Only Castro Regime Decides Who Can Return

By Sun-Sentinel Editoral Page Editor, Antonio Fins:


I learned firsthand the true meaning of the word exile — and the status it represents — 19 years ago while sitting in front of a wall-sized poster of Fidel Castro in Cuba's embassy in Mexico City. Between me and the wall was another metaphoric wall, a Cuban bureaucrat impatiently waiting for an answer.

I bring up this encounter because of the political fray over whether U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio embellished his "Cuban exile experience" — a gotcha moment that's been way overblown. To understand why, let me take you back to that embassy interview.

I was in Mexico City with a dean and a group of students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I was a graduate student. We were traveling on a research trip to Mexico and Cuba.

The other students, all U.S.-born Tar Heels, had their visas for the Cuba leg. Mine never showed up, so I went to the embassy to inquire about its whereabouts.

Because I was born in Cuba, the bureaucrat explained, I was being handled separately. Never mind that I left Cuba in 1965 when I was 2, or that I was a U.S. citizen, or that I had spent nearly all of my life in the United States. No, compañero, none of that mattered.

I was Cuban by birth, so Havana considered me a Cuban citizen. But what mattered even more was whether I was an "exile" or not.

Meaning did I support, or at least tolerate, the Castro regime? If so, I was really an immigrant, and I could pay hundreds of dollars for a Cuban passport and head for the airport.

However, if I were an individual who believed the Castro government is a dictatorship, a government that has ruined the Caribbean country, well, then not so fast. I would be regarded as an exile and could forget about going to Cuba.

I fell in the exile category.

Now, the diplomat didn't come out and say that. That's where the Cuban government's plausible deniability comes in. But that was the bottom line.

In case it matters, my family was shown the door in Cuba after my father refused to join the communist party, and was expelled from the university. My own affront to Cuba's government: I dared to believe the country should hold free elections and be a democracy.

Suffice to say, I didn't get my visa, and I didn't go to Cuba. But I walked away with a personal lesson on what makes an exile an exile, which after that encounter, mattered a lot more.

And there's your answer, too, to the Marco Rubio "exile experience" controversy. Because what determines exile status, and the exile experience, is not when you left Cuba, but if you can return. You bet the Cuban government has a big say, too, in whether your life is an "exile" or "immigrant" narrative.

There are many Cubans in the United States. We have come at different points in the past 60 years — yes, 60, because Cuba's run-ins with dictators really started with Fulgencio Batista's 1952 coup. A dictator is a dictator, whether from the right or left.

Today, many Cubans and Cuban Americans still think like "exiles," and many now think like "immigrants," to one degree or another. The common denominator is that the date of departure is seldom the determining factor in that transition.

Regardless of when Rubio's family arrived in the United States, I can guarantee you one thing: The junior U.S. senator is not going to be allowed in Cuba to see the country of his parents' birth.

He'd be deemed an "exile." Just ask the Cuban government.