Almost 25 years ago, I left Cuba, leaving behind my grandparents, parents, brother and sisters, cousins, my friends, my dog, and everything I had known up to that moment.
I came to the United States in 1994, alone, at the age of 24, carrying only a backpack, 50 dollars, and a lot spinning in my head. Like the vast majority of immigrants, I did not come looking to traffic drugs, commit violence, or get rich quick. I was looking for freedom in the broadest sense of the word: political, economic, cultural.
To enter the USA, I crossed the border from Canada without inspection, “illegally,” on a gloomy and cold November night, battling across frozen mud and half-melting snow. As I walked through a tunnel, a freight train rushed toward me. I had to press myself up against the wall as the train came so close to me that I thought those were my last moments alive.
When I arrived, I was welcomed by members of my extended family I’d never met, all of whom spoke of justice, freedom, civility, and the lack of all these values in Cuba, which they had left behind 35 years before. Their help greatly alleviated my feelings of terror, sadness, anxiety, and ignorance; I am happy, grateful and proud to have a family that helped me so much. Only someone who has lived through emigrating can understand what it means to have a safe roof and food when arriving in a new country.
With many tears, especially at the beginning, and a lot of work and effort, I managed to revalidate my medical degree and begin to establish my career. In 2000, I bought my first property, which contributed tremendously to my belief in the greatness of this country.
In 2002, I became a citizen of the United States. During the naturalization ceremony, I noticed that everyone spoke only of patriotic values, civility and justice. No one mentioned politics or parties! That seemed logical to me; this was a shining democracy! I immediately registered as a voter, choosing without a doubt the Republican party, which I saw as more aligned with my ideas about freedom and self-determination. When I applied for jobs, I anxiously awaited the question of whether I was eligible to work so that I could announce with pride that I was a citizen of the United States. During all those first years, I defended the USA to the sword, arguing with anyone who contested the morality or doubted the wonders of this country.
Twenty years later, I now realize that immigrants tend to blindly admire the country where we arrive. How else could we survive the emotional, family, social, professional cost of what we have done? How else can we justify to ourselves everything we left behind? So, of course, it is better here! Of course, we must believe everything is fairer and we are happier here. If that were not true, our grief would be in vain. An inner voice, conscious or not, searches for a way to make sense of what is almost unbearable. For some, that voice says that any problems must be the fault of other immigrants because obviously the problem is not Americans, with their perfect country and political system.
It pains me that I no longer see the United States as I did before. And it pains me that the same family members who welcomed me after I crossed the border — and who benefited from an immigration policy that granted them a path to remain in the United States — now support a president who aggressively campaigned on and implemented anti-immigrant policies, including separating children from parents and locking them in cages to languish like animals without the love of their families or even basic hygiene products. Several children have already died under their custody because of this abuse, and yet many Cuban Americans continue to support Trump.
54 percent of Cuban Americans voted for Trump in 2016. That means that many Cuban immigrants and their descendants are so determined to equate social justice with communism that they don’t realize that the MAGA mob hates us, our parents, children and siblings.
Those Cuban Americans’ failure to recognize Trump as a threat to democracy is a profound betrayal against this country, our fellow immigrants, and our stated values as a Cuban American community.
The betrayal is primarily against the United States, our adopted country. There is clear evidence that the Trump administration has obstructed justice and undermined democracy. Trump viciously and childishly attacks everyone from political opponents to journalists to members of the military, encourages Nazis and racists, and forges close alliances with Russia, and other dictatorial governments such as North Korea, Turkey, the Philippines.
Many Cubans who have railed for decades against the Cuban government for suppressing free speech now support a president that attacks its press as the “enemy of the people,” just as Stalin did in the former Soviet Union during his campaigns of terror and repression. And critics of the Cuban Revolution who disapproved of how its leaders appointed incompetent, inexperienced people to important positions based on nepotism seem to turn a blind eye to how the Trump administration has done the same and worse. Numerous high-ranking members of the Trump campaign and administration have been charged and found guilty of serious crimes including multiple forms of financial fraud, witness tampering, lying to federal investigators and conspiracy against the United States.
Cuban Americans also complain about the single party system in Cuba. Those same Cubans tend to vote Republican. Now that supporting the GOP presidential nominee requires disregarding facts, ignoring fundamental principles of democracy, justice and law, and endorsing a disgraceful swamp of hate and xenophobia, Cuban Americans who support Trump are showing the same fanatical cult-like devotion to a party that they so criticize in devotees of the Cuban Revolution. What’s the point of a multi-party system if some people will not look objectively at what’s happening and instead only vote for their chosen tribe?
The Cuban betrayal is also against other immigrants seeking the same improvements to their lives that we sought, fleeing from instability and political abuse, collapsing economies, and social violence. Immigrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, with their instability and political abuses; from Honduras, El Salvador with crushing poverty and violence; and many others. It is a betrayal against other parents who are sending their children to “save themselves” in the USA, as Cubans did 50 years ago with the Peter Pan program.
And the last betrayal, perhaps the most painful for me, is the personal betrayal of the desires and ideals that motivated immigrants like me to leave behind our homeland, families, friends, professions, everything we knew.
I would give up every one of my possessions to have been at my grandmother’s side when during her last dying moments, in our family home in Cuba, she mentioned my name and I was not there with her, as she was with me at the beginning of my life. My belief in the ideals of American freedom and justice conspired against me being with her.
For years, I could tell myself that I had made a necessary sacrifice to live in a free and just nation where everyone has opportunity. Now, I live in grief — not only over the flaws in this country but over my disillusionment with my own family and community who are willing to support a corrupt, hateful, incompetent man who represents everything I thought we stood against.
I ask my fellow Cuban Americans, please, remember who you are and do not vote for Trump.
