The next morning, after breakfast where Greta often ate by the pool, Fernando (an excellent swimmer all his life) took a dip. . . .

In 1995 I again returned for a humanist conference, at which time anthropologist H. James Birx, Free Inquiry managing editor Tim Madigan, let me take them on the road to Limon through a rain forest. Dr. Birx was fascinated with the environment and photographed me:

Later, they and Spanish philosopher Jesús Fuertes accompanied me to Fernando's tomb:

Photo by Dr. H. James Birx

Szwed, John F., Space Is The Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (NY: Pantheon Books, 1997, 476 pp., $29.95)

Sun Ra "was at once the last of the great romantic composers, one of the premier avant-gardists of the latter half of the twentieth century, and a black cultural nationalist who extended Afrocentrism from ancient Egypt to the heavens."

Dr. Szwed is Musser Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies, Music, and American Studies at Yale University

p. 202

Early in the 1960s Sun Ra was in Audiosonic, an independent recording studio in the Brill Building near Times Square, when he ran into one of their engineers, Fred Vargas. Vargas was a Costa Rican who had worked his way up from the garment district to a job in the REL labs with General Edwin Howard Armstrong, the inventor of FM radio, and then on to becoming a recording engineer. Shortly after, Audiosonic was turned into Variety Recording Studio on 225 West 46th Street when it was bought out by Vargas and Warren Smith, an English teacher in Connecticut. Vargas and Smith were intrigued by Sun Ra's music, and they began to record his small groups, and when the studio burned in 1968 and they had to move to West 42nd Street, their new studios were large enough to record Sun Ra's whole band (sometimes with as many as thirty musicians). They extended him long-term credit, living with occasional bounced checks, and helped him cut costs (Sonny often saved fifty dollars by sticking his own blank labels on the records, keeping his cost for a 12-inch LP to ninety-nine cents). Vargas and Smith allowed Sonny to press as few as 100 copies of a record at a time, when most recording companies had a minimum of 500. By handprinting the covers, they could avoid printing costs altogether. Often the covers carried only a simple title, or only the location of the recording in black ink; but at times they became more elaborate, with multicolored grids, rainbows, or astral scenes; or there might be photos of Sun Ra pasted on, hand-tinted, the whole cover laminated with a piece of textured plastic shower curtain. Sometimes every cover of a single record was different.

For the next thirty years Vargas recorded much of Sonny's music, editing the tapes with him, mastering them, and helping him get his records pressed. He introduced Sonny to people in show business, like Gershon Kingsley , an early synthesizer enthusiast, who later helped Sonny program his first Moog. The Arkestra was usually recorded in stereo with two overhead microphones, but occasionally by laying down tracks, then later overdubbing whatever parts Sonny decided to add. The whole recording process was open to discovery. Smith tells the story of when Vargas and Sonny were editing at three in the morning, and Fred accidentally played a tape backwards. "Galactic!" cried Sonny, and insisted that the sound be dubbed into the final version just as it was.

Warren Smith took care of business matters at Variety and had long conversations with Sonny about philosophical, personal, and financial matters when he was in the studio. Sonny began to have disagreements with Alton Abraham and feared that he was being cheated by other producers. So Smith created a fictive corporation by having "Enterplanetary Koncepts" stationery printed up, and he sent out inquiries to producers and record companies requesting accountings of money owed to Le Son'y Ra, Sun Ra and His Arkestra, and El Saturn Records. No money was ever collected, but Sonny treated Vargas and Smith as his colleagues: Arkestra members often slept overnight at the studio after recording sessions; they mailed press clips from their tours back to Smith, who stored them for them; and Sonny frequently sent them cheery postcards from his travels, which typically read "Having a wonderful time. Ciao, Sun Ra."

p. 372

One November morning in Philadelphia, Sun Ra found himself gasping for breath, his heart beating fast, then dropping away to a slow fade. Again they took him to the emergency room, and when the nurse saw his blood-pressure readings they put him back in the hospital once more. He came back out in a few days, but one morning he woke up unable to walk. The band tells the story that the doctor in the emergency room went through the procedures for establishing the nature of the injury, the degree of the damage: How many fingers do you see? What year is this? Who's the president of the United States? Where were you born? That was it: he called for a specialist. When the neurologist arrived there was a whispered conference at the door to the room, and the second doctor looked in and said, "Oh, it's Sun Ra. He is from Saturn !"

But this time it was serious. Serious enough that his sister came up from Birmingham to see him. The diagnosis was a series of strokes, yet Sun Ra&endash;like Bob Marley a few years before him&endash;denied it was a stroke, and said it was something done to him by his enemies. "There are forces trying to hold me back. And other forces trying to help me onward. And I'm the battleground!"

One side was affected, his legs, his left hand hardly functioned. He asked to be released from the hospital so the band wouldn't miss any work. But they kept him there and later moved him to a rehabilitation center. While in rehabilitation he asked to have a keyboard beside his bed and continued to play with one hand. He made calls to friends to reassure them and made plans for his return. One of the calls was to Warren Smith at Variety Recording Studio to say that he had heard that Smith's partner Vargas had died, and he was touched to find out that Smith had played part of the John Cage/Sun Ra recording at Vargas's funeral:

To his metaphysical surprise, I informed him that Fred was still at the studio. "Still at the studio? What do you mean?" he asked. "Well," I explained, "I took most of his cremains along with my luggage to Costa Rica, having them buried next to his parents and other family members. But I saved a little tube for my apartment and I saved another tube for the studio." "You did what?" Sun Ra asked is disbelief. "Yes," I explained, "when the workers were constructing the new Studio A control booth and no one was looking I slipped the cremains into a part of one of the walls. So Fred is still in his studio!" Sun Ra thought that was just the most beautifully metaphysical thing I had ever told him about, and before he hung up he said, "I love you both." The emphasis was on both. "I love you, too," was all I could respond, and the fact that he called just before his death adds to my indelible memories of the guy who once denied to me the London Times's report about his real birthplace and his real name . . . but we both knew otherwise, and he knew I knew. One newspaper, he laughed, even wrote that he had green blood in his veins.

A benefit was held for Sun Ra at the Village Gate at the end of November where Charles Davis , Junior Cook, Michael Weiss, Dewey Redman, and others led their own groups. In January there was another benefit at Sweetwater's with John Gilmore leading the Arkestra. And there was even talk of a tribute to Sun Ra at Lincoln Center's new jazz department, but nothing came of it.

p. 380

On May 30, 1993, a Sunday, towards whatever destiny, he left the planet. The man who had attempted to define death out of existence, to undo it with the force of words, to rescue all of the dead of history, was now himself being tested.

ASOCIACION IBEROAMERICANA ETICO HUMANISTA

The Dutch Government generously gave the equivalent of about $15,000 to the Dutch Humanist Institute for Development Cooperation (HIVOS), which advanced the money to the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) to develop a humanistic group in Central America. Co-Presidents Paul Kurtz and Rob Tielman, knowing of my "Costa Rican connection," inquired if I would be interested in helping set up such an association of Spanish-speaking humanists.

So, at my own expense I traveled to San José in 1994, met officers of the Costa Rican humanist group&endash;Asociacion Ético Humanista Costarricense (ASEHUCO)--;obtained Alexander Cox's agreement to preside over the new group, got his brilliant friend Ricardo Otárola to help, was lucky to have legal advice from an astute Marco Castillo . . . and in 1994 the Spanish-American Association for Ethical Humanism was formed. Although Dr. Kurtz had in mind an organization just for Central America, I set the group up as a South American, Central American, and Caribbean association (that included, for example, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, etc.).

In 1995, a conference was arranged in Costa Rica at which delegates came from Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, and elsewhere (Canada, Spain, France, England, Bosnia, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands), formalizing the new ethical humanist association. Instantaneous translation made it possible for us to communicate during lectures, television coverage was extensive, and our only disappointment was that the Church did not object strenuously enough so that we could obtain yet wider coverage. At the conference, speakers included editor Tim Madigan and anthropologist Dr. H. James Birx . I spoke about my research into Spanish- and English-speaking non-believers who are in the humanities. [Me, who cannot utter an entire sentence in Spanish!]

In 1996 a Congreso Mundial Humanista was held in Ciudad de México. Hundreds attended this congress on "Global Humanism for the Cyber-age." Participants included:

• Taslima Nasrin, the Bangladeshi gynecologist-poet, author of "Shame!" [because of the fatwa on her head, often called "the female Salman Rushdie"]
• Shulamit Aloni, an Israeli government minister during the Peres regime
• Mario Bunge, Argentine-born philosopher now teaching in Canada, a consummate thinker
• Paul Kurtz, leading American secular humanist
• Rosslyn Ives, Australian who spoke on caring and nurturing during the cyber-age.
• Jesus Rivero, Mexican who spoke about idols and the mass media
• Prakash Narain, who spoke about promoting humanism in the Third World from his viewpoint as a citizen of India
• Mourad Wahba, an Egyptian who spoke about the mass-man in the cyber-age
• Tariq Ismail, who discussed the danger of being a secularist in the Middle East; he has hidden both in Europe and America
• Matt Cherry, the executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, who was one of the major conveners during the congress
• Ionna Kuçuradi , chair of the session on secularism in the Middle East
• Parviz Khazai, an Iranian who fled to Norway
• Ricardo Otárola , Costa Rican chair concerning how to organize humanism in the cyber-age
• Raoul Wirtz, Dutch speaker about humanism in the cyber-age
• Fred Edwords, representing the American Humanist Association
• Marius Mathiesen , from Norway
• Levi Fragell, from Norway
• Jane Wynne Willson , from the United Kingdom
• Barbara Stanosz , from Poland
• Harry Stopes-Roe , from the United Kingdom
• Girt van Dijk, Dutch convener of a session about euthanasia
• Jesus Puertas Fuertes , teacher in Spain (my roommate during the conference)
• Raul Macin Andrade , from Mexico
• Jean-Claude Pecker , French astrophysicist
• Fariba Hachtroudi , an Iranian now in France
• Fons Elders, from the Netherlands
• Prakash Narain, from India
• Kjartan Selnes, from Norway
• Gop Uprety, from Nepal
• Diana Brown, from the UK and Switzerland
• Dr. Vijayam, from India
• Martha de Huerta , who represented Zapatistas in Mexico
• Dr. Nehal Karim , from Bangladesh
• Jim Herrick, noted English editor of "New Humanist"
• Etienne Rios, from the Center for Inquiry in Buffalo, NY
• Hector Avalos, noted expert on religion at the State University of Iowa
• Ernesto Vera, speaking about freedom of the press in Cuba
• Pablo Cevallos, from Ecuador
• Armando Mújica , from Mexico
• Barbara Stocker , from the American rationalist group
• Robbi Robson, from the United Kingdom
• Yoloxóchilt Casas , from Mexico
• Mona Abousenna, from Egypt
• Richard Stallman , from the United States
• Benjamin Wade, from the United States
• Elizabeth Seleveld , from Norway
• Serafin J. Mercado Domenech , from Mexico
• Rob Tielman, from the Netherlands
• Jim Christopher , from the Secular Organization for Sobriety
• Dennis Razis, from Greece
• Pedro Mendoça , from Brazil
• Vera Freud, from Canada
• Edd Doerr, from the United States
• Lars Gunnar Lingas , from Norway
• Rafael Fernandez Flores , from Mexico
• Tom Flynn, a senior editor of Free Inquiry , from the American Center for Inquiry
• Manuel A. Paz y Mino , publisher of Peru's Journal of Applied Philosophy
• Mario Mendez Acosta , from Mexico
• Ranjana Hossain , from Bangladeh
• Norm Allen, from African-Americans for Humanism
• Margaretha Jones , from the United States
• Luis Vargas Z, from Mexico
• Osvaldo Navarro , from Cuba
• Blanca Gutierrez Galindo , from Mexico
• Juan A. Vizzuet , from Mexico
• Patricia Lopez Zaragoza , the Mexican humanist leader who was instrumental in making the congress such a success

ASOCIACIÓN AGUA BUENA PRO DEFENSA DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS Y MINORIAS

Triangulo Rosa was A Costa Rican gay and lesbian group whose goal had been to help emplower the community of AIDS-affected persons.

I was instrumental in helping fund the Pink Triangle's project--Triangulo Rosa--to hire Guillermo Murillo , a person living with AIDS. He was chosen by the group's health coordinator, Richard Stern, to coordinate a "patient advocacy program."

Unfortunately, those two are no longer part of the group, because of a change of officers, a misuse of resources, and a lack of program quality. I have, therefore, given my support to the new organization, Asociacion Agua Buena Pro Defensa de Los Derechos Humanos y Minorias.

The Triangulo Rosa group's original goals were inspiring:

• to accept and channel complaints about discrimination and human rights violations that allegedly occur in hospitals and on the job, as well as follow up to insure that those complaints are remediated;
• to inform affected individuals about medications, their effects, and their availability; to encourage legislators and health care program administrators to emphasize the importance of helping arrange for appropriate legal advice and medical supplies; and
• to arrange a space for regular meetings in order that those who are HIV+ can organize and empower themselves to obtain proper nutrition and medical assistance.

In June 1997, Costa Rica's Supreme Court ruled that the Calderon Guardia hospital, one of the largest, has discriminated illegally against people with AIDS for over ten years by refusing to provide laboratory services. Stern, Triangulo Rosa's health coordinator, praised the decision and said, "We are happy about this landmark ruling. Gays, lesbians, and all people affected by AIDS deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It is incredible that it was necessary for the Supreme Court to remind this government of its responsibility to safeguard the rights of all patients in the health care system. But since it was necessary, we hope that a new outlook in human rights consciousness will now prevail in Costa Rican health care. Dr. Briseño's public statements continued to fuel the flames of prejudice here, and now he will be silenced."

"Access to Treatment for People Living With Aids: The Costa Rican Situation" by Richard Stern (12 June 1997) is a 17-page document with 100 pages of appendices. On p. 10 of the paper which in detail relates Costa Rica's situation, Stern wrote:

• An important landmark occurred in late April 1997 when Mr. Warren Allen Smith , not previously known to us, responded to one of my Internet postings, offering to donate $1,000 himself and forward $1,000 from another anonymous donor to support our patient empowerment program (Appendix 23). Up until that point we had had no budget as such for this program. I rapidly conferred with the Junta Directiva (Board of Directors) of Triangulo Rosa and, almost immediately, we were able to make a decision to offer the position to the only person who was willing to take it under the conditions that we offered: being willing to come out of the closet publicly as an HIV+ person and accept the responsibilities and consequences which this position implies.
• Guillermo Murillo , HIV+ for six years, had been part of the Patient Coalition since its inception and was working at the time as a Spanish teacher. He immediately accepted the offer of a full-time position coordinating the program and began work less than two weeks after Mr. Smith's generous offer was made.
• This marked a major shift, because for the first time in Costa Rica, an HIV+ person was participating openly in the community and the importance of "Memo" as a leader and role model for other people with AIDS has been immeasurable.
• In 1998, the Costa Ricans presented me with a plaque that brought tears to my eyes: See its inscription.

Richard Stern has now set up a new organization that will follow the group's original goals: Asociacion Agua Buena. In June 1999 he reported that Panama has achieved a similar ruling, that the cocktail of medications are now available in Panama, and the El Salvador may become the third Central American nation to imitate Costa Rica.

Contact person is Richard Stern, Ph. D.: rastern@sol.racsa.co.cr