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MARIO J. TORRES
The Price of the chosen
ones
Part 3
Loss of Identity:
Cuban professionals as doctors, engineers or teachers are forced to go
through an expensive winding road of obstacles to validate their credentials
in the US and be able to "be" what they were in their countries. In the
meantime, one can sadly see a doctor working in a glass factory or a teacher
working in a laundry and both have become two "nobodies" who lost their
identity as well as their values as the price for freedom and a better
standard of living. The need for working permits, proper IDs and residence
cards also keeps foreigners busy and concerned till they are completely
legal in the country. Some struggle and manage to get positions similar to
the ones they had in their country; others older or more tired give up that
idea and forget who they were.
Education:
Another obstacle on the way for these families is the payment of tuition for
sons or daughters going to college which is also new for the immigrants.
Even though grants or loans may be given, the family will have to
economically help the student and for some it is hard to achieve this goal.
Besides, other features of education, instruction, evaluation and
school-related habits and policies are completely different.
Urban distribution:
Urban distribution also contributes to a sensation of being locked or
jailed. In Spanish countries, houses are together and people walk and talk
in the streets, gather at corners and pay each other frequent visits.
Neighbors have close relationships and the sensation of being alone is never
felt. Many elderly parents visiting their sons and daughters in the US have
not been able to put up with the fact of being left alone while everyone is
at work and have decided to return to Cuba.
Foreigners usually create a closed shell within their families with no real
co-workers, friends or relatives, feeling lonely at work and also at home,
only
Health systems:
The system of health insurance is completely new for Cubans. Even before
Castro, doctor visits were paid cash and they were not so expensive. Health
insurance deductions, co-pays and bills for expenses incurred on health
problems signify a burden for these families who at times are forced to have
bad insurance or no insurance at all because they can't afford those high
deductions for their low salaries.
Life insurances are also unknown for Cubans and many do not see their
importance and do not care to have one and its relevance is only seen when
someone they know dies and the insurance pays for the expensive funeral.
In many situations, elderly people on a visit from Cuba have fallen sick
without a health insurance or have even died without a life insurance and
the two situations have created serious crises in families that have been
forced to pay large amounts of money cash either for medical attention or
for funeral expenses.
Excessive weight gain:
One of the seemingly least important obstacles is excessive weight gain due
to change in dietary habits and the consumption of more food than in the
past. Ironically, people who were extremely thin when arriving are now
concerned about being overweight and intensely look for weight reduction
plans.
General:
All this can be compared with traveling to another planet or being born
again. These are factors to which not everyone responds in the same way,
though. Some (mostly the younger ones) can acquire the new life faster and
get used to it quickly but others will not be able to dodge the shock or be
relieved by adaptation, assimilation or acculturation processes and will
develop a sad, deep and dangerous depression.
Most of these contrasts and huge differences, which are unknown or ignored
due to despair when in the island, tend to make the immigrants more aware of
their own values which they had not realized before and help them reveal
their uniqueness, their identity and the reason for their nationality from a
country which is different from the others and at the same time lead them to
understand that the best way to know their homeland is by living out of it
because many believe that they can transpose their "Cuba" with them when
they travel overseas, that they are going to find what they lost, saw, lived
or had before 1959 just by moving 90 miles North or that they can act in a
Cuban-like way in all situations and sadly for many, this is understood too
late.
Besides, due to a action-reaction psychological phenomenon as a response to
Castro's constant criticism to the US, Cubans tend to excessively overrate
their northern neighbor in such an incredible way that it affects them when
they arrive and they see that dollars do not fall from trees!
Also, the tendency of Cubans in exile to brag about what they have by
sending money, videos and photographs of their cars, clothes and houses and
make their progress known to their relatives in Cuba gives a wrong idea to
Cubans on the other side and at times they can even recur to lying to look
like absolute winners, thus leading the ones in the island to think that all
is more than what really is and then also easier to obtain.
Besides, Cuba is in such a state of destruction that any single step to
progress means richness for them so for any Cuban all immigrants are like
millionaires.
Some of these "characters" who may also travel to the island to see their
relatives on 2-week visit plans allowed by the government, show off
everything they have and make a display of power, sometimes hiding the real
and normal obstacles from the continent like high taxes, credit card debts,
insufficient medical insurance or the fact that they had to work in 3 jobs
at a time to afford the trip and the money they took to the island.
All this leads to the idea that everyone who travels to the US becomes
instantly rich, which is understood as a mechanism of defense of people
looking for a hope to live for like finding a piece of wood in the middle of
the sea, and also by the false image of excessive welfare given by the Cuban
community living in the US but when these people do finally manage to be in
the country, they will see their improvement, indeed but they will also have
to put their feet on the ground to remove the exaggeration
Many youngsters who travel to Cuba on such visits, take home a reverse false
idea, and this is really complex, because the dollars they carry, allow them
to have easy sex, easy access to beaches, good food, good hotels and good
life in general and in their lack of maturity they tend to despise the US
when they return and say that the island is "cool" forgetting that they
obtained that money thanks to being in the US and if they had gone to Cuba
without those funds, the island would not have for sure been that cool. All
of these things have happened thanks to the COMMANDER IN CHIEF who has
destroyed our lives.
MARIO J TORRES
FEBRUARY 2004
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