Today I got the chance to stay in the neighborhood, and during Loli’s afternoon cafecito time, I sat at the steps that lead up to her house, this last year, and this year have been a bit…much. So I needed to ground myself a bit and vent, and before I knew it Loli began sharing tid-bits about her life.

See, Loli is the type of woman who has lived a long life, and she’s experienced a lot despite her outwardly energetic and playful persona. She wasn’t born here, obviously, she came here in 1966 at 19. She was so young, the U.S. opened their doors, and Castro had allowed Cuban’s to leave of their own free will.

Rewind a bit.

Let’s go back to when she was 18 (or barely 18 according to her), Loli was dead set against the regime. She says from the start, something didn’t sit right with her, and she was openly against it. She’d join protests, and go to the streets and actively fight the regime how ever she could. A fireball now, imagine then.

In one of her protest she grabbed a glass coke bottle and when an officer stood in her way she threw it at him. He quickly turned around and smacked her hard, before arresting her, as she was being dragged in handcuffs by this large man she caught the eye of another officer.

This man was older than her, stalky but strong and not very tall, deffinetely higher up on the food chain than most of the grunts they’d send out to handle the masses, and something about him made her remember his face.

She was mentally preparing to spend an indefinite amount of time in jail, after being taken to the site and left there for what she said must’ve been no more than four hours they released her.

This part she said vaguely, and I’m not sure if I understood correctly, but the next morning in a box that was left at her door she found something. I think she said the other officers hand, but maybe she meant like his gun or something…

At the next riot, she saw the second officer he smiled at her despite her yelling and chanting with the crowd, he approached her and without even introducing himself he said “marry me.”

An officer, from the communist party, tells you to marry him, you’d think ‘I have to do this or I’d die’.

You think Loli cared?

Absolutely not, she said flat out.

“No.”

He spent a year like this, every time he’d see her anywhere she was he’d say nothing else other than “Marry me.”

Again she’d respond with a firm “No.”

Until her 19th birthday, when he approached her again, “Marry me.”

She spoke with complete conviction, “abandona tu lucha.” ‘Abandon your struggle.’ Her intention was for him to stop asking her, he misunderstood thinking she meant, leave the communist party.

She says three days later he knocked at her door and told her to pack her things, he wasn’t dressed in his military uniform anymore. Without missing a beat she did exactly as she was told, she gathered her things into a bag, said good bye to her brothers and left with him.

In her young mind, split second thinking she believed that removing someone in the rank he was in, which, according to her he was very very close to the leader of the communist party, she’d somehow create a power vacuum and possibly help her cause.

They arrived at the port and along with several other families boarded a large ship and off they went away from the only home and family she every knew.

A 19 year old girl, promised herself to a stranger, in another stranger’s boat, leaving to a foreign country where they didn’t even know the language.

She spent the entire trip getting to know the man who intended to marry her, while on this boat as they were fleeing their country. With the dock approaching quickly a U.S. Coast Guard Ship approached theirs, pulling up beside them. They looked at the passengers, spoke amongst themselves, and grabbed Loli’s husband-to-be taking him with them. Leaving her to arrive to the U.S., unaware of what was to happen to him,

completely alone.