ecocuban

“As many people who know Cuba and Miami well have observed, each is a peculiar mirror of the other… Two facts are clear: it is impossible to understand the Cuban Revolution without understanding Miami, and it is impossible to understand Miami without understanding the Cuban Revolution.”

— Cuba: An American History, page 419

What’s this book about?

Cuba: An American History is a chronicle of US-Cuba relations and history. The book draws on more than thirty years of research and includes extensive research from the author’s own travels into the island country. The novel is written by Ada Ferrer, a Julius Silver Professor of History and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University.

What is the importance of a book such as this?

Cuba, as is emphasized again and again throughout the book, has an intimate history with the United States that extends past the Cuban Missile Crisis, Bay of Pigs, and the Platt Amendment. Given the relevance of Cuba in American international policies, it’s important for Americans, Cubans, and non-Cubans alike to learn about the country’s history with the United States as we advance into further discussions related to the island.

What’s especially unique about Cuba: An American History is the inclusion of the human-side of the events that occur in the book. Ferrer weaves in testimonies and stories of Cuban exiles and those who still live on the island. It is rare that we not only get the human-side of Cuban history, but that it is also written by someone Cuban as well.

Where does the book leave off?

Can you describe a bit about your Cuban background?

I was born and raised in Miami, FL which obviously is a major hotspot for Cuban-Americans. So, from early childhood to late adolescence, I was totally enveloped in the Cuban culture rooted in Miami. My dad was a Cuban immigrant himself, having come over when he was around 10 years old. My mom, on the other hand, is a first generation Cuban-American born in Miami and raised by two Cuban immigrant parents. Both my parents made sure to speak Spanish around the house as much as possible, especially when my grandparents were around. Even though we have definitely assimilated to American culture, I consider myself to be extremely connected and loyal to my Cuban roots.

What makes you feel most Cuban?

I would say the largeness of my family, both in size and personality! The times when I feel the most Cuban is when I’m surrounded by my extended family in the midst of cooking, drinking, laughing, screaming, and sometimes even fighting, haha! I feel like most Cubans can attest to the fact that our defining qualities include fierce passion and intense protection over our families.

How might your Cuban identity influence your creative career?

I feel like my path towards becoming a performer was heavily influenced by the creative roots in my family, especially on my dad’s side. Granted, my maternal grandmother did serve as spokesperson for Cuban Palmolive commercials back in the 50s — a fact of which she is still proud of today. In addition to that, my dad‘s aunt, Moraima Secada was a beloved singer in Cuba beginning in the early 1950s until her late death in 1984. It’s funny because when I watch videos of her performances, she has such a theatrical style and presence. It makes me wonder if she had an actress in her as well. Who would’ve thought that 20 years later, my dad would pursue the same career as a singer/songwriter and even actor too!

So yeah with a strong lineage of Cuban performers lodged in my ancestry, plus growing up in an environment that was open to creativity and passion for the arts, I was definitely predisposed to having an artistic career. Even my mom’s background as a dancer has given me a leg to stand on as a musical theatre performer.

Now how does that link to my Cuban identity? In my opinion, due to the many societal, political, geographical setbacks people of the Cuban diaspora have faced, an element of resilience has been interwoven into our culture. Therefore, I feel like I am where I am today because of everything my family has sacrificed and overcome.

What do you recommend for people interested in theater and acting?

Always keep practicing, learning, and improving!

For my POC, LGBTQ+, or any other marginalized actors — please don’t give up when the auditions get tough. There is definitely a lot of work to be done in terms of equitable casting for all. However, as long as there are more of us both in front and behind the casting table, the more opportunities we will be able to receive! This industry is headed in a new direction, slowly, but surely!

I’m stealing this one from a professor — you can’t move forward if you’re looking sideways! Do you, and you’ll get to where you want to be.

What makes you feel most Cuban?

Oh gosh it’s a laundry list of things — Coffee, listening to Celia Cruz, sofrito, collecting mangoes in a paint bucket, yelling “I love you” instead of saying it. But above all that there is this collective story of fighting to survive, that every Cuban has a tie to regardless of if they were born in the U.S or Cuba.

It’s working incredibly hard to move up in the world but never forgetting where you came from, and letting that pride fuel you to the next milestone. Because you don’t stand on the shoulders of your parents but an entire country of resilient people.

What’s been your experience working in the entertainment industry?

Being Cuban definitely influences my career because there are still so few Latinas in positions of power in the entertainment industry. I think I have a specific voice and story that I bring to the table as a Cuban and gaining opportunities to share that really motivates me.

John Garcia, the head of Warner Bros Latin America, was one of the people who really encouraged me to embrace this voice rather than downplay it.

Street mural by @_Robenz_Art, the words “Patria y Vida” (Homeland and Life) on the upper right corner, August 2021.

August 2021, this painting hung outside Versailles. It visualizes this fight to survive for me. The ups and downs of being Cuban.

How did your heritage influence your work as a researcher for Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Payá and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba?

This job was the opportunity of a lifetime. Not only because it was interesting work and all of that, but because it was a way for me to learn my own history. I think it’s very difficult for us… I came to the United States when I was three years old, so in terms of my understanding of Cuban history at the outset of this project, I would probably count myself in with people who have Cuban heritage but were born here.

As a researcher, how did you navigate through different media and articles that are biased for your project?

When you’re doing research of the kind that I was doing, you start to create a narrative based on the majority of sources you find. So when you see something in another source being portrayed in a very different light or with different details — omitting some things and harping on other things — then you start sort of piecing together the real story, and you learn to ignore those bits and pieces that just don’t seem to fit in.

What do you recommend for people who try to fight against misinformation regarding Cuba?

There are a lot of people who have very strong opinions about Cuba but not a lot of knowledge or nuance. There was one time when a prominent dissident, Jose Daniel Ferrer — he’s currently imprisoned, and has been arrested many times over the years — and there was a time, maybe two years ago, when he was in prison and on hunger strike. They weren’t even allowing his family to see him. And, like, nobody was covering it. Nobody, not even at the Herald. The only news outlet that was covering it, funnily enough, was Breitbart. And, as you know, that’s not necessarily a publication that most people will read and accept.

It’s difficult as a consumer. There have to be outlets out there willing to report on the real stories, you know? Otherwise, we’re relegated to trying to piece together the story through Twitter, through Instagram. Those are probably the sources that I use the most to get on-the-ground information. Rather than, say, traditional media sources, I follow accounts that post clips in real time of whatever’s happening on the island. But it can all become a bit disjointed.

What are some reasons you think it’s so difficult to get information from the island?

The Cuban Communist Party is one big propaganda machine. Think about Fidel Castro’s speeches. They went on for hours and hours and hours. All of the symbolism, all of the marches, all of the slogans — and it’s not contained to just Cuba. The government has been feeding this propaganda for decades to whoever is willing to listen and, in turn, these people and institutions spread it. So what we’re dealing with is one big machine. It’s hard for individuals in the diaspora to fight an entire government.

What’s a common misconception that you wish people knew about Cuba or about Cubans or Cuban Americans?

I feel like people think that Cuba was this savage place or that we had no self-determination. That we always had somebody kind of governing us or ruling over us or whatever, and that it wasn’t until Castro came in and took over that we were liberated from the Americans, the Spanish, whoever. That’s really not the case.

There was this whole period in Cuban history where Cubans were determining their own fate, how they were going to be governed, the issues that mattered to them, and what they were going to focus on. This was the era of the 1940 Cuban Constitution, which, at the time that it was created, was one of the most advanced, thorough, and comprehensive constitutions in the world. When Castro took power in ’59, he even vowed to reinstate the 1940 Constitution, a promise on which he soon reneged.

There were still problems, of course, like in any other country, but this was a defining moment in Cuban history. Cubans were determined to become the protagonists of their own history — the very same sentiment that Oswaldo Payá expressed decades later.

We’re not a bunch of country bumpkins who have no notion of democracy or what it means to lead a “civilized” life.

There’s this erroneous notion among non-Cubans that we just want Cuba to be another mini USA, replete with theme parks, McDonald’s, or whatever. Because that’s the only thing that Cubans could want, right?

Cubans want to be able to express themselves freely, to own a business, to undertake projects, to have access to information, to not have to look over their shoulders for simply creating a song.

What Cubans want is freedom.

Give Me Liberty is a biography of Oswaldo Payá, a Cuban political and civic activist, written by Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporter David E. Hoffman.It tells the story of Oswaldo Payá and his quest for a free Cuba underneath the current Cuban dictatorship. He sought change from within Cuba and advocated for freedom of speech, expression, religion, and more.

Oswaldo Payá is a Cuban political and civic activist who founded the Christian Liberation Movement in 1987 and was the primary organizer of the Varela Project. He was imprisoned in the unidades de trabajo camps, similar to the UMAP concentration camps, for his outward expression of religion.Within this encampment, he was spurred to create the foundations for his liberation movement.

The Varela Project, founded in 1998, collected thousands upon thousands of signatures from Cubans petitioning for freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and a multi-party democracy.

It was Oswaldo’s intention to spur change within Cuba, from Cubans themselves.

The Cuban regime smeared his Varela Project as counter-revolutionary.

The “L” for Liberation hand symbol seen July 2021 originate from Oswaldo Payá’s Liberation movement. The San Isidro movement, which also advocates for freedom of expression and the right to assembly, is taking on the torch that Payá’s movement started.

“As Oswaldo had learned, change is hard. A totalitarian state does not simply flutter and faint. The Cuban regime still commands an army and vast security forces; it controls the airwaves, the borders, and the economy, and it monopolizes all politics. But Oswaldo Payá showed–and the event of July 11 proved again– that no state, no matter how dictatorial, can imprison an idea forever. The quest for liberty runs free.”

Nina Ahmadi explains how they discovered their Cuban heritage at the age of twelve and have since been on a self-discovery journey to connect to their cultural roots.

What’s your Cuban background?

So I actually didn’t know that I was Cuban until I was like 12, which is funny. I grew up mostly in Miami, like when I was six years old. We moved from New York to Miami. And all my friends were Cuban. And I grew up with my mom and my dad. But then when I was 12, I found out that my dad who raised me wasn’t my biological dad, my biological dad was actually a lovely Afro Cuban man. So, my only experience [up until that point] with being Cuban was my friends and the culture around me.

So how would you say your Cuban identity influences your art, then? If it does?

The first body of work that I ever did, that I felt has been really important for me and I felt really accomplished with was about my culture and about wrestling with who I was.

In school [when I was 15 or 16], I created … [this] painting… And that was the first time I really poured my heart into artwork. And so I guess that was the first time and it was just processing who I was and what it meant to me. And since then, I have tried to learn more about culture and about my family. I incorporated [that] into my work. I’ve been very inspired by Santería which is a big thing for a lot of Cuban people. And religion and spirituality and also just family lines. And I’ve been just trying to make work around that.

And I was actually proud, because the first couple years, like I was processing that “Oh, my dad is not my dad.” And then afterwards at that point, I had arrived at the point of being like, “What does that mean now?” It’s not just that I’ve grown up around Cuban culture, but I also am Cuban. And that’s part of my lineage.

Did you feel like you were having struggles with connecting to your Cuban heritage at first?

I definitely did struggle with it. That’s why I made art about it. It’s very challenging to find out that you’re not who you thought you were. Cuban culture is an incredibly beautiful culture. So, it’s been a privilege to be able to connect with my family and feel connected in that way. And regardless of how it may feel, I know who my family is. My family knows who I am. And I’m connected to them. But yeah, definitely. Definitely was a struggle for a time.

So what would you say right now makes you feel most Cuban? Is it our language, dance food? Do you cook?

It’s tough because… it’s the whole thing of not feeling “blank enough,” you know, of anything. So like, not feeling Hispanic enough or not feeling Cuban enough, or not feeling like Iranian enough or not feeling all of these different intersections of my identity.

My family is what makes me feel Cuban. And also just being in Miami at home. I feel very lucky to be able to speak Spanish because, you know, a lot of people, their parents didn’t teach them Spanish growing up. And so now they feel very disconnected from that part of themselves. You know what I mean? And sometimes it’s because the parents did it out of their best interests. But sometimes that ends up having adverse effects.

So it’s been challenging. Like feeling connected to it even still. It’s hard. Just because now I’m also far from my immediate family. And yeah, it’s tough. The one thing now that helps me is talking to friends. And music, talking to people on the street, having a conversation with someone randomly, speaking Spanish and chatting about it.

Whenever I’m sad or bored, I’ll just play some salsa in my room and it’s very uplifting. My dad taught me how to dance the first time I met him in Cuba. He taught me how to dance salsa. So it’s always been associated with very good memories.

Original interview conducted on March 21st, 2022.

Ecocuban is a collaborative storytelling and education platform for Gen Z Cubans, Cuban Americans, and anyone of Cuban descent. Please consider sharing, liking, commenting to show your support.

Meagan Carpintero uses her social media platform and modeling career to promote plus-sized representation of Latina women.

Can you introduce yourself? What’s your Cuban background?

I lived in Miami until I was 18. And in Miami, I lived with my grandma who came over here when Castro ended up going into power in Cuba.

I ended up leaving Miami for college. I moved about four hours north to Daytona Beach. There, I studied aviation. I was working at a corporation, but actually left the corporate world about a year ago to model and do content creating and social media online. Just because, like I love aviation, but working corporate was not it for me. And then now, I actually just recently moved to Dallas.

And how would you say your identity being Cuban has evolved? Especially leaving Miami?

So I really, I’ve been able to maintain it throughout my entire move. I just think it’s definitely a culture shock, you know, moving from a place where everyone around you is Cuban, or Hispanic. And then in Daytona, where the demographic is mainly just, you know, typical white American. So definitely very different for me, like moving to a place where there weren’t a lot of Cubans. In my college, there was only one other Cuban girl. At least that is who I knew, you know?

So it was definitely like a shock at first, especially because I lived with my friends. Like I always talk Spanish at home, I spoke Spanish… moving to a place where that wasn’t the norm, it was definitely a shock. But I felt so close to my Cuban identity, that for me, it didn’t change anything personally. I feel like it gave me an opportunity to share with my friends a culture that they were not used to seeing.

And now in Dallas, there’s a big Hispanic population here, but not a big Cuban population. So I found it really interesting, like meeting people from other countries that are still Hispanic, but like, how different yet similar our cultures are.

How do you reconnect with your Cuban culture currently?

So for me, it is definitely cooking. In college, I had a little at-home catering business for side money and I would actually sell Cuban food. And then in my dorm in college, I made Cuban coffee, which was totally not allowed because you weren’t supposed to [those kind of] cooking supplies. But I would make Cuban coffee. So, for a while, the people in my dorm floor were like, “Oh, that’s the Cuban coffee girl!” because you would smell the coffee in the hallways.

Now, it’s cooking a lot or listening to music. But yeah, I love to cook for my friends. I always love showing them things like, “This is a Cuban dish” and [explaining] the background of it and stuff like that.

When you come to your modeling gigs, do you openly express that you’re of Cuban descent?

So definitely, I feel like my identity and my modeling is super, super important to me. I felt like a lot of brands didn’t really represent plus size women in the media at all, especially plus sized Latino women. So for me, one of the big things was making sure that Hispanic women like me felt represented when they were shopping for clothing.

Yeah, so I actually tried to align myself only with brands that had those same ideas. I’ve been making sure that everyone feels represented. So I’ve been really, really lucky to work with a lot of Hispanic owned businesses, and model for them. But I think, in terms of social media and modeling, it’s just something that I always like to highlight because I try to be someone in the modeling industry that my inner child needed growing up.

How has that experience been growing up in Miami and not seeing that plus-sized representation?

I feel like Miami has a very, very strict beauty standard. Especially in the media, everyone always talks about how beautiful the women are there. But it’s a very strict standard. And like, I feel like they’ve kind of shoved down our throats from like a very young age. And also, like, as much as I love my Cuban heritage, we deal with a lot of judgment from our own families. I feel like it’s common in a lot of ethnic households, unfortunately.

Yeah, so for me, I never saw that growing up. So I need to make sure that the next generation that is growing up does see that in the media, and they realize that, “Hey, that’s not the typical [beauty standard], [or] what you were taught, but you’re still beautiful.”

Like, I’ve talked to other people at other schools and [my high school] definitely put a lot of pressure on us at a young age to look a certain way. Which I definitely push into a modeling career to show [the message] that you can really be who you are and who you want. And still be beautiful. Like, I actually don’t work with photographers that photoshop bodies. I’m very picky with what jobs I’m taking to model.

If you were to say one thing right now, to your younger self, what would it be?

Honestly, I would say like, just that it gets better. Like, no matter what you’re going through, like it does get better. And if you see something that you don’t like, go ahead and be the change in that.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I feel like especially as a lot of our first or second generation Americans, we need to start breaking generational cycles of issues within our Cuban families, so that our children don’t deal with it.

Go breaking those cycles because it’s really easy to internalize that hate. And I feel like we have a lot of hate and pressure put onto us, especially as women. We take the burden of a lot of things, which is really messed up. I’m just breaking those generational patterns. I think they’re really important. And I think it’s important that we talk about it, especially as young women.

Original interview conducted on March 23rd, 2022.

Ecocuban is a collaborative storytelling and education platform for Gen Z Cubans, Cuban Americans, and anyone of Cuban descent. Please consider sharing, liking, commenting to show your support.

@maya.varg describes her experience visiting Cuba for the first time, in memory of her grandparents.

What was your experience visiting Cuba for the first time? How did it happen?

My grandma had already passed at the time, not even a month before. And then I got an email from my school saying there’s this opportunity to travel to Cuba, and I felt I had to go. My abuelo wasn’t gonna be mad at me or anything. He just wanted to see pictures and hear about my experience.

He told me to look out at the Malecón, where they had their first date. So I went to that spot.

[I know] I should have been observing all the different socio economic, political… but I was just there to be at the birthplace of where my grandmother was born and my grandparents fell in love.

It was a reflecting and remembering type trip.

It was all for her.

Original interview conducted on February 11th, 2022.

Ecocuban is a collaborative storytelling and education platform for Gen Z Cubans, Cuban Americans, and anyone of Cuban descent. Please consider sharing, liking, commenting to show your support.

Excerpts from a conversation with @alexisdenisew on her experiences with anti-Blackness within the Cuban community and Cuban family.

Alexis Williams recalls a conversation with a Cuban peer on race and identity — this peer claimed they were not white despite appearing white.

I actually think it’s detrimental not to recognize your privilege as a white person, even though you are Hispanic. There is some privilege of whiteness.

I found myself in that conversation where it’s like I’m Black, I’m always Black, I don’t get the choice to be anything but Black. But I am also Cuban.

I have been struggling with how to make other people understand the discernible difference of having no other choice, but to be Black, versus being someone that’s ethnically mixed.

As a lighter-skinned or a brown person, [you get to] navigate that funny space of whether you’re going to be privileged from your proximity to whiteness, or whether you’re going to lean into your proximity to Blackness.

I never get a choice, I’m always Black.

Williams also recalled moments growing up when she encountered anti-Black remarks within her own Cuban family, from comments about her hair to her skin color.

That particular conversation is a conversation that I’ve never felt smaller in, and even still, I feel like I’ve been having this conversation for years now. I started it with my mom when I was younger because it always rubs me the wrong way the way that she was able to critique Blackness.

But whenever I said that [it] made me uncomfortable, she says, ‘Well, I’m also Black.’

Other people being able to say, ‘Hey, you’re too dark in the summer, you need to put a hat,’ or, ‘Hey, you have bad hair,’ or, ‘Hey, you shouldn’t wear braids, it doesn’t look as nice as when you straighten your hair.’

And then I will be like, Oh, well, these critiques feel a little funny, they feel racially charged, and I don’t feel comfortable having them say these things to me. [And then the other person says] ‘That can’t be racial,’ or ‘that’s not racial, because I’m [also] Black.’

Sometimes I feel like I’m from nowhere because I’m not from America. I can’t go back to Cuba. I’ve never been so like, ‘Who am I?’

I always have these really interesting conversations with myself about identity and I’m always invalidating myself.

But then I’m like, ‘No, you totally are these things and you need to chill.’

Original interview conducted on February 12th, 2022.

Ecocuban is a collaborative storytelling and education platform for Gen Z Cubans, Cuban Americans, and anyone of Cuban descent. Please consider sharing, liking, commenting to show your support.

Excerpts from a conversation with America Valdés (@americavaldess​) on how Cubans can find a community online, how Cubans can combat misinformation, and how Cuban affairs are important for broader perspectives.

What would you say to Cubans in the diaspora, specifically people our age who might feel discouraged or estranged from their Cuban identity?

It’s complicated thing. But I think that the beautiful thing about our community is that a lot of us, even if we have spent generations outside of Cuba, hold on to our culture pretty strongly.

When you find your community, even if that happens to be in an online space, [it’s] super important.

What would you say for Cubans trying to push back against misinformation online?

We can’t waste energy on one-on-one conflict. It used to happen to me. You see these people praising revolutionary leaders from Cuba and your family suffered for generations because of those people… and you see some random person on the internet, so boldly praising this person, keeping a poster of him. It’s depressing and it hits us in a very emotional place.

I think that we need to be very strategic and not lean into those emotions that much. Because at the end of the day, for those people, this is not an emotional thing. For us, it’s generational trauma. I’m not gonna argue with everybody that calls me gusano in my comments. I think there’s a lot of valuable work that, as a community, we have to do for the people still on the island.

Put out your information, then people will share your credible, well-researched information. They will share that and slowly truth will prevail and you have to have faith in that.

In what ways do you think that Cuban issues are global issues?

I think that all marginalized groups can see themselves identified in that. For example, the way that the LGBTQ community is punished in Cuba and how Che in his diaries wrote that they made these conversion camps, forced labor camps, for homosexuals during the revolution.

Once you really get informed, you can feel identified and even if you don’t fall into any marginalized group, think about how you would feel if you didn’t have the right to vote [or] right to express yourself. Anybody can see themselves identified in those causes.

People that want critical race theory to be talked about in the US, and then they praise Cuba and say this is the ideal but the ideal was literally just don’t speak about racism.

And then Florida legislators want to do it now, parents can sign so that their children can opt out of reading and learning about Black history and that’s basically what happened in Cuba. You just stopped talking about it, and then suddenly, it’s solved, but it just created more issues and more racism.

Original interview conducted on March 4th, 2022.

Ecocuban is a collaborative storytelling and education platform for Gen Z Cubans, Cuban Americans, and anyone of Cuban descent. Please consider sharing, liking, commenting to show your support.