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Off topic, but here is a personal account that brings home the sacrifice parents made to escape the Marxists-Lenin indoctrination that swallowed up Cuba

María del Carmen’s Story:

I vividly remember “la despedida”(the farewell). We had come from our hometown, Santa Clara, and were staying in our grandmother’s home. We said goodbye to Abuela (my grandmother) and las tias (my aunts) inside. My sister Isa and I left with our mother and as we closed the door, I wondered if I would ever again see the piece of my heart that I was leaving behind that door; unfortunately I never did. Our father was waiting for us outside. He would not go into his mother’s home because of political differences with his siblings. Some of them thought that communism would mean the end of poverty and hunger for the world’s masses while my father and the others knew that it meant the end of personal freedom with equality of misery for all.

Only one parent would be allowed to go with us to the airport, we had agreed that it would be our mother, so we kissed and hugged Papi in the sidewalk and all three of us got into the cab that he had there, waiting for us. We looked through the rear window as our father’s figure diminished with the growing distance until finally disappearing from sight, tears rolling down our cheeks just as now or whenever I think of that moment.

When we got to the airport, our mother was informed that she would not be allowed to go with us into “la pecera” so we said our most stoic “adios Mami” and proceeded towards the next step of our journey. The lady that checked our bags decided that my leather bag was “materia prima Cubana” and that it belonged to Cuba, not to me, therefore I could not take it out of the country. She caressed the leather bag as she placed it, full of all its contents, in the counter behind her.

She kept looking at me all the while expecting some kind of protestation but our parents had prepared us well for such situations, besides, losing a bag with the three garments that I would have been allowed to take out of Cuba paled in comparison to leaving behind a loving family and adoring parents. We held each other’s hands and walked away as if nothing had happened.

Once in our seats at the plane we looked out the window and saw a solitary figure standing in the balcony of the airport waving a white handkerchief in the air. The emotion was overwhelming when we realized that it was Mami, but we were still afraid that she could see us if we cried. It was only after the plane took off that we felt safe from the communists or from saddening our broken parents any further....[snip]

I fell in love with Miami at first sight. I was so impressed with the grid of straight streets and canals that I felt that somehow everything would be OK in spite of the long trip to Camp Matecumbe through the darkening country roads. I was further relieved to find out that only the boys would stay there, the girls would proceed to another place that was not as dark.

When we arrived at Florida City, there was a multitude of children pressing against the chain link fence to greet the new arrivals. My sister and I were housed in the first house as you entered the camp. The girls there called us “hermanitas del exilio”, and when they found out that I had arrived without anything, they started going through their few belongings to find things that they could share with me.

Two months after our arrival, the October [Missile] Crisis ensued. We found ourselves on opposite sides, from our parents, of what appeared to be an imminent nuclear war between our two countries. One day on a field trip to Flamingo Park, while riding and singing in the bus, as we always did, we saw the rockets readied and pointing towards Cuba. Our singing, of course, turned into crying and someone made the wise decision to return us to the camp. After the October Crisis, flights to Cuba were suspended and we found ourselves STRANDED from our parents, with dim chances of reunification.

I will always be grateful to the US Government, the Catholic Welfare Bureau, The people who worked behind the scenes to make this operation possible, at great personal peril, and the people that worked in the camps and who were always trying to make them better places for us to live in....[snip}

So much effort went into keeping us happy and occupied that we felt like normal kids during the day. It was at night that our thoughts would turn to our parents and whether they were safe and if we would ever see them again. You could always hear girls crying in the silence of the night.

For three years we lived as a family in the camp in Florida City. In 1965 our parents managed to come via Mexico. Miami has been our beloved home ever since. I graduated from Miami High, Miami Dade, and the University of Miami. [snip]