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Waiting for Castro to Die

by Gigi Anders

FEBRUARY 15, 2009        TAGS: POLITICS, CUBA, MEMORY, HISTORY         COMMENTS (69)

Where is my tricycle?

I’ve been waiting for Fidel Castro to fall since one of his guerrillas tried to seize my beautiful new red trike on Tuesday, Nov. 15, l960. Can you believe that? No, really, every Cuban-American’s been waiting that long.

And ever since, despite constant rumors of his demise -- he turned 82 last year! -- that bearded bastard hasn’t died. Or did he die this morning? Last night? Is he dying as I write this?

To appreciate the meaning of the trike and the fulminations of Cubans in America, you need to know that my family had been all for the Revolution. Fulgencio Batista, Castro’s corrupt predecessor, had captured Cuba in a coup d'état. Castro would be the end of him. The new comandante was a strapping 33-year-old black-and-white newsreel rebel with a black beret, scraggly beard, olive fatigues, and a rifle with a telescopic sight. When he descended from his Sierra Maestra hideout to assume power on New Year’s Day 1959, he was already a legend.

Castro promised a democratic government with elections, the restoration of the Constitution, and freedom from corruption. We believed. Castro wasn’t a mythic white knight on a steed coming to save us. He was the steed itself, El Caballo. The Stallion.

My family and I fled Cuba because within months of the takeover Castro and his men appropriated everything we had worked so hard for: my father’s medical practice, my mother’s social work job, our apartment, its contents, my grandparents’ and uncles’ and aunts’ businesses and homes, and everybody’s bank accounts.

Picture this: My godmother Nisia has just driven my mother and me to the José Martí Airport, 10 miles from what had been my family’s spacious apartment on Calle Ocho in Miramar, La Habana’s elegant northwest suburb. It’s a typically lovely winter day: 75 degrees, refreshing sea breeze, low humidity, bright sun and blue sky, white meringue clouds.

Outside the terminal I’m going up and down on a painted pony whose coin slot Nisia plies with centavos. Nisia picks me up and holds me close. Mami takes our picture. Nisia’s cheek is velvety against mine. She smells like flowers. When I think of Cuban women, they all smell like that, like fragrant gardens, and they all look like movie stars. Sun is forever sparkling off their blood-red fingernails and smiling red lips and golden charm bracelets. Somewhere their handsome, broad-shouldered men are off in their guayaberas, playing dominós and drinking Bacardi rum, puffing masculine clouds of earthy tobacco.

We are Cubanos, living in a place where the simplest beach trip can become a beautiful memory. What never dies — sand, sea, sun, sky — that’s who we are.

Nisia’s in love with Castro. He’s a dictator now, a communist who likes TV so much he’s nationalized it. Political opponents are executed live on the evening news broadcasts. Nisia wants to stay and help Castro fight for his Marxist vision. Nisia and Mami never discuss politics.

We have to leave. Papi’s waiting for us in Miami. We think Castro’s an aberration America will remove soon -- the United States would never allow a communist regime 90 miles from its shores. In Nisia’s Chevy trunk we have packed all we are allowed — two suitcases apiece — and my little red trike, a present from my second birthday party, my last in Cuba. In our back yard I rode it around the aromatic tufts of pink oleander and purple bougainvillea, hibiscus and frangipani.

I kiss Nisia hasta luego, not adios, and pedal furiously to the silver airplane on the tarmac.

A young pimply guerrilla carrying a submachine gun stops us. He tells Mami I can’t take the trike on board. She offers our luggage in exchange, explaining that I’m just a little girl. The guard refuses. Mami nervously whispers to me to let him have it.

“No!” I scream. “This is MY bike! My birthday bike! I'm not leaving it here!”

“Okay, okay, adelante,” the guerrilla mutters. Go ahead.

We leave. Someone at Miami customs steals my trike from our meager belongings. We are in America now. We must be American. But our core will always be Cuban. Consequently, we’re haunted. So many Cubans want to believe any rumors of Castro’s death, no matter how laughable or shaky. And every time the gossip proves premature, the old feelings of loss sting once more.

Case in point, Perez Hilton. Perez, aka “Queen of all Media,” aka Mario Armando Lavandeira Jr., “reported” in August 2007 on his celebrity gossip Web site that Castro is muerto:

“The announcement of Fidel Castro’s death will be made at approximately 4:00 P.M. Eastern, PerezHilton.com has just been updated exclusively … We stand by our story 100% … To everyone in Miami, please be mindful of each other and keep your safety in mind.”

It would be pretty amazing if Cuban-American Perez — he’s a Miami native — scooped The New York Times. A Hollywood-obsessed blogger with zero journalism experience and hair the colors of tropical fruits? It’s perfect. After all, it was The Times that helped put Perez on the map with a lengthy profile back in July.

But let’s face it. Perez may appear on The View and on his own VH1 reality show — two cultural zeniths if ever there were any — but he’s no Munchkin coroner. Remember what he said about the Wicked Witch?

As Coroner, I must aver/I thoroughly examined her.
And she's not only merely dead/she's really most sincerely dead.

Now there’s a stickler for accuracy.

Believing Perez over The Times is like believing in Elvis sightings. And who knows? Castro dead and Elvis alive? Arriba!

Nevertheless, wishful thinking trumps reality: The latest wave of greatly exaggerated rumors of Castro’s death has provoked countless emails from friends, breathlessly blurting, “Have you heard!?! Fidel is dead! DEADDEADDEAD! Are you and your family throwing the biggest Cuba Libre party of your lives? P.S. He is definitely dead, right?”

“Well,” I respond, “definitely. But not sincerely.”

There will be climactic explosions across Miami’s Little Havana, the airwaves, the papers, and the Internet on the day Castro is sincerely dead. For me, just knowing that I’ve outlived him will be enough — almost — to make me happy. “Almost” because I wish Papi were here with Mami and me to enjoy it together. Maybe he is.

But after the big bangs, the cheers, the orgiastic eruptions of pent-up emotion — what then? Will we see a sea change on that island nation? Could it get even worse?

Raúl Castro, Fidel’s youngest brother, has been running the country for more than a year. According to Norma, a family friend and recent émigré, “Este hijo de puta Raúl podría ser peor que Fidel” [This son-of-a-bitch Raúl could be worse than Fidel].

Cubans are optimists and great romantics, so it takes a lot for Norma to say what she said. And it pains me to admit that I, who haven’t set foot in Cuba in 47 years, also don’t see a free, open Cuba once Castro dies. I hope I’m mistaken, but nothing in Raúl’s makeup or history suggests he longs for democratic reforms.

Either way, I’d like my trike back. I mean, that life. I still dream about it: my glamorous parents young and healthy, marble tiles cool beneath my feet, the full sun’s warmth dappling through palms fronds. It’s the dream of home, a lost dream too real to leave behind.by Gigi Anders

 

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