Families Held Hostage by Castro's Whims
As dictator relinquishes power,
Staten Islanders revisit the heartbreak of separation
Staten Island Advance - Wednesday, February 20,
2008
When Doris Ruiz's family arrived in the United States from Cuba in
1956, they expected to stay until the school being built in their
village was complete, then they planned to go home.
But relations between the countries quickly frosted over after Fidel
Castro and his forces routed the government of dictator Fulgencio
Batista three years later and the nation became a rigid socialist
state. The family's Cuban relatives underwent wholesale
transformations in their way of life, and could no longer visit.
"All of a sudden the doors were closed and they couldn't go back,
and that was devastating," said Ms. Ruiz of Bulls Head, who knew her
grandmother only by way of her mother's frequent, longing stories
about the family she left behind, the letters that went back and
forth, and the phone conversations that steered clear of any
political content so as to keep her grandmother out of trouble. "One
of the horrors of political problems is the fact that families are
broken up," Ms. Ruiz said.
Castro's announcement yesterday that he is stepping down as the
iron-fisted leader of his country after nearly a half-century of
unchallenged stewardship has set off a spate of analysis about how
Cuba might have fared under a different form of government.
As pundits discuss how the upcoming reign of Castro's self-appointed
successor, his brother, Raul, might determine the future of the
country, some of the people affected by Castro's decades-long grip
on the Caribbean island are contemplating how his rule profoundly
altered their past.
"It's a very emotional time. For almost 50 years we lived with a
reality that has been set by one leader [who] changed the personal
histories of the millions of Cubans," said Francisco Soto, dean of
humanities at the College of Staten Island, who was 5 years old when
his family left Cuba in 1961. "His presence affected the course of
my destiny."
Soto's father, a pharmacist and intellectual working at a college,
initially supported Fidel Castro as an alternative to the corrupt
government of Batista, he said.
But the hope engendered by the revolutionary movement soon morphed
into fear, as people who spoke against Castro began to be killed or
just disappear.
After soldiers with guns came knocking on the door of Soto's family
home, his father sought refuge in the Mexican embassy, then escaped
to Mexico. From there, he traveled to Venezuela and on to Miami.
Soto, his brother and mother followed several years later. They
settled in Elizabeth, where Soto's father took jobs as a dishwasher,
a cab driver and at the Domino Sugar Factory in Williamsburg,
Brooklyn.
In between long hours, he pursued his education here, eventually
opening a pharmacy and regaining the professional status and
satisfaction he had lost. But he was never able to reconnect the
family.
"My mother lost her mother; my father lost his family members and
they didn't go back. Most of my relatives all passed away in Cuba,"
said Soto, who mused that his choice to study Cuban literature has
been his way to feel connected to the rich culture from which he was
uprooted. "I think the tragedy of the last 50 years is the tragedy
that divided the Cuban people because one man has decided for the
country what has been best for them."
Ms. Ruiz said she still remembers the look on her 18-year-old
cousin's face when he arrived at their home in 1980, having escaped
from Cuba alone at night, on a boat that drifted until it reached
Mexico, where he was given a pass to the U.S.
"He went crazy in the supermarket; he was grabbing food. He never
saw so much food in one place," she recalled. "This is a brilliant
boy who now owns a lucrative business. What was he going to do over
there? How far are you going to go in a dictatorship?"
By Deborah Young
Reprinted here with permission
from the
