“Raulito was the first of that house, close to mine, in going to Miami (…) a few years ago, he died in the United States.”
Havana, Cuba – the first time I was at Rancho Boyeros airport, I would be about 13 years old, and it was to fire a childhood friend, Raúl Milián, who left in 1960, definitively, to the United States.
I went with my mother, his parents and his brother. At that time they still allowed the entrance to what is now known as terminal # 1. There we embrace and wish him luck in his new life, before he passed to a closed cubicle with glass panels, which called “the fishbowl” where they checked The visathe passport and passage of the Pan American, which still flew to Cuba. Already within “La Pecaias”, we could only give him a final greeting stirring his hands.
Raulito was the first of that house, close to mine, in going to Miami, where his aunts resided. A few years ago, he died in the United States. I never saw him again.
That first farewell of a dear person was a drama that would be repeated several times.
Raulito’s mother, María Josefa Cabadilla, who had as a second mother, visited my home very frequently, and more after her husband dies. Some time after leaving Raulito, she also left the country.
At that time you could not go to the airport. The farewells were at the door of a residence in El Laguito, a situation that generated greater anguish.
In Cuba was his son, Sergio Milián, whom he considered a brother. Sergio took 25 years to meet his own, accompanied by his wife and daughter. In that long period he had only one encounter with his parent, when she He came to Cubaafter in 1979 the Government allowed the visits of the so -called “Cuban Community abroad.”
The day of Sergio’s departure went to his home, in the hill, to say goodbye. I did not go to the airport because I did not want to repeat the previous sad experiences. Even so, tears flooded us.
We are never again. Sergio died a few months ago, in an elder asylum in Tampa.
Another big break for me was my paternal uncle’s round, the most beloved of my uncles. That time, I went to say goodbye accompanied by my father. As they did not let in the airport, he left for a moment For the farewell. When he returned inside the enclosure, my father began to cry. It was the only time I saw him cry. He feared he would never see his brother again, and so it was.
Another dear relative who I saw leaving went to my aunt by Gabriela Maternal Line. My parents and I went to his home, near the Obrero neighborhood, to say goodbye, because going to the airport was complicated.
My last experience in terms of farewells, and the most bitter, was when my daughter went to Italy, to meet with the man with whom she married, an Italian from Verona. Of course I did not even try to go to the airport, so as not to suffer.
I haven’t seen her 26 years. My granddaughter, who already turned 12, knows her only for photos. This extensive separation is because she does not have economic resources to come to Cuba or invite me to Italy, and I totally lack them to make the trip.
When I have attended terminal # 2 several times, where the flights enter and leave The United StatesI have seen great agglomerations of people in a long portal, who are going to fire family or friends and others to receive those who come in a brief visit, unable to enter the room.
I can affirm without fear of being wrong that most Cubans have gone through these sad situations of dismissing family or friends who leave the country.
When I have rarely traveled on national flights, I visit the airport, or pass near there, those sad experiences of yesterday, with the innumerable vicissitudes due to the absurd provisions of the communist regime as revenge against “the worms”, as they detailed to those who chose to seek freedom and a better life in other lands.
