October 15, 2025 • 58 mins
A motorcycle in the barrio. Forty‑eight hours to leave. A nearly six‑year‑old whose world narrows to the sound of an engine and the shape of fear—then widens again across an ocean. We welcome author Ana Hebra Flaster to explore her memoir, Property of the Revolution, and the intimate mechanics of exile: how a family becomes “gusano,” how permission to leave turns into a three‑year wait, and how love and duty hold when language and home are stripped away.
We follow Ana from post‑revolution Cuba to a New Hampshire mill town, where hunger, racism, and winter cold collide with simple, stubborn hope. She unpacks the difference between immigrants, migrants, and refugees—and why the words we choose can open doors or close minds. There’s the chilling classroom ice‑cream lesson that reveals how indoctrination works, and the everyday definition of freedom: the right to dissent without losing your future, the ability to live without ideology deciding your job, your school, or your healthcare. Ana’s mother becomes our north star—make yourself brave—standing up to mobs, protecting strangers, and refusing to adore any leader above principle.
We talk trauma without turning away: a child’s sleepless nights, the quiet tears of a grandmother who left her father behind, and the family story that kept them afloat—We won; we are not victims—until it was safe to name the wounds. There are vivid cultural insights, too: reading America through Rudolph the Red‑Nosed Reindeer (performance as currency), and Tía’s act of defiance—smuggling her doctorate out of Cuba sewn into a bra—because education earned should never be state property. Along the way, we challenge myths about Cuba’s past, listen for the throughline of dignity, and honor the resilience that keeps families together when history tries to break them apart.
If this conversation moved you, share it with someone who cares about freedom and family, subscribe for part two, and leave a review with the moment that stayed with you most. Your voice helps these stories travel.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:08):
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
I am Anne.
Today we welcome author AnnaHebra Flaster.
When I opened your book,Property of the Revolution from
a Cuban barrio to a NewHampshire milltown, I just had
to have you on the show.
The very first line stopped mecold, and I am not kidding you.
(00:31):
I sat there staring at the page,thinking about what freedom
really means.
And I'm not talking about theflag-waving kind, but the kind
that you fight for quietly, withfear in your throat and hope in
your hands.
Anna was just shy of her sixthbirthday when her family fled
post-revolutionary Cuba.
(00:52):
They had 48 hours to get out,and they left behind everything:
their home, their belongings,and the life that they'd known.
What they found in Americawasn't easy either.
Language barriers, racism,hunger, and the ghost of trauma
that followed them across theocean.
But through it all, Anna foundher voice, first as a child
(01:13):
learning to survive, and lateras a writer determined to
remember.
Her work has been featured inthe New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Wall StreetJournal, and on MPR's All Things
Considered.
And now with her debut book,Property of the Revolution, she
takes us deep into the soul ofexile, what it costs, what it
(01:34):
teaches, and what it means tobuild a life with between
worlds.
Anna, thank you so much forbeing here.
Oh gosh, Anne, a total pleasure.
SPEAKER_02 (01:44):
Really.
I love what you're doing withyour um show.
And I've been enjoying these umrecent episodes of yours.
SPEAKER_00 (01:51):
I think a lot of the themes carry across.
Well, well, thank you forlistening.
And thank you so much for beinghere.
You know, we don't get politicalon a show.
We really don't.
And this isn't about politics,it's about people.
And your book really made methink about what it means to
seek safety when home is nolonger safe.
(02:14):
Let's set the stage.
In the late 50s and in the 60s,there was a lot going on.
Cuba was under Batistadictatorship marked by
corruption, censorship, andviolence.
Many, including your mother,hoped that Fidel Castro's
revolution would bring freedom.
But when it came into power,when he came into power in the
(02:37):
late 50s and 59, I think, hopeturned to fear.
Businesses were seized, peopledisappeared, and families were
torn apart.
But your family made theimpossible choice to leave
everything behind for safety anda future in America.
You were between two countries,sometimes feeling at home in
(02:59):
both, and sometimes not feelingat home anywhere.
You arrived here as a childafter living in fear and
witnessing so much loss.
Can you take me back to whenyour family had to leave?
SPEAKER_02 (03:14):
That was a great setting of context, and it's
complicated.
I think you really kind ofcaptured the the stage.
As you as you said, my mother,my family had believed that
democracy would be restored.
And then little by little, afterthe revolution, they saw one
kind of freedom after anotherdisappear.
(03:35):
And each family, each familymember came to the realization
that their dream had vanishedand that they were now living in
a nightmare where they hadbarely recognized society, Cuban
society, neighbors that hadlived together for generations
(03:57):
in the same barrio suddenlydidn't trust each other because
anybody could be an informant,because ideology, political
ideology surpassed humanity.
And that's always at risk incivilization, as we know.
As you said earlier, it's notabout politics.
(04:19):
This is just what happens.
People can glom on to anideology, and it can be a
religious ideology too, and wecan lose sight of the human
being in front of us.
That's what they were basicallyseeing.
But each of them, I call themthe viejos, the older, the
elders.
The viejos all saw them, sawthese this reality emerging at
(04:41):
different times and in differentways.
So that cost that caused aproblem within the family
because they weren't all seeingthe same thing.
And when my mother and fatherdecided in 1964 that they needed
to find a way out of thecountry, which suddenly, for the
first time in Cuban history,Cubans couldn't just get on, you
know, buy a ticket and leave.
(05:04):
They had to get the government'spermission.
And Cuba, until you know, fordecades after the revolution,
remained one of the fewcountries that requires a
citizen to obtain thegovernment's permission to
leave.
It's actually a universal humanright, the right to enter your
country and leave your country.
(05:25):
And that was denied.
So as they realized that thiswas a new obstacle, they began
searching for the rules.
How could that happen?
Because the government wasn'tannouncing how people could
leave the country.
They wanted everybody to stay.
They had already seen a hugeexodus uh in in the years after
the revolution.
(05:46):
So my parents found out throughwhat I they called radio bimba,
radio big mouth, which was theword on the street, that if you
went to a certain office, if youwent to a certain office in the
Ministry of the Interiorbuilding and you asked a certain
question and you went to anotherperson and you did everything
right, you could apply to leavethe country.
(06:09):
And and then that put you ingusano territory.
You were an enemy from thatpoint on because you were
declaring yourself an enemy ofthe revolution.
You lost your job.
You really were at the bottom ofsociety, and anybody could do
whatever they wanted to youbecause you were a worm, a
gusano, that's what thegovernment called us.
So from that point on, youwaited, and we waited three
(06:32):
years, not knowing if or when wewould get the permiso, the
permission.
And this opening scene, whichyou referred to in Property of
the Revolution, is of thatmoment when I, as a nearly
six-year-old, I have no ideawhat's happening, but suddenly
(06:52):
there's there's a motorcyclecoming into the barrio.
I had figured out that themotorcycle meant something big
was going down.
And in fact, that time it wasour family.
Our family was the family thatwas about to lose it all and win
it all.
So it was a moment, and I talkabout this in the first chapter
too, where the my parents'dreams came true, but they broke
(07:16):
their hearts at the same time.
SPEAKER_01 (07:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (07:18):
Because now, yes, they'd be able to leave the
country, but that meant thatthey would never they knew they
would never see most of theirfamily ever again because they
couldn't get out and we couldn'tcome back in.
And that's usually a animportant distinction too.
Here is that refugees are partof the immigrant experience, but
they have a different um pathinto the other country and out
(07:40):
of their country.
Usually they leave with nothing.
Um, usually they don't want toleave.
And usually they can't go backuh for safety reasons, for
political reasons.
That was that moment where wherelife was going to be different.
It was the moment of the loss ofour Cuban world when that
motorcycle came into the thebarrio.
(08:02):
And it's it's uh you know,there's a sound effect that
that's tied to it.
I still to this day when I heara motorcycle, I have a a
reaction.
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Oh my gosh.
I never out of reading yourentire book, I never made that
connection.
And I remember you saying thatin your book.
But yeah, you know, sights,sounds, all that stuff can bring
things back like it's rightthere.
For children, yeah.
Oh my gosh, especially forchildren.
(08:32):
Absolutely.
It was petrifying for you.
I'm sure you were justabsolutely terrified.
Um, your parents had to makesome tough decisions.
I mean, they were promisedfreedom and democracy, but of
course that didn't happen.
Leaving family behind wasagainst your culture.
And when some when safety, whensafety became the priority, and
(08:57):
you had that 48 hours to leavehome, surrender your
possessions, and step into anunknown country with nothing but
your fear and hope, there isloss and then there's loss.
And there are so many layers ofloss here.
You had to leave so much behind.
Possessions are one thing, butlike your abuela, your abuela
(09:20):
had to leave her father behind.
Share with me, if you can, thedepth of the loss that your
family went through.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (09:27):
Uh the it's it's the depth of that loss has taken me
my whole life to fullyunderstand.
Because uh the women in ourfamily were so strong and they
were very forward thinking.
My grandmother less so umbecause of everything that she
left behind.
But the story we told in ourfamily, or that they told us,
(09:48):
was that we had won.
We had beaten communism, we hadbeaten Castro, we had won our
freedom, forward march.
But then as time went on and Igrew up, I realized it hadn't
been so simple and there hadbeen great loss.
At the top of the of thesacrifices was my grandmother's,
(10:10):
were my grandmother'ssacrifices.
My grandmother didn't reallywant to come with her daughters
to the United States and leaveher father and her brother
behind, knowing that, and shewas right, she would never see
them again.
She did it because her brothersaid, you know, I'll take care
of papa, you take care of yourdaughters and your
grandchildren.
When those women and theirhusbands are working, who's
(10:32):
going to take care of thosechildren?
And so she did.
And it was a time when there wasno Spanish TV, no Spanish
internet.
You couldn't find a Spanishmagazine in in New Hampshire in
1967.
And that's one of thedifferences today.
These people, these theserefugees from Syria, Ukraine,
(10:54):
and and other uh places wherethere's political upheaval,
there's at least a little bit ofa chance that they'll be able to
hear their native tongue.
And that power of your homelanguage and losing that is
another loss.
It's another layer of loss.
I can't imagine.
So I think that my grandmother,in the end of her life, um, saw
(11:19):
that it was the right thing todo, but I think it took her a
long time to come to terms withthat.
And it affected my mother and myaunt too, because and and my
father and my uncle, we all grewup in, as you know, in the same
house.
Right.
And we would have in Cuba and wedid here in the United States in
a duplex next to each other.
But I think everyone understoodin the house what Abuela had
(11:42):
given up and honored that asmuch as possible.
And uh I think in a way we'reinspired by that.
Like what we have given up andwhat she has given up is so
great.
Let's make this the bestpossible experience for
everybody.
And one of the ways they didthat was staying together,
(12:03):
keeping the family together,which isn't easy.
And then you know in the UnitedStates, when you have so many
opportunities and people pick upand fly across the country for
work or for school, that didn'thappen.
You didn't leave your eldersbehind in Cuba.
And that's what what hauntedthem for the rest of their
lives.
It haunted them.
SPEAKER_00 (12:24):
Yeah, I and I I can imagine that that would have
been the hardest decision thatYorubuela ever made in her
entire life.
And um, I really respect that uhthat your heritage, your culture
really respects their elders somuch so that they include them
(12:44):
in everything and then theybring them along with everything
that you don't leave thembehind, that you don't, I mean,
that you keep your familytogether.
I think that uh that's just sorespected.
That's the way it should be.
It should be that way.
SPEAKER_02 (12:57):
And it's really hard.
You know, I I'm now the vieja,I'm now the elder.
And I have a tough job here.
You know, I'm trying to holdtogether a 27, 29 member Cuban
American clan that is growing upin a very different America with
lots of opportunities and lotsof uh distractions.
(13:21):
So getting people together is sohard.
And it that's what you need todo.
It's not about zooming, it's notabout texting or follow or uh
even a phone call.
It's the face-to-face, andthat's something in the book.
You know, you you've you've youyou were immersed in the book,
it sounds like you know thatthat was a day-to-day contact
(13:44):
every day, those two families,for better or worse, and a bond
happens with that that you can'thave.
It just doesn't happen.
And so I'm I'm sitting heretrying to hold the whole thing
together, understanding thatit's impossible, but doing what
I can't.
And part of it is through thethrough property of the
(14:05):
revolution.
Now, now the next generationwill know.
SPEAKER_00 (14:08):
Right.
I love that.
Um, I did want to ask you aquestion about the importance
between immigrants, migrants,and refugees, because you do
bring that up in your book.
For our listeners, can you helpus understand the differences
and why this matters?
SPEAKER_02 (14:21):
Yes, I'm I am no expert.
It's not like I've I've studiedthis, um, but I have lived it
and I have written about it aswell.
So those three groups, migrants,refugee immigrants, are all you
know, people who are coming intoanother country.
They're coming for generallydifferent reasons.
The immigrant is coming, aregular immigrant is coming
(14:43):
because um they see anopportunity in another country,
they have dreams, they want tohave a life in that country.
Uh, they know that they'll beable to generally go back and
see their family and return totheir culture, and that they
their family can come.
Uh generally, a refugee isfleeing uh a climate disaster, a
(15:08):
political disaster, war, andthey're not they don't want to
leave, they are forced to leave.
They usually they usually giveup everything, they can't take
anything with them, they usuallycannot return.
They their family usually cannotcome with them.
Okay.
Not all of the family.
A migrant is perhaps not a trueimmigrant, in that a migrant is
(15:34):
someone who is coming and goingand and between two countries or
multiple countries.
Although in this country, we'vesort of lost track of what those
words mean.
So we we're calling people atthe border migrants.
You know, I don't think thosepeople have any intention of
going back, or most of them.
(15:54):
I think they're in some casesthey should be considered
refugees.
They're fill fleeing political,uh massive political unrest.
Perhaps they have uh they'refearing for their lives, and uh
yet they're being calledmigrants.
And I don't think that that's anaccurate term.
I I I sometimes society findsitself, I think, in situations
(16:16):
where our vocabulary hasn'tcaught up yet to what we're
seeing.
What so I feel we I feel like wewe're lacking some vocabulary
can help us understand what'sdriving people and what their
journey is all about.
SPEAKER_00 (16:30):
Yeah, I think that that's really important that
people understand thedifferences.
And I'm so glad that you kind ofclarified that because I don't
think that a lot of people dounderstand the difference.
So I'm glad that you explainedthat a little bit.
One of the things you had manystories that stuck out to me in
your book, but one of them waswhen there was a so there were
(16:55):
soldiers that were going intothe classrooms and started to
infiltrate young innocent minds.
And you brought up about howthey would say, I mean, pray to
God, and there was no ice cream,and pray to Fidel.
And oh, the ice cream ismagically here.
So trust Fidel over your ownfaith.
(17:18):
How did moments like that shapeCuban youth and the way that you
that they saw things and the waythat you saw trust, faith, and
authority?
SPEAKER_02 (17:28):
Yeah.
Um, I that didn't experiencethat.
Um but my mother, that scene isthe moment that my mother
decides this is not therevolution I I risked my life
for.
Uh so the the soldier came in,soldiers came in and said, Do
you mind if we teach this class?
She said, you know, what was shegonna say?
And that was the message.
Who here likes ice cream?
(17:49):
Everything had disappeared fromshelves, and those kids went
crazy.
Well, bow your heads, pray toGod for ice cream.
Oh, raise your heads, oh no, icecream.
Okay, bow your heads and pray toGod, pray to fee for ice cream.
And the soldiers came in and putice cream cups on all the desks,
and that was the moment.
And so um that there was noquestion that education and this
(18:13):
so-called freedom of ed ofeducation was for a large part
of it, if not the majority ofthe focus was reshaping minds,
young minds, and preparing arevolutionary mentality.
And that was the revolution'smain thing was you uh you
(18:33):
revered this human being.
God and spirituality andreligion were not uh to be
trusted.
And to this day, religiousCubans are persecuted under this
new revolutionary society.
It's just not something that isvalued by revolutionary society,
at least in Cuba.
(18:54):
And I think, well, Marx, I thinkMarx was the one who called
religion the opium of themasses, and they certainly
believe it that in Cuba, theregime.
SPEAKER_00 (19:04):
With you explaining this to me, it just keeps making
it reminds me of just thefreedom that you experienced
once you reached here.
Um, what does it mean?
What does freedom mean to you asa Cuban immigrant who had to run
with her family to safety?
SPEAKER_02 (19:20):
Uh everything.
It means everything.
And um I know that there arepeople in the United States who
think that we're at theprecipice of losing our all of
our freedoms.
And I can see some some signs oftrouble and concern and all of
that, but right now you canstill stand in the middle of the
(19:41):
street, shout horrible thingsabout our president.
Uh you're not gonna lose yourjob.
You're not gonna, well, youknow, we have some some
high-profile entertainers who'vehad some issues, but then again,
a private company has a right tofire its employees uh if if so,
if if it decides it's not um totheir benefit to keep the
(20:05):
employee.
But what you want to do, andwhat we've always strived to do
here, is keep that separation sothat political ideology isn't
affecting who can get a job, whocan uh go to school, how you're
how you're gonna live your life.
And that's what happens in theseauthoritarian regimes, whether
they're from the left or theright.
(20:26):
You it's a political apartheidsystem where if you believe the
right thing, if you think theright way, you have a whole
other kind of life ahead of you.
But if you don't, you you willnot go to school, your children
will not go to school, um, youruh job opportunities are lit
(20:48):
limited when you need healthcare.
This happens in Cuba too.
When you need in supposedly Cubahas this wonderful healthcare
system, which is a completemyth.
Um uh and and it is not even andequal.
And members of the politicalelite, the military elite do not
go to the regular hospitals thataverage Cubans go to.
(21:10):
And certainly, if you're ifyou're um opposed to the regime
and you've you've come out andyou've challenged it in any way,
criticized it, you're not goingpublicly, you're uh not going to
even be treated.
Uh, there are cases of peoplebeing turned away at emergency
rooms and a dentist's office,and no, you're not gonna be
(21:32):
treated.
So that's what freedom, what nothaving freedom looks like.
So it's everything, and andstanding up for freedom and
being on alert and doing thedecent thing and calling it out
when it really is being erodedis critical.
SPEAKER_00 (21:52):
Yeah, your mom had a saying, which I won't say in
Spanish, but um in English, itwas make yourself brave.
SPEAKER_01 (21:59):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:59):
And guava.
And she made those harddecisions based, I think, on a
mother's instinct, which I feltas a mom, you know, even she
would do anything to protect herimmediate family.
And like I said earlier, familywas everything in your culture.
And your mommy was courageous.
(22:22):
Can you tell us more about whoshe was?
Because, you know, in your book,what I loved was it's not just
your story, it's everybody has adifferent story that's woven
throughout this entire bookbeautifully, by the way.
So I was hoping that you couldtalk more about her.
I she was something else.
SPEAKER_02 (22:43):
Um she was just this person.
She she knew fear, but sheconquered her fear uh a lot.
As a 17-year-old, when sherisked her life collecting money
and medicine for the rebels whowould one day take over and
(23:03):
eventually force her to abandonher culture, her life, as she
knew it, and cost hereverything, almost everything.
Uh, then she, you know, therewere examples in the book in
Property of the Revolution whereshe stands up to that mob as
they're denouncing a teacher andtakes them to task and says, You
(23:29):
are wrong.
This is a decent teacher, thisis a decent person, and you're
not being fair.
And she risked a lot thenbecause she we were already at
Gusano.
She also saved the life of theman who saved her when she was
caught after the revolution,this man who had saved her from
being arrested while Batista wasin power and she was working
(23:51):
with the rebels.
A mob showed up at his house tohang him because he was a
policeman under Batista.
And she stood up for him thenand saved him.
And then in the United States,she, I think uh you may
remember, she risked her own jobas the manager of this CVS, one
(24:11):
of the first CVSs in in NewEngland, because the eight the
the investigators who came by todetect theft thought this woman
had stolen something or had notrun up something properly.
And she she said, No, that thatwoman, I know that young woman,
(24:32):
and you're not gonna ruin herreputation by accusing her of
something that I know she couldnot have done.
And then she was right and theyfound the evidence.
And so she saved the girl's job,but she saved the girl's
reputation.
And on and on, I could tell youso many other stories like that.
But what what she what shetaught me was that you make
(24:53):
yourself brave.
Make yourself brave, do theright thing, be decent, be a
good human being.
Uh and we know what that is.
We know what that is, and standfor justice whenever you can.
Right.
And part of part of um themission of the book, speaking of
(25:14):
justice, is and you as a mom anda grandmom know probably, and
you've seen it, that childrensense injustice, even though
they may not have the words forit, but they know they know when
there's an injustice happening.
Yes.
And I think that that night andand what happened to us stuck
with me as an injustice as achild.
(25:36):
And I think that writing thebook has been a way of redeeming
the injustice, telling thestory, and honoring what what
people what these people did inthe face of an injustice, what
they accomplished, and largelyby staying together, which is a
(25:56):
big part of the message of thebook.
SPEAKER_00 (25:58):
Yeah, your mom, like you said, she did risk her life
to support Fidel Castro becauseshe truly believed that
restoring democracy, that theythat was going to happen and
bring back the 1940constitution, but once that did
not happen, and communism waseverywhere and complete control
(26:21):
over the people.
Yeah.
Um, your mommy said, and this isa direct quote from the book,
that a certain level of mistrustis essential in life, especially
when choosing sides.
Her country had over-trusted oneman and then failed to stop the
train as he ran it off thetrack.
They'd paid dearly for thatmistake.
(26:43):
Looking back, how did thatlesson of trust, mistrust, and
blind faith in leadership touchyour family and your life?
SPEAKER_02 (26:51):
Well, I think in that same page, I talk about how
she never adored anyone outsideof her children.
Again, uh, she never she lovedmusic and she, you know, was a
fan of musicians.
Um, she was a big, you know, TomJones in the 70s and, you know,
but she never let herself crossthat line of adoration.
(27:15):
And you see it sometimes.
People put everything they haveinto a political figure.
That figure becomes godlike.
This happens with religion too.
And so that skepticism stayedwith her, and we learned from
it.
Um, she they were very skepticalabout political parties in the
United States, too, uh, and sawproblems with both.
(27:39):
Although they tended towardconservative politics more
because of foreign policy.
They wanted a strong foreignpolicy, thinking that they could
avoid for us what had happenedto them, and and that democracy
would be protected more ifconservatives were in power.
That's a that's a line ofthinking that's still strong in
the Latino community, especiallythe immigrant Latino community.
(28:03):
Okay.
Um, so that that was the mainthing is don't don't just
believe what people are tellingyou.
Always wonder what their agendais.
Um, and yet the goodness in inher and in and my father and my
aunt and uncle, my grandmothertoward other human beings as
human beings, that neverfaltered.
(28:24):
That was different.
Someone in need, someone umneeded to be helped, they were
going to help them.
And you saw we saw that duringMarielle.
I don't I don't know if youremember that part in the book.
There have been many waves ofexile, exiles, and emigration
from Cuba after the revolution.
And one of them was Marielle,the Marielle boat lift in 1980.
(28:48):
And when all of our relativesfrom up and down the East Coast
were saying, don't sponsor oneof those couples, whatever, they
decided they were going tosponsor one of them.
Right.
Thinking that, you know, yes,there might be, because it this
was true, Fidel had openedprisons and was actually in some
cases hand selecting thecriminals who would be forced to
go on the boats of the peoplewhose families had come to take
(29:12):
them.
So you couldn't just take yourfamily.
You were gonna take violentcriminals with you.
And in some cases, um, he he allthey also took the patients from
mental wards from psychiatrichospitals.
Okay.
Anyway, so that was the the thethe rumor, but they didn't care.
They said, no, this country'sbeen really good to us and we're
(29:32):
gonna help a couple.
So they wanted us to sponsor amarried couple and they did.
And you know what happened withthat.
They had a little surprise withthat.
Right, right.
But it's an example of howmistrust but goodness.
Ske skepticism, but do the rightthing and but trust your own
(29:55):
sense of what's right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00 (29:57):
And I I think that your mom had a very strong
Instinct, even with her gut.
I mean, she wanted what wasright for everybody.
She just wanted what was right.
And, you know, even if we end uptrusting and it ends up not
working out, I mean, her, shejust wanted the best for your
country and for her family.
(30:19):
And you can't fault her oranybody for that.
She just wanted democracy forher family that and her and
everybody in your country.
That was all she wanted.
Yep, she did.
SPEAKER_02 (30:30):
And and you know, there's this theory, it's still
not it's still amisunderstanding that I think a
lot of Americans and a lot ofpeople internationally have
about the Cuban Revolution thatthe Cuban people wanted a
communist revolution.
They did not want a communistrevolution, they wanted a return
to democracy.
And the three rebel fronts allpromised the same thing.
(30:54):
Fidel was one of those rebelfronts, and he promised that
too.
And that's not what they got.
Right.
Um, I I think that that's a myththat a lot of people who fell in
love with the revolution in the60s, uh, they saw these young,
charismatic, you know, CheGuevara, um, Fidel rebels taking
(31:17):
over a country.
They were 30 years old, 33 yearsold.
And they they put in them thisbelief, they saw in them these
heroes, these romantic youngrebellious heroes who were
freeing up the oppressed peopleof Cuba.
But Cuba had a very highstandard of living in the 50s,
(31:38):
and a lot of Americans don'tknow that or don't stop to think
about that, unfortunately.
They had a high level of medicalcare, education, literacy rates,
um, lots of really solidinfrastructure.
Their GDP per capita was thisthe same as some of the uh some
of European countries.
(31:59):
They ranked second, third,fourth in most economic
development categories in thishemisphere.
And uh what they needed wasfreedom again.
They needed democracy.
The country had had that, andthey wanted to return to it.
And that's not too much to ask.
Yeah, and to be able to speakyour mind and think what you
(32:22):
want to think.
Yeah, not have to hide, not haveto hide your belief.
SPEAKER_00 (32:27):
When you arrived here in the United States, it
was the 60s, and the Vietnam Warwas going on, and there were
anti-war demonstrations, raceriots, people openly criticizing
the president, like you talkedabout earlier, without fear of
going to jail.
So, what was that contrast likefor you and your family as you
(32:48):
witnessed the freedoms here thatyou had never seen before?
SPEAKER_02 (32:52):
I think that it was the one thing that calmed them
because as they had just fledall this unrest and a
revolution, they thought, isthis gonna happen here?
Are we gonna have a revolutionhere?
And is socialism, communism?
And they what calmed them wasno, as long as people can go out
in the street, protest, writewhat they want to write, say
(33:13):
what they want to say, and notlose their jobs and not have a
mob come to their door.
There's hope, and we're in afree country.
And they always believed, too,that the fact that they were in
New Hampshire and that theCanadian border was right there,
they had an exit plan.
That's the thing, that's thething that happens.
That's the thing that happenswhen you lose your country, is
you always have an exit plan.
(33:34):
And they used to joke make surethe Studa Baker's gas gas tank
is half full.
And you know, you don't youcan't undo that experience from
your soul.
That's what happens when whensomething huge like that happens
to you.
You can't just erase it.
It's just it becomes part ofyou.
It shapes how you think, itshapes what you do.
And there's a level of fear thatthat I don't think ever goes
(33:58):
away.
Maybe that's the telltale signbetween a refugee and an
immigrant.
There's a kind of fear that arefugee has experienced that
marks them.
I mean, look at me.
I'm marked still.
And I I didn't make these harddecisions.
I just got dragged along.
But I'm marked by it.
I think about it.
I think about what they gave up.
(34:19):
Um, I'm still tied to my home,my native country.
I worry about my my relativesthere and what they're
experiencing and uh our storyhasn't ended.
And part, you know, property ofthe revolution.
In a way, I'm still property ofthe revolution.
Yes, they took my house, ourhouse, and our Cuban lives, but
(34:39):
in a way they took a part of metoo.
SPEAKER_00 (34:42):
Oh, absolutely.
When I saw a lot of thedifferent fears that you had
demonstrated throughout yourlife, and one incident in
particular really stood out tome as a young child, and you
didn't really know the language,you had hadn't been here very
long, and you were new toeverything, and you had a
(35:03):
situation in school where aVietnam soldier visited and you
were so scared, you werepetrified, you froze, and the
teacher picked up on it.
Could you talk about thisincident?
SPEAKER_02 (35:14):
Yes.
Uh I the the man must have beenuh father, older brother, I
don't know, of someone in theclass, but he just appeared one
day and the teacher announcedhim.
Mrs.
Drew, my first grade teacher, awonderful human being.
And he had a uniform.
He was in uniform.
And I had been taught in myfirst grade class that American
(35:37):
soldiers killed women andchildren.
That was what I was being taughtin first grade.
Uh, one of the things I wastaught.
And so when I saw that soldier,I lost it.
I ran to the teacher.
I was hysterical.
And um I was I I still rememberhow terrified I was for my life
(36:01):
because I've been taught that inmy school.
Right, right.
In my school, and that and Iwould never have been able to
explain any of it, but I feltlike she she understood the
level of fear that I had.
Maybe she did understand.
Maybe she did.
Because she she she seemed tosense it.
Yeah.
And the the the soldier was justa human being and he was I
(36:24):
remember he had a missing tooth.
Okay.
Um, but I I remember him smilingand uh but that didn't do a
thing for me.
I thought we were gonna be shotand killed because I had been
told that by my teacher in firstaid.
SPEAKER_00 (36:41):
I mean, uh, there that is the highest level of
fear.
I mean, I can't even imagine,and then you can't even speak
the language very well.
And so for you to be able to itreally even explain what was
going on within you, and also, Imean, this was an interesting
part of who you were.
It it came across on your pagesthat, and it took you a while to
(37:06):
realize the deep impact thattrauma had had on your life.
And shortly after arriving,there was a child who had died
in a nearby house fire, whichwas another traumatic event
after everything that you hadalready been through in Cuba.
And you showed clear signs ofPTSD, but kept it to yourself.
(37:27):
And I could really feel thatresponsibility that you felt to
your family and that you neededto be brave.
And it really felt to me thatyou needed to be responsible to
help keep your family safe.
Did you feel that?
SPEAKER_02 (37:43):
Yes.
I got emotional listening to youum describe that because you
know, I look back, I was sixyears old, and I never told
anybody what I was goingthrough.
Um, but yeah, so this was a firethat happened.
Um, so so soon after we arrived,and we were living in this, you
(38:06):
know, we arrived as you know, inDecember, it was freezing cold.
There was this fire in a housedown the street, and one of the
children died in that fire.
And they I heard the par myparents reading the paper or
trying to understand the new theaccount the next day.
And uh it said that the boy thethe bull older boy who had woken
(38:29):
the family up had mistaken thesound of i icy rain on the
window.
That that clicking sound.
Thought that the fire, the whatwas he he was hearing fire, but
he thought it was the icy rain.
And so I was terrified thatthere would be a fire and that
if it was windy or rainy, wenobody would know.
And we would lose we would alldie in the fire, or we would
(38:52):
lose our house in the fire,which is what I finally realized
later on was really at the heartof it.
We would be homeless again.
Okay, and I needed to be awake,I needed to save the family.
Yeah, because everybody else wasasleep.
Who was gonna save us?
Who's gonna save us?
That's right.
That was just a a house coulddisappear, a family could
(39:14):
disappear overnight, and as asix-year-old, that makes total
sense to you.
And so Well, you had just youhad just seen that happen.
SPEAKER_00 (39:22):
Yes, and so you had just lived it.
SPEAKER_02 (39:24):
Yep.
But but you're you know, thatwas um, I I don't I cannot
understand how I never toldanybody what because as you
know, I mean, I was I couldn'tsleep, I had massive insomnia.
I slept with my grandmother whocried herself to sleep every
night.
I'd put my arm over her and feelher crying every single night.
Um I heard voices that kept meawake.
(39:49):
I never told anybody thatbecause I asked my parents later
on as I started writing aboutall this stuff, they had never
heard anything about that.
They would have remembered that.
How did how did a six-year-oldkid hold all that in?
I don't think I'm that brave orwhatever, even now, to hold on
to something like that.
So, and I do remember, rememberthe song Sugar Sugar by the
(40:14):
Yarchis?
Yeah, that came out soon afterwe arrived here, and I remember
being in that Studa Baker fullof Cubans driving somewhere, and
and that song came on, and Iwanted to sing it, and I didn't
sing it because I thought it waswrong to sing when people were
(40:35):
so sad.
Oh my goodness.
What even even though they my myparents, my as I told you
earlier, they everybody put onthe bravest face they could and
acted happy.
And right, they acted happy,they were they we had won, we
(40:56):
had looked, we had we had ourliberty.
Um but I knew at a gut levelthat people were crying in their
dark rooms at times because Iwould find them.
And I knew my grandmother wasjust she was wet.
Every time I touched her, shewas wet from tears.
So so that's what it was like.
(41:18):
And you have no words whenyou're that age.
Maybe the fear was what silencedme from telling anybody.
I I felt totally loved in myhome and protected, but I guess
I don't know where that camefrom.
Why I maybe I was ashamed.
Maybe I knew that those voiceswere something embarrassing and
strange, and that because I knewonly I could hear those voices.
(41:41):
And they they terrified me.
And I only recovered thosememories at the age of 38, I
think, was when I finallystarted looking at what happened
to us as a trauma, neverconsidered it a trauma.
Our parents were we were notvictims, there were no victims.
(42:03):
We were we were awesomesuperheroes, and that saved us
in so many ways.
And when we encountereddiscrimination, those poor
Americans, they're so ignorant,they don't know how awesome
Cubans are.
You know, the stories we tellourselves can really save us.
(42:23):
But looking more carefully atthem, once you're safe, is also
a way to save yourself.
My cousins who I grew up with,and my brother have had a very
hard time with a book because itis it is it has forced them to
look at a time that they that ithas forced them to rethink the
(42:46):
story they believed of theirlives and of our view and to
look at what the Viejos enduredand what we endured, because we
you know, kids the kids wentthrough things too.
Um, and so you know, my brotherfinished the book and you know,
he loved it and he was sograteful and all of that.
But as he would read it, hewould text me, I'm on such and
(43:09):
such a page, this is happening.
And he didn't want to look atthat.
It's a it's a strange umparadox, right?
That the thing that's saving youis the thing that can sink you
later if you don't deal withthat trauma.
And I didn't want to myself whenuh a psychiatrist helped me see
(43:32):
that it what had been a trauma.
I I rejected it outright.
Right.
That was an American thing tothink of yourself as a victim.
I'm not a victim.
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
And that's when the memorystarted to come back.
SPEAKER_00 (43:46):
Well, I think that that was one of the best gifts
that maybe your husband gave youis when he actually pointed that
out to you.
Why you could be both.
You can be strong and also belike a you know, have this
trauma within you.
And it wasn't weak for you tohave that in you.
You can also be strong.
(44:07):
I I thought that that wasbeautiful that he gave that to
you.
He did.
He did.
SPEAKER_02 (44:12):
He really worked on me until I could see that you
could be two things.
You could be two things, but youhad to be, I think, one thing
when you were in the thick ofit.
Strong.
Brave.
You had to be brave, strong,stay together, and not be a
victim.
Because if you started to wallowin any of that too much, you
(44:34):
weren't you weren't gonna makeit.
You weren't gonna make it in thesame way anyway.
SPEAKER_00 (44:39):
Right.
And it might have been difficultbecause it's one with your
brother and maybe who cousins orwhoever whoever else was reading
it.
Um, it it's one thing to say it,it's one thing to write it, it's
one thing to read it.
You know, all those things add awhole different layer of healing
(45:00):
and dealing with what happenedto you.
And when you're actuallyreading, I mean, it's you just
want to close those pagesbecause you don't really want to
face it, it makes it a lotharder.
SPEAKER_01 (45:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (45:12):
It uh it's taken, it's taken them a lot.
You know, I I had not stopped tothink about what it would mean
to them to revisit those daysand look at that trauma again
and actually decide.
And I think they have realizedthis too, the same thing that I
(45:33):
realized, which was that wow,those people, something really
huge happened and reallypainful.
And look what they were able todo.
I mean, that's where I'm hopingthey come out with is yes, you
know, in order to reallyappreciate what they were able
(45:53):
to do, what we were able to do,what human beings can do, you
kind of have to know what whathappened.
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (46:02):
That's the win on the other side of that pain.
And in Cuba at the time, all thenewspapers and broadcast
networks were being shut down,and the regime began to rule by
edict.
New laws appeared overnight.
Families were desperate to flee,as we talked about, and the
(46:22):
rumors of uh spread thatchildren would be sent to
indoctrination camps.
Parents began sending their kidsto the United States through
what became the Pedro Panflights, a secret resettlement
program that eventually whisked14,000 Cuban children out of the
country.
(46:43):
And your mom felt deeplybetrayed.
It wasn't the democracy, like wesaid, that she had been
promised.
And she even compared Fidel withMussolini and Hitler.
How do you think that thisbetrayal affected your mom?
I mean, we've touched on it, butI think that there was such a
deep layer of betrayal in herthat left her, that left was
(47:07):
left in Cuba and really becamewho she was in America.
SPEAKER_02 (47:15):
Yeah, uh that that if you talk to Cubans who are
here around the world, becausethe diaspora is everywhere, um
who were of that age and whobelieved the lies of of the
revolution, um they you'll pickup that same sense of trick, you
(47:38):
know, they were tricked and theywere lied to.
And and and it it does stillstick stay with people.
I know that there are people,Cubans around the world, who
still talk about that that senseof betrayal and it's deep, it
cut deep, it costs themeverything.
And literally, yes.
(47:59):
Yeah, everything.
And so you know, a lot of timesI've run into I've run into
people in the United States whowho have a view of the Cuban
immigrant, Cuban refugeeimmigrant, as having of of that
era, as having fled because ourriches were taken.
(48:21):
And when we criticize the regimenow, that that we're only doing
that because we want our richesback and our farms and our banks
and whatever.
And that's just not has not beenmy experience at all.
And uh I all the Cubans I knoware working class Cubans and uh
(48:43):
you know professional classCubans who lost those the you
know middle class lives.
And so it's just an example ofhow there's this misconception
about what drove people out tobegin with, and what what
(49:03):
sometimes in the United Stateswhen when Cubans criticize the
the revolution and and theregime it gets misinterpreted.
Um and also sometimes you knowLatinos we we feel things and we
convey uh our um emotions, Ithink, in a more direct way than
(49:24):
um a lot of Anglo culturepeople.
Um and sometimes that comesacross as these hysterical
Cubans fighting against theregime here in the United
States, and they're they havethese and exaggerated reactions
sometimes, you know, because inthe United States you speak
(49:45):
calmly and you're umdispassionate, and when you're
making your points, they'reexpressing their sense of that
very same betrayal we weretalking about.
They have a sense of thatbetrayal, and that's what's
coming out, I think, often.
And and it's misunderstood, it'smisconstrued.
SPEAKER_00 (50:07):
I think what our parents go through deeply affect
us, and we can definitely sensewhat the generations before us
went through.
I think it definitely is passeddown.
SPEAKER_02 (50:17):
Yeah, as children, right.
You don't even um you don'tyou're not aware of it.
Um, but the older I get, themore I mean, I used to laugh at
my father when he would thinkeverything was a comedy.
Everything that like do youremember Rafi, the the the
singer-songwriter, children'smusician?
(50:39):
He had a beard.
He had a beard, right?
Yeah.
And um he my father was with us,the my kids were little, and he
understood English enough toknow that he was singing about a
song, Food in My Belly, not allI really need is a song in my
heart, food in my belly, love inmy family, something like that.
(51:02):
And my father said, I think thatguy's a communist.
Oh wow.
I laughed so hard.
I mean, I said, What?
He goes, Look at him, he's evengot a beard.
I said, Oh no, Bobby, that'snot, that's not, that's not what
he's singing about.
But that that's where thebetrayal that heap betrayal and
(51:23):
fear.
And I used to laugh at that.
Yeah, but now I I understand asan adult, uh, as an older adult,
what it cost him, yeah, and whyit was there, why he feared that
would happen for hisgrandchildren and his and his
children.
SPEAKER_00 (51:40):
Yeah, he was very protective.
We will talk about that in alittle bit, but I want to talk
about um Rudolph the red-nosedreindeer talking about songs.
SPEAKER_02 (51:50):
You were asking about mommy earlier, and uh I
think that that is a greatmanifestation of her
intelligence, her wisdom, herinsights into the world around
her.
SPEAKER_00 (52:06):
I absolutely wrote that down.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
You were so insightful what shesaid.
SPEAKER_02 (52:11):
She, yeah.
So, like all immigrants, we werelooking for clues, especially at
the very beginning.
What does this country run on?
What is valued here?
Because what we valued reallywasn't being valued by the
culture at large.
And we were seeing seeing thisin different ways.
But because we were all togetherin that house, it we were, you
(52:35):
could speed up the learningbecause it's a very verbal
family, lots of stories, lots oftelling people this happened to
me, and what do you think thatmeant?
And so one day she asked us, itwas Christmas that first.
We arrived right aroundChristmas time, and she said
asked us kids to translate uhRudolph the Red Nose reindeer,
(52:59):
and we explained what it was,and she said, So, so wait a
minute, you mean so this thisreindeer has no friends because
he's different, but then becausehe can get them out of this jam,
because he can do something thatthey can't do, everybody loves
him.
(53:19):
And uh we're like, Yep, that'smakes sense to us.
That's what we're seeing outthere in the world, in this new
world.
And she said, Caballeros,gentlemen, I think this country
is going to be all aboutperformance.
And I I remember her sayingthat.
I wasn't sure what she meant.
(53:40):
Later on, I understood.
And in in a way, it's a veryaccurate distinction in the way
that those two the two culturesview the world.
You know, Americans show me whatyou got, show me what you can
do.
Cubans, Latinos are more aboutwho who are you, what have you
(54:04):
done for your family?
Um, are you a decent person?
What what you know uh like ininterior emotions and um
dedication to your family, Ithink.
So performance just wasn't atthe top of the value uh scale,
like independence.
(54:25):
Being independent is soimportant here in the United
States, and it's just thatwasn't valued in our culture in
the same way.
And in fact, when you werecalled tu eres muy
independiente, you're veryindependent.
That was a negative thing.
SPEAKER_00 (54:42):
Okay, yeah.
Well, she was very wise umbefore her time, and I think
that uh she saw things that Idon't even think that US-born
people saw.
SPEAKER_02 (54:54):
No, I uh I she just had that where some people, you
know, I I I used to think ofthat that it was just because
she was my mother that I saw somany amazing things in her
personality, and but now I knowthat she just was truly
exceptional in as a human beingand as and her her natural
(55:19):
intelligence and her interest indoing being a good human being,
seeing human beings and speakingthe truth and and telling her
truth.
Um, I felt I feel very lucky tohave had her as my mom.
SPEAKER_00 (55:35):
Yeah, she seemed like a really great lady.
Uh and your Aunt Tia, she wasvery fascinating to me.
She was a very complex woman,and I liked her story a lot.
Um, how she wanted to get hermaster's degree in math, but
faced expulsion when she refusedto join the militia.
(56:00):
And she did have a degree,though.
And in your country, from what Iunderstand in Cuba, you weren't
allowed to take anything forgain.
And so what did she do?
Because I love this.
SPEAKER_02 (56:13):
So she and this is another um example that I think
Americans that resonate withAmericans, you know, we're
talking about performance,right?
Right, right.
She performed and she had shehad evidence of what she had
earned, her her diploma.
SPEAKER_01 (56:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (56:30):
And what I'm getting from American readers is store
her story really gets to thembecause when we earn something,
that's ours.
And education really is one ofthose things that when you earn
it, no, nobody should be able totake it away from you.
And as with your home, as withprivate property, when you left,
you couldn't take anything ofvalue with you.
(56:52):
And a document like that um wasvaluable, therefore it could not
go out.
So she decided she would risk itall.
And uh a neighbor who was aseamstress helped her tear it
into it, it was a PhD ineducation.
She wanted to teach in theUnited States, needed
documentation, she knew.
(57:12):
They cut it into strips andcreated a full panel bra, and
that's how she snuck it out.
SPEAKER_00 (57:18):
That is the end of part one.
And what a journey that we'vealready taken with Anna from
childhood memories in Cuba tothe complicated love that we
carry for our roots and thepeople who shape us.
We've seen how identity isn'tsomething that you discover
once.
It's something that you keepuncovering layer by layer as
(57:38):
life pulls you in newdirections.
But just as Anna begins to openthe door to her sister Tia's
story, which is a really greatone, by the way, you really
can't miss the rest of thisstory, but I really don't want
to give it away.
In part two, Anna takes usdeeper into family resilience
and the way that love can bindand make their generation
(58:03):
stronger.
It's emotional, it's raw, andit's unforgettable.
I it's been a history lesson forme, and I hope it has been for
you as well.
So join us next week as wecontinue this powerful
conversation on Real Talk withTina and Anne.
Until then, hold on to thisthought.
Sometimes the stories that weinherit aren't just about where
(58:24):
we come from.
They're clues to where we aregoing and who we're still
becoming.
And as we always say on RealTalk with Tina and Anne, there
is purpose in the pain and thereis hope in the journey.
And we will see you next time.
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne.
I am Anne.
Today we welcome author AnnaHebra Flaster.
When I opened your book,Property of the Revolution from
a Cuban barrio to a NewHampshire milltown, I just had
to have you on the show.
The very first line stopped mecold, and I am not kidding you.
(00:31):
I sat there staring at the page,thinking about what freedom
really means.
And I'm not talking about theflag-waving kind, but the kind
that you fight for quietly, withfear in your throat and hope in
your hands.
Anna was just shy of her sixthbirthday when her family fled
post-revolutionary Cuba.
(00:52):
They had 48 hours to get out,and they left behind everything:
their home, their belongings,and the life that they'd known.
What they found in Americawasn't easy either.
Language barriers, racism,hunger, and the ghost of trauma
that followed them across theocean.
But through it all, Anna foundher voice, first as a child
(01:13):
learning to survive, and lateras a writer determined to
remember.
Her work has been featured inthe New York Times, the
Washington Post, the Wall StreetJournal, and on MPR's All Things
Considered.
And now with her debut book,Property of the Revolution, she
takes us deep into the soul ofexile, what it costs, what it
(01:34):
teaches, and what it means tobuild a life with between
worlds.
Anna, thank you so much forbeing here.
Oh gosh, Anne, a total pleasure.
SPEAKER_02 (01:44):
Really.
I love what you're doing withyour um show.
And I've been enjoying these umrecent episodes of yours.
SPEAKER_00 (01:51):
I think a lot of the themes carry across.
Well, well, thank you forlistening.
And thank you so much for beinghere.
You know, we don't get politicalon a show.
We really don't.
And this isn't about politics,it's about people.
And your book really made methink about what it means to
seek safety when home is nolonger safe.
(02:14):
Let's set the stage.
In the late 50s and in the 60s,there was a lot going on.
Cuba was under Batistadictatorship marked by
corruption, censorship, andviolence.
Many, including your mother,hoped that Fidel Castro's
revolution would bring freedom.
But when it came into power,when he came into power in the
(02:37):
late 50s and 59, I think, hopeturned to fear.
Businesses were seized, peopledisappeared, and families were
torn apart.
But your family made theimpossible choice to leave
everything behind for safety anda future in America.
You were between two countries,sometimes feeling at home in
(02:59):
both, and sometimes not feelingat home anywhere.
You arrived here as a childafter living in fear and
witnessing so much loss.
Can you take me back to whenyour family had to leave?
SPEAKER_02 (03:14):
That was a great setting of context, and it's
complicated.
I think you really kind ofcaptured the the stage.
As you as you said, my mother,my family had believed that
democracy would be restored.
And then little by little, afterthe revolution, they saw one
kind of freedom after anotherdisappear.
(03:35):
And each family, each familymember came to the realization
that their dream had vanishedand that they were now living in
a nightmare where they hadbarely recognized society, Cuban
society, neighbors that hadlived together for generations
(03:57):
in the same barrio suddenlydidn't trust each other because
anybody could be an informant,because ideology, political
ideology surpassed humanity.
And that's always at risk incivilization, as we know.
As you said earlier, it's notabout politics.
(04:19):
This is just what happens.
People can glom on to anideology, and it can be a
religious ideology too, and wecan lose sight of the human
being in front of us.
That's what they were basicallyseeing.
But each of them, I call themthe viejos, the older, the
elders.
The viejos all saw them, sawthese this reality emerging at
(04:41):
different times and in differentways.
So that cost that caused aproblem within the family
because they weren't all seeingthe same thing.
And when my mother and fatherdecided in 1964 that they needed
to find a way out of thecountry, which suddenly, for the
first time in Cuban history,Cubans couldn't just get on, you
know, buy a ticket and leave.
(05:04):
They had to get the government'spermission.
And Cuba, until you know, fordecades after the revolution,
remained one of the fewcountries that requires a
citizen to obtain thegovernment's permission to
leave.
It's actually a universal humanright, the right to enter your
country and leave your country.
(05:25):
And that was denied.
So as they realized that thiswas a new obstacle, they began
searching for the rules.
How could that happen?
Because the government wasn'tannouncing how people could
leave the country.
They wanted everybody to stay.
They had already seen a hugeexodus uh in in the years after
the revolution.
(05:46):
So my parents found out throughwhat I they called radio bimba,
radio big mouth, which was theword on the street, that if you
went to a certain office, if youwent to a certain office in the
Ministry of the Interiorbuilding and you asked a certain
question and you went to anotherperson and you did everything
right, you could apply to leavethe country.
(06:09):
And and then that put you ingusano territory.
You were an enemy from thatpoint on because you were
declaring yourself an enemy ofthe revolution.
You lost your job.
You really were at the bottom ofsociety, and anybody could do
whatever they wanted to youbecause you were a worm, a
gusano, that's what thegovernment called us.
So from that point on, youwaited, and we waited three
(06:32):
years, not knowing if or when wewould get the permiso, the
permission.
And this opening scene, whichyou referred to in Property of
the Revolution, is of thatmoment when I, as a nearly
six-year-old, I have no ideawhat's happening, but suddenly
(06:52):
there's there's a motorcyclecoming into the barrio.
I had figured out that themotorcycle meant something big
was going down.
And in fact, that time it wasour family.
Our family was the family thatwas about to lose it all and win
it all.
So it was a moment, and I talkabout this in the first chapter
too, where the my parents'dreams came true, but they broke
(07:16):
their hearts at the same time.
SPEAKER_01 (07:18):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (07:18):
Because now, yes, they'd be able to leave the
country, but that meant thatthey would never they knew they
would never see most of theirfamily ever again because they
couldn't get out and we couldn'tcome back in.
And that's usually a animportant distinction too.
Here is that refugees are partof the immigrant experience, but
they have a different um pathinto the other country and out
(07:40):
of their country.
Usually they leave with nothing.
Um, usually they don't want toleave.
And usually they can't go backuh for safety reasons, for
political reasons.
That was that moment where wherelife was going to be different.
It was the moment of the loss ofour Cuban world when that
motorcycle came into the thebarrio.
(08:02):
And it's it's uh you know,there's a sound effect that
that's tied to it.
I still to this day when I heara motorcycle, I have a a
reaction.
SPEAKER_00 (08:11):
Oh my gosh.
I never out of reading yourentire book, I never made that
connection.
And I remember you saying thatin your book.
But yeah, you know, sights,sounds, all that stuff can bring
things back like it's rightthere.
For children, yeah.
Oh my gosh, especially forchildren.
(08:32):
Absolutely.
It was petrifying for you.
I'm sure you were justabsolutely terrified.
Um, your parents had to makesome tough decisions.
I mean, they were promisedfreedom and democracy, but of
course that didn't happen.
Leaving family behind wasagainst your culture.
And when some when safety, whensafety became the priority, and
(08:57):
you had that 48 hours to leavehome, surrender your
possessions, and step into anunknown country with nothing but
your fear and hope, there isloss and then there's loss.
And there are so many layers ofloss here.
You had to leave so much behind.
Possessions are one thing, butlike your abuela, your abuela
(09:20):
had to leave her father behind.
Share with me, if you can, thedepth of the loss that your
family went through.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (09:27):
Uh the it's it's the depth of that loss has taken me
my whole life to fullyunderstand.
Because uh the women in ourfamily were so strong and they
were very forward thinking.
My grandmother less so umbecause of everything that she
left behind.
But the story we told in ourfamily, or that they told us,
(09:48):
was that we had won.
We had beaten communism, we hadbeaten Castro, we had won our
freedom, forward march.
But then as time went on and Igrew up, I realized it hadn't
been so simple and there hadbeen great loss.
At the top of the of thesacrifices was my grandmother's,
(10:10):
were my grandmother'ssacrifices.
My grandmother didn't reallywant to come with her daughters
to the United States and leaveher father and her brother
behind, knowing that, and shewas right, she would never see
them again.
She did it because her brothersaid, you know, I'll take care
of papa, you take care of yourdaughters and your
grandchildren.
When those women and theirhusbands are working, who's
(10:32):
going to take care of thosechildren?
And so she did.
And it was a time when there wasno Spanish TV, no Spanish
internet.
You couldn't find a Spanishmagazine in in New Hampshire in
1967.
And that's one of thedifferences today.
These people, these theserefugees from Syria, Ukraine,
(10:54):
and and other uh places wherethere's political upheaval,
there's at least a little bit ofa chance that they'll be able to
hear their native tongue.
And that power of your homelanguage and losing that is
another loss.
It's another layer of loss.
I can't imagine.
So I think that my grandmother,in the end of her life, um, saw
(11:19):
that it was the right thing todo, but I think it took her a
long time to come to terms withthat.
And it affected my mother and myaunt too, because and and my
father and my uncle, we all grewup in, as you know, in the same
house.
Right.
And we would have in Cuba and wedid here in the United States in
a duplex next to each other.
But I think everyone understoodin the house what Abuela had
(11:42):
given up and honored that asmuch as possible.
And uh I think in a way we'reinspired by that.
Like what we have given up andwhat she has given up is so
great.
Let's make this the bestpossible experience for
everybody.
And one of the ways they didthat was staying together,
(12:03):
keeping the family together,which isn't easy.
And then you know in the UnitedStates, when you have so many
opportunities and people pick upand fly across the country for
work or for school, that didn'thappen.
You didn't leave your eldersbehind in Cuba.
And that's what what hauntedthem for the rest of their
lives.
It haunted them.
SPEAKER_00 (12:24):
Yeah, I and I I can imagine that that would have
been the hardest decision thatYorubuela ever made in her
entire life.
And um, I really respect that uhthat your heritage, your culture
really respects their elders somuch so that they include them
(12:44):
in everything and then theybring them along with everything
that you don't leave thembehind, that you don't, I mean,
that you keep your familytogether.
I think that uh that's just sorespected.
That's the way it should be.
It should be that way.
SPEAKER_02 (12:57):
And it's really hard.
You know, I I'm now the vieja,I'm now the elder.
And I have a tough job here.
You know, I'm trying to holdtogether a 27, 29 member Cuban
American clan that is growing upin a very different America with
lots of opportunities and lotsof uh distractions.
(13:21):
So getting people together is sohard.
And it that's what you need todo.
It's not about zooming, it's notabout texting or follow or uh
even a phone call.
It's the face-to-face, andthat's something in the book.
You know, you you've you've youyou were immersed in the book,
it sounds like you know thatthat was a day-to-day contact
(13:44):
every day, those two families,for better or worse, and a bond
happens with that that you can'thave.
It just doesn't happen.
And so I'm I'm sitting heretrying to hold the whole thing
together, understanding thatit's impossible, but doing what
I can't.
And part of it is through thethrough property of the
(14:05):
revolution.
Now, now the next generationwill know.
SPEAKER_00 (14:08):
Right.
I love that.
Um, I did want to ask you aquestion about the importance
between immigrants, migrants,and refugees, because you do
bring that up in your book.
For our listeners, can you helpus understand the differences
and why this matters?
SPEAKER_02 (14:21):
Yes, I'm I am no expert.
It's not like I've I've studiedthis, um, but I have lived it
and I have written about it aswell.
So those three groups, migrants,refugee immigrants, are all you
know, people who are coming intoanother country.
They're coming for generallydifferent reasons.
The immigrant is coming, aregular immigrant is coming
(14:43):
because um they see anopportunity in another country,
they have dreams, they want tohave a life in that country.
Uh, they know that they'll beable to generally go back and
see their family and return totheir culture, and that they
their family can come.
Uh generally, a refugee isfleeing uh a climate disaster, a
(15:08):
political disaster, war, andthey're not they don't want to
leave, they are forced to leave.
They usually they usually giveup everything, they can't take
anything with them, they usuallycannot return.
They their family usually cannotcome with them.
Okay.
Not all of the family.
A migrant is perhaps not a trueimmigrant, in that a migrant is
(15:34):
someone who is coming and goingand and between two countries or
multiple countries.
Although in this country, we'vesort of lost track of what those
words mean.
So we we're calling people atthe border migrants.
You know, I don't think thosepeople have any intention of
going back, or most of them.
(15:54):
I think they're in some casesthey should be considered
refugees.
They're fill fleeing political,uh massive political unrest.
Perhaps they have uh they'refearing for their lives, and uh
yet they're being calledmigrants.
And I don't think that that's anaccurate term.
I I I sometimes society findsitself, I think, in situations
(16:16):
where our vocabulary hasn'tcaught up yet to what we're
seeing.
What so I feel we I feel like wewe're lacking some vocabulary
can help us understand what'sdriving people and what their
journey is all about.
SPEAKER_00 (16:30):
Yeah, I think that that's really important that
people understand thedifferences.
And I'm so glad that you kind ofclarified that because I don't
think that a lot of people dounderstand the difference.
So I'm glad that you explainedthat a little bit.
One of the things you had manystories that stuck out to me in
your book, but one of them waswhen there was a so there were
(16:55):
soldiers that were going intothe classrooms and started to
infiltrate young innocent minds.
And you brought up about howthey would say, I mean, pray to
God, and there was no ice cream,and pray to Fidel.
And oh, the ice cream ismagically here.
So trust Fidel over your ownfaith.
(17:18):
How did moments like that shapeCuban youth and the way that you
that they saw things and the waythat you saw trust, faith, and
authority?
SPEAKER_02 (17:28):
Yeah.
Um, I that didn't experiencethat.
Um but my mother, that scene isthe moment that my mother
decides this is not therevolution I I risked my life
for.
Uh so the the soldier came in,soldiers came in and said, Do
you mind if we teach this class?
She said, you know, what was shegonna say?
And that was the message.
Who here likes ice cream?
(17:49):
Everything had disappeared fromshelves, and those kids went
crazy.
Well, bow your heads, pray toGod for ice cream.
Oh, raise your heads, oh no, icecream.
Okay, bow your heads and pray toGod, pray to fee for ice cream.
And the soldiers came in and putice cream cups on all the desks,
and that was the moment.
And so um that there was noquestion that education and this
(18:13):
so-called freedom of ed ofeducation was for a large part
of it, if not the majority ofthe focus was reshaping minds,
young minds, and preparing arevolutionary mentality.
And that was the revolution'smain thing was you uh you
(18:33):
revered this human being.
God and spirituality andreligion were not uh to be
trusted.
And to this day, religiousCubans are persecuted under this
new revolutionary society.
It's just not something that isvalued by revolutionary society,
at least in Cuba.
(18:54):
And I think, well, Marx, I thinkMarx was the one who called
religion the opium of themasses, and they certainly
believe it that in Cuba, theregime.
SPEAKER_00 (19:04):
With you explaining this to me, it just keeps making
it reminds me of just thefreedom that you experienced
once you reached here.
Um, what does it mean?
What does freedom mean to you asa Cuban immigrant who had to run
with her family to safety?
SPEAKER_02 (19:20):
Uh everything.
It means everything.
And um I know that there arepeople in the United States who
think that we're at theprecipice of losing our all of
our freedoms.
And I can see some some signs oftrouble and concern and all of
that, but right now you canstill stand in the middle of the
(19:41):
street, shout horrible thingsabout our president.
Uh you're not gonna lose yourjob.
You're not gonna, well, youknow, we have some some
high-profile entertainers who'vehad some issues, but then again,
a private company has a right tofire its employees uh if if so,
if if it decides it's not um totheir benefit to keep the
(20:05):
employee.
But what you want to do, andwhat we've always strived to do
here, is keep that separation sothat political ideology isn't
affecting who can get a job, whocan uh go to school, how you're
how you're gonna live your life.
And that's what happens in theseauthoritarian regimes, whether
they're from the left or theright.
(20:26):
You it's a political apartheidsystem where if you believe the
right thing, if you think theright way, you have a whole
other kind of life ahead of you.
But if you don't, you you willnot go to school, your children
will not go to school, um, youruh job opportunities are lit
(20:48):
limited when you need healthcare.
This happens in Cuba too.
When you need in supposedly Cubahas this wonderful healthcare
system, which is a completemyth.
Um uh and and it is not even andequal.
And members of the politicalelite, the military elite do not
go to the regular hospitals thataverage Cubans go to.
(21:10):
And certainly, if you're ifyou're um opposed to the regime
and you've you've come out andyou've challenged it in any way,
criticized it, you're not goingpublicly, you're uh not going to
even be treated.
Uh, there are cases of peoplebeing turned away at emergency
rooms and a dentist's office,and no, you're not gonna be
(21:32):
treated.
So that's what freedom, what nothaving freedom looks like.
So it's everything, and andstanding up for freedom and
being on alert and doing thedecent thing and calling it out
when it really is being erodedis critical.
SPEAKER_00 (21:52):
Yeah, your mom had a saying, which I won't say in
Spanish, but um in English, itwas make yourself brave.
SPEAKER_01 (21:59):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (21:59):
And guava.
And she made those harddecisions based, I think, on a
mother's instinct, which I feltas a mom, you know, even she
would do anything to protect herimmediate family.
And like I said earlier, familywas everything in your culture.
And your mommy was courageous.
(22:22):
Can you tell us more about whoshe was?
Because, you know, in your book,what I loved was it's not just
your story, it's everybody has adifferent story that's woven
throughout this entire bookbeautifully, by the way.
So I was hoping that you couldtalk more about her.
I she was something else.
SPEAKER_02 (22:43):
Um she was just this person.
She she knew fear, but sheconquered her fear uh a lot.
As a 17-year-old, when sherisked her life collecting money
and medicine for the rebels whowould one day take over and
(23:03):
eventually force her to abandonher culture, her life, as she
knew it, and cost hereverything, almost everything.
Uh, then she, you know, therewere examples in the book in
Property of the Revolution whereshe stands up to that mob as
they're denouncing a teacher andtakes them to task and says, You
(23:29):
are wrong.
This is a decent teacher, thisis a decent person, and you're
not being fair.
And she risked a lot thenbecause she we were already at
Gusano.
She also saved the life of theman who saved her when she was
caught after the revolution,this man who had saved her from
being arrested while Batista wasin power and she was working
(23:51):
with the rebels.
A mob showed up at his house tohang him because he was a
policeman under Batista.
And she stood up for him thenand saved him.
And then in the United States,she, I think uh you may
remember, she risked her own jobas the manager of this CVS, one
(24:11):
of the first CVSs in in NewEngland, because the eight the
the investigators who came by todetect theft thought this woman
had stolen something or had notrun up something properly.
And she she said, No, that thatwoman, I know that young woman,
(24:32):
and you're not gonna ruin herreputation by accusing her of
something that I know she couldnot have done.
And then she was right and theyfound the evidence.
And so she saved the girl's job,but she saved the girl's
reputation.
And on and on, I could tell youso many other stories like that.
But what what she what shetaught me was that you make
(24:53):
yourself brave.
Make yourself brave, do theright thing, be decent, be a
good human being.
Uh and we know what that is.
We know what that is, and standfor justice whenever you can.
Right.
And part of part of um themission of the book, speaking of
(25:14):
justice, is and you as a mom anda grandmom know probably, and
you've seen it, that childrensense injustice, even though
they may not have the words forit, but they know they know when
there's an injustice happening.
Yes.
And I think that that night andand what happened to us stuck
with me as an injustice as achild.
(25:36):
And I think that writing thebook has been a way of redeeming
the injustice, telling thestory, and honoring what what
people what these people did inthe face of an injustice, what
they accomplished, and largelyby staying together, which is a
(25:56):
big part of the message of thebook.
SPEAKER_00 (25:58):
Yeah, your mom, like you said, she did risk her life
to support Fidel Castro becauseshe truly believed that
restoring democracy, that theythat was going to happen and
bring back the 1940constitution, but once that did
not happen, and communism waseverywhere and complete control
(26:21):
over the people.
Yeah.
Um, your mommy said, and this isa direct quote from the book,
that a certain level of mistrustis essential in life, especially
when choosing sides.
Her country had over-trusted oneman and then failed to stop the
train as he ran it off thetrack.
They'd paid dearly for thatmistake.
(26:43):
Looking back, how did thatlesson of trust, mistrust, and
blind faith in leadership touchyour family and your life?
SPEAKER_02 (26:51):
Well, I think in that same page, I talk about how
she never adored anyone outsideof her children.
Again, uh, she never she lovedmusic and she, you know, was a
fan of musicians.
Um, she was a big, you know, TomJones in the 70s and, you know,
but she never let herself crossthat line of adoration.
(27:15):
And you see it sometimes.
People put everything they haveinto a political figure.
That figure becomes godlike.
This happens with religion too.
And so that skepticism stayedwith her, and we learned from
it.
Um, she they were very skepticalabout political parties in the
United States, too, uh, and sawproblems with both.
(27:39):
Although they tended towardconservative politics more
because of foreign policy.
They wanted a strong foreignpolicy, thinking that they could
avoid for us what had happenedto them, and and that democracy
would be protected more ifconservatives were in power.
That's a that's a line ofthinking that's still strong in
the Latino community, especiallythe immigrant Latino community.
(28:03):
Okay.
Um, so that that was the mainthing is don't don't just
believe what people are tellingyou.
Always wonder what their agendais.
Um, and yet the goodness in inher and in and my father and my
aunt and uncle, my grandmothertoward other human beings as
human beings, that neverfaltered.
(28:24):
That was different.
Someone in need, someone umneeded to be helped, they were
going to help them.
And you saw we saw that duringMarielle.
I don't I don't know if youremember that part in the book.
There have been many waves ofexile, exiles, and emigration
from Cuba after the revolution.
And one of them was Marielle,the Marielle boat lift in 1980.
(28:48):
And when all of our relativesfrom up and down the East Coast
were saying, don't sponsor oneof those couples, whatever, they
decided they were going tosponsor one of them.
Right.
Thinking that, you know, yes,there might be, because it this
was true, Fidel had openedprisons and was actually in some
cases hand selecting thecriminals who would be forced to
go on the boats of the peoplewhose families had come to take
(29:12):
them.
So you couldn't just take yourfamily.
You were gonna take violentcriminals with you.
And in some cases, um, he he allthey also took the patients from
mental wards from psychiatrichospitals.
Okay.
Anyway, so that was the the thethe rumor, but they didn't care.
They said, no, this country'sbeen really good to us and we're
(29:32):
gonna help a couple.
So they wanted us to sponsor amarried couple and they did.
And you know what happened withthat.
They had a little surprise withthat.
Right, right.
But it's an example of howmistrust but goodness.
Ske skepticism, but do the rightthing and but trust your own
(29:55):
sense of what's right and wrong.
SPEAKER_00 (29:57):
And I I think that your mom had a very strong
Instinct, even with her gut.
I mean, she wanted what wasright for everybody.
She just wanted what was right.
And, you know, even if we end uptrusting and it ends up not
working out, I mean, her, shejust wanted the best for your
country and for her family.
(30:19):
And you can't fault her oranybody for that.
She just wanted democracy forher family that and her and
everybody in your country.
That was all she wanted.
Yep, she did.
SPEAKER_02 (30:30):
And and you know, there's this theory, it's still
not it's still amisunderstanding that I think a
lot of Americans and a lot ofpeople internationally have
about the Cuban Revolution thatthe Cuban people wanted a
communist revolution.
They did not want a communistrevolution, they wanted a return
to democracy.
And the three rebel fronts allpromised the same thing.
(30:54):
Fidel was one of those rebelfronts, and he promised that
too.
And that's not what they got.
Right.
Um, I I think that that's a myththat a lot of people who fell in
love with the revolution in the60s, uh, they saw these young,
charismatic, you know, CheGuevara, um, Fidel rebels taking
(31:17):
over a country.
They were 30 years old, 33 yearsold.
And they they put in them thisbelief, they saw in them these
heroes, these romantic youngrebellious heroes who were
freeing up the oppressed peopleof Cuba.
But Cuba had a very highstandard of living in the 50s,
(31:38):
and a lot of Americans don'tknow that or don't stop to think
about that, unfortunately.
They had a high level of medicalcare, education, literacy rates,
um, lots of really solidinfrastructure.
Their GDP per capita was thisthe same as some of the uh some
of European countries.
(31:59):
They ranked second, third,fourth in most economic
development categories in thishemisphere.
And uh what they needed wasfreedom again.
They needed democracy.
The country had had that, andthey wanted to return to it.
And that's not too much to ask.
Yeah, and to be able to speakyour mind and think what you
(32:22):
want to think.
Yeah, not have to hide, not haveto hide your belief.
SPEAKER_00 (32:27):
When you arrived here in the United States, it
was the 60s, and the Vietnam Warwas going on, and there were
anti-war demonstrations, raceriots, people openly criticizing
the president, like you talkedabout earlier, without fear of
going to jail.
So, what was that contrast likefor you and your family as you
(32:48):
witnessed the freedoms here thatyou had never seen before?
SPEAKER_02 (32:52):
I think that it was the one thing that calmed them
because as they had just fledall this unrest and a
revolution, they thought, isthis gonna happen here?
Are we gonna have a revolutionhere?
And is socialism, communism?
And they what calmed them wasno, as long as people can go out
in the street, protest, writewhat they want to write, say
(33:13):
what they want to say, and notlose their jobs and not have a
mob come to their door.
There's hope, and we're in afree country.
And they always believed, too,that the fact that they were in
New Hampshire and that theCanadian border was right there,
they had an exit plan.
That's the thing, that's thething that happens.
That's the thing that happenswhen you lose your country, is
you always have an exit plan.
(33:34):
And they used to joke make surethe Studa Baker's gas gas tank
is half full.
And you know, you don't youcan't undo that experience from
your soul.
That's what happens when whensomething huge like that happens
to you.
You can't just erase it.
It's just it becomes part ofyou.
It shapes how you think, itshapes what you do.
And there's a level of fear thatthat I don't think ever goes
(33:58):
away.
Maybe that's the telltale signbetween a refugee and an
immigrant.
There's a kind of fear that arefugee has experienced that
marks them.
I mean, look at me.
I'm marked still.
And I I didn't make these harddecisions.
I just got dragged along.
But I'm marked by it.
I think about it.
I think about what they gave up.
(34:19):
Um, I'm still tied to my home,my native country.
I worry about my my relativesthere and what they're
experiencing and uh our storyhasn't ended.
And part, you know, property ofthe revolution.
In a way, I'm still property ofthe revolution.
Yes, they took my house, ourhouse, and our Cuban lives, but
(34:39):
in a way they took a part of metoo.
SPEAKER_00 (34:42):
Oh, absolutely.
When I saw a lot of thedifferent fears that you had
demonstrated throughout yourlife, and one incident in
particular really stood out tome as a young child, and you
didn't really know the language,you had hadn't been here very
long, and you were new toeverything, and you had a
(35:03):
situation in school where aVietnam soldier visited and you
were so scared, you werepetrified, you froze, and the
teacher picked up on it.
Could you talk about thisincident?
SPEAKER_02 (35:14):
Yes.
Uh I the the man must have beenuh father, older brother, I
don't know, of someone in theclass, but he just appeared one
day and the teacher announcedhim.
Mrs.
Drew, my first grade teacher, awonderful human being.
And he had a uniform.
He was in uniform.
And I had been taught in myfirst grade class that American
(35:37):
soldiers killed women andchildren.
That was what I was being taughtin first grade.
Uh, one of the things I wastaught.
And so when I saw that soldier,I lost it.
I ran to the teacher.
I was hysterical.
And um I was I I still rememberhow terrified I was for my life
(36:01):
because I've been taught that inmy school.
Right, right.
In my school, and that and Iwould never have been able to
explain any of it, but I feltlike she she understood the
level of fear that I had.
Maybe she did understand.
Maybe she did.
Because she she she seemed tosense it.
Yeah.
And the the the soldier was justa human being and he was I
(36:24):
remember he had a missing tooth.
Okay.
Um, but I I remember him smilingand uh but that didn't do a
thing for me.
I thought we were gonna be shotand killed because I had been
told that by my teacher in firstaid.
SPEAKER_00 (36:41):
I mean, uh, there that is the highest level of
fear.
I mean, I can't even imagine,and then you can't even speak
the language very well.
And so for you to be able to itreally even explain what was
going on within you, and also, Imean, this was an interesting
part of who you were.
It it came across on your pagesthat, and it took you a while to
(37:06):
realize the deep impact thattrauma had had on your life.
And shortly after arriving,there was a child who had died
in a nearby house fire, whichwas another traumatic event
after everything that you hadalready been through in Cuba.
And you showed clear signs ofPTSD, but kept it to yourself.
(37:27):
And I could really feel thatresponsibility that you felt to
your family and that you neededto be brave.
And it really felt to me thatyou needed to be responsible to
help keep your family safe.
Did you feel that?
SPEAKER_02 (37:43):
Yes.
I got emotional listening to youum describe that because you
know, I look back, I was sixyears old, and I never told
anybody what I was goingthrough.
Um, but yeah, so this was a firethat happened.
Um, so so soon after we arrived,and we were living in this, you
(38:06):
know, we arrived as you know, inDecember, it was freezing cold.
There was this fire in a housedown the street, and one of the
children died in that fire.
And they I heard the par myparents reading the paper or
trying to understand the new theaccount the next day.
And uh it said that the boy thethe bull older boy who had woken
(38:29):
the family up had mistaken thesound of i icy rain on the
window.
That that clicking sound.
Thought that the fire, the whatwas he he was hearing fire, but
he thought it was the icy rain.
And so I was terrified thatthere would be a fire and that
if it was windy or rainy, wenobody would know.
And we would lose we would alldie in the fire, or we would
(38:52):
lose our house in the fire,which is what I finally realized
later on was really at the heartof it.
We would be homeless again.
Okay, and I needed to be awake,I needed to save the family.
Yeah, because everybody else wasasleep.
Who was gonna save us?
Who's gonna save us?
That's right.
That was just a a house coulddisappear, a family could
(39:14):
disappear overnight, and as asix-year-old, that makes total
sense to you.
And so Well, you had just youhad just seen that happen.
SPEAKER_00 (39:22):
Yes, and so you had just lived it.
SPEAKER_02 (39:24):
Yep.
But but you're you know, thatwas um, I I don't I cannot
understand how I never toldanybody what because as you
know, I mean, I was I couldn'tsleep, I had massive insomnia.
I slept with my grandmother whocried herself to sleep every
night.
I'd put my arm over her and feelher crying every single night.
Um I heard voices that kept meawake.
(39:49):
I never told anybody thatbecause I asked my parents later
on as I started writing aboutall this stuff, they had never
heard anything about that.
They would have remembered that.
How did how did a six-year-oldkid hold all that in?
I don't think I'm that brave orwhatever, even now, to hold on
to something like that.
So, and I do remember, rememberthe song Sugar Sugar by the
(40:14):
Yarchis?
Yeah, that came out soon afterwe arrived here, and I remember
being in that Studa Baker fullof Cubans driving somewhere, and
and that song came on, and Iwanted to sing it, and I didn't
sing it because I thought it waswrong to sing when people were
(40:35):
so sad.
Oh my goodness.
What even even though they my myparents, my as I told you
earlier, they everybody put onthe bravest face they could and
acted happy.
And right, they acted happy,they were they we had won, we
(40:56):
had looked, we had we had ourliberty.
Um but I knew at a gut levelthat people were crying in their
dark rooms at times because Iwould find them.
And I knew my grandmother wasjust she was wet.
Every time I touched her, shewas wet from tears.
So so that's what it was like.
(41:18):
And you have no words whenyou're that age.
Maybe the fear was what silencedme from telling anybody.
I I felt totally loved in myhome and protected, but I guess
I don't know where that camefrom.
Why I maybe I was ashamed.
Maybe I knew that those voiceswere something embarrassing and
strange, and that because I knewonly I could hear those voices.
(41:41):
And they they terrified me.
And I only recovered thosememories at the age of 38, I
think, was when I finallystarted looking at what happened
to us as a trauma, neverconsidered it a trauma.
Our parents were we were notvictims, there were no victims.
(42:03):
We were we were awesomesuperheroes, and that saved us
in so many ways.
And when we encountereddiscrimination, those poor
Americans, they're so ignorant,they don't know how awesome
Cubans are.
You know, the stories we tellourselves can really save us.
(42:23):
But looking more carefully atthem, once you're safe, is also
a way to save yourself.
My cousins who I grew up with,and my brother have had a very
hard time with a book because itis it is it has forced them to
look at a time that they that ithas forced them to rethink the
(42:46):
story they believed of theirlives and of our view and to
look at what the Viejos enduredand what we endured, because we
you know, kids the kids wentthrough things too.
Um, and so you know, my brotherfinished the book and you know,
he loved it and he was sograteful and all of that.
But as he would read it, hewould text me, I'm on such and
(43:09):
such a page, this is happening.
And he didn't want to look atthat.
It's a it's a strange umparadox, right?
That the thing that's saving youis the thing that can sink you
later if you don't deal withthat trauma.
And I didn't want to myself whenuh a psychiatrist helped me see
(43:32):
that it what had been a trauma.
I I rejected it outright.
Right.
That was an American thing tothink of yourself as a victim.
I'm not a victim.
What are you talking about?
Yeah.
And that's when the memorystarted to come back.
SPEAKER_00 (43:46):
Well, I think that that was one of the best gifts
that maybe your husband gave youis when he actually pointed that
out to you.
Why you could be both.
You can be strong and also belike a you know, have this
trauma within you.
And it wasn't weak for you tohave that in you.
You can also be strong.
(44:07):
I I thought that that wasbeautiful that he gave that to
you.
He did.
He did.
SPEAKER_02 (44:12):
He really worked on me until I could see that you
could be two things.
You could be two things, but youhad to be, I think, one thing
when you were in the thick ofit.
Strong.
Brave.
You had to be brave, strong,stay together, and not be a
victim.
Because if you started to wallowin any of that too much, you
(44:34):
weren't you weren't gonna makeit.
You weren't gonna make it in thesame way anyway.
SPEAKER_00 (44:39):
Right.
And it might have been difficultbecause it's one with your
brother and maybe who cousins orwhoever whoever else was reading
it.
Um, it it's one thing to say it,it's one thing to write it, it's
one thing to read it.
You know, all those things add awhole different layer of healing
(45:00):
and dealing with what happenedto you.
And when you're actuallyreading, I mean, it's you just
want to close those pagesbecause you don't really want to
face it, it makes it a lotharder.
SPEAKER_01 (45:12):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (45:12):
It uh it's taken, it's taken them a lot.
You know, I I had not stopped tothink about what it would mean
to them to revisit those daysand look at that trauma again
and actually decide.
And I think they have realizedthis too, the same thing that I
(45:33):
realized, which was that wow,those people, something really
huge happened and reallypainful.
And look what they were able todo.
I mean, that's where I'm hopingthey come out with is yes, you
know, in order to reallyappreciate what they were able
(45:53):
to do, what we were able to do,what human beings can do, you
kind of have to know what whathappened.
Right.
SPEAKER_00 (46:02):
That's the win on the other side of that pain.
And in Cuba at the time, all thenewspapers and broadcast
networks were being shut down,and the regime began to rule by
edict.
New laws appeared overnight.
Families were desperate to flee,as we talked about, and the
(46:22):
rumors of uh spread thatchildren would be sent to
indoctrination camps.
Parents began sending their kidsto the United States through
what became the Pedro Panflights, a secret resettlement
program that eventually whisked14,000 Cuban children out of the
country.
(46:43):
And your mom felt deeplybetrayed.
It wasn't the democracy, like wesaid, that she had been
promised.
And she even compared Fidel withMussolini and Hitler.
How do you think that thisbetrayal affected your mom?
I mean, we've touched on it, butI think that there was such a
deep layer of betrayal in herthat left her, that left was
(47:07):
left in Cuba and really becamewho she was in America.
SPEAKER_02 (47:15):
Yeah, uh that that if you talk to Cubans who are
here around the world, becausethe diaspora is everywhere, um
who were of that age and whobelieved the lies of of the
revolution, um they you'll pickup that same sense of trick, you
(47:38):
know, they were tricked and theywere lied to.
And and and it it does stillstick stay with people.
I know that there are people,Cubans around the world, who
still talk about that that senseof betrayal and it's deep, it
cut deep, it costs themeverything.
And literally, yes.
(47:59):
Yeah, everything.
And so you know, a lot of timesI've run into I've run into
people in the United States whowho have a view of the Cuban
immigrant, Cuban refugeeimmigrant, as having of of that
era, as having fled because ourriches were taken.
(48:21):
And when we criticize the regimenow, that that we're only doing
that because we want our richesback and our farms and our banks
and whatever.
And that's just not has not beenmy experience at all.
And uh I all the Cubans I knoware working class Cubans and uh
(48:43):
you know professional classCubans who lost those the you
know middle class lives.
And so it's just an example ofhow there's this misconception
about what drove people out tobegin with, and what what
(49:03):
sometimes in the United Stateswhen when Cubans criticize the
the revolution and and theregime it gets misinterpreted.
Um and also sometimes you knowLatinos we we feel things and we
convey uh our um emotions, Ithink, in a more direct way than
(49:24):
um a lot of Anglo culturepeople.
Um and sometimes that comesacross as these hysterical
Cubans fighting against theregime here in the United
States, and they're they havethese and exaggerated reactions
sometimes, you know, because inthe United States you speak
(49:45):
calmly and you're umdispassionate, and when you're
making your points, they'reexpressing their sense of that
very same betrayal we weretalking about.
They have a sense of thatbetrayal, and that's what's
coming out, I think, often.
And and it's misunderstood, it'smisconstrued.
SPEAKER_00 (50:07):
I think what our parents go through deeply affect
us, and we can definitely sensewhat the generations before us
went through.
I think it definitely is passeddown.
SPEAKER_02 (50:17):
Yeah, as children, right.
You don't even um you don'tyou're not aware of it.
Um, but the older I get, themore I mean, I used to laugh at
my father when he would thinkeverything was a comedy.
Everything that like do youremember Rafi, the the the
singer-songwriter, children'smusician?
(50:39):
He had a beard.
He had a beard, right?
Yeah.
And um he my father was with us,the my kids were little, and he
understood English enough toknow that he was singing about a
song, Food in My Belly, not allI really need is a song in my
heart, food in my belly, love inmy family, something like that.
(51:02):
And my father said, I think thatguy's a communist.
Oh wow.
I laughed so hard.
I mean, I said, What?
He goes, Look at him, he's evengot a beard.
I said, Oh no, Bobby, that'snot, that's not, that's not what
he's singing about.
But that that's where thebetrayal that heap betrayal and
(51:23):
fear.
And I used to laugh at that.
Yeah, but now I I understand asan adult, uh, as an older adult,
what it cost him, yeah, and whyit was there, why he feared that
would happen for hisgrandchildren and his and his
children.
SPEAKER_00 (51:40):
Yeah, he was very protective.
We will talk about that in alittle bit, but I want to talk
about um Rudolph the red-nosedreindeer talking about songs.
SPEAKER_02 (51:50):
You were asking about mommy earlier, and uh I
think that that is a greatmanifestation of her
intelligence, her wisdom, herinsights into the world around
her.
SPEAKER_00 (52:06):
I absolutely wrote that down.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah.
You were so insightful what shesaid.
SPEAKER_02 (52:11):
She, yeah.
So, like all immigrants, we werelooking for clues, especially at
the very beginning.
What does this country run on?
What is valued here?
Because what we valued reallywasn't being valued by the
culture at large.
And we were seeing seeing thisin different ways.
But because we were all togetherin that house, it we were, you
(52:35):
could speed up the learningbecause it's a very verbal
family, lots of stories, lots oftelling people this happened to
me, and what do you think thatmeant?
And so one day she asked us, itwas Christmas that first.
We arrived right aroundChristmas time, and she said
asked us kids to translate uhRudolph the Red Nose reindeer,
(52:59):
and we explained what it was,and she said, So, so wait a
minute, you mean so this thisreindeer has no friends because
he's different, but then becausehe can get them out of this jam,
because he can do something thatthey can't do, everybody loves
him.
(53:19):
And uh we're like, Yep, that'smakes sense to us.
That's what we're seeing outthere in the world, in this new
world.
And she said, Caballeros,gentlemen, I think this country
is going to be all aboutperformance.
And I I remember her sayingthat.
I wasn't sure what she meant.
(53:40):
Later on, I understood.
And in in a way, it's a veryaccurate distinction in the way
that those two the two culturesview the world.
You know, Americans show me whatyou got, show me what you can
do.
Cubans, Latinos are more aboutwho who are you, what have you
(54:04):
done for your family?
Um, are you a decent person?
What what you know uh like ininterior emotions and um
dedication to your family, Ithink.
So performance just wasn't atthe top of the value uh scale,
like independence.
(54:25):
Being independent is soimportant here in the United
States, and it's just thatwasn't valued in our culture in
the same way.
And in fact, when you werecalled tu eres muy
independiente, you're veryindependent.
That was a negative thing.
SPEAKER_00 (54:42):
Okay, yeah.
Well, she was very wise umbefore her time, and I think
that uh she saw things that Idon't even think that US-born
people saw.
SPEAKER_02 (54:54):
No, I uh I she just had that where some people, you
know, I I I used to think ofthat that it was just because
she was my mother that I saw somany amazing things in her
personality, and but now I knowthat she just was truly
exceptional in as a human beingand as and her her natural
(55:19):
intelligence and her interest indoing being a good human being,
seeing human beings and speakingthe truth and and telling her
truth.
Um, I felt I feel very lucky tohave had her as my mom.
SPEAKER_00 (55:35):
Yeah, she seemed like a really great lady.
Uh and your Aunt Tia, she wasvery fascinating to me.
She was a very complex woman,and I liked her story a lot.
Um, how she wanted to get hermaster's degree in math, but
faced expulsion when she refusedto join the militia.
(56:00):
And she did have a degree,though.
And in your country, from what Iunderstand in Cuba, you weren't
allowed to take anything forgain.
And so what did she do?
Because I love this.
SPEAKER_02 (56:13):
So she and this is another um example that I think
Americans that resonate withAmericans, you know, we're
talking about performance,right?
Right, right.
She performed and she had shehad evidence of what she had
earned, her her diploma.
SPEAKER_01 (56:30):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02 (56:30):
And what I'm getting from American readers is store
her story really gets to thembecause when we earn something,
that's ours.
And education really is one ofthose things that when you earn
it, no, nobody should be able totake it away from you.
And as with your home, as withprivate property, when you left,
you couldn't take anything ofvalue with you.
(56:52):
And a document like that um wasvaluable, therefore it could not
go out.
So she decided she would risk itall.
And uh a neighbor who was aseamstress helped her tear it
into it, it was a PhD ineducation.
She wanted to teach in theUnited States, needed
documentation, she knew.
(57:12):
They cut it into strips andcreated a full panel bra, and
that's how she snuck it out.
SPEAKER_00 (57:18):
That is the end of part one.
And what a journey that we'vealready taken with Anna from
childhood memories in Cuba tothe complicated love that we
carry for our roots and thepeople who shape us.
We've seen how identity isn'tsomething that you discover
once.
It's something that you keepuncovering layer by layer as
(57:38):
life pulls you in newdirections.
But just as Anna begins to openthe door to her sister Tia's
story, which is a really greatone, by the way, you really
can't miss the rest of thisstory, but I really don't want
to give it away.
In part two, Anna takes usdeeper into family resilience
and the way that love can bindand make their generation
(58:03):
stronger.
It's emotional, it's raw, andit's unforgettable.
I it's been a history lesson forme, and I hope it has been for
you as well.
So join us next week as wecontinue this powerful
conversation on Real Talk withTina and Anne.
Until then, hold on to thisthought.
Sometimes the stories that weinherit aren't just about where
(58:24):
we come from.
They're clues to where we aregoing and who we're still
becoming.
And as we always say on RealTalk with Tina and Anne, there
is purpose in the pain and thereis hope in the journey.
And we will see you next time.
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