From hell to paradise
The day before Thanksgiving I received an email. Here’s what it said.
OK, here are some depressing photos of Cuba. Take a look, share with others, and thank our parents or inlaws for getting the hell out of there in time!
Included in the note was a PowerPoint presentation of some sixty or so photos of Cuba. I picked a few to share with you.
I was born in Cuba, as were my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents (except one, a Spaniard). My father was a civil engineer who happened to be on a job related trip to Texas in 1959, when Castro took power. My father did a very hard thing: he took asylum in the US. I was two years old, my mother was pregnant with my brother.
It must have been a very hard time for both of my parents. I know my father took what jobs he could. He was a janitor for a while, I don’t know what else. My mother had to live in a new dictatorship, with the stigma of a husband who had betrayed the revolution, a so-called gusasno (worm).
I was five when my father was finally able to bring my mother, my brother, and me to the US. I have no idea how he did it. I dimly remember that we were poor. We lived first in Miami, the in Tampa. My mother tells me there were signs in windows in Miami: No Cubans or dogs. She takes some pleasure in the fact that Cubans own Miami now.
It’s funny the memories that stick with you. My first winter in Tampa was cold. We lived in a rented house with no heat or AC. My lips were so chapped they bled. I started first grade not knowing a word of English.
In time my dad regained his license to practice civil engineering. I still get down to Tampa once in a while, and my mom likes to point out things he built. He loved his work, he loved buildings and bridges. I think he would have cried if he had seen these pictures. But I know he saw the reality. He and my mother went back to Cuba for a visit, once, I’m not sure why. I think they wanted to see some relative one last time. They came back heart broken by what they saw in Cuba. Not that they were surprised, but some things you cannot prepare for.
When I was very small, my mother used to tell me that Cuba had been the most beautiful place in the world. The jewel of the Caribbean. I was a skeptic even as a child. I didn’t believe her. But now I think about the beauty of the other islands, and consider that Cuba is the largest one in the Caribbean. My mother was probably right.
I recognize what I see in these pictures. Ruins. I see the ruins of a once beautiful city. I am reminded of Miami and New Orleans. Places with so much flavor that they live. Places where you know, every minute, exactly where you are. I see a shadow of that in the corpse of a once great city, a once great country. It hurts to look at it. The thing is, I am not Cuban, not really. I am an American who was born in Cuba. What must real Cubans think when they see this tragedy?
I once read a great fantasy called Tigana. A sorcerer scattered the people of Tigana and put curse on them so that they could not utter the name of their home, a place he caused the rest of the world to forget. Cubans live under a curse of sorts, one I don’t believe any other people share. Our land is devastated, our people enslaved, and we are forced to hear over and over again what good, what wonders the tyrant has accomplished. Many people have been conquered, many enslaved. Have any others had to listen to smug and ignorant fools tell them that up is down and night is day? That Cuba is better off? Better to be forgotten.
Two things console me. One is that this injustice will not stand. The people of Cuba will have their home and their freedom again. If not this year, then maybe next. Or the year after. Soon. The other is that one day the truth will be known. The records will be unsealed. The murders, the torture, the secret police. Everything. And then, I wonder, how many will forget that they ever spoke of the wonders of the revolution? The education, the health care?
Thanksgiving day is past, but I do give thanks. To my father, now 15 years deceased, and to my mother, who intends one day to return to Cuba. Thank you for getting the hell out of there. For getting me out of hell. And thank you to the people of the United States, for taking us in.
Posted on November 26th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: Cuba, personal observations
Entries RSS
For some pictures of the Batista-era non-ruins and some of what’s left
architecturally, see “Hemingway in Cuba” by H. Hemingway (niece, knows how to write) and C. Brennen (knows how to fish and write), (c) 2003 by the authors, published by Ruggedland Press.
When one looks at a ruin of any great civilization (The Coliseum in Rome, Angor Wat in Cambodia) one whose heart does not sear in pain can still see the greatness. Cuba has been in a political / economic mess the entire last 100 years (i.e. certain things sucked there before Castro, just like they suck now in Tampa; shame there’s no Mafia anymore to keep our houses in order.)
A non-ruin, in Cuba, Finca Vigia, in the “Havana suburbs”, is now a museum and cultural center; it is a scholarly place and well preserved for current and future serious research on Papa Ernesto’s papers.
Rome and Havana are both eternal cities. Pax Havana.
Castro’s loss is our gain. This nation is a better place because of the Americans of Cuban descent. I had kids in my first grade class who didn’t speak a lick of english and are now physicians, dentists, businessmen, and officers in the Air Force and Army. The Cubans effect on the american economy are the best argument for less government and a free economy since Milton Friedman went to Hong Kong. I am who I am because of my cuban friends.
Dooley
Dooley has made me see this matter in several new lights.
Like him, I am who I am because of my wonderful friends brought to the United States because of Castro’s revolution. But it makes me feel selfish. I’d like to think that I would give up these great people to let them have their country. I will contemplate this dilemma more thoroughly tonight. I know I can’t have it both ways.
Dooley,
Thank you. What you said means a lot to me. You too Paco.
Selfish I am but not on this point; people from all over the world run to the U.S. I’ve learned more from cab drivers from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Lebanon, etc. than I ever could have from the news or in school.
The melting pot is what makes this country great. I’m just very blessed to be able to know, or seek out, all these great people.
[...] When I begin to write, I don’t know exactly what I will end up saying. I am writing, not transcribing, and sometimes, when I am lucky, I learn something. Last November I wrote a piece about the ruins of Havana. Today I reread an interview of Theodore Dalrymple, and was struck by words I glossed over the first time read them. The words I wrote opened my mind to the words of another. FP: You have a fascinating essay in your collection “Why Havana Had to Die”. Can you summarize the main thesis in a few sentences? [...]
Nothing marks me as unique but my family. The beautiful and brilliant lady I married was a refugee–not from Cuba but from one of many Eastern European Socialist disasters. I am enriched, my chidren prosper, and I wonder, “Why does the world still fear such freedom?