Goodbye to Havana
HAVANA TIMES – On December 27, 2022, we left on our journey towards Brazil. It was excessively cold, even for winter. Despite the tensions in the days leading up to the trip, for reasons I don’t understand, I managed to sleep like a baby.
The car arrived at 8 am. We had a flight scheduled for noon. There was just enough time to double-check our documents, money, and luggage; leave precise instructions about who should get the belongings that still remained to be distributed; embrace the family; and cry, cry with regret.
My mother went with us to the airport. In an attempt to maximize those last moments, she had slept with us that early morning. It was a short and implosive farewell. When we turned our backs, there was only ourselves and the journey.
Passing through customs to exit the country represented the first of several victories, amid a few short blackouts that delayed our departure.
We flew into Puerto España in Trinidad and Tobago, a flight of about 5 hours. We had a layover there until seven that night, before leaving for Guyana. We landed at the Guyana airport at about 10 pm.
At the exit door, our coyote was waiting. He took us to a house and gave us food and water, then charged us $900, instead of the 700 we had agreed upon. He asked us if we wanted to leave for Brazil right away, and we said yes.
He then took us to the starting point – another house, where there were more Cubans and a few Africans. They were filling some envelopes with money that they would later hand out at each police checkpoint.
At two am, they put us in a van and we left. There wasn’t even enough room to rest my head. We made the trip with our two-year-old daughter on our laps, plus a backpack with my computer, and camera bag.
Around three am, we entered the jungle. We drove along that dark and muddy road until around six – just us and God (and who knows if anyone else). The coyote then stopped to rest. We slept however we could, and an hour later we continued the trip. I had managed to rest my back a little, but it still hurt.
The next three hours were a constant lethargic doze. The need for sleep overcame us, despite the discomfort. I would open my eyes and see only that muddy road in front of me, with thick vegetation on both sides. The trip seemed eternal.
At ten a.m., we stopped at a kind of diner, in the middle of nothing. People went into the bush to pee. Some bought drinks, but the coyote advised us not to spend our money there, that we were about forty minutes away from a restaurant where we could eat lunch.
The promised forty minutes became three hours more of lethargy, fatigue, and hunger, because the restaurant never appeared. I remember that we felt very angry and confused about this.
By about noon, we finally left the jungle. We were in an enormous and mostly dry valley that looked like paradise to us. Shortly afterwards, the coyote stopped at a house where we could buy lunch and drinks.
We continued on, and two hours later we arrived at Lethem, the last town before the border. There, we quickly changed vehicles and were driven to the river whose opposite bank was – finally – in Brazil.
They instilled terror in us, saying that the Federal Police were watching, that we had to be stealthy and be prepared for anything. We crossed the river in a motorboat, once more in God’s hands. It was ten minutes of anxious wondering what to do if the boat capsized, whether to save my two-year-old daughter or my wife, who doesn’t know how to swim.
Thirty-four hours after leaving our home, our Cuban shoes stepped onto Brazilian soil. We had arrived at the South American giant with no one waiting for us and with the money we had managed to hold on to hidden in my wife’s blouse.
I left Cuba as a young girl, thinking like my parents it would be temporarily for just a few short months. The year was 1959, three months after Fidel Castro took over. We did not have to pay coyotes and left on Cubana de Aviación, but my father and uncle left a month earlier paying an American pilot to fly them to Miami in a Cessna. They were picked up outside Havana and dropped off outside Miami at what was then Tamiami Airport. He became a friend and baptized me with the American name Heidi, since no one here could correctly pronounce my given name. I had many experiences in those three months of Fidelismo, losing everything that a child cherishes at that age. However, my sense of adventure kept me from becoming sad or fatalistic, and every adversity was just a different way to learn to triumph. I am grateful that as an exile I did not experience all the hardships that my countrymen have had to endure. Everytime I am in a different country and run into a Cuban, I rejoice that they have been fortunate enough to now experience freedom of expression. They are now free to explore and realize their desires.
If the author of this piece needs to have his work translated into English I would be happy to help. Fortunately, I grew up in Puerto Rico and did not lose my native tongue.
Desgraciadamente es la historia de muchos miles de cubanos. Afortunadamente llegaron salvos en menos de 48 horas. Nunca se va a conocer la cifra exacta de cubanos muertos en el mar, en la selva o a manos de delincuentes en su búsqueda de una vida mejor fuera de la Isla.
This is a sad and difficult story, but unfortunately too often heard. I cannot help but to get a feel of lack justice in the world when poor people, my people, are subjected to this horrendous treatment. When will justice be heard? When will we finally be treated like the human beings that we are and deserve to be treated like?