November 27, 2024 • 23 mins
In the final episode this season, Peniley reflects on the throughline of the Elián story: family separation.
In an extended interview with Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer, we share her family’s story of separation and reunification. Her mom left Cuba when she was pregnant with Ada in 1963, soon after the revolution. They left behind her 9-year old brother, Poly, or Hipólito, playing in the yard without telling him they wouldn’t be returning. She tells us how years later he would eventually come to the U.S. too, and be reunited, but that the wound of abandonment would prove deep.
To read Ada's family story, here is her New Yorker article, My Brother's Keeper.
This season's cover art by Ranfis Suárez Ramos.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:19):
I'm at International Rivals at the Miami International Airport and
I just spoke to a large family.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is Tasha Sandoval, one of our producers who you
have heard throughout the series. Despite spring, during nor Be
putting trip in Miami, there was still one more thing
Tasha wanted to witness. It's something that happens often at
(00:47):
the Miami International Airport. That is the reunification of Cuban families.
Tasha spotted a family who seemed like they were about
to be reunited with someone. Yes, the family had welcome
(01:13):
balloons in their hands with smiley faces and the American flag.
Balloons may seem pretty routine, but they are also a
powerful symbol for Cubans, something you can access when you
leave the island. As a kid in Cuba, I remember
(01:35):
with the created or school parties with inflated condoms, as
balloons were impossible to get on the island. Back at
the Miami Airport, Tasha was surrounded by a Cuban family
of ten or eleven people prima mio, cousins, nephews, nieces.
(01:57):
They waited for the arrival of two family members who
had been living in Cuba. One of them named Carlitos.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Best a person commands.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I and Ida commersame familia. Hasha waited with the family
for quite a while Lodo, but then finally Carlitos arrived.
(02:38):
There were lots of happy tears, hags and kisses.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Even Tasha cried.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's an emotional moment, something that most Cuban families dream of,
the chance to be reunited, to share a meal together,
as you know, for eight years. It was something my
father and I dreamt of, And of course this is
central to Alian's story. It is something he's on that
long for. It can be tempting to think that a
(03:22):
story of family separation ends at the reunion, but no
reunions can be well complicated. That's at the heart of
Alan's story, the real complexity families faced when they are
forced apart. You see, people could see themselves in Alan's
(03:45):
story because many of us lived a version of that separation.
So for today's finals episode or final episode this season,
we're going to share a really pointed separation and reunion
story from a Cuban America. Can you hear from a
lot this season?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
There's a way to tell history in which there are
categories and everyone.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Fits in a category.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
But real life isn't like that, and real experience, the
experience of human beings, always pushes against those boundaries.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Ala Ferrer, historian and an author of the Pulitzer Prize
winning book Cuba and American History. You might remember that
her mother was living in Miami at the time of
the Liian case, and that she took her sewing scissors
to a newspaper photo of danet Reno after the raid
that took Elean out of Miami. What you may not
(04:40):
know is that Anna and her family also experience a
god branching separation. It's one she wrote about in an
article for The New Yorker in twenty twenty one titled
My Brother's Keeper. And she told me her story too,
while we reflected on the meaning of a Liant's story.
(05:03):
I am Pennileetera meets and this is Chess Peace. The
Lian Gonzalez Story a production of Ututa Studios in partnership
with Iheartsmichael Duda Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I was born in Cuba and I left when I
was ten months old. I grew up in a Cuban community,
so Cuba was always a part of my life, but
I didn't really know anything about it. I did a
master's and specialized in Cuba, and then I started a
PhD program in nineteen eighty nine, and I I had
to go back. So I went back for the first
(06:02):
time in nineteen ninety and then after that I went
pretty much every year.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So right now, fast forward.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You win the Pulitzer two years ago with a book
about Cuba, A General History about Cuba. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I'd been studying Cuban history for over thirty years at
that point, and I felt like I never saw my
family reflected in anything I read. So I wanted to
write a book in which people would see themselves reflected.
The way I approach history is you know a history
that is peopled.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, I will say as a fellow Cuban. When I
read their book, I felt that, for the first time
somebody was explaining the country to me in a way
that was not this propaganda ish style. Right. So, in
your work as a historian, how prevalent is this family
(06:57):
separation in Cuba, And if you think that also partly
explains this passion around the case of Ilian that happened
in that moment but persists even twenty five years later.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
At the heart of it all is still this painful
family separation, but the people involved couldn't even experience it
that way because the story was taken over by these greater,
more impersonal forces that tried to use it for political gain.
So the family separation was a part of the story
(07:30):
of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You know, I lived for many years in Mexico, and
in Mexico, like in other Latin American countries, you have
also many cases of family separation. But the possibility of
going back is real. You know, people send money and
they dream about retiring back home. But in Cuba, when
you leave, you leave. Yeah, there is no coming back.
(07:55):
I mean, I think you're right. Once people leave, they leave,
they have to make a life. But I think a
lot of people, especially when they're older, do question it
and do wonder about it. You think, yeah, my father
did I know. I mean, that's one man.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I don't know how typical that was, but yeah, he
had a sense, like all his life that he'd given
something up, and then as he got older and got
closer to death, you know, he wanted to go back.
He used to write letters all the time to the
Cuban government and to the US government asking for permission
to go back.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And also because there was this moment at the beginning
of the cast regime on the Cuban Revolution, when people
were thinking that we're leaving and then we are returning.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I mean, that's what my parents thought in the beginning.
So they left in sixty two, my father and my
mother and me and sixty three, and they thought they
would be back.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It soon became clear that they wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
My father left because he was a stenographer in the army.
He was very anti communist, and when Fidel Castro came
to power dissolve the army, he was no longer in
the army. He sold sandals in a park at Patrique
de la near the Capitolio, and when the Bay of
Pigs happened in April nineteen sixty one, he was arrested
(09:13):
because before the actual invasion, Fidel Castro deputized people the
populace to arrest people who they thought might support an
invasion should they come, and a neighbor had him arrested,
and after that he decided to leave. He thought, you know,
they arrested me this time. They let me go, but
I don't know what'll happen, I want to leave, and
(09:34):
then my mother left because he left, and when he left,
she was pregnant with me. Because it's what I was
saying before about how there's categories and you expect people
to act according to these categories.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
And that's why I always wondered why they.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Left, because I didn't have property to leave, And I
think that's what shape me as a historian in the
sense that, like real experience doesn't fit easy histories. She
always knew or thought that after he left, he would
do the paperwork to bring us to the US with him.
(10:24):
The complicated thing is that she had another son from
her first marriage, my brother Ipolito or Poli, who was
nine years older than I was, and his father, who
was a member of the Revolutionary police, would not let
him leave. My mother left, always thinking that Poli's father,
(10:52):
once he saw that she had left, would change his
mind and let his son leave, but that just never happen.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Left him or she left him.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
We left him in the same house where we lived,
so with my grandmother and with my aunt who has
my same name, Ada, who we called the Anina, and
they raised him and my mother wrote letters to him
all the time. And sent Baguetes care packages. But you know,
(11:22):
he still felt abandoned. So years, past, decades passed, he
grew into a young man, got into all kinds of
trouble in Cuba. Before Marielle, the US and Cuban governments
agreed to let Cuban exiles back to Cuba for the
(11:45):
first time to visit family. Cuban stormed the Peruvian embassy
and asked for asylum, and then Fidel Castro said that
relatives in Miami could come pick up their family in Cuba.
So my mother went for a week and that was
the first time they'd seen each other since he left.
We left in sixty three, and this was nineteen seventy nine,
(12:10):
and my mother was in the process of bringing him
to the US, so she had applied for the visa.
The visa was approved for family reunification, but you know,
it's all slow and slow, and they were waiting, and
then the Mariel boat lift happened, and so he came
to the US in nineteen eighty, so seventeen years after
we left.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And it wasn't a good reunion. I mean, my mother
was ecstatic.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
There's pictures of her when he first came back and
her smile is like this big. But he never adjusted
and he got into all kinds of trouble here, worse
trouble than in Cuba.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
So it was hard.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
But something that you wrote is that you felt at
some point guilty even Yeah, but you were a baby.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I was a baby.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I know it doesn't really make any intellectual sense, but
I do feel like in some sense, my mother took
me and left him. So there was always this comparison, right,
especially as I got older, that I had been.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
The lucky one.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
My mother was never missing for me, but she was
for him.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So when Elian's case happens, is this case also resonating
in you and your mom because of your own family history.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah? Absolutely, I mean he even he doesn't quite look
like Bolly, but there was something about the cut of
his hair, the close cropped hair, the big eyes, even
the lips. Bully was darker, his face was fuller. But
even just you know the pictures that I Eleanne reminded
me of him. Elean and my brother have the same birthday,
(14:07):
December sixth. There was the question of a struggle between
a father. Lean's father wanting to keep him in Cuba,
which is what Bullie's father did. So I think for
my mother in particular, wanting Lean to stay was a
way of fighting that battle with her ex husband all
(14:29):
over and the idea that if Bully had been able
to come when he was a boy with her, history
would have turned out really differently.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So I think for her that's why she was.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So emotional about it and why it.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Hurt her so deeply. Right, the father.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Should not keep the boy in Cuba, the boy should
come as a boy to the us. That had happened
with BALI would have been a different person and we
would have been a different family.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, your brother finally came to be with you only
in the early eighties. But as you have said, family
separation was part of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
And sometimes I hear questions from people asking, well, couldn't
family stay in communication even if they were separated, But aha,
we know how complicated that really is.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I know someone in Cuba who believed very deeply in
the revolution.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Her family was very comfortable.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
They decided to leave, and she said I'm not leaving,
I'm a part of this now, and she stayed. She
was sixteen, stayed by herself, and she did not speak
to her family until the Special period, until the early nineties.
It was the physical separation, but it was even that
people were encouraged to not write to family, to not
(16:03):
keep those connections right. If people wanted to advance in
school or their careers or the government, they could not
maintain relations with their family abroad. So there was the
physical separation and then a forced emotional separation. All the
(16:28):
people who've left Cuba over the last sixty some years,
most of them have not left in a full family unit.
In many cases they reunified, but not everyone reunifies, and
so there's a separation and pain and loss everywhere. And
I do think that's why many human families have a
(16:49):
story like that, which is why Alan's story resonated so deeply.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So it's a story that it's about Elian, but it's
also a story that it's about all of us. All
of us.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah. Yeah. When I wrote Cuban American History, part of
what I wanted to do was to allow Americans to
see their own country from the outside end, to use
Cuba as a way for Americans to question what they
thought they knew about the US. And I feel like
(17:20):
I also wrote it for Cubans, and I think part
of what I wanted to do was to get Cubans
to see their own history like through the eyes of
each other, to not just assume these ideological straight jackets
that people have been forced into, because most people know
that those straight jackets are completely ridiculous and insufficient. So
(17:44):
just to kind of connect with each other on a
more human level and to just set aside these ideological constraints.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
So is Eliane then a symbol of you know, more
than sixty years of Guven history.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, and no.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I mean he's a symbol in terms of reminding us
about the centrality of the family in this history and
the centrality of family separation. So I think that's what
makes him a symbol. But he himself, no, I just
(18:30):
think we don't know enough because he's this boy who
was only ever allowed to be a symbol, but he
wasn't allowed to escape that.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
He remains a symbol.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Thank you to Ada Ferrer, Cuban American historian, twenty five
(19:14):
years after he was rescued at sea. Elian Gonzalez indeed
remains a symbol for US Cubans, no matter if you
are in Miami or Cuba. His story shows the pain
and possible healing that comes from family separation. Elian's case
also shows that history is not just political changes, but
history is about how ordinary people experience those changes, suffering
(19:38):
or benefiting from them. Leanne may be seen as a symbol,
but he himself is not. He is a real person,
a father, son, friend, living a very human life. As
(19:59):
adadive her book, I have worked on this podcast to
get Cubans to see their own history through each other size.
This is why I'm not just telling what happened to
Elian and his father, but also what happened to my family.
To understand the passion around Elian's case on both sides
of the Florida Straits, you must understand our wound of
(20:23):
family separation. I must say it was easier to investigate
millionaires evading taxes for the Panama Papers or corrupt politicians
taking bribes from the drug cartels than asking my father
about the time he spent separated from me, or asking
myself what that separation mentioned in my life. Reporting this
(20:47):
story gave me a perspective I never experienced before. It
made me feel borned up all in front of the
story I was telling in the beginning, I was not
expecting to reveal how deep the wound of family separation
is in me, how healing it is to talk about it. Now,
I know that I supposing my wound, could also help
(21:10):
others heal their own. I see my history through the
eyes of others like me, others who had said goodbye
to a loved one without knowing when they will hug
that person again. And now I see my fellow Cubans differently,
(21:30):
understanding better what we share. I feel more part of
my community, Unaguanamas, in a way I did not feel before.
(22:11):
Jess Peace The Lean Gonzalez Story is a production of
Utua Studios in partnership with Iheartsmichael Pura Podcast Network. This
show is written and reported by me Pennilei ra Medz
with Maria Garcia, Nicole Rothwell, and Tasha Sandoval. Our editor
is Maria Garcia, additional editing by Marlon bishop Or. Senior
(22:33):
producer is Nicole Rodwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandovallei
and Elisabeth Loental Torres, and our intern is Evelin Fajardo Alvarez.
Our senior production manager is Jessica Elis, with production supports
from Nancy Trojillo and Francis Poon, mixing by Stephanie Levo,
(22:53):
Julia Caruso and j J. Carubin, scoring and musical creation
by Jacob Rossati and Stephani Levo and credits music from.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Los Acellos Or.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia. Uturo Media
was founded by Maria Nohosa. For more podcasts, listen to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. I am Pennileira Millez. Thank you for
listening to this season of Chess. Peacestoria, Yesta Tempora, Chess
(23:29):
Peace
I'm at International Rivals at the Miami International Airport and
I just spoke to a large family.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
This is Tasha Sandoval, one of our producers who you
have heard throughout the series. Despite spring, during nor Be
putting trip in Miami, there was still one more thing
Tasha wanted to witness. It's something that happens often at
(00:47):
the Miami International Airport. That is the reunification of Cuban families.
Tasha spotted a family who seemed like they were about
to be reunited with someone. Yes, the family had welcome
(01:13):
balloons in their hands with smiley faces and the American flag.
Balloons may seem pretty routine, but they are also a
powerful symbol for Cubans, something you can access when you
leave the island. As a kid in Cuba, I remember
(01:35):
with the created or school parties with inflated condoms, as
balloons were impossible to get on the island. Back at
the Miami Airport, Tasha was surrounded by a Cuban family
of ten or eleven people prima mio, cousins, nephews, nieces.
(01:57):
They waited for the arrival of two family members who
had been living in Cuba. One of them named Carlitos.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Best a person commands.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I and Ida commersame familia. Hasha waited with the family
for quite a while Lodo, but then finally Carlitos arrived.
(02:38):
There were lots of happy tears, hags and kisses.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
Even Tasha cried.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It's an emotional moment, something that most Cuban families dream of,
the chance to be reunited, to share a meal together,
as you know, for eight years. It was something my
father and I dreamt of, And of course this is
central to Alian's story. It is something he's on that
long for. It can be tempting to think that a
(03:22):
story of family separation ends at the reunion, but no
reunions can be well complicated. That's at the heart of
Alan's story, the real complexity families faced when they are
forced apart. You see, people could see themselves in Alan's
(03:45):
story because many of us lived a version of that separation.
So for today's finals episode or final episode this season,
we're going to share a really pointed separation and reunion
story from a Cuban America. Can you hear from a
lot this season?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
There's a way to tell history in which there are
categories and everyone.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Fits in a category.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
But real life isn't like that, and real experience, the
experience of human beings, always pushes against those boundaries.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Ala Ferrer, historian and an author of the Pulitzer Prize
winning book Cuba and American History. You might remember that
her mother was living in Miami at the time of
the Liian case, and that she took her sewing scissors
to a newspaper photo of danet Reno after the raid
that took Elean out of Miami. What you may not
(04:40):
know is that Anna and her family also experience a
god branching separation. It's one she wrote about in an
article for The New Yorker in twenty twenty one titled
My Brother's Keeper. And she told me her story too,
while we reflected on the meaning of a Liant's story.
(05:03):
I am Pennileetera meets and this is Chess Peace. The
Lian Gonzalez Story a production of Ututa Studios in partnership
with Iheartsmichael Duda Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
I was born in Cuba and I left when I
was ten months old. I grew up in a Cuban community,
so Cuba was always a part of my life, but
I didn't really know anything about it. I did a
master's and specialized in Cuba, and then I started a
PhD program in nineteen eighty nine, and I I had
to go back. So I went back for the first
(06:02):
time in nineteen ninety and then after that I went
pretty much every year.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So right now, fast forward.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You win the Pulitzer two years ago with a book
about Cuba, A General History about Cuba. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I'd been studying Cuban history for over thirty years at
that point, and I felt like I never saw my
family reflected in anything I read. So I wanted to
write a book in which people would see themselves reflected.
The way I approach history is you know a history
that is peopled.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Well, I will say as a fellow Cuban. When I
read their book, I felt that, for the first time
somebody was explaining the country to me in a way
that was not this propaganda ish style. Right. So, in
your work as a historian, how prevalent is this family
(06:57):
separation in Cuba, And if you think that also partly
explains this passion around the case of Ilian that happened
in that moment but persists even twenty five years later.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
At the heart of it all is still this painful
family separation, but the people involved couldn't even experience it
that way because the story was taken over by these greater,
more impersonal forces that tried to use it for political gain.
So the family separation was a part of the story
(07:30):
of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
You know, I lived for many years in Mexico, and
in Mexico, like in other Latin American countries, you have
also many cases of family separation. But the possibility of
going back is real. You know, people send money and
they dream about retiring back home. But in Cuba, when
you leave, you leave. Yeah, there is no coming back.
(07:55):
I mean, I think you're right. Once people leave, they leave,
they have to make a life. But I think a
lot of people, especially when they're older, do question it
and do wonder about it. You think, yeah, my father
did I know. I mean, that's one man.
Speaker 1 (08:11):
I don't know how typical that was, but yeah, he
had a sense, like all his life that he'd given
something up, and then as he got older and got
closer to death, you know, he wanted to go back.
He used to write letters all the time to the
Cuban government and to the US government asking for permission
to go back.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
And also because there was this moment at the beginning
of the cast regime on the Cuban Revolution, when people
were thinking that we're leaving and then we are returning.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I mean, that's what my parents thought in the beginning.
So they left in sixty two, my father and my
mother and me and sixty three, and they thought they
would be back.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
It soon became clear that they wouldn't.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
My father left because he was a stenographer in the army.
He was very anti communist, and when Fidel Castro came
to power dissolve the army, he was no longer in
the army. He sold sandals in a park at Patrique
de la near the Capitolio, and when the Bay of
Pigs happened in April nineteen sixty one, he was arrested
(09:13):
because before the actual invasion, Fidel Castro deputized people the
populace to arrest people who they thought might support an
invasion should they come, and a neighbor had him arrested,
and after that he decided to leave. He thought, you know,
they arrested me this time. They let me go, but
I don't know what'll happen, I want to leave, and
(09:34):
then my mother left because he left, and when he left,
she was pregnant with me. Because it's what I was
saying before about how there's categories and you expect people
to act according to these categories.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
And that's why I always wondered why they.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Left, because I didn't have property to leave, And I
think that's what shape me as a historian in the
sense that, like real experience doesn't fit easy histories. She
always knew or thought that after he left, he would
do the paperwork to bring us to the US with him.
(10:24):
The complicated thing is that she had another son from
her first marriage, my brother Ipolito or Poli, who was
nine years older than I was, and his father, who
was a member of the Revolutionary police, would not let
him leave. My mother left, always thinking that Poli's father,
(10:52):
once he saw that she had left, would change his
mind and let his son leave, but that just never happen.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Left him or she left him.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
We left him in the same house where we lived,
so with my grandmother and with my aunt who has
my same name, Ada, who we called the Anina, and
they raised him and my mother wrote letters to him
all the time. And sent Baguetes care packages. But you know,
(11:22):
he still felt abandoned. So years, past, decades passed, he
grew into a young man, got into all kinds of
trouble in Cuba. Before Marielle, the US and Cuban governments
agreed to let Cuban exiles back to Cuba for the
(11:45):
first time to visit family. Cuban stormed the Peruvian embassy
and asked for asylum, and then Fidel Castro said that
relatives in Miami could come pick up their family in Cuba.
So my mother went for a week and that was
the first time they'd seen each other since he left.
We left in sixty three, and this was nineteen seventy nine,
(12:10):
and my mother was in the process of bringing him
to the US, so she had applied for the visa.
The visa was approved for family reunification, but you know,
it's all slow and slow, and they were waiting, and
then the Mariel boat lift happened, and so he came
to the US in nineteen eighty, so seventeen years after
we left.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
And it wasn't a good reunion. I mean, my mother
was ecstatic.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
There's pictures of her when he first came back and
her smile is like this big. But he never adjusted
and he got into all kinds of trouble here, worse
trouble than in Cuba.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
So it was hard.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
But something that you wrote is that you felt at
some point guilty even Yeah, but you were a baby.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
I was a baby.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
I know it doesn't really make any intellectual sense, but
I do feel like in some sense, my mother took
me and left him. So there was always this comparison, right,
especially as I got older, that I had been.
Speaker 3 (13:22):
The lucky one.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
My mother was never missing for me, but she was
for him.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
So when Elian's case happens, is this case also resonating
in you and your mom because of your own family history.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Yeah? Absolutely, I mean he even he doesn't quite look
like Bolly, but there was something about the cut of
his hair, the close cropped hair, the big eyes, even
the lips. Bully was darker, his face was fuller. But
even just you know the pictures that I Eleanne reminded
me of him. Elean and my brother have the same birthday,
(14:07):
December sixth. There was the question of a struggle between
a father. Lean's father wanting to keep him in Cuba,
which is what Bullie's father did. So I think for
my mother in particular, wanting Lean to stay was a
way of fighting that battle with her ex husband all
(14:29):
over and the idea that if Bully had been able
to come when he was a boy with her, history
would have turned out really differently.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
So I think for her that's why she was.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So emotional about it and why it.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Hurt her so deeply. Right, the father.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Should not keep the boy in Cuba, the boy should
come as a boy to the us. That had happened
with BALI would have been a different person and we
would have been a different family.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Well, your brother finally came to be with you only
in the early eighties. But as you have said, family
separation was part of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
And sometimes I hear questions from people asking, well, couldn't
family stay in communication even if they were separated, But aha,
we know how complicated that really is.
Speaker 1 (15:35):
I know someone in Cuba who believed very deeply in
the revolution.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Her family was very comfortable.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
They decided to leave, and she said I'm not leaving,
I'm a part of this now, and she stayed. She
was sixteen, stayed by herself, and she did not speak
to her family until the Special period, until the early nineties.
It was the physical separation, but it was even that
people were encouraged to not write to family, to not
(16:03):
keep those connections right. If people wanted to advance in
school or their careers or the government, they could not
maintain relations with their family abroad. So there was the
physical separation and then a forced emotional separation. All the
(16:28):
people who've left Cuba over the last sixty some years,
most of them have not left in a full family unit.
In many cases they reunified, but not everyone reunifies, and
so there's a separation and pain and loss everywhere. And
I do think that's why many human families have a
(16:49):
story like that, which is why Alan's story resonated so deeply.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So it's a story that it's about Elian, but it's
also a story that it's about all of us. All
of us.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah. Yeah. When I wrote Cuban American History, part of
what I wanted to do was to allow Americans to
see their own country from the outside end, to use
Cuba as a way for Americans to question what they
thought they knew about the US. And I feel like
(17:20):
I also wrote it for Cubans, and I think part
of what I wanted to do was to get Cubans
to see their own history like through the eyes of
each other, to not just assume these ideological straight jackets
that people have been forced into, because most people know
that those straight jackets are completely ridiculous and insufficient. So
(17:44):
just to kind of connect with each other on a
more human level and to just set aside these ideological constraints.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
So is Eliane then a symbol of you know, more
than sixty years of Guven history.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yes, and no.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I mean he's a symbol in terms of reminding us
about the centrality of the family in this history and
the centrality of family separation. So I think that's what
makes him a symbol. But he himself, no, I just
(18:30):
think we don't know enough because he's this boy who
was only ever allowed to be a symbol, but he
wasn't allowed to escape that.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
He remains a symbol.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Thank you to Ada Ferrer, Cuban American historian, twenty five
(19:14):
years after he was rescued at sea. Elian Gonzalez indeed
remains a symbol for US Cubans, no matter if you
are in Miami or Cuba. His story shows the pain
and possible healing that comes from family separation. Elian's case
also shows that history is not just political changes, but
history is about how ordinary people experience those changes, suffering
(19:38):
or benefiting from them. Leanne may be seen as a symbol,
but he himself is not. He is a real person,
a father, son, friend, living a very human life. As
(19:59):
adadive her book, I have worked on this podcast to
get Cubans to see their own history through each other size.
This is why I'm not just telling what happened to
Elian and his father, but also what happened to my family.
To understand the passion around Elian's case on both sides
of the Florida Straits, you must understand our wound of
(20:23):
family separation. I must say it was easier to investigate
millionaires evading taxes for the Panama Papers or corrupt politicians
taking bribes from the drug cartels than asking my father
about the time he spent separated from me, or asking
myself what that separation mentioned in my life. Reporting this
(20:47):
story gave me a perspective I never experienced before. It
made me feel borned up all in front of the
story I was telling in the beginning, I was not
expecting to reveal how deep the wound of family separation
is in me, how healing it is to talk about it. Now,
I know that I supposing my wound, could also help
(21:10):
others heal their own. I see my history through the
eyes of others like me, others who had said goodbye
to a loved one without knowing when they will hug
that person again. And now I see my fellow Cubans differently,
(21:30):
understanding better what we share. I feel more part of
my community, Unaguanamas, in a way I did not feel before.
(22:11):
Jess Peace The Lean Gonzalez Story is a production of
Utua Studios in partnership with Iheartsmichael Pura Podcast Network. This
show is written and reported by me Pennilei ra Medz
with Maria Garcia, Nicole Rothwell, and Tasha Sandoval. Our editor
is Maria Garcia, additional editing by Marlon bishop Or. Senior
(22:33):
producer is Nicole Rodwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandovallei
and Elisabeth Loental Torres, and our intern is Evelin Fajardo Alvarez.
Our senior production manager is Jessica Elis, with production supports
from Nancy Trojillo and Francis Poon, mixing by Stephanie Levo,
(22:53):
Julia Caruso and j J. Carubin, scoring and musical creation
by Jacob Rossati and Stephani Levo and credits music from.
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Los Acellos Or.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia. Uturo Media
was founded by Maria Nohosa. For more podcasts, listen to
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. I am Pennileira Millez. Thank you for
listening to this season of Chess. Peacestoria, Yesta Tempora, Chess
(23:29):
Peace
Host
Peniley Ramírez
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