#ecocuban

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.