Stories of the Cuban Diaspora- Part 1

I've been thinking recently of all the stories I come across when I read the blogs. Listening to the IBD podcast interview with Humberto Fontova in which he describes his father being prevented from leaving Cuba with the family at the last minute reminded my of my own family stories, one in particular, that of Tia and Tio. I once wrote a story about it, so I'll just subject you to excerpts. Too much, and its like watching someone else's family's home movies.

Tio almost managed to escape the island without incident. Actually, it
was Tio, Tia, and the two kids. The rest of them did, in fact, leave on the
regularly scheduled Cubana de Aviacion flight. Tio did not. You know what they
say about things that are almost. Well, the entire family was sitting in their
seats.
So it is that I picture the family sitting there- nervous, excited- unsure of what awaited them in this new life, where at least my parents had carved a path before them. They were sitting there when the announcement came. Alicia Alonso and her dance troupe had an engagement in the States and needed seats. Apparently not enough people offered theirs, because the next thing they knew, Tio had been bumped off the flight and was scheduled for the following day.
Well, that evening Senor Castro must have had quite a nightmare, being chased by badgers in red, white, and blue pajamas, for example, or maybe an extreme digestive upset caused by hamburgers and fries. The next morning, he announced that effective immediately, there would be no regularly scheduled flights to the United States. Now Tio was in Cuba with no means of leaving, and Tia, who had hitherto never worked a day in her life, found herself a single mother of two with no means of support, except my father that it is…

Years passed with my uncle stuck in Cuba, his family here. Then one day, a strange woman called my aunt. I imagine the conversation.

“I was with your husband on Cayo Anguila before the Milicianos took him
away.”
“Not my husband,” insists the mystified wife. Unspoken is the thought
that he is too meek and mild-mannered to have taken the risk to escape from
Communist Cuba.
“Is he tall and thin? A very religious man? He was carrying a Bible. I have it here. Let me read the inscription.”
At the reading of the inscription she knows is in her husband’s Bible, my aunt feels immobilized, unable to move, turned into a pillar of salt.
This conversation took place in August of 1963, the August I was six. I looked up the date. My first inkling of the tragedia that had hit my family came that night when friends brought me home to an apartment crowded with family and friends, as well as people I didn’t know. They milled about aimlessly, all trying to make themselves heard over the din. Making my way through the crowd, I found my mother in the kitchen. Tears ran down her cheeks, but I couldn’t reach her because she was encircled by bodies in a macabre tarantella. Someone was waving a copy of The Daily News. I could see something that looked like a boat on the back page. It was obvious something was terribly wrong. I was afraid
Somehow I ascertained that Tio had been captured on Anguilla Cay by the Cuban government he was trying to escape. I didn’t know him, as I didn’t know my grandparents, my other uncles, all those left behind. One grandmother used to write. The other grandfather, who farmed a small plot of land before it was taken away, used to send me pictures of my pig, my goat, etc…
That night, I learned that having reached British soil and made contact with the Americans, he and all those with him waited for the American rescue. The next day, they spied a ship. A helicopter made its way to the shore. The castaways lined up on the beach, jumping up and down for joy. The Americans! The Americans! Imagine the moment, as the helicopter nears and they spy not the American flag, but the Cuban, as well as the Milicianos pointing machine guns at them. It is a rocky shore. There is nowhere to hide. They are whisked away. The only ones to escape are the women who had left the group to attend to their grooming. It is one of these who had calls my Aunt.
The British Government protests the invasion of their sovereign territory. The Cuban Government ignores. And Tio, he spends the next years being tortured in prison for the crime of wanting to rejoin the family he had lost when Alicia Alonso bumped him off that flight.

So many stories. There are over a million.