Sep 5, 2007

The forgotten blue eyes

I remember they were, mostly, living above and beyond the average Cuban family. They had privileges and, some sort of different status. Their houses used to have nice carpets and rugs, sophisticated appliances and so many more things.

I remember my classmates --usually a lovely mix of blacks and Caucasians, sometimes resulting in beautiful mulatas (os) with blue eyes-- went to school with cute shoes I couldn't have.

They were the daughters and the sons of Russian women who emigrated to Cuba, most of them, to follow the love of their lives.

Sadly, that love turned into a whole different picture, as this report from Reuters, cross-posted from Yahoo News and The Real Cuba, shows.

Some of them, like my Dad's first wife, a German OB/GYN doctor, saw the light on time and left soon enough. She suffered in the extinct communist Germany, but even better, she witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall. Ironically, she and my two half-siblings are the ones that have support my family in Cuba in our harshest moments.

The love is gone. And the light in those elder blue eyes is disappearing. More than forty years destroying the dreams of so many people, from all over the world: that's the reality of the Russian, German, Polish, Czech and other Eastern Europe women that fell in love with Cubans.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Beautiful post, Mailyn.
Se me aguaron los ojos.