After Castro, new hope for Cuba
After fleeing Fidel Castro’s Cuba in 1961 at 5, Manuel Suarez said he holds out hope for a democratic shift after the socialist revolutionary’s death.
“I think, originally, he had a good idea about somehow or other getting rid of (Fulgencio) Batista, who was a dictator,” said Suarez, who lives on the North Coast. “Unfortunately when he got into power, I think he changed his mind.”
Suarez’s memories of the Cuban Revolution are scant but powerful. He was the 13th of 14 children, his father a dean of engineering at Villanova University’s Havana satellite campus when Castro swept into power in 1959.
“When Castro took over, he put my dad in jail, and three of my sisters,” Suarez said. “The rest of us were under house arrest. They left three men with machine guns living in our garage.”
Suarez said his father and sisters, marked as counterrevolutionaries, were among the many jailed before the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Later given a 24-hour pass by the government to attend to his wife after a miscarriage, Suarez said, his father instead boarded a meatpacking boat and fled to Miami.
Suarez and his siblings followed shortly thereafter, given passes on a ferry boat to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, by a friend of his mother’s in the Brazilian Embassy.
“For me, it just seemed like we were going on a vacation,” Suarez said of his naivety at the time.
His father got a teaching position at Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Suarez spent 35 years in Florida before moving to the West Coast. His older brother, Xavier, became the first Cuban-born mayor of Miami.
Castro, who died Friday at 90, ceded power to his younger brother, Raul, in 2006. In 2010, Suarez visited Cuba, stopping by what he said locals still refer to as the Dolores Sugar Mill, previously his family’s before the revolution.
“The government took over our two sugar mills,” he said. “We also had a farm, and they took our house away in Havana.”
The sugar mill had been dismantled, he said, but the farm, owned by the government, was still raising pigs and cows on his last visit. He said the manager has offered to give the farm back to his family, which has also sent money to fix up a church and playground around the former sugar mill.
Germany’s reunification in 1990 was followed by millions of claims by people who had fled west of the Iron Curtain and wanted their old property back. Suarez said he hopes that doesn’t happen in Cuba. “It’s not really fair to go back and try to reclaim it from the people who live there,” he said.
In 2014, Suarez again visited Cuba, and said he could see the country further opening up. Along with Castro’s departure from politics, he also credited President Barack Obama’s restoring diplomatic relations, Cubans’ increased access to the internet and Pope Francis’ visit last year with helping to lessen Cuba’s isolation. But he said the Cuban community remains split in the aftermath of Castro’s death.
“I would say, in general, our extended family is glad that Fidel has finally died,” he said. “But we also realize that now we have to contend with Raul. Our hope is that one day — hopefully in our time — is that Cuba will go back to being a true democracy.”
