Speaker 1: So I was at Partner College. Eleian happened in November,
Speaker 1: right Thanksgiving. Then there's winter break, and when I went
Speaker 1: back to New York, there's a massive uproar of more
Speaker 1: of these crazy Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2: Vanessa Garcia was born and raised in Miami. She grew
Speaker 2: up hearing stories about her Cuban family, including family members
Speaker 2: who were imprisoned by the dictatorship in Cuba Aspresos Politico's
Speaker 2: political prisoners. One of her grandfathers, she tells us, fled three.
Speaker 1: Dictatorships, Franco Hitler and then Fidel.
Speaker 2: This family history has deeply marked her, and so has
Speaker 2: her upbringing as a Miami Cuban, because Miami is unique.
Speaker 1: It's another world to the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: The most Cuban place in the United States, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: She was used to the dominance of Spanish, of given
Speaker 2: culture and politics and everything that came with it until
Speaker 2: she went away to college in New York, and the
Speaker 2: alien story magnified the differences.
Speaker 1: When I laned in New York City, when I land
Speaker 1: on campus, essentially, I very vividly remember going into an
Speaker 1: office hoer with one of my favorite professors and she
Speaker 1: looking at me and saying, you're so smart and your
Speaker 1: Cuban American, you please explain these crazy Cubans to me.
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, this is a very different perspective.
Speaker 2: Crazy cue ones. Vanessa was confronted with a narrative about
Speaker 2: her community that was new and unexpected, and she wasn't
Speaker 2: the only one. There was a sense that Elian changed
Speaker 2: how we were seen and maybe even how some of
Speaker 2: us saw else. I am Pennileetera Metis and this is
Speaker 2: a special bonus episode of Chess, Peace, Deli and Gonzalez Story,
Speaker 2: a production of Utuda Studios in partnership with Iheart's Michael
Speaker 2: Tuda podcast network. When we were reporting for this podcast,
Speaker 2: we heard this term of the crazy Cubans come up,
Speaker 2: and it made us curious to explore the idea more.
Speaker 3: Were these crazy people that don't want the kid to
Speaker 3: go home?
Speaker 1: Who are these crazy Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2: On this episode, we're going to unpack this perception about
Speaker 2: Miami Cubans and the idea that the Cuban American community
Speaker 2: lost control of the narrative during the eliansaga. And I'm
Speaker 2: not going to dig into this alone. I'm here with
Speaker 2: my back a little loving producer Tasha Sandol, who you
Speaker 2: know from the series from episode seven when we met
Speaker 2: with her adorable a Wili Daladi. Hi, Tasha, Hi, Penny.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to be here and excited to get to
Speaker 4: air some of this interview tape that we really enjoyed
Speaker 4: and really want to share with our listeners, but that
Speaker 4: we didn't get a chance to include in our earlier episodes.
Speaker 2: Me too, I'm so happy to be recording this with you.
Speaker 2: I'm just so sad that we don't have patelitos today.
Speaker 2: But before we hear more from these interviews, I want
Speaker 2: to take some time to really talk about why we
Speaker 2: are focusing on this topic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I agree, Penny. I think for me, I've just
Speaker 4: been really interested in the fact that there was this
Speaker 4: kind of us against them dynamic that seemed to be
Speaker 4: growing between Miami Cubans and the rest of the country.
Speaker 4: So some people outside the South Florida context didn't seem
Speaker 4: to understand the Cuban American context, and I think that
Speaker 4: that lack of understanding seemed to lead to judgment and resentment.
Speaker 4: They just didn't understand what the fuss was all about.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it was like several things happening at
Speaker 2: the same time. On one hand, you had these very
Speaker 2: strong feelings of anger and resentment from Cubans in Miami,
Speaker 2: and something else that was happening was about the way
Speaker 2: that Miami relatives were presented in the media because they
Speaker 2: were on the news all the time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I started questioning how Cuban Americans were
Speaker 4: perceived from the outside only when I first left Florida,
Speaker 4: so much like Vanessa, I was surprised, but it didn't
Speaker 4: happen to me when I went away to college. It
Speaker 4: actually happened right after college, when I started traveling abroad
Speaker 4: in places like Europe and going back to Columbia, where
Speaker 4: my dad's family is from. And that's when I started
Speaker 4: realizing that people sometimes seem suspicious when I told them
Speaker 4: about my mom's side and told them that my mom's
Speaker 4: side was Cuban American. It's almost like they wanted to
Speaker 4: know more in order to understand what kinds of Cuban
Speaker 4: Americans my grandparents were, and kind of once it came
Speaker 4: out they were or what we would call golden exiles,
Speaker 4: so folks who left the very very beginning the first
Speaker 4: few years of the revolution that suspicion kind of became confirmed,
Speaker 4: and there was a sense that those particular Cuban Americans
Speaker 4: had a negative connotation. Maybe for the people I was
Speaker 4: talking to. It seemed like there was this idea that
Speaker 4: everyone who left early on, you know, was the wealthy elite,
Speaker 4: and they didn't care about the revolution or didn't care
Speaker 4: about equalizing society. So after that, you know, I started
Speaker 4: to gain this new political awareness and understanding of Cuban
Speaker 4: Americans and how they're perceived from the outside, but also
Speaker 4: how it's really complicated baggage for them as well. And
Speaker 4: I think that in this reporting, coming across this narrative
Speaker 4: of crazy Cubans did set off some alarm bells for me.
Speaker 4: I have to say, it made me feel defensive.
Speaker 2: Really defensive.
Speaker 4: Why because, as you heard in episode seven, I'm in
Speaker 4: some ways part of that community through my mom and
Speaker 4: of course through myo Elita, And so yeah, make me
Speaker 4: defensive because I love Miami and Cuban Miami and Miami
Speaker 4: Cubans like my family, and I'm just not a fan
Speaker 4: of this idea that the community had been branded crazy
Speaker 4: in this narrative during and after Alien.
Speaker 2: And I understand I have some of the same reaction
Speaker 2: because also most of my family lives in Miami.
Speaker 4: And so from what Vanessa and Joe Garcia told us,
Speaker 4: I think that the Alian case really marked the image
Speaker 4: of the Miami Cuban community and how they would be
Speaker 4: viewed during the aftermath. Joe Garcia, who we'll hear from
Speaker 4: in a bit, is a Cuban American politician.
Speaker 2: So really, on both sides of the Florida Strait, the
Speaker 2: Cuban community and the Kuban government were pushing their own
Speaker 2: narrative because both sides were saying, we love Cuba, we
Speaker 2: are real paid to it. The only problem is that
Speaker 2: loving Cuba meant something completely different from Lavana and from Miami.
Speaker 2: So another thing we heard in our reporting is that
Speaker 2: in Miami, the Quan Americans lost the narrative. You might
Speaker 2: remember this, Tasha.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it was one of the things that
Speaker 4: really most struck me. That joke.
Speaker 2: Arcia said he was living in tallahasse which is the
Speaker 2: capital of Florida, when the Lean saga started, so he
Speaker 2: told us what it was like.
Speaker 5: This is one of those events where you didn't have
Speaker 5: to be a scientist to understand. You understood that boy
Speaker 5: his father, I got it. Who are these crazy people
Speaker 5: that don't want the kid to go home? Likewise, for
Speaker 5: a Cuban, you didn't have to explain it. They understood.
Speaker 5: Of course he should be with his family because he
Speaker 5: escaped Cuba. It makes all the sense in Orland, why
Speaker 5: would you send the boy back if the mother died
Speaker 5: trying to get him out. You don't even have to
Speaker 5: have that conversation. People immediately understood, and so you could appine.
Speaker 5: And in this case, it's a very simple case.
Speaker 3: That people understood.
Speaker 5: When I was the chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission,
Speaker 5: these events happened. I wasn't here. I lived Monday through
Speaker 5: Friday in Tallahassee, and so you know, I was watching
Speaker 5: Alian surrounded by communities that weren't my community. The same
Speaker 5: sort of narrative that I've just tried on you. When
Speaker 5: I tried it on them, they'd say, hey, ridiculous. A
Speaker 5: boy should be with his father. And I remember talking
Speaker 5: to some of the leaders that I knew around Elean
Speaker 5: and said, listen, this story ain't playing here. My career
Speaker 5: was after Alian, which was, you know, the government took Alian.
Speaker 5: I was called by the kimin American National Foundation and
Speaker 5: made executive directors. They realized that it been a disaster
Speaker 5: pr wise, but I had been asked to become executive
Speaker 5: director of this very powerful group, and we organized other
Speaker 5: powerful groups around.
Speaker 3: When I was hired to do this job. Part of the.
Speaker 5: Reason that they brought me in is that they lost
Speaker 5: control of the narrative. One of the things we did
Speaker 5: is we did a nationwide poll about Cuban Americans, right,
Speaker 5: and the perception people had of Cuban Americans. It was
Speaker 5: a fascinating thing. First of all, in South Florida, the
Speaker 5: polling numbers were horrible, Like, if you knew us, you
Speaker 5: hated us.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: The overcrowding in Miami, it's the Cuban's fault. Bad economy,
Speaker 5: it's the Cuban's fault. Global warming, it was the Cuban's fault. Right,
Speaker 5: And we did a concentric circle diagram. The closer you
Speaker 5: got to Miami, the more they hated Cubans. The further
Speaker 5: way you got, the more they liked us. So to
Speaker 5: know us was to hate us, right if you had
Speaker 5: actually interacted with us. Correct, Like if you were close
Speaker 5: to the eye of the hurricane, it wasn't that pretty
Speaker 5: to look at right.
Speaker 6: And did you get in that poll the sense of
Speaker 6: why they were considering Cubans were the worst of the worst.
Speaker 5: I think there was so little common ground when you
Speaker 5: come at things from an archetypal point of view, from
Speaker 5: a very basic understanding of the family. Of course, a
Speaker 5: boy should be with his father. I will say that
Speaker 5: to you, the boy should be with his father. However,
Speaker 5: if that boy happens to be in a precarious situation,
Speaker 5: you shouldn't, right. So the equivalent for Cuban Americans, if
Speaker 5: the father of that boy was in a jail, you
Speaker 5: wouldn't say, let's take the boy and put him in
Speaker 5: the jail with his dad.
Speaker 3: This is the closest of kin.
Speaker 6: Which goes back to my question of what does free
Speaker 6: Elian means in this case.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends where you're standing, and it depends who
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 2: Joe has a unique perspective because as a Kiban American
Speaker 2: he really understood what Cubans in Miami were feeling during
Speaker 2: the Earlyan case. But as a politician in Lahassee, he
Speaker 2: also understood the optics and how mainstream America was seeing
Speaker 2: Cuban Americans by the way that poll. Joe mentions was
Speaker 2: never published. It was an internal poll the organization did
Speaker 2: to gauge public opinion after the Ilian case. And at
Speaker 2: some point I was also thinking about my dad. You know,
Speaker 2: my dad got to Miami in nineteen ninety eight, so
Speaker 2: just a year before the Liang case started. I asked
Speaker 2: him why he was not there also protesting in front
Speaker 2: of Aliant's house. And he said, first that he was
Speaker 2: working hard and trying to bring his family to the US.
Speaker 2: But also he was in the middle, you know, because
Speaker 2: he was part of the community. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: he understood that the father wanted to be with Alian
Speaker 2: because at the same time he was separated from me
Speaker 2: and from my brother. So he understood the Liian's father's
Speaker 2: right to be with his son. But he totally got
Speaker 2: why Cubans in Miami were so upset and so frustrated
Speaker 2: with the US government because from their perspective, the US
Speaker 2: government was citing with Filas and as we have said
Speaker 2: in this series, that's something you never ever ever do
Speaker 2: if you're.
Speaker 4: In Miami, and Panny, that makes me curious, how is
Speaker 4: Miami represented by the Cuban government. Did you grow up
Speaker 4: thinking of Miami or having a sense of Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what I remember is this clear perspective,
Speaker 2: obsessive narrative. I remember it from the years I lived
Speaker 2: in Cuba. I remember I was a child, and I
Speaker 2: left Cuba when I was a teenager because the Cuban
Speaker 2: government was day in and day out promoting this idea
Speaker 2: that Cubans in Miami were all these hateful people that
Speaker 2: wanted to destroy the revolution, that all they wanted was
Speaker 2: to record their properties and their money back in Cuba.
Speaker 2: And also the Cuban government have been calling these Cubans
Speaker 2: living in Miami as gusanos. So worms, you know this, Tasha.
Speaker 2: So in Cuba, the Cubans of Miami are treated as
Speaker 2: undesirable and on patriotic.
Speaker 4: For sure, Gusanos is pretty intense language. So, Panny, do
Speaker 4: you think that this perception of crazy Cubans in Miami
Speaker 4: started with Alian or did it start after maybe when
Speaker 4: Florida really went red, or was it even before that.
Speaker 2: I think that definitely the Lian case was a big
Speaker 2: inflection point, and both Vanessa and Joe said when we
Speaker 2: interview them that Cubans in Miami lost the narrative during
Speaker 2: the Alian case.
Speaker 1: I think that Elian was a formative moment for anyone
Speaker 1: that was Cuban, Cuban American, or American born Cuban like
Speaker 1: myself in Miami or outside of Miami, or Cuban American
Speaker 1: around the States. So two things were happening at the
Speaker 1: same time, which was an introduction to how I think
Speaker 1: the perspective of Cuban Americans was changing because of Elian,
Speaker 1: but also what people thought of Cuban Americans outside of Miami,
Speaker 1: because Miami is a bubble to a certain degree, and
Speaker 1: you leave the city and you start to get a
Speaker 1: different perspective. This is a very Cuban city. It's more
Speaker 1: than that now, much more in a great way. But
Speaker 1: it's a bubble in the sense that people know the story.
Speaker 1: They know the story deeply of Cuba and the United States,
Speaker 1: of what it means to be Cuban, what it means
Speaker 1: to be Cuban American. All these sort of gradations.
Speaker 6: And going back to this moment when you are told
Speaker 6: by this professor that you'll help them understand this crazy Cubans,
Speaker 6: how did you deal with it?
Speaker 1: I remember saying it's complicated.
Speaker 2: We keep saying that forever.
Speaker 1: But the biggest thing for me was the was the
Speaker 1: piercing of the crazy, which was like, oh, we've already
Speaker 1: lost this, the narrative, the narrative because if she's asking
Speaker 1: me the question in that way, we've lost the story.
Speaker 1: We've completely lost it. And the Cuban government won, which
Speaker 1: is what I felt completely in that office.
Speaker 6: How did you feel about that realization?
Speaker 1: Like a giant weight. It felt like like, now, what
Speaker 1: what do you do with this? How do you get
Speaker 1: out from under this rock? People were like, let me
Speaker 1: scream through it, but you can't. The only thing you
Speaker 1: can do is lift it.
Speaker 2: So what I hear is that Vanessa understood that the
Speaker 2: outsider's perspective dominated the media, and then she got a
Speaker 2: real taste of that perspective from her college professor in
Speaker 2: New York. I think she felt there was nothing she
Speaker 2: could do about it, and I understand why that's frustrating,
Speaker 2: because it's really hard to undo perceptions and stereotypes. And
Speaker 2: all of this makes me think about Cuba because at
Speaker 2: the same time, in Cuba, there was so much propaganda
Speaker 2: that Miami Cubans were selfish because they wanted to keep
Speaker 2: Elean no matter what. But we also knew that if
Speaker 2: Elean came back to Cuba. That would be very hard
Speaker 2: for his father to free himself from the pressure of
Speaker 2: you Castro. So this perception of crazy Cubans is happening
Speaker 2: on both sides of the Floody Straits.
Speaker 4: And I have to say, really, one of the reasons
Speaker 4: I was excited to do this project is because I
Speaker 4: wanted to hear this Cuban perspective from Newpenny.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's very cute, thank you.
Speaker 4: Honestly, you're one of the very few people I've met
Speaker 4: in my life who grew up in Cuba and is
Speaker 4: under like seventy years old.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's because of most of the Miami Cubans you
Speaker 2: know are from your family, right right.
Speaker 4: They all left really early on, in the early sixties
Speaker 4: or at latest in the seventies, and so you know,
Speaker 4: they've all been in Miami for a really long time,
Speaker 4: and I've never met anyone closer to my age who
Speaker 4: really spent their formative years in Cuba. You know, I
Speaker 4: think in doing this project, I've realized that even though
Speaker 4: our perspectives are totally different around Cuba, we have a
Speaker 4: lot more in common than we have difference.
Speaker 2: Like our love for past delitos, for example now, but
Speaker 2: really we're Cuban, but we grew up thinking of Cuba
Speaker 2: very differently exactly.
Speaker 4: For example, I grew up thinking of Cuba as this
Speaker 4: kind of untouchable place where you absolutely couldn't go, at
Speaker 4: least when I was little, and you grew up living
Speaker 4: on the island. But telling the story has been exploring
Speaker 4: about what it means to be Cuban and how expansive
Speaker 4: that definition can be, which I think that you and
Speaker 4: I can kind of embody.
Speaker 2: Also to me, Tasha, it's been amazing to learn more
Speaker 2: from your perspective because most of the family that I
Speaker 2: have in Miami, they came to Miami in the nineties,
Speaker 2: so they don't have that perspective of the early waves
Speaker 2: of migrants. So I have learned a lot from the
Speaker 2: perspective that you have, that your mom has, and of
Speaker 2: course the perspective from Yurauelita.
Speaker 4: I'm really grateful that through reporting the story, you know,
Speaker 4: we were both able to learn so much and get
Speaker 4: to some of this nuanced together from one side to
Speaker 4: the other. And I think we were both really struck
Speaker 4: by these lines, these specific ideas of the narrative of
Speaker 4: crazy Cubans and of losing the narrative, and I'm really
Speaker 4: glad that we were able to kind of dig into
Speaker 4: it a little bit more of this episode me too.
Speaker 2: Thank you Tasha for joining me on this bonus episode,
Speaker 2: and also thank you for all the past delitos that
Speaker 2: you shared with me what we were reputing this podcast.
Speaker 2: We don't know if the Elian case changed the perception
Speaker 2: of Cutane Americans forever, but we know that it made
Speaker 2: up clear mark and that at least for a while,
Speaker 2: the community lost control of the story it was telling
Speaker 2: about itself. So where do we go from here? We
Speaker 2: keep having this conversation, We keep meeting like I'm doing
Speaker 2: here with Tasha, like we did with Vanessa and Joe.
Speaker 2: We come to a story with different perspectives and we
Speaker 2: try to make meaning together. An Penny Leea Midez see
Speaker 2: you in the next week's bonus episode.
Speaker 7: My mother left, always thinking that Paulie's father, once he
Speaker 7: saw that she had left, would change his mind and
Speaker 7: let his son leave. But that just never happened. So
Speaker 7: basically that was the beginning of this very painful family separation.
Speaker 2: We'll be sharing an extended interview with Cuban American historian
Speaker 2: Ala Ferrer, who will tell us about her own family's
Speaker 2: complicated separation and how it informed her view on Elian's story.
Speaker 2: Now Veemo Hencient Episolio. See you in the next episode.
Speaker 7: Jess Peace.
Speaker 2: The Lean Gonzalez Story is a production of Utudo Studios
Speaker 2: in partnership with Iheartz Michael Tura Podcast Network. This show
Speaker 2: is written and reported by me Penni Lei Ramirez, with
Speaker 2: Maria Garcia, Nicole Rothwell, and Tasha Sandowa. Our editor is
Speaker 2: Maria Garcia, additional editing by Marlon Bishop. Our senior producer
Speaker 2: is Nicole Rothwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandoval and
Speaker 2: Elisabeth Loental Torres, and our intern is Evelin Fajardo Alvarez.
Speaker 2: Our senior production manager is Jessica Elis, with production supports
Speaker 2: from Nancy Trujillo, Francis Poon and Lodi mar Marquez. Mixing
Speaker 2: by Stephanie Levo, Julia Caruso, j J. Carubin and gabrie Lewis.
Speaker 2: Scoring and musical creation by Jacob Rossadi and Stephanie Levo
Speaker 2: and credits music from Los Ace geos Or. Executive producers
Speaker 2: are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia, who Tua Media was
Speaker 2: founded by Maria Novosa. For more podcasts, listen to the
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 2: favorite shows. A Penillea Mirez, see you in the next
Speaker 2: episode Novemoes and episode