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Chapter One, page 6
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was not
allowed in my family. There were categories of lies at home. We were
never to flaunt the fact that we had relatives in the United States, but
we were not
to deny them either. We didn’t have to announce to the world that we
believed in
God, but, if asked directly, we would affirm it. And to anyone who asked
we
would always say that we were waiting for our exit papers to leave the country
because
we wanted to join my father’s siblings abroad, which was only half
the
truth.We weren’t to reveal that my father had issues with a revolution
that he felt
robbed people of their souls.
The lies were necessary because any perceived ideological flaw could potentially
mark a family as counterrevolutionary, an enemy of the revolution. Having
a relative in jail for opposing the revolution; communicating with relatives
in a
Western country, especially the United States; having had a great deal of
money
or influence under the previous regime; believing in God and openly going
to
church; and wanting to leave the country could earn one the label of counterrevolutionary.
Once so branded, life in Cuba became even more difficult. A
mistake that would cause anyone else to receive a reprimand could land a
counterrevolutionary
in jail.
Three years earlier, when Uncle Oswaldo had sent us a package from Madrid,
my mother had instructed me to lie about it. It’s a family issue, she’d
said. I understood
her comment as permission to lie. A package wasn’t worth the aggravation
of
being honest. If anyone asked where I got the canary yellow dress I wore
on special
occasions, I was to say that my neighbor, who often traveled to the Soviet
Union,
had brought it back for me. Admitting to having received a package from el
exterior—the official shorthand used to describe anything not produced,
sold, or
controlled by the revolution—offered the government ammunition to cast
aside a
family as counterrevolutionary.
And so my parents went about their lives carefully, trudging on the ever
narrowing
space where their personal convictions didn’t interfere too much with
their obligations as conscientious parents who had to teach their children
to
obey rules they abhorred. With tact and good nature, they managed to remain
undetected, or ignored, by those who thought apathy was almost as subversive
as
an attack against the revolution.
They never went to La Plaza de la Revolución, the square where Castro
delivered
