PERSONAL STORIES
My mother's Mariel Odyssey
By VIRGINIA GIL
A small, dirty, white boat. It's rusted and smells of fish. Aboard: a
collection of Cubans. Sixty in all.
Among them was my mother, Luisa Alonso, a single, 25-year-old woman, who
would reluctantly assume the moniker la marielita.
My mother had always been a rebel, even in communist Cuba.
At 15 she was kicked out of high school for refusing to march down El
Malecon in celebration of La zafra de los 10 millones, or the 10 million
tons of sugar harvest. At 19, she was kicked out of art school for
refusing to join el CDR, a Communist neighborhood watch.
So when a renegade bus driver rammed a crowded bus into the Peruvian
embassy on April 1, 1980, infuriating Fidel Castro and lighting the
spark that led to the Mariel boatlift, my mother saw her opportunity to
flee the island.
Cubans wanting out of the island rushed into the embassy. My mother was
among them.
Within hours, the lush landscape surrounding the Peruvian embassy became
a sea of people. Men without a place to sit or lay climbed trees to
escape the masses; others remained perched on rooftops.
With strangers to each side and several neighbors practically piled on
top of her, my mother managed to find a seat. Her feet falling just near
someone's head while another person's arm dangled next to hers.
All breathing and sweating on one another.
``We thought they'd put us on a plane and send us to Peru,'' my mother
said. She had no idea that she would remain there for the next seven
days. ``There were 10,800 people all over the lawn -- urinating,
defecating, some even vomiting from heat stroke,'' she said.
Once inside the gates, leaving became more dangerous than staying.
Hordes of Cuban militia stood outside waiting to arrest any
contra-revolucionista who dared to step out.
Just outside the fence, riots were beginning to break out. It had been
roughly 12 hours since my mother had entered the embassy grounds.
Comunistas picketing the Cubans on the other side of the fence were
already yelling obscenities.
``It was the first time you heard the word escoria,'' she said.
Translation: dregs of society.
``There was a small, pale-faced old man just a few feet away from me
when the men and women outside begun throwing rocks over the fence that
guarded the embassy,'' my mother said. ``I thought for certain one of
those rocks was destined towards my head but when I looked over, to the
right of me was el pobre viejito, cupping his eye as blood ran down his
cheek.
``They blinded him,'' she said.
My mother didn't pack any food so she began rationing the small tube of
toothpaste she'd brought with her. Squeezing a dollop of the
mint-flavored paste on her tongue, she'd let it melt in her mouth;
hoping the menthol would kill her hunger.
A stranger seated next to her had a different idea. He'd been watching
my mother scribbling in a small notebook she brought with her -- one of
the few things she could do to pass the time. He asked to ``borrow'' a
sheet of paper. He then lit a small fire beneath a tin cup. Inside, a
small dead bird mixed with droplets of water. Bird soup, he told her.
It wasn't until the fourth day that she began to feel faint. Then came
the nausea and on that afternoon she nearly passed out from
hunger.Police were starting to evacuate the people inside, luring them
with the possibility of temporary asylum and being able to see their
families.
Makeshift immigration stations were assembled just outside the building
so that immigration officers had somewhere to issue provisional
passports for people who could no longer stand being inside.
With passports in hand, they were to go home and wait. Wait for their
one-way ticket to Peru. Or, wait for State Security to barge in through
the front doors and haul them off to jail for being
contra-revolucionistas. My mother waited.
She didn't trust police so she sat inside, arms crossed, hoping they'd
whisk her off to Havana's Jose Marti airport before her knees buckled
from fatigue or an airborne rock hit her.
The days blurred together, but sometime on the sixth or seventh day it
all proved to be too much. The scorching afternoons were chased away by
drizzling rain, and somewhere between starvation and hypothermia, my
mother caved and approached the immigration table. She was shaking.
``Go home. Someone from State Security will go to your home with
instructions on where you are to report next,'' the women barked from
behind the table. The guards escorted her out to the streets of Miramar,
the sun burning my mother's face as she staggered home.
Two days later someone pounded her front door. The living room fell
silent. My grandmother opened the door to find two men, dressed in
starched, army-green military uniforms holding an envelope. She didn't
bother asking who they were looking for and signaled my mother to come
to the door.
``You are to report to Abreu Fontan [a social club] at 6 p.m., ready for
departure,'' one of the men said coldly. And just as soon as he uttered
his last syllable, before my mother could ask any questions, the two men
were gone. It was 2 p.m.
``I was in shock; five, six days stuck in a putrid embassy, then home
for less than two days and then, all of a sudden, we're setting off
somewhere unknown.''
A few hours later, my mother hopped in a taxi from the home she shared
with my grandmother and four younger siblings en route to the club State
Security had directed her to.
At Abreu Fontan, they loaded everyone into a large bus and drove them to
an undisclosed location. She held back tears when she realized the bus
wasn't heading toward the airport but toward Mariel harbor.
``You don't feel anything because you don't know where you're going --
Peru, China, the moon. What we know as the boatlift hadn't started yet.
They were just relocating people that were in the embassy,'' she said.
My mother was on the second boat to leave Mariel on the mass Cuban
exodus now known as the Mariel Boatlift.
The boat set off at midnight. There were 10-foot waves, crying babies,
women vomiting and men urinating on deck.
Sixty people, all piled up together, on a boat headed to an unknown
location.
Today, three decades later, the only tangible memory she keeps of her
escape from Cuba is the clothes she wore on her six-hour journey.
On several occasions I've slipped into the purple, polyester pants and
white and lilac floral blouse. I marvel at its durability. The clothes
are still intact, like a piece of armor. As though the pants and blouse
explain her courage.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/22/v-fullstory/1642454/my-mothers-mariel-odyssey.html
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