News revives passion and bitter memories
The telephone awakened Aida Lopez at 6 a.m. yesterday, piercing the silence of her little apartment above her Jamaica Plain gift shop, the one with the "Parking for Cubans only" sign in the window.
It was her son, calling with the news she had been waiting 37 years to hear. Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader she had fled with her husband, four children, and one change of clothes, was finally stepping down. She snapped on the television and smiled.
"Today is the day of my liberation," Lopez said later in her shop, surrounded by rows of pink lace, ribbon, and, in the corner, a portable CD player on which she played the Cuban national anthem. "I'm going back."
The 72-year-old widow conceded that her return probably will not happen for a while, but yesterday's announcement stirred Cubans across Massachusetts and beyond.
In interviews on neighborhood streets and corporate office buildings yesterday, many local residents who were born in Cuba said they expect democracy to come slowly to their native land, largely because Castro's 76-year-old brother, Raúl, is expected to succeed him as president. Still, Castro's announcement revived old passions and bitter memories among Cubans who have grown old in exile in the United States - still clinging to the hope that they might go home again.
Micho Spring, chairwoman of Weber Shandwick New England, a Cambridge-based communications firm, learned of Castro's departure before dawn when her 26-year-old daughter, Silvia, a Newsweek correspondent in Baghdad, called with the announcement she had seen while reading the news services. Forty-nine years ago, Spring was 8 when her father woke her to say that dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled. Days later, hopeful for a regime that would improve the lives of all Cubans, she waved a Cuban flag to welcome Castro as he rode into power in a caravan of jeeps.
A year and a half later, deeply disillusioned by his authoritarian rule, her family fled to the United States. "That was the saddest thing - the opportunity lost," Spring, 58, said in a phone interview. "There was just no room for people who, like my father and mother, who totally would have supported the revolution if it had continued to be a democracy."
Castro's announcement thrust exiles into the spotlight once again. Although Cubans dominate Miami, the plight of exiles has largely faded in Massachusetts, home to fewer than 10,000 Cubans, according to estimates from the 2000 census, compared with more than 50,000 people who said they hail from the Dominican Republic and nearly 20,000 people from El Salvador.
In Jamaica Plain, home to one Cuban enclave, exiles and others debated the issues as they watched television, pored over photo albums, and sipped sweet Cuban coffee and bowls of chicken soup. Some even speculated that Castro was already dead.
At El Oriental de Cuba, a cozy restaurant nearby, everyone seemed to know the news about Castro yesterday. Some expressed hopes for a peaceful transition of power and that Cuba's government will allow more freedom of expression and open the door to democratic rule.
Liuva del Toro Ametller, 65, said he hoped the ailing Castro, who will still influence policy as first secretary of the communist party, would encourage his brother to open the economy by allowing more private investment.
Del Toro Ametller spent more than a decade in prison for opposing Castro's regime. He arrived with his relatives at Logan International Airport in 1980 as part of the Mariel boat lift, so weakened he was unable to walk.
"He's suffering now," Del Toro Ametller said of Castro. "When you are suffering you can realize the damage that you do when you make other people suffer, too."
But Cuban-Americans said change is unlikely to come at all unless Washington changes its policies, calling for an end to the four-decade long trade embargo that has left Cuba stuck in time, with empty shelves and rationed goods. Most painful, they say, are the travel restrictions that have separated families.
Oswald Mondejar, a leader of Acceso, a Cuban-American humanitarian group that will leave Saturday for an annual trip to Cuba to deliver books, medicine, and supplies, said many members still have relatives there. "I'm just hoping that [the US] government reaches out in a more productive way than it has over the years," Mondejar said. "We all know that the embargo hasn't worked. We have so many relationships with other countries that have similar regimes, if not more restrictive. These are our neighbors."
Some Cubans said they doubt they would ever return for good. Manuel Bolívar fled in 1961, after his father, a print-shop owner, lost everything. Now he is a 65-year-old US citizen, married to an Ecuadoran immigrant, and their children are US citizens. "I don't want to leave my kids alone," he said.
But Lopez said she dreams of returning to Havana and building a motel. A year ago, she returned to Cuba to visit relatives. She despaired at the sight of crumbling buildings and empty streets. Her eyes searched in vain for the water trucks that used to cleanse the streets every morning.
When she approached her former home, the new inhabitants ran inside. She shrugged. "I don't want the house," she said. "I want the freedom."
She, like Del Toro Ametller, never became a US citizen on purpose, though she has decorated her entire store with US flags and pro-Republican stickers. "I don't belong to this country," she said simply from behind the counter. "I belong to mine." 