Isabel: Memoir of an Immigrant Cuban Girl.

By Isabel Mesa-Collins Ed. D.

Isabel, a Cuban American immigrant, has contemplated writing about her familys ordeal while living in Communist Cuba under the Castro regime. It is only after she suffers a sudden heart attack at the age of fifty-five that she realizes she needs to share her story with others who have had similar experiences.

As a young girl growing up during turbulent times in her native Cuba, Isabel takes the reader through key events that changed her life and the anguish of persecution in her own country.

Later, as an immigrant in the United States in the late sixties, Isabel experiences what it is to leave her beloved country while learning to acclimate to a new culture and learning a second language. In doing so, she experiences bullying, racism, conflict, and hopelessness.

Fifty years after her arrival to the United States, the author looks back at her life thats filled with challenges as well as accomplishments. She reflects about her roles as mother, wife, daughter, and her thirty-two-year career as an educator.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532046193

Isabel Mesa-Collins Ed. D.

Isabel Mesa-Collins, Ed.D. is a Cuban-American educator. She has dedicated her career to teaching bilingual students in Chicagos most marginalized communities. Having taught for twelve years in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, Dr. Mesa-Collins became an Assistant Principal of an elementary school in the Hermosa Park community. She then was elected principal of an elementary school in the Bucktown neighborhood from 1995-2007. She was then selected to lead as a Chief of Schools, overseeing 30-40 elementary schools in the Southeast and Northwestside until 2012 when she retired.

Book preview

Isabel

Memoir of an Immigrant

Cuban Girl.

Isabel Mesa-Collins, Ed. D.

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ISABEL MEMOIR OF AN IMMIGRANT CUBAN GIRL.

Copyright © 2018 Isabel Mesa-Collins, Ed. D..

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-4618-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4619-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018903670

iUniverse rev. date: 04/06/2018

Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1 Unfinished Business

CHAPTER 2 Fear

CHAPTER 3 Shifted landlords

CHAPTER 4 The Crisis

CHAPTER 5 1967

CHAPTER 6 A New Chapter

CHAPTER 7 Starting Over

INTRODUCTION

It has been fifty-one years since my family and I left Cuba. We came to the United States in search of freedom and liberty, just like millions of other immigrants whose courage and resolve fueled our motivation to persevere.

Leaving our beautiful island was a painful experience for my family. For me, it was a traumatic experience as a teenager to be uprooted from home and thrown into a foreign land where I did not speak the language. But, we had no choice! If we had stayed there, the Cuban government would have incarcerated my father, just because he refused to adhere to the Communist ideology.

Many years have passed since that bittersweet day in May of 1967 when we left our country, knowing we would never return and we would never see our loved ones again.

Now, having retired after thirty-four years of teaching, leading schools and urban school districts, I have time to reflect, to think and to ponder about the past. I write this memoir in order to share it with others who had similar experiences, as well as for others who were born in this great country. For, no matter how difficult your situation may seem, this country offers something millions of people seek: Freedom.

I began writing this memoir in 2015 when, then president Barak H. Obama, visited Cuba and shook hands with President Raul Castro. There, President Obama dined at a local family-owned restaurant, also called Paladar, and sat next to Castro while watching a baseball game between the Tampa Rays and a Havana baseball team.

Watching this historic event unfold on television propelled me to write this memoir where I share some very personal stories of my past; a past I did not want to remember for so many years. I wanted to show those who are not familiar with the Castro regime a different side to what most people see when they visit Cuba, a side that struggles, that hurts, that longs for what we as Americans call basic standard of living.

We have come a long way since 1959 when Fidel Castro seized Havana, while his brother Raul slayed hundreds of captured soldiers from the Batista regime. Who would have imagined that fifty years later Raul Castro could have authorized normalizing relations between the two countries?

Cubans in exile manifested their feelings about this momentous transition in many distinctive ways. The majority of Cubans, those that came in the early 60’s, remain stoutly against lifting the embargo, or blockade as the communists refer to it, while most middle aged-Cubans and their children, those that came in the late sixties and seventies, would like to see the embargo lifted. There are also the Cubans in South Florida who, for some reason, their political belief remained deeply-rooted into believing that U.S. should never concede to the Communist neighbors ninety miles south of our shores. It’s a predicament! While I cannot predict the future, I do know that history has taught us, the closer we get to our adversaries; the more we can influence change.

What we do know is that Cuba has been under a totalitarian government since 1959. There, common citizens have no rights and those in power have total control. There is no freedom of speech as we know it in United States for in Cuba, those who dare challenge the government, find themselves ostracized from their communities, and in most cases incarcerated or even dead. That is the reason why my father left Cuba as millions have done over the last 58 years and why, after 51 years of living in exile, I want to write my personal story as I feel there are millions of immigrants just like me, who still miss their country, their roots, their home.

As a naturalized American citizen, I will always consider myself Cuban. However, I am compelled to write about my own personal experience growing in my native land under an oppressive regime that made my family feel like undesirable citizens. I write about our struggles as we prepared to leave our country and the challenges we faced coming to America.

While most autobiographies are written in chronological order, this memoir presents juxtaposed stories that intertwine life events with political incidents in Cuba and later in United States.

I don’t profess to be a writer. I am a simple educator whose experiences may be worth sharing with others who might be feeling loss and helpless, confused and bewildered, bullied and tormented.

I write as I reminisce about my past while in the hospital, after suffering a sudden heart attack during a mother-daughter vacation in southern Florida. Incidents are presented in a mélange form, similarly to when we dream about events that interweave throughout six decades. I do so by taking the reader through a turbulent journey of dreams that begin during my formative years in Cuba, to the mid-sixties when my family and I came to United States and throughout decades filled with hopes and dreams, hardships and tribulations, successes and triumphs.

These events are true personal accounts of events that stayed buried in my sub conscious for over fifty years, veiled under my deepest thoughts about my past; a past I did not want to re-visit as it was too painful to recall, but one that transformed my life.

Now that my golden years are approaching, I want to share my story with others in the hopes that the immigrant experience becomes part of the American discourse.

Having taught thousands of immigrant children over the last thirty-four years, it is my honest belief that the immigrant experience in the United States can no longer be a sporadic conversation highlighted on the weekend talk shows. This experience must be an on-going narrative for everyone to bring to the surface, for elected officials to defend and support.

There are so many immigrants who were less fortunate than I. Those who lost their lives in the sea during their journey to America, in search of freedom and those who left their loved-ones, to come to a foreign land where no one spoke their language, alone and penniless. To those brave people I dedicate this memoir.

For my family:

Edward, Edward Jr., Ana and mami Ena.

CHAPTER 1

Unfinished Business

The emergency room was chaotic, the way you would expect it to be. Having had the experience of visiting my students, friends and relatives who were rushed to the Emergency Room, I knew how to tactfully deal with concerned family members. I knew how to stay calm while helping parents to remain positive while their children were in pain. However, this time was different. This time, I was being rushed down a long and sterile hallway while two nurses kept taking my vital signs. They seemed to be in a hurry to get me wherever I was supposed to go.

During my rushed journey through the corridor I saw groups of families sitting, waiting for their loved-ones who had been rushed there just like I was. Their faces told a story. Some were crying, others were comforting their mother, father, sister or brother. It was all happening so fast that I could not see clearly.

I felt sweaty and weak. I had never felt this way! All my life, I had always been in control; the one in charge of taking care of others, the one to console those in pain. However, this time I was the one hurting. While my training as a teacher taught me to be strong, tough and firm during difficult situations, this time I felt weak, hopeless and defenseless.

I recall feeling the same sense of despair when my father was rushed to the hospital in 2007. My mother and I ran down a similar hallway to meet the doctor after my dad had been rushed to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night. As soon as the doctor greeted us we knew my father had passed. I could not believe that my father, the man I thought was indestructible, as he had endured so many challenges in his life, was now gone. I hugged my mom as we both cried, knowing that he was never going to be our rock, our support.

My mind wondered and suddenly, I realized this familiar feeling of despair was real as I had been rushed to the closest hospital in Palm Beach, Florida where my mom and I were enjoying a mother-daughter vacation. The ambulance did not travel far as the hospital was near the resort where we had arrived the night before. After the typical triage procedures, the EMTs took me in the ambulance where my mother had been waiting impatiently. She held my hand throughout the short trip while whispering prayers that reminded me of my maternal grandmother who always prayed during troubled times.

I was wheeled into the Emergency Room rather fast. The nurse came in the triage room several times to do what nurses do. I was more concerned about how my elderly mother was feeling than my own health. However, my mother seemed in control, but I knew underneath that hard-core Cuban toughness was a mother agonizing about her daughter’s diagnosis.

Shortly after the nurse completed triage, I looked at mom and said,

Te quiero or I love you, and she responded,

To tambien (me too).

Then, she sat down to pray for me as I suddenly went into a horrible heave and passed out. Amid my sudden collapse I recall hearing mom scream,

Help! help my daughter!

As the nurse, who had been sitting right outside my room, ran to assist. I don’t recall what happened next but when I came through, I counted more than six nurses and a couple of doctors hovering over me. One of them said,

We are taking you to the Cardiac unit.

Cardiac unit! Why? I quietly wondered in despair. Another nurse said to her colleague,

I thought the doctor said it wasn’t Cardiac.

Those words didn’t seem to make sense to me. Did I just have a heart attack? -I thought to myself, I never smoked, I don’t drink, I’m in good physical shape…oh wait, is it my stress level? Why is this happening to me now? We are supposed to be on a mother-daughter vacation in Southern Florida!

The last couple of years had been quite stressful and 2009 was just as taxing. My husband lost his job after working as a Vice President of Sales at a national company in the Chicago land area after working for several years and developing products that made the owner a very rich man. Then, as our city schools were experiencing a see-saw of new superintendents every couple of years, my position, and that of over twenty-four other colleagues who were area school officers, was being reorganized. To be clear, reorganized in the Chicago lingo means closed! Imagine that, at the age of fifty-four my husband loses his job and my career is in jeopardy after three decades of service!

My father’s passing two years prior had taken a toll on all of us. My mother, having been at my father’s side for fifty-six years, was left numb after his death. Although she was a strong woman, mom wanted to deal with his death with the utmost dignity and composure. However, we knew she missed him terribly, but she remained strong; always looking out for us.

Losing my father was an unexpected and tragic experience for all of us as my dad was doing well, despite being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s two years before his passing.

My father died as I was being considered a candidate for a significant promotion from school principal to Area Instruction Officer which required me to oversee several elementary schools in the South Side of Chicago.