This morning, I received an article from Mexico City that was published in the Spanish newspaper El Pais on February 18, 2024.
As I read it, tears welled up in my eyes. Like dust in the wind, I could feel the searing breeze that has carried my friends away from our beloved island. That same wind has also swept away my emotions and attachments. I miss Cuba, but I find myself wanting to shield my heart from the suffering of my fellow Cuban compatriots who remain on the island, unable to leave. The number of people who wish to stay in Cuba is dwindling daily.
The article was sent to me by a close friend, a psychologist who was once my colleague in Havana. We were part of a tightly knit group that often gathered at my apartment in Vedado to eat, drink, chat, listen to each other, and create a wealth of memories. However, she is now in Mexico City, and it is unlikely that she will ever return.
Leonardo Paduro, a well-respected writer and a good friend of my adopted mother in Cuba, has documented the raw truth of life in the streets of Havana through his Lieutenant Conde mystery novels. For anyone who loves Havana, his novels are a balm that is soothing, disturbing, charming, caressing, and exciting—all at once, much like our dear Havana.
In his editorial, Leonardo Padura captures the essence of nostalgia for a land, especially an island, steeped in sun, rum, affection, and literate people. Those who have experienced this yearning will find his words resonating with their own songs of lost hopes and sands.
EL PAIS , SPAIN
EDITORIALS
*More dust in the wind*
Exile has been a substantial part of Cuba since the nation's origins, but the current wave of migration appears to be the largest in history
LEONARDO PADURA
18 FEB 2024
My friend Eduardo came to give me the news: he already has all the necessary documents, he has even bought the plane ticket. In two weeks he leaves Cuba, almost certainly never to return: he has sold off his house, with everything he had inside it. Eduardo is going to meet in Lima with his two sons, who emigrated eight and two years ago and settled there.
My friend Eduardo is a contemporary of mine and, like me, a mantilla resident since always. Or until now. Our friendship must be as old as we are, but the first image I have of him is from the first day of the school year in 1960, when we started first grade at what is still called Plantel Juventud. When lining up for the Civic Act that opened the year—we sang the National Anthem, saluted the flag, and listened to a speech from the school principal—a teacher took Eduardo by the hand and took him to the end of the line of “the men”: because although Eduardo was the youngest, he was also the tallest of all and had to go at the end of the line. Eduardo always had red hair and a freckled face that earned him the nickname El Colorao. Like me, he now has more gray hair than red hair, but he is still El Colorao and, I am sure that since that day of my memory, we are friends.
Eduardo has a degree in Geography. And he was always an excellent professional, with notable knowledge of topics such as cartography, the geological study of soils and other subjects. Two years ago, upon reaching 66, after decades of work, he retired. The pension assigned to him is about 2,000 Cuban pesos. But it happens that today, in Cuba, a carton of 30 eggs is priced at 3,000 pesos. With his retirement, Eduardo would not be able to eat an egg every day. That's also why he leaves. Like his children, he leaves. He is another friend who flies, like dust in the wind.
A few days before I had said goodbye to Kike, another old friend. He went to live in Spain, with his daughter and his grandchildren. And he leaves me with a huge void, not only sentimental, but also practical. Kike was, as my wife and I called it, “the man of the house.” A carpenter, plumber, bricklayer, painter, sometimes even (against his wish) an electrician, Kike solved all domestic problems and from his hands came, over many years, several of the pieces of furniture we use: shelves for books, a table and dining room chairs, wooden doors.
Kike is 78 years old. He is also a mantillaro by birth and never thought of leaving, not even from Mantilla. But he's gone. His retirement, by the way, was around 1,500 pesos and, for this reason, he never stopped working, whatever appeared to be the case, despite his bone pain and persistent stomach discomfort.
Now I just found out that Dr. Esperanza is also leaving. We were study buddies and she was my girlfriend, about a century ago. She is going to meet in Tampa with her daughter whom she hasn't seen in ten years and with two grandchildren that she doesn't know. And she leaves never to return.
Eduardo, Kike, Esperanza are some of the few old friends I had left in the neighbourhood. Over time I have seen many leave and have even attended the wake of others. Like dust in the wind, those friends have dispersed and left me here, increasingly alone and more nostalgic. Each one who walks away is a loss, not only physical, but also mental: they take with them a piece of shared memories that only they could confront. And that hurts, like the amputation that it is.
Why do so many leave? Why people like them, already militants in the senior citizens' club, who will hardly be able to do anything in those destination countries to earn a living? They leave because their affections claim them, but also because they are tired. A heavy historical fatigue that takes shape in a present that does not resemble the future that was promised to us, the one that we deserved after years of work and sacrifices. They leave because here, in their country, they lived off what another friend from the neighbourhood calls “donations”: financial aid from family and friends living abroad.
The children and grandchildren of my contemporaries did not wait that long. Many decided to change their present, aspire to another future and, to achieve this, they emigrated. The children and grandchildren of my generation have not thought twice about it, they have left and they continue to leave through any loophole, towards any destination.
If it is necessary to illustrate the proportions of this national bleeding in transit, there are the figures that the US Department of Border Protection (CBP) has recently made public. Only between October and November 2023, 38,154 Cubans entered the United States through irregular means. The majority have done so through the Mexican border where they usually arrive after taking the “coyote route” from Nicaragua, through Central America and Mexico. The cost of this journey is around $10,000 per person and there is already a network of traffickers who organize the journey.
Thus, through legal channels such as the so-called humanitarian parole established in January 2023 by the Biden Government for emigrants who have a “sponsor” who welcomes them on North American soil, plus those who have done so through irregular means, only to the United States. More than 650,000 Cubans have emigrated in the last two fiscal years. And how many, like my friends, have left for other destinations such as Spain, Peru, Argentina, Russia or wherever they can go? The figure is shocking when placed next to the census of 11.260 million citizens residing on the island that were counted in 2021—a figure that included many who had already emigrated.
Exile has been a substantial part of Cuban history since the origins of the nation. The first man who proclaimed his Cuban belonging and immortalized it in his texts was the poet José María Heredia, who in 1823 fled the island, required by his independence activities. It is a destiny that has followed us ever since and continues to pursue us despite the nationalist pretensions we put on ourselves. And also despite the fact that, as Milan Kundera said, “no one leaves the place where they are happy.”
The current migratory wave, to which these friends have joined, seems to be the largest in national history. And it forms, without a doubt, the reflection of a dissatisfaction of so many people who prefer distance and live all the dramas that an exile implies than to remain in their own place waiting for the bright future that does not light up, that never arrives.
In my novel Like Dust in the Wind I tried to outline a chronicle of the reasons and results of the diaspora of my generation and of the batch of those who could be my children and grandchildren. But reality is usually more powerful and painful than fiction, and today we are seeing how a country is bleeding from which not only young people who are pursuing a less uncertain future are leaving, but also people like my old friends, in search of a future. which undoubtedly has a lot of uncertainty, in which they will suffer nostalgia and feel losses, but in which at least they will have the closeness of their affections and, with them, among other things, perhaps, a relief for so much historical fatigue and, I hope , also the revolts of an emotional memory that makes you fondly evoke the many coffee brews that I made for you here, in my house in Mantilla.
Leonardo Padura is a writer. Princess of Asturias Award for Literature 2015.
https://elpais.com/opinion/2024-02-18/mas-polvo-en-el-viento.html
