a Cuban accent strikes many fellow Latins as full of verve and good cheer and has probably done more for good vibrations between Cubans and other Spanish speakers than any diplomatic venture. During the 1970s and 1980s, Álvarez Guedes dedicated himself to recording comedy albums and writing comedy books. He routinely expressed his desire for Cuba to return to the way it used to be; such was the occasion when he made one of his famous jokes, involving a TWA flight he supposedly took between Havana and Miami. That route was actually flown by TWA, Pan Am and Cubana before Fidel Castro's rise to power. Curiously, his own best-selling album is in English — sort of. In his How to Defend Yourself from the Cubans, which was released in the mid ’80s, Alvarez Guedes routines are spoken in heavily accented English — and incongruously American-accented Spanish. In the album, Alvarez Guedes warns Americans in a tongue-in-cheek manner about the Cuban invasion of United States homeland and culture. The humor works doubly with English and Spanish speakers, the latter recognizing the absurdities of their own culture. It is admitted among Cuban-Americans that Alvarez Guedes could call Cubans on their follies without eliciting any rancor from his countrymen. In that recording and other stand-up routines, Alvarez Guedes patented the use of the expression ¡ñó! Though it stands for a blunt obscenity, Cubans use the word in both the two-syllable original and the abbreviation as a sign of awe, indignation or even reflection, without ever considering its original meaning. It is the ultimate four-letter word. But given how Cuban speech tends to slur pronunciation, the comedian picked up on its shortened version and it became his trademark. It’s likely that Guillermo Alvarez Guedes broke the vulgarity barrier in Spanish stand-up. But he did not do so transgressively, like a Lenny Bruce, but in the manner of American ethnic comics like the masters of Jewish shtick, as the natural expression of a people. For most of his career, Alvarez Guedes’ humor was laced with vulgarity and his audiences laughed accordingly. Yet he never told truly off-color jokes and his comic persona was deadpan and straight, sometimes affecting righteous indignation. He was just talking as would any Cuban. That was his biggest appeal. He played — some would say he was — the cubanazo, a word well known in Miami which roughly means, The Big