SALON

Wednesday, Mar 28, 2012 10:30 PM UTC

Cuban-American in emotional return to family home

By

Topics: From the Wires,

HAVANA (AP) — Cecilia Dalmau’s mother made only one request before her daughter flew to Cuba for Pope Benedict XVI’s visit: “I would love to see pictures from my childhood home.”

When Dalmau and her Cuban-exile father, Sergio, located the address in an upscale part of Havana on Tuesday they found a decaying, two-story building with a priest of Cuba’s Afro-Cuban Yoruba faith living inside — and a wellspring of powerful emotions.

“It looks like it could fall down at any minute,” Dalmau said. “But I can imagine them living here, my grandmother upstairs. The life they once had. This is so surreal.”

Dalmau’s mother fled Cuba in 1959 as a young girl, days after Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionaries marched victoriously into Havana. They never returned. The family remade their life in Miami, and Dalmau grew up hearing little from her mother about the island. Still she yearned to see it.

This week Dalmau, a 29-year-old pediatric dietitian, is one of more than 300 mostly Cuban-Americans on a pilgrimage to Cuba led by the Roman Catholic archbishop of Miami, Tomas Wenski. Like many on the tour, Dalmau came seeking a spiritual experience but was also on a personal journey: to find her ancestral home and a connection to her family’s roots.

For months before Dalmau left for Cuba, her mother, Ana Maria Garcia, wouldn’t even discuss her daughter’s trip. Then, just four days before Dalmau’s departure, her mother acknowledged that she would love to see the photos of her home.

Accompanied by her nervous father, Dalmau climbed into a taxi and set off to see her parents’ old Miramar neighborhood.

“Here it is,” driver Juan Betancourt announced as they pulled up to a shady street lined with a handful of elegant Spanish-style mansions.

A group of young men chatted outside the home, a large, sand-colored villa with a crest of lions on the facade — and a tire repair workshop in the front yard. Worn steps led to a heavy, carved wooden door framed by a grand stone entrance.

Dalmau’s grandfather, Justo Garcia Rayneri, was treasury secretary under Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban strongman who was ousted by Castro’s guerrillas, so she expected a grand house.

But the home has fallen on hard times since her family left.

“It’s really sad to think what it could have been. Then again, maybe I wouldn’t have been here. But I do know now I want to be more involved in helping in any way,” she said.

Dalmau’s emotional return mirrored others taken by Cuban-Americans over the years, especially since President Barack Obama lifted limits on how often those with relatives on the island are allowed to visit. American tourists are still barred.

Dalmau didn’t find any long-lost relatives living inside the house.

The home’s current 41-year-old occupant, Humberto Lopez, soon arrived and Dalmau explained her story again.

He agreed to show her around but was clearly anxious about the unexpected visit. For years, exile families whose homes were confiscated after the revolution sought compensation and hoped to one day reclaim them. Most have long since given up that dream, but the ghost of such threats remain for Cubans on the island.

Inside, a cluster of wooden rocking chairs faced a small television, encircling a floral design in the marble-tile floor. Lopez said the staircase had long been blocked off so another family could live on the second floor, typical of the many buildings that have been subdivided since 1959 to create more, but smaller, homes.

In the corner was a small altar with carved wooden figures. In addition to being a painter, Lopez is a babalawo — a Yoruba priest.

“I help people with what ails them,” he explained, taking out the beaded chains and deer horns he uses as part of the healing ceremony. A quick look at a list of cures showed much of Lopez’s work entails special foods to help his patients.

Dalmau couldn’t help but smile. There are some similarities to her line of work as a dietitian, she noted later.

Lopez took her through the rest of the house, showing off pictures of his children and looking nervously at her father.

“This must be very difficult for him,” Lopez said quietly. “It must be hard coming back here.”

In the taxi again, Dalmau wondered what her mother would make of the photos she snapped. “I don’t know if seeing her home in this way will bring her joy or sadness.”

But in just over a day in Cuba, Dalmau’s own perspective had changed.

“I’d like to learn more about their experience,” she said of the Cubans who stayed on the island and those who emigrated more recently. “And I’d like to maybe bring our two worlds closer together.”

More Laura Wides-munoz.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
229 points230 points | 13 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
216 points217 points | 167 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
196 points197 points | 30 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
79 points80 points | 16 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
52 points53 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations