Greetings!
I was born and raised in Miami, the son of Cuban immigrants. My father was a card-carrying member of the Grand Ole Party (I still remember letters “signed” by President Gerald Ford arriving at our house addressed to my dad) and virtually all of my family was virulently anti-Castro and, I later learned, profoundly anti-Cuba.
I was taught to hate all that is Cuba and yearn for a Cuba that ceased to exist years before I was born. I bought into this nihilist brand of self-hate, this profound and paradoxical contempt of self. Although masked by bombastic and narcissitic rhetoric, it is the same self-loathing found so commonly in other client cultures.
The only choice left for most “Cubans” reared in Miami is either abdication to this self-emasculation of self-identity vis-a-vis blind and deaft and completely mute lambs following others to social slaughter OR deeply painful feelings of conflict and confusion. That is, those are the choices for those who choose to stay in Miami either physically or emotionally.
The “Cubans” that leave Miami – physically and/or emotionally – are one step closer to returning to Cuba herself even if one or all have never actually experienced Cuba in a first-hand, physically sense.
This shift, this inevitable, inexorable reversion to what is in one’s DNA, in one’s blood, in one’s sinews, in one’s essence is what all right-wing “Cubans” must prepare themselves to accept. Whether old or young, abuelo viejo o padre recien, all neoconservative “Cubans” must realize that sooner or later, all Cubans will return to Cuba in either the physical or at least the spiritual sense regardless of what the “Cubans” try to do to stop them.
CAMBIO … en la Yuma!
