Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
about their parents. The parents started pulling the children out. The first nonpolitical fam-
ilies started to flee. People betrayed their neighbors to the
comites
. A woman who lived in
the neighborhood, a woman named Solita, “somebody accuse her of having fried pork in her
house. And they make—she was a teacher—they make a public,
¿come se llama?, juicio?
”
Trial. “Exactly. Accusing her of having pork.”
My wife's grandfather had let it be known that he was against the Castros—not because
he had preferred Batista; in fact, the family had some obscure connection, that I've never
been able to get anyone to be forthcoming about, to one of the other revolutionaries in the
mountains, a rival who was executed not long after the uprising—in any case it was known
thatthefamily'ssympathiesdidnotliewiththecommunists.“Irememberonetimewegoing
to the farm,” she said, “and when we was coming back, we stop in Mario's grandmother's
house, and we saw my brother passing on the road very fast. We get scared. We say, 'What
happened?'Hesays,'Thepoliceisgoingtoaskfor,gettingintoyourhouse.'Andatthistime
we was already saving some American money to come here. And you believe or not? The
first thing that I do in the house was burning the dollars. To be sure that they don't find it
out.”
The party came andtookaway the family business. They tookthe store. They tookthe car,
covered in tobacco advertisements. They took “a house of birds.” Not yours anymore. They
took a little dog, named Mocha. They took pictures off the wall. They came in and coun-
ted the number of pictures, and took a certain percentage of them. Absurd things. They took
away the family's tiny beach house in Playa del Rosario, “gave it to some fishman.” But this
successionoflossescametoseemindistinctagainstwhatwashappeningoutside.Thepicture
had darkened. “So bad, so cruel all the things that they do it,” she said. “The television was
onalldaylong.”Shemeantboththattheywerewatchingalldaylongandthattherevolution-
aries were transmitting constantly. There was “a man that the name Blanco,” she said. And
his trial concerned “if he abuse the farmers, if he do all these things that accuse him to do it.”
They found him guilty. “Then the people go to the street, singing,
'Paredon paredon pare-
don!' Paredon
means 'kill in front of the wall.' And then they put this in television. And you
seethebrainofthismanjumpingout.Itwasgettinggrossandgrossandgross.”Sheresigned
her job, and they essentially went into hiding.
She got her two children out first, my mother-in-law and her brother, on waivers made
possible by the CIA-initiated, Catholic-sponsored airlift known as Pedro Pan. The story goes
that the CIA started spreading rumors on the island that the government was about to take
away the children, raise them in camps. People panicked, and the planes were waiting to fly
them away. The children wound up living with Catholic families all over the United States
or, in this case, with an aunt in North Carolina. Eventually Wei-Wei and her husband got out,
through Mexico, and joined the children. But Pedro Pan tore apart many families.
