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SUMMARIZE STORY Esteban’s Story I was born into an upper…
SUMMARIZE STORY
Esteban’s Story
I was born into an upper middle-class family of European (French and Spanish) origin in Cuba in 1947,
during the years prior to Castro’s communist revolution of 1959. At the time of my birth, and throughout my
childhood, my father was an engineer/administrator, who was the director of a large corporation. My mother
was an educator/homemaker, who dedicated herself primarily to raising her children and running our
household. My sisterwho was 3 years my seniorand I lived in an atmosphere of emotional and financial
comfort and stability. In addition, we were the recipients of a sense of psychological security, which was
conscientiously bestowed on us by our parents and which simultaneously resulted from our organized style of
life.
I experienced my family of origin as a loving, peaceful, nurturing, and well-structured system. My parents
enjoyed a long, happy, and stable marriage. They formed a successful team and equally distributed their
parenting responsibilities so that both parents provided quality time to my sister and me. As a result of my
parents’ socioeconomic position, my earliest identity was formed against the backdrop of Cuba’s upper
stratum. This was at once a gift and a tragedy, given the devastating, politically imposed, all encompassing
losses that followed Castro’s communist revolution of 1959.
The gift was receiving a refined and somewhat privileged reception into human life. The tragedy was that
such graciousness did not prepare me for the poverty, emotional devastation, and personal and relational losses
I would begin to experience in my early adolescence after the initiation of my forced expatriation.
I, along with more than 14,000 other children, experienced forced expatriation from Cuba in 1962, when I
was 14 years oldas an unaccompanied child. My parents sent me into political exile in the United States,
through the then clandestine Operation Peter Pan, which was organized and funded by the Catholic Welfare
Bureau and led by Monsignor Bryan O. Walsh. This operation facilitated the largest recorded political exodus
of children in the Western hemisphere. After arriving in the United States, I was sent to a refugee camp for
adolescent Cuban boys, which was located south of the Miami area. We lived in Spartan, barracks-type
accommodations, which constituted a marked change from the physical comforts and emotional security to
which I had been accustomed in Cuba. During the 3 months I spent in camp, I cried every day under the
same pine tree for hours at a time, mourning the loss of part of myselfmy family, my comfort, and my
existential/phenomenological security.
Subsequently, I received an academic merit scholarship to continue my secondary education in a Catholic high
school in Delaware. During the next 2 years, I resided in a group home for boys, which was administered by a
Catholic priest, who was also on the faculty of the high school I attended. Thereafter, I was, once again,
relocated to a third destinationan orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska, where I completed my final year of high
school in 1967. I reunited with my parents in Omaha at approximately the time I completed high school. My
sister, Anna, was not able to seek political exile because, by the time my parents were able to obtain exit visas
in 1967, she had married and had given birth to her first child. Her husband was of military age and would
not be allowed to exit Cuba for at least a decade.
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The reunion with my parentsafter 5 years of separationwas bittersweet. I was angry and disappointed that
Castro’s government did not allow my sister, with whom I had been quite close, to leave the island.
Furthermore, notwithstanding my intense joy at being reunited with my parents in exile, I had to contend
with the realization that things would not be the same as they had been in Cuba. For example, my family
would never again be complete, and the privileged socioeconomic conditions that my parents had provided for
me in Cuba were gone forever. Thus, I found my parents’ vulnerability to the harsh conditions of forced
expatriation to be quite devastating. It was excruciatingly painful to see that my fatheronce the powerful and
highly respected administrator of a leading international corporation in Cubahad to accept an insignificant
factory position that had nothing to do with his engineering background or administrative expertise to help
the family survive financially. My mother, who herself had been a distinguished educator in Cuba, also had no
alternative but to accept factory work, which held no relevance to her profession and personal meaning in
reference to her life goals. These profound, transcending wounds have left a long-lasting mark on my sense of
self and my developing identity.
I perceived my forced expatriation as a highly traumatic phenomenon, which not only represented a series of
profound sociopolitical, economic, and cultural losses, but also entailed a long separation from my parents at a
very sensitive age and a permanent separation from my sister, which culminated in her premature death at the
age of 44 years, the result of an “automobile accident” in Cuba in 1988. As such, these critical elements have
constituted the loss of my phenomenological framework and original sociocultural context and have come to
represent losses of a transcending and irretrievable nature in my life. For example, gone was the psychological
security of having an extended family and a support network. Furthermore, our family system was drastically
reduced from a comprehensive constellation, which included grandparents and younger generation aunts,
uncles, and cousins, to a nuclear family unit, which was comprised solely by my parents and myself.
My current values are a blend of my mother’s and my father’s beliefs, life philosophies, and manners of being-
in-the-world, and they reflect an unresolved polarity between realistic industriousness and the romantic
delusion that one is still a member of the upper class while living in the conditions of near poverty, a state
which hundreds of thousands of political exiles encountered upon arrival in the United States. My values also
constitute the essence of my “received” identity and of the identity I have actively chosen to incorporate into
my sense of self, as a conscious, reflective adult. For example, although given my present status as a full-time
graduate student, my income is somewhat limited, but my values, aspirations, social training, and philosophy
of life have nothing to do with this temporary category and continue to correspond to the upper
socioeconomic grooming I received as a child. Furthermore, the humanistic values, which I received from
both of my parents, I believe, characterize most accurately my consciously chosen manner of being-in-the-
world. This is reflected in my chosen profession, as a “wounded healer,” in the field of psychology and in my
professional dedicationspanning the past 20 yearsto providing culturally sensitive services to the most
discriminated against minority populations.
I was brought up as a member of the Caucasian raceboth biologically and socioculturally. This has been
instrumental in maintaining an intact sense of racial identity in my subsequent experiences as a political exile
in a country such as the United States where ethnicity is often absurdly confounded with race and where even
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the most explicit and obvious Caucasian individuals of Latin American extraction (mostly of the younger
generation) are effectively brainwashed into thinking that they, indeed, are not Caucasian because they were
born in a Spanish-speaking country. Such individuals have had to contend with ethnic discrimination,
notwithstanding that they indeed are members of the Caucasian race, given the issue that they are not per se
“classic” representatives of what has been denominated as “culturally White” by a collective of powerful and
influentialbut highly ignorant and uncultivated individualswho have succeeded in establishing the “rules
and regulations” for what is, and what is not, “socioculturally White.” These individuals have, moreover,
established that Whiteness is a “registered trademark” and a monopoly of exclusively one group of Caucasians
in the worldnamely, the U.S. Anglo Saxons. In view of these anthropologically absurd antics, which,
unfortunately, are widespread, I am quite proud of having arrived in this country as an individual with an
already well-developed sense of self, including the dimensions of racial and ethnic identity. I am, furthermore,
proud that, notwithstanding the social and academic ignorance of mainstream society, I have remained
impervious to the indoctrination of the latter and have not succumbed to the betrayal of my identity as a
member of the Caucasian racefor the sake of the so-called ease of not having to swim against the
preposterous and absurd current of “mainstream” society’s collective and all-encompassing ignorance.
In terms of ethnic or national identity, along with tens of thousands of youngsters, I was deprived of growing
up on my own soil and within the emotional security of my own cultural infrastructure. Instead, my cohorts
and I have grown up as foreigners in the United States, and notwithstanding our legal status as permanent
residents or American citizens, we shall remain as ontological foreigners for the rest of our livesour cultural
identities split forever between two irreconcilable nations. Along with more than one million individuals, my
family experienced the total confiscation of our businesses, real estate, private property, bank accounts, and
other assets by Castro’s government. Shortly after the revolution, we were exposed to diverse forms of political
oppression, such as the abolishment of the freedoms of speech and press, the abolition of governmental
elections, the Marxist-Leninist indoctrination of children at school, the persecution of the clergy, and the
eradication of free enterprise. As political dissidents, we were permitted to exit Cuba with only a few personal
belongings and very limited funds (i.e., 5 dollars per person).
Experiencing these devastating events during early adolescence, followed by my attempts to consolidate my
original national identity with my newly acquired status as a political expatriate living in a foreign country,
resulted in profound existential turmoil and a state of cultural uprootedness. Thus, through the phenomenon
of forced expatriation, I, along with hundreds of thousands of exiled Cubans, experienced a resulting, all-
encompassing feeling-state of phenomenological uprootednessthat is, a lack of cultural, historical, and
national continuity and stability. Many of us who were exiled at an early age may regard ourselves as the lost
generation of the late 20th centurya collective of individuals whose lives were developmentally and
phenomenologically quartered by the devastating socioeconomic, political, and cultural effects of the
communist revolution and the ensuing chaos of political exile. From a metaphorical perspective, many Cuban
expatriates of our generation conceive of ourselves as sociocultural-psychological abortions. This is a state of
being that emerges as the result of having lost our original framework to exist (i.e., the conditions of our lives
in Cuba, before the communist revolution), as a consequence of not fitting in, either into what Cuba has
become under communist rule or, ontologically, into the phenomenological sphere of our adopted country of
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exile, and as a consequence of having had our existential development interrupted.
In my developmental process, this feeling of cultural displacementof not having roots anywheregradually
evolved into a perduring, multidimensional sense of existential alienation from postrevolutionary, communist
Cuba and, simultaneously, to some degree, from my country-of-exile, the United States. It is this inescapable
presence of alienation per se that comes to form an inextricable part of many Cuban exiles’ national identity
and existential framework: the nauseating feeling of not belonging anywherea perpetual state of being in
existential limbo persists even after four decades of political exile. I do not feel completely North American,
and I do not feel Cuban in the manner in which Cuba exists geopolitically today. Along with many of my
exiled cohorts, I remain inexorably Cuban in my identification with a unique society, with its own
phenomenological configuration, which ceased to exist in 1959, following the communist takeover.
It is important to distinguish here, between the experience of an immigrant and that of an expatriate. Cuban
expatriates do not practice the mentality or philosophy of immigration, which lends itself to a more adaptive
attitude on the part of the individual who, as an immigrant per se, is voluntarily seeking an alternativeand
permanentlife in a new country. The early-wave Cuban expatriate who belonged to the island’s considerably
large upper and middle classes would not have left Cuba seeking a better life in the United States because
prior to the revolution there was no socioeconomic need for such action given the expatriate’s level of
professional and fiduciary development.
Along with my family and myself, the overwhelming majority of Cuban expatriates believed that our political
exile would be short-lived and temporary and that we would return to Cuba after Castro’s demise. Forty-four
years after our political exile, many Cuban expatriates still consider the possibility of returning to Cuba after
the eradication of communism. For example, many of my peers and I consider it an ethical responsibility as
well as a human right and privilege to return to Cuba after Castro’s demise and to participate in the long and
comprehensive reconstruction process, which will be needed to restore Cuba to the functional first world
nation it was prior to Castro’s invasion.
The relevant point is that the majority of Cuban expatriates presently residing in political exile throughout the
world would not have left their nation for socioeconomic, migratory reasons. Thus, as a first-wave Cuban
expatriate, I consider myself to be in exile solely from Castro’s totalitarian government, from the ensuing
abolition of the basic human rights that are upheld in a democratic system, and from the preclusion of free
enterprise as it is recognized internationally, within a capitalistic infrastructure. As such, I am not in exile
from the fatherland, in itself, and I shall continue to indefinitely await Cuba’s eventual recovery and
restoration to democracy, a key and highly present issue in the execution of my daily existence.
This may be the reason why my struggles with the English language were so severe. English was not spoken at
home during my childhood and early adolescence. I had difficulties once I arrived into the United States. The
acquisition of English has been a painful process and an instrumental component of my identity construction.
I have an idiosyncratic speech pattern that embodies my struggles with losing my original and desirable
psychosociocultural framework, the “temporarility” of my forced expatriation, and my resistance to the
acquisition of (or the serious attempts to learn) Standard English phonemes as a strategy for not being
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assimilated by the dominant culture, to keep my Cuban identity intact. I know that people still struggle to
understand my heavy accent.
Notwithstanding the ravaging experiences connected with my loss of country and forced expatriation, and
even after assuming the role of a political exile, my identity was constructed within the values, norms, and
structure of an affluent, Cuban-European family. However, even upper stratum Cuban society was still
considerably influenced by a phallocentric model of psychosocial development and functioned primarily from
a patriarchal perspective. Therefore, gender identity formation and sexual orientation issues were clear:
heterosexuality was, unquestionably, the only acceptable sexual orientation for both my sister and for me.
Gender roles were clearly delineated for men and women, very much in a parallel manner to the upper class,
1950s society of the United States. In Cuba, as in the United States, a critically differentiating experience in
female and male development is generated from the transcultural phenomenon that women are, for the most
part, responsible for early child care. Therefore, the development of my masculine traits and my defined male
personality took place in relation with and in connection to other individuals to a lesser degree than did my
sister’s identity formation. As a result, my sister was less individuated than me, and I was more autonomous
and self-oriented than her. For example, through the process of early identification with our mother, my sister
developed a sense of self that was continuous with others as well as connected to the world. As a consequence
of the fact that women are mostly mothered by women, as a female child, my sister developed within a self-in-
relation context of relational capacities and needs, in which significant importance was placed on the mother-
daughter connection as an empathic unit of ongoing mutual support and on the values of nurturing and caring
for others, kindness and graciousness in human transactions, and self-development within a framework of
respecting and supporting the simultaneous progress of others.
Conversely, my own gender identity formation was more independent and autonomous and more centered on
developing myself as an individual entity versus a being-in-relation-to-others. Decades later, it was the
referred independent and autonomous attitude that, in part, contributed to my divorce from my second wife. I
now remember that she would often make referencequite accurately and specificallyto the marked
contrast between the manner in which she perceived herself in our relationship (i.e., as a being-in-
relationship) and the manner in which she perceived that I behaved in our relationship (i.e., with much less
reciprocity and mutuality, focusing more on my personal development vs. our development as a team). In
retrospect, I realize that this was a valuable lesson to learn.
Furthermore, from a multigenerational perspective, males played a dominant role in both my paternal and
maternal ancestors’ lives. These phallocentric gender and societal roles were consistently transmitted across the
generations to my own family of origin, wherein males enjoyed more personal freedom, individual autonomy,
and decision-making power than females and benefited from certain double standards of behavior. For
example, at the age of 12 or 13 years, I had more privileges and personal autonomy than my sister, who was
then 16 years old. Whereas I received the message that I was macho, varón, y masculino and therefore had the
upper hand, she received a message of deference to the masculine sexa message against which she
fortunately successfully rebelled.
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Again, these previously held values of male dominance ultimately resulted in significant conflicts in my second
marriage to a Cuban woman, whose feminist orientation toward gender equality considerably contributed to
my progressive rejection of what I now realize is an unfair and quite primitive value system. As a result of
many academic discussions with my second former spouse (who presently remains my closest friend and
colleague), and of my own consistent reflections on the subject matter, I have adopted a more humanistic and
egalitarian worldview and understanding of human relationships, and understand the critical importance of
mutuality in allnot just in marital relationships. In addition, my phallocentric family context affected my
first attempt at forming a nuclear family. My daughter, Mabel (from my first marriage), at 10 years old
nervously asked me if I wanted or planned to have a son, as if I would not be satisfied with merely having a
daughter. By the time Mabel confronted me with this issue, I had divorced my first wife and had remarried,
and my value system had evolved to the point that I was able to reassure her that I was ecstatic to have her as
an only child and that she would always be my treasured and beautiful offspring.
Another pattern is that all first-born or only sonsincluding myselfhave been consistently and invariably
named after their fathers on both sides of the family. Having been given my father’s name was at once a great
honor and a marked challenge. Given that my father was a highly educated, culturally refined, and
sophisticated individual who was gifted in many areas of life, and that he was, simultaneously, a truly
accomplished professional in the fields of engineering and technical administration, at times I felt awed by his
presence and by the expectation to follow in his footsteps. For example, I was expected to become an engineer
and completed 1.5 years of engineering courses. In addition, because both my sister and I inherited our
gender-consistent parental names (i.e., Anna and Esteban), I was resolute not to name my daughter, Mabel,
after her mother or anyone else in the family. I voted to choose a name that had no antecedents on either side
of the families-of-origin, thereby presenting Mabel with the opportunity to develop and formulate her own
essence as an individual, without preconceived family notions or expectations from prior personas.
Again, although as a Cuban expatriate I am considered to represent an ethnic minority in the United States, I
am aware that my simultaneous membership in the Caucasian race has also entitled me to certain privileges
that minority groups of color have not been able to receive, including easier upward mobility and the absence
of racial discrimination on an almost daily basis, which is part of other minorities’ phenomenological
experience. I feel that I have also successfully maintained my identity as a Caucasian individual, despite daily
exposure to the absurd stereotyping and social ignorance of mainstream Anglo-American society, which
postulates that Anglo-Saxons are the sole ethnicity with rightful claim to authentic membership in the
Caucasian race. This latter ability to maintain an intact identity as a member of the Caucasian race despite the
endless brainwashing that takes place through all possible mediums of written and verbal communication in
the United States at times feels comparable to swimming upstream against a force equitable to that of Niagara
Falls and actually surviving; it is, indeed, a significant accomplishment.
I feel that as an individual I have attained a certain degree of integrated biculturalism (i.e., the ability to be
involved in both my culture-of-origin and the culture of my host society without having a blended identity),
while maintaining an intact sense of identity as a Cuban expatriate. Having had the subjective experience of
forced expatriation from my fatherland, Cuba; having had four decades of life in political exile to consciously
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analyze and reflect on my context as a Cuban national living in the United States, with all the profound levels
of loss and reconstruction such a position in life entails; and, finally, having attained an effective level of
integration of the two cultures in reference, I feel comfortable with the experience of encountering and
understanding the unique processes of cultural transition and acculturation of other individuals in
phenomenological transition.
Finally, as a Caucasian, I have developed an effective working knowledge about racial, ethnic, cultural, and
religious differences, and since the time of my residence in Cubaa time also marked by ethnic and racial
diversityI have actively and consciously worked on developing a nonracist, humanistically oriented,
Caucasian identity. As previously stated, I was raised with humanistic, Christian values, which place emphasis
on equality and justice for both genders and for individuals of all races, ethnicities, cultures, and
socioeconomic backgrounds. Moreover, my parents believed in social justice and equality and ran their
household in a democratic and equalitarian manner. Thus, the principles of racial, ethnic, cultural, and gender
equality have been of paramount importance in my upbringing and in the development of my sense of identity
as a Caucasian of Cuban nationality.
I have successfully become bilingual and bicultural, and I can function quite capably and efficiently in both the
mainstream U.S. culture and in my culture-of-origin, which I consider to be at least as efficient and high
functioning as U.S. mainstream culture. I have been able to incorporate many aspects of U.S. culture without
forsaking my own ethnic identity and value system. In addition, I have emerged as a stronger, more sensitive,
more insightful human being as a result of this process. However, at a deeper, existential level, it would be
absurd to deny that there are still unresolved personal and identity issues, which are the natural consequences
of the loss of my cultural framework; of the fact that Cuba has not, as yet, been liberated from communism;
and of the reality that a democratic process has still not been restored to millions of individuals whose human
rights continue to be violated by a totalitarian regime.
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Content Themes
In this story, Esteban tells us about the profound effect his losses have had in his life. He describes the sorrow
at his loss of country, family, upper middle-class comforts, and language, weaving in the themes of
acculturation and ethnicity in his relationship with the American cultural.
