Some Cuban emigrants return to island to live

[Judi Lynn]

Some Cuban emigrants return to island to live
Whether for financial or family reasons or just plain homesickness, a growing number of Cuban emigrants are returning to the island.
Posted on Wed, Jun. 11, 2008

BY MIAMI HERALD STAFF
[e-mail]

HAVANA -- Jorge's friends at work call him the ``Sixth Hero.''

Folks here figure Jorge must be the secret spy who got away. Why else would he have returned to Cuba after living in the United States for six years? The ''sixth hero'' reference relates to the five Cuban intelligence agents the Cuban government nicknamed ''the Five Heroes'' who are serving long U.S. prison sentences.

Despite the freedom Jorge enjoyed and the ability to earn a better living as a school custodian in Miami Beach, Jorge returned to Cuba in 2002 to face a government that mistrusted him, a year of probation and friends who assume he is a member of the intelligence service. He said he is one of a growing number of émigrés who after years of living abroad yearn for the sounds and familiarity of home.

So they pack a few things and return to a country where they might make in a month what they used to earn in an hour.
Jorge says he feels now like a TV mute button -- every time he walks into a room, everyone stops talking.

''The government here thinks you are CIA, and the people think you are state security who went to the United States and came back after completing your mission,'' said Jorge, 47, who works as a guitarist. 'The others just think you are crazy for coming back. But, you know, every now and then someone visiting from Miami passes by my house and asks me, `I want to come back, too. How did you do it?' ''

More:
http://www.miamiherald.com/581/story/565667.html


STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Jorge, a Cuban who once lived in Miami but later decided
to move back to Cuba, rides his motorcycle from his
apartment to his job as a musician at a restaurant in Havana.


STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Jorge, a Cuban who once lived in Miami but later decided
to move back to Cuba, stands in the doorway of his
apartment in Havana .


STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Jorge, a Cuban who once lived in Miami but later decided
to move back to Cuba, plays with his dog and cat in his
Havana apartment.

[Mika]

1. The beloved Havana blogger Yoani Sánchez returned to Cuba also.

Well-known Havana blogger Yoani Sánchez returned to Cuba from Zurich four years ago with her 8-year-old son in tow. She says friends advised her to rip up her passport so the Cuban government could not force her to leave again.

In her Generation Y blog, she describes how she showed up at a provincial immigration office and was simply told to get in line -- behind all the other ``crazies.''

'A man who returned from Spain with his wife and daughter after living there five years told me, `Don't worry, they are going to try to force you to leave, but you have to refuse. The worst thing that happens is that they detain you for two weeks, but the jail is right here, and the mattresses are quite fine,' '' she wrote.

Sánchez never did have to test the jail mattresses.

''People think it's weird for you to return, but in any other place in the world, leaving for a few years and coming back is the most normal thing,'' she said in a telephone interview. ``It's Cuban law that makes it absurd.''

She lived in Switzerland for two years with her husband and child but came back for family reasons. She has encountered several people who did the same thing.

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I cannot tell you how frustrated the majority of Cuban immigrants Miami are regarding the travel restrictions the current regime has put in place.

Astonishing numbers of naturalized Cuban-Americans tell me that they're voting for Obama because of this issue.


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[Judi Lynn]

3. It was documented by Ann Louise Bardach in her book Cuba Confidential, Love & Vengeance in Miami &

Havana, when she pointed out Cubans do come and go between the two places.

The more people are exposed to this truth the better off everyone will be. It's been deeply suppressed outside Florida, hasn't it?

Regarding Ms. Bardach's book:

In Cuba, one used to be either a revolucionario or a contrarevolucionario, while those who decided to leave were gusanos (worms) or escoria (scum). In Miami, the rhetoric has also been harsh. Exiles who do not endorse a confrontational policy with Cuba, seeking instead a negotiated settlement, have often been excoriated as traidores (traitors) and sometimes espías (spies). Cubans, notably cultural stars, who visit Miami but choose to return to their homeland have been routinely denounced. One either defects or is repudiated.

But there has been a slow but steady shift in the last decade-a nod to the clear majority of Cubans en exilio and on the island who crave family reunification. Since 1978, more than one million airline tickets have been sold for flights from Miami to Havana. Faced with the brisk and continuous traffic between Miami and Havana, hard-liners on both sides have opted to deny the new reality. Anomalies such as the phenomenon of reverse balseros, Cubans who, unable to adapt to the pressures and bustle of entrepreneurial Miami, return to the island, or gusañeros, expatriots who send a portion of their earnings home in exchange for unfettered travel back and forth to Cuba (the term is a curious Cuban hybrid of gusano and compañero, or comrade), are unacknowledged by both sides, as are those who live in semi-exilio, returning home to Cuba for long holidays.


Page XVIII
Preface
Cuba Confidential
Love and Vengeance
In Miami and Havana

Copyright© 2002 by
Ann Louise Bardach

Bardach's the N. Y. Times journalist who did the series in the paper on Luis Posada Carriles' interview with her and Larry Rohter. She also covered the Elián Gonzalez story in her Cuba Confidential book after many trips back and forth to speak with everyone involved.

I think it's very unusual to see this story being carried in the Miami Herald, after all it's been through, as the hardliners attemted some extreme behavior modification on them long ago, in order to get them more reflective of their official positions on everything!

[Bacchus39]

2. I'd take the money I've earned and go back too

seems like it would make good economic sense. take your money and some provisions like soap and a pressure cooker back home to Cuba and live off your earnings supplemented by your $20 a month State salary.

I wonder though what the Cuban government thinks of that though with regards to the "equality" issue.