El susto de su vida

My mother remembers “ el susto de su vida” the scare of her life came on the day that we were to leave Cuba, the three of us had had “saranpion” chicken pox a week earlier due to an outbreak in the country. She recalls the night before we actually flew out we had to spend the night at the airport, it was hot and mosquitoes everywhere, there was another family with a child that would not stop crying, my mother stepped in and helped out the mother by carrying her child while the mother tended to her other kids, the child had chicken pox and could not stop scratching, so he cried all night long. In every flight leaving Cuba there was an American Customs officer looking out for sick people who had been affected with the chicken pox outbreak or any other disease, since we had had it a week earlier the marks were still there. The family with the kid which was crying all night was just ahead of my family on the boarding order and they did not allow the family to fly because of the boy and his brothers having marks all throughout their body. Was mom was now petrified knowing that we still had marks from the chicken pox even though we had gotten over them, what saved us was that my grandmother had made the three of us long sleeve-shirts from a blanket weeks earlier and our arms were hiding the red spots. As we were told to board the plane, my mother had to be prompted by the security officer to move on ahead and into the plane because my mother actually froze with the thought of having to stay in Cuba because of our marks, even once inside the plane she worried that until the plane took off the American representative would come and get us and you never knew when your number would come up again to leave. I took our family 5 years after signing up to actually have our permit to get out and that was on my mother’s mind, what if it takes another 5 years because once a child turns 14 he had to file on his own to leave the country. My mother knew of families who had applied to leave prior to their child turning 14 and receiving their permit after the age and the child having to stay behind with one of the parents staying with the child, so many families were broken up because of this rule. When my mother got the word that we had our permit to leave, she had 48 hours to get to my dad and my uncle Leonel who was also leaving with us. A neighbor named Pedro Morro helped out my mom by going to go pick up Leonel with his car and another neighbor put the money for the gas. While --- to get my dad where he was cutting sugar cane.

Leaving Cuba

Soon after Fidel Castro took over in 1959 my father’s family including his mother, father and a total of 9 brothers and sisters started leaving Cuba.

Some were unmarried, like the youngest Amador, who tells me that at the age of 17 he knew he would never return to his homeland. He was one of the first to leave, for him coming to New York was an adventure, it was like living in downtown Havana except larger and with taller buildings.

Ana with her husband Rafael and their two children Rafaelito and Ana left soon after. There was Antonio who managed to leave with younger sister Xiomara and their mother Rosa because Antonio had friends at the Swiss embassy and managed to get a passage to leave the country on one of the Red Cross boats returning to Miami after the Red Cross delivered medicine and baby food in relief to  the struggling Cubans after the Castro takeover.

All the other siblings managed to leave within two years of Castro's takeover, including my father’s father Arturo Lopez-Rogina, who left in the summer of 1961 with his second wife Lala and two daughters, Iliana and Mayra.

Of the Lopez-Rogina's there were two that stayed behind, Armando and Amalia. My father’s younger sister Amalia left in 1965 with her husband Pepe and two children Ana Maria and Jaqueline.

That same year my father Armando finally decided to leave Cuba, but soon found out that he had waited too long, the rules had changed and this is the story I’m promising to tell here.

My father’s hope of Cuba being a better place to live for his family once the revolution settled down was terribly slipping by, the food rations in effect are more severe since the inception of “La Libreta” and lots of other items you had taken for granted such as having the opportunity to buy what you needed when you wanted were no longer available, mostly due to the embargo the USA had placed on Cuba.

My family’s other issue was that my mother did not want to leave the country without her brother Leonel. But Leonel did not want to leave, he was single, with few worries, no family of his own to care for other than to contribute to my family as he could since he lived with us. My uncle Leonel was a very giving man; he would take food off his plate to give to someone in need. He and my mother had a very close relationship mostly due to their father leaving home to marry another woman when they were young. When my mother and father married, my grandmother “La suegra” came to live with them as well as my uncle. My father always said that Leonel was like a brother to him. My grandmother would have either stayed or gone to America.

The needed paperwork had to be submitted, our sponsor in the USA was Arturo, my father’s father who had long asked my father to leave Cuba. My grandfather who was living in New York filled the necessary “reclamo” at the Cuban embassy in New York.

Once that was done the Cuban embassy notified the embassy in La Havana about my dad’s wishes to leave for the USA and soon after my father lost his job at the Havana Airport. My uncle Leonel Musibay lived with our family and lost his job as well as part of the family “reclamo”.
 

Once my father and uncle lost their jobs at the Airport it was my mother, grandmother and the three of us boys living with only my grandmothers retirement check from her pension as a seamstress. In addition my grandmother would sew clothing such as dress shirts for men or dresses to make some extra money, from what fabric was left over from jobs she would sew shirts for us kids.

My father and uncle would go out to the farms and pick coconuts to make the sweet coconut candy that I have written about before; the sale of these candies was helpful because the extra money was used to buy needed foods at what were now controlled prices at the “bodegas” with the Libreta.



Soon after, both my father and uncle reported to serve their time to the government in the small town of Güines picking “malangas” (a potato type vegetable root). Güines is a municipality and town in the Mayabeque Province of Cuba, which is about an hour and a half by bus from our home in Rancho Boyeros; it is located 30 miles southeast of La Havana.


Both Armando and Leonel served several months in Güines for the agricultural cause, with a visit home once every few weeks to see the family.

One day most laborers were loaded on trucks and taken to the train station with no idea where they were headed but after several hours on the tracks they were informed that they were going to Camaguey to work on the farms, my uncle was lucky, he did not move with the majority of the workers but my father was on that train.

In time, all men on the train were allowed to send word home via a telegram to their families to inform them of their new work site, my mother received the notice from a childhood friend named Iraida who worked in the Post Office, she received the telegram and rushed to our house to give her the news that the men were being reassigned.

In the telegram my father said ”we are on the way to Camagüey, please send me a blanket and something to eat”, he needed the blanket because it was now December and the temperature would drop at night. It was the only blanket my parents had at home between the two of them, but a cousin of my grandmother was a male nurse at a Hospital in Rancho Boyeros, which is just a few blocks away from our house. My mother knew she had to take a blanket from the Hospital, but there was a security guard there to keep tabs of all items coming and going out of the Hospital, but as my mother was walking out of Hospital with the blanket hidden she saw the security guard at the exit searching everyone and all of the sudden , she started yelling: “I hear the train, I hear the train, I’m going to miss the train” and ran pass the policeman with the blanket to send to my dad without being searched.

From that point on my father would send letters home asking for any leftover food my family could spare, that he was starving out in the sugar cane fields. Adelfa would go and get in lines at the bread stores and since there were three boys in the family you got extra bread (as long as there was some available) Keep in mind that because my father was not home, his ration was not available any more. There was bread to feed us three boys and some to toast and send to my dad (it was toasted hard so it would not mold in the days it took in the mail to arrive to Armando’s hands). My father’s hunger was so bad that he would take some of the cane back to the barracks after the long day at work and strip it himself to get what little juice one could get out of it to mix it with the bread which was now grounded and the two were mixed making Guarapo, sort of a shake with the ingredients being bread and sugar cane juice.

With some luck, my uncle who lived with us and was going to leave the country with us, had a paying job that paid a little more than a regular laborer, all that he earned he shared with the family.

Prior to my father going to Camagüey, my mother was not allowed to visit either my father nor her brother; she tells me that once she tried to go to Güines because she received a letter from the government saying that if Armando did not present himself for the Agriculture that he would not be allowed to leave the country.

She needed to go to Güines, with my brother Alex and I in hand, my younger brother Charlie could not go, because any time he got on a bus or a car he would start throwing up. Buses at that time were always very full. My mother went to La Havana which had the central bus line that went throughout the country from there she needed to get to Güines, but had no idea where to go other than just asking general questions to get to the workers. She finally found the bus to Güines and arrived very late, after being told that she was not able to do any business at such a late hour, so instead of spending the night in Güines she decided to take the bus back home, now late at night she arrived with no meals eaten all day long, when she saw a line to shop to get Guarapo and that was our meal for the day. The next morning she sent a telegram to the offices in Güines telling them Mr. Lopez-Rogina is already in Camaguey serving his time.

As time got worse my mother would go to her home town of Alquizar to trade clothes for food to be able to feed us and send some food to my father. About every three months my dad would get leave to go home and spend time with his family for about ten days, but this was also a tricky partly because my mother now would have to go to the local committee (Oficoda) to say that my father was home on leave and that he needed to get his rations for the 10 days but only after she presented his leave papers from the government.

Soon after my mother also had to present herself to the government offices to say that she was there to do her commitment for the cause. While there, the government had had previous problems with women, because they had been sent out to work on the fields and many got sick because of allergies, so when my mother was asked if she had allergies, she said yes, to many grasses and got lucky that she had to do her time just a few blocks from the house for about 8-9 months prior to getting out. It was while my mother was working at “La Ferria” which was now an iron-works factory and my mother’s job was to inspect the work of others. It was while working here that she received the information that we were granted our leave.

My mother became very good friends with her boss, a black man named Pedroso , who supposedly was a communist , but my mother felt by the way he acted that he was very sensitive to the “gusanos” who were about to leave the country. My mother would tell Pedroso that she had to run home and take one of her children to the doctor, but he knew it was really a lie, that all my mother was doing was trying to find a store to go get in line to try and buy some food for the family. Pedroso would say to my mother “¡Chiquitica tu sabes mas!” as in saying you are very sharp and you know how to survive in this situation we are all in.

Early one morning in the first week of June of 1970 the day finally came, a co-worker came to my mother and said your turn is up, you’re going to America, you and others here at the factory are leaving us, but she had to wait for the official word from the commandant. When he finally came, he told my mother to go home that the Policia was waiting for her to do inventory on our house. Once inventory was done one could not take anything out of the house, especially out of the country, the house and all of its furnishings had to be left behind and now they belonged to the government.

On a side note, a friend of my parents, Pedro Morro had a car for many years, but the car did not work, when his turn came up he had to get the car fixed to leave it in working order for the government.

La policia took inventory of all of our belongings, closed the door and we had to go live with neighbors so we would not have access to our belongings, which were so few. Later my parents were allowed to go inside and pack our clothes to have them once we arrived in the USA.

That same day Adelfa rushed to the post office and went to her friend Iraida to send my father a telegram to give him the notice that we were leaving, but even thought my mother sent the telegram, my father needed to receive the official papers to be released from the agriculture.

My uncle Leonel who was at Güines at the time of the news was now home, he took the responsibility to go notify my father, even thought my uncle who had lost his job at the airport some years earlier still had many friends there, so he went over to the airport and said to his friends, “I need a flight to Camaguey right away”, after explaining himself and paying for the flight he headed out to give notice to my dad.

Once my uncle arrived in Camaguey he asked for directions to the Cañaberales to find my father, he walked for miles looking for him, while my father knew that he would be released from the telegram received he had to wait for the official notice, my mother tells me that when my uncle returned he was filled with dirt from his trip to find my father. Even though the sugar cane had its season, the men were not released, there was always work to be done, such as clearing of the fields and the processing of the sugar cane.

Men at the sugar cane fields where paid, but it was a small amount just so the government could say that they paid its employees. The money coming in was very little to survive on, it was like that for all Cuban leaving the country; my mother sold most of her clothing and in desperation had to sell her wedding ring to be able to buy food. My mother tells me that life was very, very dark or bleak.

Every three months my father was given leave, he would come home and spend the 10 days with us, but after the end of the leave he had to report to La Havana and there they would put the men in trucks or trains to head back to work. My father while in Camaguey lived in barracks with other men and would take showers at the end of the day with cold running water from the wells, many days he would not take showers from being so tired , knowing that in the morning he would have to go out and do the same work again.

The men would wake up at dawn and were sent out to the fields, each group had “metas” production quotas that they had to meet in work, and it was not a defined hourly schedule. My father would tell my mother that there were older man who could not meet their quotas and they had to be helped out by the younger more able men like my father.

Each morning the men were taken to the “Cañaberales” by caretas, mule driven carts.

The men had only half a day of rest during the week, which was Sunday afternoon after lunch.

At the time my father was released he weight 145 lbs. at 5’10. He lost about 30 pounds while at the agriculture, as you can see from the photo the size of his arms from cutting and harvesting sugar cane for close to four years.

Chicharo (split pea type cream soup) is what the men ate on a daily basis, but the men would joke around that once in a while they also had meat, but it was the bugs that would come in the chicharo a maggot like grub that would grow on the peas.

But it was all they had to eat and they did not have a choice to keep from starving. My mother would send what coffee she could get from “La Libreta” which was 3 oz. per week and since she did not drink coffee, she would send it to my father in the farms, so he would have what was a luxury to be able to drink coffee.

Of the 15ozs of coffee my mother was able to get she would also trade with their friend Pedro Morro for some condense milk to send my father or to feed us.

My parents waited almost 5 years from the time they asked to leave to the time they were released – There was no order was what people were told in who got out when they did, because my mother knew of people that asked to leave after them and left before our family was allowed to leave.

Within a year of signing up they had gotten word that they had been accepted. The house payment was never made after we knew we had been accepted to leave; there was no money from a regular salary to make payment. My mother recalls that my uncle who had a better position than my dad would come home at the end of his shift to share what little food or meat with his family then make the bus trip back to his job to sleep in his barracks.

My father suffered a breakdown some years after all his family left, He did not hear from his family at all for all those years. It was very hard on him because he loved his family.

*** As families left Cuba, they forfeited their homes to the government and one of these homes belonged to the Mayor of Rancho Boyeros Leon a politician that was outspoken towards Castro, the house was an open raffle open to all the government employees working at the Jose Marti International Airport where my father and his brothers worked. My father won the house when I was 4 months, but monthly payment had to be made monthly. At that time my uncle moved in with us and contributed to the house payments.

But once they went to work for the government they did not make any more payments on the house, but when it was our turn to leave, the government made my family pay all that was due over those four years before we left the country, house payment were very low in those days, ours was 10 pesos a month, but my parents had to reach out to all their friends in accumulating the money to pay the house, friends of our parents Miguel y Pidelina lent them 200 pesos to help make the outstanding payment, utilities had to be paid , such as water and electricity or they would have been cut off, payment was made with my grandmothers pension check or my mother selling her clothe or what little jewelry she had.

My grandmother’s husband walked out on her early in their marriage, but she had a small house in which she lived with her two children. Once my parents were married, my grandmother sold her house and moved in with us. My uncle also moved in with us, remember that my father and uncle treated each other like brothers since my father’s courtship lasted for years.
____

extra notes to myself for future research

Mothers half sister Julita lives in Cape Corral, FL.

( my cousins)Julita, Sirita, Carmen y Romeo Nieve is the mother. Veterinaria in Cuba – Home health care. Has one son, who lives in Miami born in Cuba is divorced, lives with new husband. All of my mom’s half sisters live in Alquizar save Nieve who lives in Havana.

Mount Rainier

Sometime in late 1980 or early 1981 when I was in the Air Force I lived outside Tacoma, Washington at McChord Air Force Base. The time of the year I really can't remember but definitively close to winter. With Mount Rainier so close by I decided to go cross-country skiing, which is about an hour and a half southeast of Tacoma, it was something I had never done before so I thought as long as I lived so close to the mountain I would go and add an adventure to my life.

I just bought my new 1980 Chevy Monza and I was living in an Air Force dorm. Making a small salary from the Air Force and without commitments other than to be at work on Monday morning, I had all day to make the roundtrip up to the mountains.
The equipment for skiing was free thanks to rentals with the Air Force,  which all of us enlisted were privilege to use. Saturday afternoon after work I went to the rental office and took out the ski pants, jacket, shoes, skis, and other items required I thought for the trip. I had invited my roommate Rolando Campis whom wanted to go just as much as I did, but could not as he had a different work schedule than mine.

I really had no idea where I was going other than southeast from Tacoma on the WA-7 South Mountain Highway, in those days planning out a trip was not my strength or for that matter planning anything.

I was on top of the world, my first trip where I actually had my new car, I was living more than 2200 miles from my parents and the freedom of a young man ready to see new things and have new challenges. I could go as I wanted, do as I wanted, no one to answer to but myself.
I left early Sunday morning hoping to get a good couple of hours of skiing in before heading home and work the next day. I reached the National Park sometime in the early afternoon, but for some reason there were not a lot of people skiing, in fact I had seen just a person or two in the parking lot and on the drive in.
After putting on my cold weather clothes and ski's I  headed out to the snow. The scene was overwhelming, so much fresh snow everywhere, I felt like I had the place to myself, so tranquil, for me this was definitively a new environment.
After falling over a few times I was somewhat getting the hang of it. At a distance of about a mile away I could see a couple of guys smoothly skiing cross-country in a lower valley. I watched and tried to copy them and somewhat tried to copy their technique. I skied for about 20 minute in an area in which was no more than 100 yards long before I had to change directions, what I really wanted was to go to the valley where I had just seen the two skiers and the space to get into a rhythm without having to turn and restart.

Sometime later I headed back to the car to take a break and grab something to eat, but I had not brought any food, so I decided to go back out for another hour or two before darkness and heading back.

I got the hang of it a bit more this time around, but I still felt like it would take many tries and other trips to feel the proper rhythm. About an hour later I decided to head back to the car knowing that I still had a couple of hour trip back to the base.

When I got back to the car, I could not find my car keys anywhere; I calmly searched in all the pockets in my ski pants and jacket, but with no luck. So I decided to head back out and retrace my steps, silly me maybe thinking that maybe if the keys were to fall out of my jacket they would miraculous float in top of 2-3 feet of snow.
After searching for about fifteen minutes I headed back to the car, but the car was locked. So I entered the car through the trunk which stayed unlocked at all times, I opened the back of the backseat panel and then snaked into the car. By this time it was very dark, I had not paid attention to where I had parked in relation to the Ranger Station on the drive up the mountain, so I thought the only thing to do was to spend the night in the car and then in the morning go for help. Spending the night in the car was something I had done before in Houston prior to running the Houston Marathon in 1979 when I had no money for a hotel.

That night the temperature really dropped, my socks were already wet from the skiing and the only shoes I had were the ski boots, I had worn my Tiddies Sandals on the ride up to the mountain. As I tried to sleep in my car it started to snow and the cold temperature along with my freezing toes did not let me sleep, I tried wrapping my toes in my t-shirt that I had under my jacket to keep warm but that was wet as well. I must have dosed of a few times here and there throughout the night, but I still felt very tired.

Finally in what seemed to be morning I tried to get out of the car, but the door would not budge, it had snowed close to a foot that night and after a struggle I did manage to push the door and get out. I started to walk down the mountain for some help in getting keys made and within a minute, I could not believe that just around the first bend was the Longwire Wilderness Center and Ranger Station no less than 200 yards away, but unfortunately out of site from where I was parked.

I walked into the Station and there were just a person or two working. I explained my situation and they immediately helped me. We got a hold of the Chevy dealership in Tacoma where I bought my car and after the explanation, they gave me the serial numbers to my keys and told me that the nearest Chevy dealership was Eatonville which was about 30 miles away.

Now came the hard part, I had to hitchhike my way down to the town to have keys made. Because it was not the high season there were not many skiers on the mountain. I managed with my freezing toes to walk some and get several rides from passersby all the way into town. Once in town I had the keys made quickly, but now I had to trek up the mountain. The dealership called around to see if anyone was going up to Rainier, but with no luck after an hour of waiting for a ride , now I had to get up the mountain.

I did have a ride just out of town which took me about 8-10 miles closer to my car, after walking again a few times and a few rides , I managed to get up to the Ranger station , but by now it was dark again and very late, the couple of people at the station by now feeling sorry for me offered me some Chili for dinner and offered to put me up for the night, after telling them I did not have any money , they let me sleep in a small room with a cot for the night.

I slept better that night and in the morning, now with a new set of keys in hand I drove down the mountain to McChord Air Force Base, most of what I remember from the trip back was driving into Tacoma, people where staring at my car because it still had 6-8 inches of snow on the roof of my car after the hour and a half drive back to the base.

Immediately I went to my job which I was already several hours late and explained to them what I had just gone through, all they could do was laugh, telling me how stupid I had been to go skiing by myself and to top it off to go in the off-season where there was little support in case there was trouble. It was a trip I will never forget and one that I must pass down hoping my children will not do the same or at least do a bit more planning than I did.