MARINA

Thirteen years after leaving Cuba, I returned to the place where I grew up. My parents' family live there. The ones that are left, that is. Many of them emigrated in the years I was away. My grandma Marina has just turned 85. One month before Fidel Castro, her beloved leader. Now she lives with three of her daughters and two grandchildren.
  My uncle Jacinto was a soldier and he hasn't seen his daughter Katia, who emigrated to the USA, for 14 years. My uncle Arturo is an alcoholic. The family says he was never the man after he came back from East Germany.   My auntie Odalys is my grandfather's right hand.  She and her daughters keep the household cheerful.

 

Grandma Marina is resigned to her children being scattered. She's the heart of a humble family. A family used to making huge sacrifices, that has survived poverty and wars. But Marina hangs on, resolving conflicts with patience and optimism, in the country that chose them as leading players in its utopia. And I ask myself: were all those years of sacrifice worth it?