Speaker 1: I'm at International Rivals at the Miami International Airport and
Speaker 1: I just spoke to a large family.
Speaker 2: This is Tasha Sandoval, one of our producers who you
Speaker 2: have heard throughout the series. Despite spring, during nor Be
Speaker 2: putting trip in Miami, there was still one more thing
Speaker 2: Tasha wanted to witness. It's something that happens often at
Speaker 2: the Miami International Airport. That is the reunification of Cuban families.
Speaker 2: Tasha spotted a family who seemed like they were about
Speaker 2: to be reunited with someone. Yes, the family had welcome
Speaker 2: balloons in their hands with smiley faces and the American flag.
Speaker 2: Balloons may seem pretty routine, but they are also a
Speaker 2: powerful symbol for Cubans, something you can access when you
Speaker 2: leave the island. As a kid in Cuba, I remember
Speaker 2: with the created or school parties with inflated condoms, as
Speaker 2: balloons were impossible to get on the island. Back at
Speaker 2: the Miami Airport, Tasha was surrounded by a Cuban family
Speaker 2: of ten or eleven people prima mio, cousins, nephews, nieces.
Speaker 2: They waited for the arrival of two family members who
Speaker 2: had been living in Cuba. One of them named Carlitos.
Speaker 3: Best a person commands.
Speaker 2: I and Ida commersame familia. Hasha waited with the family
Speaker 2: for quite a while Lodo, but then finally Carlitos arrived.
Speaker 2: There were lots of happy tears, hags and kisses.
Speaker 3: Even Tasha cried.
Speaker 2: It's an emotional moment, something that most Cuban families dream of,
Speaker 2: the chance to be reunited, to share a meal together,
Speaker 2: as you know, for eight years. It was something my
Speaker 2: father and I dreamt of, And of course this is
Speaker 2: central to Alian's story. It is something he's on that
Speaker 2: long for. It can be tempting to think that a
Speaker 2: story of family separation ends at the reunion, but no
Speaker 2: reunions can be well complicated. That's at the heart of
Speaker 2: Alan's story, the real complexity families faced when they are
Speaker 2: forced apart. You see, people could see themselves in Alan's
Speaker 2: story because many of us lived a version of that separation.
Speaker 2: So for today's finals episode or final episode this season,
Speaker 2: we're going to share a really pointed separation and reunion
Speaker 2: story from a Cuban America. Can you hear from a
Speaker 2: lot this season?
Speaker 1: There's a way to tell history in which there are
Speaker 1: categories and everyone.
Speaker 3: Fits in a category.
Speaker 1: But real life isn't like that, and real experience, the
Speaker 1: experience of human beings, always pushes against those boundaries.
Speaker 2: Ala Ferrer, historian and an author of the Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 2: winning book Cuba and American History. You might remember that
Speaker 2: her mother was living in Miami at the time of
Speaker 2: the Liian case, and that she took her sewing scissors
Speaker 2: to a newspaper photo of danet Reno after the raid
Speaker 2: that took Elean out of Miami. What you may not
Speaker 2: know is that Anna and her family also experience a
Speaker 2: god branching separation. It's one she wrote about in an
Speaker 2: article for The New Yorker in twenty twenty one titled
Speaker 2: My Brother's Keeper. And she told me her story too,
Speaker 2: while we reflected on the meaning of a Liant's story.
Speaker 2: I am Pennileetera meets and this is Chess Peace. The
Speaker 2: Lian Gonzalez Story a production of Ututa Studios in partnership
Speaker 2: with Iheartsmichael Duda Podcast Network.
Speaker 1: I was born in Cuba and I left when I
Speaker 1: was ten months old. I grew up in a Cuban community,
Speaker 1: so Cuba was always a part of my life, but
Speaker 1: I didn't really know anything about it. I did a
Speaker 1: master's and specialized in Cuba, and then I started a
Speaker 1: PhD program in nineteen eighty nine, and I I had
Speaker 1: to go back. So I went back for the first
Speaker 1: time in nineteen ninety and then after that I went
Speaker 1: pretty much every year.
Speaker 3: So right now, fast forward.
Speaker 2: You win the Pulitzer two years ago with a book
Speaker 2: about Cuba, A General History about Cuba. Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: I'd been studying Cuban history for over thirty years at
Speaker 1: that point, and I felt like I never saw my
Speaker 1: family reflected in anything I read. So I wanted to
Speaker 1: write a book in which people would see themselves reflected.
Speaker 1: The way I approach history is you know a history
Speaker 1: that is peopled.
Speaker 2: Well, I will say as a fellow Cuban. When I
Speaker 2: read their book, I felt that, for the first time
Speaker 2: somebody was explaining the country to me in a way
Speaker 2: that was not this propaganda ish style. Right. So, in
Speaker 2: your work as a historian, how prevalent is this family
Speaker 2: separation in Cuba, And if you think that also partly
Speaker 2: explains this passion around the case of Ilian that happened
Speaker 2: in that moment but persists even twenty five years later.
Speaker 1: At the heart of it all is still this painful
Speaker 1: family separation, but the people involved couldn't even experience it
Speaker 1: that way because the story was taken over by these greater,
Speaker 1: more impersonal forces that tried to use it for political gain.
Speaker 1: So the family separation was a part of the story
Speaker 1: of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: You know, I lived for many years in Mexico, and
Speaker 2: in Mexico, like in other Latin American countries, you have
Speaker 2: also many cases of family separation. But the possibility of
Speaker 2: going back is real. You know, people send money and
Speaker 2: they dream about retiring back home. But in Cuba, when
Speaker 2: you leave, you leave. Yeah, there is no coming back.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think you're right. Once people leave, they leave,
Speaker 2: they have to make a life. But I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people, especially when they're older, do question it
Speaker 2: and do wonder about it. You think, yeah, my father
Speaker 2: did I know. I mean, that's one man.
Speaker 1: I don't know how typical that was, but yeah, he
Speaker 1: had a sense, like all his life that he'd given
Speaker 1: something up, and then as he got older and got
Speaker 1: closer to death, you know, he wanted to go back.
Speaker 1: He used to write letters all the time to the
Speaker 1: Cuban government and to the US government asking for permission
Speaker 1: to go back.
Speaker 2: And also because there was this moment at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the cast regime on the Cuban Revolution, when people
Speaker 2: were thinking that we're leaving and then we are returning.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what my parents thought in the beginning.
Speaker 1: So they left in sixty two, my father and my
Speaker 1: mother and me and sixty three, and they thought they
Speaker 1: would be back.
Speaker 3: It soon became clear that they wouldn't.
Speaker 1: My father left because he was a stenographer in the army.
Speaker 1: He was very anti communist, and when Fidel Castro came
Speaker 1: to power dissolve the army, he was no longer in
Speaker 1: the army. He sold sandals in a park at Patrique
Speaker 1: de la near the Capitolio, and when the Bay of
Speaker 1: Pigs happened in April nineteen sixty one, he was arrested
Speaker 1: because before the actual invasion, Fidel Castro deputized people the
Speaker 1: populace to arrest people who they thought might support an
Speaker 1: invasion should they come, and a neighbor had him arrested,
Speaker 1: and after that he decided to leave. He thought, you know,
Speaker 1: they arrested me this time. They let me go, but
Speaker 1: I don't know what'll happen, I want to leave, and
Speaker 1: then my mother left because he left, and when he left,
Speaker 1: she was pregnant with me. Because it's what I was
Speaker 1: saying before about how there's categories and you expect people
Speaker 1: to act according to these categories.
Speaker 3: And that's why I always wondered why they.
Speaker 1: Left, because I didn't have property to leave, And I
Speaker 1: think that's what shape me as a historian in the
Speaker 1: sense that, like real experience doesn't fit easy histories. She
Speaker 1: always knew or thought that after he left, he would
Speaker 1: do the paperwork to bring us to the US with him.
Speaker 1: The complicated thing is that she had another son from
Speaker 1: her first marriage, my brother Ipolito or Poli, who was
Speaker 1: nine years older than I was, and his father, who
Speaker 1: was a member of the Revolutionary police, would not let
Speaker 1: him leave. My mother left, always thinking that Poli's father,
Speaker 1: once he saw that she had left, would change his
Speaker 1: mind and let his son leave, but that just never happen.
Speaker 3: Left him or she left him.
Speaker 1: We left him in the same house where we lived,
Speaker 1: so with my grandmother and with my aunt who has
Speaker 1: my same name, Ada, who we called the Anina, and
Speaker 1: they raised him and my mother wrote letters to him
Speaker 1: all the time. And sent Baguetes care packages. But you know,
Speaker 1: he still felt abandoned. So years, past, decades passed, he
Speaker 1: grew into a young man, got into all kinds of
Speaker 1: trouble in Cuba. Before Marielle, the US and Cuban governments
Speaker 1: agreed to let Cuban exiles back to Cuba for the
Speaker 1: first time to visit family. Cuban stormed the Peruvian embassy
Speaker 1: and asked for asylum, and then Fidel Castro said that
Speaker 1: relatives in Miami could come pick up their family in Cuba.
Speaker 1: So my mother went for a week and that was
Speaker 1: the first time they'd seen each other since he left.
Speaker 1: We left in sixty three, and this was nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 1: and my mother was in the process of bringing him
Speaker 1: to the US, so she had applied for the visa.
Speaker 1: The visa was approved for family reunification, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's all slow and slow, and they were waiting, and
Speaker 1: then the Mariel boat lift happened, and so he came
Speaker 1: to the US in nineteen eighty, so seventeen years after
Speaker 1: we left.
Speaker 3: And it wasn't a good reunion. I mean, my mother
Speaker 3: was ecstatic.
Speaker 1: There's pictures of her when he first came back and
Speaker 1: her smile is like this big. But he never adjusted
Speaker 1: and he got into all kinds of trouble here, worse
Speaker 1: trouble than in Cuba.
Speaker 3: So it was hard.
Speaker 2: But something that you wrote is that you felt at
Speaker 2: some point guilty even Yeah, but you were a baby.
Speaker 3: I was a baby.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: I know it doesn't really make any intellectual sense, but
Speaker 1: I do feel like in some sense, my mother took
Speaker 1: me and left him. So there was always this comparison, right,
Speaker 1: especially as I got older, that I had been.
Speaker 3: The lucky one.
Speaker 1: My mother was never missing for me, but she was
Speaker 1: for him.
Speaker 2: So when Elian's case happens, is this case also resonating
Speaker 2: in you and your mom because of your own family history.
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, I mean he even he doesn't quite look
Speaker 1: like Bolly, but there was something about the cut of
Speaker 1: his hair, the close cropped hair, the big eyes, even
Speaker 1: the lips. Bully was darker, his face was fuller. But
Speaker 1: even just you know the pictures that I Eleanne reminded
Speaker 1: me of him. Elean and my brother have the same birthday,
Speaker 1: December sixth. There was the question of a struggle between
Speaker 1: a father. Lean's father wanting to keep him in Cuba,
Speaker 1: which is what Bullie's father did. So I think for
Speaker 1: my mother in particular, wanting Lean to stay was a
Speaker 1: way of fighting that battle with her ex husband all
Speaker 1: over and the idea that if Bully had been able
Speaker 1: to come when he was a boy with her, history
Speaker 1: would have turned out really differently.
Speaker 3: So I think for her that's why she was.
Speaker 1: So emotional about it and why it.
Speaker 3: Hurt her so deeply. Right, the father.
Speaker 1: Should not keep the boy in Cuba, the boy should
Speaker 1: come as a boy to the us. That had happened
Speaker 1: with BALI would have been a different person and we
Speaker 1: would have been a different family.
Speaker 2: Well, your brother finally came to be with you only
Speaker 2: in the early eighties. But as you have said, family
Speaker 2: separation was part of the Cuban Revolution from the very beginning.
Speaker 2: And sometimes I hear questions from people asking, well, couldn't
Speaker 2: family stay in communication even if they were separated, But aha,
Speaker 2: we know how complicated that really is.
Speaker 1: I know someone in Cuba who believed very deeply in
Speaker 1: the revolution.
Speaker 3: Her family was very comfortable.
Speaker 1: They decided to leave, and she said I'm not leaving,
Speaker 1: I'm a part of this now, and she stayed. She
Speaker 1: was sixteen, stayed by herself, and she did not speak
Speaker 1: to her family until the Special period, until the early nineties.
Speaker 1: It was the physical separation, but it was even that
Speaker 1: people were encouraged to not write to family, to not
Speaker 1: keep those connections right. If people wanted to advance in
Speaker 1: school or their careers or the government, they could not
Speaker 1: maintain relations with their family abroad. So there was the
Speaker 1: physical separation and then a forced emotional separation. All the
Speaker 1: people who've left Cuba over the last sixty some years,
Speaker 1: most of them have not left in a full family unit.
Speaker 1: In many cases they reunified, but not everyone reunifies, and
Speaker 1: so there's a separation and pain and loss everywhere. And
Speaker 1: I do think that's why many human families have a
Speaker 1: story like that, which is why Alan's story resonated so deeply.
Speaker 2: So it's a story that it's about Elian, but it's
Speaker 2: also a story that it's about all of us. All
Speaker 2: of us.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. When I wrote Cuban American History, part of
Speaker 1: what I wanted to do was to allow Americans to
Speaker 1: see their own country from the outside end, to use
Speaker 1: Cuba as a way for Americans to question what they
Speaker 1: thought they knew about the US. And I feel like
Speaker 1: I also wrote it for Cubans, and I think part
Speaker 1: of what I wanted to do was to get Cubans
Speaker 1: to see their own history like through the eyes of
Speaker 1: each other, to not just assume these ideological straight jackets
Speaker 1: that people have been forced into, because most people know
Speaker 1: that those straight jackets are completely ridiculous and insufficient. So
Speaker 1: just to kind of connect with each other on a
Speaker 1: more human level and to just set aside these ideological constraints.
Speaker 2: So is Eliane then a symbol of you know, more
Speaker 2: than sixty years of Guven history.
Speaker 3: Yes, and no.
Speaker 1: I mean he's a symbol in terms of reminding us
Speaker 1: about the centrality of the family in this history and
Speaker 1: the centrality of family separation. So I think that's what
Speaker 1: makes him a symbol. But he himself, no, I just
Speaker 1: think we don't know enough because he's this boy who
Speaker 1: was only ever allowed to be a symbol, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't allowed to escape that.
Speaker 3: He remains a symbol.
Speaker 2: Thank you to Ada Ferrer, Cuban American historian, twenty five
Speaker 2: years after he was rescued at sea. Elian Gonzalez indeed
Speaker 2: remains a symbol for US Cubans, no matter if you
Speaker 2: are in Miami or Cuba. His story shows the pain
Speaker 2: and possible healing that comes from family separation. Elian's case
Speaker 2: also shows that history is not just political changes, but
Speaker 2: history is about how ordinary people experience those changes, suffering
Speaker 2: or benefiting from them. Leanne may be seen as a symbol,
Speaker 2: but he himself is not. He is a real person,
Speaker 2: a father, son, friend, living a very human life. As
Speaker 2: adadive her book, I have worked on this podcast to
Speaker 2: get Cubans to see their own history through each other size.
Speaker 2: This is why I'm not just telling what happened to
Speaker 2: Elian and his father, but also what happened to my family.
Speaker 2: To understand the passion around Elian's case on both sides
Speaker 2: of the Florida Straits, you must understand our wound of
Speaker 2: family separation. I must say it was easier to investigate
Speaker 2: millionaires evading taxes for the Panama Papers or corrupt politicians
Speaker 2: taking bribes from the drug cartels than asking my father
Speaker 2: about the time he spent separated from me, or asking
Speaker 2: myself what that separation mentioned in my life. Reporting this
Speaker 2: story gave me a perspective I never experienced before. It
Speaker 2: made me feel borned up all in front of the
Speaker 2: story I was telling in the beginning, I was not
Speaker 2: expecting to reveal how deep the wound of family separation
Speaker 2: is in me, how healing it is to talk about it. Now,
Speaker 2: I know that I supposing my wound, could also help
Speaker 2: others heal their own. I see my history through the
Speaker 2: eyes of others like me, others who had said goodbye
Speaker 2: to a loved one without knowing when they will hug
Speaker 2: that person again. And now I see my fellow Cubans differently,
Speaker 2: understanding better what we share. I feel more part of
Speaker 2: my community, Unaguanamas, in a way I did not feel before.
Speaker 2: Jess Peace The Lean Gonzalez Story is a production of
Speaker 2: Utua Studios in partnership with Iheartsmichael Pura Podcast Network. This
Speaker 2: show is written and reported by me Pennilei ra Medz
Speaker 2: with Maria Garcia, Nicole Rothwell, and Tasha Sandoval. Our editor
Speaker 2: is Maria Garcia, additional editing by Marlon bishop Or. Senior
Speaker 2: producer is Nicole Rodwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandovallei
Speaker 2: and 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 Trojillo and Francis Poon, mixing by Stephanie Levo,
Speaker 2: Julia Caruso and j J. Carubin, scoring and musical creation
Speaker 2: by Jacob Rossati and Stephani Levo and credits music from.
Speaker 3: Los Acellos Or.
Speaker 2: Executive producers are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia. Uturo Media
Speaker 2: was founded by Maria Nohosa. For more podcasts, listen to
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to
Speaker 2: your favorite shows. I am Pennileira Millez. Thank you for
Speaker 2: listening to this season of Chess. Peacestoria, Yesta Tempora, Chess
Speaker 2: Peace