Mother’s Day in Havana

I hope everyone’s Mother’s Day was as good as possible yesterday.
Growing up in Cuba as well as in Cuban communities in New Jersey and Florida, Mother’s Day was always a bittersweet holiday. More times than I care to remember, tears marred the event.
Yesterday’s article in the Sun Sentinel highlights the pain of the forced separations between mother and child experienced by so many of us.
Mother’s Day means heartache in Havana

Havana • For Adelfa, every Mother’s Day is the same. Her son in New York will either call her one day before or one day after. So it goes, too, with her daughter in Orlando.
“It’s true the phone lines are too congested,” said Adelfa, 60, who asked that her full name not be used. “But I also think they prefer to call before or after because they’re so sad about not being with me. My son told me, `I can’t call you on Mother’s Day because I have too much work. I’ll call you Monday.’ But I know. I’m his mother.”

Adelfa’s daughter won the annual visa lottery and came to the US, her brother Arturo became obsessed with leaving Cuba:
His mother said his strong desire to leave attracted the attention of local authorities. The president of the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), a neighborhood watch group, paid Arturo a visit.

“My son sat there and told the president of the CDR that all he wanted to do was leave,” Adelfa recalled. “He was brave. But it scared me. He was so desperate. I offered to get him help, a psychologist or something. He said, `The only help I need is a raft with a motor. I’d rather die trying to leave than to stay in Cuba.'”

As with most MSM pieces, the “Embargo” and travel restrictions are brought up as the culprits in the painful separation of families:

Pamela Falk, a law professor at the City University of New York, said the heartbreak of the Cuba-U.S. relationship is the divided family. The decades-old trade embargo against Cuba coupled with more recent travel restrictions have hurt only families, she said. Especially on holidays. Particularly on Mother’s Day

But, Adelfa knows better:

“In Cuba, you can live with the scarcity of food and medicine and certain material things,” she said. “But being apart from your children, that’s the hardest part. I would love to visit them and come back. That’s my wish for Mother’s Day — to see them.”

There’s only one thing stopping Adelfa from seeing her children-the castro communist regime that holds families hostage in an island prison.
Rest of the article Here