MARIELITOS
Egging on those who left
BY MIRTA OJITO
mao35@columbia.edu
Huevos (Eggs) is one of the few works of art produced in Cuba that
acknowledges one of our most memorable national traumas: El Mariel, the
span of five months in 1980 when a convulsed country spewed out some of
its best -- and some of its worst -- sons and daughters and sent them to
South Florida.
The play, written by Ulises Jose Rodriguez Febles, born in Cardenas,
Matanzas, in 1968, pierces the almost total official silence that in
Cuba has shrouded Mariel for 30 years. I know there have been other
attempts at capturing the despair, confusion and violence of that time,
but this is the first that gets to my hands.
Why the silence? Perhaps because, from Cuba's point of view, there's
nothing good to remember, nothing much to celebrate. Mariel marked the
first time since 1959 when the Cuban people voted in mass, if only with
their feet. We -- from poets and pioneers to secretaries, actors and
truck drivers -- opted to leave rather than to continue participating in
the charade the island and its inefficient government had become.
Rodriguez Febles was 12 and a patient at a hospital in Havana when
Mariel unfolded at his feet, floors below. From there, he saw the acts
of repudiation against those who announced they were leaving. ``It was
cinematic, and I was moved,'' he wrote in an e-mail from Cuba. ``The
play is about the contradictions that exist when everyone thinks he or
she possesses the truth.''
The play opens in 1993 when a man wakes up to find a fortress of eggs
outside his house. The image is powerful because in 1993 there were not
even eggs in Cuba. In 1980, however, they had been so plentiful that,
instead of rocks, people bombarded with eggs many of those who had the
temerity to abandon ``the process'' -- a euphemism for the government --
and, literally, jump ship, or, rather, jump to a ship to escape.
Kisses, not eggs
We were lucky that, in our block, people gathered to hug us and wish us
luck and ask us to write when we left for Mariel. Instead of eggs, they
threw us kisses. Later, in a bus without window covers -- they had been
removed; the better to aim at the escoria (scum), the government's label
for those who were leaving -- we were the victims of eggs and tomatoes
and an occasional rock. But we ducked and, I can proudly say, I left
Cuba sad and dirty, but not smelling of eggs.
Others in our bus were not so lucky. Manolo, the father in a family that
traveled with us, was hit with so many eggs on the back of his fat neck
that he joked we could have made an omelet to assuage our hunger at El
Mosquito, the last stop before Mariel in the via crucis -- the stations
of the cross that leaving Cuba became in those chaotic days.
The man who wakes up to the fortress of eggs in the play is the father
of a former young pioneer who in 1980 was made to stand outside the home
of her best friend, who was leaving, to read an angry comunicado of
hate. Oh, how I felt for that girl! I used to know girls and boys like
that, and I still do. As I've traveled around the United States with my
book about Mariel, Finding Mañana, invariably someone in the audience
approaches me at the end to apologize.
For what? I reply. It was a different time. It was difficult to stand up
for human decency and personal dignity. Not impossible, but difficult. I
understand.
`Down with the worms'
Rodriguez Febles acknowledges as much throughout the play but,
especially, at the end, when one of the characters, Enelio, puts his
beer aside -- bought with his returning cousin's dollars -- and delivers
an impassioned monologue in which he says, ``I, too, was a child, but I
didn't yell at anyone, I didn't throw any eggs, didn't slam any doors,
didn't sign any papers.''
This is the phrase that punctuates the play: ``Pin pon fuera! Abajo la
gusanera!'' It means ``Down with the worms!'' But it sounds better --
and worse -- in Spanish. I remember it well.
But it's been a long time since those words have echoed in my ears as
they used to. When I eat eggs, I don't think about Cuba. I don't ever
dwell on those who wanted to humiliate us just because we got to leave
and they had to stay. (I have run into too many of them at the Publix in
Coral Gables to hold a grudge.) I do think it is easier to forget for
us, Marielitos, than it is for them. It's the egg throwers who can't
forget their past. All we had to do was duck and get out fast. And we did.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/16/1630656/egging-on-those-who-left.html
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