Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in The Miami Herald
July 19, 2008

Santiago de Cuba’s Archbishop Emeritus Pedro Meurice Estiu called it ”an anthropological lesion,” the fear and helplessness that keeps most Cubans on the island paralyzed. If I may add to Meurice’s signal insight, that lesion also bears a deep-seated anger — manifest or latent — that haunts Cubans everywhere.

There’s nothing wrong with anger, particularly if justified as it is in the Cuban case. If anger turns to hatred, however, that is a problem. Mind you, I’m not singling out anyone or any specific group on either side of the Florida Straits. Rather, I’m saying that many among us — here and there — are thus afflicted, which makes it a problem for all.

Kay Abella’s book — Fighting Castro: A Love Story — renders tribute to Lino Fernández and Emilita Luzárraga de Fernández. In the late 1950s, they fell in love, got married and started a family. The cause of a free and democratic Cuba — whether against Fulgencio Batista or Fidel Castro — also bound Lino and Emilita together. So much so that, after Lino’s arrest in 1961 and before she could see him, Emilita asked her parents to take their three children into the safety of exile just so she could be there for him. In 1979, Lino and Emilita finally reunited with their children in Miami.

There are, of course, many other Cuban stories of courage and grace. None, however, touches me so personally.

I met Emilita in 1975 at my cousin’s in Havana. For Lino, the worst of his imprisonment was over except he still wasn’t free. I was young and a supporter of the revolution and, hence, ill-equipped to appreciate the Fernández’s ordeal or Emilita’s generosity in accepting me for who I was then. In 1978, I met Lino — free at last — and spent an afternoon in Havana with him, Emilita and my cousin. I well remember the expression on their faces, even if many years would pass before I could identify it as inner peace.

”We had to choose between living the trauma and living our lives,” Lino and Emilita said to me a while back. We were then spending many a Saturday afternoon talking about Cuba’s past and future. Lino had accepted my invitation to join the task force, Memory, Truth and Justice, which was grappling with the question of what a democratic Cuba should do about past human-rights abuses. In 2003, we issued the report, Cuban National Reconciliation (http://memoria.fiu.edu).

Reasons there are aplenty for the wounds and pain Cubans everywhere have accumulated over decades. Still, rancor and vengeance cannot set the pace for our national reunion. Only a Cuba that banishes political violence, bolsters democratic institutions and protects civil liberties can lead us to reconciliation. Along the way, individual Cubans across the Florida Straits have already found the strength to make peace with their lives. Lino and Emilita are extraordinary cases in point.

Cuba must be made whole again. Restoring silenced memories, unveiling truths and seeking justice — which wouldn’t necessarily mean trials — are imperative. In 1963, when Cuba was again gripped by civil war, Marcelina Chacón said: ”Two of my sons died fighting for Cuba’s freedom: one with one idea, the other with another.” She and her husband, José Tartabull, put photos of their boys in a common frame, draped it with the Cuban flag and hung it at the entrance of their hut in the Escambray Mountains. As a nation, will Cuba be able to follow the example of Marcelina and José?

Unintended consequences aren’t always bad. When I put together the task force on Memory, Truth and Justice, I knew I was stepping on sensitive ground. What I didn’t realize was that some of it was within me. Though I had long left behind the support I once held for the revolution, I hadn’t, it seemed, fully grasped its human costs. At last doing so proved liberating. Lino and Emilita Fernández have been a quiet presence in my life all along. Finally identifying the look in their eyes long stored in my memory as inner peace was no small marker on the road to my own.