Paul had started out at the Mexico Lindo as a kitchen boy, and in a short time, thanks to his culinary skills, he was promoted to chef s assistant, and by the time he left it all to dedicate himself body and soul to the revolution, he was the restaurant's regular cook. In those early days of the 1960s, Paris was experiencing the fever of the Cuban Revolution and teeming with young people from the five continents who, like Paul, dreamed of repeating in their own countries the exploits of Fidel Castro and his bearded ones, and prepared for that, in earnest or in jest, in cafe conspiracies. In addition to earning his living at the Mexico Lindo, when I met him a few days after my arrival in Paris, Paul was taking biology courses at the Sorbonne, which he also abandoned for the sake of the revolution. We became friends at a little cafe in the Latin Quarter where a group of South Americans would meet, the kind Sebastian Salazar Bondy wrote about in Poor People of Paris, a book of short stories.
