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* When I left Cuba or My House in Havanaby Rafael VG Rodriguez (Class of '71)New York , Dec 31, 2005 This event happened at a junction of cultures, and centuries, I was almost unaware of its importance, yet with all the grandness and simplicity of the moment, it was my departure from Cuba as a child. At first it was like a dream trip, my parents had begun by telling us that we might take a trip around the world for a year, a sabbatical for my father who worked so hard, and it would also be one for the three children, as it meant that we wouldn’t have to go to school for that year ! Now, what places might we visit ? America, which was at the doorstep, beyond the turquoise blue sea that stretched beyond Marianao Bay, where we went swimming and boating every day if we felt like it. Occasionally we also went to the airport to see planes take off and land, especially when relatives or friends came to Cuba, like my great uncle and aunt in New York, who came every Christmas. Our house was a few blocks from the clubs on the bay, that was the center of our social life. We used to go on Sundays for lunch, or during the season of regattas. My father took First Prize in the Amigos del Mar regatta in 1959. That was big, although not as powerful as the day we came back to the club after watching the regatta from the club yacht and we were soaked by a cold tropical rain, and my mother took us to the bar and asked the waiter for beers. For the kids ? he said – Yes, she replied : these kids have to « entrar en calor » warm up, « they have been at sea all afternoon in a storm ». In 1959 I was already wearing a cap with the revolutionary colors..our neighborhood church and many in Havana invited « guajiros » (small farmers) from the countryside to come attend mass and take communion with the upper middle class or white collar populations of the city. Words of love filled the air, love of country, love of family, of Justice, of the bright future that awaited the island Republic that was proud in its revolutionary effort that succeeded in defeating a corrupt President. Fidel Castro appeared on television surrounded by priests and by professionals with the best reputations in the country. Even a child could sense the euphoria of joy felt through a nation so rich and diverse as Cuba. In 1959 I saw my first color television set at the Miralda store in Havana. I remember it being kind of fuzzy. A child can describe his or her childhood home down to the square centimeter! But during the year 1959 many political maneuvers took place, and not the least important was the taking over of the leadership of the CTC (Confederación de Trabajadores Cubanos) or largest union in the country, by a communist minority. There had already been irregularities, injustices, and betrayals that revolutionary fervor seemed to forgive and forget, with the difference that each time a newspaper denounced an abuse by the new temporary government it was closed down. So went Avance, and the most famous Diario de la Marina, an institution that would later be taken over by the communist Hoy, later renamed Granma. In that year also the President, Manuel Urrutia, resigned, and so did the Prime Minister, Miró Cardona, who fled to Miami to organize the counterrevolution, a movement to insure that Cuba was on the path to the elections promised by Fidel within 18 months. Felipe Pazos, a renowned professor of banking at the University of Havana and founding father of the IBRD (World Bank) institutions, who was brought in by the new government as President of the Cuban National Bank, would then be forced into into exile, he would eventually go to work in the Kennedy Administration where he headed the Alliance for Progress. All these respectable people were replaced by Fidel and Che, the charismatic leaders who were pulling the strings from backstage, with leaders from the extreme left as they emerged themselves respectively as the maximum leader and the President of the National Bank. What did « Ché » know about banking ? Was he a good economist, or a communist ? The jokes were starting, in good Cuban form. Time magazine had a piece in 1960 titled « Last days of Castro ».. My school was « intervened » in the Spring of 1961, and after one « miliciano » accidentally killed another, it was closed and we were sent home. I then attended the neighborhood elementary school Alicia Joffrey, which I liked, because I could walk to it, instead of being bused to the far away « castle » that was the Colegio de Belén, the best Jesuit institution of its kind in the world, we were told. With its sports facilities and its patios, as well as free vocational school, observatory and other advances, it felt like a world of its own. Fidel had gone there and we didn’t expect the closing to last long, he would do something about it, kids said to one another. I happened to be on the cover of the last yearbook, 1960, walking alongside Father Baldor, the new Rector, with his hand on my shoulder. I was used to that kind of treatment, with « cariño », a particularly cuban word that qualifies the loving care that accompanies everything that one might do or feel. The Bay of Pigs was the final blow to the Cuban Republic that began in 1940, called by some the « Second Republic ». A long list of maneuvers by politicians and events led to it. Revolutionary fervor and Sadness had replaced Universal Joy. Strife and war between classes, sometimes instigated by the government itself until they had completed taking the reins of power and maintained order by terror. Cuba was considered by some the richest farm in the world. It also had an incredibly modern nationwide transportation system that included air conditioned buses and night coach trains. A unionized agricultural economy that had several world firsts to its name, including profit sharing for farm laborers by national law of 1943. In September 1959, when the Catholic Church of Cuba had its first National Convention a warning had been sounded about the increasing presence of communists in the new government, while they had represented only 6% of the popular vote in the past. And with the communists being in cahoots with a leader like Fidel, the chances of free elections within 18 months seemed to wane by the minute. By October 1960, my parents, who had been split for a while about their personal opinions of Fidel, had jointly decided that they weren’t sending the kids abroad alone with the « Pedro Pan » operation, like many other families, but instead we would all leave. The new law of Patria Potestad, giving the right to children to the State over the parents was incredibly imposed at that time, and soon another decree would prohibit whole families from traveling together. My mother told my father that either we all stayed or we all left, but that we weren’t splitting our immediate family. Putting words into action, we applied for and obtained passports, and the process to purchase plane tickets and leave the country had begun. Since money would be worthless soon, my father, seeing this happening, was able to take enough money to spend on a new car (1959 Chevy with the most beautiful fins after the Cadillac!), a new TV, new furniture, and he spent on restaurants and weekends in Varadero at the Hotel Internacional. He also paid off the mortgage on the house, so that if we came back we would have the proof that he had finished paying for the house that he built with his (and my mother’s) efforts. He also rented a house in the beautiful mountain town of San Miguel de los Baños, complete with maids and a deal with the local horse rental guy who came around in the mornings and whose son took me on my first adventures through nature on horseback. We had been to San Miguel’s Spa Hotel, the Balneario, before, and learned to play canasta with the old people, including Don Manuel Abril, the sweet old owner, a timeless character. I wonder what happened to him. The main street in town was called Avenida de Abril, it was neatly paved with perfect curbing and lined with the loveliest stone homes in a resort style. A jewel of Cuban architecture. There was a public swimming pool, a mountain to go hiking, and all the tropical flora and fauna to boot. Food however was already scarce, and trips to the market often ended in dry runs. That’s when a friend of my mother came one day and told us about SPAM, something invented by the americanos as a ham substitute ! At the end of the main avenue stood the local church. Except for the lack of food which was due to government control, it was idyllic to find this much civilization in the midst of a tropical forest, that would be the Cuban version of Paradise. Unfortunately, on Sundays, in the middle of the church service one could hear the Communist Internationale blaring from the police headquarters across the street. Our parents told us to pay no attention to this insult, and that they had the right to feel the way they did, though it was in bad taste to do it at the moment that they had chosen. The period between October 1960, when we got our passports and June 28 ,1961, the date we left on a Cubana Super Contellation to New York, was one during which my parents made every effort to hide the imperfections of the world around us and show us the Cuba that forever was and that forever will be : we took trips to Varadero, staying at the Hotel Internacional, the only big hotel at the time, with beautiful gardens and marble statues right on the sand ! These vestiges of Cuban elegance were still there in 1990! We also went to visit friends in Sagua La Grande, a city on the North Coast, through country lanes and landscapes of Eden-like beauty. Unbeknownst to us, my father was returning $100,000 in cash to a friend who had sold a sugar mill and thought he would be leaving before my family but as it turned out we were leaving first..people trusted one another! Our church asked my parents to keep gold and silver objects in our house, as furniture and other items that were eyed by the new masters were sent as gifts or bribes to the Soviets and the Czechs who were streaming in. For instance Soviet Foreign Minister Mikoyan went home with the Crystal Chandelier of the Havana Yacht Club. I remember seeing lines of Czech army trucks stranded alongside the roads, with smoke pouring out of their radiators, hoods up. My mother would say : « Children if they stop us and they ask us where we are going and we say that we are going to the Moon, you say nothing » . My father’s business would be run by an associate, until the inevitable government takeover, unless of course Fidel’s government would cave in, as many people predicted. But my parents didn’t take any chances, and prepared us well for the exit. A friend’s chauffeur, Reinaldo, was enough of a daredevil to hide, under a layer of watermelons in the trunk of his 1956 Maroon Ford, most of our baccarat, silver, and photos and other family heirlooms, which he brought to an acquaintance who lived on a small farm that we called Shangri La, because she didn’t even have electricity, though she had the most beautiful tiled porch and a wrought iron gate to enter the property with the words Villa China. The Revolution took most of her land and allowed her to keep a small plot for herself and her husband to keep working on their now meager property. I remember the night when we went to say goodbye to her too, through the total darkness of the tropical countryside, being struck by flashes of lights coming from the Russian trucks that were carrying those missiles..and she commenting : « they took my land to put that ? ». Our « trip » was a roundtrip flight to Montreal with a stopover in New York. The ticket had to be purchased in Canada, it was a round trip with the purpose of Tourism and Business, with an allowance to take only $10 pesos, which most people spent on drinks on the plane. And since we had no money abroad we were of course dependent on the charity of a Canadian family from Ontario, and our Cuban friends who preceded us there, to whom I should always be indebted. After several frantic calls from the airline changing the date of departure rush to prepare for departure became more intense, while at the same time we had to give people in the neighborhood the impression that everything was normal and that we were not leaving, for now. But somehow I felt the excitement that the moment had come for this great trip that had first been thought of as a family vacation, and now had become a search for a new job for our father so he could support us. We visited my grandparents in their apartment in La Víbora, one last time. That time my father seemed to have had a few nervous words with his father, I am not sure why, but the plan was, and it was carried through, that he « squatter » in his son’s house and give the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, the neighborhood watchdogs, a piece of his socialist mind and he tell them to let him stay in our house until my parents’return. This worked for a number of years but after all my uncles and aunts left my grandfather wrote a letter to my father in Paris, where we were now living, saying : - Your mother and I are ready to go, it breaks my heart to « entregar » literally : hand them the house. When we went to the airport at midday June 28, 1961 I don’t even remember how we got there exactly. My father had sold the 59 Chevy, and we had given away most of the household belongings, including the new swing set that was in the garden, so the house was ready to be taken over, unless of course my grandfather would be able to keep them at bay, which he did. I never knew or even asked my father if he hid money in the light sockets and other hiding places. My mother claimed that the statue of the Virgin of Lourdes, which had disappeared from the sculpted grotto that was part of the landscaping, suddenly reappeared, and some glue was also found, miraculously, because by then such consumer items as paper and glue were scarce, so it was set again so it may « guard » the house until our return. Fantasy and reality were intertwined in the intrinsic relationship between reality and dream. I can still feel the commotion and the anxiety among the crowd at the airport. But it wasn’t a sad feeling of departure, but actually a joyful feeling, complete with brand new clothes made for the occasion by a seamstress : ties and overcoats, as we knew that it would be cold in the north in the winter. Relatives came to say goodbye, there were words exchanged about future phonecalls and words of caution as the phones were under surveillance. For some time already everytime you picked up a phone up it would say « El que no tiene Patria no tiene Amo, Patria o Muerte, Venceremos » . At that time, people were sent to jail for saying one word in an elevator, over the telephone, the whole society was going insane! We were glad we were getting out of there and my mother’s first words when we stepped into the Hall of Flags at the then Idlewild International Airport were : « We are Free ». |
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