Desperately Seeking

I think almost everyone I know wishes to return to their native roots. They say, “Noo, cuando Fidel caiga, entonces Cuba volveria hacer lo que era antes.” If you are the exception, then you are seen as what they call “vende patria.”

A high percentage of Cuban immigrants come to Hialeah and feel “right at home.” Like, when Firmat arrived at FIU and heard the WBQA FM radio playing Spanglish music (some American and some Latin), he felt right at home. I will have to go against the grain with “feeling right at home” given that I came from Cuba when I was three years old; although recalling the video I posted on my first blog post series of Exile and Generation X “Roller-coaster Through Intellectualism,” I should have grown experiencing the Cuban culture in Hialeah. 

 I love Salsa dancing and I like the Spanish language, which is one of the four love languages; but other than these two reasons, I cannot wait to exile myself from Hialeah. Firmat feels “right at home” when he can experience his Latin culture. I feel disgusted when I walk into a place and there is a group of Cuban people, speaking vulgar and loud, depicting a negative representation of Cuba; which is almost every place I have visited in Hialeah. I have wanted to leave the state of Florida for many years now; however, recently I have realized that leaving Florida because of my negative experiences in Hialeah would be ignorant. Maybe I can be an “immigrant” to another city in Florida, they must have salsa dancing though! “My patria (Hialeah) can no longer be my país (Cuba).

People who have been involuntarily banished from their native roots may not comprehend the thoughts I am expressing in this blog. After reading Firmat’s essay about “Transcending Exile,” I can now understand that I think of myself as an immigrant.

My longing of an exile is not the detachment of Cuba, my country, but of Hialeah (also known as Havana, USA).

“Unlike the immigrant, the exile is not willing to acknowledge any distance or discontinuity between his patria or his país.” ~ Firmat Perez.

Maybe, leaving the city I have lived in for 22 years might actually make me feel more Latina and connected to my native roots.

If I move to a state like Massachusetts where Hispanicsmake-up 9.9% of the population, I would probably see and feel the difference between the abundance of Americans and myself. The obvious difference in accents would remind me that I am from a city full of Hispanic people. I would constantly be reminded that I am Latina and I would love that! Referencing Firmat’s thought on immigrant literature being prospective and exile being retrospective. As an immigrant, my focus is in desperately seeking my near future and not so much on what I left behind.