Dusvany Martinez seems to have gotten used to being teased about his first trip to a U.S. supermarket.
The native Cuban held up a package of meat and exclaimed, "Who will arrest me if I buy this?"
With his wife, two children, and father-in-law at his side at Fostoria High School yesterday, Mr. Martinez laughed as he declared the cases and cases of meat in grocery stores to be the biggest surprise about America to him.
In communist Cuba, he said, people could only rarely purchase meat with their government-issued coupon books. If they bought meat on the black market, they had to hide it and hope no one reported them.
"If you were to take or have a pound of meat, you could spend 10 to 15 years in jail," Mr. Martinez said through a translator.
Stories like his stunned the city government and Spanish students gathered in the school's performing arts center to meet Manuel Diez, 72, who visited the school in 2007 and returned yesterday with his newly arrived daughter, Lisset; her husband, Mr. Martinez, and her two children, Dayanys, 11, and Darian, 6.
Mr. Diez, a former political prisoner in Cuba, had not seen his daughter since he left Cuba in 1987. She was 13 at the time.
"I didn't see him for 23 years, and I actually didn't think I'd get to see him again before he passed away," Ms. Diez said through a translator. "I'm extremely happy."
Her father, who was imprisoned and tortured after refusing to kneel down to Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, finally was released under an agreement between Cuba and the United States that permitted political dissidents who had been imprisoned for 10 years or more to be transported to the United States.
"For me, leaving my daughter when she was only 13 was the hardest thing I ever had to do, harder even than being in jail," Mr. Diez said. "I live for her. My whole life is surrounding her, and now I'm not alone anymore."
Mr. Diez, who works at Consolidated Biscuit Co. in McComb, Ohio, and became a U.S. citizen in 2006, saved for years to bring his daughter and her family to the United States. He recently purchased a home near Findlay where they are now living together.
Family members, who only speak Spanish, fielded a wide range of questions from the students - some as simple as how old the kids are, others as complex as what Mr. Diez would say to Castro if he could do so without fear of punishment.
Mr. Diez initially responded that "there is no such thing as saying something and not having a problem in Cuba," but when the student rephrased the question, asking what he would say to Castro now that he has the freedom to do so, Mr. Diez reconsidered.
"He should respect individual initiative, which is one of the things communism kills," Mr. Diez said. "No one can think for themselves. The government thinks for you."
When 11-year-old Dayanys was asked what she'd like to be when she grows up, she had no answer. It's a dream she's never had the opportunity to dream before.
Her mother said that in Cuba, careers are assigned to you by the government, and everyone, regardless of profession, earns the same meager wage.
Asked whether he still considered Cuba his home, Mr. Diez said the United States is his home and that he never would return to Cuba.
Asked whether he still would stand up to Castro if he had things to do over, he replied, "Absolutely."
"But he's not going back," his translator added.
Fostoria High School junior Paul Rodriguez said the presentation made him grateful to live in America and have the kind of freedom Americans take for granted.
http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20100423/NEWS16/4230326
