November 20, 2024 • 22 mins
After taking you through the Elián González story, we’re sharing some reporting and interview content that didn’t make it into our narrative series.
This week, Peniley and producer, Tasha Sandoval, sit down to reflect on their experiences reporting on this project, particularly through their perspectives as Cubans: Peniley, a Cuban who grew up in Cuba, and Tasha, a second-generation Cuban-American.
During the Elian saga, the Cuban American community in Miami gained a negative reputation as “crazy,” something that came up in several interviews. We hear from writer Vanessa Garcia and former Executive Director of the Cuban American National foundation, Joe Garcia, to reflect on how this perception of “Crazy Cubans” and that the community lost the narrative, may have reverberations to this day.
This season's cover art by Ranfis Suárez Ramos.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
So I was at Partner College. Eleian happened in November,
right Thanksgiving. Then there's winter break, and when I went
back to New York, there's a massive uproar of more
of these crazy Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Vanessa Garcia was born and raised in Miami. She grew
up hearing stories about her Cuban family, including family members
who were imprisoned by the dictatorship in Cuba Aspresos Politico's
political prisoners. One of her grandfathers, she tells us, fled three.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Dictatorships, Franco Hitler and then Fidel.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
This family history has deeply marked her, and so has
her upbringing as a Miami Cuban, because Miami is unique.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's another world to the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The most Cuban place in the United States, that's for sure.
She was used to the dominance of Spanish, of given
culture and politics and everything that came with it until
she went away to college in New York, and the
alien story magnified the differences.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
When I laned in New York City, when I land
on campus, essentially, I very vividly remember going into an
office hoer with one of my favorite professors and she
looking at me and saying, you're so smart and your
Cuban American, you please explain these crazy Cubans to me.
I was like, Oh, this is a very different perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Crazy cue ones. Vanessa was confronted with a narrative about
her community that was new and unexpected, and she wasn't
the only one. There was a sense that Elian changed
how we were seen and maybe even how some of
us saw else. I am Pennileetera Metis and this is
(02:06):
a special bonus episode of Chess, Peace, Deli and Gonzalez Story,
a production of Utuda Studios in partnership with Iheart's Michael
Tuda podcast network. When we were reporting for this podcast,
(02:34):
we heard this term of the crazy Cubans come up,
and it made us curious to explore the idea more.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Were these crazy people that don't want the kid to
go home?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Who are these crazy Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
On this episode, we're going to unpack this perception about
Miami Cubans and the idea that the Cuban American community
lost control of the narrative during the eliansaga. And I'm
not going to dig into this alone. I'm here with
my back a little loving producer Tasha Sandol, who you
know from the series from episode seven when we met
(03:08):
with her adorable a Wili Daladi. Hi, Tasha, Hi, Penny.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I'm excited to be here and excited to get to
air some of this interview tape that we really enjoyed
and really want to share with our listeners, but that
we didn't get a chance to include in our earlier episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Me too, I'm so happy to be recording this with you.
I'm just so sad that we don't have patelitos today.
But before we hear more from these interviews, I want
to take some time to really talk about why we
are focusing on this topic.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, I agree, Penny. I think for me, I've just
been really interested in the fact that there was this
kind of us against them dynamic that seemed to be
growing between Miami Cubans and the rest of the country.
So some people outside the South Florida context didn't seem
to understand the Cuban American context, and I think that
that lack of understanding seemed to lead to judgment and resentment.
(04:00):
They just didn't understand what the fuss was all about.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, I think it was like several things happening at
the same time. On one hand, you had these very
strong feelings of anger and resentment from Cubans in Miami,
and something else that was happening was about the way
that Miami relatives were presented in the media because they
were on the news all the time.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Yeah, I think I started questioning how Cuban Americans were
perceived from the outside only when I first left Florida,
so much like Vanessa, I was surprised, but it didn't
happen to me when I went away to college. It
actually happened right after college, when I started traveling abroad
in places like Europe and going back to Columbia, where
my dad's family is from. And that's when I started
(04:43):
realizing that people sometimes seem suspicious when I told them
about my mom's side and told them that my mom's
side was Cuban American. It's almost like they wanted to
know more in order to understand what kinds of Cuban
Americans my grandparents were, and kind of once it came
out they were or what we would call golden exiles,
so folks who left the very very beginning the first
(05:05):
few years of the revolution that suspicion kind of became confirmed,
and there was a sense that those particular Cuban Americans
had a negative connotation. Maybe for the people I was
talking to. It seemed like there was this idea that
everyone who left early on, you know, was the wealthy elite,
and they didn't care about the revolution or didn't care
about equalizing society. So after that, you know, I started
(05:28):
to gain this new political awareness and understanding of Cuban
Americans and how they're perceived from the outside, but also
how it's really complicated baggage for them as well. And
I think that in this reporting, coming across this narrative
of crazy Cubans did set off some alarm bells for me.
I have to say, it made me feel defensive.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Really defensive.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Why because, as you heard in episode seven, I'm in
some ways part of that community through my mom and
of course through myo Elita, And so yeah, make me
defensive because I love Miami and Cuban Miami and Miami
Cubans like my family, and I'm just not a fan
of this idea that the community had been branded crazy
(06:11):
in this narrative during and after Alien.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And I understand I have some of the same reaction
because also most of my family lives in Miami.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
And so from what Vanessa and Joe Garcia told us,
I think that the Alian case really marked the image
of the Miami Cuban community and how they would be
viewed during the aftermath. Joe Garcia, who we'll hear from
in a bit, is a Cuban American politician.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
So really, on both sides of the Florida Strait, the
Cuban community and the Kuban government were pushing their own
narrative because both sides were saying, we love Cuba, we
are real paid to it. The only problem is that
loving Cuba meant something completely different from Lavana and from Miami.
(07:18):
So another thing we heard in our reporting is that
in Miami, the Quan Americans lost the narrative. You might
remember this, Tasha.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Yeah, I think it was one of the things that
really most struck me. That joke.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Arcia said he was living in tallahasse which is the
capital of Florida, when the Lean saga started, so he
told us what it was like.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
This is one of those events where you didn't have
to be a scientist to understand. You understood that boy
his father, I got it. Who are these crazy people
that don't want the kid to go home? Likewise, for
a Cuban, you didn't have to explain it. They understood.
Of course he should be with his family because he
escaped Cuba. It makes all the sense in Orland, why
(08:07):
would you send the boy back if the mother died
trying to get him out. You don't even have to
have that conversation. People immediately understood, and so you could appine.
And in this case, it's a very simple case.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
That people understood.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
When I was the chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission,
these events happened. I wasn't here. I lived Monday through
Friday in Tallahassee, and so you know, I was watching
Alian surrounded by communities that weren't my community. The same
sort of narrative that I've just tried on you. When
I tried it on them, they'd say, hey, ridiculous. A
(08:42):
boy should be with his father. And I remember talking
to some of the leaders that I knew around Elean
and said, listen, this story ain't playing here. My career
was after Alian, which was, you know, the government took Alian.
I was called by the kimin American National Foundation and
made executive directors. They realized that it been a disaster
pr wise, but I had been asked to become executive
(09:03):
director of this very powerful group, and we organized other
powerful groups around.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
When I was hired to do this job. Part of the.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
Reason that they brought me in is that they lost
control of the narrative. One of the things we did
is we did a nationwide poll about Cuban Americans, right,
and the perception people had of Cuban Americans. It was
a fascinating thing. First of all, in South Florida, the
polling numbers were horrible, Like, if you knew us, you
(09:31):
hated us.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Right.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
The overcrowding in Miami, it's the Cuban's fault. Bad economy,
it's the Cuban's fault. Global warming, it was the Cuban's fault. Right,
And we did a concentric circle diagram. The closer you
got to Miami, the more they hated Cubans. The further
way you got, the more they liked us. So to
know us was to hate us, right if you had
actually interacted with us. Correct, Like if you were close
(09:54):
to the eye of the hurricane, it wasn't that pretty
to look at right.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
And did you get in that poll the sense of
why they were considering Cubans were the worst of the worst.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
I think there was so little common ground when you
come at things from an archetypal point of view, from
a very basic understanding of the family. Of course, a
boy should be with his father. I will say that
to you, the boy should be with his father. However,
if that boy happens to be in a precarious situation,
you shouldn't, right. So the equivalent for Cuban Americans, if
(10:26):
the father of that boy was in a jail, you
wouldn't say, let's take the boy and put him in
the jail with his dad.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
This is the closest of kin.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
Which goes back to my question of what does free
Elian means in this case.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Well, it depends where you're standing, and it depends who
you are.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Joe has a unique perspective because as a Kiban American
he really understood what Cubans in Miami were feeling during
the Earlyan case. But as a politician in Lahassee, he
also understood the optics and how mainstream America was seeing
Cuban Americans by the way that poll. Joe mentions was
never published. It was an internal poll the organization did
(11:12):
to gauge public opinion after the Ilian case. And at
some point I was also thinking about my dad. You know,
my dad got to Miami in nineteen ninety eight, so
just a year before the Liang case started. I asked
him why he was not there also protesting in front
of Aliant's house. And he said, first that he was
(11:34):
working hard and trying to bring his family to the US.
But also he was in the middle, you know, because
he was part of the community. But at the same time,
he understood that the father wanted to be with Alian
because at the same time he was separated from me
and from my brother. So he understood the Liian's father's
(11:55):
right to be with his son. But he totally got
why Cubans in Miami were so upset and so frustrated
with the US government because from their perspective, the US
government was citing with Filas and as we have said
in this series, that's something you never ever ever do
if you're.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
In Miami, and Panny, that makes me curious, how is
Miami represented by the Cuban government. Did you grow up
thinking of Miami or having a sense of Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Well, you know what I remember is this clear perspective,
obsessive narrative. I remember it from the years I lived
in Cuba. I remember I was a child, and I
left Cuba when I was a teenager because the Cuban
government was day in and day out promoting this idea
that Cubans in Miami were all these hateful people that
(12:55):
wanted to destroy the revolution, that all they wanted was
to record their properties and their money back in Cuba.
And also the Cuban government have been calling these Cubans
living in Miami as gusanos. So worms, you know this, Tasha.
So in Cuba, the Cubans of Miami are treated as
(13:15):
undesirable and on patriotic.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
For sure, Gusanos is pretty intense language. So, Panny, do
you think that this perception of crazy Cubans in Miami
started with Alian or did it start after maybe when
Florida really went red, or was it even before that.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I think that definitely the Lian case was a big
inflection point, and both Vanessa and Joe said when we
interview them that Cubans in Miami lost the narrative during
the Alian case.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I think that Elian was a formative moment for anyone
that was Cuban, Cuban American, or American born Cuban like
myself in Miami or outside of Miami, or Cuban American
around the States. So two things were happening at the
same time, which was an introduction to how I think
(14:12):
the perspective of Cuban Americans was changing because of Elian,
but also what people thought of Cuban Americans outside of Miami,
because Miami is a bubble to a certain degree, and
you leave the city and you start to get a
different perspective. This is a very Cuban city. It's more
(14:36):
than that now, much more in a great way. But
it's a bubble in the sense that people know the story.
They know the story deeply of Cuba and the United States,
of what it means to be Cuban, what it means
to be Cuban American. All these sort of gradations.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
And going back to this moment when you are told
by this professor that you'll help them understand this crazy Cubans,
how did you deal with it?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I remember saying it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We keep saying that forever.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But the biggest thing for me was the was the
piercing of the crazy, which was like, oh, we've already
lost this, the narrative, the narrative because if she's asking
me the question in that way, we've lost the story.
We've completely lost it. And the Cuban government won, which
(15:33):
is what I felt completely in that office.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
How did you feel about that realization?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Like a giant weight. It felt like like, now, what
what do you do with this? How do you get
out from under this rock? People were like, let me
scream through it, but you can't. The only thing you
can do is lift it.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So what I hear is that Vanessa understood that the
outsider's perspective dominated the media, and then she got a
real taste of that perspective from her college professor in
New York. I think she felt there was nothing she
could do about it, and I understand why that's frustrating,
because it's really hard to undo perceptions and stereotypes. And
(16:44):
all of this makes me think about Cuba because at
the same time, in Cuba, there was so much propaganda
that Miami Cubans were selfish because they wanted to keep
Elean no matter what. But we also knew that if
Elean came back to Cuba. That would be very hard
for his father to free himself from the pressure of
you Castro. So this perception of crazy Cubans is happening
(17:08):
on both sides of the Floody Straits.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
And I have to say, really, one of the reasons
I was excited to do this project is because I
wanted to hear this Cuban perspective from Newpenny.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Ah, that's very cute, thank you.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Honestly, you're one of the very few people I've met
in my life who grew up in Cuba and is
under like seventy years old.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, that's because of most of the Miami Cubans you
know are from your family, right right.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
They all left really early on, in the early sixties
or at latest in the seventies, and so you know,
they've all been in Miami for a really long time,
and I've never met anyone closer to my age who
really spent their formative years in Cuba. You know, I
think in doing this project, I've realized that even though
our perspectives are totally different around Cuba, we have a
(17:55):
lot more in common than we have difference.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Like our love for past delitos, for example now, but
really we're Cuban, but we grew up thinking of Cuba
very differently exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
For example, I grew up thinking of Cuba as this
kind of untouchable place where you absolutely couldn't go, at
least when I was little, and you grew up living
on the island. But telling the story has been exploring
about what it means to be Cuban and how expansive
that definition can be, which I think that you and
I can kind of embody.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Also to me, Tasha, it's been amazing to learn more
from your perspective because most of the family that I
have in Miami, they came to Miami in the nineties,
so they don't have that perspective of the early waves
of migrants. So I have learned a lot from the
perspective that you have, that your mom has, and of
(18:56):
course the perspective from Yurauelita.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
I'm really grateful that through reporting the story, you know,
we were both able to learn so much and get
to some of this nuanced together from one side to
the other. And I think we were both really struck
by these lines, these specific ideas of the narrative of
crazy Cubans and of losing the narrative, and I'm really
glad that we were able to kind of dig into
it a little bit more of this episode me too.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Thank you Tasha for joining me on this bonus episode,
and also thank you for all the past delitos that
you shared with me what we were reputing this podcast.
(19:42):
We don't know if the Elian case changed the perception
of Cutane Americans forever, but we know that it made
up clear mark and that at least for a while,
the community lost control of the story it was telling
about itself. So where do we go from here? We
keep having this conversation, We keep meeting like I'm doing
(20:03):
here with Tasha, like we did with Vanessa and Joe.
We come to a story with different perspectives and we
try to make meaning together. An Penny Leea Midez see
you in the next week's bonus episode.
Speaker 7 (20:23):
My mother left, always thinking that Paulie's father, once he
saw that she had left, would change his mind and
let his son leave. But that just never happened. So
basically that was the beginning of this very painful family separation.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
We'll be sharing an extended interview with Cuban American historian
Ala Ferrer, who will tell us about her own family's
complicated separation and how it informed her view on Elian's story.
Now Veemo Hencient Episolio. See you in the next episode.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Jess Peace.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
The Lean Gonzalez Story is a production of Utudo Studios
in partnership with Iheartz Michael Tura Podcast Network. This show
is written and reported by me Penni Lei Ramirez, with
Maria Garcia, Nicole Rothwell, and Tasha Sandowa. Our editor is
Maria Garcia, additional editing by Marlon Bishop. Our senior producer
(21:28):
is Nicole Rothwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandoval and
Elisabeth Loental Torres, and our intern is Evelin Fajardo Alvarez.
Our senior production manager is Jessica Elis, with production supports
from Nancy Trujillo, Francis Poon and Lodi mar Marquez. Mixing
by Stephanie Levo, Julia Caruso, j J. Carubin and gabrie Lewis.
(21:53):
Scoring and musical creation by Jacob Rossadi and Stephanie Levo
and credits music from Los Ace geos Or. Executive producers
are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia, who Tua Media was
founded by Maria Novosa. For more podcasts, listen to the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(22:14):
favorite shows. A Penillea Mirez, see you in the next
episode Novemoes and episode
So I was at Partner College. Eleian happened in November,
right Thanksgiving. Then there's winter break, and when I went
back to New York, there's a massive uproar of more
of these crazy Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Vanessa Garcia was born and raised in Miami. She grew
up hearing stories about her Cuban family, including family members
who were imprisoned by the dictatorship in Cuba Aspresos Politico's
political prisoners. One of her grandfathers, she tells us, fled three.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Dictatorships, Franco Hitler and then Fidel.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
This family history has deeply marked her, and so has
her upbringing as a Miami Cuban, because Miami is unique.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
It's another world to the rest of the country.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
The most Cuban place in the United States, that's for sure.
She was used to the dominance of Spanish, of given
culture and politics and everything that came with it until
she went away to college in New York, and the
alien story magnified the differences.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
When I laned in New York City, when I land
on campus, essentially, I very vividly remember going into an
office hoer with one of my favorite professors and she
looking at me and saying, you're so smart and your
Cuban American, you please explain these crazy Cubans to me.
I was like, Oh, this is a very different perspective.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Crazy cue ones. Vanessa was confronted with a narrative about
her community that was new and unexpected, and she wasn't
the only one. There was a sense that Elian changed
how we were seen and maybe even how some of
us saw else. I am Pennileetera Metis and this is
(02:06):
a special bonus episode of Chess, Peace, Deli and Gonzalez Story,
a production of Utuda Studios in partnership with Iheart's Michael
Tuda podcast network. When we were reporting for this podcast,
(02:34):
we heard this term of the crazy Cubans come up,
and it made us curious to explore the idea more.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Were these crazy people that don't want the kid to
go home?
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Who are these crazy Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
On this episode, we're going to unpack this perception about
Miami Cubans and the idea that the Cuban American community
lost control of the narrative during the eliansaga. And I'm
not going to dig into this alone. I'm here with
my back a little loving producer Tasha Sandol, who you
know from the series from episode seven when we met
(03:08):
with her adorable a Wili Daladi. Hi, Tasha, Hi, Penny.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I'm excited to be here and excited to get to
air some of this interview tape that we really enjoyed
and really want to share with our listeners, but that
we didn't get a chance to include in our earlier episodes.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Me too, I'm so happy to be recording this with you.
I'm just so sad that we don't have patelitos today.
But before we hear more from these interviews, I want
to take some time to really talk about why we
are focusing on this topic.
Speaker 4 (03:38):
Yeah, I agree, Penny. I think for me, I've just
been really interested in the fact that there was this
kind of us against them dynamic that seemed to be
growing between Miami Cubans and the rest of the country.
So some people outside the South Florida context didn't seem
to understand the Cuban American context, and I think that
that lack of understanding seemed to lead to judgment and resentment.
(04:00):
They just didn't understand what the fuss was all about.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, I think it was like several things happening at
the same time. On one hand, you had these very
strong feelings of anger and resentment from Cubans in Miami,
and something else that was happening was about the way
that Miami relatives were presented in the media because they
were on the news all the time.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Yeah, I think I started questioning how Cuban Americans were
perceived from the outside only when I first left Florida,
so much like Vanessa, I was surprised, but it didn't
happen to me when I went away to college. It
actually happened right after college, when I started traveling abroad
in places like Europe and going back to Columbia, where
my dad's family is from. And that's when I started
(04:43):
realizing that people sometimes seem suspicious when I told them
about my mom's side and told them that my mom's
side was Cuban American. It's almost like they wanted to
know more in order to understand what kinds of Cuban
Americans my grandparents were, and kind of once it came
out they were or what we would call golden exiles,
so folks who left the very very beginning the first
(05:05):
few years of the revolution that suspicion kind of became confirmed,
and there was a sense that those particular Cuban Americans
had a negative connotation. Maybe for the people I was
talking to. It seemed like there was this idea that
everyone who left early on, you know, was the wealthy elite,
and they didn't care about the revolution or didn't care
about equalizing society. So after that, you know, I started
(05:28):
to gain this new political awareness and understanding of Cuban
Americans and how they're perceived from the outside, but also
how it's really complicated baggage for them as well. And
I think that in this reporting, coming across this narrative
of crazy Cubans did set off some alarm bells for me.
I have to say, it made me feel defensive.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Really defensive.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
Why because, as you heard in episode seven, I'm in
some ways part of that community through my mom and
of course through myo Elita, And so yeah, make me
defensive because I love Miami and Cuban Miami and Miami
Cubans like my family, and I'm just not a fan
of this idea that the community had been branded crazy
(06:11):
in this narrative during and after Alien.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
And I understand I have some of the same reaction
because also most of my family lives in Miami.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
And so from what Vanessa and Joe Garcia told us,
I think that the Alian case really marked the image
of the Miami Cuban community and how they would be
viewed during the aftermath. Joe Garcia, who we'll hear from
in a bit, is a Cuban American politician.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
So really, on both sides of the Florida Strait, the
Cuban community and the Kuban government were pushing their own
narrative because both sides were saying, we love Cuba, we
are real paid to it. The only problem is that
loving Cuba meant something completely different from Lavana and from Miami.
(07:18):
So another thing we heard in our reporting is that
in Miami, the Quan Americans lost the narrative. You might
remember this, Tasha.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Yeah, I think it was one of the things that
really most struck me. That joke.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Arcia said he was living in tallahasse which is the
capital of Florida, when the Lean saga started, so he
told us what it was like.
Speaker 5 (07:44):
This is one of those events where you didn't have
to be a scientist to understand. You understood that boy
his father, I got it. Who are these crazy people
that don't want the kid to go home? Likewise, for
a Cuban, you didn't have to explain it. They understood.
Of course he should be with his family because he
escaped Cuba. It makes all the sense in Orland, why
(08:07):
would you send the boy back if the mother died
trying to get him out. You don't even have to
have that conversation. People immediately understood, and so you could appine.
And in this case, it's a very simple case.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
That people understood.
Speaker 5 (08:21):
When I was the chairman of the Florida Public Service Commission,
these events happened. I wasn't here. I lived Monday through
Friday in Tallahassee, and so you know, I was watching
Alian surrounded by communities that weren't my community. The same
sort of narrative that I've just tried on you. When
I tried it on them, they'd say, hey, ridiculous. A
(08:42):
boy should be with his father. And I remember talking
to some of the leaders that I knew around Elean
and said, listen, this story ain't playing here. My career
was after Alian, which was, you know, the government took Alian.
I was called by the kimin American National Foundation and
made executive directors. They realized that it been a disaster
pr wise, but I had been asked to become executive
(09:03):
director of this very powerful group, and we organized other
powerful groups around.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
When I was hired to do this job. Part of the.
Speaker 5 (09:09):
Reason that they brought me in is that they lost
control of the narrative. One of the things we did
is we did a nationwide poll about Cuban Americans, right,
and the perception people had of Cuban Americans. It was
a fascinating thing. First of all, in South Florida, the
polling numbers were horrible, Like, if you knew us, you
(09:31):
hated us.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Right.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
The overcrowding in Miami, it's the Cuban's fault. Bad economy,
it's the Cuban's fault. Global warming, it was the Cuban's fault. Right,
And we did a concentric circle diagram. The closer you
got to Miami, the more they hated Cubans. The further
way you got, the more they liked us. So to
know us was to hate us, right if you had
actually interacted with us. Correct, Like if you were close
(09:54):
to the eye of the hurricane, it wasn't that pretty
to look at right.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
And did you get in that poll the sense of
why they were considering Cubans were the worst of the worst.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
I think there was so little common ground when you
come at things from an archetypal point of view, from
a very basic understanding of the family. Of course, a
boy should be with his father. I will say that
to you, the boy should be with his father. However,
if that boy happens to be in a precarious situation,
you shouldn't, right. So the equivalent for Cuban Americans, if
(10:26):
the father of that boy was in a jail, you
wouldn't say, let's take the boy and put him in
the jail with his dad.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
This is the closest of kin.
Speaker 6 (10:34):
Which goes back to my question of what does free
Elian means in this case.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
Well, it depends where you're standing, and it depends who
you are.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Joe has a unique perspective because as a Kiban American
he really understood what Cubans in Miami were feeling during
the Earlyan case. But as a politician in Lahassee, he
also understood the optics and how mainstream America was seeing
Cuban Americans by the way that poll. Joe mentions was
never published. It was an internal poll the organization did
(11:12):
to gauge public opinion after the Ilian case. And at
some point I was also thinking about my dad. You know,
my dad got to Miami in nineteen ninety eight, so
just a year before the Liang case started. I asked
him why he was not there also protesting in front
of Aliant's house. And he said, first that he was
(11:34):
working hard and trying to bring his family to the US.
But also he was in the middle, you know, because
he was part of the community. But at the same time,
he understood that the father wanted to be with Alian
because at the same time he was separated from me
and from my brother. So he understood the Liian's father's
(11:55):
right to be with his son. But he totally got
why Cubans in Miami were so upset and so frustrated
with the US government because from their perspective, the US
government was citing with Filas and as we have said
in this series, that's something you never ever ever do
if you're.
Speaker 4 (12:14):
In Miami, and Panny, that makes me curious, how is
Miami represented by the Cuban government. Did you grow up
thinking of Miami or having a sense of Miami Cubans.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Well, you know what I remember is this clear perspective,
obsessive narrative. I remember it from the years I lived
in Cuba. I remember I was a child, and I
left Cuba when I was a teenager because the Cuban
government was day in and day out promoting this idea
that Cubans in Miami were all these hateful people that
(12:55):
wanted to destroy the revolution, that all they wanted was
to record their properties and their money back in Cuba.
And also the Cuban government have been calling these Cubans
living in Miami as gusanos. So worms, you know this, Tasha.
So in Cuba, the Cubans of Miami are treated as
(13:15):
undesirable and on patriotic.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
For sure, Gusanos is pretty intense language. So, Panny, do
you think that this perception of crazy Cubans in Miami
started with Alian or did it start after maybe when
Florida really went red, or was it even before that.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
I think that definitely the Lian case was a big
inflection point, and both Vanessa and Joe said when we
interview them that Cubans in Miami lost the narrative during
the Alian case.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
I think that Elian was a formative moment for anyone
that was Cuban, Cuban American, or American born Cuban like
myself in Miami or outside of Miami, or Cuban American
around the States. So two things were happening at the
same time, which was an introduction to how I think
(14:12):
the perspective of Cuban Americans was changing because of Elian,
but also what people thought of Cuban Americans outside of Miami,
because Miami is a bubble to a certain degree, and
you leave the city and you start to get a
different perspective. This is a very Cuban city. It's more
(14:36):
than that now, much more in a great way. But
it's a bubble in the sense that people know the story.
They know the story deeply of Cuba and the United States,
of what it means to be Cuban, what it means
to be Cuban American. All these sort of gradations.
Speaker 6 (14:51):
And going back to this moment when you are told
by this professor that you'll help them understand this crazy Cubans,
how did you deal with it?
Speaker 1 (15:03):
I remember saying it's complicated.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
We keep saying that forever.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
But the biggest thing for me was the was the
piercing of the crazy, which was like, oh, we've already
lost this, the narrative, the narrative because if she's asking
me the question in that way, we've lost the story.
We've completely lost it. And the Cuban government won, which
(15:33):
is what I felt completely in that office.
Speaker 6 (15:37):
How did you feel about that realization?
Speaker 1 (15:41):
Like a giant weight. It felt like like, now, what
what do you do with this? How do you get
out from under this rock? People were like, let me
scream through it, but you can't. The only thing you
can do is lift it.
Speaker 2 (16:21):
So what I hear is that Vanessa understood that the
outsider's perspective dominated the media, and then she got a
real taste of that perspective from her college professor in
New York. I think she felt there was nothing she
could do about it, and I understand why that's frustrating,
because it's really hard to undo perceptions and stereotypes. And
(16:44):
all of this makes me think about Cuba because at
the same time, in Cuba, there was so much propaganda
that Miami Cubans were selfish because they wanted to keep
Elean no matter what. But we also knew that if
Elean came back to Cuba. That would be very hard
for his father to free himself from the pressure of
you Castro. So this perception of crazy Cubans is happening
(17:08):
on both sides of the Floody Straits.
Speaker 4 (17:11):
And I have to say, really, one of the reasons
I was excited to do this project is because I
wanted to hear this Cuban perspective from Newpenny.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Ah, that's very cute, thank you.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
Honestly, you're one of the very few people I've met
in my life who grew up in Cuba and is
under like seventy years old.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
Yeah, that's because of most of the Miami Cubans you
know are from your family, right right.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
They all left really early on, in the early sixties
or at latest in the seventies, and so you know,
they've all been in Miami for a really long time,
and I've never met anyone closer to my age who
really spent their formative years in Cuba. You know, I
think in doing this project, I've realized that even though
our perspectives are totally different around Cuba, we have a
(17:55):
lot more in common than we have difference.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
Like our love for past delitos, for example now, but
really we're Cuban, but we grew up thinking of Cuba
very differently exactly.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
For example, I grew up thinking of Cuba as this
kind of untouchable place where you absolutely couldn't go, at
least when I was little, and you grew up living
on the island. But telling the story has been exploring
about what it means to be Cuban and how expansive
that definition can be, which I think that you and
I can kind of embody.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Also to me, Tasha, it's been amazing to learn more
from your perspective because most of the family that I
have in Miami, they came to Miami in the nineties,
so they don't have that perspective of the early waves
of migrants. So I have learned a lot from the
perspective that you have, that your mom has, and of
(18:56):
course the perspective from Yurauelita.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
I'm really grateful that through reporting the story, you know,
we were both able to learn so much and get
to some of this nuanced together from one side to
the other. And I think we were both really struck
by these lines, these specific ideas of the narrative of
crazy Cubans and of losing the narrative, and I'm really
glad that we were able to kind of dig into
it a little bit more of this episode me too.
Speaker 2 (19:21):
Thank you Tasha for joining me on this bonus episode,
and also thank you for all the past delitos that
you shared with me what we were reputing this podcast.
(19:42):
We don't know if the Elian case changed the perception
of Cutane Americans forever, but we know that it made
up clear mark and that at least for a while,
the community lost control of the story it was telling
about itself. So where do we go from here? We
keep having this conversation, We keep meeting like I'm doing
(20:03):
here with Tasha, like we did with Vanessa and Joe.
We come to a story with different perspectives and we
try to make meaning together. An Penny Leea Midez see
you in the next week's bonus episode.
Speaker 7 (20:23):
My mother left, always thinking that Paulie's father, once he
saw that she had left, would change his mind and
let his son leave. But that just never happened. So
basically that was the beginning of this very painful family separation.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
We'll be sharing an extended interview with Cuban American historian
Ala Ferrer, who will tell us about her own family's
complicated separation and how it informed her view on Elian's story.
Now Veemo Hencient Episolio. See you in the next episode.
Speaker 7 (21:06):
Jess Peace.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
The Lean Gonzalez Story is a production of Utudo Studios
in partnership with Iheartz Michael Tura Podcast Network. This show
is written and reported by me Penni Lei Ramirez, with
Maria Garcia, Nicole Rothwell, and Tasha Sandowa. Our editor is
Maria Garcia, additional editing by Marlon Bishop. Our senior producer
(21:28):
is Nicole Rothwell. Our associate producers are Tasha Sandoval and
Elisabeth Loental Torres, and our intern is Evelin Fajardo Alvarez.
Our senior production manager is Jessica Elis, with production supports
from Nancy Trujillo, Francis Poon and Lodi mar Marquez. Mixing
by Stephanie Levo, Julia Caruso, j J. Carubin and gabrie Lewis.
(21:53):
Scoring and musical creation by Jacob Rossadi and Stephanie Levo
and credits music from Los Ace geos Or. Executive producers
are Marlon Bishop and Maria Garcia, who Tua Media was
founded by Maria Novosa. For more podcasts, listen to the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(22:14):
favorite shows. A Penillea Mirez, see you in the next
episode Novemoes and episode
Host
Peniley Ramírez
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