He falls to his knees as he leaves the airport, kisses the granite
sidewalk with his eyes closed, and then rises like someone surfacing after
years underwater. His face is awash in conflicting emotions: release and
suffocation.
It's 1986 again, and Fidel's latest shipment of cheap labor to a
Central European ally, Czechoslovakia, arrives in this same airport.
The group of young men and women walk out of a plane under an ominous
winter sky. They shiver from a cold foreign to their bodies, not yet
knowing they've been duped.
Among them is Morel. He is about to become a victim and an unofficial
historian of one of Fidel Castro's most egregious, yet least-known tools
for money and control -- a program that from 1978 to 1991, sent 80,000
young men and women to Eastern bloc countries to work for meager pay. The
host countries got cheap, unskilled labor for jobs the natives didn't
want, and Castro got cash.
Everything now, in 1999, is different, Morel notices as he rides away
in a friend's car. There's a new building across the tiny airport, with a
Coca-Cola sign on it. There are more cars and billboards. The roads are
better.
Even the country's name is different. It's now the Czech Republic,
which is celebrating the 10th anniversary of its liberation from
Communism.
Closing his eyes now, Morel breathes deeply and smells a memory.
''That peculiar smell -- carbon from the cheap heaters,'' he says, as
if sated. ''You always smell it here when winter starts. Delicious.''
Time has a way of turning the bitter into the sweet. Years ago,
desperate in this very land, Morel wrote a letter to his godmother in
Miami, about a magnificent snowfall, and about the same smell:
''The snowflakes began gathering on the windowsill, first in a fine
coat and then as a white, clean carpet, brilliant. It was as if only the
snow and I existed. Then, the smell. I opened the window, it filled my
nostrils, and I thought I was going to throw up everything I had eaten
since birth. It was carbon from the cheap heaters.''
It's strange to Morel now, how you always come back to the place where
you've felt the most pain and seen the most beauty. Like Homer's
battle-worn and homesick Odysseus finally reaching Ithaca after years of
forced wandering, Morel is home.
And like Odysseus, he has stories to tell.
''Before 1986, I had already thought about the possibility of
traveling outside the island, to discover what for many was -- and still
is -- forbidden. I never took the idea very seriously. Instead, everything
would disintegrate into street corner plans between midnight friends who
always ended up talking about what German women were like and whether
Czech women were prettier, or whether Hungarian meat was the
cheapest. When our patience or the bottle ended, each would head home to
sleep, and the next day would bring a new monotony, without Czech or
German girls, much less cheap meat.''
-- From Morel's letters
Since 1994, Morel, 44, has lived in Miami, where he is a graphic
designer and an active member of an anti-Castro Cuban exile group. But
think of Miami as a way-station in a journey that started in his native
Havana in 1986.
That journey took him first to Czechoslovakia. There, on poster-size
pieces of thin paper that resemble scrolls, Morel began writing about his
and other workers' experiences: their back-breaking work and scarce
food; their light moments -- sharing beers in an old pub, visiting
beautiful places. Each word was painstakingly pounded on an old typewriter
as letters to his godmother in Miami.
His journey next took him to Canada, where in 1990 he defected during a
layover on a flight back to Cuba. There, he and other Cuban exiles helped
a childhood friend in Prague seek asylum in 1990. Israel Cabrera was then
secretary of the Cuban communist party in Prague.
Three years later, Morel made his way to Miami.
''When I think of everything that happened to me, it still seems
unreal,'' Morel says.
Morel was born in a neighborhood of Havana called Lawton, the eldest
son of a painter and a housewife.
He was always meticulous, observant and a quick learner -- at 17, he
became an architectural draftsman and later, a graphic designer. Like many
his age, he longed for a life outside the repressed island. At 31, he got
his chance, when a colleague asked him to accompany her to apply for a
work-abroad program.
Officials sold the program to young Cubans as a way to earn money while
learning technical skills, such as auto mechanics and operation of textile
and other machinery. In reality, the program was designed to ease civil
unrest due to unemployment, and pump money into Communist activities in
Cuba and worldwide.
Chosen workers would be sent to Eastern bloc Communist countries to
work under four-year contracts. At the end, they earned a certificate and
a chance to buy a Czech motorcycle.
They were promised language courses, clothes, comfortable living
quarters. Embassy officials and supervisors from Cubatecnica, the
government-run agency that coordinated the program, would offer support
and guidance.
Under their contracts, 60 percent of workers' pay would be deposited in
bank accounts until their return to Cuba.
Morel -- and thousands like him -- couldn't wait to apply. But,
secretly, Morel had a risky plan in mind.
''I was never going to get to Czechoslovakia,'' he says. ''My plan was
that when we got to Montreal on a scheduled fuel stop, I was going to get
off the plane and defect.''
He figured getting from there to Miami, where his godmother lived,
would be a snap.
On March 12, 1986, he and fellow workers boarded a Czechoslovak
Airlines plane. It flew 14 hours nonstop -- and landed in the Socialist
Republic of Czechoslovakia. There had been no layover.
Morel's first words as the plane door opened: ''What the hell am I
doing here?''
''The fields were all in shades of dark green, ochre and sienna, the
houses were all the same shade of burnt ochre, with roofs that looked as
if they had been saddened by time. That world felt completely alien to
me.''
Sitting down to lunch at a riverside restaurant soon after friend
Lazaro Castañer picked him up at the airport, Morel tells
Castañer that he has come back to face his past and talk to others
with similar experiences. Most of the 1,000 Cubans living in the Czech
Republic are former workers granted asylum after the fall of Communism in
1989.
Morel's ultimate goal: Write a book. Then, he feels, he can move on.
Struck with an idea, Castañer, himself a former worker, pops open
his mobile phone and calls a Cuban woman Morel has never met, a former
worker who lives in Prague.
''I just want to meet people who went through the same abuse,'' Morel
tells her.
The woman's response is icy: ''No, comrade. I don't know what you're
talking about. No one ever abused me.'' Click.
Over the days, Morel will encounter the same attitude from people who
were once friends or lovers. He'll find them reluctant to dig up a past
they've buried beneath a new life, afraid they'll not be allowed to visit
Cuba if they talk, or that relatives will suffer for it.
But this first rejection fills him with rage. ''Can you believe she
said that? 'Comrade,' '' he repeats in disgust. ' ''No one ever
abused me.' ''
In fact, according to Morel, other workers and documents, Cubans were
abused and exploited from the beginning.
''Soon after we got here, I felt a tremendous curiosity to get to
the bottom of the suspicion that kept turning itself over and over in my
head: that it was all a farce.''
Cat meat, if you cook it long enough and try not to concentrate on its
shape on your plate, tastes just like rabbit. So learned Cuban workers
desperate to eat something more substantial than a scoop of rice flavored
with an old onion. Out of a thin plastic tube and rope, they fashioned a
simple device to catch wandering cats.
Others sneaked into fields to steal fruit or corn. They dug through
garbage cans and learned to shop at flea markets where rotting meat was
sold for a few Czech crowns.
The Cubans learned these survival methods just weeks after arriving,
Morel says.
''My first reaction was to try to leave, but you would hear the rumors,
'so-and-so got caught at the border','' Morel says. ''So after that, it
was a waiting game, waiting for my contract to expire so I could defect
during a layover.''
At the airport, Morel's group of 30 workers was bused to a tiny town
outside Prague. In Votice, they were given new clothes, meal tickets and a
stipend for their first three months.
In a small boarding house, Morel's group was crowded as many as four
roommates to a unit composed of a tiny living room and one bedroom. They
shared a bathroom with the other guests. In other collectives across the
country, as many as seven roommates were squeezed into two-bedroom
units.
Initially, most of the Cubans did not work, instead learning Czech in
daily eight-hour classes. Some worked voluntary shifts at factories during
that time, and started to get a clue about conditions. Everyone started
working after the three months.
''Hope vanished in the first few days,'' Cabrera said.
Morel's group was moved to Tynec-nad-Sazavou, where they were assigned
to a Jawa motorcycle factory. Their duties -- like those of other Cubans
working in truck and shoe factories, breweries, paper and textile mills,
and construction sites -- were a far cry from the technical training they
were supposed to get. Morel's group moved boxes of motorcycle parts by
hand.
When workers were paid for the first time, reality hit hard, Morel
recalls.
Aside from the expected 60 percent deduction, there was an unexpected
deduction for the clothes, food and shelter of the first three months.
Later came more deductions -- ''strongly recommended donations'' to
Communist causes. Examples of where the money went, Cabrera says: Cuban
troops, a Chilean revolutionary group in 1988, the reconstruction of the
Lazaro Peña Theater in Havana in 1989.
Out of the average 3,750 crowns workers earned per month during Morel's
era, they were left with about 1,200 -- about $40. With that, they had to
feed and clothe themselves, pay rent and try to send money home. Shifts of
12 to 16 hours were the norm.
Workers didn't know Czechoslovakia had paid Cuba about 250 crowns for
each worker sent.
''These people were basically indentured servants,'' says Michael
Luhan, of the Czech human rights group People in Need, which last year
published an article about the Cuban workers' experience.
Many workers, like Eneida Hernandez, refused to stay, despite the
consequences.
Hernandez, who lives in Miami and has never met Morel, started working
in Czechoslovakia in 1979. A year later, sick of the hunger and
intimidation, she and 16 others who worked at a shoe manufacturer staged a
strike. It was a sure way to get ''revoked'' -- meaning a nullified
contract and a flight home.
''When I saw all this -- sometimes you had to choose between buying
food or feminine products -- I said to myself, 'If I'm going to be
miserable, I might as well be in my own country,' '' she said. But
shortly after repatriation, a mob stood outside her home, carrying out an
''an act of repudiation'' -- government-sponsored harassment.
''They yelled at me and called me all kinds of names: traitor, whore,
gusana [worm],'' said Hernandez. ''They threw eggs and rocks at my
house.''
She and the others learned that the bank accounts that was supposed to
have 60 percent of the money they'd earned were empty. In 1990, when she
asked to emigrate to the United States, she was told she'd have to
reimburse the government 781 pesos, the cost of her Czech round-trip
ticket.
Still, why did others choose to stick out the four years?
Because in Czechoslovakia, workers say, once you managed to get out of
the sight of Cuban officials, you could forget for a while that you were
under Castro's power; because your relatives were counting on your
help.
Above all, you stayed for a chance at freedom.
''Why did we stay?'' Morel says. ''Why do people risk their lives
trying to cross the ocean on an inner tube to get to Miami when they know
the water is full of sharks? There is always the hope, the possibility, of
crossing a border to freedom.''
''All these theatrics had a premeditated end: Divide the workers,
confuse them, create uncertainty and mistrust within the group of
slaves.''
Sitting around a bottle of vodka in Castañer's apartment, Morel,
Castañer and Fidel Zulueta remember that the indignities didn't end
with money. A lot of the abuse was psychological.
Zulueta, 39, a worker who stayed in Prague after working from 1981 to
1987, is the only person other than Castañer who was willing to
speak.
''I remember I used to wear a cap with an American logo on it,''
Zulueta says. ''After they saw that, they kept a close eye on me and made
a big deal out of every little thing. We were all constantly being
intimidated, and you didn't feel like you could say a word.''
At monthly group meetings, the three recall, workers were browbeaten
over perceived offenses, such as Zulueta's, or for keeping in contact with
relatives or friends in the ''imperialist'' United States.
''They were always mentioning el avioncito, the plane back to
Cuba,'' Morel remembers. ''And they were always bringing out the political
stuff: 'Remember everything that the revolution has done for
you.' ''
The threats were accompanied by secret room checks that became
routine. Workers' personal letters were opened and drawers rifled.
Zulueta, like Morel and others, found a way of coping by moving in with
Czech women who had homes and steady jobs. Both Zulueta and
Castañer married Czechs and stayed in the country.
The situation spun out of control. Some workers started drinking
heavily. Others stole parts from factories to sell on the black market, or
secretly moonlighted shoveling snow in the streets or the dead at
crematoriums. Yet others started sleeping with older Czech women and men
in exchange for money or gifts.
''You had to do whatever it took to survive,'' Zulueta says. The room
falls into silence.
''Not to write about this would be to betray myself, and that, I
will never do.''
As kids in Lawton, Morel and Israel Cabrera had been buddies until
mandatory military service separated them as teens. They met again by
chance, at a conference in Prague, in 1988. Seeing Cabrera again, a
familiar face so far from home, turned out to be more than a comfort to
Morel.
Cabrera was a secretary for the Cuban communist party in Prague and a
supervisor for a collective in Steti -- a man who portrayed himself as
ruthless in front of Cuban officials, but was loved by workers for his
fairness. He needed a translator and a worker liaison, someone he could
trust.
Morel, who'd become fluent in Czech, accepted the job.
It meant better pay and better conditions in a new town, but it also
meant that he would see things most workers didn't.
He rushed workers into emergency rooms when faulty equipment and other
dangerous conditions at job sites had chopped off their fingers or broken
their bones. He stood by the injured as officials talked them into not
filing complaints against the factory.
Life for women, who were paid less than male workers, could be
particularly bad.
At the gynecologist's office, Morel translated for the women. If they
were pregnant, their options were an abortion or a plane ride.
Taking advantage of a bizarre sexual fetish, women shaved their pubic
hair and sold it.
Others were coerced into sexual relations with Cuban officials. If the
girl refused the advances, Cuban officials looked for any excuse to send
her home.
''They were always on the prowl,'' Morel says.
When Cabrera was away, Morel was acting supervisor. No longer a lowly
worker nor part of the Cuban officials' circle, powerless to truly help
workers, and doubtful he could trust Cabrera despite their friendship,
Morel felt alienated. He turned to alcohol.
''For months, I lived like an animal,'' Morel says. ''I didn't know who
I was.''
Finally, he traded the vodka bottle for a typewriter. One of the
anecdotes in his writings is about Lucia, a girl from Las Villas who lost
two fingers to a faulty machine, and begged not to be sent her home.
''By sheer will, she continued to do the same level of work with
only eight fingers,'' until the same machine took a third
finger. ''This time, no one wanted to be responsible for her. She was
sent back to Cuba with her heart in pieces and with three fewer
fingers. She was 22.''
Votice is exactly as he left it, except that the Hotel Modra Hvezda, the
Blue Star, is under scaffolding. Near the hotel, Morel's first home, are a
fountain and a bench. Sitting down, Morel relives a scene from his
past: He and friends discover that planes fly over Votice, and the bench
becomes a place of daydreams.
''We would sit here, looking up and watching the planes fly over,
wondering when it would be our turn to get on one and leave,'' he says.
For Morel, that day came January 13, 1990, after November 1989's Velvet
Revolution had overthrown the Czech Communist government. Cuba had begun
flying workers home by the thousands.
Morel boarded a plane again. This time, it stopped in Montreal, and
Morel did what he'd intended to do four years earlier: He got off, walked
to the nearest Canadian official and asked for asylum. Three years later,
he was in Miami.
''Time passes with blinding speed, without us even realizing
it. Scenes that abide in our minds form part of an immense archive in
which only the beautiful things are remembered. That's why many people are
able to forgive betrayal -- as time passes, beauty is the only thing that
prevails, and then your mind is ready to forgive. The heart is
different. It always keeps pain until it stops beating, and it is my heart
that I'm counting on to tell this story. Still, I think I'll find beauty
there too.''
Morel started writing again after his November trip to Prague. He is
still angry about the people who turned him away, including Cabrera, whom
he met again only by chance. He had seemed like the only one who hadn't
moved on, who still wanted to remember.
But when he has written every word, Morel knows what he will remember
most are the precious moments of beauty, made so much more significant
because they were surrounded by misery:
The faces of Czech farmers and neighbors who opened their homes and
their pantries, allowed him to use their addresses to receive forbidden
mail, hid friends seeking asylum; the way the Bohemian countryside was
dotted with hops fields and green forests, and Prague, with a thousand
spires.
The scene in Wenceslas Square on Nov. 17, 1989, when Communism
fell. Czech civilians, carrying candles and flowers, faced police officers
covered by shields, helmets and guns, and in a moment, the armor came down
and brothers hugged again. Morel was there, anonymous in a sea of
radost, joy, hoping that a similar celebration would one day be
Cuba's.
He was in that square again this November, 10 years later to the
day. Small groups of friends, carrying flags and candles, walked around
quietly, indulging in private remembrances. Morel joined them.
He crouched down at the base of a statue, where flowers and tiny
candles had been placed in remembrance of all the victims of
communism. Without saying a word, he began lighting the candles whose fire
had gone out, one by one.