Window From the House of the Irrational Art Przytarski
The roads in El Cerro, like the roads in much of Havana, are pricked with potholes and bumps and are prone to flooding. They're crisscrossed with tangled ability lines, and they aroma of rust and tobacco. El Cerro ranks among the poorest neighborhoods in a city full of them. But of all the stops I want to make in Cuba, this is the most important.
Our driver bobs over the uneven asphalt in a yellow Chinese taxi, looking for 405 San Pablo, betwixt Mariano and Clavel. I know we've plant it when, on a glass panel in a higher place the front door, I see the initials "JR" shining in the morning dominicus. They stand for Julio Robla, my great-granddad. The "tap, tap, tap," of a metal knocker on old wood echoes in my ears. I've been sent to Republic of cuba to understand the office of religion and religious freedom in a country long thought opposed to such liberties. But I've also waited my whole life to come up here, to stand and knock, to find some part of myself.
Fifty-half dozen years, ii months and 23 days earlier, my mom, my uncle and my grandparents left Cuba for Miami. They were among the final departures of the Camarioca boatlift of 1965, which brought some 3,000 Cubans to the United States. At present, I'grand the first among them and their descendants to render. The others have refused to venture here equally long equally the revolutionary authorities remains unchanged. As my mom puts it, "Why would I want to go back when they never wanted me there?" I'd always vaguely understood that position. But I thought my own detachment from their firsthand experience might insulate me.
My family had been hopeful that Fidel Castro and his insubordinate army would restore the Cuban constitution that had been abased by dictator Fulgencio Batista when he took over the land via coup d'état in 1952, but they quickly grew concerned near the authoritarian nature of the new regime. They refused to join the Communist Party, which led my grandfather to resign his postal service equally a captain in the Cuban navy and my mom'due south classmates to call her "gusano" — literally "worm," only contextually akin to "traitor" — for non wearing the red beret and neckerchief bachelor just to children whose parents acquiesced. Mayhap because I never experienced those consequences straight I harbored a lifelong marvel nearly the island a mere 90 miles from Key Westward, Florida, yet every bit seemingly bulletproof as any place on Earth.
The writer in Havana. Behind him, the fortress known as La Cabaña, where his keen uncle was imprisoned long agone.
Deseret Magazine
Growing up as I did, eating pastelitos de queso at birthday parties, speaking Spanish with my grandma — who, at 91, however speaks not i discussion of English — and taking salsa dance classes, you can't assist but feel more Cuban than American. My favorite food is a Cuban hamburger called a frita. My tan, linen wedding suit was fabricated by a visitor named Cubavera. In Miami, when you come from a Cuban family (or fifty-fifty a one-half-Cuban family, like me) you're surrounded at all times by Cuban civilization — or, at least, what Cuban culture once was.
Yet Cuba itself remains mysterious. A sort of forbidden mirror of the Cuban exile community. I always thought I was missing something. Like to understand what it really ways to be Cuban, I had to get past the distorted reflection in Miami; to see Cuba itself. My suspicions grew when, upon landing in Havana, the entire airplane inexplicably burst into spontaneous applause, myself included. I wanted to sympathise why. And that, I figured, started with seeing what my family left behind.
No i answers when we knock the first time, so my guide and I knock again. This time, a woman'southward vocalism calls back from within. These meetings rarely go well. Today's Cubans often feel threatened by people who return. They sense these visitors are there to merits land or property long abandoned and, for that reason, they slam the door. Or and then I had been told, and so I'1000 thinking before the vox calls me over to a glassless window frame.
From behind rusted atomic number 26 bars and frayed wooden blinds, the voice asks what we want. My guide and I do our best to explain something and then imposing and strange — that I'yard the grandchild of the family that used to live in this house, and I want to look inside.
The blinds pop open. A pair of dark-brown eyes stare back at my blue ones.
Fidel Castro was well on his way to victory when my mom was born in September 1958. His rebels — including his blood brother, Raul, and a and so-unknown Argentine medico named Ernesto "Che" Guevara — had invaded Republic of cuba's southeastern shore in early December 1956 aboard a yacht chosen the Granma. They reached the Sierra Maestra mountains, where they recruited peasant farmers disgruntled by government corruption and American favoritism. The strength kept growing, subconscious from Batista'south army, until it was also big to end. During the early morning of Jan. ane, 1959, Batista fled, and Castro's troops marched into Havana. Castro himself arrived a week afterwards, clad in rosaries, the liberator of Cuba.
Castro was a production of Cosmic education, having attended the long-standing Colegio de Belén — a schoolhouse run by Jesuit priests in Havana since 1854. Nevertheless, he declared Republic of cuba an atheist country before long afterward taking power and feuded with the Catholic Church. On May 1, 1961, he announced a new law that would nationalize pedagogy, and on May xiii, all the Jesuits at Belen were forced out. Many of them eventually settled in Miami, where they reestablished the school — the aforementioned schoolhouse I graduated from in 2014, 69 years after Castro.
La Virgen de la Caridad in the Sagrado Corazon de Jesús church in Havana.
Deseret Magazine
Many religious people fled Cuba in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. My family unit was amongst them, though they didn't flee specifically for religious reasons. For them, the last harbinger came when my mom's uncle, Julio, was jailed.
A string of bombings at the electrical company, where he worked, swept him upwardly. Co-ordinate to his girl, Lourdes — my mom's cousin — Julio was arrested for "contra poderes del estado"; basically, as an enemy of the state. His crime was, supposedly, aiding the counterrevolutionaries who carried out the bombings by acquiring supplies for them. The verifiable historical details go murky here, and then allow'due south merely say that according to family legend, he was sentenced to three years in prison house (that part is definitely true) because he was institute to accept not provided the assist, while his co-workers who did got 30 years, and the actual bombers were executed. He served part of his sentence, carried out between 1965 and 1968, slicing sugar pikestaff in the fields near Santiago, and part of it at La Cabaña — the Spanish fortress-turned-prison where Guevara spent 5 months as Castro'southward commander in accuse of revolutionary justice. Upon Julio's release, he'd tell stories of guards rounding people up late at dark and hearing them scream "Viva Cristo el rey!" — "Long live Christ the king"— earlier the sounds of gunfire and bodies falling on stone.
My mom one time visited La Cabaña with my grandmother and great-grandmother. They brought Julio empanadas and dress in shopping bags. Unbeknownst to my mom, this was her terminal take a chance to say goodbye. Soon, they'd pack up a suitcase with a unmarried change of apparel each, and my mom'due south Mariquita Perez doll. They drilled holes in the bottom of their bedroom door and stuffed them with bills, even so entertaining the thought that they'd render some day. They spent several weeks at the small fishing town of Camarioca, pending discussion from government workers about when they could leave, all the while eating a daily serving of lentejas — lentils — from the communal deli. "That is why," my mom says, "I have a horrified aversion to lentejas."
On Nov. 22, 1965, their ferry finally left Camarioca bound for Cardinal West. Forth the way, a U.S. Coast Baby-sit vessel brought over some snack boxes with water, chewing glue, cookies, apples and sandwiches. "Nobody had seen a sandwich — or bread — in I don't know how long," my mom says. "Information technology was a feast."
Gone from my immediate family's view, Cuba'due south state atheism lasted decades. Over time, yet, the government's approach to faith evolved. That evolution offers a useful road map for understanding the evolution of Cuba itself. Because even every bit the country began accepting people of faith, that opening oftentimes came with a price.
A toll my family knows well.
" Hijo de quien?" the woman in the window asks. "Son of who?" I tell her my mom's name. I tell her that the "JR" above the door stands for Julio Robla, my great-grandfather. Of a sudden, this faceless woman becomes my family unit'due south personal historian. How'due south Valladares? she asks about my grandad. Hectico, Lourdes, Julito — she knows all their names, all the uncles and cousins long since gone. She invites me inside.
Her name is Tania. She has black hair streaked with grey, held in a ponytail by a lime-green scrunchy. My family doesn't know her, I would later on learn, but they know her aunt, Josefita, who lived on the lesser floor when my family was here. Tania would have been very young in 1965, and she would have lived in the countryside. But she knows my mom very well, information technology turns out. Because when my family left, she inherited my mom's toys. Cuban property rarely changes easily, so eventually, Tania moved to her aunt Josefita's domicile with her mother, Pascuala, and the ii of them still live there today.
Cubans more often than not struggle to pronounce my name. Most settle on "EH-than" or "EH- tan." Curiously, Tania is the outset Cuban I meet who pronounces it exactly like my grandma — "EE-ssen." "Que sorpresa," she adds, smiling at me from behind her white COVID-xix mask. "What a surprise."
I'm similarly surprised to discover the house in excellent condition. My great-gramps built the bottom floor in 1928 and added the top flooring around '45. Outside, chipped sections of paint and groupings of clay draw all the attending — as you'd expect for a building nearing 100 years in a place where paint and pressure cleaners are most impossible to find. But inside, the teal walls and floral tile expect most new, if a tad dusty. A small chandelier dangles from the living room ceiling. The place hasn't inverse much, she tells me, and she's trying to go along information technology in the best shape she can.
Clara Martinez and Antonio Darias, left, live in the apartment where the writer's mom and grandparents lived before fleeing Cuba.
Deseret Magazine
That's the story of homes across the island: People trying to maintain or rebuild with deficient resources. Many buildings fester in total decay, with supportive beams of wood bending beneath the weight of aging concrete. Tourists like me ofttimes don't run across that, as I'd learned a few days earlier.
The author's female parent and grandparents shortly before they left Cuba in 1965.
Provided by Ethan Bauer, Deseret Magazine
I'd set out for Varadero with my guide and a commuter. The famed beach, about ii hours eastward of Havana along the well-maintained (aside from wandering cows and horses) Villa Blanca highway, extends due north into the Gulf of United mexican states on a narrow peninsula. It's often ranked amid the best in the world, with turquoise water, pulverization sand and open space. My mom has a picture of herself there when she was 10 months one-time. My grandma talks about it like nothing else compares. I had to see information technology for myself.
I already figured I wouldn't exist able to enjoy it. Not fully. Cuba's economy functions on a sort of tourism apartheid, where folks like me have admission to things regular Cubans don't. In one meal, I ate iii things — shrimp, beef and fish — that average Cubans can't beget. Then while I wanted to see one of the most treasured parts of Republic of cuba, I also wondered whether I'd be able to escape my own privilege, my ain guilt.
On the mode, our driver spotted a new-looking Ford F-250. It was white, and its bumper sticker suggested information technology came from a dealership well-nigh Washington, D.C. That's rare in Cuba, where the U.S. embargo makes new American cars pretty much impossible to find, much less afford. "That has to be the relative of a general," my guide said. He and the driver went back and forth expressing disbelief.
Indeed, I hadn't seen any newish American cars in Cuba until that moment. How it got in was a mystery to all of the states, though as they said, it must take involved some major favors. My guide had already brought upwards George Orwell's "Fauna Subcontract," which is unofficially banned in Republic of cuba. "I don't know how that guy saw into the future," he'd told me, "but it's similar he was writing nigh Cuba." Upon speeding past the shiny truck, he cited it once over again. "All animals are equal," he told me, "but some animals are more equal than others."
Reina Church building, the Parish of the Sacred Eye of Jesus and St. Ignatius of Loyola in Havana.
Roberto Machado NOA/Lightrocket via Getty Images
As we approached Villa Blanca, he suggested nosotros brand a finish. His aunt, uncle and cousin lived right off the road. If I wanted to see the real Cuba, he told me — the kind that would be forbidden if he were working equally an official state tour guide, equally he one time did — and then I should end in. So I did. I hopped a small metal bulwark onto the front end porch, where a friendly fiddling dog jumped on my leg. Cinder blocks painted white formed the spine of the home, which we entered through a rusted metal door. Ii box-shaped TVs rested in a corner of the living room. A frayed carmine drapery served as a bedroom door. His aunt offered u.s.a. coffee and scrambled into the kitchen to put it on the stove. His uncle saturday in a wheelchair at a small tabular array, sipping from a plastic yellow java cup. He offered to tell me annihilation I wanted to know — almost the revolution, the "special period," the current situation, all of information technology. Only when he turned toward me did I realize he didn't have either of his legs. When he talked, he squinted, and I could hardly see his eyes.
He was a large fan of the revolution when information technology triumphed, he told me. He was but 12 then, and for many years the island'due south Soviet relations ensured relative material stability. Enough of food, everything was affordable. And then the Soviet Union savage, and Cuba felt the full force of the U.S. embargo; he virtually winced at remembering the shortages and suffering. He helped many people build makeshift boats, he said, in an efforts to abscond to the U.S. during the 1990s and early 2000s, when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the seas aboard homemade rafts to escape. And he lectured at length on how the embargo makes life miserable. "No ha ayudado a nadie. Es terrible," he said. "It hasn't helped anyone. It'due south terrible."
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was a big fan of Barack Obama, and his new era of relations with Republic of cuba. Perhaps just every bit unsurprisingly, he wasn't a fan of Donald Trump, and his policies that undid much of what Obama had washed. Trump screwed everything up, he told me — in less- kind language.
Back in the machine, I asked my guide what he made of his uncle's view of Obama, Trump and Cuban-American relations. He disagreed. Echoing the very same arguments that rage in American political circles, he said the root of the problem is not the embargo, just the Cuban government. If he was an American political leader, he added, he would favor the same iron-fisted approach; he just doesn't trust Cuban assurances that foreign investments and trade with the U.S. would trickle down to the people. Cooperation, therefore, entrenches government ability without tangible benefit. The changes Obama brought, in his view, were largely bogus. We passed a oversupply of dozens waiting at a bus cease. "The Cuban manner," he chosen information technology.
We somewhen made it to Varadero, which felt like a slice of Miami. A new resort grew near the entrance. Homes featured fresh paint and upwards-to-date maintenance. Nosotros even came across a Harley-Davidson motorcycle rally. It was a beautiful identify — ane that I could visit and appreciate, while most Cubans can't. My guide said that if he always managed to buy a car, the first matter he'd do is pile in his family and bring them there. But for now, that remains a furthermost dream. "Esto es otro mundo, chico," he said as we drove past the strip of restaurants along the coast.
"This is some other globe, human."
Back at 405 San Pablo, Tania offers a bout of the downstairs home. She leads me to the back, where a physical courtyard opens up. She has a few potted purple flowers and crotons growing in one corner, which she hopes to expand into a full garden. Beside the door leading back within, she'due south assembled scaffolding out of stripped tree trunks and ii-by-fours. I follow her through the bedrooms, through the living rooms, which feature some familiar artifacts: A pendulum clock; green leather chairs with ovular cerise armrests; a mahogany cabinet, all dating from the days my family lived here. As Tania moves toward the chiffonier to retrieve something she wants to show me, I observe something that isn't hither: Religious artifacts.
My family unit was never likewise religious back then. Though my granddaddy had grown up across Havana harbor in Regla, home to 1 of the nigh unique churches in the globe: Nuestra Señora de Regla — Our Lady of Regla. Information technology'south officially Catholic, just many, if non almost, of the people who get there to worship are non Catholic. They practice a faith officially known as the Regla de Ocha, unremarkably chosen Santeria. It originated with African slaves, who disguised their faith by adapting their behavior into a Catholic framework, resulting in a syncretism where Catholic symbols represent Yoruba gods. Our Lady of Regla — a depiction of the Virgin Mary with a Black confront and a bluish robe — represents Yemayá, the god of rivers and h2o. So this Catholic church, located steps from the harbor, is actually a functional shrine to Yemayá.
Peradventure living near this place is why my grandfather made regular reference to a Santero phenomenon known every bit "el sereno" — a vague, superstitious phrase that basically translates to condensation or mist in the air, especially at night; avoiding it meant avoiding ill wellness effects or even death. All that, despite the fact that he was Cosmic. Though he left too early to really feel the consequences of that affiliation.
Indeed, family unit members that stayed in Cuba later my mom and grandparents left, like cousin Lourdes and uncle Julio, bore the brunt of the overt religious bigotry that accompanied the early on revolution. After the Jesuits and other religious leaders were forced out, many believers were driven into hiding. Lourdes told me about her family unit'south quest to worship covertly. "We used to hibernate to go to church at the beginning," she says. "We decided that we had to go, and then nosotros did. ... Only we were not in a good identify. Because the thing was, if you lot were going to church, then yous weren't communist." And if you weren't communist, you lot were an enemy of the revolution — or and so the thinking went.
The 'Christ of Havana' statue looks over the Cuban capitol from across the harbor. It was installed just days before Fidel Castro's revolution triumphed.
Photo by Jacques Langevin/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images
Over time, that approach inverse. Petra Kuivala, a scholar of history, religious studies and Cuban studies at Harvard, says churches were working behind the scenes to undo their tense relationship with the Cuban government for decades earlier they saw results. Protestant churches, co-ordinate to one longtime minister I spoke with, led the mode.
"At that place is a process of 25, xxx years of finding new common footing," Kuivala explains, "from religious institutions to state institutions to deciding the terms and parameters for a shared coexistence." Those talks diameter fruit in the '90s, during what Fidel Castro dubbed Cuba's special catamenia. After the fall of the Soviet Union, which Cuba relied on for trade, an epidemic of poverty and fabric scarcity overtook the island, leading to various reforms. In 1992, Cuba amended its constitution to declare itself a secular state, rather than an atheist state. A 1998 visit past Pope John Paul 2 signaled a new phase of the revolution's arroyo to religion. For the start time since the early on '60s, even the Catholic majority was free to worship.
"The earlier-and-after moment for religion in Republic of cuba is Pope John Paul II's visit in 1998," says Michelle Maldonado, a former professor of religious studies at the University of Miami. "Folks trace that as the moment when nosotros saw a distinct opening, and a much more public opening." But this opening was non a free-for-all. Today, barriers to religious liberty take a more than covert form.
Before I flew from Miami to Cuba, I visited Colegio de Belén President Male parent Guillermo Garcia-Tuñon, known to almost equally Father Willie. He grew up in Miami and presides over the school, simply he's also of Cuban heritage. Nosotros met at his sports-themed office. His homilies when I was a student were known for references to the 1972 Miami Dolphins, and so I'm not surprised to notice football helmets and bobbleheads crowding his desk. It'south worth noting that the Cuban exile community in general has the sharpest of axes to grind against the Cuban regime, and its hatred of annihilation the government does can border on irrational. That said, from what I saw in Cuba, Begetter Willie sums upward the religious freedom question perfectly.
There are basically two schools of idea, he said. One holds that maintaining dialogue with the Cuban authorities keeps certain doors open up. "They may be limited," he says, "merely it gives them an opportunity to do something and be in that location and be of service." The Cosmic Church, since the Pope's visit in 1998, has moved toward this position, as have most religious leaders on the island.
The other school believes in speaking out confronting the government as a core component of freedom — religious or otherwise — at the risk of retaliation. By now, many such believers have been pruned, usually by forced exile. "The one interesting thing well-nigh the Castro government is there was never a astringent, fierce persecution of priests and nuns, similar in that location may take been in places like China or the Soviet Union," Male parent Willie told me. "I tin't call back of whatever priests or nuns that were killed or incarcerated for long periods of time."
China offers an interesting comparison point. Co-ordinate to Pew's religious freedom index, which plots countries on axes of social hostilities and government restrictions, Communist china is the worst country in the globe in terms of state prohibition of religion. Cuba isn't ranked well — it's the lowest-rated country in the Americas — but it ranks far better than China, and above places similar Israel, Russian federation and Singapore. In that sense, Cuba really has more religious freedom than it once did. Only is "more freedom" synonymous with freedom itself?
I'one thousand reminded of Paco Rodés, a Baptist pastor I met in the port city of Matanzas, about an hr and a half east of Havana. He's 79, with brusque white hair and ears that stick out only plenty to notice. He's been at the First Baptist Church of Matanzas since 1965. These days, part of his strategy is to requite the Cuban government credit when information technology does a good job — for case, with new laws or with hurricane preparedness — rather than insist on abiding criticism. Therein lies the tension of religious freedom in Cuba, and indeed around the world: Is the church really gratuitous if it operates only at the will of the state?
"They know that if they speak up, life will become very hard for them," says Carlos Eire, a Yale historian and religious studies professor, of the ecclesiastical leaders who take this more diplomatic road. "Their prime objective is to create a infinite where at to the lowest degree some people tin be religious. Merely they're all painfully enlightened of the fact that those people are going to be paying a price for information technology."
Despite a crumbling roof in the sanctuary itself, Matanzas Showtime Baptist still appears very much alive. Tapestries and watercolor paintings decorate the walls. The wellspring is even more obvious next door at the Kairos Center, founded in 1994 to bridge the gap betwixt Protestant worship and Cuban culture. It serves equally a sort of community centre, with a purified h2o station available to anyone; a communal dining room; a proliferation of paintings from local artists; and a garden of flowers and medicinal plants.
"We have a place in this city, in relation to the arts," Rodés told me. I followed him up an orange tile staircase to his small, beige part, where a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and a poster of Gandhi's "Seven Deadly Social Sins" hung on the wall. This place, I thought, was exactly what religion could be in Cuba: a force for communal good.
Yet when Rodés left his function to use the bath, I was once more reminded of what Father Willie, Eire and others take observed about such religious flourishing: Like the aging houses of Havana, such institutions can only stand as long as their back up systems allow them to. Which is why, even here, a 20-something human with a brusque beard and a "California" T-shirt poked his head within. "Communism is bad," he told me. "Don't let them fool you."
Tania opens up the mahogany cabinet and pulls out a dusty old photo album. About of it features pictures of her own family — of people I don't recognize. Only there! There information technology is! Near at the cease of the album, on the top-left corner of the folio, there's my mom! She'due south probably two or three years old, wearing a feather headdress for some reason, simply that'due south her! On the aforementioned page, I find Hortencia and Julio Robla, my great-grandparents — the man who built the firm where we now stand. I bear witness Tania some pictures of my own, brought from Miami. Of my mom, grandmother and grandfather in this very aforementioned place. She covers her mouth with her hands and smiles backside her mask before leading me up the turquoise staircase, to the living quarters my mom once chosen domicile.
Tania Telleria shows the author photos from an old album of hers, featuring his female parent (acme left, wearing plumage costume) and great grandparents, (bottom right).
Ethan Bauer, Deseret Magazine
The only affair that'south changed up hither is the kitchen. Fifty-fifty the bath, with its blue tiles trimmed with black and its white porcelain fixtures, is the aforementioned — and information technology shines similar new, also. In what was once my mom'due south bedroom, I walk past a blackness sewing machine that my grandmother in one case used to tailor dresses. In the living room, I try out the rocking chair that my mom'due south cousin famously tumbled out of, and that my great-grandfather often took out onto the balcony. And on that balustrade — where my mom recorded her earliest retention, sitting on her own little rocking chair — I expect out at the neighborhood.
Some things, like the bodega half a cake over where Tania tells me my family used to shop, remain intact. Some things, similar the business firm across the street now reduced to random walls of cinder blocks, roosters running free in their midst, do not. I follow Tania back down the staircase, where a thin wire runs along the wall. That wire, I realize later, connects to the lock at the front door. My family unit installed that a lifetime ago so they wouldn't have to become all the way downward to let visitors in. And there information technology is — still here. This is why people — even people who accept never been hither — clap upon landing in Cuba.
Cousin Lourdes explained it well. She left Cuba when she was 20. So, unlike my mom, she spent most of her formative years on the island. She'south no fan of the government or the current situation, but when I ask her about the clapping, she surprises me with simplicity: They applauded "because they are happy to come back," she says. "Nearly of them are homesick." And if it wasn't for the passport laws that get in hard for people born in Cuba to visit, she would like to go back, too. Because when you're Cuban — or Cuban American — Cuba all the same feels like abode, like a part of yourself. Potholes and bumps and all.
The writer shows Tania Telleria, who lives in the house his great grandfather built, photos of his family before they left Cuba.
Deseret Mag
I follow Tania up the street to the sometime Materva soda manufactory, which these days looks like a rust museum. My bully-granddad once worked here, helping brand what was then sort of Cuba's ain Coca-Cola. The visitor withal exists in Miami, but the product remains unavailable to most Cubans hither. Staring upward at the ex-factory, with its rusted white h2o tower and cracked concrete walls, Tania trips astern in a small-scale cobblestone crater. She tells me she remembers they used to have a slogan printed on all the cans: "If you drink, don't bulldoze. And if y'all drink, beverage Materva." I tell her they all the same impress the same slogan. She laughs. She smiles. I laugh. I smile. I wish I had a can to requite her.
We walk back toward the firm, and exterior nosotros notice Conchita, some other woman who knew my grandparents. "Eran como familia," she says. "They were similar family unit."
Before I get going, Tania has something to say. "Yo siento alegría. El bisnieto de Julio Robla está en la casa que él construyó," she tells me. "I experience joy. The great-grandchild of Julio Robla is in the house that he built." She smiles, and she pulls me in for a hug. She asks when I'1000 leaving. When I tell her the side by side morning, she pouts. Next time I'm in Havana, she assures me, I'1000 welcome to stay for free, to eat their nutrient. I don't know whether that day volition ever come, though I'd sure like it to. Such is the paradox of exile: You want to become, merely yous know you shouldn't. You want to bask it, but you tin't. As long every bit the tourism apartheid remains intact, information technology's hard to justify journeying back.
Only should such an opportunity ascend, Tania says I'k always invited. Aye, at this onetime business firm, she promises I'k welcome whatever fourth dimension.
This story appears in the April event ofDeseret Magazine.Learn more about how to subscribe.
Source: https://www.deseret.com/faith/2022/3/30/23001870/the-house-that-exile-built-cuba-castro-exile-miami-religious-freedom-family-tourist
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