Reunion stories abound among Miami pilgrims to Cuba
Meeting for the first time
Saturday, March 31, 2012
* Ana Rodriguez Soto
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HAVANA - Teresita Gonzalez was trying to figure out what she was doing in Cuba.
The director of the Archdiocese of Miami's Mission Office and of the lay missionary group Amor en Accion had made the pilgrimage thanks to the generosity of a donor. She is the youngest of three children, and the only one born after exile, in Puerto Rico.
The Cuban revolution had burdened her family with ever-lasting pain yet somehow she had felt the call to return to the island. And as long as she was traveling to Cuba, she decided to run an errand for her mother and late father. They had been holding on to wedding and family photographs of another couple, friends from the time both were dating. The couple had given the pictures to Gonzalez's parents for safekeeping, hoping to retrieve them when they left the island. But they never did.
Gonzalez carried some of the pictures in manila envelopes. She also made a picture book from the wedding photos. With the help of a friend from Miami and his Cuban cousin, she set out after the Mass in Havana's cathedral to find the house in the La Vibora neighborhood where her parents had lived, the Passionist church nearby where they had gotten married, and the friends they had left behind.
Riding through the neighborhood, she instantly recognized their house. The locals who were driving her around asked if she was sure. How did she know?
"I knew the house. I said, 'This is it.' I've been looking at that picture for 40 years."
After the shock of seeing her and the ensuing emotion on both sides, Gonzalez and her parents' friends sat down to talk and look at the pictures. They thought half of them had been lost forever. They were amazed at the picture book she had created of their wedding. "They had never seen anything like that."
Gonzalez was amazed at how well they knew her and her siblings and the stories of their lives. "You're the rebel," they told her.
The couples had stayed in touch until last year. The last thing the family in Cuba had heard was that Gonzalez's father had died. They had written to her mother but the letter had been returned.
She also was amazed at seeing another side of her parents: the sweethearts going on double-dates with their friends; their smiles and youthfulness.
"I never knew them before the crisis (of exile)," Gonzalez said, adding that the nearly two hours she spent with her parents' lifelong friends helped her reconnect with her roots.
"In El Cobre, I kept asking, 'Why am I here?' This isn't my story. I'm just another pilgrim. I felt like I was just riding the train. Now I know I belong here," Gonzalez said.
Hers was not the only reunion story among the pilgrims.
Father Francisco Garcia, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Loveland, Colo., in the Archdiocese of Denver, was born in Havana but left with his parents in 1960, at age 3. He grew up in Colorado and was ordained a priest six years ago. Both his parents are deceased now.
"I hope to see my cousin in Havana for the first time, my first cousin," he said as the plane took off from Miami. The two had communicated by phone, so she knew he was coming. "She's more nervous than I am."
Still, Father Garcia said he discerned for three weeks whether to go to Cuba or not. "I said, 'Lord, do you want me to go? Our Lady, do you want me to go?'"
He applied and within two weeks was notified that his visa had been approved. He met up with his cousin and godson outside Havana's cathedral, after the Mass celebrated by Archbishop Thomas Wenski.
Aside from being family, he said, after giving them a long blessing in the cathedral square, "We are habaneros. We are Cubans."
Earlier, Enrique Machado had sat in his wheelchair in front of the sanctuary in Havana's cathedral, much the same place where he sits when he attends Mass in Miami's cathedral.
He had come to Cuba on his own a week earlier and joined the Miami pilgrims for the March 27 Mass. Born in Santa Clara province, he had left the island in 1961 and this was his first time back - partly for medical reasons, and partly to see Pope Benedict XVI.
"I have received a blessing from Paul VI and John Paul II and I was missing Benedict XVI's," he said. Besides, "I left Cuba 51 years ago. But Cuba didn't leave me."
A neurological condition makes it difficult for Machado to walk more than a few steps at a time. But he decided the time had come to return because he also helps out a mission in the Diocese of Santa Clara.
Machado never married and most of his relatives are in Miami. For help getting around in Cuba he relied on Luis Ramos, a friend who lives on the island but travels frequently to Miami.
"I have been with him the whole time. He is like a father to me," Ramos said, adding that his friend's journey had been extremely emotional.
"It's been very traumatic, because what I left of Cuba and what remains now..." Machado said, his voice trailing off.
Not to mention the daring it takes for a lone 72-year-old, dependent on a wheelchair, to get on a plane in Miami then move around in Cuba.
"I am used to fighting with life. Since 1968, I live in the hands of God," Machado said. "I plan to come back every once in a while."
