Today, I offer readers a glimpse into the reaction of a son of Cuban exiles living in Barcelona, upon his arrival in Cuba on a trip to discover his roots. "Antonio Diaz Torres" traveled to Cuba back in the Winter of 1999 and has told me on numerous occasions: "It changed my life."

“Tonight you’ll see what it means to live in Cuba. Tonight you’ll understand what it is to live in fear.”
As night fell, Cuba's oppressive heat gave way to a gentle, sweet-smelling Caribbean breeze. The power had gone out midway through my shower and I found myself using a 5-gallon bucket and soup ladle to rinse the soap off my body. As the last remnants of the Irish Spring I’d brought with me to Cuba for my family rolled off my chest, I rested my chin on the tiny square windowsill that looked out onto the side lawn of the house from the shower. I have a mind that tends to wander and meander through the oddest of topics. Had my great grandfather rested his chin on these very same tiles at some point during the revolution? How had this very same bathroom changed over the past 40 years – what types of colognes and liniments lined the medicine cabinet the day Fidel marched into town. How did it smell the day night fell on Havana?
Suddenly, my cousin Alberto began to rap on the door; “Oye, let’s go,” he whined, “we’re going to be late,” he added as he tapped on the face of his watch. I tossed on an old t-shirt, took off my watch and exchanged my new sneakers for a pair of ratty flip-flops. I’d need to pass as an islander if I wished to be easily accepted at the party. We hopped into Alberto’s Muskovitch and rumbled on down the road.
Driving through the streets of small town Cuba at night is a strangely eerie experience. The streetlights were shut off long ago, leaving the only available light to see by, that emanating from passing cars. As we made several tight turns in a cluttered residential neighborhood, we’d catch little snippets of life in Fidel’s Cuba, frozen in time for brief moments by the yellowish haze of our headlights; a boy walking his mangy dog on a frayed rope lead, a young woman perched atop the hood of a Lada, passionately kissing her boyfriend, and on every block, impromptu barbecues held street side, complete with 55-gallon drums loaded with homemade charcoal on which cooking chicken emitted a scent that mixed with the smell of the ocean and thick exhaust fumes trailing out of the tail pipes of any number of 50’s-era American cars. All of this, a part of the yearly celebration of the CDRs. These were the old guard celebrating, the ones who had staked everything in the revolution when it triumphed back in ’59. Nary a young face was to be seen street side. Only wiggly chins and aging jowls.
“Look at these people,” snapped Alberto. “They only continue to support him because that’s all they have left. The memory of what they thought they were fighting for.”
Within a few minutes, Alberto pumped the brakes and brought us to a halt in front of a Soviet-.style apartment building. As the engine sputtered to a halt I slipped a small tape recorder into my pocket.
Inside the courtyard of the apartment complex, a decrepit structure blighted by peeling paint and crumbling stairwells, salsa music mixed with cheap government rum made for quite a raucous-sounding party. As Alberto and I made our way through the crowd of mostly young people, an older woman handed me a plastic glass of something that smelled more like kerosene than rum and I was introduced as a cousin visiting from a neighboring province. Toasts were made, cigarettes were lit and I began to let my guard down just a little bit.
Over the course of the next half hour, I was introduced to a dozen or so locals. Alberto told those he trusted the real story – that I was in Cuba for the first time, on a mission to unearth my roots and get to know my family for the first time. Snickers began to emanate from the faces of those around me as an older woman who served as the president of the local CDR began to speak with some of the old guard in attendance about the glories of the revolution. Most were there simply for the salsa music and free rum. “Nobody gives a shit about Fidel,” whispered the woman next to me as she grabbed my arm.
Finally, at midnight, the old CDR president asked for silence.
“Well my friends, its already midnight. The 40th anniversary of the CDRs is upon us. Long live Fidel! Long live our commander in chief. Fatherland or death, we will succeed!”
At first I sat silently through her recitations until I felt a tug at my right arm. “Oye, you’ve got to say it, you’ve got to pump your fist,” whispered Alberto. I thought for a few very brief moments. If I were to pump my fist in the air and give out a “long live Fidel” chant, it would feel like spitting on my own family. Forgoing the fist-pump however would most surely result in trouble. Too many people at the event knew Alberto, and his association with an overt “anti-revolutionary” would garner attention. I crossed the fingers of my left hand, took a gulp of air and exclaimed “Venceremos!” (We will win!) in response to the customary statement: “Patria o meurte!,” Fatherland or death!
Fatherland or death. My aunt Yolanda had brought up that very topic earlier in the day, railing on about the way Cuban school children were indoctrinated into party policy by repeating those very same statements at the compulsory rallies their parents often attended in downtown Havana. Is “Patria o Muerte” so different from the pledge of allegiance I myself had grown up with during grade school in rural Georgia? The difference lay in the fact that American statements of patriotism don’t often involve the topic of death unless you live in New Hampshire (Live Free or Die). “What does a 12-year-old know of politics?” said tia Yolanda. “Why does my child need to sing of the glories of Fidel every morning in the schoolyard?” “The only thing Fidel ever brought us was misery.”
Over the course of the evening, glasses of rum continued to be foisted upon me until the alcohol began to assist in the pulling of my heart strings. Visions of what had happened to my family began to play in my head. This, combined with my earlier fist pumping caused the tears to begin to well up in my eyes until finally, I asked Alberto to take me home. Guilt had indeed set in. We left the sweaty smell of revolutionary indoctrination at 1:30 in the morning. Not a word was uttered between us on the ride home.
Crawling into bed that night, my mind began to wander yet again. I felt somehow cheapened by what I had just done, so much so that I felt it sacrilegious to be falling asleep in the very same bed on which my mother had been conceived in the 1940s.
My aunt Yolanda’s bedroom was a time capsule of the life they had all led in February of 1961, when my mother, uncle, grandfather, and grandmother fled Cuba. Weeks after they’d left their house in El Vedado abandoned, my uncle Eugenio had arrived with a moving truck to salvage what he could. All around me lay revolutionary hand-me-downs. My grandmother’s dresser, a rococo-style mahogany piece complete with hand painted flowers loomed before me and the mattress I was tossing and turning on was straight out of 1942 – so worn that I settled in the center, enveloped by two hillocks of mattress on either side of me. That night I fell away while staring at the myriad of tiny, winged denizens of Havana that scurried along the opposite side of my mosquito net. An odor of salt water and sweat wafted through the worn wooden louvers of the storm shutters in my bedroom, lulling me to sleep. I felt as if I was home.