Two Among Many

Alfredo Fernandez Rodriguez

Omar got a job at the French embassy, but since he didn’t have anywhere to live, he deprived himself of everything humanly possible to gradually build his own house.  He accomplished this feat after six years.  The following year he left for Spain and never returned.

Verdaguer didn’t have a home either.  Though he was a university professor, and not a builder, he was finally able to join a micro-brigade (the work force used for erecting apartment buildings in which an employee leaves their regular job and becomes a construction worker until their residence is completed).

He did this for seven years.  He obtained his house and a year after he began living in it he received a work trip to a Mexican university.  He crossed the border and now lives in Miami.

By leaving, Omar and Verdaguer lost their respective homes through laws whereby the government confiscates properties from people who permanently leave the country.

Such situations always leave a question in my mind: What right does the State have to appropriate a private belonging that was obtained honestly?

Today, each of them lives in apartments they rent in Miami and Madrid.  Selling the ones they owned in Cuba would have alleviated the hardship of exile.