Exciting time for Cuban Americans

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Hundreds of Cubans and thousands of Americans watched, some in glee, others with distaste, as the U.S. flag was raised in front of the now American embassy in Havana on Aug. 14.

John Kerry became the first secretary of state to visit Cuba since James F. Byrnes in 1945 and last week marked the first time the flag has flown since 1961, when Cuba and the U.S. ended diplomatic relations.

As both a Cuban-American from Miami and a one-time visitor of my home country, I find this one of the most exciting and confusing times to be alive.

While most Americans cheer that they can finally visit Cuba and all its beaches and cities, many in Miami do not support the change — like the Cuban-American Republican Sen. Marco Rubio — and believe that the embargo should not be lifted until the Castro regime falls.

Like me, Mr. Rubio is the son of immigrants.  His parents came to the United States in 1956, before the rise of the Castros, making them members of the first of three generations of Cuban Americans.

That group is the most powerful force in Miami.  Most were wealthy before Fidel Castro came down from the mountains, as they say, to overthrow the Batista government. 

For the most part, they are still rich.

The first generation, some of whom fought in the 1961 Bay of Pigs, is full of staunch opponents to normalizing relations with Cuba.

The second generation is slightly different.  The generation of Mr. Rubio and my parents is filled with children of the first immigrants and those who suffered under the roughest years of the Cuban Revolution.

Most who emigrated from Cuba in the late 1970s and ‘80s had both political disagreements with Cuba’s socialist government and experienced extreme poverty and violence during the years immediately following the institution of the embargo.

The second generation is the most split over the renewal of ties between Cuba and the U.S. The children of the first generation are rigidly against the move, but many of the political and religious exiles of the late 20th century teeter totter between people like my mother, who are excited to visit their homes and families freely for the first time in 50 years, and those like my aunt, who “will never go back, no matter what.”

The second generation, whose average age is between 50 and 35, also has children: my generation, which is mixed and ready to take on the world, but also unwilling to decide where we stand.  

The third generation has three basic groups: the grandchildren of the first generation, the children of the second and those that are just now coming to the U.S.

The new Cuban immigrants are the polar opposites of the first. They come not because of fundamental disagreements with the Cuban government, but for economic motives.

A family friend, Gerardo Hernandez, director of public relations at Casa de las Americas in Havana, said that Cubans living in Cuba today have known nothing other than the revolution.

“I’m not going to deny,” he said in Spanish, “there is more economic opportunity in the United States.  Especially when Cuban Americans come here, covered in gold and fancy clothes, they make their cousins think that making money is easy, so they leave.”

These new immigrants, of course, love that they can now send money to the friends and family that they left behind, keep in touch with them on social media and even visit during the summers.

For the rest of the third generation, most of us have never heard anything other than the horrors of Cuba during the Revolution, with carnage all over.

Most feel strongly one way or the other. Recent developments have only made me more excited to go back to Cuba, my home, and visit friends and family I’ve never met. On the other hand, many of my former high school classmates are ready to vote for Mr. Rubio so he can repeal President Barack Obama’s steps toward diplomacy.

Some, like my cousin William Gerardo, simply do not care what happens.

“I’m an American now,” he explained. “I’m from Miami, not Cuba.”

Either way, the third generation is the largest, and by far has the most political potential of the three generations.

It is time for us to stop listening to what has been told to us, see it for ourselves and find a voice — one voice — to end a crippling embargo that has done nothing but hurt the Cuban people. 

Anthony Capote is an intern at The Press and a junior at Manhattan College.

Cuba, John Kerry, Marco Rubio, Fidel Castro, Anthony Capote

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