Reply #228: You may recall a small girl in Miami who was the subject of a dispute last summer.

[Judi Lynn]

Her mother came to the States, and the mother's new husband literally ditched her at the airport in Miami and went to live with his relatives.

The mother struggled to keep her two children and herself together while she looked for work in a country where she was completely alone! She started saying she wanted to go back to Cuba, and the people where she worked made trouble for her, and within a short time her Section 8 housing and her food stamps which are given to Cubans who arrive here were withdrawn. She was desperate, went to Houston to look for work away from Miami, and ended up calling the cops and then slitting her wrists in dispair because she couldn't take care of her two kids.

During the fight for the daughter to be able to return to live with the father in Cuba, it was mentioned again that the mother had been wanting to go home, and desperately hoped her daughter could go back to Cuba to live with the child's father.

That was discussed just last year in American papers. Here's something written by former New York Times journalist, Anne Louise Bardach, who travelled back and forth from Miami to Cuba writing her book on the two Cuban communities. It was published before _{George Bush} severely damaged what little travel freedom to Cuba was available:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. One either defects or is repudiated.

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a nod to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriots who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero, or comrade), are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.


Page XVIII
Preface
Cuba Confidential
Love and Vengeance
In Miami and Havana

Copyright© 2002 by
Ann Louise Bardach