The title of this painting refers to a beautiful fresh-water lake in the interior of Cuba. My parents spent their honeymoon there, and after Castro’s revolution, my father worked there for two years on a project. It was to be a hotel, made up of small cabanas artfully set in the gorgeous surrounding nature. But actually, as we found out later, it became one of Castro’s personal hideaways. The smiling crocodile represents the perfidious tyrant, trying to swallow the turtle, my symbol for the Cuban people. The turtle, however, has a hard shell, and is large enough that the crocodile can’t swallow or digest it.