I woke up to the news of Fidel Castro's death Saturday morning, Nov. 26. Messages had piled up on my iPhone before I tuned in to CNN to make sure I was not dreaming about it, the way so many Cubans have for decades.
A friend from my Miami Senior High School years, also a Cuban refugee like me, calls me. We cry on the phone, , not about the death of the bearded dictator, but simply because at times like that, the tears become like a teddy bear to carry us by the hand. It was like a bouquet of emotions that dragged us to our childhood. In my case, to that breezy day, Feb. 28, 1962, the day that my parents put me on a Pan Am flight to live in Miami with my uncle and his family.
“It is only 28 days and we will be together again,” my mother told me, pretending to be brave (she wasn’t), the tears too obvious, betraying her. My dad, standing silently next to her, avoiding my eyes, as if he did know what was to come.
I was one of those Pedro Pans, the 14,000 children who were sent to the US without their parents, to escape communism.
Suddenly, I saw myself in a new country, without knowing a word of English, and getting totally immersed in a totally different world in Miami, attending school 8 hours a day while working part time as a bus boy in a downtown Miami restaurant after school.
At 14, I had to grow up, and become a man quickly. Because I was still a child, I would cry in private. As the adult that I was forced to become, I would dry my tears with the white apron the restaurant provided and moved on with another tray full of dirty dishes. I was learning English and saving the tips I collected each day, putting them into a huge glass jar.
At the end of the 28 days, my visa expired and I knew I had to stay in the US. It was then that I made it a point to become more American, to learn English faster and to adapt to the new country and new culture. History took care of the rest: the Soviet missile crisis that put the world on the edge of a nuclear war; the President Kennedy decision to place an embargo on Cuba, the breakup of relations between the two countries, and the end of free travel for Cubans into the US. My parents were stuck in Havana, and it was two years before they could leave, via Mexico. Eventually, they came to the US and they prospered and I achieved the American dream.
My parents died dreaming of this moment, of the day when Fidel Castro would be gone, one way or the other. And that is why I am so sad that I can’t hug them and tell them the news.
I can only imagine my Dad’s face upon hearing the news. It would have been one of those morning when he drank at least 15 of those strong Cuban cafecitos.
Fidel Castro has always said that “history will acquit me” but I don’t think that will be the case. History, however, will tell the kind of indomitable dictator that Castro was, how his first act was to make the United States its enemy, then align forces with the Russians to keep himself in power. He put the world on the edge of a nuclear war with the Soviet missile crisis. He tried to export his brand of communism abroad, sending thousands of Cubana to fight wars in Angola and Ethiopia. He also tried to foster revolutions in Latin America, primarily in Venezuela where he had one of his most devoted followers, Hugo Chavez.
Today, with the announcement of Castro's death (at last!) it is hard to control the tears.
Tears for those thousands of Cubans who drowned trying to escape to freedom in those treacherous waters of the Caribbean.
Tears for our loved ones who died without experiencing this day.
Tears for the impact that this dictator had on our childhood, forever impacting it.
Tears for that beautiful country of my birth, Cuba, which has suffered much during more than five decades of one of the most brutal dictatorships ever. Castro took away the promise of a country that was one of the most financially stable of Latin America.
Sometimes it is good to let the tears flow before opening the bottle of champagne. That’s where we are this morning in November.
In the most intimate part of my soul, Fidel Castro resides as an undesirable dictator who granted me a title I never wanted: he made me a refugee.
This is one occasion when Rest in Peace does not fit the occasion nor the character.
40 Years/40 Lessons: Refugee
A segment from my memoir, detailing that day of my arrival in the United States as a refugee in 1962.
https://www.garciamedia.com/blog/40_years_40_lessons_2–refugee