Havana-Costa Rica-Miami(?): A voyage to prove love

MIAMI — Every night, before turning off the bedside lamp in the hostel where she has been sleeping for the past 20 days, Sofía rekindles her hopes, thinking that soon she will embrace Gaby, “the love of my life.”

With that thought, she relieves the daily tedium while waiting for news that will untangle her fate and that of the almost 4,000 Cubans marooned in Costa Rica, the tragic protagonists of one of the most serious migratory crises Cuba has ever experienced.

Compared with the situation of those who sleep in makeshift shelters and mats on the floor, courtesy of humanitarian organizations and the Costa Rican government, Sofía’s status is enviable. Her girlfriend in Miami provides the daily $20 that pay for a safe bedroom, food and communications.

Her girlfriend is also willing to pay whatever is required to remove Sofía from Costa Rica, legally or illegally, just as she paid for her plane ticket from Havana to Quito, Ecuador, and the $2,500 that a coyote charged to take Sofía through Colombia and Panama.

The two women trust that Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solís finds a way for the Cubans barred by Nicaragua and Guatemala to continue their journey to the southern border of the United States, as is their wish. They’re not interested in the chess game played by politicians who take rhetorical advantage of the situation.

Nor do they care about the learned analyses, the abstract blame or the speculation about a migratory policy that is different from others in the Americas because it rewards those who arrive at their desired destination.

Sofía concentrates in getting there. She repeats that mantra daily, with the stubborn instinct of a 20-some-year-old woman in love, to whom no sacrifice is excessive.

Some Cubans leave their homeland because of the economic asphyxia of a 25-year-long crisis without a light at the end of the tunnel. Others want political and participative freedom; others, to travel the world and work as they go; others, in search of adventure. Sofía took her chances to marry another woman.

Their story began two years ago, at a party in Havana. A common friend introduced them to each other and changed their lives. Gaby wanted to go to the United States and her project was going well.

By the time they met, some of the money needed for Gaby’s departure had already been invested. Her reason for emigrating: after years of selling to neighbors the goods that others stole or brought from abroad, she tired of worrying to a frazzle just to earn a few pesos. By emigrating, she thought, she would be able to sleep in peace, without exposing herself to the risks of “inventing,” the word redefined in Cuba to mean overcoming the challenges of daily life.

The trip took a year to firm up, enough to allow the two women’s relationship to deepen and consider a future together. In July 2014, Gaby boarded the plane that took her north and initiated the torture of separation.

Sofía, too, had thought about emigrating. However, until Gaby’s departure, that thought had not been a priority. As a descendant of Italians, Sofía could apply for Italian citizenship and fly legally to the United States. But the long citizenship process made her desperate and she chose to leave for the U.S. from Ecuador overland, mindless of the dangers, because, after all, tens of thousands of Cubans have been taking the same road for years.

“When someone is in love, everything is easier. You feel that you’re flying, you’re not afraid.” She writes with a fevered romanticism that raises the temperature of a Facebook chat box. “For her, I would walk all the way to China,” she says, to underwrite her belief that love conquers all.

We’re communicating through Facebook, thanks to a friend. I look at a picture of her kissing Gaby’s cheek; in another picture, she looks at the camera through dark sunglasses. I pose a reporter’s questions, concerned as I am by that humanitarian situation full of subliminal subtext that I cannot always discern.

She unburdens the tension of uncertainty and repeats what others have said, thanking the government and people of Costa Rica for their generosity. But she won’t go back to Cuba, not even by force.

There are plans that she will not abandon: she and Gaby legally married, traveling through Europe, owners of a modest home and a cat to feed.

“Could you have lived that love in Cuba?” I ask.

“With Gaby, even in the underworld,” she answers. “Wherever she chooses for me, that’s paradise. We lived well in Cuba. She earned a good salary and owned a motorcycle. We had a dreamy time. Everyone in our circle was gay.”

–“So, what does the United States offer you?”

–“The freedom to marry. That’s my dream. I also want to travel and see European capitals. In Cuba there is no future. To have money there, you have to do illegal things, but I want peace and love. I’m not very ambitious.”

Like Sofía, many Cubans have reasons to leave the island, especially young people. I myself write from Miami, the city that those 4,000 migrants wish to reach.

The arguments for their decision are primarily, financial. If the world’s top economy welcomes you with guaranteed documentation and provides assistance that facilitates your insertion in the society you seek, the logical destination is the United States.

There are political backstories on both sides: Washington plays dirty by denying visas in Havana while accepting those who risk their lives. In Cuba, the stampede is a symptom of disillusionment, of indolence.

But the human drama is greater than the words spoken from places of power. Each emigrant is a world, a star-crossed story, a cloud of shadings that cannot be captured in speeches and statistics.

“I know that this will end very soon and that we’ll embrace. To be in love gives meaning to my life,” Sofía tells me.

I try to fit her story into the hundreds of lines that I’ve read to understand the reasons for the migratory crisis that takes away our sleep. How to express, among so many complexities, that love is also a reason to depart?

It could be that, for us Cubans, emigrating has an undertone of melancholy. Despite the flexibility of the emigration reform law of 2013 and the restart of relations between the island and the U.S., those of us who were born there experienced emigration as an act from which there was no turning back. We continue to think in terms of being “turncoats,” of feeling a sense of guilt.

We forget that moving in search of a better life is a practice that predated national borders and modern nations. It is a human right that should be exercised without leaving scars.