Young Cuban-Americans get new impressions on island visits

Young Cuban-Americans get new impressions on island visits

On Friday, after a week in Havana visiting entrepreneurs, artists and
relatives she'd never met, the 20-year-old senior at the University of
California, Berkeley flew home with impressions certain to upset many of
her grandparents' generation.
MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN
Associated Press

HAVANA
Miranda Hernández' grandparents lost everything when they fled Cuba in
the 1960s. She grew up thinking of the island as "North Korea with nice
beaches," she said.

But when four young Cuban-Americans started a program sending peers with
similar island ties to explore their heritage after U.S.-Cuba detente,
she applied.

On Friday, after a week in Havana visiting entrepreneurs, artists and
relatives she'd never met, the 20-year-old senior at the University of
California, Berkeley flew home with impressions certain to upset many of
her grandparents' generation.

"Right off the bat I'm going to say honestly it's not that bad," she
said on Thursday afternoon as she visited the Havana apartment where her
grandmother once lived. "A lot of people perceive Cuba as a terrible
place where people aren't happy, but that's not the case."

The declaration of U.S. detente with Cuba was made possible by the
softening of a hard line held for half a century by Florida's powerful
Cuban-American community. Expectations for a fearsome backlash to follow
any outreach to Cuba grew less so as the first generations of
Cuban-American exiles were joined by new waves of economic migrants, and
by children and grandchildren who never directly experienced communism.

Now the process of normalization between the U.S. and Cuba is
accelerating and widening that softening of attitudes. Inspired by the
reestablishment of diplomatic and business ties, the children and
grandchildren of exiles are traveling to Cuba in increasing numbers,
often as part of programs designed to support family reconciliation and
political normalization.

Among the most notable efforts is CubaOne, the new program that took
Hernández to Cuba. Inspired by Birthright Israel, a program that has
sent 500,000 young Jews to Israel since 1999, CubaOne hopes to send
three groups of Cuban-Americans to the island by February. Its founders
are putting nearly $100,000 of their own money into the fledgling
program and hope to raise enough funds for future years from individual
donors and the American airlines, hotel companies and other businesses
starting to establish footholds in Cuba.

"It's a new community and a new culture in Miami," said CubaOne founder
Daniel Jiménez, a 34-year-old digital executive at Ernst & Young, "Being
here and listening to what 11 million Cubans have to say rather than the
media in Miami is something every young Cuban-American should go through."

With an average age of 25, CubaOne's inaugural class of nine millennials
included artists, entrepreneurs and writers from across the United
States, many from families based in South Florida.

They traveled to the tobacco-growing region of western Pinar del Rio
province before returning to Havana for six days of visits with
independent business people and artists and stays in private
bed-and-breakfasts.

"Young Cuban-Americans love Cuba, but we express that love differently
than our parents," said Giancarlo Sopo, one of CubaOne's founders and
the son of a veteran of the U.S.-backed forces in the Bay of Pigs
invasion. "For us, loving Cuban means going there to learn about our
culture, meet family, and engage the people."

At least four of the young people saw family members who they had never
met, or had met only briefly, including Hernández. She spent two days
with her great-uncle Jesus Cervello Ruiz, the 78-year-old patriarch of
the five family members who remain in Cuba. Some 15 more relatives live
in the U.S.

Along with his daughter Caridad and twin 16-year-old grandsons, Ruiz
took Hernández to the hospital where his sister, her grandmother, was
born, and the apartment where she lived as a young woman.

For Hernández, a Republican like her parents, the small interactions
with her relatives and other Cubans fleshed out the caricature of Cuba
she grew up with, she said.

"No one has come back except me," she said. "People here are happy, they
don't need a bunch of material things to make them genuinely happy."

Ruiz, a retired mechanic in a state workshop, spent the trip
wisecracking and gently teasing his great-niece and the journalists and
program participants who accompanied her.

But at the end, as he stood in the doorway of the apartment where his
sister lived before the revolution, tears welled in his eyes as he felt
the pain of living decades separated from most of his family.

"I've been holding this pain but since I came in here I've been
emotional," he said. "This brings back memories."

Source: Young Cuban-Americans get new impressions on island visits | In
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