An ASU School of Letters and Sciences mathematics instructor spoke about his experience fleeing Cuba in 1960 to escape Fidel Castro’s totalitarian regime Thursday night at the Nursing and Health Innovation II building, an event launching the spring 2011 Humanities Lecture Series on the Downtown campus.
In his lecture, “Surviving Casto’s Cuba,” Juan Carlos Jimenez recounted how he and his sister fled to Miami when they were both young.
“I was separated from my family for seven and a half years,” he said.
His father, a businessman, and his mother, a writer, provided a comfortable lifestyle for Jimenez and his sister. The family owned hotels, restaurants, retail stores and a construction company before Castro confiscated them with no compensation.
Soldiers “used to break into our house every week or every other week,” Jimenez said. “Soldiers would search for American dollars or radio transmitters.”
After he got out of Cuba, Jimenez said moving to the United States was different than what he had expected.
“It was a culture shock for me,” he said. “We lived very well in Cuba. We used to have our own maids, a chauffeur, and when we got to Miami, we were put in a little hotel.”
While Jimenez was living with his aunt and sister in Miami, Castro remained powerful and existed as a frequent source of difficulty for the United States. During The Mariel boatlift in 1980, the dictator allowed approximately 125,000 people to freely flee Cuba for U.S. shores, but President Jimmy Carter was unaware some of them were criminals released from jail and mental-health patients.
“He was very smart,” Jimenez said. “He got rid of the people he didn’t want.”
Jimenez’s parents finally arrived in Miami nearly a decade after Castro’s overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, the dictator that was in power prior to him.
Prior to Castro’s takeover, or “B.C. — before Castro,” as Jimenez put it, Havana, Cuba, was the fourth most expensive city in the world, had the third lowest mortality rate, according to the World Health Organization, and its average industrial salary was eighth in the world.
Now Cuba has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and the Cuban average wage is $20 a month, Jimenez said.
Jimenez explained the difference between living in Cuba and what a tourist may experience while vacationing in Cuba. There are stores, restaurants, beaches and areas that are reserved strictly for tourists, he said, but Cubans are not allowed to be at any of these places and are instead given ration cards for food.
“I hope that people realize especially that the people in Cuba are not free to speak, and if they talk against Castro, they will be killed and tortured,” Jimenez said. “I try to get the people to be more aware that there are no human rights there.”
Jimenez celebrates his “Freedom Day” — the day he fled from Cuba — every year on April 19, and he owns a cigar company with his favorite cigar named “4/19” in celebration of the day. This year he is celebrating his 51st Freedom Day.
“When I first heard of Dr. Jimenez’s story, I really felt there was a connection to our workers,” said Mirna Lattouf, lecture organizer for the spring 2011 Humanities Lecture Series. “I wanted to bring a human face to the issues we’re facing in Arizona.”
Lattouf stressed the importance of spreading Jimenez’s story, explaining that it is necessary to understand the bigger picture of why people flee certain countries.
“It was impossible to live under those circumstances,” said Isabella Jimenez, Juan Carlos Jimenez’s wife. “There are a lot of people that are very unaware. I grew up in the Midwest, and I certainly had no idea.”
Contact the reporter at apsmith5@asu.edu
