Glimmer of Cuban reconciliation seen in activist’s trip
MIAMI — For 50 years, Felice Gorordo’s grandmother and great-uncle did not speak. She fled Cuba after the 1959 communist revolution and never looked back. Her brother fought with the revolutionaries and remained on the island.
Today, they not only communicate but also have reunited during trips to Miami.
“It’s as if, I don’t want to say the last 50 years never happened, because obviously there’s still pain there,” said Gorordo, of Roots of Hope, a group he co-founded that connects young Cubans in the U.S. and on the island. “But we’ve been able to move past that pain and find what still brings us together.”
There have been no truth and justice commissions. No transition to democracy after more than five decades of communist rule. And the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba remains firmly in place. Yet in small but important ways, reconciliation has already started to occur among Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits.
That was firmly on display when Cuba’s most wellknown dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, visited Miami last week. She called on Cubans on the island and in the diaspora to be one community again.
“I like the metaphor of the mirror,” she said at an event Wednesday. “It’s as if the Cuba inside the island and outside were approaching and watching one another.
“We look at each other and think it is someone else, but when we get close we see it is our own reflection on the other side. We are the same.”
Cuban-Americans from generations new and old responded with an enthusiastic applause.
In the not-too-distant past, talk about reconciliation and dialogue were taboo subjects in the Cuban-American community. If anyone traveled to Cuba to visit family on the island, they did so quietly, and against the wishes of many friends and family. Those feelings have not entirely disappeared, but they have been tempered.
Sanchez has been criticized for her stance against the U.S. embargo, which many Cuban-Americans still support. Yet when she visited Washington, Sanchez received a warm welcome from Cuban-American politicians like Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who strongly supports the embargo.
“She has accomplished what very few other Cubans have been able to accomplish,” said Carlos Saladrigas, co-chairman of the Cuba Study Group, a nonprofit organization that advocates for political and economic change on the island.
“She really began to build a huge bridge between Miami and Havana.”