Cuba, my first country, my people, has been bleeding for 62 years.
I had aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, and my very own mother, who were born and died in this oppressed, incarcerated island, without ever seeing freedom.
In the news you may read about the politics, about the current violence, the lack of food, medicine, medical care. People dying in their homes, bodies rotten, suicide. People showing up in the hospital with bullet wounds only to go missing. Police disguised as their kin to turn around and betray their own.
But I wanted to share the stories closest to me.
My father was incarcerated countless times in Cuba for speaking out against the government, until finally months before I was born, he boarded a DIY raft headed for Mexico with hopes that one day he would meet his unborn daughter.
Four years later he did. And four more years after that, a lot of money, pain, and frustration, I had the chance to escape in a commercially manufactured and air conditioned airplane. My father saved my life.
My father's close friend was incarcerated when he was 20 years old for the same reasons. He was not released until his 50s. In the demand for freedom, they took the best years of his life.
My cousin broke his wrist while trying to make a living. The hospital gave him a piece of cardboard and some gauze. No pain medicine. And sent him home.
My only aunt on my mother's side has sent me a good morning text every single day since she finally got stable internet on her phone. Monday morning July 12, 2021, I did not receive one. I called their landline. They're okay.
The government painstakingly gave the citizens access to social media in recent years, and brought it down in one day.
If I want to talk to my family on the island, I have to spend $1/minute.
When I have traveled back to visit, I filled two suitcases with food and hygienic items. Even toilet paper. I brought back only what I was wearing and the exact cash I needed to make it home.
I tried to mail letters. Every single one gets returned a month later.
Renewing a Cuban passport costs $200 every 2 years.
I travel there in fear, because they do not recognize me as an American citizen. I was born there, and to them I must succumb.
It hurts.
