My Cousin’s Departure from Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – My eldest cousin’s only son leaves today for Havana. Next Sunday, he and his partner will travel to Suriname. From there, they will continue on to Uruguay, where they plan to live for some time. A friend who already lives there with his wife and two daughters is waiting for them. We’ve wished them the best of luck. They are both thirty-five years old, very good people, and we trust they will find the future they cannot have in our country.
Here, they had a small food business. They sold everything, just like most Cubans who decide to leave the country. One of our sorrows—because it cannot be otherwise—are the stories of people who are deported and forced to return under orders from the authorities of the countries where they settle. To pursue these life projects, they had to get rid of all their belongings—houses, businesses, cars… they left everything behind to reach that other land where they hoped to find a different kind of existence.
And now the mother complains about why she didn’t sell the house and leave with them. I told her that even I was thinking of selling mine and taking off too. I don’t know how I haven’t done it yet. In Cuba, we’re already at the stage where leaving is either the conversation topic or the recurring thought. The situation doesn’t allow for many other reflections. And it’s not just the twenty- or thirty-year-olds who are leaving. We’re talking about an experience that has spread much further.
Relatives and friends come from other countries to take their grandmothers, aunts, and elderly friends away. Those of us who remain do so for very weighty reasons: a bedridden mother, a father left alone who cannot be abandoned… A friend of my mother’s came to our house and made a very witty remark: “In Cuba, only the worms without money are left, because the first to leave were—and still are—the communists.”
Here “worm” should be understood as the derogatory term the Communist Party has used for decades for people who did not agree with the State.
We laughed and, of course, admitted he was right. For this reason, I’m not surprised by the reports I hear about so-called ghost towns. Cuba could at any moment turn into such a country, if this uncontrolled exodus continues. Living through these processes carries a spiritual, cultural, economic, and many other kinds of cost. And it’s impossible to experience it personally as anything less than a major challenge.