The remarkable story of how a teenager rescued from Castro’s
Cuba rose to become a United States senator
The swift and improbable rise of Mel Martinez to the top echelon
of America’s government began not with a political race but with a
burst of gunfire. In April 1958, an eleven-year-old Martinez
huddled on his bedroom floor while Cuban soldiers opened fire on
insurgents outside his family’s home in the town of Sagua la
Grande.
If political unrest made daily life disturbing and at times
frightening, Fidel Castro’s Communist Revolution nine months later
was nothing short of devastating. When armed militiamen shouted
violent threats at Martinez for wearing a medallion as a sign of
his Catholic faith, his parents made a heartrending decision: their
son would have to escape the Castro regime–alone.
A Sense of Belonging is the riveting account of innocence lost,
exile sustained by religious faith, and an immigrant’s
determination to overcome the barriers of language and culture in
his adopted homeland. Though his story ends in the United States
Capitol, Martinez has never forgotten the boy who experienced the
loss of liberty under communism. A Sense of Belonging is a paean to
the transformative power of the American dream.
關於作者：
MEL MARTINEZ is a United States senator from Florida.
Chapter 1
Homeland
Darkness. A porch. A warm ocean breeze. The sound of voices—my
father’s, and those of the old fishermen gathered around him.
Stories about fishing, storms, boats, life.
These are my earliest memories. They are memories collected at my
family’s quaint summer beach house at Playa Uvero, fifteen miles
from our hometown of Sagua la Grande. My father’s father had built
the house in this fishing village on the northern coast of Cuba
long before it became a popular summer vacation spot. At that time
Playa Uvero was the year-round home only to charcoal makers and
professional fishermen. When my grandfather and other early
vacationers settled, they built their houses near the locals’
homes, far back from the water’s edge. Later vacationers built
houses on stilts close to the shore.
Sadly, I never knew my grandfather—he died when I was only forty
days old—but the beach house he put up in the 1920s is the backdrop
for some of my most vivid recollections of childhood. That porch in
particular: it’s as if I can still hear the buzzing of insects in
my ear and see the weathered fishermen trading stories with my
father.
My father, who had been coming to this village every summer since
his own childhood, was very outgoing and friendly and loved to
talk. He had a booming voice that, along with his heavyset frame,
made him a real presence. So our porch became a social center, with
men from the village gathering there most nights. I would plop down
in my dad’s lap or, later as I grew bigger, would sit cross-legged
on the porch, listening to them talk. We would be enshrouded in
darkness, for the simple reason that our rustic little home
had
no electricity. A small windmill supplied only enough electricity
to charge a car battery, which in turn powered a couple of
lightbulbs. We wouldn’t have used the bulbs on the porch, since the
darkness helped keep away the ever-present bugs. For additional
lighting when needed, we used kerosene lanterns.
The stories these men shared were mesmerizing to a young boy. The
old fishermen had lived through World War II, when German
submarines combed the waters off Cuba. One man from the village
told a story about picking up some German sailors who were adrift
on a raft, hauling them into his fishing boat, bringing them
ashore, and turning them over to the authorities. It amazed me that
submariners from across the ocean had apparently patrolled so close
to our little home.
My father was a veterinarian in Sagua. Just as his father had
done before him, he would commute on weekdays in the summer, taking
a small railcar to and from Sagua, about an hour’s ride through the
green sugarcane fields of Central Resulta, the sugar mill in Sagua
la Grande. Meanwhile, the rest of our family stayed in Playa Uvero
from mid-June to mid-August. I didn’t mind the simple living
conditions— the lack of electricity and running water, the cistern
we relied on, the charcoal-burning stove and the kerosene
single-burner stove we had. I enjoyed the novelty of taking a
shower at Uvero. The bathroom shower was nothing more than a
five-gallon tank with a showerhead welded to the bottom. We would
fill the tank with warm water and hoist it using a pulley attached
to the ceiling. There was a cleat on the wall where we would tie
off the line holding it up. Once it was secure, the bather released
the water by pulling a cord one way for “on” and the other way for
“off.” Simple, but ingenious.
I loved spending the summers at Playa Uvero with my mother and my
younger brother, Ralph. There were always aunts, uncles, and
cousins visiting as well. Every Sunday, my great-uncle Mariano
would come for the big seafood lunch we shared as a family and
would bring fresh bread from Sagua with him. Sunday lunches were
always on the front porch, with the breeze gently blowing.
Playa Uvero was an idyllic setting for a boy. Cuba was a kind of
paradise to me, unrivaled in its physical beauty, its climate, and
the warmth and friendliness of its people. I got to see the sun
sparkle on the water in the daytime and then watch it set as a
fiery red ball at dinnertime. As a small child I played for hours
in the sand, and as I got older I would pass entire days swimming
and fishing.
My father passed many things on to me—not least being my name,
Melquiades, which was also the name of my grandfather and my great-
grandfather before him. A love of fishing was one of the many
traits I shared with my dad. He was big on fishing, and he taught
me the techniques of hand-line fishing and net fishing. We just
threw the line out with a weight on it and held it firmly in hand,
then pulled when a fish struck. We also would cast a net for bait,
snaring small fish in the mesh. When I got older I got my own small
cast net. I developed a routine: catch bait with my cast net, then
go fish until lunchtime.
My dad would often go out in our twenty-three-foot boat and fish
for the whole weekend. Sundays would be filled with anticipation
for his return. My mother would bring my brother and me to the
shore in the afternoon to await his arrival. Often when Papi came
back, his boat would be practically overflowing with fish—grouper,
snapper, yellowtail. It was more than we could ever eat in those
days before reliable refrigeration. So he would wait for the
commercial fishermen many of them his old friends to come in and
sell their catch on the beach. Once he was sure he wasn’t
undercutting any of the professionals, he would give away his extra
fish.
When I was around ten, my dad finally started taking me on
overnight trips. Sleeping and eating on the boat seemed like heaven
on earth. On one occasion Papi bought lobsters from some commercial
fishermen. The lobsters he cooked made for not only a wonderful
dinner but also a rare breakfast treat: the next morning I ate the
leftover lobster, cold with stale Cuban bread.
When I turned twelve I received the greatest summer gift ever. My
parents surprised me with my own twelve-foot rowing dinghy,
complete with a live well. This was a dream come true. It was handy
for my father’s fishing trips—my job was to row while he and the
other adults threw a cast net for bait fish—but during the week, it
was all mine. I would row out to my favorite fishing spots with a
friend. Being out there in the sea on my own gave me a quiet sense
of independence.
Fishing left me with memories of the best of Cuba and the best of
my childhood. To this day when asked I will always answer that it
is the thing I miss the most about Cuba.
= = =
So many of my recollections of Cuba involve family. The whole
family gathered every summer at Playa Uvero, of course, but that
was not the only place. It wasn’t unusual in Cuban families to have
several generations living under one roof. That was the situation I
experienced for the first six years of my life. We lived with my
father’s mother—my grandmother Graciela. Her home was a large
upstairs apartment located right in the center of Sagua la Grande.
Grandmother Graciela had a pretty balcony in the front and a little
courtyard in the back, where I have faint memories of riding my
tricycle and my scooter. I also recall going downstairs beneath the
balcony and getting the bus to take me to first grade and my first
school experience. My father drilled into me that when I got on the
bus I was to say good morning to the bus driver.
My own little universe was all right there in Sagua la Grande, a
city of maybe thirty thousand people located on the banks of the
Sagua River, about two hundred and twenty miles east of Havana, due
south of Miami. When I got a little older I could go everywhere in
town on my bike—my school, the ball field, my grandmother’s house,
my uncle’s house.
Sagua, though not a big city, was an important commercial center,
with a sugar mill, a foundry that made parts for sugar mills
throughout the country, and a thriving shipping business out of the
Port of Isabela de Sagua. The surrounding agricultural area was
rich in sugarcane, rice, and cattle. But those aspects of Sagua did
not really enter my world. It was simply a great place to grow
up.
Only about twelve miles from Sagua was the tiny rural town of
Quemado de Güines, home to my mother’s mother, Pilar Caro Ruiz. My
mother loved going home to see her mother. When Ralph and I were
young, she would often take us there for weekend visits. I would
sleep in that little wooden house and wake up with the sun
streaming in and the clip-clop of horses going down the street. An
old milkman would deliver on horseback, perched in the saddle with
a couple of big milk jugs strapped on either side of the horse in
straw bags. He would sing out to the ladies to come out of the
house. They would bring a container and he would pour the milk into
it. That was one of those little things I vividly recall—pastoral,
rural, rustic. It was typical of the life of a small Cuban town in
the 1950s. This was a long way from the glittering lights of
Havana’s nightlife.
= = =
Adventures were never hard to find, even when we were not at the
beach. My grandfather Melquiades, who built the beach house, also
owned a small soda-bottling factory in Sagua, Compa?ía de Refrescos
Purita, S.A. After his death, my great-uncle Mariano and my father
ran the business with their partners. Since my dad was busy with
his veterinarian job, Mariano oversaw the day-to-day operations. I
was constantly in and out of that little factory. Going there was
great fun for me. Many of the men who worked at the plant watched
me grow up. When I was a little boy, the bookkeeper entertained me
in the office. Later, as I grew older, I did some real work with
the men. Sometimes I’d help load the trucks with cases of soda and
then ride shotgun for the deliveries at restaurants and bars in and
around Sagua. Other times I’d load bottles into the bottle-washing
m...
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