Today, I am an immigrant in the United States

Yenisel Rodriguez

HAVANA TIMES — I lived in Cuba until March 30, 2013. Today, I live with my father in the city of Miami.

I have found compelling reasons to engage in political, grassroots activism in both Havana and Miami, though these cities are ninety miles apart. In a few words, I intend to lead a life based on the principles of self-management, driven by a political and religious commitment to individual and collective freedom.

My engagement with the field of Socio-Cultural Anthropology 8 years ago awakened a committed love towards human diversity in me, and my new status, as an immigrant in the United States, has served to deepen this sense of knowing and revelation.

Above all, it has stirred in me a need to explore the different ways Cuban identity can be expressed in the United States.

While in Cuba, Havana Times gave me the means to step beyond the official screen of disinformation and to overcome the alienation imposed one by the island’s authoritarian regime.

Havana Times continues by my side in Miami, helping me in the arduous effort of rising above the mind-numbing influences of the American Dream and in my struggle against the self-perpetuated colonialist mentality of the Third World immigrant.