Chamizo and I sat together on the military bus going to Havana for the boatlift. We thought it was going to be smooth sailing to America, but we didn’t understand all that we’d have to pass through to arrive there. We had our first indication before the bus had even left our hometown of Cienfuegos when it pulled up outside of Ariza Prison. The doors opened and the bus filled with the kind of men we’d never been around before. They had prison tattoos and bore scars that looked like they might have come from being stabbed. These were hard guys—murders, rapists, all kinds of violent criminals—sitting among the good people of Cienfuegos who only wanted something better for themselves. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that to Castro, we were all the same—bad Cubans who were not serving La Revolución.
At 4:00 a.m. we arrived at a sports arena in the capitol. This, we were told, would be our home until we were assigned to a boat. Of course, with so many criminals among us, our encampment had to be guarded by soldiers with AK-47s and German Shepherds. Chamizo and I didn’t care about that. We didn’t want to go anywhere in Cuba except Mariel Harbor. But it soon became apparent that the Cuban government lacked either the ability, or the desire to feed us all. For three days we didn’t eat so much as a snack. My military training had taught me how to survive on little or no food for long periods. But Chamizo, my good friend, was younger than me, and had no such training. He was getting weak.
Someone up above must have been looking out for us, because on the forth day, I found forty Cuban pesos on the ground. I don’t want to calculate the chances of that happening in such a den of murderers and thieves, but it did. Now the problem was how to spend it. Not what to spend it on, but literally how to do it. One more thing the military taught me was how to move about undetected, stay hidden, evade enemy soldiers—American soldiers. And even though the men who guarded us at that time were Cubans, they were my enemy in my quest to get myself and my friend to America alive.
I went to Chamizo, who by this time was listless. I told him I was going to escape from the camp, buy food for both of us, and sneak back in with it. To my dear friend, it was a suicide mission. Even if the guards didn’t see me, the dogs would smell me. And even if they didn’t smell me on the way out, they would surely smell the food I intended to have with me when I came back. He begged me not to go.
I didn’t hesitate. I might make it a few more days without food, but Chamizo would soon fall terribly ill. As soon as I was out of sight of the guards, I started running. I didn’t know my way around Havana, but I simply followed my nose. There was food somewhere, and I would find it. After about six blocks I found myself at the baseball stadium. There was a game in progress and the concession stands were open. In another time, I would have loved to come to Havana to see a baseball game, but now I had no time for diversions.
I looked at the menu on the wall. Ham and cheese sandwiches seemed nutritious and cheap. When I asked how many of them I could get for forty pesos, the lady behind the counter looked at me like I was crazy. Impatient, I slapped the money down on the counter and insisted she give me as many sandwiches as she could. A couple of minutes later, I was running back to my prison with a bag full of thirty sandwiches. I snuck back in, pulled Chamizo into as private a corner as we could find, and we ate a few sandwiches each, determined to hide the rest and ration them for as long as we could.
Four days later, having survived only on our sandwiches, we climbed aboard an old, rusted shrimp boat named the Alba Junior with as many other souls as she could hold. We were pressed together with the old and the young, men and women, kids, babies, and the bad guys with all their tattoos and scars. But even at such close quarters, as we left Mariel Harbor I felt alone in my thoughts, watching the only land I’d ever known disappear in the wake of the boat.
I came to America thirty years ago to make a bigger, better life for myself. And after all I’ve been through, my roots are still there in Cienfuegos, Cuba with my father and my sisters, and beside my mother’s grave.
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