Stories and photos by AL LARA. Northeast. CTNow.com.
http://courant.ctnow.com/news/special/ne/cuba1.stm
During a visit with my parents, I asked the question once more. We had
argued about it so many times, but I thought it was time.
My mother had just recovered from a stroke and retired from her factory job.
With so much attention focused on the custody battle over Elián González,
I couldn't ignore my position as a Spanish-speaking reporter of Cuban descent.
"If I go to Cuba, will you go with me?" I asked in Spanish.
My father nodded from his seat in front of the television as he had in the
past, but my mother's response was unchanged. "No," she said from the
kitchen counter, keeping her back to me.
It had been 30 years since my parents left Cuba, enduring a four-year wait
for an exit visa, including threats of forced labor on a sugar plantation. They
wanted their first child born on the U.S. mainland. Now they are American
citizens, and I had frequently suggested they should go back to visit while they
still had their health.
My father is a simple man, never overly concerned about the political or
moral ramifications of returning to Cuba. But my mother was adamant about not
giving a penny to Fidel Castro's government. I also knew she was terrified the
Cubans would find some reason to tear up her American passport and jail her.
For me it was a great opportunity to go to Cuba, report on the custody fight
for my newspaper and meet relatives I had never met.
A week later, the phone rang late at night. It was my mother calling from
Massachusetts.
"If you come with us, we'll go,'' she said. "I want to see my
brother Luis. I have to at least try."
Of my mother's seven brothers and sisters, Luis was the only one who
remained in Cuba. In the early years of the revolution he fell in love with a
Communist, became a Communist himself and swore to never speak again to his
exiled brothers and sisters.
That night I caught an "I Love Lucy" rerun. Ricky Ricardo was at
Club Babaloo with his bongo drum, belting out a tune.
Cuba, where it's all happy
Cuba, where all is gay
Why don't you plan a wonderful trip to Havana?
Hop on a ship
And I'll see you in C-U-B-A!
In our household it was an oft-told story. Shortly before I was born, as my
parents waited for an answer to an application to leave Cuba, my father walked
10 miles from his house in Havana to a giant statue of Jesus Christ on a
hillside overlooking the harbor. He prayed to Saint Lazarus, the most popular
saint among Cubans, that I be born in America.
They applied in 1965 but had given up hope when, in the spring of 1969, the
approval came. My mother was seven months pregnant and panicked: Women weren't
allowed to leave after six months. My parents don't know why, but a doctor wrote
down on my mother's medical chart, "five months pregnant." I was the
first in my family to be born in the United States. I was christened with the
middle name "Lazaro," Spanish for Lazarus.
Now, I could just make out the massive white marble statue of Christ through
the airplane window as the cloud cover thinned. Across the aisle my mother
pressed her face against the glass, clutching her American passport like a life
preserver.
I worried about approaching my Uncle Luis and his wife. I was disappointed
my younger sister Rita couldn't come with us. I also worried that I hadn't
brought enough money. Since 1993, the Cuban government has allowed the use of
American money on the island. But there are no ATMs in Cuba, and checks and
credit cards issued by American banks are still not honored. The $2,500 I had
hidden in a money belt would have to last two weeks. I also wanted to leave what
I could for relatives.
The plane touched down on the runway with a thud, and the passengers burst
into applause. "Gracias a Dios!" someone shouted. "Cuba!"
one young child called out to passengers' laughter.
A stewardess opened the door and warm, balmy air rushed into the flight
cabin. I thought my mother would turn and run back into the plane at the sight
of the bright green uniforms of soldiers waiting for passengers on the tarmac.
Inside the drab, utilitarian terminal, dim, fluorescent lighting made the tanned
Cubans look like menacing green Martians. I gave my passport with a journalist's
visa clipped to it to a soldier processing the passengers. I expected a hard
time.
"You're an American journalist, eh?" he asked in Spanish. I
nodded. "Well, let me tell you something: I've been here since 6 o'clock
this morning, and I think I'll die if I have to work another hour.'' He stamped
our visas and wished us a nice visit.
Automatic doors opened to reveal hundreds of Cubans behind a rope, waving
and calling out names. Others beckoned with offers to carry bags or give taxi
rides. A man in a wheelchair and another in crutches begged. Dozens of American
cars from the 1950s in varying states of preservation circled the parking lot.
I saw a lanky, deeply tanned man with sad eyes and a mustache, and I
intuitively knew he was my 47-year-old first cousin Julito. We hugged and
several hands grabbed our luggage and heaved them in to the deep trunk of his
brother Nino's 1968 Soviet Lada diesel sedan, here derisively called a "Lata,"
the Spanish word for "tin can."
The conversation was hurried and thoughtless as I concentrated on my first
glimpse of the fabled Cuba. Billboards praised Havana Club rum and Cristal beer
alongside signs reading "Motherland or death!" and "Socialism
Forever!"
"I'm lost," my father said. "I don't recognize anything."
"A lot has changed," said Julito, stammering slightly, "and a
lot hasn't."
The car wove through Havana and onto the potholed roads of Marianao, my
father's old crowded neighborhood, where Julito still lives. It was in total
darkness.
"I can't believe it, of all nights for a blackout," said Julito.
The blackouts imposed by the state to save fuel for electrical generation were
now infrequent, he said. "It's been weeks since we had one."
In his home, by the light of a kerosene lamp, Julito introduced us to his
wife, Tanya, and their 28-year-old son, Rolando. We met Julito's sister-in-law,
niece and his sister-in-law's mother. They all live with another of Julito's
sons, his wife and their 5-year-old son, in the four-bedroom, two-story home.
With Rolando's brother and his family visiting in-laws for the next week,
Julito insisted we stay in the crowded house. No one slept much that night as we
caught up on 30 years of missed family history over Cuban rum. After the others
went to bed, I sat outside on the porch excitedly writing as much as I could
remember about the night's events.
Nearby, the diesel engine of a morning delivery truck roared to life, and
the ghostly face of Cuban independence hero José Martí loomed out
of the darkness, his bust illuminated by the truck's headlights. The statue sat
on a pedestal in front of a building with a faded sign that read "Committee
for the Defense of the Revolution." CDRs exist in every neighborhood to
organize services and serve as watchers for the revolution, reporting anything
or anyone deemed anti-revolutionary.
And in the truck's lights, I noticed for the first time an old woman seated
on a second floor terrace, arms folded across her chest, watching me with an
unblinking gaze.
A cacophony of crowing cocks, barking dogs and snorting pigs woke me the
next morning. Through a window with no glass or screen, I saw an expanse of
rooftop antennas and palm trees, and concrete-block homes built impossibly close
to each other. With little land for yards, people kept dogs on roofs. One
neighbor kept a pig in a pen in an alley.
This narrow, stuccoed home with white and blue trim was where my father
lived before he married. It now belongs to Julito and is comfortable by Cuban
standards. Front and rear terraces on the second floor are ornamented by spiral
wrought-iron grillwork and matching deck furniture Julito has made from Soviet
scrap iron. Like most Cuban homes, the original doors and light fixtures have
been replaced with Soviet-supplied steel doors and cheap fluorescent lights.
Julito's pride and joy is the home's floor, made of hundreds of pieces of
different kinds of salvaged marble.
In the modest bathroom I turned the rusty faucet of the shower. Nothing
came out.
"Oh, today's the ration day. There's running water only every other
day,'' Tanya explained. She's a short, middle-aged, attractive redhead with
lines in her face - more likely the effect of Cuba's unforgiving sun than of
age. On the roof was a concrete cistern and two 55-gallon drums holding excess
water for waterless days.
"If you wait a few minutes, I'll heat up some water for you," she
said. Heat? I asked with the look on my face. Few people have working hot water
heaters here. An electric soldering iron hung from a hook near the kerosene
stove. I asked if someone in the house was an electrician. She laughed and
demonstrated the device's use by scraping it against a burner to spark ignition.
"We Cubans, we know how to invent."
It was 10 a.m. before the first programming appeared over the family's old,
British-made color television. An authoritative-looking "news'' anchor
appeared holding sheaves of paper and calling for the return "of our native
son Elián from captivity at the hands of his kidnappers in the Miami
Mafia.'' The rhetoric in Cuba over the custody battle has gone on unabated since
Elián was rescued from the Florida straits on Nov. 25. A month before I
visited, a Cuban newsman had lost his job when he segued to a report on the boy,
then, not realizing the camera was still on, complained: "Enough with this
already."
"What do you think should happen to Elián?" Tanya asked me.
I had to be careful. It's an emotional subject to broach among Cubans on
either side of the Florida Straits. I told her while I sympathized with the
Miami relatives and understood the child's mother died to liberate him, American
and international law is clear and the boy should be returned to his father. Any
decision otherwise would be racist, in light of immigration policies regarding
Haitians and other Caribbean groups who are frequently deported. Tanya seemed
pleased with my answer.
Cuba's economy is an unnatural mix of socialism and capitalism built on the
Cuban peso but ruled by the American dollar. State jobs pay in pesos that can be
used in neighborhood state stores. But lines are long and shelves are often
empty. The best products and foods are sold for dollars only on the pervasive
black market or in dollar-only stores. But only Cubans with relatives in the
United States or those who work in the tourist industry have access to American
money.
Here, where the going exchange rate is 20 pesos for one American dollar, a
house painter makes the equivalent of $12 a month; engineers make $23. Driving
his 1952 Chrysler as a taxi seven days a week over several years, my cousin
Rolando saved 3,000 American dollars, from tourist fares and loans. Three months
before, on his way to buy a newer car, he was robbed.
"Do you know what it's like to lose that kind of money here?" he
asked. "People expected me to kill myself. But what can you do? You just
have to start over." Since he was unable to replace it, his old car was in
the shop being repainted a bright shade of turquoise to attract tourists.
Rolando is a lean, tanned, grinning, wise-cracking ball of energy with the
kind of good looks I had no idea were possible in my family's gene pool. He's
only two years younger than I am. Rolando has never known a Cuba without
Communism. From the cradle he has been a product of the state, receiving a
Marxist-centered education and basic food and shelter from the motherland.
He attended the University of Havana. Mandatory military service - four
years are required for all males up to age 28 - pulled him out of school early.
He served in Cuba's version of the American elite Special Forces before bouncing
through a string of unsatisfying jobs. But for the next two weeks, he was to be
my guide.
In a borrowed car, we drove through Havana to pick up my rental car at a
resort hotel. I planned to drive all over Cuba with my parents to find their
relatives. I needed a reliable vehicle that could travel quickly and was
available at a moment's notice, should some news break about Elián that I
would have to cover for The Courant.
The street scene in Havana was mesmerizing. Shark-finned Cadillacs, `55
Chevys, `49 Ford step-side pickups, even Edsels were all used as everyday cars
or taxis. There were crude conversions, like a German dump truck turned into a
public bus, and bicycles and chairs fused together as rickshaws. Every few
blocks there was a broken-down car, its owner desperately trying to keep it
alive.
It was February and 80 degrees. An unbelievable number of people were in the
street, ignoring sidewalks. People of all ages rode bicycles, which were
everywhere. A woman who looked like she was 80 peddled a rickety 10-speed up a
hill, carrying produce. Police officers and soldiers stood at every corner. At a
stop light, several women jumped from the median and tapped on car windows.
Everyone hitchhiked, even the police.
A block-long line of people at one bus stop surged when a truck pulling a
bizarre, pink-colored trailer pulled up. It is called a "camello" -
camel - because its passenger trailer droops in the center, like the back of a
double-humped camel. It stopped, although it was already impossibly packed with
passengers. Rolando warned me not to ride one. "My brother's wife has had
someone cut a hole in the bottom of her purse four times and take her money,"
he said.
The rental car agency was in modern resort hotel near the Russian Embassy
built with cash from investors in Canada and Germany, where Cuba remains a
popular tourist destination. As we walked into the hotel lobby, a uniformed
guard looked our way.
"Pull out your passport and stay by my side so they let me in,"
Rolando whispered. The previously stern guard smiled and opened the door for us.
At the rental counter I asked for a "discreet" car. I also asked
to have Rolando's name placed in the rental contract as an auxiliary driver.
"Is he a tourist, sir?''
"No, he's Cuban. Why?''
"Well, sir, Cubans aren't allowed to rent cars or participate in rental
contracts." I felt the bile rise in the back of my throat. "Why?"
I asked a second time. It was a question Cubans aren't used to answering.
Rolando took me by the arm and urged me to leave.
"You have to understand, Cubans don't have the same rights as tourists,"
he explained outside. Rental cars are for tourists to raise money for the
country, he said. Cubans are also excluded from the hotels for the same reasons.
"There's a dealership downtown with all new American and Japanese cars, but
even if I had a million dollars, I couldn't buy one," he said.
We picked up a bright red stick-shift Daewoo, a Korean car just becoming
available in the United States. It's an inexpensive model, but with a fancy
grill that if you squint, you might mistake for a Lexus. Not the discreet car I
was looking for. In defiance of the rental agreement, I threw Rolando the keys.
He sat in the driver's seat and looked stunned.
"I've never been in a car as nice as this before. Ohmigod, is this air
conditioning? People are never going to believe this." He spent a few more
minutes delightedly acquainting himself with the retracting cup holder before
driving off.
We drove by an uninviting, rocky, seaweed-choked beach. "This is the
beach at Marianao," said Rolando. It's not much of a beach, only the local
kids go here, he said. And the balseros, the people leaving on rafts to go to
the United States.
"I left from here once, on a raft, years ago," said Rolando. "It
was made of inner tubes. I prayed to Saint Lazarus that I would take his name as
my middle name if he watched over me."
Rolando said he was about a mile and half out when the raft broke apart. "Any
farther out and I wouldn't be able to swim back," he said. "If no one
finds you, you're lucky if you drown. If you're less lucky, the sharks get you.
And if you're really unlucky, you'll just float around for weeks, starving and
burning in the sun. Lots of people I know have left. I don't know if any made
it."
At the house the noontime television news was on. The Florida judge set to
decide custody of Elián González had suffered a stroke, and a new
one had to be appointed. "Another delay! One must wonder if the American
courts are interested in the truth," the news anchor said.
The next day, with Rolando driving, my parents and I made the first of
several sojourns outside the city to look for friends, relatives and other
pieces of my parents' past. In Cojímar and Regla, which contain some of
Havana's poorest neighborhoods, many homes were little more than rusting tin
sheds.
People sitting on stoops craned their necks as our modern car went past. It
was a work day, but the streets were as full of people as on Sunday.
Unemployment, a theoretical impossibility under Communism, is common here. As
Cubans explained it to me, after paying for a taxi or bus to go to and from
work, they might only bring home a few pesos. Why bother?
We searched for my father's cousin Perico. Before the 1959 revolution, they
worked together at the Castellíto, a storied Old Havana bar, where my
father was a bartender. We asked half a dozen people before a door-to-door soap
salesman led us to the corrugated tin shack that was our cousin's home. Perico
is now an old man with a black vinyl fedora, his pants worn through in several
spots. His wife, bone-thin with bulging eyes and a sore on her leg, said she was
66, but she looked 86.
"Pepe, how are you?" Perico asked. "No, man, it's Alberto,"
my father said. "Pepe's my brother." "Oh yes, I remember well,"
said Perico.
My father rattled off names from 30 years ago. The old man nodded knowingly,
but I didn't think he remembered a thing. A crowd gathered. My father reached
for his wallet, and I had to look away. I was uncomfortable to be in a society
where a $20 bill made my father an important man. In the car my parents remarked
how bad the couple looked.
At my father's request, we searched for the Castellíto. At dusk we
drove through the unlit canyons of Old Havana, a block from the capital's
landmark seawall, known as El Malecón. Young lovelorn Cubans, with little
money to go elsewhere, go to the Malecón for romance, as my parents did
in their youth. The seawall was raised but whitecaps still break over it,
splashing kissing couples and passing cars.
Beautifully decaying Spanish colonial buildings stood side-by-side for
blocks in a colorful patchwork of crumbling architecture. Drying laundry and
bored Cubans hung from every balcony and window. Over a curb, an old man pounded
a dent out of a rusty car fender. We found the Castellito on a street corner,
but my father didn't recognize it. It was vacant, its sign gone and its windows
and doors boarded up.
My father declined to get out of the car. "Why should I? There's
nothing here now."
Late that night in Julito's kitchen, Julito, my father and I tried to drink
each other under the table. They call Julito "El Flaco," "the
skinny one," because he's 6 feet tall and weighs 150 pounds. He worked as a
mechanic at a state-run bus company. After the Soviet Union collapsed, some $6
billion a year in Soviet aid dried up. In a country already suffering the
effects of a decades-old American trade embargo, it meant drastic reductions in
food rations and shortages of fuel, oil and spare parts. Another relative
confided that Julito rode his bicycle 3 miles each day to a job where he often
sat idle with nothing to fix.
"Do you know I was the first one in the family to apply for an exit
visa in 1962? Did you know that?" he asked me, his usual nervous stammer
now accompanied by slurred speech. Julito was talking about the Freedom Flights,
a program started in 1962 that allowed Cubans to fly to the United States. My
parents left Cuba on such a flight.
"But then I got married and had two sons. I couldn't just leave. I
watched my sisters go. Then my parents. Then I was called into the military
service for four years. When I came out, it was too late."
"Do you know what it's like to go more than 30 years and not see your
family? I've applied to the U.S. Interests Section five times. And each time
they said no. I don't want to stay, I just want to see my family.
"The last time I told them my father was dying. He died a week later. I
couldn't even go to his funeral."
Julito broke down in my father's arms. I slammed back the last of the rum.
In dealings with the Cuban government, I soon learned I was considered
special. I was an American-born Cuban. That and my profession as a journalist
earned me a little more respect than an exile. Rolando called me "SuperCubano"
for the way my passport opened doors closed to him and other Cubans.
Meanwhile my parents had also become used to, if not comfortable with, the
Cuban authorities. Their fear subsided somewhat, and now they were reveling in
the nostalgia of the trip.
The morning TV news reported that U.S. courts had postponed the next hearing
on Elián González for a month. I was bitterly disappointed; I had
hoped to be present in Cuba when a decision came down.
From the street a man on a bicycle, carrying several stacked crates of eggs,
called for Tanya. He filled the bowl she carried. The monthly ration provided by
the government allows each person eight eggs, 5 pounds of rice and 3 pounds of
black beans. Milk is provided only to nursing mothers and children up to age 7.
Meat rations have been replaced by rationed blocks of soy.
Watching the exchange, my mother seemed anxious. She said she longed to see
her own relatives. They lived in the Havana neighborhood of Los Pinos on the
Avenida de los Pinos, so named for the majestic pines that had lined the
boulevard. It was where my parents had lived just before leaving Cuba. We passed
her old street several times before she recognized it; the pines had been
chopped down long ago.
The house, which now belonged to her brother Luis, was overgrown with shrubs
and almost invisible from the street. Thieves stealing bricks had removed the
entire rear wall, exposing the kitchen, where pots still sat on a stove.
"I'm sorry you have to see it like this, Maggie," my mother's
cousin Raquél, who still lived next door, told her. "Your brother
won't live in it, and he won't let anyone else live in it or fix it."
The relatives here, really strangers, were oddly affectionate toward me. I
was puzzled until I realized in a sense we had met, and I had been here. They
saw my mother through most of her pregnancy with me.
"This is where you would have grown up, Albert, if your parents stayed,"
Raquél said. I tried to imagine living here as a child, throwing stones
at the nearby foundry, attending the little school a block away, growing up
among these cousins.
I left my parents there while I attended an Elián rally at Havana's
convention center. It was rumored that Castro would be there. Sure enough, the
bogeyman of my parents' nightmares entered the hall. The crowd respectfully
quieted down when "el Jefe Comandante" took his seat of honor, front
row center in the audience. More than 40 years of fighting American capitalists
had done little to diminish his forceful presence.
For three hours, Cuban celebrity athletes and coaches took the microphone,
one after another, condemning the United States and Elián's Miami
relatives. Castro never took the stage. Once famous for marathon six-hour
speeches, he rarely speaks in public anymore, amid speculation that age has
affected his memory and made his once powerful voice a raspy growl. I left with
no greater understanding of the Cuban dictator.
On the way back to Los Pinos, it occurred to me that in all the homes I had
visited there were no pictures of Fidel. No portraits of Che. No bright green
army uniforms hanging in open closets. No Communist Party awards or citations or
any of the other paraphernalia that certainly must have accumulated after 40
years of living in Cuba. Were items removed to make us feel more comfortable?
I returned to Los Pinos, where a homecoming party was being thrown for my
parents at another cousin's house. He had a rooftop bar and dance floor
illuminated with colored lighting. Loud salsa music played. Sheet metal obscured
it all from the view of spying neighbors.
It was raucous, with singing and dancing and lots of beer and rum flowing.
My parents sat at the head of a table, surrounded by their childhood friends,
sharing stories of adolescent mischief. They were so happy they were crying, and
so were many of the partygoers. This is why we came to Cuba, I thought.
In the midst of a dance a young woman in Lycra shorts and horn-rimmed
glasses, balancing a baby on her hip, took my arm. "You're the American
journalist, aren't you?" For the next half-hour, she told me of her
frustration with the revolution.
"I am a patriot, a socialist and a revolutionary," said the woman.
"But what has been going on here is not socialism. Cubans aren't given the
same rights as tourists. Cubans aren't given the means to earn dollars to buy
food and products in dollar stores.
"Don't get me wrong, I love my country. But there is a great deal of
disillusionment with our government," she said. "People don't rise up
against Castro because they're too busy trying to find enough food to sustain
their families each day. Still, I think the introduction of the dollar was the
best thing to happen."
This surprised me. Surely the dollar has created class divisions, I said.
"Yes, the dollar has improved conditions only for those who have access
to it. But the dollar, and more importantly the tourists, are forcing Cuba to
open up and be freer. It has allowed you to come here and carry our words out of
Cuba," she said.
The rest of the evening I was barely able to get in a dance as one person
after another took me aside to get the latest news on everything from Elián
to the Russian war in Chechnya. How starved these people are for information, I
thought.
I caught up with my parents during a quiet moment. "Are you glad you
came to Cuba?" My mother flashed me a genuine smile I hadn't seen on her in
a long time.
My parents, Rolando, Julito and I drove two hours to visit my father's
cousin Modesto, a guajíro, or peasant farmer, who runs a tobacco farm in
my father's childhood home of Piloto. It is a section of Consolacíon del
Sur in the western province of Pinar del Río, where much farming is still
done with oxen and plowshares. The region is considered the finest tobacco
growing area in the world. A pig roast, the favorite of Cuban traditional meals,
was planned as a homecoming.
I found that the farther we were from Havana, the less friendly Cubans were
to tourists. In a gas station parking lot, a child kicked a cardboard box
shouting, "Estados Unidos! Estados Unidos!" with each kick. I ignored
a threatening shout of "Yanqui!" from a group of teens.
Modesto's farm was near the site of my grandfather Antonio's plantation. In
the first half of the 20th century, as U.S. corporations dominated Cuban
agriculture, my grandfather held on to his farm, raising tobacco and sugar and
vegetables with the help of my father and his brothers, who worked in the
fields. The farm was destroyed in the 1980s to make room for a reservoir that
provides water for area farms.
While trying to avoid a deep puddle that covered the dirt road leading to
Modesto's farm, I managed to drive the rental car right into a bog, burying the
front wheel halfway up the tire. I persuaded a farm hand retrieving oxen from
the fields to hitch them to the car and pull it out. I thanked him with five
American dollars and a bottle of rum I was saving as a souvenir.
We arrived at harvest time, as Modesto gathered the broad green tobacco
leaves from his fields. He hung them from a stand made of large branches to dry
in the sun. Nearby a dried batch hung in an immense thatch hut to cure for 45 to
60 days until the leaves turn brown. Later we rode horses bareback to survey the
property.
"All of this as far as the eye could see belonged to the family. Now it
all belongs to the state, and we simply have permission to farm it,'' said the
guajíro.
"Cuba is a beautiful woman, but you have to eat fire to live here."
During a visit to another cousin's home, one of my father's eyes reddened
and swelled. We took him to the provincial hospital in the city of Pinar del Río,
which had a staff ophthalmologist. Days earlier I was in a clean and modern
hospital for tourists in Havana, to buy cough medicine from the hospital's
pharmacy. I was stunned by the difference.
The provincial hospital's dingy lobby was a crowded waiting room where stray
dogs wandered and flies swarmed. The halls were completely dark. A woman in a
hospital gown and crutches tried to negotiate a flight of stairs in pitch
blackness. I reached for a light switch and found an empty electrical box.
Doorknobs were missing from doors.
A nurse told us the ophthalmologist was in surgery with a patient with a
nail driven through his eye. I was embarrassed when Julito stressed we were
tourists, to hasten treatment.
In the hospital lobby, my father, already taking medication for high blood
pressure, swooned. In minutes an attentive doctor determined my father's blood
pressure was alarmingly high and that the dosage of the medication prescribed by
his American doctor was too low. My father immediately felt better after a
double dose.
Later the ophthalmologist determined my father had torn the membrane
covering his cornea, probably with an abrasive rub with a handkerchief. She
removed the torn portion right there in the examination room and covered the eye
with a gauze patch. I was struck with the bedside manner of the doctors. Each
spent much more time with my father than his American doctors had, repeatedly
explaining their diagnoses until he understood.
We were then taken to the nicest room in the hospital, a well-lit,
air-conditioned office where tourists pay for their treatment in cash. The whole
procedure cost just 50 American dollars, not counting the $20 bill my father
later slipped the ophthalmologist. "It was the best attention a doctor ever
gave me," he reasoned.
With our plans changed and my father in no condition to travel, we spent the
night with friends of the family in Piloto. "The Twins," as they are
called, were the middle-aged daughters of a Florida supermarket mogul. They live
in relative luxury, in two adjacent air-conditioned homes with hot running
water.
One twin is married to Ramón Suarez, a pitching trainer for the Cuban
national baseball team who participated in last year's exhibition games with the
Baltimore Orioles in the United States and Cuba. Suarez is something of a Cuban
celebrity, having trained New York Yankee Orlando "El Duque" Hernández
and his younger brother, San Francisco Giant Livan Hernández, both
embarrassing defections from Cuban baseball. That night Suarez was coaching the
Cuban all-star game at a stadium in nearby Pinar del Río.
Suarez and I met the next morning in an exchange of firm handshakes. "He
came in at 4 a.m. asking me, `Are they still here? Are they still here?' He was
so worried you'd be gone," his wife said.
My father, a baseball fan, emerged from a bedroom with his eye patch on. "José
Canseco hit me with a fly ball," my father joked, referring to another
Cuban expatriate baseball slugger.
Suarez talked with my father all morning, ravenously taking in any news he
could about professional baseball in the United States. "You have to
understand, this is my job, but even I don't have access to American sports
newspapers or Sports Illustrated," he said.
Suarez said he hoped the cultural exchanges between Cuban and U.S. baseball
teams would continue. "Since the games with Baltimore, five major league
teams in the U.S., including the L.A. Dodgers, have asked to play in Cuba,"
said Suarez.
Before we left, Suarez gave me a baseball card with his picture on it, just
like the American kind. I asked him to autograph it. Then he surprised me and
gave me a stack of American baseball cards from the 1950s. Some looked valuable.
"I've had them since I was a kid, but I don't have any use for them
here. Maybe when you have a son you could give them to him," he said.
Back in Havana, I was anxious to get back to the work I wanted to do in
Cuba. I wanted to go to Cárdenas, the hometown of Elián González.
It's a gritty, industrial town about 80 miles east of Havana, the last
outpost of Cuban reality before reaching the fantasy tourist resort of Varadero
Beach. Before Elián, Cardenas was known as the site of the first Cuban
flag raised on the island, and the first statue of Christopher Columbus erected
in the Western Hemisphere. If I thought Havana was a throwback to the 1950s, Cárdenas
harkened to the early 1900s. Fuel and oil shortages hit the town particularly
hard, and nearly all public buses were replaced with horse-drawn carts and
bicycle taxis.
An understated billboard dedicated to "Eliáncito" - "little
Elián" - greeted travelers on the main road entering town. The
Marcelo Salada Primary School that Elián had attended showed signs of the
fresh peach paint and the repairs it had received by government order since the
world's eyes had been trained on the town. Over an open archway hung framed
photographs of Elián on one side and Fidel Castro on the other. A popular
poster of Elián, with prison bars superimposed over his face, was tacked
to the door of principal Maribel Reyes' office.
Despite the nearly constant worldwide attention, the boy's hometown is
strangely missing the handbills and posters of support visible throughout the
rest of the country.
"The truth is, with all the press attention, putting a poster of Elián
in your window has been an invitation for intrusion," said Miguel Quintana,
a brother of the boy's paternal grandmother, who traveled to the United States
earlier this year with his other grandmother to argue for Elián's return.
As they do nearly every day, a handful of friends, relatives and reporters
sat and waited on this short street of colorful, freshly painted homes. Photos
and newspaper clippings about the boy were tacked to doors.
On this day there was no military guard protecting the bright-blue front
door of the house belonging to the boy's father, Juan Miguel González.
Neighbors said that for weeks he had been staying in Havana in one of Fidel
Castro's many safehouses. As for the guards, they had learned to anticipate
media interest and appear before major court decisions or government edicts.
I asked Quintana about speculation that the boy's father wanted his son to
stay in the United States, but he was swept up in the Cuban government's
campaign to return Elián. He diplomatically ignored the suggestion.
"It's been very difficult for the family. It seems that everything that
could be written has," he said. "We understand the attention and
appreciate the support. It's just gotten to be too much."
Back in Havana, it was time to face something we had been avoiding since we
got here. It was the reason my mother agreed to come to Cuba. She got the
address from her cousin Raquél, and she, my father, Rolando and Julito
piled into the rental car to find it. Ironically it was less than a mile away.
"Is this it?" Rolando asked, bringing the car to a stop on a
narrow street before a nondescript doorway where my mother's brother Luis lived.
"Yes, I think it is,'' my mother said quietly. Her hands trembled. My
father held her hands. "Don't worry, we're all going with you," he
said.
We entered the rundown apartment house through a winding hall that opened to
a courtyard solarium. Laundry hung from balconies and water dripped from a
rooftop cistern.
My mother hesitantly knocked on a swinging, wooden, saloon-type door. A
pony-tailed girl with bright eyes and the traditional golden tan uniform of a
Cuban schoolgirl answered the door. "Yes?" she asked.
"Hello, is your grandfather in? We were hoping we could see him. Is he
here?" my mother asked, peering over the little girl into the tiny living
room with a small, high window covered by bars.
"My grandmother left a little while ago. But she'll be back soon,"
the girl said, not answering the question.
"You don't know me, but I'm your aunt from America. Are you Freda? I've
always wanted to meet you." The girl looked down on the floor shyly,
confused and not knowing what to do.
"I've got something here for you from your Aunt Nereida," my
mother said, letting herself in and pulling from a plastic shopping bag a blue
satin party dress and packages of colorful barrettes and hair bows. Freda's eyes
brightened.
We sat with the 14-year-old for nearly an hour, making small talk. I felt
like an intruder. I didn't know what I was more afraid of, the reaction of my
uncle or his wife when she returned and found us here.
"Are you sure your grandfather's not here?" my mother asked.
Without a word, the little girl glanced up a flight of concrete stairs to the
second floor. Silently, my mother stood up and began climbing the stairs. My
father and I followed. Freda looked alarmed but said nothing.
The second floor was a narrow maze of clutter. Floor-to-ceiling piles of
clothes, papers and what looked like garbage lined the walls, leaving only a
narrow passage. Clothes hung from the ceilings like curtains. Around a corner
was a small bedroom. On a bed surrounded by more piles of clutter sat an old
bearded man with long, stringy gray hair, his eyes seething with anger.
"What do you think you're doing? How dare you! Who invited you here?
Get out, get out!'' he shouted, waving threateningly.
"Luis, relax, it's Alberto and Magaly," my father said.
"I don't care who it is! Get out! Get out! Get out!" Luis shouted
until we scrambled down the stairs again. Freda wouldn't look at us.
"Don't be embarrassed. We knew this would happen," I told the
girl.
At that moment a thin, small woman in her 60s with a scarf around her head
arrived at the door.
"Magaly? Alberto? Wow," she said, bursting into the room and
embracing my parents. "I heard you might come around. Have you been
upstairs yet?"
"I'm afraid so. It didn't go well," said my mother.
"I'm sorry. Don't take it personally. He doesn't see anyone. He hardly
ever leaves his bedroom." She told us he had a new baby grandson he has
refused to see as well.
It was only then that I realized what kept my mother and her brother apart
for so long was not ideology but his worsening mental condition. Luis was a
pitiful, estranged figure. It was just easier to call him a Communist and blame
his behavior on Communism.
His wife, who had shouldered much of the blame in family stories, was the
real victim. A brilliant woman, she was a university language professor fluent
in English, Russian and German. Bubbly and friendly, she, her daughter and
beautiful grandchild had been cut off from relatives because of my uncle's
behavior.
All the sadness and guilt that had been building inside me since arriving in
Cuba was becoming too much to bear. I could barely look these people in the eye,
imagining the tragedy of those 30 years of isolation. We spent what must have
been hours there, telling stories, taking pictures and exchanging addresses and
phone numbers and promising to keep in touch. We never asked her if she were
still dedicated to the revolution.
That night Rolando and I drank tequila and daiquiris at El Floridita, a
pretentious but beautiful Old Havana bar that was supposedly a favorite haunt of
Ernest Hemingway. Star-shaped light fixtures hung from the ceiling and elaborate
dentilated molding framed the room. A waiter lit our fat $12 Cohiba cigars with
much ceremony, charring the blunt end with a lighter, snipping a sliver off the
other end and waving the cigar in the air in short circles to ignite it. Rolando
was in heaven.
But I had trouble enjoying myself. I couldn't stop thinking about how
different my life would have been had my parents stayed in Cuba. I imagine I
probably would have become an army officer. I have always had an inclination
toward authority and to being involved in important events. Journalism here
would have been pointless.
Julito is a sad picture of what the exiles left behind, I thought. I
wondered how Rolando's life would be different. He is still young, and his life
still holds promise. I decided to help get Julito permission to visit the United
States and Rolando permission to leave. For 30 years, I had ignored them. I owe
them something, I thought.
Without telling anyone, my last day in Cuba I took a cab to the U.S.
Interests Section, which serves as our country's representative in Cuba in the
absence of diplomatic relations. I expected the driver to take me to the guard
booths I had seen while driving by the front of the building so many times. He
drove until he came to a huge crowd on an empty lot about two blocks from the
rear of the building.
"What are you doing?"
"We're here."
"What do you mean? The building's still blocks away."
"Yes, but this is as far as you go, then you get in line."
I stepped out of the cab, and the sight was heartbreaking. What appeared to
be a couple of thousand people, many carrying suitcases, milled around in an
empty lot, listening to Cuban police shouting directions from a megaphone.
Across the street, a line five-people deep and two blocks long led to the
Interests Section. Many of the people carried suitcases. I asked one middle-aged
woman what was going on.
"We're waiting to get an appointment for an interview. They say they're
giving out 400 visas a day." I ask why she's carrying a suitcase. "Oh,
it has a change of clothes and some food. I've been here for four days now."
I had driven by the front of the building so many times, completely unaware
of the drama unfolding behind it.
A line of armed Havana police manned barricades on the street leading to the
Interests Section. Several lines of Cuban soldiers with handguns and automatic
rifles stood behind them, spaced about 50 yards apart. Blue-uniformed American
security forces stood behind the 10-foot-high walls and gates of the Interests
Section.
I pulled out my passport and began heading toward No Man's Land. The Cuban
police, hands on their guns, ordered me to stop. I put my hands over my head and
shouted in Spanish that I was an American. They seemed startled, not used to
seeing a non-Cuban in the crowd. They pointed me to the next line of security,
where the process was repeated.
After identifying myself to a military supervisor, I was permitted to reach
a heavy metal gate door on the gray outside wall of the Interests Section. The
steel door clicked open to admit me to a small room, where I was searched by
American security personnel and put through a metal detector. Reaching the
building itself, I was put through another metal detector before an interior
door buzzed open, letting me in.
Inside I was led into a sterile-looking waiting room, with 50 empty chairs,
five windows and framed tourism posters of New York and San Francisco on the
walls. I took a number, and moments later a crowd of Cubans entered, filling
nearly every chair. When my number was called I asked for a supervisor and
explained the situation regarding Julito. Why was he denied so many times for a
visit?
"If you're a working-age Cuban, it is very difficult to get permission
to visit the U.S. Really, only retirees get permission, because they have
property and extended family here. Young people say they're only visiting the
U.S.; then they refuse to leave."
How about all the people standing outside? I asked. Is it true you're giving
out visas?'
"There's no set number of visas we give out. It's done case by case,"
he said. About three weeks earlier the Interests Section changed the procedure
for requesting an interview, asking people instead to drop their Cuban passports
into mail slots outside. In a place with so little public information, rumors
are rampant. A rumor got out that visas were being handed out and for a month
the crowds had been camping outside.
I asked if it helped to have an American-born, Cuban-descended blood
relative make an appeal. Or if I could personally take out a bond or lien
ensuring his return.
"There is a provision in immigration law to allow a bond, but there's a
unique Catch-22 with Cubans," he said. They're the only immigrant group
with blanket permission to stay in the United States if they reach it. There's
no such thing as an illegal Cuban immigrant, so technically the lien could never
be enforced if he decided to stay. "I'm sorry, but there's not much you can
do," he said.
The night before we left Cuba I took my mother to the statue of Christ my
father prayed to back in 1969. Below, the lights of the Havana skyline sparkled
off the harbor waters like diamonds.
The 600-ton white marble statue was completed in 1958, just before the
revolution that eventually espoused an atheistic philosophy and discouraged
religious worship. We later learned the statue's sculptor had died the very
night we were there.
I felt so much richer for the experience of knowing my family here and was
thankful for the new understanding I had of the sacrifices my parents made so I
would be born an American. I was thankful for my birthright and the freedoms
democracy had afforded me. But I also understood the Cuban revolution was the
direct result of centuries of interference by Spain and the United States. Today
its people remain as they always have been, at the mercy of fierce political
winds.
I could blame my own ignorance for not having contacted my Cuban relatives
sooner. To some extent I could understand a mixture of fear and politics in the
case of my parents. But why had the rest of my relatives, some living only 90
miles away in Miami, done so little to help their family here? Rolando told me
Cubans had come to an understanding about their exiled cousins. Something about
becoming an American meant going from worrying about not having enough to eat to
worrying about not having as nice a car as your neighbor. It was just easier to
let go of the Cuban guilt.
My mother said she was finally at peace with her brother, the hurt healed by
the love showed by his family. Somehow the joy of the little schoolgirl filled
the void.
"This is my first time here at the statue, you know," my mother
said. "In fact, I saw more in Cuba in the last two weeks than I ever did in
the 30 years I lived here."
My mother looked at me for a long time. "It's funny; you were the
reason we left Cuba, and now you're the reason we came back."
March 12, 2000.
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