Genetics, Elites, and Emigrant Children

Cuba: Genetics, Elites, and Emigrant Children / Juan Juan Almeida
Posted on April 3, 2014

Some months ago, someone who does not wish to be named because she is
closely related to a high level Cuban leader, called me and told me that
she had finished living her first and very unhappy American experience.
Her voice sounded ragged, with the irregular breaths that usually
accompany crying.

Bilingual, university graduate, pretty, well prepared and much better
raised, she applied for a job and found as an answer: Your last name is
vetoed here, we don't want any trouble. I told her, "Don't worry, when
someone destroys our dream, life always fixes it to help us build
another one much better."

I believe that so I managed to calm her; but today I need catharsis
after seeing the hubbub generated in the local press by the arrival in
Miami of the young Havanan named Josué Colomé Vazquez, the son of the
Cuban vice-president and minister of the interior, General Abelardo
Colomé Ibarra.

It is true that since there is no gossip press on the island, the lives
of certain people who make up that clouded high society generates a
curiosity that approaches morbidity and gives life to hunters who with
mandibular exercise seek to call our attention shooting relentlessly at
the so-called elite who because of non-programmed genetics were born
with certain privileges.

Needless to say, with exceptions, this so attractive demographic group
that includes many relatives of leaders of the Cuban revolution, does
not decide to emigrate because of feeling persecuted or for political
reasons; they do it because of fashion, eccentricity, or to study and
one day return home with the honorific baggage of an American residence
and some ultra-flamboyant title. Also to improve their personal economy
and/or look for more stable places than Havana in which to reverse the
syndrome of generalized apathy that is produced by not knowing where we
are going… In short, the reasons vary by those who come, ninety miles
further north, this galaxy that many call "Daddy's kids."

Are they simply opportunists? God save me from judging, although I agree
that they are taking advantage of Public Law 89-732, "The Cuban
Adjustment Act" which offers refuge and opportunity to Cubans in this
country, the United States. The same law and opportunity of which so
many Cuban emigrants (the term exile sounds a bit more cruel to me) make
use of.

It is not good to outlaw so much. He who is free of sin come and ask me
for a few. Is it necessary to clarify that, although to many it seems an
act of high patriotism, stealing an airplane, a boat or raiding a
warehouse in order to steal loaves of bread, without being hungry or
needy, are not political issues but common crimes?

Look, on March 31, 1589, the fortification works of Havana began to come
into being, directed by the engineer, military architect and Italian
builder Bautista Antonelli, and by field marshal Juan de Tejeda who was
governor of Cuba from 1589 to 1593. An excellent anniversary to think of
building a better country, where judging is an act of law, the guilty
pay for their crimes and not for being sons or nephews. Reconsidering it
bodes well.

1 April 2014

Source: Cuba: Genetics, Elites, and Emigrant Children / Juan Juan
Almeida | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-genetics-elites-and-emigrant-children-juan-juan-almeida/