Mirta Ojito, The New York Times
Posted 5/25/1999 12:00:00 AM

Cubans Face Pastas Stranded Youths in U.S. -- January 12, 1998
The World; FourDecades of Revolution Bring Cuba Full Circle -- February 1, 1998
Havana Journal;A Sentimental Journey to La Casa of Childhood -- February 3, 1998
Havana Journal;Divided Loyalties Tugging at Cuba’s Children --February 18, 1998

Cubans FacePast as Stranded Youths in U.S.

January 12, 1998

Raquelin Mendieta cannot cry. Mariade Los Angeles Torres cannot send her daughters alone in a plane anywhere.And Antonio Garcia, married for 31 years, cannot stand to be apart fromhis wife for even one night.

They are grappling with the legacyof the darkest period in their lives, the time in the early 1960’s when,as children, they were sent alone from Cuba to the United States by parentswho feared Communism.

The 3 were among 14,000 childrenwho in the span of 21 months -- from December 1960 to October 1962 -- wereflown out of Cuba under a plan developed by the Roman Catholic Church inMiami and the United States Government. Under the plan, which for a timewas kept secret from the Cuban Government as well as the American public,the State Department gave a young Miami priest the extraordinary authorityto allow entry, without a visa, to Cuban children age 6 to 16.

Some of the parents who sent theirchildren away were underground fighters seeking to topple the Governmentof Fidel Castro, who took power in January 1959. Others feared that Mr.Castro, who had closed all Catholic schools and confiscated church property,planned to indoctrinate children in special schools. And other parentssimply thought that having children living in the United States would guaranteethem a quick visa later.

Known as Operation Pedro Pan, ina bilingual reference to the boy who never grew up, it is the largest childrescue ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. It is also one of the saddestchapters in the history of Cuban immigration to the United States.

The family separations were to havelasted only a few months -- whenever the parents obtained visas to travelto the United States or Mr. Castro was ousted, as many Cubans at the timeexpected. But the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 abruptly ended flightsto and from the island, leaving the children stranded on the other sideof the Straits of Florida.

Many remained under the care of theCatholic Church for years. They were sent to foster homes, orphanages andeven homes for delinquents in 35 states. By the time they saw their parentsagain, they were grown women and men, already married and with children.Some of the families were never reunited.

The children of Pedro Pan, as theycall themselves, now live quiet lives all over the United States. Mostare successful men and women who managed to put painful memories behindas they learned English, became United States citizens, got an education,started families and worked hard. They are bankers and hairdressers, writersand teachers, artists and builders.

Only recently, with their childrenas old as they were during the operation, and as they have reached theage of their parents when such decisions were made, they have begun dealingopenly with the memories of their lonely childhoods.

Some, particularly those who wereseparated for a long time, say they paid a very high price for their freedomand resent their parents’ actions. Others say they are forever gratefulfor their parents’ sacrifice. But however they view the decisions madelong ago, the children of Pedro Pan are united today in a fraternity ofshared pain. They all carry the scars of a truncated childhood.

"Over all, it was a good thing becauseit saved us from Communism," said Mr. Garcia, who is now 50 and a car washerin Miami. "But I have told my mother, and I know it pains her, that I wouldnever do to my own children, if I had them, what my parents did to me."

Ms. Torres, a political science professorat DePaul University in Chicago, came to the United States alone when shewas 6. She has spent six years researching the operation and is particularlyinterested in the role of the United States Government. Ms. Torres saidshe believed that people in the Government viewed the children of PedroPan as a perfect cold war propaganda tool.

"There were people involved who hadtheir own sinister motives," said Ms. Torres, who is now 42 and the motherof two girls. "They wanted to create panic, to scare the middle class intodisaffecting from the revolution."

Ms. Torres wants the Central IntelligenceAgency to allow her to see the files that she is sure hold details of thePedro Pan operation. So far, the C.I.A. has denied knowing of the operation.Today, Ms. Torres plans to file suit to force the agency to release whateverinformation it has. Anya Guilshes, a spokeswoman for the C.I.A., said theagency had no comment about Operation Pedro Pan.

The operation started in December1960, when James Baker, the headmaster of an American school in Havanawho has since died, met with the Rev. Bryan O. Walsh, a Miami priest withthe church’s social service agency, and told him that parents in Cuba wereconcerned about their children’s welfare. The two agreed that if Mr. Bakercould get children out of Cuba with student visas issued by the UnitedStates Embassy in Havana, the Catholic Church would take care of them.

When the embassy closed shortly thereafter,in January 1961, Father Walsh turned to the State Department, which gavehim blanket authority to issue visa waivers to children 6 to 16. Olderchildren had to undergo security clearances before they could travel.

Father Walsh sent the waiver formsto Cuba, often in diplomatic pouches. The forms were filled out for thechildren, who were then allowed to travel to the United States. When theorganizers in Cuba ran out of forms, they falsified them.

With some exceptions, the childrenof Pedro Pan say they are grateful to have grown up in this country, butthey also wonder what their lives would have been like if they had notbeen separated from their parents.

"It is not all as rose-colored asone may think -- we carry around a lot of pain," said Elly Vilano-Chovel,a 50-year-old real estate broker in Miami and a founder of the OperationPedro Pan Group, which was created in 1991 to help children who are orphansand refugees.

What frustrates so many Pedro Panchildren is the twist of fate of 1962, when the flights were canceled,leaving a trail of broken families and troubled lives.

"That is the irony of it," said Ms.Torres, who began her research when her eldest daughter turned 6 and shestarted to question what could possibly had driven her parents to sendher abroad at such a young age. "This operation was conceived to avoidthe destruction of the Cuban family and ended up creating so much suffering."

Monsignor Walsh, now 67 and directoremeritus of Catholic Charities, says he knew the children were lonely andsad without parents. But he said the church had done everything possibleto make them happy and keep them safe. In all these years, Monsignor Walshsaid, he has heard of no child who was mistreated.

"I know it was sad for them, butI have no regrets," said Monsignor Walsh, who still lives in Miami. "Howcan I? All I did was to take care of children who were alone. Ultimately,the decision to send them was made by the parents, who assumed the separationwould be short-lived."

Ms. Torres, who was separated fromher family for four months, considers herself lucky. Others, like JorgeViera, a 50-year-old banker in Miami, had a much tougher time. Mr. Viera,who was sent when he was 14, did not see his parents for 25 years and thenonly briefly, when his parents visited him in Miami. They returned to Cuba,where they died two years ago.

"Basically, I lost my parents whenI was 14 -- the family, as I knew it, ceased to exist then," Mr. Vierasaid, adding that he understands why his parents sent him alone and feelsonly admiration for their courage.

In Mr. Garcia’s case, his parentsfeared for his life because he had started to rebel against the Government.He was sent at 15 and was separated from his parents for five years. Whenthey finally arrived in 1967, he stood in front of his mother and she didnot recognize him. Mr. Garcia’s mother, Maria del Carmen Garcia, now 71,sobbed on the telephone as she recalled that day.

"I sent a boy, a nice child who neverspent a night outside his home and I found a man with a mustache and agirlfriend," Mrs. Garcia said, adding that in the years she was away fromher son, she contemplated suicide every time she went to the docks.

"I would look to the water and think,‘This water that separates us can bring us together.’ But my faith in Goddid not allow me to do anything foolish."

Mr. Garcia, who married at 20, saidthat although he lived with a kind family while he waited for his parents,he would always miss the time they could have spent together. Fifteen yearsago, he said, he suffered a nervous breakdown and the memories of his adolescencecame rushing in. He cried all the time.

Others have had different reactions.Enma Baron, a 53-year-old perfectly composed and impeccably coiffed wineimporter in Manhattan, begins to cry at the mere mention of the five years-- from 17 to 22 -- she lived without her parents. Ms. Baron calls them"the dark ages" and refuses to discuss them. When her parents immigratedto the United States, her mother had become mentally ill and her father,a doctor, was crippled and could not work.

Ms. Mendieta, who left when she was15, was sent to a home for juvenile delinquents in Dubuque, Iowa. She wasaccompanied by her sister, Ana, then 12.

She told of living a nightmare surroundedby violent girls who had committed crimes. Ms. Mendieta said nuns had forbiddenher and her sister to speak Spanish, hit them when they misbehaved andonce locked her in a dark closet when she cried hard. Ms. Mendieta, now51, is accomplished sculptor and the mother of five who said she had alarge family, in part, in an attempt to replicate the family she lost.

Mr. Viera, the banker, refuses togo to Cuba to see his only brother because to see him would open up oldwounds, he said.

"I have healed -- I have moved on,"Mr. Viera said. "It would be too painful."

And Luis Ramirez, a childless contractorin Newark who is 44, recently lost a chance to become a foster parent becausehe decided to return a little girl to her mother after two months.

"In the end, children belong withtheir parents," said Mr. Ramirez, who was sent alone when he was 8 yearsold and did not see his parents for two years. "Ultimately, she would haveheld it against us."

Yet, despite the pain, many PedroPan children say they would do what their parents did, given the same circumstances.Although their parents’ worst fears never materialized -- children werenot taken from their homes by the Government in Cuba -- growing up therein the 60’s and 70’s would not have been easy for them. It would have meantnot being able to openly practice their Catholic faith and, for childrenof people who opposed the Cuban Government, a life of ostracism.

"Our parents gave us choices in life,"said Yvonne Conde, a 47-year-old freelance writer in Manhattan who wasseparated from her parents for eight months when she was 10 and is nowwriting a book about the program. "Over all, I think it had a positiveeffect in our lives."

But even Ms. Conde said she was somewhatweary of people who assert that the operation was positive because so manyof the Pedro Pan children are now leading productive, successful lives.

"Those are the ones we know about,the ones who want to be known," she said from her apartment on the UpperEast Side. "They send their business cards and fax their resumes. But Ioften wonder about the ones we don’t know about. What are their lives like?"
 

The World;Four Decades of Revolution Bring Cuba Full Circle

February 1, 1998

HAVANA

FOR 39 years he has worked hard tobuild a better society for his own children and for all the children ofCuba. At 73 he still works as an organizer of the elections that everytwo years guarantee the permanence of the government he helped bring topower in 1959.

Pictures of him with Fidel Castrodot the walls of his comfortable apartment in the upscale Vedado district,and his frayed olive green uniform -- the one he wore without fail for13 years -- hangs in his closet. He still rattles off the achievementsof the revolution in health and education. When Mr. Castro speaks, he listenswith pride.

Yet Serafin, the only name he wouldallow for publication, says he is an anguished man. "I look around andI see the needs of my people, how they must struggle to survive every day,and it fills me with sorrow," he said.

Serafin’s quandary is common thesedays in Cuba as old revolutionaries and diehard Fidelistas come to termswith the failure of their dreams. From their posh apartments in Vedadoand the area known as Miramar, those who helped make this revolution lookaround in horror and see what the country has come to: Many parents mustscramble to feed their children, some sick people die for lack of medicines,young women marry foreigners for a chance to leave the country, old peopleline up in the morning to buy newspapers they can resell, and childrenas young as 8 gravitate to tourist spots asking for handouts.

Welcome to Latin America

In many ways, Cuba today is not unlikeany other underdeveloped Latin American country. True, children go to schooland do not sleep in the streets. But there is class division (those whohave dollars and those who do not). There is prostitution (young womenthrow themselves at tourist cars). People rummage through garbage for everythingfrom spare parts to plastic containers. Some of the potholed city streetsresemble rural roads. Large families of two or three generations squeezeinto tiny, dilapidated apartments. And there are a lot of needy, unhappy,rundown, desperately sad people.

In these conditions, it is temptingfor Cubans to look for solace in comparisons with, say, Peruvians or Mexicans.At least here, the Government guarantees some basic needs (rice, beans,sugar and, occasionally, toothpaste) and free doctors’ care for all.

But the people who made the Cubanrevolution, who for the most part genuinely believed they were buildinga better world, know the revolution was supposed to be much more than that.The country was not supposed to just survive, but to prosper. It was notsupposed to alienate its best sons and daughters, but to convert ordinarycitizens into social idealists. And finally, after all the years of scarcitiesand slogans, it was not supposed to depend, once again, on the Yankee dollar.

This is perhaps the cruelest failureof the revolution for people like Serafin, who believed Mr. Castro couldliberate them from dependence on their huge northern neighbor. That dependencewas what Mr. Castro blamed for Cuba’s troubles 39 years ago -- the regimeof the dictator Fulgencio Batista, the reliance on American sugar marketsthat kept Cuban peasants poor, and the domination of Havana’s tourism,gambling and prostitution by American mobsters.

Yet today, despite the United Statesembargo, officials acknowledge that the economy’s pillars are dollar-based:tourism and "remesas," the dollars that Cubans abroad send home to relativesand friends. Half of Cuba’s people -- most of them in Havana -- have accessto dollars, either because they are paid in them or because they receivethem from abroad.

With the return of the dollar, anyhope of achieving the old revolutionaries’ tattered ideals is bucklingunder the weight of all the concessions the regime has had to make in orderto survive since the crumbling of the Soviet bloc.

In the last few years, the hotelshave filled with tourists who snap pictures of dilapidated buildings, andthe nights have reverted to a debauchery that recalls the 1950’s. Teacherswho taught Russian have been retrained to teach English, and young doctorsand engineers bribe hotel managers for jobs serving food in dollars-onlyrestaurants.

And the schism that separates theclasses is deepening: Those who have dollars eat meat and have toilet paper;those who do not go without proteins in their diet and use pages of oldtextbooks for their sanitary needs. There are people in Cuba who carryonly dollars in their pockets. There are others who have never seen one.

Welcome to 1958

In a twist of fate or bad planning,these were some of the very conditions that fomented the Cuban revolutionin the 1950’s. The revolution set out to eradicate ills it attributed tocapitalism: poverty, inequality, illiteracy, diseases, prostitution. WithSoviet help, it made enormous strides in education and health care. Butit was never able to fully accomplish all of its goals. The children ofgovernment officials always lived better than the children of ordinaryworkers, and the economic crisis began even before the Berlin Wall fell.

In important ways, the Cuban revolutionis hardly alone. Throughout the Soviet bloc, the most common -- and, inthe end, perhaps the most fatal -- failure of Communism was its inabilityto turn ordinary human beings into loyal new socialist citizens. Here,after almost four decades of indoctrination, most people, including thechildren of old revolutionaries, are dissatisfied by the government’s failureto deliver material security. The welcome to the Pope last week demonstratesthat Marx did not become the only source for ideals.

The desires of today’s youth, itseems, are not so different from those of people who were young here in1958. Like people everywhere, Cuba’s young want to raise families and prosper.If that is impossible in Cuba, many want to leave for a land of greaterindividual opportunity.

Five years ago, Serafin’s oldestson was sent to prison for trying to leave by boat. Serafin finally visitedhim after eight months. "It was very difficult," he said, swallowing hard."I think he made a mistake."

Although pained by Cuba’s situation,some old revolutionaries stubbornly cling to their ideals. Very few admitthey made a mistake. And they probably cannot. At 73 or 65, to declarethe revolution a failure would be to renounce their life’s work.

Reality, though, is sometimes impossibleto ignore. Carlos, a 65-year-old man who fought against Batista then wentinto exile and returned when Batista fell, cannot accept any criticismof either Mr. Castro or his revolution. He was the only person interviewedwho gave his full name. But his daughter asked him to withhold it for fearof reprisal against her. A 35-year-old former biology teacher, she rentshalf of her one-bedroom apartment and sells cigars on the side. Both activitiesare illegal without licenses. She and Carlos avoid politics when they talk;yet, when she can, she drops a few dollars in her father’s wallet.

Many Cubans, of course, blame theUnited States embargo for their problems. But even that argument ranklesold revolutionaries because to hang Cuba’s fate solely on its ability totrade -- and with the United States at that -- reeks of the dependencymentality Mr. Castro set out to eliminate.

Welcome to World Trade

Economists trained here now acknowledgethat few countries can survive economically without trading with theirneighbors. But even that simple thought has required a shifting of thecollective Cuban mind. People born after the revolution never had to worryabout market conditions or the value of the dollar.

Now, there is a long list of applicantsfor a new M.B.A. program at the University of Havana, and people flockto English and marketing classes. The dollar has become so much a factof Cuban life it has at least eight names: fula, guano, guaniquiqui andvaro (all slang for money), peso, verde (green), chavitos (coins) and,of course, divisas, the official term, which means foreign exchange.

A woman who lives in Miramar takessolace in the fact that her husband, a respected official who believeddeeply in socialism, died eight years ago, right before the worst timesbegan. Since then, two of his children have left Cuba. Two more would liketo go.

"As much as I miss him, I know thatwhat happened was the best thing that could have happened," she said, dryingher tears. "If he were alive today, I don’t know what my husband wouldhave done, but I do know that he would have been incredibly sad."
 

Havana Journal;A Sentimental Journey to La Casa of Childhood

February 3, 1998

HAVANA, Feb. 1 -- This is the momentwhen, in my dreams, I begin to cry. And yet, I’m strangely calm as I goup the stairs to the apartment of my childhood in Santos Suarez, the onlyplace that, after all these years, I still refer to as la casa, home.

I am holding a pen and a reporter’snotebook in my hand and, as I always do when I am working, I count thesteps: 20. In my memory, there were only 16. The staircase seems narrowerthan I remember, the ceiling lower.

Perhaps I have grown taller, perhapsmy hips have widened with age and pregnancy. I am buying mental time, distractingmy mind from what I am certain will be a shock.

After 17 years and 8 months, I havereturned to Cuba as a reporter. I am here to cover the visit of Pope JohnPaul II, not to cry at the sight of a chipped, old tile on the floor.

The last time I went down these stepsI was 16 years old and a police car was waiting for me and my family downstairs.They had come to tell us that my uncle, like thousands of other Cuban exileswho had returned to Cuba to claim their relatives, waited at the port ofMariel to take us to Miami in a leased shrimp boat.

It was May 7, 1980, the first daysof what became known as the Mariel boat lift, the period from April toSeptember 1980 when more than 125,000 Cubans left the island for the UnitedStates.

That day I left my house in a hurry.The police gave us 10 minutes to get ready and pack the few personal itemswe were allowed to take: an extra set of clothing, some pictures, toothbrushes.Everything else, from my books to my dolls and my parents’ wedding china,remained behind. There were dishes in the sink and food in the refrigerator.My underwear in a drawer and my mother’s sewing machine open for work.

Since then, I have often thoughtabout this house, remembering every detail, every curve and tile and squeakysound. The green walls of the living room, the view from the balcony, thefeel of the cold tiles under my bare feet, the sound of my father’s keyin the keyhole and the muffled noise from the old refrigerator in the kitchen.

A stranger opens the door and I tellher who I am and what I want. "I used to live here," I say. "I’d like totake a look."

Surprisingly, she knows my name.She asks if I am the older or the younger child who used to live in thehouse. I say I am the older as I look over her head. Straight into my past.My home remains practically as we left it, seemingly frozen in time, likemuch of Cuba today.

There, to the right of the bedroom’sdoor, is my father’s handiwork -- two glass shelves he screwed into thewall -- and my mother’s set of orange and green glasses. Later, I learnthat no one ever drinks from those glasses. If they break, the new ownerof the house tells me, they cannot be replaced. Under the shelves is mybookcase, painted a fresh coat of dark brown. A carpenter friend of myfather’s had built it for me when I was a little girl.

My books are gone, though. When theCuban Government declared a few years ago that it had entered a "specialperiod" of shortages and books all but disappeared, she took my books tothe school where she teaches. I am pleased to hear that. It is a much nicerfate than I had imagined.

One book remains, "Captain at 15,"by Jules Verne. I want to take it to New York with me, to show it to myson. But I do not say anything and the yellowing book remains there, insidethe bookcase. My mother’s pots and pans are in the kitchen. The old woodenironing board remains where it always was, behind the door to the patio.

The dining set is exactly the wayit was, except the table is covered by a plastic tablecloth and I do notfeel the coldness of the beige Formica when I sit at the table as I usedto. A painting of red, white and yellow hibiscus that always hung overmy sofa bed is still in the same spot in the living room. It was paintedby one of my mother’s cousins, who now lives in Florida.

This is a strange feeling. I knewI would face my childhood by coming here, but I never expected to reliveit as I am doing now. I go out to the balcony and then, as if on cue, Ihear someone calling out my childhood nickname, "Mirtica! Mirtica!"

For a moment, I do not know who iscalling or even if the call is real. It sounds like my mother calling mefor dinner. But it is the neighbor from the corner who looked up from herterrace and somehow recognized me. I wave faintly. I want to stay in thisapartment for a long time. I want to be left alone. But I cannot. It isno longer my home.

The Jimenez family now lives in thehouse. He is a truck driver, just as my father was. They have a 15-year-oldson who sleeps on a sofa bed in the living room, just as my sister andI did. The Government gave them the apartment a few months after we left.Their own house, nearby, had been badly damaged in a hurricane.

They were shown three apartments,all in the same neighborhood. They settled in ours, they said, becauseit seemed the nicest. It does not seem so nice anymore. It is rather small,smaller than I remember. The floor tiles are porous and lackluster andchunks of plaster have fallen from the ceiling. There is no light in theliving room, because nowadays in Cuba light bulbs are luxury items. Butit is home. And, yes, I cry.

Despite their warm welcoming, I amacutely aware of what the Jimenezes may be thinking. For years, one ofthe propaganda campaigns that the Cuban Government has mastered is thatof instilling in ordinary Cubans the fear that exiles in the United Stateswant to return to the country to recover the homes and businesses theylost when they left the country.

There is even a television shortthat mocks the Helms-Burton Act, a law intended to strengthen the UnitedStates embargo against Cuba, that warns Cubans to watch out for peoplelike me, returning exiles.

I have no interest in my former homeand whatever furniture still exists there, other than a purely sentimentalone. But I do not know what the Jimenezes are thinking. They are, however,extremely generous with their time and space. They serve me coffee. Wediscuss the good features of the apartment, as if this were a real estatetransaction. They tell me they love the old American refrigerator, a whiteHotpoint that, miraculously, still stands.

I roam through the house as if itwere my own. When, upon leaving, I apologize for the inconvenience, Mr.Jimenez tells me: "Don’t mention it. This is your home."

I knew this would be an emotionalvisit. Before I mustered enough courage to go up to the apartment, I hadwalked through the neighborhood. As my father asked me to do, I visit labodega and search for Juan, the Spaniard who once owned it and, after itwas confiscated by the Government in the early years of the revolution,remained there as an employee of the state.

He is retired now, but I find himhelping out at another bodega, and we chat. I take a picture for my fatheras he stands behind the counter with a pencil balanced behind his ear,as he always did.

I walk the streets and find facesI recognize. I approach some; others approach me because, they tell me,I remind them of my mother. Some even call out her name, which is alsomine, from across the street: "Mirta, what are you doing here? You’ve comeback?"

They tell me who died and who left.The son of my sixth-grade teacher lost a leg in a bicycle accident. Mynext-door neighbor left for Spain with her son, Pepito, to claim an inheritance.The musician from downstairs died of bone cancer; his daughter marriedan Italian and left.

The downstairs neighbors returnedto the province where they were born. For years, she was the presidentof the watchdog neighborhood committee; he wore a green olive uniform,a military man forged in the mountains of Sierra Maestra with Fidel Castroand later trained in the Soviet Union. Their two children left for theUnited States.

My old neighbors tell me how theylive, how they survive, as one woman put it. They make sweets at home andsell them in the street. They receive money monthly from the United States.They steal from the Government. They save and scrape and work very hardjust to put food on the table every day.

The old movie theater is gone, demolishedtwo years ago because it was crumbling with age and disrepair. Anothertheater has been condemned. The front door is covered with bricks. Thehardware store is now a Government office. The glass of the windows brokeyears ago; crude wooden boards cover the empty shelves. The streets areunpaved and full of potholes. Workers rip them open to fix water or gaspipes and then do not have the materials to finish the work.

In a way, I’m reporting the storyof a neighborhood, a typical one in Havana. But I’m also reporting thelife I never got to have. Through their stories, I see what my life couldhave become. I search for parallels. I imagine myself as my neighbors.

What would have become of me? CouldI have become a professional like the two girls from the corner who nowteach? Would I have left in a raft like my next-door neighbor? Or perhapsI would have gone crazy, like the woman across the street, Regina, whocould not recall my name after years of electroshock and pills. Her husbandwas accused of counterrevolutionary activities in 1979 and executed bya firing squad.

Had I stayed, would I have talkedto a returning neighbor the way they talk to me? They tell me about thesadness of their lives, their husbands, their lovers, their misguided children,their ungrateful relatives, their never-ending litany of needs: bread,toilet paper, sanitary napkins, underwear, freedom.

Because I left, and because theyknow I will leave again, I become a depository of their penury. They arehappy I have returned, glad that I remembered. A woman gives me a rosefrom her garden; another, two lithographs from an old book of paintingsand a silver cross that has been in her family for years.

The Jimenezes give me a plastic birdthat hangs from its beak from a wooden stand and, more important, our oldsoap holder, a white enamel piece from Poland that my mother always keptin the patio.

Down the block I find a man I neverknew before. He stops me and asks if I am a foreign journalist. I say yes."I want to ask you something," he says. "Perhaps you know. Why is it thatchildren can no longer eat breakfast in the morning?" He is 70 years oldand has lived in the same house for 44 years. His grandson goes to my oldschool, down the block. It is the man’s birthday and, he says, he cannoteven buy a bone in the market to make himself a soup. I get a lump in mythroat and wish him happy birthday.

I cross the street to the schooland ask to see the library. It is here where I became a reader and, therefore,I think, a writer. I hardly recognize the place. The marble columns arethere, but the bookcases lean precariously to the side. The books are dustyand yellowing.

I ask for the French literature section,but there is not one anymore. The librarian tells me that last year shereceived only two books, copies of "La Edad de Oro," by Jose Marti. Theyear before, none. In fact, except for those two books she does not rememberthe last time she got a shipment. Children now use the library as a classroom.

After a second visit to the apartment,I leave. And I leave exactly the way I left almost 18 years ago, profoundlysad, surrounded by friends and neighbors, people glad that I rememberedthem, unselfish people who are happy that I left and live better than theydo.

Who says that Cubans are dividedby politics or even by an ocean? In Enamorados Street, at the foot of asmall hill called San Julio, my home and my people remain.

Havana Journal;Divided Loyalties Tugging at Cuba’s Children

February 18, 1998

HAVANA

More than eight years after the coldwar melted in the rubble of the Berlin wall, the children of Cuba continueto dive under desks in schools all over the island.

The drills serve to reinforce themost pervasive ideological lesson in Cuba’s schools: that the United Statesis evil and that Cubans must always be ready to defend themselves.

That old message, fashioned afterthe Bay of Pigs invasion and the missile crisis in the early 1960’s, isfed constantly to children here even when there are no tensions betweenthe United States and any other country, as there are with Iraq now.

But it is an especially poignantmessage today when most families in Cuba have relatives in the United Statesand when, faced with enormous economic difficulties, the Cuban Governmenthas allowed dollars to circulate freely on the island.

Nowadays, when children come homefrom the war drills, they slip on shoes bought with dollars sent by theirgrandparents in Miami or, in some cases, they work odd jobs catering toAmerican tourists to earn dollars themselves.

In the mornings, William Jose Diaz,a 12-year-old Pioneer who is in eighth grade, swears to defend the Cubanflag against "los Americanos." In the evenings, he rushes to open the doorsof tourists cars. He works outside Pain de Paris, an expensive bakery inVedado. Most nights, he makes at least $2. When someone handed him $1 recently,the boy rushed home to buy bananas for dinner.

Years ago, it was easier for parentsto keep their children blissfully unaware of both their true politicalfeelings and the hardships they went through. But now, with the country’seconomy in chaos, even young children know that once they turn 7 they losethe right to buy milk.

They know that the Government issuesonly two school uniforms during elementary school -- one in kindergartenand the other in fifth grade. And that they are no longer able to buy toysbecause the Government did away with the yearly ritual of selling toysto children on the 26th of July, the anniversary of the beginning of FidelCastro’s armed uprising in 1953.

The contradictions of their younglives -- hearing one message in school and another, radically different,at home -- confuses some children. Their teachers want them to fight theAmericans; their parents want to join them or, at least, to get some oftheir dollars.

"Mom," a 7-year-old girl recentlyasked her mother, "if William Clinton is so bad, why do we want to go livewith him?"

Trusting their children and thinkingthem ready to absorb contrasting messages, many parents openly discusstheir beliefs in front of them and even mock the revolutionary slogansand songs they bring home. But then they ask their children to keep itto themselves.

Some parents fear that their childrenwill be ostracized if their teachers know that they live in a non-revolutionaryhome. Parents who make a living in what the Government considers illegalactivities -- renting a room or selling cigars without a license -- alsofear that, if their children talk, the Government may confiscate theirgoods, fine them or, in some cases, jail them.

The burden of living in two distinctrealities affects some children in psychological and physical ways. Teresita,a 14-year-old ninth grader who lives in Old Havana, said she had nevertold her best friend that her parents desperately want to leave the country.

She has also never told anyone that,when the doors are locked, her mother rants against President Castro, blaminghis Government for the scarcities in their home. Two months ago, Teresitabegan to shed the hairs of her arms and legs. The doctors told her thatshe lacked some essential vitamins in her diet; the mother thinks it isa result of stress.

A 52-year-old writer who insistedon being identified only by his first name, Angel, cannot stand a songpraising the revolution that his 9-year-old daughter has been singing lately.He tells her to stop and his daughter obeys. The mother, worried abouther daughter, intercedes.

"You want your children to be a fullmember of the family, to know how you feel about everything," said themother, a member of the Communist Party who long ago grew disenchantedwith the revolution but outside the home pretends to be as enthusiasticas ever. "But I worry sometimes how all this is going to affect her andhow much contradiction she can really absorb in her young mind."

Yet the girl’s mother, in a fit ofanger, recently ripped to pieces her red Communist Party ID and threw itout the window. It was her daughter who ran three flights downstairs ina panic to retrieve the picture from the sidewalk so that no one wouldever know what her mother had done.

While Angel helps his daughter withher homework, he systematically deconstructs everything she has been taughtat school. She is now learning about Jose Marti, a 19th-century patriotwho fought to free Cuba from Spanish colonialism. In Cuba today, Martiis also regarded as the intellectual precursor of the revolution. Angeltells his daughter that Marti would never have supported Mr. Castro’s Government.The little girl giggles and rolls her eyes.

But there is very little that parentscan do to shape their children’s education. In a country with no privateschools and compulsory education until ninth grade, parents are forcedto send their children to state-run schools. They also have no say aboutthe curriculum and, more and more these days, very little about their children’sextracurricular activities.

Some parents try to exert controlby taking their children late to school to avoid the morning ritual wherestudents salute the flag, sing the national anthem and repeat revolutionaryslogans. Others are turning to religion, hoping that lessons in catechismwill open their children’s minds to other points of view.

The Roman Catholic Church is takingfull advantage of it. To make the shift easier for the children, it isincorporating some of the messages children hear in school into Sundaysermons. It is not unusual for priests now to somehow link Cuba’s patriotsto religion.

At a recent Mass here, Jaime CardinalOrtega Alamino drew cheers from his mostly young listeners when he remindedthem that the full name of Antonio Maceo, one of Cuba’s most revered martyrs,was Antonio de la Caridad, a clear reference to Cuba’s patriot saint, OurLady of Charity.

Priests in some churches are alsoenticing children to attend Mass and catechism classes through a systemof bonuses and rewards. Children receive bonuses for every Mass and catechismclass they attend. Once a week, they can exchange the bonuses for giftslike gum, clothing, pencils and toys, all donated from churches abroad.

"They get things they want and needand we get an opportunity to show them the church’s way," said the Rev.Jesus Maria Lusarreta, a priest at La Milagrosa, where more than 400 childrenattend catechism weekly.

During his five-day visit to Cubain January, Pope John Paul II referred to Cuba’s youth in two of the fourMasses he held. At the first, in Santa Clara, some parents nodded in silencewhen the Pope said, "Parents must be acknowledged as the first and foremosteducators of their children."

But it is difficult for parents toheed the Pope’s words. Elementary school children go to school here from8 A.M. to 4:20 P.M. On Saturdays, they often return to school for sportsor political events. Sometimes they sleep over in the school to await so-calledDomingos de Defensa, Sundays of Defense, days in which the children practicewhat it is like to be under attack and receive their lessons in a bunker.

Marta Perez Herrera, deputy directorof Pepito Tey, an elementary school in Old Havana, said that, beginningin third grade, children are trained by members of the Revolutionary ArmedForces, who teach them everything from patriotic symbols to military moves.At a recent practice session in a park, uniformed men were training youngchildren to march as one.

While the children marched, a 16-year-oldgirl in tight pink shorts stood in a corner a few blocks away eyeing foreigners.The girl, Yanel Noa, said she dropped out of school because she did notwant to work in the fields, a requirement for all students in high school.

Had she continued in school, shewould have become a dancer, she said. For now, she lives off the charityof a special friend: a 32-year-old married American man who often travelsto Cuba loaded with cash.