Now he is gone, and I miss him so much. So very much.
Friday 21st of June
It has rained for days. I feel like the heavens are crying with me. How I wish my abuelo were here. And my brother, too! And Efraín. It is so difficult to be away from people you love. I feel as if I cannot breathe, as if there is not enough fresh air to go around. I now know better than ever what Papi means by exile because in certain ways death is a form of exile. It is separation and finality and the ability to remember without the joy of touching or seeing or hearing.
Saturday, 22nd of June
It hit me: I am finally leaving on the trip tomorrow. I’m so excited.
Wednesday, 26th of June
We toured most of Saint Augustine today, though it was so hot we kept having to stop at different places to get a drink. This place reminds me a lot of Cuba, especially the Castillo de San Marcos at the edge of Matanzas Bay and Fort Matanzas, which is much smaller than the Castillo. We took lots of photographs. When I phoned my parents—I must call every evening—I felt a little homesick. That surprised me because I so much wanted to leave on this trip.
I’m having a great time with Jane and her grandparents. They insist I call them Gramps and Grannie, which I do, and they let us eat ice cream every day.
Sunday, 30th of June
I haven’t forgotten you, but I have so little time. Today we motored around Lake Okeechobee with a fishing guide. This lake is so big it looks like an ocean. We also saw a lot of people in bus-like cars that Jane says are called recreational vehicles. People camp in them. I had never seen one before.
I’d write more if I weren’t so exhausted.
Thursday, 4th of July
I’m back! It was the most fantastic vacation I have ever had. Jane’s grandparents treated me so nicely. We swam in the ocean, we jumped from diving boards, we saw rocket ships, we sat on old Spanish cannons, we saw a sunset in Key West, we went fishing on a boat in Lake Okeechobee—oh, we did so many things that I will need a new diary to write them all.
Today is Independence Day, and it is celebrated with picnics and fireworks, but we did nothing except work around the house. I helped Mami refinish a dresser that she rescued from a trash pile on her way from work earlier in the week. “Amazing the usable things los americanos throw out,” she says. “This is a country of such abundance.” Her statement reminded me of those long lines we used to wait in for everything—soap, beans, rice, shoes, clothing. Abuelo Pancho used to say Cubans queued up for everything except death, and now poor Abuelo Pancho is still there in Cuba, standing in lines. When I told Mami what I was thinking, her eyes misted. She said it was not always like that in Cuba. Years ago, before the Communist revolution, when I was a little girl, you could buy most anything at any store if you had money. Now, even with money, there’s nothing to buy.
In the late afternoon when it was a teensy bit cooler, Tía Carmen barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers. Then we went through some old photo albums that Abuela had brought from Cuba. We could not bring any of ours, so these photographs of our childhoods are very precious. Staring at them, I felt like I was spying on someone else’s life, someone who looked like me but was existing in a parallel world of scalloped photo paper. It made me wonder what kind of life I might have had, the kind of life all my family would have had, if the Communists had not taken over our country. It would be very different if we had stayed behind. For one thing, I would not know any English. I would have never met Jane nor gone on that wonderful trip. Mami would not have learned to drive—at least not for a long time. Ileana would not have a job, and Papi would not have ever trained with those militias in the swamp. How strange that one event, one decision, can change so many parts of so many people’s lives!
At night we saw the fireworks on television from the United States capital. It was beautiful to watch the night sky lighting up in what we knew were fantastic colors, even if it was only on a black-and-white screen and not in person. Next year, though, Tía Carmen has promised we will go to a park to see the fireworks and festivities. We will bring a blanket and lie on it and stare up at the darkness. (She always tries to be optimistic. It must be so hard for her to keep smiling while Efraín is away.)
“The colors of the fireworks in the night look like exploding flowers,” she explained. “You will see what I mean next year.”
So what do you think Papi said to Tía Carmen? One guess. That’s right. He said, “Next year we’ll be in Cuba.” And he said, too, that instead of staring into the dark sky, we will be taking an evening swim in Guanabo. I wish I could believe him.
FIRST PERSON FICTION
My Personal Exodus
Ana Veciana-Suarez
My father was a comptroller of a national bank in Havana and my mother a housewife when, on New Year’s Eve of 1958, Cuban leader Fidel Castro overthrew the Fulgencio Batista government. I was just two years old, and now have few memories of those times except for blurry images of our front porch and the wrought-iron gate that led to it. But this I do know: Like many of their friends and neighbors, my parents welcomed the change and never suspected that the much-awaited revolution would soon turn Communist.
As the new Castro government confiscated private property, however, and firing squads exacted revenge on counterrevolutionaries, thousands of families left all their possessions behind in hopes of finding a temporary haven in the United States. Most settled in Miami, where the exile community became very politically active. Thousands of exiles joined anti-Castro groups, many of them subsidized by the American government. In April of 1961 more than 1,400 men, who had trained in Central America under the auspices of the United States, launched an unsuccessful attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
My family was still in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs invasion, and it wasn’t until May 1961 that my mother was able to leave with my brother and sister and me for Spain. (A younger brother and sister would be born later in exile.) My father remained on the island, fighting in the underground. In October of that year he fled the island with my grandmother and a group of men on a fourteen-foot boat. They were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, and we were reunited in New York a month later. Eventually we joined the growing Cuban community in Miami. My parents found jobs, we children were registered in school, and, along with both sets of grandparents, we went about the business of preparing to return to Cuba. Everyone thought the stay in the United States would be temporary.
But the exodus of Cubans to Miami continued, in spurts and, by air and boat, for decades. Perhaps the most poignant departures took place from 1960 to 1962, through Operation Pedro Pan, a program to get children off of the island when their parents had not been granted permission to leave immediately with them. About 14,000 Cuban children fled Cuba alone. Many didn’t see their parents for years and lived in foster homes and orphanages across the country. I have several friends and relatives who arrived in the United States under this program. Some came with older siblings, but others traveled alone, and it was an experience that rushed them out of childhood and into youthful responsibility.
The next big migration of Cuban exiles began in 1965, when Castro opened the port of Camarioca to anyone who wanted to leave the country. In less than a month, between October 10 and November 15, more than 6,000 fled in all manner of boats, most of them supplied by relatives already in Miami. It was a dangerous journey, but one that many had taken across the Straits of Florida before 1965 and still make now in homemade rafts, inner tubes, and tiny fishing boats.
I was almost nine years old when Camarioca opened and clearly remember how my parents desperately searched for a boat captain who would bring my mother’s sister and her children to the United States. (Her husband was a political prisoner.) Castro, however, closed the port before my aunt was able to leave. About two years later her family boarded a Freedom Flight to Miami. Started in December 1965, this airlift was made possible because of negotiations between the U.S. and Cuban governments after the closing of Camarioca. By the time
the twice-a-day flights ended in April 1973, more than 260,560 refugees like Yara García and my aunt had come to the United States.
The exiles’ presence changed Miami. The same year the Freedom Flights stopped, the county commission proclaimed Dade a bilingual and bicultural county, and Maurice Ferre, born in Puerto Rico, became Miami’s first Latin mayor. Though migration from the island slowed in the late 1970s, the United States and Cuba opened Diplomatic Interests Sections in each other’s capitals in 1977. In 1978 the Cuban government also began talking with Cuban exiles to negotiate the release of political prisoners. By November 1979, 3,900 political prisoners had been freed. Most settled in Miami, among them my uncle, who was able to be reunited with his family after serving almost twenty years in prison.
Charter flights bearing exiles back to the island also began in January 1979, the first time refugees could visit their homeland since 1961. Though I have never been back, several of my relatives have, including my younger sister born in the United States. This ability to travel to and from the island, however, did little to stop the migration of Cubans who wanted to leave for a better life in the United States. In April 1980, after 10,000 Cubans hoping for freedom flooded the embassy of Peru in Havana, Castro opened the port of Mariel to any exiles who wanted to rescue relatives. Like the Camarioca boat lift fifteen years earlier, but on a much larger scale, exiles’ boats and yachts invaded the Cuban coastline. When Mariel closed in September, more than 120,000 refugees had left the island. As many as 100,000 settled in Miami, including one of my great aunts and several of my cousins.
With each wave of refugees, Miami became increasingly Hispanic. Cuban political power grew. During and after the Mariel boat lift, Hispanics constituted a majority on the Miami City Commission, and the 1980s witnessed many political firsts as Cuban-born politicians were elected mayors, school board representatives, and county commissioners. At that time several cities in south Florida—Hialeah, Miami, and Miami Beach—already had or were close to having a Hispanic majority.
One of the most recent—and most dangerous—exoduses from Cuba occurred during the summer of 1994, when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the sea in all manner of floating devices. During a thirty-seven-day period, about 32,000 survived the journey across the Straits of Florida, but countless others died at sea. Many rafts, floating like corks adrift in the large ocean, were found eerily empty by the U.S. Coast Guard and private Brothers to the Rescue planes. Although the United States continues to welcome Cubans fleeing the Castro regime, its immigration laws are stricter now, and many Cubans who have recently attempted to flee to this country have been deported back to the island.
Exiles who, like Yara’s father and my own family, expected to return to their homeland in a few months ended up making Miami home. Many who had relocated to cities in the north in the 1960s and 1970s—as had my uncles, aunts, and cousins—eventually returned to the warmer climate of Florida. With freedom on our side, we built hospitals, shopping centers, schools, and housing developments. We went on to become teachers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, developers, politicians, journalists, actresses, and beauty pageant queens.
Now, more than forty years after the first wave of Cubans to the United States, in an act of gratitude the exile community is raising funds for a complete multi-million-dollar transformation of El Refugio—the downtown Freedom Tower that housed the Cuban Refugee Emergency Center, where about 450,000 exiles, like Yara’s family and my own, received generous emergency help from the U.S. government from 1962 to 1974. The Freedom Tower will serve as an interactive museum, research center, and library chronicling the Cuban exile experience in south Florida.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Luis Orta and Guillermo “Willy” Aguilar for their many stories of Cuba, particularly those they shared with me about La Escuela al Campo. Thank you also to Carolina Hospital for her advice and to my parents, Sira and Antonio Veciana, who refreshened my memory of our early years in this wonderful country.
FLIGHT TO FREEDOM
by Ana Veciana-Suarez
Discussion Points
Characters
1. Yara is trying to adjust to American life but is torn over obeying her parents’ Cuban “rules.” In what ways does Yara respect her parents’ wishes, even when she doesn’t want to? In what ways does Yara decide what is best for her instead of obeying her parents?
2. Papi, Yara’s father, seems to strongly resist change by repeating that the family should not adjust because they will be back in Cuba soon. At what moments do you start to see Papi adjusting to American life? Do you think that he will ever fully adjust? Explain.
3. Mami, Yara’s mother, begins to adjust to the change of living in America. How does her getting a job and learning to drive a car affect the family? In what ways does Mami try to keep their Cuban heritage and customs constant in their life? How does Mami’s acceptance of American life help the rest of the family adjust?
4. Ileana, Yara’s older sister, tries to adapt to American life by rejecting Cuban customs. How does Ileana’s rebellion affect the family? How does it affect Yara? Ileana also fights her family to get a job. How does this new responsibility change Ileana?
5. Yara meets and befriends a girl in school named Jane. How does Jane help Yara adjust to American life? In what ways do Jane and her family show respect to Yara’s family’s beliefs and customs?
6. Yara’s uncle and his family help the Garcias get adjusted to American life. What qualities does Efraín demonstrate that help ease this adjustment? How does Efrain’s joining the army affect the family?
7. Yara’s grandfather, Abuelo Tony, teaches her and her sister, Ana Maria, many things. Abuelo Tony has many sayings. How do they affect Yara? How does Abuelo Tony’s death affect the family? How does it affect Yara personally?
8. Pepito, Yara’s older brother, stayed in Cuba because he was in the army. In what ways does his being in Cuba put a strain on the family? In what ways does it hold back their progress in adjusting to American life?
Settings and Theme
1. In what ways has the family’s attitude toward one another changed from Cuba to America? What things have some of the family members done in America that they may never have thought of doing when living in Cuba?
2. Papi asks the family to live “suspended in the middle between two countries.” Yara disagrees and says that “we have to be either here or there…We must choose.” Is there a way to live in both? How does the family begin to accomplish this?
3. Describe some of the prejudices or other barriers the García family faces in Cuba. Describe the prejudices or barriers they face in America. How does the family overcome them? How does Yara personally deal with them?
4. This book was written from Yara’s point of view. How might the book differ if written by another family member?
5. Yara says, “It made me wonder what kind of life I might have had, the kind of life all my family would have had, if the Communists had not taken over our country…How strange that one event, one decision, can change so many parts of so many people’s lives.” How do you think the story would have been different if the family hadn’t been forced to leave Cuba?
Discussion guide written by Katy Stangland.
Here’s a peek at the two newest First Person Fiction books,
The Stone Goddess by Minfong Ho, and Finding My Hat by John Son.
The Stone Goddess
By Minfong Ho
When the Communists take over the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, Nakri Sokha and her family’s life is suddenly disrupted. Forced to evacuate the city, she and her siblings are soon torn from their parents to work in a labor camp in the countryside.
Minfong Ho, the author of The Clay Marble and of the Caldecott Honor book Hush!: A Thai Lullaby, is a sensitive and powerful storyteller. With imagery that is at once vibrant and subtle, Ms. Ho shows how a young girl—through her love of classical dance—eventually comes to terms with a world shattered by upheaval
s beyond her control.
An excerpt from The Stone Goddess:
Part One
We moved as one, the trees, the river, even the clouds in the sky were stirred by the same silent force that was moving us as we danced. It was as if all motion was guided by the same rhythm, so that we were all part of each other, inseparable yet distinct.
We had been dancing for hours, going through the strict steps that we practiced each day in the palace’s airy dance pavilion. Fingers flexed far back, wrist circling continuously, back arched, shoulders straight, ankles bent, feet alternately flat on the floor or lifting—every movement had to be controlled, and in perfect unison with the other dancers. It was late in the afternoon, and I should have been tired. But just then, a gust of wind stirred the still hot air, and suddenly I felt it—this strong sense that everything that moved was moving with that same silent rhythm.
As I danced, I looked around me. In the distance the avenue of grand old trees in the palace garden—the rain trees and the jacarandas and the casuarinas—were dipping their branches and rustling in unison, stirred by the breeze. Above them a few wisps of gray clouds sailed across the blue sky, reflected on the glistening surface of the Mekong River flowing just outside the palace walls. And as they moved, so I moved, because in dance we were moved by the same rhythm that moves the whole world.
Teeda was lifting one slim arm up, and so I did too, trained as I had been for years to dance behind my sister, following her every gesture, trying to be as graceful and natural as she was in her movements.
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