By Daniel Gonzalez. The Arizona Republic. Jan. 7, 2000
Before Vivian Diaz was sent to Miami at age 6, her parents tried to prepare her. "My father taught me to say, 'I'm hungry. I want an apple.' They actually sat me up on the kitchen table and taught me that."
Vivian Diaz was 6 when she climbed onto a plane in Cuba, clutching a thermos full of chocolate milk.
Desperate to get her out of Cuba, her parents sent her off to live with relatives in Miami.
For 37 years, the memories surrounding that day have haunted the north Phoenix woman, but never more so than now.
Elian Gonzalez brought them back.
He is the 6-year-old Cuban boy whose rescue at sea touched off a politically charged custody battle. On Wednesday, U.S. immigration officials said the boy should be returned to his father in Cuba.
"This is wrong," said Diaz, 43, an administrator at Phoenix's Hispanic social services agency, Chicanos Por La Causa. "From my heart, it's wrong."
Diaz would have preferred to see the boy's father brought to the United States.
"My theory from Day One was to bring the father," said Diaz, who moved to the Valley 22 years ago. "If he is such a good father and such a good parent, he would give up a country. . . . If the father is so committed, come be with your son. Start fresh here."
Her own odyssey began Sept. 14, 1962, when Diaz boarded a Miami-bound Pan-Am flight.
Diaz cannot recall the memories without tears welling in her eyes. But she would not trade those experiences, or her freedom, for anything, not even the four weeks she waited to be reunited with her parents -- weeks that turned into seven years.
At the time, Fidel Castro had just steered Cuba toward communism, and thousands of middle-class Cubans were fleeing the island, 90 miles south of Florida, by the planeload. The Diaz family tried to leave the country, but her parents couldn't get visas to enter the United States.
The Diazes decided to send Vivian, their only child, unaccompanied, to an aunt and uncle already living in Miami. Her parents would come later, the thinking went.
From 1960 to 1962, 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children entered the United States under Operation Peter Pan, according to Maria de los Angeles Torres, a political science professor at DePaul University, who is writing a book on the subject.
Parents could apply for visas to join their children. But about 8,000 children were left stranded for years when the program stopped in 1962, she said.
Diaz remembers preparing for the trip.
"My father taught me to say, 'I'm hungry. I want an apple,' " Diaz recalled. "They actually sat me up on the kitchen table and taught me that."
On the big day, her mother dressed her in a plaid skirt, white blouse and black patent leather shoes. In the taxi on the way to the airport, Vivian's mother coached her some more: Whatever you do, don't look back, she instructed.
But at the boarding gate, a guard in green army fatigues grabbed Vivian by the shoulders and forced her to turn around. Vivian could see her mother, standing behind a pane of glass, waving goodbye. Other parents were waving to their own children.
Diaz can still hear the cruel words of the guard, "Te quieres ir o te quieres quedar." Do you want to go or do you want to stay.
She remembers replying without hesitation: "I want to go."
Door slams shut
Diaz thought she would be reunited with her parents within a few weeks. But the next month, the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out. The U.S. government shut the door on Cuban refugees, and the flights out of Cuba stopped.
For the next seven years, Diaz waited for her parents. She lived with her aunt, uncle and a cousin, first in Miami, then in La Jolla, Calif., then in Mineola, N.Y.
Her aunt initiated a nightly bedtime ritual.
"Blow a kiss to the wind, and your mother and father will catch it," her aunt would tell her.
In 1969, Diaz was tearfully reunited with her parents at a New York airport. Both parents died five years later.
Now, Diaz sees a parallel between herself and Elian Gonzalez. The boy was rescued on Thanksgiving, clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic Ocean. His mother and stepfather were among those fleeing Cuba who drowned when their boat capsized.
"I'm him," Diaz said. "I want to touch that child. I want to meet him. I want that child to know that he will be stronger because of this experience."
Copyright 2000, Arizona Central |