It’s been six weeks since protesters took to the streets in Cuba to condemn the island nation's Communist leadership and demand change. For decades, much of the focus from the international community has been on Fidel and Raul Castro — and now Miguel Diaz Canal.
New York Times reporter and author Anthony DePalma is telling a different story. His wife is Cuban and he’s spent decades reporting about life on the communist island.
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After Fidel Castro died, DePalma looked for stories of everyday Cubans who are trying to make life work with very little. His latest book, "The Cubans, Ordinary Lives in Extraordinary Times," looks at the lives of a handful of Cubans who decided to stay, and embrace the revolution.
"The Cubans" was the August title for the Sundial Book Club, you can join the club via our Facebook page.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation with Anthony earlier this month, which has been edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: One of the fascinating things about this book is, you don't focus on Castro and the revolution and the policy and the politics. Those things are there, but it's about the stories of individuals and how those things may play in the lives of individuals. This is about people their life stories. When you started writing this, did you know how you were going to approach this project?
DEPALMA: It was my goal very much to write a book that didn't mention Fidel Castro except in passing, which I thought would really set it aside. Now look, I did the obituary for Fidel. I wrote a previous book called "The Man Who Invented Fidel." I know Fidel. Everybody's heard from him. Enough of that.
There wasn't anything I could say that was going to be a surprise or revealing to anyone. But having visited so many times and reported there and also been there to be with family, I knew that the reality of their lives really hadn't come across to anyone. They certainly don't have much of a voice there — all the state-owned media. They may do an interview with a man on the street.
I always laugh because whatever man it is that they pick in whatever part of the country, it turns out that he's always a very solid supporter of the regime. They never have anyone on the street who might say, you know what, this isn't working. I know that they're not heard down there, the ordinary people, and they're very rarely heard in the United States at all.
The predominant voice is the one that you have down there in South Florida, and they have their legitimate concerns. But we sort of know what their concerns are and we know what their point of view is. But we don't know what it's like to live through this revolution that never seems to end. We don't know what it's like to be stuck there, like if you can't get out.
How do you live if you can't get out, if you don't agree with the regime, but you also can't leave because you have a relative who's sick? You have a kid who can't get out. What do you do? How do you keep your sanity? How do you keep your sanity if you once believed in the revolution and the promise that you thought it held and you see what it's become. They're basically scrounging to get ahead, meaning from today to tomorrow on very little and always relying on their adaptability and their willingness to put up with a whole lot.
Let's talk about these characters. I mean, you're a U.S. journalist, you know, and you're coming in there. And I wondered how open were they to sharing their stories with you — or did it take time?
Well, I'm glad you asked that. As a fellow journalist, you understand how difficult that process can be, right? As a journalist, you land somewhere. You've got to become intimate with these people in a very short time. It's an accelerated process of intimacy. I had a couple of advantages. One, I'd been to Cuba before. Two, I speak Spanish. And most importantly, I was able to let them know at the beginning that I had married into the Cuban family. And although any of your listeners who might see me would know instantly that I'm not Cuban, that little fact, that little connection, linkage to them really made a huge difference.
Now, that said, not everyone agreed to talk to me. There were some who were very suspicious. There were some members, of even the families that I focused on after selecting them, who never believed that I was anything other than a CIA plant. By and large, the principal individuals in the book Caridad, Lili, Maria del Carmen, Arturo and Jorge Garcia, none of these people were known to me at all. So that first day when I landed, I had nothing other than Caridad's name.
Lili is my favorite character. This is a little bit tragic in that she’s a pro revolutionary, she heads a group called the neighborhood watchdog committee. That’s just somebody who is watching her neighbors, right?
Not just watching because every neighborhood has a snoop. Because she’s watching and reporting to the authorities who’s in line and who’s out of line. And that dividing line of where you are is not determined by where you are, is not determined by any set of rules or laws. It depends on what the regime is willing to tolerate.
She has this experience with the party, that kind of blows back up in her face. And now she’s forced to make a choice. But it seems like she never loses support for the party.
A couple of years ago, her father who was living in Santiago, had developed dementia and had progressed to the point where he could no longer live in Santiago with the hired help of the neighbor. He was like many people with dementia, losing his memory, forgetting if he ate or not, forgetting where he was, so he’d get lost. So Lili and her current husband Carlos agreed it only made sense to bring him up from Santiago and live with them.
The father moved in and as his condition worsened, it became more difficult for them to all live together. He became incontinent and more forgetful, wandering around sometimes without clothing on. She went to the state that she had supported for her entire life for assistance. And the response to her, was he’s your father, so you have to take care of him.
