Sea splits Florida, Cuba; family pain binds them
By Susan Spencer-Wendel
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 07, 2006
Strip away everything shrill and angry and heartbreaking and they are
the same place, really.
Land spit from emerald seas.
At one time, even connected, about 225 million years ago, of course.
Tectonic forces split them. Human forces sealed it.
Yet, Cuba, Florida. Florida, Cuba. They are stirred together in ways one
likely forgets in today's hubbub.
One of the largest U.S. military expeditions ever to embark from
American soil traveled from Tampa to Cuba during the Spanish-American
War in 1898.
Calls for the first revolution in Cuba emanated from this very land.
José MartÃ, freedom fighter, poet, stood in Florida calling for freedom
from Spain.
Then the mix of sugar and oranges and cigars and wealthy businessmen,
flitting back and forth, linking industries together, as close as 90
miles away.
And, oh, the tourism! Honeymoons in Havana in the '40s and '50s. Young
Floridians who honeymooned there might be 70 or 80 years old now. Or dead.
Then Castro. Revolution again. Massive. Class war. Government seizing
properties. Locking up dissenters. Sweeping every corner, even inside homes.
Slipping in the front door, cleaving Cuban families.
They fled to Florida. First on planes, then boats, then tractor tires.
Sons left mothers. Brothers left brothers. Blood left blood behind.
It is the true heartbreak of it all, they say. Leaving people behind
there, leaving people suffering there, in many cases. No food, no
medicine, no money. Hearing pleas for help in the occasional phone call.
From the ones lucky enough to have a phone.
From Florida to Cuba now, families are linked, as linked as can be.
For the ones divided by decades, the trauma may be a dull, deep ache,
massaged by time. For recent arrivals, it's still right there, stuck in
their throats.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/state/epaper/2006/08/07/m1a_CUBA_INTRO_0807.html
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