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Cuban families try to stay connected despite barriers

By CRISTINA SILVA
Published April 23, 2007

Armando Ramirez's worst fear is that his sickly mother in Cuba will die before he sees her again.

For 27 years, Ricardo Blanco has only spoken with his three children in Cuba on holidays.

And it's been years since Jose Parades has spoken with the cousins he used to be so close to in Cuba.

"If you have a brother, an uncle, a cousin, a grandmother there, it makes no difference, that separation hurts," said Parades, 64, of St. Petersburg. "You never forget it,"

Faced with U.S. travel restrictions and spotty communication, Cubans immigrants in Florida have struggled for years to stay in touch with family members on the island. Some have managed to stay close against all odds, while others have battled the guilt, sadness and frustration of watching family ties unravel.

In recent months, many Cuban immigrants have carefully monitored Cuban leader Fidel Castro's uncertain health - and the reaction of the United States - hoping for signs of change on either side.

Since 2004, the U.S. embargo against Cuba, or el bloqueo, as Cubans call it, has prohibited Cuban-Americans from visiting immediate family on the island more than once every three years.

For a culture that typically reveres cousins, aunts and grandparents alongside parents and siblings, the separation and the restrictions have strained the extended Cuban family unit, said Rosemarie Skaine, author of The Cuban Family: Custom and Change in an Era of Hardship.

"They have very close-knit families, but there is a lot of stress put on that because they cannot see each other very easily," she said. Last year 40,000 Cubans-Americans applied for a travel license to visit their families in Cuba. Federal officials do not have overall travel figures to Cuba before 2004, when Cubans were first required to obtain travel licenses for routine visits.

The divide can be especially painful in times of political uncertainty. The number of calls from the United States to the island spiked when news spread that Castro was undergoing surgery in December, according to AT&T and Verizon. The companies would not provide specific figures.

Such bouts of communication are unusual in Cuba, where special authorization is required to access the Internet and there are no precise figures on use of the Internet; mail is slow and some Cubans worry others will read their letters; and telephone access is limited.

Blanco's son in Cuba is the only one in his family who has a telephone. A truck driver who splits his time between St. Petersburg, Orlando and Miami, Blanco calls his son at random and sets up a time to call when all the children can be together.

Blanco, who left Cuba in 1980, said he has tried to get used to not talking to his family so that, "it is just normal that you haven't spoken to your mother or children in a while. But you still remember that they are there and you are here."

For Parades, who has been able to bring much of his family to the United States, keeping in touch with extended family also has been difficult.

As a young newlywed in 1966, Parades sent his wife and two daughters to Miami, but could not get a visa because he was of military age.

Too poor to call each other, he and his wife mailed carinitos, or love letters, to each other. Weeks would pass until they received them.

He was finally able to leave Cuba four years later, but the years of being apart from his wife and children prepared him for what would come next.

When Parades' mother died and he was unable to travel to Cuba to attend her funeral, he and his brother comforted each other over the phone. For 11 years until his brother was able to come to the United States, their only contact was the occasional static-filled phone call.

A videographer and disc jockey, Parades used to travel to Cuba to meet with musicians. Since the restrictions, he has no desire to return, partly because it's so hard and partly because he doesn't support Castro.

He has lost touch with the rest of his family. "If you threatened to kill me, I couldn't remember the last time I spoke to them," Parades said.

Families also have to battle the political undertone involved with sending money or goods to Cuba. Opponents of Castro's regime often discourage any investment of American dollars in Cuba as a symbolic sign of disapproval in Cuba's long-standing communism.

Roberto Mendoza, 72, fled Cuba in 1971 as a political prisoner. But he still sends his ill sister money and medicine and often calls Cuba 10 times a month to speak to her.

"My sister is 86 and she is all I have left there," he said. "I am just worried about her."

In Cuba, Castro has not been seen in public since before July 31, when he announced he had undergone surgery and was provisionally ceding power to his brother. He was photographed over the weekend shaking hands with a visiting Chinese Communist Party official, the latest sign the Cuban leader might be recovering.

Some Cuban-Americans have managed to keep part of their family intact despite the wear of time and the stress of trying to stay connected to a country placed off-limits by the United States.

Armando Ramirez was 23 when he left Cuba in 1968. Leaving his parents behind was one of the hardest things he has ever done.

After arriving in the United States, Ramirez opened a travel agency on Columbus Drive called Tampa Envios, sent his parents money and visited Cuba nearly every year.

His store was first met with outrage from conservative Cubans in Tampa. They threw rocks and broke his storefront windows.

But Ramirez persisted. At its peak, Tampa Envios was booking 3,000 trips annually to Cuba before the 2004 restrictions. Last year, however, only 300 clients applied for travel licenses.

For someone who gladly would be called a mama's boy, Ramirez now only sends medicine to his parents and calls Cuba as often as he can.

Even if the restrictions continue, Ramirez said, he will never give up hope that one day his family will be reunited. "I would never abandon them," he said.

Fast Facts:

Obstacles

- Cubans make up nearly 6 percent of Florida's overall population. In the decades just after the Cuban revolution in 1959, 600,000 arrived in the United States, most as political refugees. In the past two decades, 300,000 more have come, many seeking economic relief.

- Travel to Cuba is restricted by the U.S. Treasury Department, which also limits how much money can be sent to Cuba: $300 to immediate family every 90 days and an emergency amount of $1,000 only once.

- The average international telephone rate between Cuba and the United States is $1 a minute, more than triple the cost of calling other nations in the Caribbean or Latin America.

Sources: Pew Hispanic Center, AT&T, Verizon

[Last modified April 23, 2007, 01:47:21]