Dos Familias Separadas: Two Families Separated

Photo Credit: Yosie Crespo

"I remember one day I had a final math test, and mom went out to the streets of Pinar del Rio to find me lunch before going to school,” Yosie Crespo, an immigrant from Cuba said. “She came back empty-handed, with money, but no food. She then realized that it was time for a change.”

Yosie also remembers when, at age 13, her mom asked if she would sneak onto a boat to get to the United States. “Of course,” she recalls saying innocently, as if it was as simple as snapping her fingers. Yosie and her family did not take a boat to leave Cuba, but it still was not easy; a popular phrase in Cuba is “it’s not easy” or “no es facil.”

“God really helped us though and someone up there put his hand on us so that we didn’t have to travel that way,” she said.

Yosie wound up leaving Cuba by means of her mother’s sham marriage to a political prisoner, which left her family forever separated and changed her whole life. Despite the better quality of life Yosie and some her family obtained, a typical scenario amongst Cubans played out: “Dos familias separadas”—two families separated through immigration to the United States.

Yosie’s mother was married to a man named Pedro Gonzalez for seven years and, it just so happened, that the political prisoner, Nico, had the same last name. When her family filled out paperwork with the U.S. Embassy, they listed her real husband as a step-son on the application; however, a day before Yosie and her family’s appointment with the U.S. Embassy, Pedro’s permission to travel was held.

“People in Cuba are often and very quickly influenced by the powers of money,” Yosie said. “Nico became interested in my mom, and, after knowing that my mom would not sleep with him, he threatened to stop the trip the day before we received our permission to travel.”

As a result, the embassy told Pedro that he could travel at a later date. But he was never allowed to do so and, after many years of separation, married someone else in Cuba. Yosie hypothesizes that this was a result of Nico’s jealousy.

“We all made it to the United States, safely, up until this very moment. Nico went his way, and my mom, my grandparents, and I also went our way,” Yosie said. “We were a happy family now, but without Pedro.”

Yosie immigrated to the United States in 1993, right in the middle of what she calls “el periodo especial,” the special period, when a lack of resources was widespread.

“I remember having to go to school with a piece of bread filled with brown sugar,” she said. “That was my lunch and I ate it as it was a Quizno’s sandwich.”

Despite the troubles Yosie and her family endured, she successfully immigrated to America. She remains faithful to Cuba and is currently working in hospitality and aspires to be a writer. She is still troubled by the issue of her family being separated and the structure of communism that changed her life.

“I hope that one day, I can go back and visit Cuba as many times as I want to, without a government dictating how many times I can go back to my own country, never mind whether anyone can or cannot leave at all.”