Our official souvenir from my mother's most recent trip to Cuba.
By Magdalena I. García
My mother came back to Chicago last night, after spending two weeks in Cuba visiting her familia (or relatives, as they are called in English, to signal that they are not part of the nuclear family). This is no small enterprise, considering she has nine siblings and only her youngest sister lives in the US. Everybody else is back home on the island, including a countless number of nieces and nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, and so on.
This trip always translates into 14 long nights of sleeping on low-quality mats and bumpy pillows—instead of her Sealy Posturepedic mattress and hypoallergenic pillow—as she makes the rounds from house to house. Needless to say, when she got back from the island a couple of days ago, the first thing she did was to crawl into her sister’s bed in Miami and, like a Sleeping Beauty of sorts, take a long nap.
But the trip to Cuba also adds up to 14 long days of entertaining visitors from morning to night. You see, when exiles visit Cuba, they immediately acquire celebrity status. That’s because they are like Santa Claus: they always show up with a bag full of treats. Or two or three, depending on how much cash they have available to buy presents for their familia and to pay for extra luggage. And the treats can include all sorts of basic items—like underwear, which is hard to come by in Cuba—or electronics such as MP3s, which are highly desirable among young people. Let’s be clear, capitalistic tendencies have not been tamed by 50 years of Communist indoctrination, and the Cuban Democracy Act (the official name of the US embargo) has not achieved its stated goal of “democratization and greater respect for human rights,” but it’s certainly brought all kinds of free goodies to the island nation courtesy of Cuban exiles.
I know what you’re thinking: my mother spends a small fortune on this journey and comes back exhausted; not exactly a vacation. But it’s probably the most life-giving trip that she can take. There is something magical about that visit to the homeland that puts a glow on her face and a spring in her step. It also adds speed and volume to her already lively and resounding speech, so we are all trying our best to adjust our Americanized ears to her reinforced Cubanness. So if we show up at your doorstep looking exhausted, just let us take a nap!
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