Louisville Magazine is Louisville's city magazine, covering Louisville people, lifestyles, politics, sports, restaurants, entertainment and homes. Includes a monthly calendar of events.
Issue link: https://loumag.epubxp.com/i/89420
"T here was one point where I started selling my households," Joel Castillo-Diaz says in broken English, "trading a mir- ror for rice and a dress for meat. When I started exchang- ing my books for food, that was the moment that I made my decision to leave Cuba because my books were my life. I was nothing if I had to sell my life." He sits slightly hunched in a wooden chair at the Iroquois branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, his brown eyes wide as his gray eyebrows dance up and down on his 60-year-old face. Te library has been a comfortable place for Castillo-Diaz ever since immigrant-ser- vices librarian Sophie Maier invited him there to study his first English grammar books. His past aches in his memory. Deep creases line his forehead as he talks about leaving his home and his past, his identity. "Cuba was very fave . . . fave . . . I know in Spanish," Castillo-Diaz says, laughing as he reaches into a black bag and pulls out a canary- yellow book with Langenscheidt Spanish-English Dictionary printed across the front in bright blue letters. He repeats the word quietly to him- self as he flips through the pages. "I'm sorry," he says, still searching. "It is something like to treat favorably." He points to the small print on the page. Favorable. Cuba was home, is home. But home changed and Castillo-Diaz, an educated man with a sterling academic background, found himself, through no fault of his own, unable to provide for his family. His choice was clear: Stay home and starve or leave for another life. Maybe a bet- ter one, maybe not. Castillo-Diaz discovered that starting over, here in America, in Louisville, meant starting at the bottom. Like so many im- migrants, he left behind not just family and friends but his professional self, his standing in the community and all that he had done to build that life. B ack when Cuba and the Soviet Union were linked ideologically and economically, the Soviets provided Cuba with low-cost, low- interest products. When the U.S.S.R. imploded in 1991, those goods vanished. "It was overnight," Castillo-Diaz says. "From one day to another, everything disappeared." Castillo-Diaz and his wife Sara (Botello Ramírez; they've since sepa- rated) were both university professors in Cuba and made a decent liv- ing of about 6,211 pesos a year (approximately $258 in U.S. dollars), receiving monthly payments in cash. On paydays, Castillo-Diaz car- ried several empty bags to the university, where he would pick up the money he and his wife earned, then proceed to the black market, which emerged after the Soviet fall, to buy food. "I remember one day I went to the black market and the government police redada? How do you say redada in English?" He taps his fingertips rhythmically on the table trying to recall the word he is looking for. "Where they went to the neighborhoods and black market houses and imprisoned the people." Police raid. "So on this day I can buy nothing. So I arrived to my house with nothing, all of my money, more than 800 pesos, and one food. Plus, when I arrived to my house we were without power, and we had an elec- tric kitchen without power. We could do nothing. When I opened my door, my wife and my three children were waiting for me. 'What to eat?' 'Nothing.' And I remember my words: 'Tis is the country, the only country in the world that your money, the money you earned working hard, is good for nothing. I earned my money, my wife her money, and I can bring one piece of bread for my children.' And then I understood that I can't hold the situation." His way out? A lottery visa, also called a Diversity Visa, in the United States. Part of the Immigration Act of 1990, the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program mandates that 55,000 visas be available annually to in- dividuals through a lottery system in countries that typically send few immigrants to these shores. It isn't much of a lottery. To qualify, entrants Once in America, Joel Castillo-Diaz, with two college degrees and three decades in the classroom in Cuba, worked cleaning floors as a janitor at Kentucky Fried Chicken. must have a high school education and two years of work experience within the past five years in an occupation that requires at least two years' training. Castillo-Diaz qualified. On Dec. 23, 2003, he, his wife and their three children departed on a charter flight from the international air- port of Santiago de Cuba. Tey brought clothes, books, photos, but no money. "I cannot recall what my thoughts were during the trip," says Castillo-Diaz, who left behind his mother, three brothers, five sisters, his extended family and his wife's family. "I just remember feeling in- finite sadness and I cried for part of the journey. And believe me when I say that in all this time we have never spoken between us about it." Some 20,000 Cubans enter the U.S. every year through various visa programs, including the Diversity Visa. And according to Sherry Stan- ley, the assistant director of Catholic Charities Louisville, which works with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to resettle refugees, 2,603 Cubans have made Louisville home in the past five years. Upon landing in Miami, a representative for Catholic Charities greeted the Castillo-Diazes, telling them that they could choose between relocat- ing to Syracuse, Houston or Louisville. Tey chose Louisville. Why? Perhaps fate. But it was the one city Castillo-Diaz had heard about. C astillo-Diaz was born and raised in Santiago de Cuba in a neighborhood called Altamira. His grandfather bought land and built the family home, which they called "the big house" because almost the entire family lived there, including his grandfather, four uncles, two aunts, and his mother and father. His mother and two aunts were housewives, and his father was a metallurgical worker specializing in pipelines. In 1973 he earned his first bachelor's degree, in Spanish and Litera- ture Basic Secondary Education at the University of Oriente in San- tiago de Cuba. After graduation he worked in Manzanillo, about 108 miles from where he was born. He earned a second bachelor's degree in Spanish and Literature Higher Education at the Superior Pedagogic Institute. From there he taught for 29 years — first at the Pedagogical University of Manzanillo for 26 years, then at the Pedagogical Uni- versity of Santiago de Cuba for three. During that time, he returned to school for a master's degree in socio-cultural studies and a doctor- ate in philology. (He dropped out of both programs when the Cuban economy crashed.) In Manzanillo, Castillo-Diaz lived with his wife and children in a neighborhood of multi-family buildings, usually four floors with apart- ments of two and three bedrooms. His apartment had a living-dining room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and two balconies. He now lives in Louisville's Bon Air neighborhood, just southeast of the Watterson Expressway near Bowman Field, in a 1,700-square-foot 11.12 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE [47]