
This is my father in his baseball uniform in Cuba. Baseball is big in Cuba,
but my father was not that great at sports. He told me he remembers when he would
strike out his father would get up and walk out of the game.

This is a picture of my dad and his little sister, Magda. Our family owned an apartment building in the Vedado section of Havana. Behind the apartment building there was a prison. My dad said as a boy he watched the prisoners walking in circles for hours around the prison yard. What he remembers most about the prisoners was the "expression of persecution they wore." He said it was an expression he came to know well when he walked around the prison yard as an inmate.

This is a picture of my brothers Danny, Hector and Carlos. This picture was taken soon after we moved into our first house after my father's incarceration. We were homeless for a period, and we were all SO excited that our mom found this house. We loved the backyard. The rent was $99 dollars a month.

A letter written by my father during his hunger strike in 1976 to Governor Askew.

This is a letter my father sent to my brother when he was
elected president of his class. (I love when he writes basketball is "in" now.)
My father always took advantage of any opportunities offered in the prison system,
from college courses to intensive and experimental therapy. He led his own therapy
groups in prison.

This is the only picture I have with my father as an adult. This was the week I interviewed him. I just finished interviewing him in the car. His wife, Teresita, took this picture on13th Avenue where there is a Memorial park to Cuban heroes in LittleHavana. I spent my summers two blocks away with my grandparents. We are standing in front the Jose Marti memorial (poet and revolutionary).
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This is my favorite photograph of my grandmother and my
father making their way down a street in Havana in 1940. We don't know who took
this photograph but they appear completely unaware that someone is taking their
photo. Just beautiful.

This is my dad in the Bahamas when he was a teenager. Taking a vacation from the revolution?

This is my mom when she lived in Cuba in 1960. In this picture
she's pregnant with my oldest brother Hector. This is the year she left because she didn't want my brother born in Cuba for fear that she wouldn't be able to get him out. My father had to escape Cuba through Mexico. He swam across the Rio Grande where he was arrested for entering the country illegally.
Later, our family settled in the little Havana section of Miami.

This is a picture of my grandparents after they re-settled in government subsidized housing in the Little Havana section of Miami. After my father was sentenced to 30 years on bombing charges, my grandfather was so angry with him that he rarely visited him in prison. He made a few exceptions. One was when the prison officials thought my father was going to die during his 40 day hunger strike. A priest was called to give him last rites. My father said he remembers floating outside of his body looking down on his parents and the priest giving him last rites in the prison hospital.

This is a letter my dad sent me from prison when I was a kid. I was horrified by his comment about my spelling and grammar, especially since English was not his first language! Now I can see it his attempt to parent from prison.

A letter my dad sent me from prison in 1975.
I have been receiving so many powerful emails since the show has been up on Transom. I received this photograph of my father that was taken by political prisoner Luis Crespo at Belle Glade Correctional Institution in 1975. |