Memorias Cubanas 1 : Professor Isabel Álvarez Borland, Spanish

Interviewed by Jill Azarian, Jon King, and Katie O'Connor

Would you describe how you found out you would be leaving Cuba for the United States?

     This was so long ago; you have to think in terms of 1959 and the Cuban Revolution when Castro comes into power. Prior to Castro, there was a dictator called Batista. People were very hopeful that Castro was going to solve all the problems that Batista had created in Cuba. In 1959, almost everybody was very happy with Castro, including my family. By 1961, my parents decided that they wanted to leave the country because my father was a lawyer and in his last years in Cuba he had also been a judge. The whole legal system in a communist country changes, so in a sense, he could not do what he had been trained to do. Under a communist system, there are no individual rights. There was really nothing else for him to do there. My parents decided in 1961 that they were going to leave the country with us, the two of us, my brother and me. And it took one year until they gave us permission to leave. We left May 4, 1962, via Pan American air. There were still planes leaving Cuba then. We had obtained an exit visa but we had to wait a year until we were allowed to leave… So that was 1962.

Where did you go once you got to the United States?

     My father’s brother, Daniel, was a Presbyterian minister in Brooklyn, New York. He was the pastor for a mainly Puerto Rican community in Brooklyn. Daniel had come from Cuba in 1960 and he had connections with U.S. Presbyterian churches. In fact, my father's side of the family was Presbyterian and even his father, my grandfather, had been a minister in Cuba, a very unusual thing during those days for Cuba or any Latin American country. Two of his brothers, including Daniel, were also Presbyterian ministers. Since they had connections with Presbyterian churches in the United States, one of those churches, in New Vernon, New Jersey, sponsored us as a family. We were one of those sponsored families who had arrived with practically nothing. Remember, we had been allowed to take five dollars and three sets of clothing per person and that was it.

Do you have any childhood memories of Cuba?

     I had a very normal childhood. I was not from the capital, I was not from Havana. I lived in a little town in the northern part of the island called Sagua la Grande. The Jesuits were there and they had a boys’ school called El Sagrado Corazón. Likewise, the nuns had a girls’ school called El Apostolado and there were also public schools. I studied in a private El Apostolado. By now I must have you confused, but I will clarify: even though I said my father was Presbyterian, my mother was Catholic. I was baptized by both churches, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything! Double insurance you might call it. I went to school from first to sixth grade in the same school. The school ran from about 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a two hour recess in the middle when I’d go home for lunch and go back. Well, this is the way it was in Cuba, because as you know, it gets really hot at noon on a tropical island.

     I had a bunch of friends and I just had a regular childhood, but it all came to an end after sixth grade when our schools were intervened by the government. Schools were forced to close and the priests and nuns were sent back to Spain. So there was one year, while we were waiting for the permit visa that I didn’t go to any school. I took private lessons in people’s houses such as sewing lessons, math lessons, etc. My brother and I weren’t in school for that year as well as many other Cuban kids. My friends at the time began to leave with their families or on their own through what is known as the Peter Pan Operation, a kinder-transport in which Esther Levine and Nick Sánchez participated. But that is their story and you will hear from them on this. In general, parents were so terrified that their kids were going to be sent to obligatory military service that they put their children in planes by themselves, and a lot of these kids were orphans here for awhile and many never saw their parents. But that wasn’t my case. My parents didn’t go for that, so the four of us came together.

How did you feel about leaving? Were you scared, excited?

     Well, when you’re that age, and I was fourteen - no, my fourteenth birthday was here, so I was thirteen. I was aware of what was happening, but still, when you are thirteen… At that age, it was kind of exciting to change countries, no big deal, you weren’t being very philosophical about the fact that your life will be changed forever. I think young people in general are naturally provided with a kind of “Teflon-coat” that thankfully prevents them from understanding the immensity of the change that was about to take place. With the help of the New Vernon Presbyterian Church, we eventually settled in a town named Madison in New Jersey, where I ended up in the ninth grade. So I never did seventh and eighth anywhere. The school systems were so different here and consequently, after I was tested, they placed me according to the Madison New Jersey Public School system. This is interesting because since I have come I’ve heard the opposite story from many Cuban friends of mine who ended up being placed behind a couple of grades only because they couldn’t speak English. I am thankful and lucky I didn’t come across that kind of prejudice and lack of understanding. I didn’t know any English at the beginning of that year in ninth grade, but by the end of that year I managed to get all B’s and could figure out what was expected of me.

     When my mother read the book I wrote on Cuban-American literature, she said, “I didn’t know you kids suffered so much!” You know, because they were the parents, the exiles, whereas we (those who came as adolescents or pre-adolescents) were a kind of an in-between generation. We were put in schools here, we had had been educated somewhere between ten to twelve years on the island. We really felt Cuban, but at the same time we were not complete adults as our parents were. It takes a toll in different ways for different generations. For those of us that came halfway in between a Cuban and an American life, it was a matter of making a cultural adjustment or a way to juggle two cultures constantly for the rest of our lives. Somehow my way of repairing that loss was to study languages. I majored in French and Spanish as an undergrad and then went on to obtain my PhD specializing in Spanish American Literature. For my PhD work I decided to explore the works of a famous Cuban exile novelist, Guillermo Cabrera Infante. And while I have done much work on other Latin American novelists, in particular on Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, a few years ago I returned to Cuban literature and published a book on the literature produced by Cuban-Americans of my generation. If you guys had taken my seminar on Cuban-American literature, you would know the story from the outside. You have to read my book!

How you identify yourself? Do you think of yourself as Cuban, or Cuban-American, or American now? Has it changed over the years?

     I think you always know that you’re different because people let you know. They say, “Oh, you have an accent! Where are you from? When did you come over to this country?” I still get that. The other day I was talking to a friend of mine, the two of us are Cuban-Americans who came here in the early 60s… We were at a conference in this hotel and one of the employees from the hotel, who was helping with the reception, came over to us and said, “Where do you all come from?” So, I feel that people will never let you forget that you are different; I guess its human nature… we are or we become what people think we are. The accent, in my particular case, will never let anyone forget that I’m somehow not from here, no matter how I feel. As you know, your identity always has to do with how others see you as well. So sometimes I feel I am not really American, but I know as well that I am not really Cuban, so that I and many others who came during adolescence feel that we are really in that in-between position. Of course you can sometimes use that hybrid condition to your advantage; you can say, “Oh the Americans!” or “Oh the Cubans!” if you don’t like what is happening at the moment.

How does language affect your identity? When, where, and why do you use English or Spanish? Do you use English more or Spanish more?

     It’s interesting… I’ve taught classes with a high number of native speakers, for instance, a “Composition and Conversation” course for native speakers, and I realize that language does affect identity because I was different as a teacher in Spanish when I knew that all the students I was teaching were native Spanish speakers. I behaved differently, I know. Not super differently, but somehow other aspects of my personality would come out, like I would kid around with the students a lot more, because in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries the kids can take it and go along with you and laugh along with you. With my usual American students, they could feel they are singled out so there’s more distance in my “American” teaching. Yes, language is culture and cultural patterns affect how we behave. Likewise, when I am speaking to people that are Cuban, I use a Cuban accent, and when speaking to people that from Spain, I tend to use a non-accented Spanish. Identity is a fluid concept, as you who have traveled abroad know. You’re all those things but never at the same time. For instance, I'm married to an American. My son is not fluent in Spanish. He’s now taking Spanish and learned the subjunctive in the classroom like all of you. At the time he was born – he’s nineteen now – I read Spanish poetry to him when he was in the crib, and he used to memorize these Cuban poems, these great poems by Jorge Guillén. Guillén has these Afro-Cuban poems that have beautiful African sounds, such as open vowel sounds and rhythmic sounds, and my son really liked hearing them. But one day it all came to an end when he said to me, “Mom, talk regular.” End of Spanish. And I didn’t push it. At that time I didn’t know whether I should push it or not. I kept thinking, “Well, what if I confuse him?” Language acquisition studies today indicate that if one parent stays with one language, and the other parent stays with the another, the kids will grow up totally bilingual. But that wasn’t clear then and I didn’t want to do anything that would harm his school progress. So we mostly spoke English, although his granddad always spoke to him in Spanish and they communicated rather well.

Do you think you express yourself better in Spanish than in English?

     Obviously I sound better in Spanish because I don’t have an accent in Spanish. But I don’t know. When I’m writing in English, more words flow to my mind because I am surrounded by English, so it is easier to write in English. Since I don’t hear Spanish as much (only from my students and colleagues) when I attempt to write in Spanish there is a lot of interference… Let’s say I’m equally bad at both!

How has your past influenced your profession today?

     I think that my profession allows me to preserve some of my identity. It's fun - today in class we were doing José Martí’s “Amor de Ciudad Grande.” Remember that poem about the city? We were comparing that poem to Casal’s “En el campo.” Both were nineteenth-century Cuban poets who wrote in vastly different styles. The class was having a lot of fun with the comparison and I wonder if it was because I knew and understood that poetry, not just as poetry, but culturally as Cuban poetry. So it’s always fun, you know, to do literature because it really brings you to your origins. As you know, the study of literature always involves not only aesthetics but also values and feelings - components of our identity. It would be radically different if I were teaching science. My brother was a sociology major and is now a hospital administrator. He doesn’t do anything with Spanish. I am sure he has the same memories and cultural fusions and confusions as I have, but he probably doesn’t understand himself as well because he’s not working with language and culture as I am. So, the great benefit is that I’m my own therapist!

Could you tell us a little bit about the political aspect of Cuba and the demise of Castro?

     Did he die already? Did he finally die? Castro is like Erendira’s grandmother, that horrible character from Garcia Marquez’ novella Erendira. The grandmother was a character that would not die and who kept Erendira as prisoner and made her become a prostitute in order to earn money for herself. This horrible grandmother wouldn’t die because she represented evil. So in a similar way, I don’t think Castro is ever dying.

Have you been back since you left?

     I was back in the early 80s with my mother to see my grandmother who stayed in Cuba. All our family stayed in Cuba, and to this day, my mother has weekly contact with her sister in my town of Sagua la Grande. So we have been very aware, all these years, of what “socialism” meant to people, such as my aunt, who live in small towns of Cuba.

Was it difficult to leave your mom’s side of the family?

     Leaving my grandmother was very hard. During the years my grandmother was dying, there were very bad communications between the two countries and we didn’t find out she was dead for weeks, and my mother was terribly upset. There were no phone calls and the mail wasn’t getting here, and it was rough. As you can see, exile has been rough especially for my mother’s generation.

How do you envision Cuba over the next 50 years or so?

     I don't think I’ll see anything that I haven’t seen up to now. Christina Baldor, one of our Fenwick Scholars, is writing short stories about her Cuban-American community in Miami (See “The Say that Every Year”). When she was asked about this topic she said something that stayed with me: “He won, no matter what, as he ruined the lives of many generations of Cubans...” And I think she’s right; Castro won, no matter what. He got all of these people displaced and families separated… No one is going back in my generation or even my parent’s generation and, of course, not from later generations such as Christina’s. I see similarities with the case in Germany, as East Germans were not quite ready to embrace West Germany after 1989. If the system changes in Cuba, there will be horrendous problems of adaptation for a while. And of course, it could just remain the disaster that it is today. Things won’t be greatly changed after Castro’s death. Not for a long, long time. And frankly, I don’t think I will be here to see the changes, if they do take place.