Letter to Mr. Obama

Dear Mr. President, Many have written recently about your trip to Cuba a few days ago. You were applauded and you were criticized. I am just one more person who has been affected by your visit to my country of birth. Mr. Barack Obama, you and I are the same age. I am 3 months older than you and was only 5 years old when I left Cuba. When my family was expelled from Cuba, you were almost four and living in Honolulu, the place of your birth. I am a naturalized citizen, you are citizen by birth. According to your bio, you left the US to Indonesia with your mom when you were a 6 years old boy. This may cause you some compassion for me and the many of Cuban children who arrived in this country as a young child. I remember my entry in the US very well and it was traumatic in some ways. I wonder Mr. Obama, were you told to leave all your belongings behind when you left for Indonesia, or did you bring your special toy? I had to leave behind my favorite doll. Do you remember kissing your family wondering if you would ever see them again? I had to say goodbye to my kind great grandfather Alberto and my favorite Tio Pepe, never able to see them again as they both died of old age while I was in exile. I was happily able to reunite with my grandparents years later as a young adult. Your bio says you separated from your mother at age 10, when she sent you back to Hawaii to live with your grandparents. It is recorded that this separation had a huge effect on you. Perhaps this pain has given you some empathy for the pain of many of us who separated from our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, sisters and brothers. You know how separation stresses out families and saddens our souls. It is written that even though you did very well academically in school you ‘never felt as though you fit in’. Wow, that is how many of us Cubans in exiles felt too. Cuban American kids tended to do very well academically; however, it is hard to fit in when you are straddling two cultures and wondering which tribe does one belong in, isn’t it? It has been said that because of this you started to drink beer, smoke pot in high school and even tried cocaine as a way to “fit in”. Isn’t true that we all do things we later may regret as a way to make ourselves relevant to our peers? Mr. Obama, you are like many of my Cuban exile friends, during the late 70’s, trying to act cool and burying the pain that separation from our loved ones can bring. I am sure you also wanted to know more about your family who were in another continent. In the 1980’s as a young adult, you wanted to get to know your birth father and so just before you began law school here in the US, you were able to travel to Kenya, Africa to get to know your father’s family since he had since passed away from a car accident. You wanted to know your “identity”. I found out that this trip back to your father’s home town helped you understand his struggles. It gave you a sense of purpose to the work you were doing in the US. You had been working with social justice issues and found it connected directly to your own family’s struggles. You are quoted, “(the visit to Kenya) helped unify my outward self with my inward self in an important way.” During this time when you were trying to “find yourself”, I also was experiencing a similar sensation. However, I could not go get a passport and buy a ticket to Havana, as you did to Alego. Cuba did not want me back. I was expatriated when I left my country. All I had to connect with my family were their letters and occasional phone calls (calls and letters that were all censored by the Cuban authorities.) Then came those few months in 1980 when the Mariel boat lift was taking place and I remember the exhilaration of hope that we Cubans felt wondering and hoping that our loved ones would be one of the “lucky ones” who could find a way out of Cuba to a country where they could experience freedom, the US. Perhaps finally I would be able to connect with my identity like you were able to by visiting with your father’s people. Unfortunately, this did not work out for me, but it did for many of my Cuban friends. For many months after the Mariel boatlift I remember meeting those hardened faces of Cubans who had weathered the Cuban revolution telling us their stories. It was then that I started to discover a part of my identity I didn’t know about. I learned firsthand the stories that my grandparents had been forbidden to tell me when we had our phone calls a few times in the year or in the letters they wrote to me. I was horrified at knowing what people are capable of doing to one another in the name of “the Revolution”. I was also amazed at what people were capable of fighting for when they knew what was right and what is God given: freedom to be what God called them to be, freedom to say what was in their hearts, freedom to do the right thing for themselves and for others. These Mariel Cubans who I met and who sat in our living room telling us their stories of hope during their suffering were the survivors; I was one of the fortunate ones that had escaped the oppression. Together, we became a part of a bigger story, one that needed to be passed down to our children. It was a story that needed to be told to the world. (Remember this was pre internet times.) Upon 10,000 Cubans crashing the Peruvian embassy in Havana, and taking asylum, Castro decided he would use this opportunity to expel all those he wanted out. He let loose the criminals in jails and the mentally ill and dropped them off in the embassy. Among the criminals, desperate courageous Cubans, (now known as Marielitos) were willing to be labeled “scum”, “queers”, and “thugs” so that they could get out. Mr. Obama, you were busy in Columbia University in New York during this time of Mariel, and with your interest in social justice, I can imagine you were reading the newspapers daily on what had been going on as the south Florida tried to assimilate so many Cubans at one time. You may have read how this mass exodus required the help of the US Army and US Coast Guard. You may have learned of the difficulties of processing so many desperate immigrants at one time and the strain on the city of Miami. It is estimated that about 125,000 Cubans made it into our country during that time and many died on the trip here. Later came the early 90’s and Cuba entered what they call “the Special Period” upon the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was during this time that Cuban industries, transportations, agricultural systems became paralyzed, since oil imports from the USSR were almost all cut off. Humanitarian aid from the US became more open. In 1998 Pope John Paul II visited Cuba. This period of time was special for me too, for it brought me renewed hope. Perhaps now the Cubans would taste freedom. Mr. Obama, the Internet was fairly new and you were a young dad then, Malia had just been born and you had been reelected to the Illinois Senate. I had just started experiencing the World Wide Web and was frantically searching for news of Cuba on this new cyber highway. I found that Cubans are among the most strictly controlled people on the World Wide Web. I found that the Revolution was still alive and those who run the country for the sake of the Revolution would not permit my cousins to talk to me via internet. My cousins had no clue that the internet even existed. It would not be for another decade before they would know. In fact, it wasn’t until last year (2015) that Cuba opened up internet hot spots, and though still illegal to have internet in private homes, young Cubans are now finding ways to raise the money to afford their time on the internet. During the early 90’s you were in the Illinois Senate, fighting for your causes and raising a family. I am sure that your fight for social justice was influenced by your identity, by the man you wanted to become. You share a lot with us Cubans, Mr. Obama. Many of us Cubans also desire to have families and fight for those issues which we find important. And so, all of this Mr. Obama, is my long way of helping you see that we have a lot in common. Our fight for democracy in Cuba is based on how we identify with our struggles. Watching you sitting with Raul Castro at a baseball game the other day while I ate a late lunch, to my eyes, is seen a traitorous. You joking around and smiling next to the man who was responsible for the atrocities that many Cubans experienced, that many Cubans still experience today was very painful. Through your eyes as you sat there, that warm afternoon in the Cuban sunshine, I was praying you would see the millions of Cuban children who had been separated from their families, who felt the same hurt, you may have felt as a child. You may remember the pain of separating from your mother and never knowing your birth father. That was your fate, Mr. Obama. This is mine. My fate and the fate of many Cubans happens to be in your hands today. Don’t forget us Mr. Obama. Don’t forget our pain. Don’t forget our story. Our stories are all connected in some way. Sincerely, a U.S. Citizen who can’t forget her Cuban story.