The Glory of Being Free

Miami Herald File: Albert Coya
Miami Herald File: Albert Coya

The story of Carmen Santana’s life in exile mirrors that of so many others who left their lives behind in Cuba to seek freedom. The fact that Ms. Santana’s story isn’t out of the ordinary doesn’t make it any less heroic, however.

The above picture from the Miami Herald’s files was on the front page on Sunday, June 6th, 1971:

On June 6, 1971, the Sunday Miami Herald front page displayed stories about the Vietnam War, a Fort Lauderdale car crash that killed six, First Daughter Tricia Nixon’s upcoming wedding – and an arresting picture of a woman on her knees holding a young boy’s hand.

The woman was Carmen Santana; the boy her 12-year-old son, Normando. The day before, they’d landed at Miami International Airport on a “freedom flight’’ from Cuba.

Carmen was fulfilling a promise.

“She was a nurse in Cuba,’’ explained her son, now called Norman. “When we were living there, the age for the armed forces is 12. When I was 11, we had been sanctioned to leave but they put a clamp on her’’ because of her profession. “She made a promise that if she did leave, she would never go back. She vowed she would be on her knees.’’

Words can’t fully describe the emotions displayed by Ms. Santana in that picture. Holding her 12-year-old son in one hand and on her knees in what could be described as a mixture of heavenly gratitude and perhaps a tinge of emotional pain. God only knows how many others in her exact situation had similar reactions or displays of joy and gratitude upon landing in Miami. We can be grateful that Ms. Santana’s dramatic gesture was captured on film, if only to serve as a reminder of the invaluable nature of freedom.

That’s what freedom does. Freedom from an island prison. Carmen Santana, en paz descanse.

Read the article in full below the fold.

BY ELINOR J. BRECHER
ebrecher@miamiherald.com

On June 6, 1971, the Sunday Miami Herald front page displayed stories about the Vietnam War, a Fort Lauderdale car crash that killed six, First Daughter Tricia Nixon’s upcoming wedding – and an arresting picture of a woman on her knees holding a young boy’s hand.

The woman was Carmen Santana; the boy her 12-year-old son, Normando. The day before, they’d landed at Miami International Airport on a “freedom flight’’ from Cuba.

Carmen was fulfilling a promise.

“She was a nurse in Cuba,’’ explained her son, now called Norman. “When we were living there, the age for the armed forces is 12. When I was 11, we had been sanctioned to leave but they put a clamp on her’’ because of her profession. “She made a promise that if she did leave, she would never go back. She vowed she would be on her knees.’’

And so, in her floral-print dress and hosiery, Carmen Santana inched across the tarmac.

“It was quite a ways,’’ her son said, but “hurting herself was the least of her worries.’’

Born Carmen Griñan in Santiago de Cuba in 1926, Santana died on Feb. 28 at her home in Westchester, four days before she would have turned 85. Her son found her in a lounge chair in front of the television after she failed to answer the phone.

“You get premonitions,’’ he said. “I saw the lighting like it was night and the TV on. She looked like she was sleeping, but when I touched her, she was cold.’’

Santana’s peaceful death ended a life of hard work and struggle. She was born to an unwed mother. Her father died when Santana was in her teens, leaving her enough money to attend nursing school.

Married in 1954, she’d divorced by the time she left her island homeland. She took menial jobs in Miami – in a model airplane factory and a nursing home — as she worked toward an R.N. certification.

That accomplished, she worked at Pan American and Northshore hospitals, and later for a nursing agency.

Santana kept working while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for breast cancer in the 1980s, and during a silent heart attack in 2003, Norman Santana said.

“She was very strong. She never took a penny from anyone…She was very spiritual and very Catholic.’’

Nor did she hide her distain for Fidel Castro, her son said, paying the price when she announced her intention to emigrate.

“Growing up over there, I would have to be taken to grandmother’s house because my mother was working at night, midnight shift, or go to the rural areas as punishment. She was marked as a ‘worm.’ ?”

Their first six months in South Florida, Santana and her son stayed with a friend in Hialeah. Then, they moved in with Santana’s half-brother, who sponsored them.

Her mother was able to join them in 1973. She lived another six years.

“We made the right move,’’ said Norman, who works for the Miami-Dade school board. “We always knew that.’’

When his mother became a United States citizen in 1986, “it was very a emotional matter. She loved this country.’’

Norman Santana remembers the day he landed in Miami – in a suit and tie — and a vague feeling of embarrassment at his mother’s dramatic gesture. He was young, he said, and didn’t really understand the significance.

On the plane, “she was frantic until she saw it was moving to the left and could not be called back to the tarmac. She crossed herself and said, ‘I’ll never see you again.’ She vowed she would never go back.’’

And she never did. Carmen Santana was buried in Miami.

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