In 1964 those Cooperadoras Diocesanas that had already been in formation for three years were asked to participate in a three-day spiritual retreat to evaluate the commitment that we were going to do and the Evangelical counsels that we were going to accept as part of our profession as consecrated lay woman. The Evangelical counsels or vows are of poverty, of chastity, and of obedience.
The vow of poverty may generally be defined as the promise made to God of a certain constant renunciation of temporal goods in order to follow Christ. The object of the vow of poverty is anything visible, material, or appreciable at a monetary value. The Catholic Encyclopedia described the vow of obedience as “freedom from ambition which leads a man to choose a position of inferiority, implies a spirit of humility which esteems others as superior, and willingly yields them the first place; the sacrifice of his own independence and his own will presupposes in a high degree that spirit of self-denial.”
On that retreat, the vows of poverty and obedience didn’t represent a problem to me. However, until that moment I hadn’t put together all the challenges that renouncing to be a mother meant to me. I remember the last day of the retreat I was sitting in the small chapel alone, and suddenly I started to cry. I cried from my heart, from my whole body, from my empty womb, from my inability to renounce to the call of my feminine side. I wanted to be a mother. I needed to hold a child in my arms. And I cried. When the calm of releasing my tensions came back, I took a pen and wrote the below poem. It’s dedicated to a son that was not going to be, a poem that described all the feelings associated with his presence and my maternal care to him. I am enclosing the poem written in January 1964 as it was written in Spanish. I have tried to translate it to English but after a few attempts I refused to translate it. It doesn’t sound the same, and it doesn’t carry my feelings with the intensity they were experienced.
Canto A Mi Hijo
“A tí, mi niño alegre,
de ojos grandes,
de sonrisa angelica,
que nunca nacerás”Canto a la inconcebible dicha de saberte en mi seno,
al sobresalto angustioso de tu primer llanto,
-ese llanto nervioso que no sé si es hambre, si dolor, o si sólo ensanchar tu cuerpo que busca respirarCanto a la renuncia de tu primera mirada.
Canto a mi pecho seco que no te podrá amamantar.
A tu pie desnudo … entre sabanitas blancas.
a tu gordezuelos brazos,
a tus pucheros tristes,
a tu balbuceo ingenuo,
a tus primeros intentos de decirme “mamá.”Canto, hijo mío, a la lágrima primera,
al objeto perdido en la tan grande cuna
-aquel que buscas y no sabes agarrar.
Al osito de peluche que yo te compraría.
Al biberón encarnado, para que te llame la atención.
A las batas bellas que yo te bordaría,
a las botitas duras de cuando empieces a andar.Canto a tu gateo cadencioso,
a tus primeros pasitos…
a tu caer en mis brazos, con miedo a hacerte daño,
al “aupa” amoroso que yo te diría
-y te haría levantar.Canto a tu primer diente,
a las noches en vela de febril ansiedad,
a las alegrías de tus días de reyes,
a los retozos de cumpleaños,
al dolor de tu primera enfermedad.Canto, hijo mío, a todo lo que esta tarde sueño
a todo lo que renuncio
a todo lo que ya nunca sera.
But that son, José Néstor, was meant to be. I got pregnant in September 1972 in the resort Kawama in Varadero. Both Pepe and I followed the embryonic journey throughout its different stages, week after week, and very carefully we prepared ourselves for the joy of bringing this child to our family.
We were open to having a girl or a boy. Deep inside me, I was thinking that probably it was going to be a girl. We both wanted to call her Sarai. Pepe and my father wanted a boy, and the name selected was a traditional name in both families: José. José like his maternal uncle and grandfather, José like his father and his paternal great-uncle. He was going to be José with the nickname Pepito.
As soon as we found out about my pregnancy, and especially because neither Pepe nor I had the opportunity to begin our lives again outside Cuba, we analyzed the steps that we need and could do to accommodate our lives in Cuba. We understood that for sure we must not continue living at the margin of the society or in front of the society, but at the same time, we could never embrace an ideology that we deeply rejected or invent a fake integration to the political environment.
In search for orientation, we decided to visit one of my former professors of psychology, Dr. Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo. Alfonso Bernal del Riesgo (1903-1975), doctor in philosophy and arts of the Habana University, was professor of psychology and of sociology at Habana University and the founder of the school of psychology and one of the founders of the Communist Party in Cuba. During our visit, we were very straightforward with him. We told him: during twenty-one years both of us had been against or at the margin of the Cuban Communist society. Since we didn’t have opportunity to leave Cuba to restart our lives outside we approached him not only to discuss our future as a couple and as a family but because we appreciated his sound advice to organize our lives from now on.
Professor Bernal walked us through the different scenarios in front of us, weighing our degree of disposition to incorporate to them, and slowly was giving advice to each one of us. With regard to me he wondered about the factual needs the field of mental health had as well as the skills that I already had acquired. Professor Bernal called one of his former students who were in charge of the regional psychology department of Vedado’s neighborhood. Just in a few days I started to work within the labor system of the new Cuban society. I had two areas assigned: doing psychometric studies to children from newborn to five years of age and giving psycho-educational education and/or orientation to their parents. I really loved what I was assigned to do.
Being a worker for the system required me to register in the three basic political organizations: the Workers’ Union, La Federación de Mujeres Cubanas, and the Comite de Defensa de la Revolución. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) was established in 1960 under the revolutionary government with Vilma Espín as its president. She was the president of the FMC till her death in 2007. A few of the stated goals of the FMC are bringing women out of the home and into the economy; developing communal services to alleviate domestic work and childcare; and mobilizing women into political work. The other organization, the CDR system, was formed on September 28, 1960, with the slogan “En cada barrio, Revolución.” (In every neighborhood, Revolution.) Fidel Castro himself proclaimed it as “a collective system of revolutionary vigilance” to report, “Who lives on every block? What does each do? What relations does each have with tyrants? To what is each dedicated? In what activities is each involved? And, with whom does each meet?”
Each one of these organizations had its own inalienable duties. I had to attend all the meetings to discuss/study the presentations of the comandante en jefe, Fidel Castro, to walk in all the rallies, and to defend the Centro de Trabajo by doing periodic guardias in the place during the evenings. The same situation and duties happened at the level of our block: being a member of the CDR (Comité de Defensa de la Revolución) meant attending meetings of discussion regarding the what and the why of every single decision done by the government, walking in all rallies, and doing the guardias one night per month from 9pm to 6am.
My pregnancy was a blessing, a joyful blessing. I didn’t have any nausea, vomiting, morning sickness, food aversions or cravings, headaches, constipation, mood swings, faintness, or dizziness. I was counting the days for “the big event.” I was anticipating the days of medical appointments with joy. I was dreaming night and day. Everything was running smoothly: work, pregnancy, marriage. It appeared that we had found our north, and that were going to survive the system.
On May 21, 1973, my father had a transient ischemic attack or warning stroke at home and was hospitalized to stabilize him. I went to visit him at the hospital every day before his death on May 26. In one of those visits he looked at my belly and told me, “How is Pepito doing?” His certainty regarding the sex of my baby caught my attention. Almost a month later, a boy was born, and he was baptized José for his father and his grandfather, and Nestor for his maternal uncle.
On June 19, 1973, due to my age—I was thirty-two-years-old when I got pregnant—I went for an amniocentesis procedure, which can reveal many aspects of the baby’s genetic health. After the procedure, I began to have the signs of my baby settling or lowering into my pelvis, just preparing to come to life. The night from June 21 to June 22 the first rhythmic contractions began. My abdomen moved between being hard and becoming soft. Near sunrise, I asked Pepe to take me to the hospital. (I was going to deliver in a hospital just two blocks away from my mother’s house, in Vedado neighborhood.) We arrived at the hospital and the exam predicted at least four more hours of contractions. We walked to my mother’s house and I continued experiencing the dull ache in my back and lower abdomen and the pressure in the pelvis of the baby pushing his way out. I have commented in many opportunities how I felt the contractions as a wave-like motion from the top of the uterus to the bottom. I used that sensation of wave movement to murmur “nana songs” to my baby still in my uterus. Once again, I didn’t want a dramatic labor; what I wanted was a joyful welcoming event.
Around 2:00pm I thought that I was ready to deliver my baby. So, again, I walked to the hospital and this time I was registered and sent to the labor area. The nurse started the timing of the contractions: the length or duration of the contraction and the minutes between the contractions. Just fifteen minutes after 4:00pm, my four colleagues from the Regional Psychological Department came to accompany me. They practically took over the work of the nurses of the ward helping me with the breathing exercises until they were able to happily inform the nurses the rupture of the amniotic membrane (the fluid-filled sac that surrounds the baby during pregnancy).
Around 5:30pm I was moved to the delivery room and said good-bye and thank you to my excellent peers. It was an easy delivery: three big pushes and the head was outside, one more and the body came out. “Vaya, si es un machito” (Look, it is a boy). Soon I felt the warm skin of my son who was placed over my heart. I took one of his small hands and with tears told him, “Pepito, tu abuelo sabia que vendrías pero se tuvo que ir antes de tu llegada.” (Pepito, your grandpa knew that you were coming, but he had to leave before your coming.) The rest of the procedure was done while I was crying joyful tears for the blessing of being a mother, sad tears for the absence of my father, and grateful tears to God for giving me such a unique opportunity in life.
Although Pepito appeared healthy when he was born, he had to stay two more days in the neonatal area under the focus of light because he was born with an immature liver. This condition is called biliary atresia and has these visible symptoms: jaundice or a yellow coloring of the skin and eyes due to a very high level of bilirubin (bile pigment) in the bloodstream, dark urine caused by the build-up of bilirubin (a breakdown product from hemoglobin) in the blood, and clay-colored stools because no bile or bilirubin coloring is being emptied into the intestine. I knew his condition the day after he was born when I was asked to go to the neonatal room to breast feed him. When I explained to Pepe what was going on, he became really upset and didn’t want to go to visit him at the neonatal room.
Three days after his birth the results of his tests were negative and the nurse brought him to my arms during the time of visit. I never remember seeing Pepe so happy and relieved—he kissed me and kissed the baby continually. No matter how much I thought I knew him; I never anticipated what was for him having a child, his child. Still today he says, “The birth of my child changed my life. He became my reason to live and to better myself.” Pepito’s birth was the supreme moment of happiness in his entire life.
Pepito was and is our major source of pride and joy. His arrival changed totally our life as a family. The three of us accommodated ourselves in one small room of Pepe’s parents’ house. During six months he was gaining weight and inches in a very healthy way. I breastfed him for three months. After that, his feeding was diversified and I started to give him my breast milk only when he woke up in the morning and when he was going to sleep.
After Pepito was six months old, and because I was no longer living in the Vedado neighborhood, I started to look for a similar job in Marianao area. I went for an interview at the Regional Psychological Department of Marianao’s neighborhood. As a blessing, the office was just a few blocks away from the house of Pepe’s parents. And as a blessing too, the psychologist in charge of the department was a cousin of one of my close friends, who also was a boarding student, in Colegio Apostolado. She immediately hired me and assigned me to work in the Policlinic Carlos J. Finlay in Marianao. There I was going to be doing the same duties as in Vedado, but now I was also going to be working with a neonatal pediatrician three days per week.
The next step was a very difficult one: we needed to find a daycare facility for Pepito. In 1973, the Circulos Infantiles were organized to fill the needs from nursery (six-month) to preschool (four-year-old) children. Almost all preschoolers with a working mother attended an organized childcare facility while their mothers were at work. Another good number of children was cared for in their own home (most often by their relatives or grandparents), and just a few were looked after in someone else’s home. The so-called best Circulo Infantil in Marianao (Le Van Tang) was just a block away from Pepe’s place of work and three blocks from the Policlínic Carlos J. Finlay. Pepe’s boss gave him the needed letter of recommendation and Pepito was admitted before being one year old. The medical tests and checkups were good and the period of adaptation was somehow successful. He started staying for two hours during a week, the second week he stood four hours (including lunch), and the third week he was able to stay for the eight labor hours. Every morning when Pepe and I brought Pepito to the Circulo Infantil, I changed his clothes and went with him to his assigned room. I usually stood with him for a while before leaving. Around 5:00pm, both of us arrived to the Circulo Infantil to pick him up. I offered to do voluntary work and I did so much voluntary work during the three years and a half that Pepito was in the Circulo Infantil that I was selected Mother of the Year on more than one occasion.
The whole family and relatives on both sides were not commenting but criticizing us. No one could babysit Pepito, but everyone could point at me and call me a “negligent” and “abusive” mother. At the beginning we spent time justifying our actions. Later we didn’t waste our time listening and answering the comments and critics. We didn’t want to lose any minute of the small quality time that we had every day with Pepito!
Just a few months after Pepito started to attend the Circulo Infantil, he suffered his first episode of diarrhea. The pediatrician diagnosed him with a virus, explained to us that it was very common in children that attended Circulos Infantiles, and prescribed the medication needed. We were at home for a few days and when he overcame the episode he returned to the Circulo Infantil. Regretfully a few weeks later, the diarrhea returned and “we” were hospitalized in a pediatric hospital for ten days. The medical team performed tests, observed him, and prescribed the medication that helped him to control his diarrhea. I must mention the wife of one of Pepe’s cousins, Tomasa. She was working in the same Pediatric Hospital where Pepito was hospitalized. She went every day at her lunchtime to take care of Pepito so I was released to walk home to take a shower and came back to continue caring for Pepito.
When Pepito was one year and a half, he repeated the episode of diarrhea. He was in very bad shape that time. A new pediatrician worked very hard in finding the real cause of the diarrhea. The pediatrician asked the technician of a laboratory to test and examine every single piece of cloth that was in contact with him the day he was hospitalized. She got the answer: Pepito was hosting amoeba in his liver—amoeba can infect the bowels to cause diarrhea and the liver to cause abscess formation. That was the last episode of diarrhea of Pepito.
Pepito was a very talkative child with a very good imagination. The greater good of the intellectual mechanism of imagination is creativity—taking existing data and reintroducing it in a variety of forms. We nourished his imagination through play—mostly verbal play—hoping that he would have ample opportunity to display his creative potential in the future. I loved his early drawings, and I still have a few of them. Just the essential lines of everything that he perceived, as a good impressionist painter.
In the meantime a new development happened in my life. The University of Habana was in the process of restructuring the different programs of studies, among them the Licenciatura en Psicologia. The different Departments of Psychology and of Mental Health were selecting those of their members that were working according to their capacities and skills –obtained by studies done before or just by experience of work but didn’t have the official accredited title to work as psychologist- to apply to be registered for the “new” Licenciatura en Psicologia. My name was selected but I didn’t qualify due to my poor political history. The head of the Department went to talk to the Members of the Communist Party in the Office and begged an opportunity to me. I was invited to meet with them and was indoctrinated about the goodwill and generosity of the Cuban revolution that was lending a hand to me, who has been totally ignorant of the political process of the society and who has given nothing to my country and my community. They requested on my part a pledge of alliance to the principles of the revolution in response to their letter of recommendation. The pledge added a new element to the previous duties accepted when I entered the Workers Organization, the Women’s Organization and the Comite de Defensa de la Revolución, and it was to do voluntary work whenever I was requested.
Thus, in September 1974, I went back to Habana University to study licenciatura in psychology, majoring in clinical psychology. So now I was going to be working from 8:00am to 12:00am and attending classes at the University from 1:30pm to 5:30pm. When I arrived home, Pepe, who had the responsibility to pick up Pepito from the Circulo Infantil and feed him with the dinner, walked to classes of economy in the Pre-Universitary Institute from 7:00pm to 9:30pm. During the weekends we devoted all the time to Pepito. Usually we visited parks, the Zoo, or went to the beach, or to the movies.
In the meantime, Pepito was approaching his fourth birthday and ready to exit the Circulo Infantil to attend kindergarten in a regular public school. The director of the Circulo Infantil spoke to me about his future. She wanted to refer him to Ciudad Libertad (previously the Military Campus of Columbia), which was the best school in the area of Marianao. She began the conversation telling me the good qualities of Pepito—alert, very intelligent, and creative—but first she needed to know our political integration and we needed to provide her with letters of recommendations before continuing with the referral process. I told the truth, our total truth. She listened carefully but did not overreact to the facts I was presenting, as if she knew already what I was telling her. Instead of telling me, “Me apena mucho la situación pero …” (I am sorry about your situation but …), she told me that she was going to consult the situation with her superiors. More than a week later, she was waiting for me early in the morning at the door of the Circulo Infantil and invited me to her office. Her superiors had evaluated the situation and wanted to know if both of us would be able to provide a letter of recommendation from our Centros de Trabajo and from the Comité de Defensa de la Revolution. They also wanted to know if we would give permission for our son to become a pionero. (On April 4, 1961, the Cuban dictator created the Unión de Pioneros de Cuba (Union of Pioneers of Cuba). Almost all children had to become pioneros. If you didn’t want your child to be a pionero, then his chances of getting an education in Castro’s Cuba were almost nonexistent. Pioneros had to participate in many extracurricular political activities.)
I answered that there was not going to be any difficulty with the letters requested but that I could not answer about our son being a pionero until I discussed it with his father. We obtained the letters stating that we were members of and so on, but we never answered back about being or not a pionero and the director didn’t ask us again.
A few weeks after submitting the letters, we received an application for entering the educational program of Ciudad Libertad. We filled and submitted it with no hope of getting this golden opportunity for the education of our son, however, Pepito was admitted to begin his kindergarten in September 1978 in Ciudad Libertad. Pepito exited kindergarten with excellent grades. When he was in first grade, after he learned to read in Spanish in just three months, we emigrated to Spain.
Since Pepito’s birth until we decided to leave Cuba, we never made any type of comment regarding his father’s time in prison, or my time as member of a secular institute within the Catholic Church, or any criticism to the political and social situation of Cuba. Besides doing the guardias for the Comité de Defensa de la Revolución and of our Centros de Trabajo, attending the rallies programmed by the government as well as the circulos de estudio at our Centros de Trabajo, we also attended mass on Sundays, prayed every night, and taught him about the existence of God and the maternal protection of Our Lady of Charity, the Cuban Patroness.
When Julio, Pepe’s older brother, came to visit the family in 1978, Pepito heard for first time comments and criticism about the Cuban system/revolution/government. Among those comments was that his father was a political prisoner for ten years. The next day when we were walking to the school we started to talk about Julio’s visit. At one moment, as if he were thinking for a while about the idea, Pepito said this statement: “Mami, there are people that went to prison because they killed and robbed, but also there are people like José Marti that go to prison because they defend their country.” He didn’t say, “like my father,” and I didn’t ask, “Why did you say this?” There was no need of that. He once again revealed himself to us as he was and is.