Cuban children had an easier time adapting to the new climate, though they struggled with restrictions arising from their parents’ fears. Many resettled Cubans lacked familiarity with so many American behaviors. For example, my mother called my brother inside the apartment the first time it snowed; she feared he’d get sick.
I was too young to make comparisons about the weather or our housing. I believed life was lived in numerous houses in various climates because that’s how we had lived. I didn’t know any other way.
Surely, the Cuban adults in Minnesota must have talked among themselves. Were they sad when the days shortened and the temperatures dropped below zero? Were they amazed with their new wardrobes, which included unfamiliar items—long underwear, boots, coats, scarves, hats, and gloves? Salting and sanding sidewalks and entrances was a new practice. For those who lived in houses with yards, what about that leaf raking and burning?
I remember watching my father shovel the driveway. An afternoon snow had fallen. It was dark. My mother’s Buick was inside the garage. He wore a wool coat, brim hat, and leather gloves. I don’t remember him laughing.
The adults in exile may have learned quickly what took me many years and moves to learn. For one, the homeland is never forgotten, though many other places will be loved as home. A place is called home, no matter where the dwelling is situated, for one reason: the sanctuary of home is carried within each person. The material manifestation of home—trailer, apartment, or mansion—is secondary.
The extended family is essential to Cubans. My mother’s maternal aunt, Great-aunt Carmen, and her husband, Great-uncle Epifanio Echevarria, were with us from the beginning of exile. They moved from Miami to Minnesota and settled in the Sibley Manor Apartments in West St. Paul.
Their son, Dr. Orlando Echevarria, was my mother’s first cousin, which in Spanish is primo hermano. The literal translation is brother-cousin, reminding everyone of the closeness of their relationship. When someone is identified as a first cousin, that person is announced as being loved in the same way we love our brothers and sisters. This love is a natural result of the love our parents had for their siblings. My mother’s mother and Orlando’s mother were the Spanish sisters.
Orlando, my mother, and her brother Homero were born and raised in Punta San Juan, Central Punta Alegre, Camaguey, a few houses from one another.
Starting in 1948, Orlando was in medical school at the University of Havana. However, in March 1952, the university closed as a consequence of a military coup d’état by a former Cuban president (1940–44) who had been living in Daytona Beach, Florida. Fulgencio Batista wanted to come back to Cuba in a big way. The 1952 elections were canceled. The United States supported this regime.
Consequently, in October 1953, Orlando left Cuba to finish medical school in Madrid, Spain. Two years later, he was in Ohio, working at a psychiatric hospital and studying for the U.S. medical boards. He married Carol Good, and eventually they had four children: Orlando Jr., Lisa, Victor, and Gina. Orlando obtained a license to practice medicine in the United States in 1966. The rest of his professional life was spent in Kankakee and Bourbonnais, Illinois.
My maternal grandmother Manuela Ballesteros González went into exile in May 1961 to Valencia, Venezuela. Her son Homero González was about to be married to an Italian-born immigrant to Venezuela, Antonietta Legrottaglie. In 1956, Homero had graduated as an electrical engineer from the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida. He traveled to New York City and attended a job fair where he learned Termec, S.A., had a position in Maracaibo, Venezuela. The company made an excellent offer and he moved.
Their three children are my first cousins, Patricia, Homero Alejandro, and Fabiola. Homero and Antonietta remained in Venezuela until they retired to Miami, Florida, in 2009.
From Venezuela, Grandmother Manuela visited Minnesota, as did my paternal grandparents Miguel and Evangelina Veiga. My maternal grandfather Severiano González stayed in Cuba and died there. No one in exile saw him again.
My father’s only sibling, Rosita Veiga de Alvarez, and her husband, Rafael Alvarez, went into exile early in 1960 to Mexico City with their three children, my first cousins Rafael, Bernardo, and Lourdes.
Without a doubt, one impact of our resettlement in Minnesota was the family’s faster rate of assimilation, especially on the part of the children. Due to the small numbers of Cubans in the Twin Cities, I suspect our assimilation was faster than for our counterparts who remained in Miami. There, Cuban cultural norms and Spanish language remained intact. The number of refugees in the community and waves of new ones reinforced Cuban traditions.
Our family was among the estimated 35 percent of the 165,000 Cubans who had registered at the Cuban Refugee Center who found new homes and work in places outside Miami by June 1963.
The experience of exile, especially during one’s formative years, leaves an imprint. The constant moving to find a place to live then claiming many places as home does not let me forget that an exile is much of who I am.
“Once a refugee, always a refugee,” writes Carlos Eire in his second book, Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy, on his early exile as an unaccompanied child, one of more than fourteen thousand who were part of Operation Pedro Pan. While it is a hard truth, I like it. It’s a bit of an affirmation.
“Where are you from?” I am asked, especially when I am north of Miami. To date, I have lived in Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia, Puerto Rico, and, briefly, in the Dominican Republic. My Florida homes include Miami, Coconut Grove, Homestead, and St. Augustine.
The question trying to place me typically surfaces after my first name has been said. Sometimes, we have pronunciation practice. I watch as people scan me physically for more information. There’s confusion. My first answer is simple.
“It’s a long story.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m a Cuban raised in Minnesota and Miami. I’m Cuban.”
It’s a long story. Do you have time?
Typically, people want to know more about Fidel or, in more recent years, about Raul Castro. Sometimes our information concerning what’s transpiring in Cuba differs from what is gleaned from mainstream U.S. media reports. Cuban exiles listen to both English and Spanish media; news coverage of the island is crucial in Miami.
Besides, Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits make and receive telephone calls, send letters and emails, and travel to and, more frequently now, from the island. The communication flows and recedes according to decrees by both countries.
My family’s story, like that of many exiles, contains the elements of extraordinary loss—a severing from one’s personal and collective history and homeland and the accompanying, often suppressed, grief. It is followed by some recovery—the increasing knowledge of different customs and the chance to participate as citizens of our adopted country. The story is laced with continuous ambiguity and high flexibility, states that, in time, become easier to tolerate. They are second nature to a person who is bicultural.
When we left Cuba, we weren’t donning space suits or thinking ourselves explorers to the New World. Both of my parents had traveled to the United States before they married. My maternal grandfather, Severiano González, studied English and radio communications in Poughkeepsie, New York. One reason he didn’t leave the island was because he didn’t like the way of life he had known in the United States. He didn’t want to join his only son and his family in Venezuela, either.
Bicultural lives are lived in the most unexpected places. It is my hope that native-born people of any country who have welcomed foreigners will benefit from the telling of the story of my family’s early years in exile. Perhaps refugees, exiles, and immigrants—in spite of strange languages, foods, and customs—will not be such scary people. I hope more people will be moved to include them. I wish our hosts, now fellow citizens, would more vocally