By Jorge Reyes. Published Sunday, August 26, 2001 in
The Miami Herald
I have been thinking a lot lately about the U.S. embargo and its ability,
real or perceived, ultimately to bring about a democratically elected government
in Cuba. In my most recent book, a personal memoir that included a visit to
Cuba, I hardly touched on the subject. At the time I was writing it I didn't
think politics was as important as the personal drama I sought to analyze.
However, since then, many things have occurred that have brought the entire
dialogue of Cuba to the forefront (yes, I'm thinking of the Elián soap
opera), causing me to change my own personal opinions. Prior to that time, my
thoughts were not unlike what the vast majority of Cubans in exile think: With
an embargo, Fidel will be history.
I left Cuba when I was 8 years old. Up until my visit, I thought very little
of my country. I was too taken by my new adopted nation -- by everything it gave
me, by all the opportunities I had. Cuba, to my way of knowing, was a backward
nation with a repressive form of government that stifled aspirations, hope and
even happiness. The few times I thought about Cuba, I only thought about the bad
things: having my hair forcefully trimmed at my elementary school; actos de
repudios -- acts of repudiation; the hardships; the hunger.
Why, I thought to myself, would anyone want to go back and visit?
As I grew older, my ideas matured, and my memories became laced with
childhood nostalgia. It was Ernest Hemingway who said that memory is hunger. I
often heard about the old house in the town in Boniato near the city of Santiago
de Cuba. I often heard about my grandmother, now old, with cottony white hair
and a face full of wrinkles, who every afternoon sat in the corridor of the
house dressed in white cotton petticoats she still made by hand. She often asked
any visitors from Miami about me, about my mother, about her other family
members whom she hadn't seen in more than 20, then 30 years.
These thoughts, plus the terminal illness that finally consumed my
grandmother, prompted me finally to ask my mother and an aunt to go back. They
-- especially my mother -- had trepidations about going to Cuba. What were they
going to find? What were they expecting to find?
We left Miami on a Friday afternoon and arrived in Boniato at the crack of
dawn on Saturday. It took us almost 12 hours to arrive in a country that's only
45 minutes away. By the time we got to our hometown, the three of us were
already tired, seeing our country as if in a dream. Cars, buses and horse-drawn
carriages made up the traffic of Santiago at that hour.
The people seemed to live under circumstances that were, well, less than
favorable. Homes had electricity, but blackouts underscored the strange
realities of the peoples' existence. When there was light, it was so faint that
everything took on a surreal pale glow that was nothing less than creepy.
Buses were filled to capacity, and the people on the buses usually hung from
doors and windows, clinging desperately to each other by the hem of shirts or
pants, whatever.
I devoted a very brief chapter to politics in my book. As I said, politics
wasn't as important to me as the personal drama I sought to rediscover. And yet
the tragedy of the Cuban people as a whole and Cuba's experiment in communism,
or Fidelism, cannot be separated -- complex as it may be, sad as it is -- from
political undertones.
It was then, on my trip to back, seeing this disaster all about me, that my
ideas about Cuba began to change, and quick. The U.S. embargo hurts the people,
not those in power. If the ultimate purpose of the embargo is to defeat Fidel by
isolating him economically, socially and politically, it has failed in both
rhetoric and in practice. Fidel, 42 years after his revolution, is still there,
old and doddering, but still there nonetheless.
This, to me, is reason to enough to scrap this relic of the Cold War and
come up with something better., And this should be done not because of Cuban
politics but in spite of Fidelism and in spite, even, of the ire this view draws
among many well-intentioned Cuban Americans in Miami. Further isolation makes no
sense when the time is ripe to bombard Cuba with commerce, information and an
influx of new ideas.
I often heard about my grandmother, now old, with cottony white hair and a
face full of wrinkles.
All those who with Janus-like face only can look at an either-or situation
miss the complexities of the Cuban nation and the countless, slow ways it will
eventually turn into a pluralistic, multi-party political system.
I may be naive about my opinions. What I do know, though, is that there is a
lot of work to be done in a post-Castro Cuba. The realities of that future
demand new, fresh, imaginative ways to bring about a peaceful reconciliation
among Cubans.
I don't have all the answers. What I do have is an open mind. Now is the
time, more than ever, to breach this gap and cross that 90-mile stretch that to
some of us is as wide as the universe. So I wrote in the book: "Go and
visit an uncle. An aunt. A grandmother. Honor your past. Crack that barrier that
exists. Rediscover yourself. The Cuba of tomorrow belongs to all of us.''
My parents lost Cuba once. Don't let it happen again with this generation.
Jorge Reyes lives in Miami. His latest book Rediscovering Cuba: A
Personal Memoir will be published this month.
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 
