The day had started with lots of excitement. The year 1964 and the Cuban government had announced Camarioca. This was a chance for people to leave Cuba by boats or family abroad come to Cuba to pick them up. Part of my family was in the USA already and sure making efforts to come to Cuba with a boat to get part of the family including my brother, mom and I. Well, it so happens that this lady who lived in our same town started with a long paper getting names of people who wanted to leave in the big ship her family was bringing to Cuba to take people to the USA. My mother upon hearing about what this opportunity was went to see her. The lady showed her hundreds of names on the list and said: “Sorry, but all the space in my family’s big ship is taken, there are no more seats available nor space.” Mom started begging her and crying for my brother if he got to be 15 years of age would go on the military and there was no way we could leave. Mom explained her urgency but the old-time friend was not moved. She just repeated the same statement about mom getting to her too late.
It so happened that no ship from that lady’s family ever came to Cuba and 2 years later mom, 2 aunts, one uncle, my brother and I were on route to Miami in the Freedom Flights in 1966. But the lady came few years after us but had to leave her 15 year old son behind in the military, exactly what mom had told her it would happen to my brother if he did not leave during Camarioca.
I thought about this real story a lot. How people think they have our fate in their hands and destiny has other plans. Sure the story got twisted for us in a positive way, but for this lady, she made a fool out of herself because everyone talked about how her family had no ship, no money, and how she had played with such an important need of so many hundreds- the need to seek freedom or else.
It was a big lesson for me at an early age, I was 10 years old at the time and never forgot about this experience. Many years later my brother was visiting Hialeah Hospital and there was Ramoncito, the lady’s son. He had become a Dr. in Miami and told my brother how his mother had left him in Cuba alone in the house and how he had to spend so many years in the military and how he became a Dr. in Cuba and finally after many years now he could come to the USA.
To be humble, to count one’s blessings, this is what I learned.
Hope you find some meaning in my story.
Thanks for reading!!
Adria Martinez
