Mirta Ojito, Finding Mañana

SHOW: Fresh Air 12:00 AM EST NPR

April 26, 2005 Tuesday

Mirta Ojito discusses her memoir, "Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus"

ANCHORS: TERRY GROSS

TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

On May 7th, 1980, the police knocked on Mirta Ojito's door in Havana and told her mother that the family was cleared to leave Cuba. At the age of 16, Ojito became one of the 125,000 people who emigrated to south Florida in the Mariel boat lift. Castro allowed these Cubans to leave from the port of Mariel on boats run by relatives already living in the States. Although Ojito came here speaking no English, she eventually became a journalist. She shared a Pulitzer Prize for her contribution to The New York Times series, How Race is Lived in America.

Now, on the 25th anniversary of the boat lift, she's written a memoir called "Finding Manana." Manana is the name of the boat that took her to the US. Many Cubans were desperate to leave. Thousands had been seeking asylum at foreign embassies in Havana. Ojito says that one of the events that set the stage for the boat lift was Castro's decision to allow thousands of Cuban exiles to visit relatives in Cuba in 1979.

Ms. MIRTA OJITO (Pulitzer Prize Winner; Journalist, The New York Times; Author, "Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus"): In 1979, more than 110,000 Cubans from the United States went back to the island, mostly carrying gifts and wonderful stories about what life was like in the United States, created a crisis for the Cuban government in Cuba. People basically were saying, `Well, we have been told that life in the United States for immigrants is pretty horrible. That's not what I'm getting from the uncle, my cousins, my aunt, everybody who went back. It's not as bad as I have been told. In fact, it's pretty good. They get to have a house, a car in the garage, a vacation in Disney World.'

And people wanted to do that, too, so there was a degree of desperation among us Cubans on the island, trying to get out, trying to get to have what others have. And it wasn't just material goods. It was also the idea, of course, of freedom. And that led to several break-ins in embassies. And the most successful, of course, was the on the Peruvian Embassy April 1st.

GROSS: Where people were breaking in to be in a place of sanctuary, to declare that they wanted to leave the country.

Ms. OJITO: Yes. They wanted political asylum, absolutely. And it happened in several embassies, Latin American embassies in Havana. It just so happened that the six people who went on April 1st were lucky enough to encounter a diplomat, very young diplomat, who was also a lawyer. His name was Ernesto Pinto-Bazurco. His name is. He still lives in Lima, Peru. And he very much stood by them and refused to turn them over to the Cuban government.

The Cuban government, specifically Fidel Castro, got extremely angry, and they removed all the guards, all the protection from the embassy. And it just stood there, tempting and open. And in less than 36 hours, more than 10,000 people went into and also asked for political asylum.

And the foreign minister of Lima, Peru, began to ask for help to the international community. Several countries said, `I'll take 300,' `I'll take 500,' `I'll take 600,' whatever number. And that eventually led to the opening of the port of Mariel.

GROSS: When you became one of the people leaving Cuba from the port of Mariel, were there certain things you had to do to qualify to be one of those people that Castro was going to let out?

Ms. OJITO: Well, the reason we got out was because my uncle, my father's older brother, went to Cuba to pick us up. He chartered a bout in the Miami River and basically went to Cuba and said, `This is the list. This is the family members I want.' And he waited for us. That was one of the ways in which we could leave Cuba in 1980. There were other ways, and the other ways were basically when the government wanted to get rid of you. But one of the categories was family claiming you, and that's what happened to us.

GROSS: So you had family come to claim you, and that was your ticket out?

Ms. OJITO: That was my ticket out, absolutely. I did not know it, but I found out during the reporting of the book, my uncle had made a promise to my father, to get him out in any way he could and as soon as possible. And that was the very first instance he was able to deliver on that promise, so he left his job--he was an accountant for General Electric at the time--his family, and without even knowing how to swim--which I always find amazing. He didn't know anything about boats--chartered this boat and went to get us out of Cuba.

GROSS: Your book opens with the police knocking on your family's door.

Ms. OJITO: Yeah.

GROSS: What did the police say? What were they doing there?

Ms. OJITO: The police were sent to take us to the first of a series of places before we actually got to the harbor. And they first asked for our names, all of our names, asked if we lived there. And we said, `Yes.' That day, it was just my mother and me. I was getting ready to go to school. I was in 11th grade. My sister was in a school, and my father had just left for work after a lunch break. And they asked if we were ready to abandon the country, which was a word they used all the time. It was a preferred word, the abandonment of the country, not just simply leaving. And it was loaded with all kinds of political and social implications. So I resented it immediately. But yes, at that point, I was ready to leave.

GROSS: So the police came to ask you if you were ready to leave because you had already applied to do that?

Ms. OJITO: No, because they knew that there was someone at the port, waiting for us, and they simply said, `There's somebody out there. Do you want to go, or not?'

GROSS: Right.

Ms. OJITO: And by us saying `yes,' it meant they could take us there in a police car.

GROSS: Why did your parents want to leave so badly? I mean, for as long as you were alive, they had wanted to leave Cuba.

Ms. OJITO: Yeah, even before I was born. My parents were--my father was a truck driver, and my mother was a homemaker. And they always--specifically my father, they just never believed in the promise of a better society delivered by Fidel and his people. They just never believed in him. My father was a lot--very much believed in the individual and in what you could do as an individual. He had his dreams. They were modest, but he had his dreams before the revolution, and he could not fulfill them. He had to--that's how he became a truck driver, in fact. He wanted to do something else. But they simply said, `This is the job the revolution needs you to do right now,' and that's what he had to do.

So the whole thing--he also had relatives in the United States, and he really wanted to join them. And he did not understand a system that attempts to rob you of the soul. I mean, this whole idea of controlling who you talk to, who you communicate with in the United States, what you read, what you teach your children, whether or not they can go to church, that did not make any sense for him. And he was constantly teaching me and my sister, but especially me--I was the older, the oldest--that there was another way.

GROSS: On the day when your family set out to go to the Mariel Harbor and leave for the US--Would you describe what it was like in the streets? You know, in your book, you describe that there were gangs prowling the street, because, you know, the people who were leaving were abandoning the country. You weren't being good guys in leaving. There was a very negative association with that.

Ms. OJITO: Oh, my gosh. It was the worst time. I have never seen anything like that in Cuba, or elsewhere, for that matter. And I think it was perhaps a very dangerous time for the Cuban revolution, because I don't think they even realized how out of hand it almost got. It was almost--I don't want to say like a civil war, but it was very, very ugly time to be a Cuban in Cuba. In my particular case, nothing happened. We were lucky enough that, because our neighbors had always known us, they knew that we always--we were ready to leave at any time, and that we had never lied to them, they--and they also like my parents, who were good neighbors. They, in fact, came to say goodbye and asked us to write to them and `good luck' and all kinds of things.

But I know of many stories, and I've seen many videos in which--in fact, I know a person who was locked in his house for 47 days. He couldn't get out. They would have killed him. It was a horrible thing. People were throwing eggs, tomatoes, screaming, yelling horrible names, writing on the walls insults just because we wanted to leave the country.
And you know the worst part is--perhaps the best part, depending how you look at it--that I am certain that many of the people who did that in 1980 are now walking the streets of Miami. They've came from Cuba later. I am certain they are here, many of them.

GROSS: I think one of the things that added to, like, the negative connotations of you and the others leaving Cuba was that, in addition to letting people out who had family members in the United States, family members who had come to get them, Castro was letting out a lot of, quote, "social misfits," prisoners...

Ms. OJITO: Yes.

GROSS: ...people from mental institutions.

Ms. OJITO: Yes.
GROSS: What was his strategy in doing that? What was that about?

Ms. OJITO: Well, imagine you are the leader of a country, and, in five months, more than 125,000 people leave you. It was a public relations fiasco. He had to turn it around, and he's very good at that. He knows how to do that. In addition, he wanted to punish the United States. You may recall that on May 5th of 1980, President Carter urged Americans to receive those of us coming in the boat lift with open arms and an open heart. That cost him a great price, because the Cuban government did not appreciate that. And I think it was around then that he began inserting in the boat lift these social misfits and these people who--basically people he wanted to get rid of, that didn't have to be bad people necessarily. They simply needed to be malcontents, people who were not happy with the revolution.

It was a great opportunity for him not to have to worry or have to feed people who did not agree with him, who did not want to be there to begin with. And in addition, if he also could get rid of some criminals, perfect. It was like a sweet deal for him. And he knew that they would have been--and in fact, it was very difficult for the United States to detect those people. So he won that round, and he knew it.

GROSS: And that was also his way of making it more difficult for the United States.

Ms. OJITO: Absolutely. It made it very difficult for the United States. Because how do you know who's a criminal and who isn't? I mean, some people were kind of obvious, but others were not. ...(Unintelligible)...

GROSS: And that must have made it difficult for you, too, because maybe you're a criminal. Who knows?

Ms. OJITO: Well, I have to tell you that to this day, when I say, `I came in the boat lift,' or `I'm writing a book about the boat lift,' people tell me, `Oh, my God! That's when all the criminals came from Cuba,' or, otherwise, they tell me, `You don't look like a Marielito,' which is a word that was immediately used to describe us. And I'm always, `So what does a Marielito look like, Scarface?'

GROSS: Right.

Ms. OJITO: That movie did not help, I have to tell you.

GROSS: No. I'll bet it didn't. Tell me about what that movie did.

Ms. OJITO: Well, you know, the main character was...

GROSS: This is the Al Pacino character.

Ms. OJITO: Al Pacino, yes.

GROSS: Yeah.

Ms. OJITO: It just--I mean, it was a good--I like him very much. He's a terrific actor, and it was a good role for him. But it was very damaging for us, because he made us all look like we were, you know, crazy. There was also the time of the cocaine--so-called cocaine cowboys in Miami, so it wasn't far from the truth. I just simply doubt that a Marielito, himself, get that far in that business. But that was the idea, you know, that we were all out here, because we wanted to make money, and that we would do it in any way possible, including breaking the law to that gross degree, which was what the movie was about.

GROSS: You know, when you were describing what happened when the police knocked on your door and told you it was time to go, you mentioned that you and your mother were home, your sister was in school, your father was on his way back to work...

Ms. OJITO: Yeah.

GROSS: ...after a lunch break. So here you are, ready to flee the country, but the family isn't together, and there isn't a lot of time. So I take it you were able to round up the rest of the family.

Ms. OJITO: Very quickly. We were able to round up the rest of the family very quickly, and it was a terrifying moment, because the one thing we had very clear was that we were not going to leave unless we were all together. At the time, the Cuban government was pretty much, I think, on purpose, breaking up families. That means that, for example, in the case of my uncle, he was only allowed to claim two people. But somebody else who was with him in the boat was also only allowed to claim two people, and one of his people didn't come, so they gave him one. In other words, he was able to cobble together a few slots so that the four of us could leave together. And we knew that. We didn't know what was happening with my uncle, but we knew that not every family was able to leave together or to leave at all.

And we had made a decision that either we left together, or we did not at all. So it was a moment of panic to have to go get my father quickly and my sister before the police got tired and left. We didn't know if at some point, the police was going to say, `You know what? You're not here. Sorry. Try next time.' So--but we managed to do it pretty quickly.

GROSS: Would you describe the scene at the Mariel Harbor when you got there?

Ms. OJITO: Yes. The first thing I remember seeing was my uncle. He was wearing a very dirty white T-shirt, and had a little bit of a beard from not shaving for about 16 or 17 days. And that was quite emotional, seeing him there finally.

And then I remember, you know, the sounds of the harbor, the people running around the guards, bullhorns. It was all very confusing. I do remember getting quickly in our boat and then seeing it fill up slowly by people I did not know and that clearly were not related to anyone on board. There were about seven people who had left with my uncle to pick up relatives. And those people arriving or getting into our boat did not belong to anyone. And so we huddled, all of us who we knew who were related to someone in the boat, huddled in one end of the boat and sort of left everyone else on the other side, and just waiting for the time to leave. And it took a long time. And when we finally got it, the boat, which was called the Valley Chief, broke down.

GROSS: And then what happened?

Ms. OJITO: And then, that was another moment of desperation. Then my uncle decided that he needed to find--he was the only one who spoke English in the group. And he decided that we needed to find somebody else who would take us to Miami or to Key West, and went in search of that person, and found one, one boat captain who was eager to leave. He was not getting the people that he had come to get. And luckily for us, he said that, yes, that he would take the women and the children, and that he would tow the other boat, the Valley Chief, with the men on board, to international waters. And that's what he did. And in fact, that was the captain of the Manana, and it's the person I set out to find in 1999, and the reason we have this book now to begin with.

GROSS: OK. So you're in this yacht, the Manana, which is towing the broken-down Valley Chief, the boat that your uncle came in on. And the Valley Chief is let go in international waters, and then what? Then you're separated from your father and your uncle.

Ms. OJITO: Yes.

GROSS: What happens to them?

Ms. OJITO: I did not see the moment in which the Manana let the Valley Chief go. I was very, very sick and sleeping and throwing up. It was a very horrible ordeal, 16 hours. But I remember waking up in the middle of the night--it was Mother's Day, it was Sunday--and saying, you know, `Happy Mother's Day' to my mother. And then I saw her face, and her eyes were very dark. Like, you know, my mother has very dark eyes, black pools. And I said, `What happened?' And she said, `Well, you know, we've let go of the Valley Chief, and I don't know where your father is.'

GROSS: So there was a period there when you and your mother thought you might never see your father and your uncle again?

Ms. OJITO: Right. We found them again--or they found us, rather, when--after we had arrived, we were taken to sort of a military warehouse, a very large place. And there were thousands of people there. And there, we found my uncle's wife and my father's sister, who had come to pick us up. We left with one of them, and the other remained behind, waiting for the men, for my father and his brother. And--but, you know, in the rush to leave, we left our papers behind, these sort of entry papers we had received when we arrived. And we had been told not to lose the papers, but we left them behind. And therefore, on the way to Miami, we were stopped and told we needed to wait before we could proceed for our papers.

And sometime that night, I was sleeping inside the car by the side of the road, and I felt this warmth, and it was my father.

GROSS: How did he find you?

Ms. OJITO: Because he was driving to Miami with his sister, and they recognized the car stopped in the middle of the road, the other car. And then, of course, they stopped and saw my mother, and saw that my sister and I were sleeping inside the car.

GROSS: So it all worked out?

Ms. OJITO: It all worked out, yeah.

GROSS: Do your parents have any second thoughts about having left Cuba? Does their life in Florida measure up to what their expectations were?

Ms. OJITO: You can't see me, but I'm smiling. My father has never had a second thought. I remember when the neighbor of my uncle asked him, `Well, so have you adapted well?' And my father just looked at her and said, `Ma'am, I adapted before I came here.' He was--he so wanted it. It was so much his dream that he absolutely loves this country. He became--both he and my mother are US citizens. They vote in every election. And they just--especially my father.

My mother, you know, likes what happened, in other words, the end result. She likes to see me and my sister thriving, but she had to pay a very, very high price. She left her father behind. He was ill, my grandfather. And I don't think she's ever reconciled herself with that.

GROSS: Did your grandfather encourage her to leave, or did he want her to stay?

Ms. OJITO: He encouraged her to leave. He knew from the moment my mother married my father that he would one day lose her, and he totally identified with my father in political terms. He understood my father, and he knew it was going to happen. So I think the last time he saw us, he had a sense that it would be the last time. But I think he thought it was because he would die before. In fact, he died six months after we were here.

GROSS: So you found the captain of the boat...

Ms. OJITO: I did.

GROSS: ...that took you from Cuba to Florida. What did you learn about him?

Ms. OJITO: He's a wonderful person. He's just a wonderful person. I'm so glad he's in my life. We're now friends. He came to our house Christmas Day last year, and he's met my husband and my children. And we all love him. He's just a great guy. I told him when I met him, I could not have asked for a better hero in my life.

GROSS: Why did he do it?

Ms. OJITO: He's an actual...

GROSS: Why did he do it?

Ms. OJITO: Well, you know...

GROSS: Why did he take the yacht and let you and others on it?

Ms. OJITO: Well, Mike Howell is a Vietnam veteran, and he was almost killed in Vietnam. He lost--he went to Vietnam when he was 18. He lost his left arm at 19. And he felt--he told me that he was alive for a purpose. It was like he was living some extra time. He should have died in Vietnam. And I don't think it's survivor's guilt. I think it's survivor's gratitude. I think because of that, you know, he had a debt with God. Even though he had--by that point, he had stopped believing in God, I think the Catholic boy in him was still there, and he felt he had this debt with God.

And when several Cubans from New Orleans--he lives in New Orleans--approached him and asked him, you know, `Would you take this money and take us to Cuba to get our relatives?,' he said, `I'll take you to Cuba, but I'm not going to take your money.' So he took these people, whom I've met, of course. They're in the book, as well. And for a variety of reasons, these people could not get their relatives out of Cuba. And then he was ready to come back and--by himself, you know, without any refugees. And that's when he met my uncle. He said he took a look at the Valley Chief and realized that it was extremely dangerous, too many people. There were more than 200, perhaps 300 people in that boat.

GROSS: This was your uncle's boat.

Ms. OJITO: Yeah, the one that he had chartered. And he thought, you know, `If I don't do it, who would? Who's going to take these people out?' And decided in one moment to do it, and he never charged anything. And the interesting thing is that he didn't know--he said that--he told me later, when I found him, that when he saw us leave, he and a friend who went with him, David, looked at each other and cried. They were crying, because they felt right. They felt that they had done something very important.

GROSS: You know, it's...

Ms. OJITO: And then he never heard from any of us until I showed up (unintelligible) his boat.

GROSS: But that's the thing, you know. It's amazing that after an experience like this in which he's basically saving the lives and giving new lives to a group of people...

Ms. OJITO: Right.

GROSS: ...and then there's, like, you don't know where you're going. And it's not like you have necessarily a phone number to give or, you know...

Ms. OJITO: No, that's right.

GROSS: ...there's no e-mail address to give. And it's amazing how people just kind of leave after that without exchanging any information or any way of, like, sending a thank-you card even.

Ms. OJITO: Exactly. But who would have thought of that? You know, refugees--I don't know any refugees coming off a boat who thinks of a thank-you card. But that's what I did years later, in effect. Instead of sending a thank-you card, I went myself. I showed up and knocked on his door. He lives in the boat, by the way. He lives in the Manana.

GROSS: Oh, wow.

Ms. OJITO: And just--I mean, I've gone out with him in the boat twice already, and it's been a wonderful experience. And I just say, you know, `Here I am, and you brought me from Cuba, and I couldn't wait to meet you. Thank you so much.' And he was thrilled. He's still thrilled about it.

GROSS: You did a lot of research for this book.

Ms. OJITO: Yes.

GROSS: And you talked to people who were in the Carter administration at the time of the Mariel boat lift, and you talk about some of the controversies behind the scenes. What surprises you most about what the controversies were like, what the debate was like within the Carter administration?

Ms. OJITO: You know, what really surprised me was that I thought that when Carter has said that Americans should receive us with open arms and an open heart, he had really meant it. It turns out, he didn't. I actually sent him a message a while ago, and he replied, saying that he had been misunderstood. That's not what he had meant. He had not meant to encourage a boat lift at all. What he meant to do was to say, `Those who have already arrived'--and at that point, it wasn't that many--`let's be nice to them, because after all, we're all immigrants.'

But he did not mean for his words to mean that the boat lift was on and that Fidel could send whoever he wanted, and that it would last for five very long months in a re-election year. Well, in an election year. Actually, he was running for re-election. When so many other things were going on in this country--this was the beginning of 1980--they understood very early on that the only way to stop the boat lift was through the use of force. Coast Guard service told them, `Mr. President, we will have to use force.' And the government made a choice, a government that, remember, was guided by principles of respect for human rights all over the world, not only not to use force against unarmed refugees, but not even to intimidate us, on the contrary, to help us. The Coast Guard service saved an untold number of lives, and I'm very grateful for that.

But I was surprised when I learned, as a reporter, that, in fact, they had discussed all kinds of options to stop the boat lift, and that it simply had gone on because they were not able to come up with one that worked. In time, eventually, they did, but not before hundreds of boats had already left for Cuba and came back, eventually and slowly, full of refugees.

GROSS: And just to put this into context, this is about the same time of the Carter administration's failed rescue attempt of the...

Ms. OJITO: Yes.

GROSS: ...American hostages in Iran.

Ms. OJITO: Yes, exactly.

GROSS: So there's a lot going on.

Ms. OJITO: A lot going on, yes.

GROSS: So what about the negotiations between the Carter administration and Castro? What surprised you most about that?

Ms. OJITO: It surprised me that it was Castro who stopped the boat lift. I thought--remember, this is something that I really had not written about as a reporter, because I was 16 at the time, so I lived the story. I didn't report it. And it's quite different when you are the reporter in the story. So perhaps reporters knew that back when it happened, but I didn't. It surprised me that it was Castro the one who put a stop to it, not the United States.

On May 14th, 1980, the United States announced a series of measures to stop the boat lift. And to a certain extent, they stopped in the sense that after that date, very few boats left for Cuba, if any. But many, many boats had already left. So in fact, it was up to Castro how those boats were coming back, with one refugee each, completely empty or 200 each, which is what he did, until he basically, I think, either ran out of people that he wanted to see go, or was too exhausted and embarrassed by the whole process.
And by the time two people from the Carter administration went to Cuba to negotiate the end of the boat lift with him, they told me that he basically said, `You know what? I've already made up my mind, and this is going to happen whether you ask me or not.' In other words, he wanted to give the impression that he was not, if you will, obeying an order from the United States, but that he had already decided to stop the boat lift for his own motivations. And the motivations, I think, more than anything else, was the economic cost. The country was in a total upheaval. Everyone had lost someone to the boat lift, someone to the United States, and he needed to put a stop to that. He needed to go back to the business of running the country instead of organizing a flotilla of people who were leaving the country.

GROSS: Your ambition, when you were young and still living in Cuba, was to one day be a journalist. You thought that that would never happen, because you moved to a country and didn't speak the language. You learned to speak and write English, write it where--I can vouch for the fact you write it quite well. It's a beautifully written book. But I'm wondering what it means to you now to be a journalist who has written about the boat lift and the new book and who has covered the Cuban community in south Florida.

Ms. OJITO: You know, I've been a reporter for so long--since 1987--that--and I've--can I tell you, I've never given this question some serious thought. It's just what I am. It's what I do, and it's--I don't know that it means anything other than--well, you know, what it does--well, I'll tell you what it means. Learning English is--other than having my children, healthy children, it's the biggest single most important accomplishment of my life, because I thought I was never, ever going to learn English. And being able to write it is just a wonderful thing.

But--and also, if people like what I do, to me, still, it's so humbling and incredibly amazing and wonderful to have people--sometimes they remember a story I wrote, and they call me, or they see me in the supermarket or whatnot. And I just think it's great, and I'm so grateful that I had, I don't know, my love of reading, my wonderful teachers, my wonderful parents that allowed me to go to school. They worked two and three jobs so that I could continue in school. Not all immigrants have that luck, and I did. And that just made such a huge difference in my life that I have to tell you, you know, humbled, I'm grateful.

GROSS: How old are your children now?

Ms. OJITO: My--I have three boys: 10, five, and the little one is going to be two on Sunday.

GROSS: Have any of them ever been to Cuba?

Ms. OJITO: No, but we've tried. A couple of years ago, my husband and I asked for visas to go to Cuba with the oldest, because--well, because we wanted him to see Cuba, but also because he's really into baseball, and I had this dream of seeing him playing baseball in the streets of Havana. And I have been told that boys there don't--you know, they have to--I don't know what they do, but they don't really have baseballs or gloves or bats, so I thought I would take the suitcase full of all these things and see my boy play baseball in the streets of Havana, as I never did, because I never played baseball.
And we were not allowed. He got the visa, my son, but my husband and I did not. And, of course, we didn't send him. I also asked for a visa while I was reporting this book, because I wanted to be able to interview some Cuban officials, and I did not get it.

GROSS: How much do your children know about your family's story?

Ms. OJITO: My oldest, who is 10 in fifth grade, and a wonderful reader, is reading the book and relating very well to it, I was pleased to see. So he knows quite a bit of it. And the others are too little. We just went to Books & Books, a bookstore here in Miami, yesterday, in fact. And there was a poster there announcing my reading, and my five-year-old stopped at the door and said, `What are you doing there? What is your picture doing there?' He was shocked. So he has no idea.

GROSS: I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Ms. OJITO: Thank you. Thank you very much.

GROSS: Mirta Ojito is the author of "Finding Manana: A Memoir of a Cuban Exodus."