Learning to Die in Miami

by Carlos Eire

  Among the many ways in which we Cuban exiles encounter such prejudices and blatant ignorance, none is more constantly irritating than that of seeing the face of Che Guevara emblazoned on T-shirts and all sorts of other merchandise. Che was Castrolandia’s chief executioner, the very embodiment of ruthless slaughter, the exact opposite of the idealistic hero so many people take him to be. Yet, I and other Cuban exiles constantly run into these bitter reminders of the world’s foolishness and of the racially based prejudices that allow falsehoods to endure and turn into myths. The depth and breadth of such ignorance is staggering, and very troubling, especially for a historian. When falsehoods become history, and psychopaths like Che are turned into saints and pop icons, the whole world is in trouble, not just Cuban exiles, for then we are all one step closer to George Orwell’s 1984 or already in it.

  You always had the desire to come to America even at a young age; was there anything in particular about America that you were eager to experience?

  I was eager to experience everything, not just something in particular. As I point out in this book, the United States had projected itself into my consciousness through its films, television shows, comics, and toys. It was the real world, where nearly everything important took place. In my early childhood years, up to 1959, I was aware of the fact that the United States was more stable than Cuba and that there was no cretin running the country, like Batista, and no need for a violent revolution across the Florida Straits. And then, after Batista left and Fidel made everything worse, the United States began to look even better to me. As the repression increased under Fidel in 1960, and as his policies drove Cuba back into the Stone Age economically, intellectually, and technologically, the United States became even more of a Utopia in my eyes. So of course I longed to go there, and not just to experience it but to live in it.

  Do you feel that Spanish-speaking people living in America today are getting too comfortable with having translation readily accessible to them, reducing the urgency to learn English and perhaps progress further and faster through American society?

  Yes, I think Spanish-speaking immigrants are digging a deep hole for themselves, collectively, by clinging so steadfastly to Spanish in every way. America as a whole is helping with the digging, too, especially those who define and guard political correctness. This sad mess resembles the dysfunctional relation between addicts and the people who enable them. What the enablers and the addicts won’t admit in this case is that the only way to gain equality in the United States is to be fluent in English. This is how every other immigrant group has climbed its way up. And that doesn’t just apply to the past: it is still happening with immigrants from places other than Latin America. Right now, here at Yale University, 18 percent of our undergraduate students are Asian, most of them first or second generation. Asian immigrants don’t insist on being addressed in their languages the way Spanish-speakers do, and they always ensure that their children have full command of English. Imagine if Asians insisted on bilingual everything: “for Cantonese, press one; for Vietnamese, press two; for Korean, press three,” and so on. Imagine if Jews, Poles, and Italians had done the same a century ago. “For Yiddish, please press four.” How many of our undergraduate students at Yale are “Hispanics”? Only between 1 and 3 percent. And many of these are third or fourth generation. The language issue alone is not responsible for this disparity, but it contributes to it significantly. I am angered by bilingual signs in Spanish(many of which are grammatically incorrect, anyway), by phone lines in Spanish, and especially by schools that stress bilingual education. All of these accommodations are wrong, and extremely prejudicial to Spanish-speaking immigrants in the long run. As I say in this book, while this attitude persists, Spanish-speaking immigrants will continue to be second- or third-class citizens and to be perceived by the rest of the population (including immigrants from other places) as deserving of nothing other than the lowest place at the bottom of the heap.

  What is your view on Arizona’s stringent law on immigration?

  Fortunately, this is a question that will become increasingly irrelevant with the passage of time, as the United States comes to terms with the lunacy of current immigration policies. Today this Arizona law is a volatile issue that has caused tens of millions of knee-jerk reactions, guided by emotion and ideology rather than reason or a knowledge of the facts. In reality, two factors drive illegal immigration into the United States from Mexico and Central America, and both are economic: the need for cheap labor on this side of the border, and the relatively poorer economies south of the border. It’s a basic supply-and-demand question. Not many in the government or the news media want to admit this, but the United States has lost control of its southern border and of the lowest rung of its labor force. So it’s the marketplace, rather than government policy, that is driving this immigration. The market and the law need to be brought into greater harmony. Perhaps a guest worker program, like those in place in Europe, would be in everyone’s best interest.

  Unfortunately, things are very messy right now. The current flap over the Arizona law—which allows police to ask for immigration papers from anyone suspected of a crime—is an irrational response to an eminently reasonable measure. The law in question does not call for random checks or racial profiling. It simply puts into effect at the local level what is already the law of the land: the identification and deportation of illegal aliens. And it actually does so within limits, for its intention is not to round up all illegal aliens, but only those who might be breaking the law

  I am not opposed to this law or offended by it. What really offends me is the way in which this very reasonable policy is being opposed, and how this controversy only helps to perpetuate the notion that “Hispanics” are hapless victims or helpless, inferior people who are so incapable of taking care of themselves that they can’t even be expected to play by the same rules as everyone else. The real solution to the problem is not the abolition of this law, but rather its enforcement, coupled with the overhaul of the current system, which allows for uncontrolled immigration.

  What other memoirs have inspired you?

  Surprisingly, very few memoirs have inspired me. In fact, I hardly ever read memoirs, save for those from the distant past, in my work as a historian. At the top of the list is the ultimate memoir, which is also one of the oldest of all: the Confessions of Saint Augustine, written in the late fourth century. But Augustine skips over his childhood and adolescence, devoting only a few pages to that period of his life. What inspired me, then, is not how he thinks about his earliest years, but how he places all of his existence into a larger metaphysical and religious framework. His honesty is also exceptionally inspiring, for he is all too painfully aware of his worst faults and makes an effort to come to terms with them through his writing. It’s a book I can read over and over again and always learn something new. I assign it to many of my classes. The other items on my list are not memoirs, but rather novels that might as well be memoirs: Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s Tres Tristes Tigres (Three Trapped Tigers). One semi-autobiographical novel in particular taught me how to see past, present, and future as interconnected plot lines: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. One quasi-autobiographical film in particular had a profound effect on me: Fellini’s Amarcord.

  The last part of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is the proposition of Returning to the Cave. Have you been back to Cuba since you left? Would you ever consider living there again?

  I have never returned to Cuba. I can’t. First and foremost, right now, I am a persona nongrata, an avowed enemy of the state. The Cuban authorities would never allow me to set foot on the island, and if they did, I would end up in prison in just a matter of days, maybe even within the first hour. The place is such a monstrous living hell, so repressive, so much a negation of all of the principles proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that I would be unable to keep my mouth shut. Speaking your mind i
n Cuba is illegal, a crime punishable by decades of imprisonment or death. This is why even before I wrote Waiting for Snow in Havana and was proclaimed a criminal by the authorities in Castrolan-dia, I could never set foot in the place: I knew I’d be headed straight into prison. That is where I would have ended up if I had I stayed. I know that for certain, and so did my parents, which is why they felt compelled to send me away as quickly as possible.

  As if this were not enough, I can’t return for another reason: I think it is immoral to travel to places such as Cuba that have no regard for human rights. To travel to despotic locations, no matter how exotic or how deeply familiar, is one of the worst sins imaginable. First, one’s presence legitimizes the oppressive regime, making it seem somehow “normal” or on the same level as other countries. This goes for everyone, whether they were born there or not. Tourists, especially those who go to enjoy themselves or sample the local color, are guilty of the worst sin of all, for they not only lend a sheen of respectability to the oppressors, but they also fill their coffers and keep them in power. In essence, anyone who travels to a place like Cuba is an accessory to oppression and exploitation. Since the government controls absolutely everything in Cuba, every penny spent there goes directly into the pockets of the oppressors, and only a tiny fraction goes to the Cuban workers. It’s exactly the same setup as slavery, where the masters reaped the profits of captive labor. Moreover, a very strict apartheid is observed in Cuba, in which foreigners have access of all sorts of rights, facilities, and commodities that are denied to Cubans.

  In the 1980s the oppressive apartheid of South Africa was brought to an end largely because of the boycott enforced on that nation by the rest of the world. Cuba’s oppression and apartheid should—and could— be brought down in a similar way. Yet, in 2009, more than two million tourists visited Cuba, to sun themselves on beaches that are off-limits to Cubans, to rent cars and jet skis, and to eat and drink to their hearts’ content in secluded air-conditioned hotels, while eleven million Cubans sustain themselves slightly above starvation on a government-controlled diet, deprived of all of those things that the tourists take for granted as rightfully theirs to enjoy. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I see that many of the very same people who call for a boycott of Arizona because of one law that does not violate any human rights also call for a lifting of all travel restrictions to Cuba, a country that has been violating every human right for over fifty years, with abandon.

  I don’t see myself living in Cuba ever again. Cuba has changed way too much, irreversibly, and so have I. Home is here, in the United States. As for visiting, I will not set foot on the island again until the country is free of its current dictators and their henchmen, elections are held, and free enterprise and the free exchange of ideas are allowed. But I would love to visit a free, prosperous, tolerant, and intellectually vibrant Cuba some day, maybe contribute to its rebirth. The sooner the better.

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM CARLOS EIRE

  “The most accomplished literary expression of exile sensibility to have appeared to date. What is powerful and lasting about the book is Eire’s evocation of childhood and his extraordinary literary ability.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  “Deeply moving. . . . Eire’s tone is so urgent and so vividly personal . . . that his unsparing indictments of practically everyone concerned, including himself, seem all the more remarkable.”

  —The New Yorker

  “Eire is gifted with what might be called lyric precision—a knack for grasping the life of a moment through its sensuous particulars. . . . Vigorously written and alive.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Bursting with wonderful details and images and populated by characters so well described that they seem to be sitting next to you on the couch.”

  —The Washington Post

  Available wherever books are sold or at www.simonandschuster.com.

  eBook edition also available.