Bicho malo nunca muere

Part Two of mi Cubana's story follows. Part One is here.

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My family left Brooklyn for Hopewell, Virginia in 1963, after my father was hired by the Allied Chemical Co. as a mid-level engineer at a plant in Chesterfield, VA. We lived in a small frame house, but as my father was able to save a little, we moved to a larger home after the birth of my sister, who was named after my mother Nilda (and called Nildita). My brother Johnny had entered college, and my aunt Delia had remained in New York with her new husband Luis Quintero. She held a doctorate in pedagogy from the University of Havana, but she worked as a seamstress and attended night school to get her teaching certification here. My aunt taught in the New York public school system until she retired in 1984. She had met Uncle Luis in Cuba, and they were married in New York in 1963. He was a pharmaceutical sales rep and a Teamster.

Though I was only a first-grader, I can recall the heated discussions my family would have about the developments in Cuba. They were all incensed about President Kennedy's failure to support the soldiers at the Bay of Pigs in '61, and they really never got over it. (Most Cubans of my parents' generation have always voted Republican, and this is the primary reason.)

My dad was promoted to plant management with Allied and we moved to New Jersey in 1970. Sadly, my brother Johnny passed away in 1976, at the age of 28, the day before my sixteenth birthday. I spent my formative years in Freehold Township (Springsteen country!) and my father continued rising through the ranks at Allied-Signal, receiving a promotion to manage a chemical facility in Orange, Texas, where we moved in 1980.

That's where in the winter of 1981, at a fraternity party, I met the man who became my husband. Perry and I married in September of 1986, my father retired from Honeywell in 1988, and my parents moved to Miami to join my aunt and uncle and many of our relatives in Little Havana. They later moved back to Texas, joining my sister and I in Houston after my nephews joined the family in the mid- to late '90s.

My mother, who had long suffered from a defective heart valve, had an operation in 1994 to replace it but suffered several small strokes as a complication of the surgery. She recovered most functionality, but her mental condition has generally declined over the years since to the point where she now has severe dementia and must be cared for around the clock. My father was diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2003, and has sent it into remission four times with a battery of chemotherapy treatments administered by the fine doctors at Baylor and Methodist Hospital, in the Texas Medical Center.

My uncle Luis passed away in 1990, and my dear aunt Delia, who was like my second mother, lost her battle with cancer in May of this year.

My parents and I had become United States citizens in 1967. Though their parents had always spoken of someday returning to Cuba, my mother and father had made a new life for themselves and were happy and comfortable here. They never spoke seriously of returning, though they both had many relatives on the island whom they would never see or speak to again. My mother, who is only a few months older than Fidel, often said of him: “Bicho malo nunca muere”, which translates to “A bad bug never dies.” She couldn't have guessed how prophetic that would turn out to be.

I have some interest in visiting Cuba, but as a naturalized Cuban-American it would not be possible until the Communist regime is done away with. I hope one day in the not-too-distant future that my husband and I can visit the land of my birth, perhaps see some of my distant relatives and complete the circle of discovery that my family began so many years ago.

"Texroots" rolls out first endorsements

See, a bunch of us have been talking, and we finally figured out how to leverage the Internets into something meaningful. This is how we do it:

The Texas Progressive Alliance today launched 'TexRoots,' an online fund-raising campaign designed raise funds for Democratic candidates in Texas via the internet. The launch of 'TexRoots' is the first major unified fund-raising effort by Texas blogs of its kind.

The Alliance, a group of blogs and bloggers united to promote Democratic and progressive candidates and causes, launched 'TexRoots' Monday with solicitations for three Texas candidates: Hank Gilbert, candidate for Agriculture Commissioner, Juan Garcia, candidate for Texas House of Representatives in District 32, and Shane Sklar, candidate for U.S. House of Representatives in Congressional District 14. The Alliance's goal is to raise a combined $3,000 for the "Texas Trio" of Gilbert, Garcia and Sklar. TexRoots works with the nationally recognized fund-raising tools of ActBlue.com.

So, your mission -- should you choose to accept it -- is to support the effort by contributing what you can to these fine Democrats. Take out your credit card, click on the box at the top right and help us turn Texas a little bluer.

Dejando A Cuba, No Mas Libre

As promised, Part One of the guest post from mi Cubana:

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My family in Cuba was easily what would be considered upper middle class. We had a large home in the province of Matanzas, east of Havana, and employed domestics -- cooks, maids, people who did the laundry. My father, Israel, was a pharmacist and then a manager in a chemical plant which produced rayon. My mother Nilda was a teacher before she married my father and became a full-time housewife after the birth of my older brother Johnny in 1947. Johnny was my half-brother; my mother divorced his father and married my dad in 1957. I was born in 1960, twenty months after Fidel Castro overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista.

My family was horrified at the prospect of a communist Cuba. The thought of the schools, hospitals, businesses large and small being taken over by the state, with free speech not only stifled but clamped down, with boys conscripted at age 14, all was a terrifying thing to them. My maternal grandfather, Luis Felipe Lizazo, was a journalist and political activist; he ran for office in the years prior to La Revolucion challenging the party of Batista (as a capitalist, of course). He was also the highest degree Freemason and head of his lodge. After Fidel came to power he was almost immediately imprisoned for counter-revolutionary activity. So was the man who later married my mother's sister in the US -- my uncle Luis -- and my mother's cousin Elsa, who was detained for several days in very unsanitary conditions with a large group of other women.

The Cuban political prisons were as bad as anything you have heard. Once my grandfather got nothing to eat for a month but mashed pumpkin. There were mock executions, where a prisoner would be taken out of his cell and even fired at, but not upon. My grandfather was in and out of Castro's El Principe until he passed away in 1967.

The last straw for my parents came in 1961, when my brother was approaching his fourteenth birthday, and at that time boys of his age were taken from their family to military training camps. A large army was of course needed to continue La Revolucion. My father felt things in Cuba were only getting worse, and my mother was adamant that Castro would not get her son.

My dad concocted an elaborate ruse in order to escape; many professionals at the time were leaving the country while on vacation, and he believed he was under surveillance, so he took his vacation without traveling anywhere. A few weeks later, he reported to his plant supervisor that his father had suffered a heart attack, and he had to take time off to go see him in a neighboring province. They packed less than what you might take on a weekend trip -- a few clothes, some extra cloth diapers for me -- and left their home unlocked and all their money in the bank, and instead went to the airport in Havana.

My family's paperwork -- Papi applied for a passport long before Castro ceased processing them -- had initially been held up because my dad's name matched that of an avowed Communist, and that naturally meant he would be unable to qualify for political asylum in America. That matter had taken weeks to clear up, long before he took his vacation and arranged the "illness". But the most harrowing part of the journey came at the Havana airport: our flight to Jamaica was delayed for unexplained reasons for several hours. My father told me years later that those hours waiting were the most agonizing of his life. Had he been discovered he would have been thrown in jail, probably for the rest of his days. All of the trappings of wealth he had acquired were lost anyway, but the thought of his wife and son and infant daughter serving a Castro regime in destitution while he languished in prison was more than he could bear.

Finally we were all able to depart without incident, and my family, together with my aunt Delia, spent a few weeks in Jamaica getting the assistance of a Jewish organization to come to the United States. We arrived in New York in October of 1961.

My dad took a job in a pharmacy, but because his licensing was delayed, he performed janitorial work until he could be certified. My mother and aunt spent their first winter in the States with unsuitable overcoats, and they told me that as they trudged through the snow carrying groceries home, it was so cold that they cried.

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