Cuban-Americans and a complex identity

To Paola, trapped in this genetic-cultural skein

In 1975, the Hollywood Academy of Motion Pictures awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Picture to a film by Akira Kurosawa titled Derzu Uzala. The movie, whose plot unfolds in the early 20th Century before the Bolshevik Revolution, told the story of the friendship that emerged between Russian Army Capt. Vladimir Arsiniev and Dersu Uzala, a nomadic hunter from the Goldi tribe.

Both meet unexpectedly on a Siberian steppe. The army officer was a cartographer who led an expedition assigned to explore that remote region of Asia to draw maps and fix boundaries. The two characters come upon each other by chance in the middle of the woods and the captain, surprised at seeing that strange and primitive man, asks -- through an interpreter -- an odd question: "Where are you from?" The hunter stares back in amazement, not knowing exactly what to answer, since nomads are not from anywhere and of course have no idea of what a nation is, and finally, after some hesitation, he responds: "I am a person." His real homeland was his condition as a human being. From that moment on, an increasingly affectionate relationship builds between an educated Russian, aware of the State and the institution he serves, and a primitive, shrewd and kind hunter who recognizes no identity other than being a person who lives in total communion with nature.

The problem of identity
I begin these reflections with that anecdote because it broaches with intelligence the essence of the problem of identity, a phenomenon that emigrants and their families must inevitably confront. I am an old Cuban who has lived in Spain more than half of his adult life, while the great majority of you are very young women and men who have been born in the United States and are the children or grandchildren of Cubans who went into exile to escape from communist dictatorship. My "Cubanness" has neither merit nor demerit, because I didn't choose it. I was born in Havana, in a very old neighborhood, in the bosom of a Cuban family, and spontaneously absorbed the identifying features of the tribe to which I inexorably belong.

The manner in which I speak Spanish, the food I like, the music I listen to, my historical and cultural references, the urban and rural landscapes that impregnated my memory and have accompanied me since childhood, the down-home environment that taught me gesticulations and rites, all these were freely given to me by the medium in which I grew and evolved until the age of 18, when I had to leave Cuba after escaping from prison and gaining political asylum in a Latin American embassy. In other words, in an organic and absolutely natural manner, with total continuity between my home and the society in which I lived, a certain identity was built that enveloped the essential creature my mother had brought into the world in the remote year 1943. That identity, my identity, was simple and monocultural.

Your experience is different and a lot richer. You belong to two worlds. Better yet, you belong to the world of the United States, but with an addition that makes you partially different from the huge majority of your compatriots. You first opened your eyes in a home different from the society where you later developed. At home, your parents or grandparents spoke Spanish, a language you learned or retained with greater or lesser ease, the food used to have a penetrating flavor of garlic that tamed your tastebuds, and even the lullabies you heard were different from those sung to the little American friends you began to meet in the neighborhood or in the early days of kindergarten.

You gradually acquired a complex and bicultural identity. On one hand, you adopted the features of the American mainstream; on the other, you received a strong familial influence that contributed elements that automatically incorporated into the way you appeared before others and even the way you understood reality. Naturally, that duality was not easy to assume, especially in the stages of childhood and adolescence, when our intellectual basis is not good enough to permit us to understand how society functions or how we function within society. Let us remember that human beings are the only creatures capable of a complex identity. Tigers or doves are just that; people, in contrast, can add many differentiating hues to their essential identity.

Identity and biology
On this matter, let me share with you some very speculative observations that you might find useful:

A fundamental function of identity is to keep tribes united. When we meet other people who display some of our own features, that similarity bonds us. That is a factor of social cohesion based on biological mechanisms that until now have been little explored. The reasonable hypothesis posed by thinker and anthropologist José Antonio Jáuregui (The Rules of the Game: The Tribes, 1979) is that both recognition and affinity are controlled by the activity of neurotransmitters, an activity perfected during thousands of years of natural selection.

On the other hand, a common identity serves to articulate a defense against the enemy, who is always "the different one." A common identity has (or is credited with) a primordial function to protect the group's integrity.

There is nothing special in this biological mechanism. It exists in almost all species and is very present among the large primates, a zoological family to which we belong or are closely and humbly linked. The neurotransmitters reward with pleasurable sensations or punish with unpleasant sensations. When someone feels part of the group, he or she experiences a pleasurable sensation. When someone is a stranger, he or she perceives an uncomfortable, awkward sensation. Jáuregui's theory is that we unknowingly are slaves of the incessant activities of the neurotransmitters. They govern our affinities and our aversions so the group may prevail.

Intuitively, when people become aware of their individuality, they also realize that they belong to certain groups and try to accentuate the features that link them to those groups. This allows them to maximize the pleasurable psychological rewards. Here's a very clear example: When we're with fellow fans of a sports team that's participating in a contest and our team scores a point, we immediately feel a common burst of joy. That's the physiological reward provided by the neurotransmitters. They reward us as a way of keeping us united, around a common objective, in this case, support for a sports team.

The other extreme of the phenomenon explains why children, especially teenagers, experience anxiety when they discover that their features are different from those of the group that defines the appearance and general behavior of the mainstream. Not belonging is vexing. It hurts. The neurotransmitters punish us because we are different. That's why we try to belong —so we won't suffer.

A complex identity and biculturalism carry a certain price tag. I remember an anecdote told to me by my younger brother, Roberto Alex. My brother, who is a brilliant physician, came from Cuba at the age of 10, learned to speak unaccented English, is blond and has green eyes. In other words, he is —to a millimeter— the stereotypical gringo. He lived in West Palm Beach when no Cubans lived there, and very soon he became just another American. That's how he was perceived by his schoolmates, until they visited him at home. Then they learned that, in addition to rock, Roberto liked Cuban music and alternated hamburgers with black beans. All of this happened in a home where, suspiciously, people fried plantains...

The consequence of that discovery on the part of Roberto's schoolmates was that he was classified as a different person. Suddenly he became a Hispanic. He tells me that his schoolmates never discriminated against him, but in their eyes he had become quite a different human being. Note what I'm trying to say. What made him different from the mainstream was not what he lacked but what he had a surplus of —the other elements he brought to the fundamentally American identity, which, like other identities, was made up of certain common factors.

I suppose something similar occurs to American Jews. They meet each and every requirement of the American identity but add to it an extra religious or cultural element that marks and differentiates them, as Woody Allen tirelessly points out in his clever movies.

I raise these reflections because I'm sure that you, to a greater or lesser degree, have gone through similar experiences. The final conclusion is that a complex identity and biculturalism have a certain price and imply some emotional wear and tear. It is important, then, to learn to live with those characteristics and to extract from them the advantages and pleasures they can provide. Let's deal with that.

The positive side of a complex identity
If the bad news was that a complex identity has a price, the good news is that its benefits can be extensive. Actually, the expression "bicultural" is inexact. You do not have two cultures. To have two cultures, you'd have to have two brains. You have a richer culture, one with more shadings and more diverse sources of information. You can read Faulkner and Vargas Llosa. You can enjoy rap -- those of you who like it -- as well as guaguancó and salsa. If many of you observe how you yourselves talk with other bilingual people, you'll understand what I say. You begin a statement in Spanish -- for instance, "Fulano es un tramposo que nos quiere engañar" ["So-and-So is a cheater who wants to trick us"] — but immediately switch to English: "He thinks he can get away with murder."

What has happened? Almost automatically, the brain has selected the phrase that most precisely and economically describes what you want to express. A purist might think that you're making hash of the two languages. A neurolinguist will opine that you communicated in the most efficient manner you know. Obviously, I am not recommending the use of Spanglish but am explaining the reason for this juxtaposition of languages in order to go on to my next pronouncement —biculturalism operates like bilingualism.

Our dual experience furnishes us with very rich ways to understand reality. It gives us a greater critical distance and, in a way, refines our ethical and esthetic judgments. When you judge some facts or examine a situation, you do so equipped with a denser and more delicate outlook. Naturally, one can be a fool in three languages, as Ortega y Gasset reportedly said (unfairly) about Salvador de Madariaga, but what's probable is that fluency in two languages and the information we receive from two worlds will notably enrich our intellect, especially if behind everything lie a powerful intelligence and an adequate moral structure.

Other good news is that the world is moving in the direction in which you're already marching. The Internet, CNN, Fox, and the rest of the symptoms of what we call "globalization" point to an interrelated universe in which English is the lingua franca, but where the rest of the particular cultural manifestations are transmitted, conserved and magnified.. A simple flick of the television dial in the United States will allow you to watch channels in Spanish, Chinese, Korean and half a dozen other languages. Whereas some decades ago, to stay in touch with his original roots, an immigrant and his descendants had to make do with belated newspaper clippings delivered by mail or costly telephone calls, today the Internet, international television, videotelephone and the fax machine allow us to live in any part of the world as if we had never moved from our home of origin. That permits complex identities to be increasingly more frequent and lasting.

Obviously, this reality had to generate legal consequences. The trend worldwide, including the United States, is to recognize the complex identity on the juridical field. More and more countries permit and recognize multiple nationalities. My oldest granddaughter, Paola, was born in the United States, lived part of her childhood in Miami, and is an American citizen. But because her father is Mexican and, logically, Paola has relatives living in that country whom she visits frequently, she also has a Mexican dimension and a second passport. However, because she also lived in Spain, where she went to high school, and her mother is a Spanish citizen born in Cuba, she holds a third passport, a Spanish one, and the right to a fourth, a Cuban passport, which she may obtain if Cuba someday becomes a free country. Were we to ask Paola, like Derso Uzala, where are you from, she would have to answer that she is an American-Mexican-Spanish-Cuban woman, a complexity that makes her, same as all of you, a more interesting person because of the enormous number of shadings contained in her complicated biography.

Does a complex identity provoke a loyalty conflict? Of course not. The loyalty professed by civilized and democratic persons in the contemporary world is not to nations but to principles and ways of life. The Cubans in exile and the oppositionists on the island are not enemies of Cuba but friends of freedom. That's why we oppose Castro's government. It is a pernicious foolishness to parrot the phrase "my country, right or wrong," as the unreflecting nationalists propose. If my country falls in the hands of a totalitarian gang, the patriotic response is to confront that gang. There is no contradiction between loving the United States, Cuba or any other place, because in reality that phrase is poetic license. What a person loves, I repeat, is a certain way of life and the principles that rule that form of coexistence. If one day the enemies of freedom seize the government of the United States, the decent and patriotic thing to do would be to oppose them fiercely.

Once Cuba is free
I think it's time to examine the concrete case of you and Cuba. After all, that's what has brought us to Princeton this spring of 2006. All of you, more than 100 young Cuban-Americans, have come together in a remarkable organization called Roots of Hope. You are united by a common ancestry and the desire to be useful to a society you know only through hearsay.

It seems to me you do very well in congregating. To contribute to the freedom of the Cubans is a noble cause. To denounce the abuses they suffer is a decent and dignified endeavor. Every human being must devote some effort to philanthropy and that word, as we all know, means "love for one's neighbor." "Neighbor," in turn, comes from the Old English word "nigh," meaning "near," and who is nearer to you than the members of the tribe your parents and grandparents came from? To come together to do good is one of the noblest tasks people can and should perform. Besides, altruism brings pleasant emotional rewards. To serve those who suffer generates a sweet interior satisfaction, perhaps, as I said before, due to the secret activity of the neurotransmitters.

Of course, once Cuba is free, the contribution you can make will be of a different nature. Your education in the U.S. has taught you some fundamental lessons that you surely have assumed without even realizing it: the value of tolerance, the importance of forging consensus, the virtues of flexibility, the indispensable nature of fair play, the role of institutions, and the need for all of us to submit to the rule of law. That is part of the positive charge that American culture has delivered to you. I would have to add the spirit of competition; meritocracy as a way to recognize hierarchy; the search for excellence as an objective in the tasks being tackled, humble though they may be; a strong commitment to civic activities, and a clear sense of individual responsibility. Happily, in the United States, both rights and duties are learned simultaneously. Don't think that that difficult balance is present in all latitudes.

As soon as it is feasible, it is important that you carry to Cuba "the good news," as the early Christians used to call the gospels. Successful societies triumph thanks to the values and principles that proliferate within them, not to natural riches or the ability of their leaders. Churchill would not have been Churchill in Paraguay or Burundi. He needed the virtuous English society to display his immense talent as a leader. There are ways to transmit values, and that's a major task before you in a future Cuba.

But you musn't see Cuba only as a place for which you should sacrifice yourselves expecting nothing in return. Martí, who was an extraordinary man but who understood life exclusively as a perpetual priesthood in the service of one's neighbors, said that "the motherland is an altar, not a pedestal," thereby emphasizing that Cuba should be the permanent object of our sacrifices without the expectation of a reward -- but I think the Apostle was wrong. The metaphor was very clear: the altar is the sacred stone on which the priest officiates. The pedestal is the base on which people stand so they can stand out better. In reality, the motherland should be both altar and pedestal. It is fundamental that you know how to serve, but there's nothing reprehensible about legitimately seeking your own benefit. That is very convenient for the whole of society.

Once political and economic freedoms come to Cuba, once the creators of wealth are no longer hounded, as happens stupidly today, those of you who have an entrepreneurial bent and the desire to stand out in the economic field must think about the island as a fertile territory for the development of all the economic and professional skills you have learned in the United States. It is also reasonable that you conveniently exploit the potentially super-rich links that will be established between Cuba and its great neighbor. That will benefit the Cubans, the Americans, and those of you who do your jobs well.

It's good to understand this: As a consequence of Castro's dictatorship and the exodus he created with his cruelty and clumsiness, the island gave birth to a huge and very rich province overseas whose principal territory is South Florida but also encompasses Union City, New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Juan (Puerto Rico), and half a dozen other cities that are home to large Cuban communities. The same phenomenon, on a different scale, is repeated outside the United States, in Madrid, Mexico City and Caracas, where Cubans can be counted in the tens of thousands. This massive presence, which in its origins was a heart-rending personal tragedy, will be a blessing for the future Cuba, perhaps in the way the painful diaspora of the Jewish people and their successful implantation in half the planet became an unexpected advantage for contemporary Israel, which is strongly connected to the vibrant Jewish communities in numerous cities worldwide.

To foster those ties when the moment comes will be an extraordinary way to help Cuba. It is good, therefore, that you participate now in the struggle for the freedom of the Cubans. It will be good when you put your shoulders to the task of reconstruction. It will be good when you strive to achieve personal and collective prosperity. You have -- legitimately, if you choose to occupy it -- a prominent place in Cuban society. Cuba awaits you with arms open wide.

Thank you for all you do for the Cubans. Thank you for all you can do in the future.