Staying put

Staying put

A growing number of Cubans in South Florida say reclaiming homes lost
during the revolution is no longer realistic

By Doreen Hemlock
Havana Bureau
Posted November 5 2006

GUINES, Cuba · The Spanish-style home that Mercedes Garcia left in 1961
for South Florida has lost its grandeur. The paint is peeling off the
tall columns on the veranda. A bare bulb hangs in the crumbling foyer.
And three pigs live corralled in the inner courtyard.

Erli Pedroso, 28, is among the three extended families that share the
decaying residence in this town in Havana province. The security guard
has heard Cuban officials repeatedly warn that the island's former
residents may reclaim their homes one day, but he has no plans to move.

"Where would we live?" Pedroso said. "Let them stay in the United
States, and we'll stay here."

With Fidel Castro, Cuba's 80-year-old leader, recovering from surgery
and his brother, Raul, temporarily in charge, questions have intensified
about ownership claims on homes the island government confiscated after
the revolution.

While Cuban officials insist that former owners will return to evict
residents, a growing number of Cubans in South Florida believe residents
should stay in their homes, surveys show. Many, including Garcia of
Royal Palm Beach, believe a property grab would complicate efforts for
political reform in post-Castro Cuba.

"My parents lost everything, but that's the past," said Garcia, 61. "We
don't want the homes back. We want freedom for Cuba."

As new generations of Cubans move to Florida motivated more by economics
than politics, they're less likely to support calls to dislodge
residents still suffering economically under communism. Older émigrés
who may have dreamed of recouping their former homes are dying off or
have built new lives in Florida, said Fernand Amandi, executive vice
president at Coral Gables-based researcher Bendixen & Associates.

"You hear a lot of propaganda coming out of Cuba that people in South
Florida are going to come back and take away their homes," Amandi said.

"In the first 15 to 20 years after Castro took power, that was a real
possibility. But today, a lot of folks have set roots in South Florida,
and their home and roots are now in the United States."

Pedro Freyre, a Miami attorney who was born in Cuba, has no illusions of
recovering his family's four-house compound in Miramar, an upscale
Havana neighborhood where many embassies and government offices are
located. The leafy complex his grandfather built now houses Cuba's
Institute for Research into Citrus and Fruit Trees. Large clay jars rest
on the front lawn. An office for Fidel's brother, Ramon, a farming
specialist, was built in the back garden, an employee said.

"Emotionally, would I like my beautiful house back? Of course. It's
where all my childhood memories are," said Freyre. "But it's not my life
ambition to get it back."

Still, Freyre, 57, said he seeks justice and vindication for his
parents. Like many Cuban-Americans, he would like an "orderly process"
to receive some form of compensation, perhaps a tax credit to build a
new home on the island.

"Cuba is a country that is bankrupt with a massive housing shortage," he
said. "You have to balance equities."

Even the U.S. government is changing its position on former Cuban
citizens recouping their erstwhile homes.

Washington now draws a clear distinction between residential claims from
those who were Cuban citizens at the time they lost their property and
all other claims. Claims from Cuban citizens would be handled within
Cuba, U.S. officials recommend.

In its latest report on a future Cuba, the Bush administration suggested
a transition government in Havana "reassure the Cuban people that they
will be secure in their homes ... and not subject to arbitrary expulsion."

The Cuban government, however, remains wary of Washington's newfound
flexibility.

Vice Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said the U.S. Helms-Burton law of
1996 lumps together all property claims. U.S. laws carry more weight
than the "tricky" language in the new report, Rodriguez said.

"We're not going to let people come back and get their houses, even if
they come with support from U.S. naval forces," Rodriguez said.

Jose "Pepe" Lopez, 58, who heads the Latin Chamber of Commerce of
Broward County, recalls his own eviction with anguish. Lopez's father
was a police captain in Havana, when Cuba's revolution triumphed. The
new government quickly seized his family home. His father was sent to
jail, and Lopez, his mother and siblings moved in with a grandmother in
her small apartment.

"They can't compensate me. How can they make up the 10 years that my dad
was in prison and I was raised without a father?" asked Lopez. "It's
impossible."

Teo Babun, who lives in Miami, came from a family in eastern Cuba that
had businesses in shipping, mining, logging and sawmills, as well as
farms and homes in Santiago.

During a visit to Cuba in 2002, Babun found his grandmother's house
converted into a center for the Arab-Cuban Solidarity Association. His
former home housed three families, all retired Cuban Army veterans
living on scant pensions. One family lived upstairs, another downstairs
and a third in an area the Babuns called the "doll house," a recreation
room behind the houses where the children had practiced piano, he said.

Babun arrived at his former home with gifts, only to find the residents
initially wary.

But the conversation soon flowed, and they offered him lemonade and
coffee, and showed him vegetables they'd planted in the garden. Babun
said he appreciated the group sharing the little they had, but realized
how much better off he was living in the United States.

"Once the government changes in Cuba, we'll start thinking more about
the people [in our former homes] and how they have nothing," the
58-year-old consultant said. "If anything, those people will become
humanitarian projects for us, not someone we want to kick out."

Doreen Hemlock can be reached at dhemlock@sun-sentinel.com.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-c.pre.1a1nov05,0,4691125.story?coll=sfla-news-cuba