The Miguel Marquez, and the Escape from Cuba Story

The Miguel Marquez, and the Escape from Cuba Story

1963

A True Story

Written 01/01/2020* 1,517 Words*

#119 By Howard Yasgar

This is the story about how my good friend Miguel Marquez and his family escaped from Cuba.

If I don’t write his story now, no one else will ever do it.

I am sure there are many similar stories that can be told, about families that had escaped from Cuba, but this one is Miguel’s own story, and Miguel was my friend.

It was 1963 when I first met Miguel Marquez, it was when Miguel and his family had just arrived in Miami from Cuba.

There was Miguel, his mother and his father, there was Miguels wife Orpha Lina and her baby son Jorge.

The family had just been transported from Key West to the Cuban Freedom tower in Miami, where they were to be processed as incoming refugees.

Once they were at the Miami Freedom Tower, they called their cousin (Herman, Totico) Echeverri who came to the Freedom Tower to get them.

Herman’s family had once been very prosperous landowners in Cuba, but they fled the country early in 1959.

They fled when Castro first took power, they saw what was happening and they feared for their lives.

Once Miguel’s cousin Herman settled in Miami, I became friends with him.

When Miguel and his family first arrived in Miami, it was Herman who took the responsibility to sponsor them.

Herman picked them up at the freedom tower and brought them to his small Miami apartment, where they were they all were to sleep on the floor.

The following day Herman called me and asked if he could bring his newly arrived cousin Miguel to see me.

I had an automotive parts rebuilding company in Miami called Automotive Parts Industries, and Herman was hoping that perhaps Miguel, who he knew was mechanically inclined, could come to work for me.

When I first met Miguel, I was very surprised, he was tall, about 6 foot two inches, just like me, and he had black wavy hair, just like me.

Miguel had a darker complexion than I had, but other then that, we could have been brothers.

When I first met him, Miguel didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak much Spanish, but by using his cousin Herman as an interpreter, Miguel agreed to start working for me the very next day.

I was excited to have a real Cuban refugee like Miguel coming to work for me.

I felt sorry for him, here he was, a 34-year-old married man, and he didn’t speak hardly a word of English, and he now had to start his life all over again in a new country where he knew no one.

We all saw on television what was going on in Cuba, but to me this guy Miguel, he was the real thing, he had just come from there.

Over the next few weeks, I found Miguel to be a fast learner, so every day, I tried teaching him a few words in English, and he started teaching me a few new words in his Hillbilly Spanish.

It was then, while I was working every day with Miguel, that I realized that my meeting someone like him, offered me a very unique opportunity.

I could take Miguel under my wing and show him what we all called the “American Dream”, and that’s just what I did.

Miguel and I became such good friends that after several months of working together, we were both able to converse with each other in “Spanglish”, we were almost like family.

During the week, I was teaching Miguel to become a rebuilder of Automotive parts, but on the weekends we

would go fishing together and while doing that Miguel taught me all he knew about the ocean.

One day, Miguel told me the following story.

Miguel said he and his family lived an idyllic life on their fathers farm in Cuba.

The farm was on an island called Cayo Coco, just off the Northern coast of Cuba.

Living on the farm, besides his mother and father, Miguel also had seven brothers and sisters.

He had a brother that everyone called Mongo, also a brother named Ricardo, a brother named Jorge, and a bother named Rudolpho, and he also had three sisters named Marcia, Mercedes and Rosa.

Miguel said they all lived together in a large rural style Cuban farmhouse with a thatched palm frond roof.

I asked Miguel what they did when it rained hard and the roof leaked?

Miguel laughed, he said they simply moved the beds.

On the family farm they raised vegetables as well as several pigs.

Miguel said his father fed the pigs palm nuts, and the pigs grew fat, he told me that once they had tried feeding the pigs fish they caught, but they stopped doing it when no one liked the taste of the pork.

Miguel said his father had a small thirteen-foot wooden sailboat and they used it both for fishing, and to sail to Havana monthly for supplies, and that’s how Miguel learned all about the ocean.

To earn hard cash, and having Miguel as their leader, all the brothers worked at making charcoal, they would cut trees down and slowly burn them on the beach.

The charcoal was then put in sacks and a broker would take it to Havana to sell it in the marketplace.

When Miguel reached the age of thirty, under family pressure he married. He said it was sort of an arranged marriage to a local widow named Orphalina and she and her baby son Jorge, moved in with the Marquez family.

Every night the entire family gathered to listen to the radio.

They listened to a revolutionary named Fidel Castro; he was broadcasting from a secret base in the Sierra Maestra mountains.

Fidel spoke of equality for all Cubans and Miguel and his family thought that meant they would get chickens from some of the super wealthy chicken farmers in Cuba.

But Miguel’s youngest brother Rudolpho didn’t like Fidel, and he left their farm and went to Havana to fight

in the Batista Cuban army.

Eventually Rudolpho was shot by Fidel’s soldiers and he came home to Cayo Coco, never able to walk again.

By 1959, Fidel Castro was firmly in power, and soon his troops were there on Miguel’s father’s farm.

The troops needed food to eat so all their pigs and vegetables were taken.

Miguel saw that all the local people were now being pushed around at gunpoint.

One night Miguel’s brother Ricardo tried leaving the island by boat. He was caught and sentenced to eight years in prison.

Then the soldiers wanted Miguel’s family to continue making charcoal, but they wanted it for free, that was the Communist way.

There was no choice, Miguel and his father knew what they had to do.

They had a family meeting, Miguel, his wife and her son, and Miguel’s mother and father would leave first.

The family had 8000 Cuban Pesos put aside, and they used all of it to pay a fisherman to smuggle the five of them at night to Cayo Lobo.

Cayo Lobo was a vey small rocky island with a lighthouse on it, it was a very risky thing for them to do, but they were told that the U.S. Coastguard ship would come by every few days.

They waited, but they soon ran out of food and water.

Fortunately, the Coastguard ship did arrive, and it sent a tender in to rescue them.

Miguel said that once on the Coast Guard ship they were all hosed down and deliced, then they were given all new clothing.

It was their first time ever eating in a Coast Guard ships cafeteria, and Miguel said that he couldn’t believe the food was so good.

That evening the Coast Guard ship arrived in Key West, and they were quickly put on a special bus heading for the Freedom Tower in Miami.

As they drove up U.S. 1 in the Florida Keys, heading towards Miami, Miguel said he was looking out the

bus window and saw that the highway in the Florida Keys back in 1963 was sparsely populated.

He wondered what was going on, where all the people and big buildings that were supposed to be in America.

My friend Miguel is gone now, he passed away Dec 12, 2006, at age 76.

As long as Miguel was my friend, I made sure he lived the “American Dream”.