Chapter 1: CUBA

[The gym is packed.

We are down by one.

There are two seconds left on the clock.

We call our last time out.]

The boat is packed. Castro has taken over Cuba. There is one sister we must leave behind. We arrive in Miami.

After the Bay of Pigs, my father, Manuel Antonio Suarez-Carreno, decided to get his family out of the country; no small task since he had 14 children. His motto was "God, family, country."

I was five years old and it was a Saturday. My sister, Maria, and I had decided to walk to Villanova University across the street from our house to use one of those new fancy coke machines that had just arrived from the United States. A coke was only 5 cents. On the way home, we encounted some militia men with beards and guns. We ran home crying only to find my father and older sisters flushing anti-Castro propaganda down the toilet and burning more stuff in the fire pit in our back yard. Castro had led the revolution against Batista's military dictatorship but once in power Castro turned to Russia for money and arms and in returned declared himself a communist.

That afternoon they came to our house and took my father away to prison. For what crime? For political reasons. A dictator's way to take over a country is to start by putting all its leaders in jail. They also took three of my older sisters.

My mother, Eloise Suarez-Gaston, was pregnant with her 15th child. She had a miscarriage and was very weak. They let my father take a twelve hour leave to visit her in the hospital. While out, he eluded his guards and escaped to America in a meat boat. When the border patrol searched the boat, he hid in a freezer. Dead or alive, he thought he would never see his family again.

Once in the United States, my father began to plan our departure from Cuba. By bribing the Cuban officials and leaving two sugar mills, a farm, and beautiful house in Havana, and through the intercession of the wife of the Brazilian Ambassador to Cuba, they allowed my mother, the six youngest children ages 4-12 and some older sisters to board a ferry to Miami. Twice we were told to go down to the docks. Thousands of people were all trying to get on the boat. Both times we walked back home disappointed. The third time we got on. Freedom!!

We arrived in this country with nothing except the clothes on our backs. Through the generosity of many Cuban friends who had fled the country before Castro's take-over, we were housed in many different homes.

I'll never forget being invited to eat dinner and my older brother saying no thanks because he was too proud to accept a handout. I remember starving. My mom called me "pollo flaco" (skinny chicken). That is why to this day, I can not throw away good food, and I get nervous when there is no food in the refrigerator.