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Francisco M.'s Story

I left Cuba on Sunday February 19 1961, just a couple of weeks after my 16th birthday. My parents had told me about my departure barely a week before. On that day I attended 8:30 Mass at Colegio De La Salle in full winter gala uniform (navy blue suit), changed clothes at home and proceeded to the airport at Rancho Boyeros with family and a few friends.

I still remember almost everything about that day. It was my first flight and I was heading towards Kingston, Jamaica for my U.S. visa was apparently not ready yet. Upon boarding the plane I realized there were 4or 5 other kids like me who were travelling alone. Somebody gave us these metal buttons to put on our lapels to identify us when we arrived in Jamaica as well in Miami. It was from the National Conference of Bishops or something like that. Also travelling with us was the tiny Cuban singer Blanca Rosa Gil, who with her entourage was heading for Caracas.

It was a beautiful and exciting flight for a teenager. Luckily I had a window seat and was able to observe the crisscrossed cultivated fields, and then I saw the whole Peninsula de Zapata, not aware of what would be going on there in just two months. The light turquoise waters of the Caribbean and the Jardines de la Reina were just too beautiful.

We arrived on Kingston and were taken to a halfway house where there were many Cubans of all ages awaiting for their U.S. visas. My new found friends and I ventured outside the residence and explored a bit of Old Kingston. There was a plaza with a statue of Queen Victoria and a market. We almost got run over by a car, not realizing that the British drove in the opposite side of the road.

My stay at Kingston was short lived for on Monday evening we boarded a flight to the U.S. The flight had a stop at Montego Bay, and there the seat next to mine became occupied. It was a young black man who in the course of the flight told me he was Johnny Nash, a pop singer.

The flight arrived at Miami after midnight and we were picked up by a van that took us to these barracks in a place called Kendall. The next morning I learned that there were at least two barracks separating the boys from the girls. The place was run by a combination of nuns and lay couples. I looked around and did not know a soul. Then I heard somebody call my name. She was Ofelia Dominguez, a friend of mine when I was 10 years old and lived in Almendares. Ofelita, had apparently been crying a bit, for like me did not know anybody. Our meeting filled us both with joy. I remember that she was quite an accomplished pianist. A teenager, she played the meanest “Poets and Peasants” I had ever heard. I never did see her again.

A little over a week later, I was transferred to Father Walsh’s house near Brickell with an older group of boys. We walked to the Gesu for some classes, but a couple of days later I was told that my older cousin Julia Cuadrado had completed my relocation papers and I was sent to live with her in New Orleans.

I have lived all this time in the New Orleans area where later on I was joined by my brothers and sisters. My parents arrived nearly two years later on the very day the Cuban blockade was declared. I completed school at De La Salle High School in New Orleans, received my Bachelor in Architecture at Louisiana State University (Geaux Tigers) and have been practicing Architecture ever since.

I married the former Berta Perez Vallejo, also from Havana in 1970. Bertica has given me two wonderful children Nicole Maria and Francisco Javier, an attorney and a Civil Engineer respectively.