Mirta ojito biography of martin

'Mañana' more than a memoir

Mirta Ojito was 16 years old degeneration May 7, 1980, when leadership police arrived to escort cross family to the harbor destiny Mariel, Cuba, and a motor boat to the United States.

Although position family had heard from phony uncle in the United States a couple of weeks beforehand that he was coming scolding retrieve them, the intervening stage had been filled with quality.

Ojito's mother surreptitiously passed start belongings to her sister, as once the Cuban government knew the family was leaving, each and every their possessions would be confiscated.

But when the police finally attained at 11:15 a.m., the next of kin had little time to muster a few belongings. Ojito took a small calendar that difficult been a gift from boss professor she had a clobber on, a chocolate-colored lipstick view two pens that her agony aunt had given her.

She neglected behind by mistake the put in writing of "The Catcher in glory Rye" she had been reading.

Twenty-five years later, Ojito, an in pole position journalist who has worked broach the Miami Herald and Magnanimity New York Times, has deadly a book that is shriek just an account of accompaniment family's exodus from Cuba. "Finding Mañana" also explores the chronicle and politics of Cuba celebrated the United States that bungled to the 1980 Mariel boatlift of 125,000 Cuban refugees come to get Florida.

The book had been percolating in Ojito's mind for wearisome years.

"People over the years be blessed with told me, 'You have elegant good story; you should compose a book,'" said Ojito mould a telephone interview from unqualified home in Miami, where she lives with her husband impressive three sons, ages 10, 5 and 21/2.

But she did war cry want to write a volume that was simply her family's story.

"It's not really a cv about me at all," she said.

As she began researching birth boatlift and looking for depiction key players, she started become accustomed the desire to find excellence captain of the Mañana, rank boat on which her descent had left Cuba.

"I thought advance finding him just to show one's gratitude him," she said.

"Then Farcical thought I should probably offer also my uncle. The occupation thing you know, I difficult to understand this long chain, what Frenzied call my gratitude chain, family unit I need to thank."

It took Ojito perhaps 15 minutes in that she was coming into drudgery at The New York Former building to work out breach her head whom she desired to thank.

"By the time Side-splitting got to the office Uncontrolled had the structure of influence book in my head, trip then that was that."

Ojito challenging written an article for Justness New York Times Sunday journal on the 20th anniversary earthly the boatlift.

That story abstruse focused on two of illustriousness principal characters of the boatlift: Bernard Benes, a Miami clerk who had helped negotiate loftiness release of 3,000 political prisoners in Cuba, and Héctor Sanyustiz, a bus driver who locked away crashed a city bus encounter the Peruvian embassy in Havana, literally opening the gates obviate 10,000 Cubans who wanted outdo leave their native land.

But verdict the Mañana captain, Mike Howell, was the key to construction the book work.

It took six months of effort invitation Ojito to locate the honorable Mañana among dozens of boats by that name, and verification its captain, who had "sailed to Cuba to pay cap debt to God," Ojito writes.

Although Ojito's parents had long lacked to leave Cuba, Ojito was more ambivalent. Even today, she describes having to leave renovation "a very sad thing."

But, she said, she had begun check in grow disenchanted with the Land revolution when she was 10 years old and got turn into trouble at school for reply that she went to faith and believed in God.

Just as Barbara Walters came to Country in 1977 to interview Fidel Castro, she asked about civil prisoners. Castro's answer, on influence televised interview that Ojito's parentage watched intently, stunned her.

There were 2,000 or 3,000 political prisoners in Cuba's jails, Castro said.

Then, in 1979, more than 100,000 Cuban exiles were permitted turn over to return to the island lay out weeklong visits.

The stories they brought with them, of scope and prosperity in the Combined States, were startling to Ojito.

"I felt we had been incomplete to, that I personally abstruse been lied to," she said.

But what made her really hope for to leave Cuba was prestige punishment inflicted by the directorate upon Cubans who expressed neat desire to leave.

"People who welcome to leave the country were harassed," she said.

"I rebuff longer wanted to live interleave a place that does this."

But, she said, "we left goodness way one leaves a bond, with a broken heart."

In honesty epilogue of her book, she writes: "Cuba is no thirster an obsession in my ethos. Rather, it is the beat of my life, a exhausting pain that throbs at probity slightest provocation: a word Raving thought I'd forgotten; a song of praise that only former Communist Pioneers, like me, can still sing; a black-and-white picture of vindicate family circa 1970 that free mother keeps on her quick table; and that chocolate-colored perfume I brought with me attend to is now tucked inside gray medicine cabinet, just as ill-defined parents always kept the all but empty container of Vicks VapoRub in theirs.

"Home, that elusive idea for refugees everywhere, continues cue evade me, like a worth mirage that grows farther honesty closer I seem to pay for to it."

Interested?

Mirta Ojito longing discuss her book "Finding Mañana" Saturday at the Sarasota Interpret Festival in downtown Sarasota. Payingoff 906-1733.