By Osmel Almaguer
HAVANA TIMES – The first time I thought about the possibility of leaving Cuba was in 2016. I remember it was night, and I was swimming in the pool of the Hotel Panamá after completing the day’s tight schedule during one of the trips I made as an independent journalist to the Panama City.
In reality, I didn’t even seriously consider it. The idea was dismissed for a bunch of reasons that, at that time, weighed heavily enough.
The following years brought new trips, while Cuban reality deteriorated irreversibly. Every return to Havana meant coming back to a society that seemed designed to invalidate me, underutilize me, and humiliate me.
It reached a point where I fantasized too much about that pool, which symbolized a clear and illuminated life in a country where my talent would be valued. Then the coughing from the smoke of the “almendrones” (old US cars used a taxis), which wouldn’t stop, brought me back to reality.
What came out of those exhaust pipes seemed black and volatile, like my future. But my wife, my father, and especially fear, kept me immobilized. Fear, mainly fear. Anyone who knows Cubans knows that we have been indoctrinated into the deepest terror of capitalism.
Then the pandemic arrived, and with it, the feeling that I was trapped in Cuba. Life had given me enough opportunities to escape, and I hadn’t taken advantage of them. And now?
With the pandemic, our daughter was born as well, which became another kind of excuse to stay in that country. But the pandemic ultimately accelerated the crisis of the Cuban economy to such an extent that we soon reached a point of no return.
Those same reasons that had held me back until then became motivating factors to grow and escape. The worst part was still leaving my father behind; elderly and sick as he was. It seemed absurd that it had been my own decision to move away from him forever.
The psychological and emotional barriers had been overcome. Everything would be easier now. All that remained was to gather thousands of dollars, complete countless legal procedures, and find a destination country.
Read more from the diary of Osmel Almaguer here.
