Surprised by Alejandro

On July 22, 1961, two and a half weeks after my arrival in Miami, I visited my uncle Panchito and Aunt Sara at her niece Graciela’s house. As the July sun was starting to come down on the horizon uncle Panchito and the other family members took out the porch chairs and set them on the grass alongside the front walkway, forming two rows facing each other so they could talk and leaving the cement path free so others could pass by.  

I had just gone back inside the house when I heard a commotion outside. I heard a very familiar voice say: “Soy yo, Alejandro. No me reconocen?” (“It’s me, Alejandro. Don’t you recognize me?”) I could not believe my ears. My brother Alejandro in Miami? No one had called to say that he was arriving.  In disbelief I started to rush outside as he was walking in.  “Alejandro, sí, es Alejandro. Cómo llegaste aquí?”  (“Alejandro! Yes, it is Alejandro. How did you get here?”)  We hugged each other.   

My uncle Panchito and my aunt Sara, and all the other relatives did not recognize him initially because they had not seen him for about two years. Alejandro, who had been a chubby boy, famous within the family and close circle of friends for being a big eater, had slimmed down and had grown to be six feet tall.  Now 15, boy Alejandro had turned into handsome young man Alejandro.

Alejandro had arrived at the Miami Airport on Thursday July 20^th as an unaccompanied child, thanks to a visa waiver from Operation Pedro Pan.   He had spent two days at the camp in Kendall where many unaccompanied Cuban children resided at the time.  Someone had the kindness to drive him to the Reynaldo’s so he could visit with the family.    

The great joy of seeing my brother again soon turned into sadness when I was told that he would only be with us for the weekend. Nevertheless, we did the best we could under the circumstances.  We walked to the same shopping center that I had walked to on the day I had arrived in Miami.  We ate dinner at the Reynaldo’s, where we both spent the weekend. We must have gone to church on Sunday, and I remember going to a movie with him that afternoon. Someone picked him up on Monday, and he was transferred to St. Vincent’s Villa, a former orphanage in Fort Wayne, Indiana, that was then housing unaccompanied Cuban boys.¹ When the new school year began, Alejandro started to attend Central Catholic High School. ²

In 1963, when he was a senior, he entered a project in the Indiana Regional Science Fair and won first place in Physics.  This led to a one-year scholarship and Indiana Institute of Technology. He attended Indiana Tech for a year and a half, but ended up graduating from Purdue University several years later.

Our parents were still in Cuba when Alejandro won first place at the Science Fair and they were very happy when they heard the news.  My Dad raved about him in the letters that he wrote to the family.

In June of 1964 our parents arrived in Florida. Alejandro rode a Greyhound bus from Fort Wayne to Miami to see them. He considered staying with them, to help them out, but after some advice from the owner of a boat factory where he applied for a job, he decided to go back to Fort Wayne.

One afternoon in early summer of 1965 I found my Mom sitting in front of her sewing machine, with a very sad look on her face. “I feel like crying because I have lost Alejandro. I sent him to Miami thinking that he would only stay a year and then he would come back to Cuba. But I don’t think that he will ever come back to us now.  I have lost my child.”

To protect her child our Mom and Dad had made the great sacrifice that Cuban parents faced during those tempestuous times.  

Let me back track.

            On April 25, 1961, 8 days after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, Alejandro had been taken prisoner by the Castro police. The 15-year-old was detained for 12 days with a group of 13 or 14 men.  On the afternoon of May 7, the militia men who were guarding them left the premises without giving them any explanations or any instructions about what to do.  When one of the prisoners in the group decided that they should leave, they simply walked out. As I have written before, that was the event that triggered my Mom’s decision to persuade our Dad that all their children should leave the island.

Alejandro has told me that when our parents first broke the news to him that he was going to be leaving Cuba he was vehemently opposed because, without my parents knowing, he had just made plans to marry a girl named Marta.  He also had a very strong feeling that if he left Cuba he would become a traitor to the counter revolution. 

He spent several hours that night talking with my parents, set on his idea of staying in Cuba.  After much discussion, and after talking with Marta the next day, he finally agreed to leave.  Marta had found out that her parents were also going to send her away to Mexico.  They also both thought that they would be back in Cuba in six months, since they were convinced the Castro regime would not last that long.

Alejandro remembers going shopping in downtown Havana for a shirt and a few other items with our mom and with Marta. He was told he could only pack a few things. He remembers his suitcase had 2 pairs of underwear, one shirt, a Physics textbook and a Geometry book.   The Physics book by Alonso Acosta, was covered with a color page from a Spanish language newspaper. The Geometry book had the cover from his school, El Colegio de Belen, the school Fidel Castro had attended in the mid 1940’s.

On July 20^th our Dad drove him at 6:00 a.m. to the Rancho Boyeros Airport in Havana.  Only one person was allowed in the waiting room, and my parents agreed that Marta should be that person. At 5:00 p.m. he was taken out of the room. After answering a few questions, he was allowed to get on the plane. Alejandro and Marta corresponded for about six months. They never saw each other again.

Alejandro had taken the books out of his suitcase and carried them with him. He lost the suitcase, hence when he arrived in Miami he did not have clothes to change into. He still has the two books.

On July 23, three days after Alejandro had left, the G2 police knocked at our parents apartment looking for him. When they found out that Alejandro had left the country, they became irate. If he had not left Cuba, Alejandro would have been captured by the G2 again. My mom would have spent many years visiting her youngest son in a Cuban prison, if not the rest of her life mourning his death.

My parents were convinced that it was in retaliation for Alejandro’s departure that they and our brother Francisco Javier were not allowed to leave Cuba for a long while.

Let me get back to the summer of 1965 and subsequent years.

Towards the end of the summer of 1965 Alejandro married Judy, whom he had met in Fort Wayne, and they have lived most of their married life in the Midwest. They have two sons, Alexander Jr. and Derek, five grandchildren and one great grandchild. Alejandro and Judy always kept in touch with our parents.  In our parents’ treasured correspondence I have found many letters, reports, photos and cards sent to them by Alejandro, Judy, Alex Jr and Derek. They visited each other in the summers, alternating between our parents travelling one year to see them in Indiana, and the next year Alejandro and Judy and children coming down to Miami to visit them.

Those visits were the highlight of my parents’ summers. When they visited Miami all of us siblings would get together in Miami. Our parents were the happiest when they were able to gather all their children in one place. 

Thanks to the sacrifice our parents had made years before we were all able to partake many times in the joy of those recurring family reunions.

___________________________________________________________________

Footnotes

¹ There were 41 Cuban boys at St. Vincent’s Villa in the early sixties. A group of them met recently.  Here is a good article about their reunion.

Mass reunites Fort Wayne Pedro Pan refugees – Today’s Catholic (todayscatholic.org)

²   During his early years in Fort Wayne Alejandro officially changed his name to Alexander (Alex), and that is how most people know him. I kept the Spanish version of his name here for the sake of simplicity.