Memorias Cubanas 4 : Professor Jorge Valdés, Spanish

Interviewed by Emily Cashman, Thomas Ferrante and Neala Polachi

When did you come to the United States and how did you find out that you were coming?

     July 21, 1961. I was 10 years old and I wouldn’t turn 11 for three more months. That’s when I left. Now, how I found out? Two days before I was about to leave for the United States, my parents told me. They couldn’t tell me beforehand because I would then reveal the fact that I would be leaving Cuba and that would have created problems politically for my parents. So I was surprised. I was told two days before, and we went shopping in Havana because at that point you could actually carry 66 pounds out of Cuba. So we went shopping and came back and made this bag, which was actually a canvas bag because you could put more stuff in it than in a regular suitcase. Next thing I was at Rancho Bolleros Airport in Havana with my mom and my dad. They shipped me off on my own, by myself. I had a little tag that said my name.

     My uncle and aunt had been here in Tampa since the 50’s, before Castro’s takeover and of course I was to come to Tampa too but way of Miami. I came alone, and my mother did not come until seven months after I did, and my father didn’t come until seven years after I did. So we all left at separate times. What happened was that my mother didn’t want to leave my father. My father didn’t want to leave, so she was caught in the middle between husband and son. So she said, “let’s send them, and then in six or seven months we’ll go.” In effect she had to make a decision, and she came in seven months. Now my father couldn’t leave because he was a medical doctor, not only a medical doctor, but he was the chief doctor of the town, very well known, and he had been offered a high position in Castro’s government as the supervisor of all the hospitals in the province. So the government had their eye on my father and wanted to keep him in Cuba because they needed his services. We waited seven years for my father to come and in those seven years we must have gone to the airport about five or six times to meet him and he never showed up. At the last minute the government would pull his permit and say, “no you can't go” because of this or that. Eventually the government said “well, if you work for us for 5 years we'll let you go.” And in fact in 1967, 5 years pretty much after my mom left, my father was finally able to come to the United States.

Why did you leave Cuba?

     Well, you have to imagine that in 1961, the revolutionary takeover was very recent and Castro had turned already towards the Soviet Union by that time, certainly by June of 1961. Russia itself, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria – all these countries started being named as possible places in which to educate the young Cubans. I had just graduated from sixth grade, and I was a very good student and I was singled out by the government as a candidate for a scholarship. They offered me the scholarship, and these are offers you can’t refuse. It was to Prague, Czechoslovakia. So basically my family would never see me again because I was to go to Prague, or they had a chance of closer ties and that would be Florida, with the chance that they would see me again. Of course you didn’t tell the government you were not going to send your child to Prague, Czechoslovakia. So you tried to get them out of Cuba and say, “well, he’s gone to be with his family.” That happened so sudden. I learned about it in two days and it happened so suddenly that I did not have an exit visa from Cuba. I found out later that my father had paid tons of money under the table to get me on a plane from Havana to Miami. So money talks, even in Castro’s day! And so that’s why, because of the fear that we would be sent to another country and also because of the instability of Cuba.

     The first years were just filled with terror, it was very, very unpleasant to live in Cuba during those first years of the Revolution because you never know at what point you might be singled out as the opposition. There was not really any due process of law – you’re accused, you have a chance to defend yourself, you go to court, you know all that stuff. In Cuba, you’re accused and tried and judged at the same time basically. There was a lot of fear. And of course my parents ultimately would come because they didn’t want to live under what was then supposed to be a communist regime, because Castro did this very slowly. At first he did not talk about communism or anything of the sort. For instance in the first years of the revolution from ’59 to ’60 and the middle of ’60 still, my family was supportive of the Revolution. Certainly the first year from ’59 to ’60, no question about it. But it was when things started to turn and Castro was breaking relations with the United States and he began to announce the different reforms – the agrarian reform which was first, which they confiscated large holdings of land, and the urban reforms which they confiscated also extra houses that people had for rental, extra real estate, etc. When all these laws began to pass the wealthy and the middle class began to see truly what was happening.

     Now some of the very wealthy left right at the onset, because they were tied with the Batista government and we were not. We were opposed to the Batista government, so there was no reason for my family to leave. My father was a sympathizer of the Revolution for the first year and subsequently said “well enough is enough, we’re seeing the handwriting on the wall and we’ll eventually have to go to the United States.” My father never thought that he would remain in the United States, that’s why he wasn’t so upset that he was kept because he was still holding on to some lands. Being a doctor and a prominent figure, the government respected him more than most people. He had been a sympathizer of the government and had cured many of Castro’s men that were up in the hills surrounding my town pre-1959. The government knew this and knew that my father was a supporter and a sympathizer.

     Castro came to my house in the 50’s. My mother would always tell me the story that Castro came to collect money for the Revolution. First my house was chosen as the house and very few people showed up because they were so fearful of the Batista. Mom asked the young Fidel Castro, very handsome she said, “what would you like to drink?” and he says “a coke.” And so she served him a coke. We were not the only wealthy family who was pro-Castro who were just horrified by the Batista and the Batista regime, and by what was happening. My father was to be executed by Batista on January 6, 1959. Castro took over 5 days before that. My father was to be executed by being hung from a pole in the town square and they found a list of the people that were to be executed. The 6th of January was chosen because it's Epiphany, so that would be a gift that we would get from the Wise Men. That’s the terror that we lived under the government of Batista. We were ecstatic when Batista left overnight. And on the first of the year we woke up to find out that he had left and that Castro, the promise, was coming in, and fact already making way on the Eastern part of the island, which took him a couple days, maybe more.

Do you have any vivid childhood memories from Cuba?

     Childhood memories… I would say that the happiest point of my life was my childhood. And it was partly because I grew up in Cuba that was so and also because I grew up in a small town unlike many of my Cuban colleagues who might have come from Havana or might have come from a larger city or town. I grew up in Candelaria, the western most province of Pinar del Río in a small town surrounded by hills on the north, and with its coast nearby on the south. It was just an idyllic place where you could walk the whole town freely and roam about and go hunting. As a child, I remember going to my father’s farm and playing with my friends, taking fruit from the trees, selling them in town, roaming about... it was basically, for me, freedom; it was such a free childhood. There were no fears of crime or being abducted or anything. You could just get on a little bus and travel up to Sagua la Grande, to the hills, or to the farm, etc. By contrast, when we had to go to Havana, to visit my Mom’s family or something official that my father had to attend, I was very sad. I hated Havana as a child. To me, it was cement and asphalt and I felt confined. I couldn’t wait to get out of there and come back to the little town in which I lived. I think the fact that I lived in a small town marked me tremendously – that freedom, that space. To this day, I really love the country more than I love the city.

     Those are some of the childhood memories, but there are so many and some are not so pleasant… One more, this is kind of important I think… when Batista fell, two days after, clearly most of these towns had fallen in the hands of Castro. A lot of the Batista sympathizers and some of his henchmen, as there were, some police, people in the military, etc. that actually had been involved with murders – had either murdered people or had participated in burying some of the people that were executed in the fields which were right outside my town. Sometimes you could hear the shots. A lot of these people were incarcerated immediately. I remember that my father took me to the next town’s jail; I would say it was January 3rd 1959, and I don’t know why he took me… I was only 9 years old. But he took me, and I remember walking with him and I remember all of these jailed men, begging with him, saying “Please tell him that I didn’t do it... I didn’t kill so and so…” Now they would say to him, “Doctor, you know I wouldn't do such a thing... I only carried the shovels... I only carried the corpse, but I wasn’t the one who fired the shots…” I remember long hallways and all of these prisoners just begging for some kind of alibi, mercy, some way to get out of their situation, which most of them did not because they were executed for their involvement in Batista’s government. In that memory I can visualize the entire jail and these people caged like animals, begging to be spared.

What was the transition like from Cuba to Tampa?

     It was a rupture; it was a violent rupture, a violent tear. It wasn’t a transition, let’s say, as you would have from childhood to your teenage years in the same country, in the same language, in the same ambiance, in the same class status. The transition was traumatic. When I left Cuba and came to Tampa, I left the freedom of my town, I left the wealth and the high status of my family, I left my mother and my father. I came to live in a house where there were a different set of rules, and they came under my uncle's care. And I felt very strange in the United States and in Tampa. I really, really missed what I had left behind. It was not a good break. It was a tear. And then to have to learn a new language… I didn’t know a word of English. I was thrown again into the sixth grade, which I had to repeat because I didn’t know the English language. I was placed in a school where there were very few Spanish speaking people. I was the only one who could not speak English. It was kind of like sink or swim. I learned it very fast, because I had to, just to survive. I don’t think I have really ever recovered fully from that break.

     To this day, actually, I want to go back, under different government in Cuba. I was thinking that, in my years of retirement, if the government changes in Cuba, and if it were to go into a democratic society, I may even try to live there for a few years, and see how I like it. I haven’t tried to go back since I left, even though I had family there. I don’t know what kept me back, but something has kept me back. And I don’t know whether it’s not wanting to face what I find would find as a huge change, and then all of my childhood memories and what I hold so dear would vanish... I think that may be playing a part of that.

     My town is still quaint. It’s still small. As a matter of fact, I saw some pictures of the little church and the town hall and what was surprising to me was how much smaller they look now than when I was a child, which kind of makes sense. Some of the old buildings have been torn and new ones have been constructed, the town looks very poor. There’s not much paint on the houses. Those that were built… there’s no such thing as aesthetics, basically una vivienda house, a place to live… But the basic town is there. Of course, the people that I knew, most of them are either in Miami or are in Cuba in the town and they would be between 50 and 60 years of age and probably working with the government or in some kind of basic coexistence.

Where did you go when you first arrived in Tampa?

     I went to Ybor City, Tampa, with my uncle. My uncle had a cigar factory, and maybe that’s where I learned to smoke! The tobacco certainly smelled good. Ybor City was a thriving community; it wasn’t a tourist mecca or anything like that. It was just a place with a little downtown area where the Hispanic and the Italian communities both lived and there were pescaderías (fish markets), and theaters, and they showed Spanish movies and plays and there were little stores, the Columbia restaurant was there of course... and so it was just a thriving community, blocks and blocks and blocks of the bungalow style houses with the porch and triangular roof. It was actually a wonderful place to come back to, in the sense that it enabled me to identify a little bit with my town. Because it wasn’t Ybor, it wasn’t as large as Tampa. It was a little more manageable. Of course, there were no fields and there were no horses, so it wasn’t exactly the same. I was living in my uncle’s house for six months. My mother came seven months after I did and we moved to a housing project where we paid eighteen dollars a month for rent. So this was for the poor. But we were happy in a way, because we now had our own little place again. And Mom was with us... here’s a lady who never worked in her life, except trying to make sure that all the servants did what they were supposed to do, etc. and she went into a shrimp factory and she started working, peeling shrimp ten hours a day. I worked in a catering service, delivering food, and my brother worked at a cigar factory, basically hauling boxes around. So it was a huge change…

How did you become a Spanish literature professor? How has your past affected your profession?

     I don’t really know why I decided to pursue Spanish literature… There’s always things that motivate you and you don’t know exactly why, but I can tell you this: I went to Florida State and I did my college years there in three years because we could go in the summer time on the trimester system. I went in as premed and I was to follow in my father’s footsteps as a doctor. “The doctor’s son,” everyone called me that. My father arrived in 1967, so we were together for a few months before I went off to college in 1968. Florida State, at that point, was still coming from under the shadow of being “the girls’ school” and known for music, drama and the arts, and now they were building the science program. They had a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry when I was there. So by the time I got there the presence of men was equal to that of women. I went into the premed program and did six courses in biology and all the way to organic chemistry and physics and all the basic math, just like you would do here for premed, and then I decided after I had done that, which was probably in the middle of my junior year, that I would not pursue that anymore. The reason I went into it I think was because of family pressure and upbringing. My father was a doctor; I was to be a doctor.

     The reason I left premed was because I was carrying very difficult courses and a friend of mine that who was in the graduate program in literature in Tallahassee said to me, “why don’t you take an easy course and take a course in Spanish?” Of course I couldn’t take any language courses so I just went directly into Survey of the Golden Age. That was my first class. I loved the teacher. She was a Cuban refugee, also, who had done her revalidation here and was studying for her PhD. So, I was reading Don Quixote at the same time that I was dealing with fecal matter in a parasitology lab. And, to me, the charge that I felt from reading literature, such as Cervantes, and the beauty of it just really captivated me. By contrast, I was bored to tears in parasitology. And so I put the two together and I contrasted them. And it just happened in a moment like a flash and I said, “wait a minute, where is my heart here?” And clearly my heart was in literature. And so much was the case that, without telling my parents, I went to the dean of the premed school and I said, “please remove me from your list because I’m changing majors” and I went right into Spanish in my junior year. So I had basically five more trimesters left to do and we would then be carrying four to five courses. From my prior two years being premed, I had already completed all of my basic courses in science and sociology and any other general requirements. So I was then to take over twenty Spanish courses and two of them were graduate-school level. In other words I enrolled into the graduate school because there were no more courses for me to take. Starting in my junior year I would be taking four courses in Spanish every semester. So I really became totally emerged. I would be doing nineteenth-century Spanish American Literature at the same time I would be doing the Golden Age. So I was really passionate about Spanish. And then decided to go on and pursue it as a profession. It was something I wasn’t totally aware of, my love for literature, but it was something that carried me on.

How did you arrive at Holy Cross?

Well, I got my PhD from Connecticut. And I wanted to live in the northeast for a while. And I had a choice. There were two job offers when I graduated from Connecticut. One was at Holy Cross and one was at Union College in Schenectady, New York. And I applied to Holy Cross and at that point it was 1975 and there was a big push to hire women. And apparently my competitor was a woman and everything being equal, the woman got the job. So when I first applied here, I was actually turned down, came in second but had a wonderful, beautiful letter from Professor Fraser, who was then chair, letting me know how sorry he was. But at the same time, Union College answered me, before Holy Cross actually, and said the job is yours. And they were very enthusiastic and offered all sorts of benefits, so I went to work at Schenectady and lived in the Mountains of the Berkshires, which was another wonderful time, back in the hills of Lee Massachusetts.

     Now I would commute. You see, I’ve never really lived where I work. You’ve got that from me, right? (Laughs.) Right, I have always commuted. Right now is the longest of my commutes because it’s 1,400 miles one way. (Laughs.) Well, I was five years at Union when the crisis with the oil and gasoline came about, and so I decided I had to live closer. Basically closer to Hartford, because my male lover lived in Hartford and still taught at the University of Hartford, but we were living in Lee, Massachusetts. He was driving to Hartford, and I was driving to New York. So we kind of said, well let’s move closer to Hartford so we can split the difference and get there because there was no gasoline. And so I applied to Holy cross, and this time Holy Cross accepted and gave me the job. And so I brought some experience with me and so in two years’ time I got tenure at Holy Cross. But I left a really high position at Union to come to Holy Cross. And that was a big decision to leave where I was headed to as the chair of the division of humanities at Union College. To leave Union, already in my fifth year I was granted tenure at Union, to come to Holy Cross, without tenure, with 3 years and then who knows what’s going to happen. But it was a matter of basically proximity, of distance, not necessarily that Holy Cross was better than Union, in my eyes anyway, but it was a Jesuit school and a catholic school and that always attracted me. So I was always drawn to Holy Cross. So I arrived here in 1980 and have been here ever since.

Do you identify yourself as Cuban? American? Or Cuban-American?

     I have to say, sincerely, that I don't identify myself as an American. I don’t identify myself as a Cuban-American. And I don’t even identify myself as a Cuban. For me, these are abstractions. So I don’t have any identity that's tied to patriotism or to homeland and I think this is part of the tear. And going back to teaching Spanish, I believe is an effort to mend the tear. And in the tear it really shows the fact that I am not patriotic about the U.S. and I’m not patriotic about Cuba. Now, I was patriotic about Cuba when I was a child, very patriotic. I would be in all of las ceremonias civiles reciting poetry as a child before the monument to Martí, and all of this stuff. I loved the Cuban flag. I was passionate about flags in general actually. Not only the Cuban flag, but I liked the American flag. I liked the flag of the Catholic Church, which I had as well. But I was definitely very patriotic then and that disappeared when I came to the U.S. and now I’m not very patriotic toward any particular country. But those are kind of abstractions and I really identify myself more with customs and with people. And that’s why if I’m home in the U.S. it’s because of the wonderful people here. Just like there are wonderful people in Cuba too. So I don’t think in those kinds of abstractions. It’s like when they say, “do you like New England and consider New England home for you?” – I've spent more time in New England than any other place in my life. And when I come back every Monday to New England, I feel like I’m coming, in a certain sense, home. It’s not a strange place to come to. And the reason for that is the friends that I have here and the emotional ties that I have here. It’s a beautiful part of the country, but it’s the friends, the students, the job that make me happy to come back here. And likewise, I’m always happy to go back to Florida, because when I land in Tampa, I also feel like I’m coming home. But I think it’s more home in Florida than here, even though I lived there fewer years than in New England. But Cuban-American, I don’t know what it is. For some people it means something, but for me it’s just a blank. It doesn’t mean anything at all, which must be strange for you. Because, I’m sure you have a very different identification with the U.S. and the land and the history and what the flag signifies and that kind of stuff that I had when I was a child in Cuba, but from which I was separated and probably never will recover again.

Are you more comfortable speaking in English or Spanish? Is your identity tied to either language?

     I think that I’m as comfortable in English as I am in Spanish. And in part it’s not just because of language competency, but because there are certain things about my experience with English that I identify with. Well, my education from the sixth grade on was all in English and there is a strong identification with those years. Likewise, Spanish is home to me also for obvious reasons. Now Professor Borland and I are very good friends and of course I speak with Esther Levine, and Nick Sánchez. With people who are native speakers of Spanish, by and large, we speak Spanish. It just feels a lot more natural. Unless, the subject matter is bureaucratic or something technical that you learned outside of the language, then, we feel much more comfortable, or at least I feel more comfortable making the jump, without thinking, into English. When the subject matter changes, the language changes. And sometimes, there are times when it doesn’t change, and I step back and say to myself, “why am I talking English to you?” And all of a sudden you’re cognizant that you’re not speaking the right language, because you’re going against your identity then and you switch, at that point consciously, back into Spanish or English. As far as identity goes, I don't think my identity is necessarily tied to language. I think my identity is tied mostly to my childhood. And at that which I learned to love and still do. And what is identity anyway? How you see yourself? How you think of yourself? I think of myself as somebody who likes to write, who has some sensitivity to poetry, and who would love to live in the country – 10 acres, a nice wooden house, and horses and cows and pigs and roosters all over the place and books to read. That’s kind of like my identity. And if I could go back to Cuba under a different system I'd like to have that. But I do find that I shift from language to language according to the situation, according to the subject matter.

     Now, I do write my poetry in Spanish, primarily, which is kind of curious. I feel much more at ease writing poetry in Spanish than I do in English. But there is a reason for that, in my formal education, all of the poetry I have learned is in Spanish. So the techniques, the poetic forms, etc. That tradition is so much more ingrained in me than the English tradition that I automatically go to Spanish when I write.

What do you think will happen after Castro’s demise? What will that mean for the future of Cuba?

     Castro’s demise? I'm not sure there will be a demise. I mean, he’ll die; he’s got to die at some point. It’s been over forty some odd years with him as the head of the country but, I’m not sure how that’s going to play out. Will there be a transition towards a more democratic government? His brother stands right there, next in line, so we don’t know if there will be any kind of transition. Do the Cuban people ever want a capitalist society again? That’s a huge question. There are people who have been living under a socialist society for fifty years, right? Yeah, almost fifty years… And so that’s three generations already, so will those people be content to live in a capitalist society where there may be great disparities between classes? I don’t know. Will they accept a transition into a democratic government? I honestly think the only transition I think those people would probably accept is a move into a socialist-democratic government; with a lot of socialist influence in the democratic framework, per se. I can’t imagine them supporting what the Cubans supported, of course, back in Batista days. When there were very rich families like mine, and very poor people. So I don’t know if I can answer that. Anything can happen. It’s almost logical that Cuba should have some type of rapprochement to the United States again. There are very strong ties, and emotional ties as well, as well as the desire to visit Cuba and enjoy its beauty, from the United States part and the Cuban people have always admired the Americans. By and large the American people have always been admired by Cuban people, not the American government, but the American way of living, Americans and their ways have always been, I think, by and large have been admired. I think that the patriotic hatred of the US by Cuba, I’m not sure its there anymore. But when there was, it was hatred towards the government and what the government was trying to do.

     A lot of people ask that question: “how do you think it’s going to play out?” And I don’t know how it’s going to play out, I really don’t know. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been back to Cuba. If I had been back and if I were more in touch I’d have a better sense. I think to answer that question, I would have to live in Cuba for at least six months and talk to a lot of people and see what the status is. See what people are thinking, how they are feeling about the situation, and then I would have a good reading of it. Of course depending with whom you talk you’d get a different perspective but it's all hear-say, because, in other words, you’re hearing from somebody who’s heard it from someone else. You know how a telephone conversation begins, you begin to tell the same story and when it all comes around it’s a complete fabrication. So, I’d need to have direct contact to be able to answer that question.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

     There is one thing I’d like to mention, and that is my identification with the poor. That’s very important and it goes back to my childhood. My sensitivity to the plight of the poor has actually affected, in part, my career. I have always been interested in how “the other half” lives; those on the other side of the tracks. It goes back to my childhood because having come from a very privileged background it was very, and still is, puzzling to me that none of my friends were rich. I didn’t associate with the rich people in town. I associated with the poorest of the poor in Cuba. As a ten-year-old, all of my friends were literally dirt poor. There were about 5 families of a very high status, in terms of wealth, but I can’t recall, that in terms of importance to the town, there was any family as important as my father and my mother because my father was the eminent doctor, and you need a doctor. The other family had a preserve factory, and perhaps a lot of wealth associated with, it wasn’t the same status. The others had an air conditioning business in Havana, but they weren’t of a medical status, it was a different status.

     My house in Cuba was directly opposite the church. In other words, there was a town square, typical of Spanish construction of towns, and there was a church and on the opposite side of the square was the city hall, and our house was right next to the city hall, facing the church. Now that tells you a little bit about the prominence about who lives around the town square and the church. Even having come from that privileged background, I never boasted about it. I just took it for granted, I felt very secure. But for some reason I always played with friends who were very poor – the shoe shiners of the town. As a matter of fact, my family would, on the Epiphany, when we would get our gifts, would make sure that all those kids had toys. And often I would just give my own toys away because it was just the thing to do. Frequently, everyone would come to watch television at our house. We had one of three televisions in town. And people would come and watch television. Also, a lot of my clothes that were still good were always given to my friends. I don't know why, it was just natural. My family absolutely encouraged it, not only condoned it, but encouraged it.

     My father was a very humble man; there was nothing uppity about him at all. He cured the poor and didn’t charge them anything, often times they would pay him with eggs and chickens. He had not come from a rich background, he made it all himself. It all came from his talent as a doctor but he never forgot his humble background. My mother comes from a higher up professional family and came to live in a family of a status not as high. I think they were lawyers in the Supreme Court on my mother’s side. But for some reason, I associated exclusively with the poor. And that’s carried into my life today, being sensitive to the plight of the poor, not judging them morally or ethically or anything like that. It’s just a natural gravitation pull towards the poor. I would actually, often times, if the shoe shiners had to make two dollars a day to take home to their moms, because that’s how they survived, I would often times take the two dollars and give it to them so that they didn’t have to work so that we could go up the mountains to go chase after orchids and fruits. I would actually pay whatever they had to earn for the day in order to be free and to play and roam around town.