Understanding and not understanding

There were four books from the Viva Cuba! article that I have to consider together:

My Havana: Memories of a Cuban Boyhood, by Rosemary Wells

90 Miles to Havana, by Enrique Flores-Galbis

Waiting for Snow in Havana, by Carlos Eire

Leaving Glorytown: One Boy's Struggle Under Castro, by Eduardo F. Calcines

All of them have a young male protagonist who leaves. It was often via the Pedro Pan program where youth came alone, living in youth homes or foster homes with the expectation that parents would be able to come later. That did not always work out.

Usually before leaving there was a lot of abuse, with informers spying and bullies (including teachers) abusing, not to mention a lack of food. When I read those books - especially the books from Eire and Calcines - the anti-Castro hostility of the refugees transplanted to the United States makes sense. They hate him, his death has not changed that, I get it.

(90 Miles to Havana was the most even-handed.)

But then, on another level, I am not sure it makes sense.

The book from my May reading that relates the most is When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the Khmer Rouge, by Chanrithy Him. Her physical suffering was worse, the name-calling and dehumanization was similar, but there isn't that same bitterness. Having known many refugees from Southeast Asia with similar experiences, I notice that as well. They may not love the Communists, but there doesn't seem to be the same hate.

There are ways in which the Cuban revolution seems to have gone better. It had definite cruelty, corruption, and incompetence, but the medical and educational systems built seem far superior than those of countries who went through similar turmoil. Is it because Russia was a better helper than China? Is it because the country was so much smaller, and perhaps had a better climate? I don't know. Regardless, that does not seem to get much credit on this side of the Straits of Florida. They don't care about the literacy rate.

Economic factors could have played a role, with wealthier people being the most likely to flee and take a leadership role in the States (and write about their experience). However, often the refugees from Southeast Asia were at least somewhat better off financially, if not truly wealthy. The Cuban narrators all explained why they were actually poorer than the other people around them, but that's a thing rich kids do.

Some of it could be gender. One of the other books, The Memory of Silence by Uva de Aragon, has twin sisters separated as their husbands follow different paths. The sister in the States did not have that bitterness, but her husband did. At the same time, her brother-in-law both loved the revolution and was broken by it.

(We will spend some time on masculinity in a different post.)

Maybe it was just that Castro lived so much longer than Ho Chi Minh or the Khmer Rouge (though the communists are still in power in Laos, and that doesn't seem to have embittered Laotian refugees in the same way.)

I am glad I read books about people who stayed as well, and their various experiences. I am glad that I read In the Time of the Butterflies to get the Dominican view of Castro and Guevara as well. It's not even that I can defend Castro, but we lean toward the simplistic view, and that is not helpful.

One strong memory from high school is watching Univision to try and improve my Spanish. Game shows went too fast and frenetic for me, and I got really into one telenovela, Rubi, but the most important thing that I ever watched was probably the news. I remember that the way they talked about the Contras was not the way our news talked about the Contras. Communism - and the US horror of it - had a lot to do with that as well. That has not always made us act wisely.