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Cuban American Memoirs History, Revolution, and Reform: New Directions for Cuba Online Supplement 1 Cuban American Memoirs Mayling C. Blanco Born in Havana in 1978, she left the island for Spain in 1982 and moved to the United States in 1983. It was during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 that my family took its first steps toward the United States. As a young man, my father had been optimistic about some of the changes that took place as a result of the Revolution, such as the literacy program and the promise to decrease racism. Neverthe- less, he could not deal with the increasing infringements on his economic, political, and religious liberties. Eventually, my father realized that the only way to ensure a life for his family free from political and religious persecution was to leave Cuba; so in 1980, he left the Island on a boat heading north with nothing but the clothes on his back, his dreams of freedom, and the desire to reunite his family. My mother opted not to leave on a boat headed to an unknown future with two small children, both of whom were under three years of age. Although I was not quite two years old at the time, one of the few memories I have of Cuba is the day my father left. I remember that two or three men, dressed in the customary military fatigues and riding loud motorcycles, came to give my father the news of his departure. He was given only a couple of hours to get dressed and say goodbye to us. I still remember, as if it were yesterday, going out on the stone balcony of my grandmother’s second- floor apartment in Havana to wave goodbye to my father as he headed toward El Mariel. Little did any of us know then that we would not see him again for over three years…. During that time period [in the United States], my father found himself performing a number of odd jobs, including waiting on tables and acting as a security guard. This was quite difficult for him because back in Cuba, he had been a professor at the University of Havana.... [I]f you asked me what I am, I would respond that I am Cuban-American. American because I value independence more than anything; because at the age of seventeen I left home to go to college; because okay is the most frequently used word in my vocabulary, regardless of whether I’m speaking English or Spanish.... Yet I am Cuban because I was born on the Island; because I cannot overcome the overwhelming urge to go there; because I still feel that my roots lie there.... I know that if I ever go to Cuba, I will never be seen as a cubana, and if I go to the heartland of America, I will never be seen as an American.... My Cubanness is something deep within me, yet I realize now that it is mostly something I have learned from my parents and the traditions they have instilled in me. Excerpts from Herrera, Andrea O’Reilly (ed.). ReMembering Cuba: Legacy of a Diaspora (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001). 325 pages. Mendible, Myra. “Growing Up Cuban in Miami: History, Storytelling and the Politics of Exile,” Jouvert: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies 6 (2001). http://social.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/ mendib.htm, taken from the web on 04/23/08. Note: “Cuban American Memoirs” is an online supplement to the lesson “Cuban American Experi- ences” in History, Revolution, and Reform: New Directions for Cuba published by the Choices Program. Information on this and other resources from the Choices Program is available online at <http://www.choices.edu>. THE CHOICES PROGRAM ■ WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY ■ WWW.CHOICES.EDU History, Revolution, and Reform: New Directions for Cuba Online Supplement 2 Myra Mendible Born in Cuba, she left the island for the United States in 1959 at the age of five. … As one of over two million Cuban immigrants who settled in the South Florida area follow- ing the 1959 Cuban Revolution, I was raised a mere ninety miles away yet a world apart from my homeland. Growing up Cuban in a U.S. city where Cubans are in the majority meant that I could be an insider, could feel at home anywhere in Miami where my food was served and my language spo- ken.… Only later, in my adult travels beyond the city’s borders, would I recognize the…relativity of that “insider” status: I did not have to go far to become the outsider, an object of suspicion or curiosi- ty. I could travel a mere hundred miles south or north or west of Miami and encounter looks that said “go back where you came from.” Yet these figurative boundaries were more fluid still: during a return visit to Cuba, I was shocked to discover that I was an outsider in the land of my birth as well. …We had fled Cuba just two months after Fidel Castro and his Revolutionary Army occupied Havana, settling in Miami for what my parents regarded as a brief sojourn. Year after year, my mother safeguarded our property titles in a small metal box, convinced that someday we would reclaim the life left behind. My father’s loss was less tangible; his memory served as his metal box, and it stored a wealth of stories rich in detail and drama. Years of exile never faded my father’s memories of home…. So it was that as a teen growing up in Miami, I identified with the Cuban exile community. I shared the memories of loss that haunted my parents and other Cuban-born adults. I understood the rage, the mourning, the painful longing that fueled public protests and other expressions of Cuban exile identity. I moved between this familial world defined by exile and the world I shared with my American friends, who regarded my family’s preoccupation with politics with curious bewilderment. They could not understand why so many Cubans in Miami did not simply move on, live in the pres- ent as Americans and shed their obsession with Cuba’s past and with Fidel Castro. How could they know that lives had been forever changed and a people radically divided by events in 1959?... In my familial world, Castro’s latest words or deeds informed dinner conversations, and news flashes about Cuba sparked impromptu street demonstrations or heated arguments among friends and family. In my home away from home, Cuba was always an absent presence, the subject of gossip exchanged over café cubano at the ubiquitous coffee stands and the object of passionate emotions vented on local radio talk shows and news editorials. It was a world where the butcher bore the scars of torture en- dured during twenty years as a political prisoner and my neighbor’s brother had been executed by a pro-Castro firing squad. This was not a world where politics was just about an occasional election…. THE CHOICES PROGRAM ■ WATSON INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, BROWN UNIVERSITY ■ WWW.CHOICES.EDU History, Revolution, and Reform: New Directions for Cuba Online Supplement 3 Ernesto F. Betancourt Born in Havana in 1927, he left the island in 1953 after Batista’s coup. He returned to Cuba after the 1959 revolution but went into permanent exile in the United States in 1960. …I went back to Cuba and was present at Columbia’s military base when Fidel arrived in Ha- vana…. Shortly thereafter, I was appointed to the Cuban Bank of Foreign Trade, and my wife and children joined me. [At a weekly luncheon with the Economic Cabinet at the National Bank in July 1959]…Castro informed us that he wanted feedback on the potential economic impact of a constitutional crisis: he was getting ready to depose Dr. Manuel Urrutia, the man he had installed in the presidency six months earlier. Castro explained to us how he makes decisions in those cases: in effect, he sees all the actors as moving on a chess table, and eventually his instincts tell him what to do. He concluded by telling us, “Man is a political animal, and some of us are more animal than others.” A few moments later in the discussion, Castro revealed those animal instincts after someone warned him that since we had already antagonized American business interests through the land re- form law enacted in May, any political instability could provide an excuse for an intervention. Fidel did not hesitate for a second; he snapped back, “If they send the marines, I do not care. They will have to kill between 300,000 and 400,000 Cubans, and I will get a bigger monument than José Martí.” The truth was out. The man did not care about the well-being of the Cuban people, he only cared about the size of his monument. Right then and there, I decided this was not the kind of regime with which I wanted to be associated. Although my wife and I decided not to stay in Cuba, we had to avoid giving the impression that we were defecting. As a result, we didn’t tell anyone about our plans until shortly before all of the arrangements had been made…. In 1983, President Reagan proposed a law that resulted in the creation of Radio Martí. This led to my getting involved once again in matters related to Cuba…. My tenure at Radio Martí was the second most fascinating period of my life. I had to learn about a new activity—radio broadcasting— while putting to use all of my previous knowledge and experience in order to create an effective instrument of public diplomacy.
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