Exiles weighing possible return to Cuba

Exiles weighing possible return to Cuba

By ADRIAN SAINZ, Associated Press Thu Aug 3, 9:41 PM ET

MIAMI - Jesus Perez Valiente rafted to Florida's shores three years ago,
seeking freedom, opportunity and an escape from the food rationing and
other hardships that are part of everyday life in communist Cuba.

Unlike older exiles who fled the island when
Fidel Castro took power in the early 1960s, the 25-year-old Valiente
doesn't have idyllic memories of his island homeland and said it would
be difficult for him to return.

"They haven't lived the reality," Perez said of the older exiles. "For
me, there's nothing good over there. I've never liked it."

This week's announcement that an ailing Castro had temporarily ceded
power fueled speculation among exiles that he was near death and that
freedom could one day take hold again in Cuba.

Their plans if that happens — whether to stay or return — had no easy
answers. Some more established exiles may want to stay away because they
have careers, property and family in the United States. More recent
arrivals may want to put bad memories behind them, or return and see
their families again.

But individuals' views of Cuba are often colored by the generational
divide between those exiles who arrived at the start of Castro's rule
and those who came to the United States later.

Juan Clark, a sociology professor at Miami-Dade College and a Bay of
Pigs veteran, has studied Cuban exiles of all ages and backgrounds. He
said older exiles complain that more recent arrivals only came to the
United States for money.

"They say all these people only come because economic conditions are so
bad. I say no," Clark said. "I say, 'They have experienced and suffered
through the system more than you people here."

Castro loyalists believed in a populist revolution to eliminate
corruption in the government of Fulgencio Batista, who had taken over in
a 1952 coup. Men such as Huber Matos wanted change, but he soon had a
falling out with Castro over the direction of the revolution and was
jailed for 20 years before his release in 1979.

Today, at 87, Matos, lives in Miami and recalls the days before Castro
took control.

"Let's not call it paradise. It was a very positive place, and it was a
place of progress," Matos said. "It was a populace that wanted to extend
the reach of the republic and make the public institutions stronger. We
were lucky to live under great minds and illuminated people."

He said he would return even before a democracy was in place: "I have an
obligation to help the transition as a Cuban with a responsibility to
his people."

But Miguel Pineiro, a 38-year-old intensive-care nurse in Cuba,
remembers a different place. He arrived by raft about four months ago.

Pineiro said he made the equivalent of about $15 a month on the island,
with which he had to feed his parents and wife, whom he left behind there.

"I spent my life saving lives, and I had to struggle to eat and
survive," Pineiro said. A month's rations consisted of a pound of
chicken, eight eggs and a pound of fish.

In Cuba, people had to attend government rallies and meetings "or else
they called you a worm," he said. "You can't stand on a street corner
and say that the food that (Castro) gives the people is garbage. If you
do that, they throw you in jail for four years."

Still, Pineiro said he would go anywhere — even back to Cuba — if it
meant he could be reunited with his family.

Orlando Pino, 34, arrived in the Miami area in 2004 on a visa and today
works as a painter. He wants to go back.

"I'll be the first to go back because anyone who has been through what
we've been through would want to return to their homeland," Pino said.
"The Cubans here are the ones who have to bring the message of hope back
to Cuba."

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