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A few months ago I left one world for another. After more than a year of waiting, I finally got a visa to leave my native Cuba and immigrate to the United States. My fiancé, a U.S.-born Latino, and I had gone through so much together, each of us in our own country, far away, unhappy to be apart, never sure we would be together some day.
Getting the visa wasn’t easy – there was red tape to go through, bribes to pay. I don’t regret having to pay $60 to get an interview at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, because if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to get a visa. I lost my patience often, getting angry over the many Cuban and U.S. institutional inefficiencies I had to endure.
I made it to Los Angeles International Airport. I had never seen anything like it — so large, so luxurious, full of technology and people everywhere. Havana’s José Martí Airport is a small apartment in comparison.
This great city has surprised me many times since I arrived. It is far more ethnically and culturally diverse than I had imagined. The wealth, especially when compared to Cuba, is staggering. One example makes clear the difference. In Cuba, the flimsy plastic bags used to pack groceries are saved and used over and over until they fall apart.
On the other hand, racism here is much stronger, not just against blacks, but also against Latinos who come to pursue the American Dream, working beyond exhaustion for minimum wages.
Cuba is not a racial paradise, but blacks, mulatos and whites mix easily. In Los Angeles, segregation is fairly common. My husband and I were married in a beautiful chapel in a luxury seaside community. Just about everyone who lives there is white and well-to-do. Where we live, almost everyone is Latino or African-American and poor.
In Havana, where I met my husband, I labored hard as a technician in a food plant. My pay was the equivalent of $12 a month, not considered low in country where doctors make around $18. Not
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