Cubaverdad

New book preserves stories of Cuban exodusBy OLGA CONNOREl Nuevo Herald

Miami music mogul Emilio Estefan has always carried his love of Cuba on his sleeve. From the conga beat he made famous with his wife Gloria to his restaurant fare, there's no doubt he's a proud product of his homeland.

Like nearly two million others, he was forced from his homeland by Fidel Castro's rise to power and eventually came to live among Miami's Cuban exile community, where, as we know, he found fame and fortune.

Now, he wants to ensure the history of other Cubans like him is captured for posterity — the beginnings of an Ellis Island-style chronicle.

Going on sale today is Estefan's personal pet project, a massive, bilingual coffee table book. Through stories, photographs and lists of names, the book documents the different generations of Cubans who escaped through three famed exoduses — Operation Pedro Pan, the Freedom Flights and Mariel.

The Exile Experience: Journey to Freedom fittingly debuts at Christmas – a melancholy time for older exiles who recall Castro took power 51 years ago this month. The book can be purchased at six CVS stores in Miami-Dade or ordered at www. MiamiHerald.com/exile.

The book is the brainchild of Estefan, who contributed to its creation through his Crescent Moon Publications and Emilio Estefan Enterprises. Guiding the project was HCP/Aboard Publishing, an affiliate of the Miami Herald Media Co.

It's Estefan's second book this year. His The Rhythm of Success: How an Immigrant Produced His Own American Dream is still in stores.

“For a long time, five years more or less, I've been thinking, `What can I do for the world to understand what happened to Cubans?' '' said Estefan, who wrote the foreword and took part in deciding which authors would contribute.

“There are many people who are not Cuban and they ask, `What is your pain and why did you leave Cuba?' You can never tell the entire truth of what happened in one sitting — the separation, the dead, the lack of freedom for so many years, the prisoners, the Mariel boatlift, the Freedom Tower, so many things that have transpired in 50 years.''

He hopes this book will help the world understand.

The book tells the story of the various waves of exiles who arrived on these shores. It is a collaboration of well-known Cuban writers: Carlos Eire, Carlos Alberto Montaner, Mirta Ojito and poet Carlos Pintado. But Estefan also sought personal testimonials of successful people from different generations of exiles, like the Mas Canosa family, television personality Cristina Saralegui, medical entrepenuer Benjamin Leon Jr., and Perry Ellis International chairman and CEO George Feldenkreis.

“It has been an exile (community) that has fought a lot,'' said Estefan, who fled Cuba as a teen with his father. “They have had to work hard, to defend themselves against everything, to separate from their families, their properties, even their own personalities, because they have had to start all over again in a totally new country.''

The Exile Experience: Journey to Freedom is published in three separate editions — each tailor-made for those who arrived through Operation Pedro Pan, the Freedom Flights and the Mariel boatlift. Each edition features the names of every Cuban who arrived in one of the three exoduses, more than 400,000 names between the three editions.

Garry Duell, publisher of HCP/Aboard, guided the project with Estefan and the book's sponsors. He says the names in the back of each edition give Journey to Freedom an emotional impact.

“If you came in the Freedom Flights, as a member of the Pedro Pan group or during the Mariel boat lift, you can find yourself in one of the three volumes.'' The books serve as proof and verification of your arrival into exile, he said.

For months, Duell's staff worked to weave together the work of Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald reporters and photographers and other writers. It took weeks to figure out how to fit the exile names in the book from existing Miami Herald exile databases.

The first chapter was written by Montaner, whose life is as dramatic as that of any exiled Cuban. He was a political prisoner at the age of 17, but escaped from prison and took refuge at a foreign embassy in Havana. He arrived in Miami in September 1961 with hundreds of other Cubans.

In his chapter, “The Cuban Revolution: Why and How,'' Montaner presents the historic background that produced this dramatic change in the island. “My assignment was to explain why hundreds of thousands of Cubans ended up in Florida,'' Montaner said. “Until 1959, Cuba was at the receiving end of immigrants, there were more Americans living in Cuba than Cubans in the U.S.'' Then Castro came to power.

The assignment to explain the exodus of 14,000 children during Operation Pedro Pan fell upon Carlos Eire, who was one of the children who came in that program sponsored by the Catholic Church and the U.S. government.

Several successful people, such as Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado, musician Willy Chirino, Miami Dade College President Eduardo Padrón, and former senator Mel Martínez were Pedro Pan children, whose exemplary lives are captured.'

The following exodus was the Freedom Flights, where 260,000 Cubans arrived on two daily flights from Varadero to Miami from 1965 to 1973. The chapter is written by Miami Herald reporter Luisa Yanez, who as a child was among those exiles.

Based on her own experience and journalistic research, Mirta Ojito summarizes the Mariel experience in the chapter “Mariel, An Epic Exodus.'' She explains one of South Florida's most famous and impactful immigrant waves and how her family came to join its 125,000 participants.

Poet Carlos Pintado, was living in Havana during the 1994 balsero crisis – the last major exodus from Cuba to Miami — uses poetic language to narrate the chapter “Rafters: Lost Between Two Destinations.''

Born in 1974, Pintado considered leaving Cuba on a raft, but changed his mind after realizing that the people crafting those small boats were neither sailors nor boat builders. “I had doubts and thought the ocean was the only way out. But one of the things that frightened me was that the boat builders were dancers, actors, writers.'' He had already written books he would later publish in Miami, where he arrived in 1997 with his father, who came as a political refugee.

The current editions of The Exile Experience do not list the names of rafters, or those who came in the early days of the revolution, or via third countries. Some of those will be chronicled in later editions.

Still, the book is a rich trove of historic photographs from The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald and private collections.

There is also a tribute to the Freedom Tower, or El Refugio as Cubans called their processing center, this community's Ellis Island. Today, the iconic 1925 building is owned by Miami Dade College, where the book was launched last Tuesday with a party for dignitaries and contributors.

“The Freedom Tower means a lot to me,'' Estefan said. “I stood in line there to get food with my aunt. … my father lived in Puerto Rico and my mother remained in Cuba with my brother. Once they gave me a voucher to have surgery at Variety Children's Hospital, and when the operation was over my parents were not by my side. There are many things we have lived in our own flesh.''

When the gala for the college's 50th anniversary was held in the Freedom Tower earlier this month, Estefan sat at the presidential table.

“That's what my career and this book are all about. We have to explain it to the world. I went there for food and now I was sitting at the presidential table,'' he said.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/18/v-fullstory/1980017/new-book-preserves-stories-of.html