How the Cuban Embargo Backfires

It’s been a long California summer for Laura Pina.

She shopped the malls like any 16-year-old; worked at a textbook factory for spending money, and slept late at her grandmother’s house in Los Angeles--the one with the backyard swimming pool in classy Cheviot Hills.

Now she can’t wait to go back home--to Havana.

Laura was born and raised in Cuba. She returns Wednesday night to start 12th grade at an elite school named after a revolutionary martyr. Back to the two-bedroom apartment her family has occupied since her birth, the one with the dark stairwell and the still erratic supply of water, gas and electricity. Back to classes in Marxism, dates at the disco and scoldings for missing curfew. Back to her girlfriends and gossip about privileged boys who drive their own cars, like the one they call “the Mitsubishi guy.”

Back to a country both steeped in change and stuck in time. Back by choice.

For all the coverage of Elian Gonzalez, we learned little about family life in Cuba. Taking sides over the castaway, anti-Castro pundits and politicians repeatedly claimed that Cuban children belonged to the state. Fidel is their real father, they’d say.

That’s the backfiring of our embargo. Cubans don’t get food from us; we don’t get the truth about them.

Laura see it this way: “It’s not that bad. I grew up pretty well.”

She is not your average Cuban kid. Her mother, Ellen Rosenzweig, is an American expatriate who does English translations for the government newspaper, Granma. Her father, Edmundo Pina, plays trombone with Cuba’s premier salsa band, Los Van Van. They met at a wedding 20 years ago this month in Havana.

Laura and her younger sister, Sonia, are bilingual, bicultural, binational and biracial. “They’re just as American as they are Cuban,” says their proud grandmother, Isabelle.

I met the family 12 years ago, shortly before the Soviet Union collapsed. I went from musical fan to fast friend, keeping in touch thanks to Mundo’s tours with the band and Ellen’s summer visits.

It’s been a decade of herky-jerky reforms and reversals in Cuba. Abandoned by its political sponsor, the island sunk to the depths of economic despair. With his ideals shattered, Mundo angrily resigned from the Communist Party. His disillusionment threw the household into upheaval, said Ellen--”our little microcosm of what was happening in the country.”

But for the kids, there was a silver lining. They didn’t have to watch Fidel’s speeches anymore!

Unlike many Cubans who marry foreigners, Mundo vowed to Ellen that he’d never leave his country. Yet, he wants his daughters to make their own choice.

He encouraged Laura to take advantage of this summer to learn about life in the United States. “Maybe you’ll like it,” he said. “Hopefully you won’t, and you’ll want to go back.”

Laura sees good and bad on both sides. Here, teenagers have more opportunities, but they also encounter more violence and drug use. There, they get terrific free schooling, but they face stubborn hardships and creeping inequalities, even as conditions gradually improve.

Only the kids with dollars, like herself, can afford $15 cover charges at nightclubs or $70 Levi’s. That’s “getting awkward,” says Laura, who feels bad for peso-earning friends.

Laura also was lucky enough to get around the socialist policy requiring teenagers to attend rural schools and cut sugar cane. Her parents’ pull kept her in Havana.

“That’s something else I feel bad about,” said Laura, who studied flute and competed in swimming. “Supposedly, the honorable thing to do is to go to the countryside and work.”

Mom never liked that idea. Ellen praises Cuba’s excellent state schools, but always spoke her mind when she disagreed. Like the time Laura came home from school and asked, “Mommy, they said the Yankees are bad. Are you a Yankee?”

Well, we’re not all bad, dear.

Today, Laura says her classmates mercilessly grill their Marxism teacher, who tries valiantly to tow the party line. “How can you believe that stuff if you don’t make enough to buy a good pair of shoes?” they ask. Laura keeps quiet because she feels bad for the teacher--and wants a good grade.

Smart girl. Laura plans to study business, perhaps in the States, and eventually work for one of the multinationals poised to do business in Cuba when the embargo thaws.

One day, all Cuban parents may react like Ellen did when she came to take her daughter home: “My God, she’s turned into an American teenager.”

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or [email protected].