Rafters meld their lives into the Miami mosaic
By ANA VECIANA SUAREZ
Deep into the night, after his wife has gone to sleep and color beckons from the darkness, Sergio Lastres paints. He paints until his eyes can no longer focus. He paints until his limbs give out. He paints with fury, with grief, with all the nostalgia of a man who left his homeland behind.
His work is stacked up behind the furniture, lined against the stairs, hung from every available inch of wall -- a reminder, as if he needed it, that he is finally free to dream. In Cuba, he wasn't allowed to show his work, and if he was lucky enough to find paint or canvas, it was inevitably through the black market.
That is one reason he risked his life, leaving everything he had known behind: ``In Cuba, I couldn't breathe.''
Lastres, 39, was one of more 35,000 Cubans who left the island in homemade rafts in the summer of 1994, in the largest exodus since the 1980 Mariel boatlift. He and his wife, Elsa, 47, spent eight months at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, eight months during which Lastres painted to his heart's content. Living free in South Florida, he spends every hour outside work in a corner of his tiny living room in Hialeah putting thoughts and feelings into images.
VISIONARY: Sergio Lastres sits in front of a self-portrait
He was typical of the exodus -- young, male, dissatisfied with a system that allowed no dissent and gave him minimal control of his life. A decade after taking to the sea, some of the rafters have been very successful; others have struggled mightily to adapt to an unknown way of life. The majority have managed to settle into a middle-class existence consisting of work, family and an abiding hope that they can soon bring over relatives they left behind.
Jorge del Rio, 39, a geographer in Cuba who is now running an environmental consulting firm, finally feels at home in Miami. Enel ''Tito'' Puentes, 38, managing to put his life together after a run-in with the law, now wants to make up for lost time.
HOLDING FAST TO DREAM
Once merely a hobby, painting is now Lastres' passion. Over nine years, the self-taught painter has been part of 40 shows in the United States and abroad. He has sold paintings for several thousand dollars and managed to pique art collectors' interest.
''I would like one day to live off my art, to have time to devote myself entirely to that,'' he said. ``I know it's a dream, but it is my dream.''
By day, he works for an interior design company painting murals and faux finishes. He likes his work, and he is elated finally to have an apartment he doesn't have to share with another family.
It wasn't always like this. When Elsa and Sergio arrived, they roomed with former neighbors from Havana. They walked to their jobs. Elsa studied to become a medical assistant. With savings, they bought an ancient Nissan that proved to be more bane than boon.
''One of the things we learned is that some people were taking advantage of the balseros who didn't know their way around,'' Sergio said, adding, ``Our own people.''
Housing was more difficult. They bunked with friends, with fellow balseros, even with in-laws of friends. At one point, they were both living in the Florida room of a family they had met through acquaintances. The family's teens played video games into the night while the Lastreses tried to sleep on a sofa. With one landlord, Elsa helped clean houses but was never paid.
''You feel impotent; you feel like nothing,'' Sergio recalls. ``You want to send money home to help your family, but you can barely survive here.''
The Lastreses tried to remain upbeat. ''After you survive in Cuba, anything else you do is comparatively easy,'' Elsa Lastres said. ``We told ourselves we couldn't doubt.''
RESHAPING A LIFE
But doubt haunted the balseros early on, even those who eventually made it. Jorge del Rio's optimism about his future is contagious now, but there were times, at the beginning, when he wondered whether he had done the right thing.
A geographer in Cuba, del Rio is the senior environmental scientist at Walsh Environmental. He is hoping soon to buy the consulting outfit. ''Where else but here can this happen?'' he gushed.
IN IT TOGETHER: Elsa Lastres watches her
Deep into the night, after his wife has gone to sleep and color beckons from the darkness, Sergio Lastres paints. He paints until his eyes can no longer focus. He paints until his limbs give out. He paints with fury, with grief, with all the nostalgia of a man who left his homeland behind.
His work is stacked up behind the furniture, lined against the stairs, hung from every available inch of wall -- a reminder, as if he needed it, that he is finally free to dream. In Cuba, he wasn't allowed to show his work, and if he was lucky enough to find paint or canvas, it was inevitably through the black market.
That is one reason he risked his life, leaving everything he had known behind: ``In Cuba, I couldn't breathe.''
Lastres, 39, was one of more 35,000 Cubans who left the island in homemade rafts in the summer of 1994, in the largest exodus since the 1980 Mariel boatlift. He and his wife, Elsa, 47, spent eight months at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, eight months during which Lastres painted to his heart's content. Living free in South Florida, he spends every hour outside work in a corner of his tiny living room in Hialeah putting thoughts and feelings into images.
VISIONARY: Sergio Lastres sits in front of a self-portrait
depicting him as a child, his journey to the United States,
and the mother he left behind in Cuba.
PETER ANDREW BOSCH/HERALD STAFF
He was typical of the exodus -- young, male, dissatisfied with a system that allowed no dissent and gave him minimal control of his life. A decade after taking to the sea, some of the rafters have been very successful; others have struggled mightily to adapt to an unknown way of life. The majority have managed to settle into a middle-class existence consisting of work, family and an abiding hope that they can soon bring over relatives they left behind.
Jorge del Rio, 39, a geographer in Cuba who is now running an environmental consulting firm, finally feels at home in Miami. Enel ''Tito'' Puentes, 38, managing to put his life together after a run-in with the law, now wants to make up for lost time.
HOLDING FAST TO DREAM
Once merely a hobby, painting is now Lastres' passion. Over nine years, the self-taught painter has been part of 40 shows in the United States and abroad. He has sold paintings for several thousand dollars and managed to pique art collectors' interest.
''I would like one day to live off my art, to have time to devote myself entirely to that,'' he said. ``I know it's a dream, but it is my dream.''
By day, he works for an interior design company painting murals and faux finishes. He likes his work, and he is elated finally to have an apartment he doesn't have to share with another family.
It wasn't always like this. When Elsa and Sergio arrived, they roomed with former neighbors from Havana. They walked to their jobs. Elsa studied to become a medical assistant. With savings, they bought an ancient Nissan that proved to be more bane than boon.
''One of the things we learned is that some people were taking advantage of the balseros who didn't know their way around,'' Sergio said, adding, ``Our own people.''
Housing was more difficult. They bunked with friends, with fellow balseros, even with in-laws of friends. At one point, they were both living in the Florida room of a family they had met through acquaintances. The family's teens played video games into the night while the Lastreses tried to sleep on a sofa. With one landlord, Elsa helped clean houses but was never paid.
''You feel impotent; you feel like nothing,'' Sergio recalls. ``You want to send money home to help your family, but you can barely survive here.''
The Lastreses tried to remain upbeat. ''After you survive in Cuba, anything else you do is comparatively easy,'' Elsa Lastres said. ``We told ourselves we couldn't doubt.''
RESHAPING A LIFE
But doubt haunted the balseros early on, even those who eventually made it. Jorge del Rio's optimism about his future is contagious now, but there were times, at the beginning, when he wondered whether he had done the right thing.
A geographer in Cuba, del Rio is the senior environmental scientist at Walsh Environmental. He is hoping soon to buy the consulting outfit. ''Where else but here can this happen?'' he gushed.
IN IT TOGETHER: Elsa Lastres watches her
husband, Sergio, paint in their Hialeah apartment.
'After you survive in Cuba, anything else you do is
comparatively easy,' she said of their early struggles
in the United States.
PETER ANDREW BOSCH/HERALD STAFF
Though born after the Castro revolution of 1959, del Rio remembers dreaming of the United States every time his relatives sent letters and photographs from abroad. It wasn't until college, however, that he became completely disillusioned with the communist system.
His first attempt to flee ended in his arrest. He was successful in his second attempt, in August 1994, after surviving a terrible storm at sea.
After Guantánamo, he worked as a handyman while studying English and computers at Miami Dade College. His computer skills eventually got him his first professional job, and slowly he moved up the ranks of Walsh Environmental.
''I was willing to sacrifice the job and the money for a while so I had the time to study,'' he said. ``It was the way to a better life.''
But the better life did not come easy. He lived in 15 places before finally buying a home in South Miami. During the first few years, he was often lonely for his family and the small fishing village where he had grown up.
''I missed the family very much, and everything I knew,'' he recalls, ``but one day I realized that this was home. I realized this was the natural place for me. After a while, it became so much part of me that I could have been born at Jackson.''
Del Rio has managed to bring over his sister, his parents and his grandmother. His brother, also a balsero, lives here, too.
Last time he went to Cuba, ``I was ready to come back after a few days. This is the place where an immigrant can start from zero and get somewhere.''
Along the way to somewhere, however, have been some stumbles -- figuratively and literally. Elsa and Sergio Lastres were finally getting on their feet after a series of low-paying jobs when an injury from a fall left Elsa unable to work. ''I'll come back from this,'' vows Elsa, who seems to wear a perpetual smile. ``We've come back from worse.''
HARD LESSONS LEARNED
For others, the stumbles have been even more serious.
Puentes tried to leave Cuba a dozen times before he and his then-wife succeeded in August 1994. Once in Miami, he worked at a series of jobs -- as a courier, in a kosher food establishment, selling Carico pots and pans -- before self-publishing a 330-page book of his experiences.
CONTENT:Jorge del Rio plays with his dog, Danny,
Though born after the Castro revolution of 1959, del Rio remembers dreaming of the United States every time his relatives sent letters and photographs from abroad. It wasn't until college, however, that he became completely disillusioned with the communist system.
His first attempt to flee ended in his arrest. He was successful in his second attempt, in August 1994, after surviving a terrible storm at sea.
After Guantánamo, he worked as a handyman while studying English and computers at Miami Dade College. His computer skills eventually got him his first professional job, and slowly he moved up the ranks of Walsh Environmental.
''I was willing to sacrifice the job and the money for a while so I had the time to study,'' he said. ``It was the way to a better life.''
But the better life did not come easy. He lived in 15 places before finally buying a home in South Miami. During the first few years, he was often lonely for his family and the small fishing village where he had grown up.
''I missed the family very much, and everything I knew,'' he recalls, ``but one day I realized that this was home. I realized this was the natural place for me. After a while, it became so much part of me that I could have been born at Jackson.''
Del Rio has managed to bring over his sister, his parents and his grandmother. His brother, also a balsero, lives here, too.
Last time he went to Cuba, ``I was ready to come back after a few days. This is the place where an immigrant can start from zero and get somewhere.''
Along the way to somewhere, however, have been some stumbles -- figuratively and literally. Elsa and Sergio Lastres were finally getting on their feet after a series of low-paying jobs when an injury from a fall left Elsa unable to work. ''I'll come back from this,'' vows Elsa, who seems to wear a perpetual smile. ``We've come back from worse.''
HARD LESSONS LEARNED
For others, the stumbles have been even more serious.
Puentes tried to leave Cuba a dozen times before he and his then-wife succeeded in August 1994. Once in Miami, he worked at a series of jobs -- as a courier, in a kosher food establishment, selling Carico pots and pans -- before self-publishing a 330-page book of his experiences.
CONTENT:Jorge del Rio plays with his dog, Danny,
in front of his home. Del Rio, who was a geographer
in Cuba and now runs an environmental
consulting firm, says he finally feels at home in Miami.
PETER ANDREW BOSCH/HERALD STAFF
Guantánamo Bay 94: Dos Caras de una Misma Moneda Coin (Guantánamo Bay 94; Two Sides to the Same Coin) brought Puentes an unexpected measure of fame and fortune. He quit his job and bought a house, he said.
''It was a big thing for me, but I wasn't prepared for it,'' he now says. ``I didn't save, I didn't invest, and I spent it all.''
As the money began to run out, he gambled at the Miccosukee Resort and Gaming Casino in West Dade. When that didn't bring in enough cash, an acquaintance at the casino suggested another form of employment -- buying and selling luxury cars stolen in New York, their ID numbers altered, the cars shipped to Florida.
Accused of grand theft, among other charges, he said he worked out a deal in which he would make monthly restitution payments over a period of years. He was relieved at the opportunity to stay out of prison, but by then his wife had divorced him and his daughter, born in 1998, was growing up without him.
''It was stupid and unnecessary, a bad, bad mistake,'' he says, shaking his head. ''There are many legal ways to earn money here.'' A criminal record has proved to be a major stumbling block.
''One mistake, and the spot is there forever,'' he says, pressing his finger on a place mat for emphasis. ``All I want is a second chance. Everybody deserves a second chance.''
Slowly, Puentes is rebuilding his life. He works as a construction subcontractor, is engaged to be married and recently put a down payment on a house in Kendall that should be finished by March. He is adamant about not looking back and insists he has never harbored any nostalgia for Cuba.
''I can't lose any more time,'' he says. ``I'm ready for my new life. I still believe nothing is impossible in this country. You simply have to work hard at it.''
(C)2004 The Miami Herald
Guantánamo Bay 94: Dos Caras de una Misma Moneda Coin (Guantánamo Bay 94; Two Sides to the Same Coin) brought Puentes an unexpected measure of fame and fortune. He quit his job and bought a house, he said.
''It was a big thing for me, but I wasn't prepared for it,'' he now says. ``I didn't save, I didn't invest, and I spent it all.''
As the money began to run out, he gambled at the Miccosukee Resort and Gaming Casino in West Dade. When that didn't bring in enough cash, an acquaintance at the casino suggested another form of employment -- buying and selling luxury cars stolen in New York, their ID numbers altered, the cars shipped to Florida.
Accused of grand theft, among other charges, he said he worked out a deal in which he would make monthly restitution payments over a period of years. He was relieved at the opportunity to stay out of prison, but by then his wife had divorced him and his daughter, born in 1998, was growing up without him.
''It was stupid and unnecessary, a bad, bad mistake,'' he says, shaking his head. ''There are many legal ways to earn money here.'' A criminal record has proved to be a major stumbling block.
''One mistake, and the spot is there forever,'' he says, pressing his finger on a place mat for emphasis. ``All I want is a second chance. Everybody deserves a second chance.''
Slowly, Puentes is rebuilding his life. He works as a construction subcontractor, is engaged to be married and recently put a down payment on a house in Kendall that should be finished by March. He is adamant about not looking back and insists he has never harbored any nostalgia for Cuba.
''I can't lose any more time,'' he says. ``I'm ready for my new life. I still believe nothing is impossible in this country. You simply have to work hard at it.''
(C)2004 The Miami Herald
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