I Never Saw Guantanamo Bay Cuba

I never saw too much of Cuba but I left as a seven year old that thought he was going on vacation. That’s what my parents told me. It was 1967 and we were leaving the country forever. That is the way to really look at immigration. If your number comes up – as the winners of the Cuban immigration lottery explain it – you are leaving for good. My only problem is I wasn’t told we were leaving for good. I was told we were going on a vacation and visit friends in the US and perhaps see snow and return soon to be with my family again. The idea of snow and my parent’s explanation of weather becoming colder and the rain’s ability to freeze and change its properties intoxicated me as a seven year old. The idea of riding on a plane, something that I had only seen from the ground also mesmerized me. And that is how I left Cuba and my roots and my family, save for mother and father.

It took quite a while to fully understand what happens when you are yanked from your piece of Earth and dropped off somewhere else. I imagine if you grab a sugar cane or a tobacco plant, pull it from its roots and drop it off in Chicago Illinois in the middle of January, they may not do so well. The plants will probably freeze and then die and chances are they will lie there until the spring weather arrives to display a dead heap of mush that insects and birds may feast on. That’s what happened to me, however, as a child of seven the first experience I remember was that of being lied to and cheated of. 

 As an adult I now know that I wanted to know the truth so that I would have known that my last hug and kiss from my aunts, uncles and grandparents was, indeed, the last one. I would not have been able to understand all the intricate details of immigration at age seven but at lest I would have understood better why everyone else was fighting back tears. I was very confused because I remember that it didn’t make sense to be so gloomy about going on a vacation. But everyone around me cried and everyone around me hugged each other hard and long and I didn’t get it. I did get it about four months later when I wanted to see my family and my parents were at a loss for words. They finally fessed up and told me we were in Chicago to stay and they didn’t see any way we would be going back to Cuba any time soon. I lost it, as any seven year old would, and screamed and hollered at my parents told them I hated them, I hated Chicago, I hated the snow and all I wanted was to go back to Cuba and go home.  

It took me another while to figure out that this is why I hated school even more than normal kids hate school. I can remember going to school in Cuba and I hated it normally, as any other kid hates school just because. I hate school, however, because I hated that I had been pulled from my roots in Cuba. I was antisocial, I could not speak English and there were no special classes in 1967 so I went crazy in a large room filled with kids and grown ups that spoke this funny language. Then the ultimate betrayal happened when I started getting beaten before, during or after school by bullies because I looked different and could not communicate. I had already figured out that there were people in the world that were simply not nice, however, my parents promised me that by going to this Catholic grade school, I would receive the finest education and be with the best people in the neighborhood. While I did get a fantastic education and I thank them for that. I found the hard way that when kids are young it doesn’t matter what the circumstances are or the religion you fall under. Children can be more evil toward each other than adults. At least in 1967 it seemed this way.

I know my parents thought they were doing me a great favor by hiding the truth from he. It was probably their own way of making the break for freedom even easier on them. With hindsight, had they told me the truth, everyone including me would have been able to cry out loud and hug and kiss harder and it may have been less traumatic for all of us. It is inevitable that us humans must try to cover up something that hurts, something that is unpleasant or be able to speak words that get stuck in the throat and cannot muster out.

Ó 2007 Carlos A. Perez