Sir Huntley,
You do have company on this site.
I am the last of three generations of Spaniards in my family who left the homeland for political and economic reasons. This was not done casually or due to a lack of love for "nuestra tierra" (our land).
My father's three maternal uncles left the province of Galicia following Spain’s civil war and the economic devastation and political repression that ensued. They settled in Cuba and, starting from scratch, built a very successful furniture manufacturing business. My father and grandmother followed later and he went to work for them as a laborer. Here he developed his skills and eventually started his own company in the same industry.
My father too did well and on one of his prolonged trips back to Spain he met and married my mother. I was born in Havana three months after my mother left her family and moved to Cuba. Unfortunately, my father died of a massive heart attack when I was three years old, and my traditionally reared mother was thrust into having to settle my father's business affairs and provide for our keep.
Move forward a few years to 1959, my mother had converted my father’s relatively modest interests into real estate, and while running a small retail store, we were well on our way to realizing the equivalent of the American dream. Of course, Fidel and history intervened, tenants stopped paying rents, business slowed to a crawl, people had no money to buy the few consumer goods that still flowed into the island, and all semblances of personal and property rights and civil order went out of the window.
I was very fortunate. My mother had the foresight to recognize that Fidel was a communist the first time she heard him speak. She had heard the communists back in her country and knew what followed if they gained power. Unable to gain a visa to the U.S. because she was a Spanish citizen and the U.S. Cuban Refugee Act was specific to Cubans, my unselfish mother did what relatively few are willing to do: full of hope and unfathomable sadness, she put me on a Pan American plane bound for Miami.
I am one of the beneficiaries of Operation Pedro Pan organized and operated by Catholic Charities. I lived near Miami in a crowded camp for a couple of months while awaiting placement with a foster family. The first opportunity that came along was in Ohio and I took it. My mother followed some three years later after being allowed by the Cubans to return to Spain, and then going through the normal immigration process there to come to the U.S.
One of the most vivid memories I have of Cuba was of the night before my departure when the police came to our house and ransacked it. Looking for gold, silver, and anything of value, they stole the few pieces of jewelry my mother owned, harassed us and left the place in a mess. The next morning at the airport, the police confiscated the only item of value I had left in this world, my father’s Omega watch that was passed on to me after he died. I stepped on the plane with a couple of changes of clothes and no money in my pocket.
My mother came to the U.S. with little money, limited language skills, and no professional credentials that were recognized here. We are familiar with hardship, prejudice, and indifference. She worked in factories when women were not accepted, the first to get laid off and last to get the less physically demanding assignments.
Somehow we muddled through. I had several jobs throughout my high school years and we did not want for the essentials. I was able to get a moderately adequate education, paying for it largely by working 50+ hours weekly in a factory during the summers and tending bar during the school year.
Though my mother has had a hard life, I am sure she would say that the hope and confidence she had on the day she put me on that plane have been more than realized. She is unashamedly pro-America, a firm believer that flaws, warts, and all, it is still by far the best place to live in this world.
In comparison, I have had things much easier. And while I tend to sometimes engage in a bit of self-pity with a glass is half-empty mentality, I only have to look around to see the great promise and opportunity of this wonderfully generous country.
My wife works with a woman who as a child escaped Viet Nam in a rickety boat. Her father never got on, killed just before he could join the family. As a pre-adolescent on the boat leading them to freedom, she witnessed people murdered and raped by pirates preying on what little of value they had. She finally made it to the U.S., worked in the garment sweatshops of Los Angeles, earned degrees in engineering and law, and today is a highly respected telecommunications attorney.
As if proof that life can be terribly unfair is needed, about a year ago she was diagnosed with an advanced state of cancer. I had the privilege of transporting her to a few of her treatments, and terribly ill from extensive chemotherapy and radiation, she once responded to my question of how she was doing with the old adage that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.
Hers is the indomitable spirit that once prevailed in this country and one that I fear we are losing. Phil Gramm was pilloried for his comment that we are becoming a nation of whiners. President Kennedy asked about what we could do for our country. In comparison, Senators Obama, Biden, and Clinton campaigned primarily on what government must do for their special interest groups.
When my mother hears Obama and many of the Dems engage in class warfare and make the case for “spreading the wealth” via a large, powerful government she is reminded of Fidel and any number of European fascists she heard growing up. I have a similar visceral reaction. I pray that we are both blatantly wrong.