History > 2006 > USA > Cuban-Americans

Cuban-Americans Keep the Hyphen

August 3, 2006
By DAVID GONZALEZ
and ABBY GOODNOUGH
The New York Times
 

MIAMI, Aug. 2 — When Pelayo Duran left Cuba, he had only the clothes on his back and a cigar. He prospered in the United States, not so much with money, but with something more precious: an education for his children, who are now professionals.

Still, like many other Cubans who fled the island, Miami was only supposed to be a stopover for Mr. Duran and his wife.

“I always said we did not come to stay,” he said. “We came to leave.”

But that was nearly 50 years ago. Mr. Duran, 75, spoke on Wednesday under the unforgiving Miami sun, which warmed the bronze tablet that marks his wife Eida’s grave at Woodlawn Park Cemetery. She died 10 months ago.

Members of the first generation that fled Cuba after Fidel Castro came to power were always sustained by the dream of one day seeing their homeland free of its Communist government. But in time, they balanced their lives on the hyphen between Cuban and American. They remade themselves and this city.

Now, like many of the others, Mr. Duran knows that his children cannot just pack up and go live on an island they never knew. The reality for Mr. Duran, as for many other Cuban immigrants, is that home is here now.

“One of my sons is a lawyer,” Mr. Duran said proudly, pulling out a spotless business card that read: Pelayo Duran, Attorney at Law. “He has his cases, his work. He can’t just go to Cuba.”

No one knows for sure how many Cuban-Americans would go back if they could. But most experts agree that time has taken its toll and that the numbers have dwindled.

“They will all tell you of course they’ll go visit,’’ said Sergio Bendixen, a pollster who conducted surveys on the question in 1989 and 2005. “Of course they’ll buy a vacation home so they can spend time there, but the overwhelming majority, 80 percent plus, will remain in the U.S. because it’s been too long, it’s been 45 years.”

A day after Cuban officials said Mr. Castro was recovering from surgery and had only temporarily ceded power to his brother, the topic of what might come next in Cuba was on everyone’s mind at the Shops at Sunset Place mall in South Miami.

Reynaldo Ulloa, 19, said his father wanted to return to Cuba, and had spoke of its advantages.

“He says the lifestyle is better,” said Mr. Ulloa, a criminal justice major at Miami-Dade College. “Here you live to work, but there you work to live.”

But Mr. Ulloa said he had little interest in moving to Cuba.

“Maybe Fidel is going down, but you never know who’s going to take over,” he said. “We live a pretty good life here.”

For one thing, Mr. Ulloa said, he could not imagine pursuing his dream career in criminology and forensics in Cuba.

“They’re not going to have the kind of forensic science labs where I can do what I want to do,’’ he said. “It’ll take a while.”

At La Diferencia, a barbershop and gathering place for young men in Little Havana, Josué Romero, 24, the owner’s son, said he would consider spending part of his time in Cuba after Mr. Castro was dead but not moving his life there.

“It’s a beautiful place,” Mr. Romero said, “even though it’s really messed up right now. You see torment, you see buildings all messed up, but the people are good, the people are very friendly.

“Maybe a couple years down the line — if the U.S. gets there and we get it the way we want it — yeah, I could see that.”

Not for at least a decade, though, he said.

Asked what “the way we want it” meant, Mr. Romero said: “Like any other Latin country, just free, everyone with freedom of speech and buying what they want.”

Even some of the Castro government’s staunchest opponents say times, and dreams, have changed.

Jorge Mas Santos, chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, said there were still those who talked of reclaiming what was lost.

“You have people who lost a farm and now say they want their cows back,” Mr. Mas Santos said. “Forget it. The cow is dead.”

But he said there was a strong feeling among young, educated professionals like himself that they could share their expertise and aspirations with their counterparts in Cuba.

He said the Castro government had long portrayed him and his colleagues as “Mafiosos” who wanted to take over, but Mr. Mas Santos bluntly dismissed that notion.

“Cuba can give me nothing,’’ he said, “but what we have here, we can give to Cuba. Look at the miracle of South Florida. Yes, we can rebuild roads and buildings. But what we have to do is touch the hearts of Cubans and help them smile and dream again. To propel them into the future and not relive the past. That is our generation’s gift.”

Maria Vazquez said she had memories of her parents’ putting off buying a house in the United States because that would be like admitting they were not returning.

As an adult, Mrs. Vazquez and her husband run Sentir Cubano, a store bursting with every imaginable sort of Cuban memorabilia, like posters of boxers, books and figurines.

“Since we heard the news three days ago, the ground shifted under me,” said Mrs. Vazquez, 56. “I have so many questions. Do I want to go? Should I go?”

But she said she wanted to.

“If Castro dies, after 47 years of people being oppressed, I would go to rebuild our country,’’ Mrs. Vazquez said. “If it is to bring democracy, I’ll do it.”

Her husband, Miguel, agreed, though he was more circumspect.

“It’s a long process,” he said. “First we would go to see, then maybe get an apartment. Maybe I could open up a business. But that takes time.”

Time may be all Mr. Duran has left. His in-laws are buried not far from his wife. He knows younger people may share his deep wishes for change in Cuba. But he knows they have other commitments.

His commitment is to visit the cemetery each day with small bouquets of flowers.

“There is a lot of pain in all of this,” he said, sweeping his arms over a landscape of granite headstones, imposing mausoleums and modest plaques. “All these people stayed here.”

America has been wonderful to him, Mr. Duran said. He lived in Puerto Rico, where he married, and in New Jersey before settling in Miami in 1980. He promised his wife that if he lived long enough, he would rebury her in Cuba. Clutching a fresh bouquet, he walked slowly to her grave, where he hunched over, tucked the flowers into a vase and poured water over them.

The plaque glistened, and Mr. Duran slowly stood up.

“I do all of this for you, my love,” he said. “For you.”

White House Sounds a Cautious Tone

The White House urged Cubans yesterday not to try a dangerous boat trip to Miami in the wake of Mr. Castro’s illness and also warned Cuban exiles in Florida not to return to Cuba illegally. “This is not a time for people to try to be getting in the water and going either way,” Tony Snow, President Bush’s spokesman, said at a news briefing.

    Cuban-Americans Keep the Hyphen, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03exile.html?hp&ex=1154664000&en=c1ab6414b8569c20&ei=5094&partner=homepage

For Cuban Exiles, a Day Filled With Celebrations, Rumors and the Wait for News

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By ABBY GOODNOUGH

MIAMI, Aug. 1 — One exile group spent Tuesday afternoon replacing parts on aging boats its members hoped to sail soon to Cuba. Another met all night, debating how to help dissidents on the island thwart Fidel Castro’s plan for his brother Raúl to succeed him. And in Little Havana in 92-degree heat, one confident crowd wagered that Mr. Castro was not ailing but dead, singing, “Na na na na, na na na na, Fidel, goodbye.”

Though the delirious first response to the announcement of Mr. Castro temporarily ceding power dampened as myriad questions went unanswered, anticipation remained palpable here on Tuesday. Throughout the day hundreds of thousands of Cubans in South Florida awaited updates from the island they fled, mostly to escape Mr. Castro’s authoritarian rule and harsh economic conditions, and officials watched for signs of unrest on land and sea.

Mayor Carlos Alvarez of Miami-Dade County said that the county’s emergency operations center had opened in case developments in Cuba stirred chaos here, and added that a rumor-control hot line, operating around the clock since Monday night, had received 500 calls.

Mr. Alvarez, who begged people not to block traffic if they reveled outdoors, said that things had remained surprisingly orderly but that Miamians were bursting with questions about this turn of events they had dreamed of for years.

“Is Castro dead?” he said, repeating the most frequent inquiry. “Is it safe to go outside?”

Celebrations erupted around the county after Cuban national television reported the extraordinary development — that Mr. Castro had undergone emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding and had temporarily ceded power to his brother Raúl — around 9 p.m. Monday. Revelers of all ages honked horns incessantly, clanged pots and pans and shouted, “Cuba libre!” The police beefed up their presence and blocked off several streets, including part of Calle Ocho in Little Havana.

Information remained scant, and speculation — a finely honed art among Miami Cubans, accustomed to having to guess about conditions on the tightly controlled island just 90 miles from Key West — ruled the day. In that sense, it was similar to two other times when Mr. Castro’s health faltered: in 2001, when he almost fainted two hours into a televised speech, and in 2004, when he stumbled on a stage, breaking an arm and fracturing a knee.

“Obviously something has happened,” said Joe Garcia, a political strategist for Democrats and the former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, the largest exile group. “This is a guy who, the last time he went into surgery that we know of, made a point of saying he had no general anesthesia and was on his cellphone giving orders the whole time. He was unwilling to cede the stage at all. That he did so now in such a dramatic fashion implies something big.”

All morning, local radio stations buzzed with hopeful conjecture, and one host even phoned a funeral home in Havana to mischievously feign grief. The Coast Guard watched for boats taking to the Florida Straits, but said it had seen no unusual activity along the Florida or Cuban coasts.

Gov. Jeb Bush said Florida and the Coast Guard had a joint plan to minimize any influx of Cuban immigrants if Mr. Castro died or relinquished power. Many Cuban exiles have envisioned taking boats to the island to fetch relatives the moment Mr. Castro is gone.

“I think that you don’t want to have mass migration that creates the loss of life and creates tremendous hardships for local communities and for our state,” Mr. Bush said in Tallahassee.

Alfredo Mesa, the current head of the Cuban American National Foundation, said his executive board had met all night and was conferring with dissidents on the island about how to keep Raúl Castro from permanently taking power. Mr. Mesa was among a number of exile leaders who said that instead of rushing to Cuba, the role of Cuban-Americans should be to lend financial and political support to dissidents there from afar.

“We know there are people at all levels of power in the Cuban government that want to return sovereignty, basic freedom and respect for human rights to the Cuban people,” Mr. Mesa said. “There are people who can make that change possible if in fact they know there is support abroad for them in this very critical hour.”

In Little Havana, Miami’s largest Cuban neighborhood, people spouted theories about Mr. Castro, who will turn 80 on Aug. 13. Some said he was already dead, others that he was faking illness to gauge how the island he has ruled for 47 years would respond.

“Oh my God, this is really something!” said Felipe Mendez, 69, who left Cuba in 1980.

Peter Bello, who sells cigars at Cuban Tobacco Trading on Calle Ocho, said the fact that Raúl Castro had not appeared publicly or issued a statement made him suspicious.

“We strongly believe this could be one of his tricks,” said Mr. Bello, 49.

Ramón Saul Sánchez, leader of the Democracy Movement, an exile organization that once ran flotillas to the waters off Cuba to protest human rights abuses, said his group was replacing parts on its few boats and fueling up to take food and other supplies to the island. But like other exile leaders, he preached caution.

Mr. Mesa of the Cuban American National Foundation said it was crucial for the roughly 830,000 Cuban immigrants in South Florida to stay calm and not fight about what is best for Cuba after Castro. He and Mayor Manny Diaz of Miami said community groups might organize large rallies at places like the Orange Bowl to channel some of the excitement, though nothing was in the works yet.

“We have disagreed on the issue of Cuba, but this is a time to stand together and be in a position to support the courageous men and women who live there,” he said. “Demonstrate, celebrate, but do it peacefully. Do it appropriately.”

Terry Aguayo and Andrea Zarate contributed reporting from Miami for this article, and Joe Follick from Tallahassee, Fla.

    For Cuban Exiles, a Day Filled With Celebrations, Rumors and the Wait for News, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/us/02miami.html?_r=1&oref=slogin