We Live Here! Florida Community Studies Consortium

Oral History of Alfredo Granado

Conducted by Brad Shultz

4 October 2001

Alfredo Granado: Well I’m a teacher. I’m the department chairperson for the Social Studies Department at Hialeah High School, which is a major high school in Dade County, composed mostly of working-class Hispanic kids.

I was born in 1951. Currently the second largest city in Cuba at the time is Santiago de Cuba, which is in the eastern portion of the island. I came to the U.S. in 1963. My parents–interesting from that perspective that they didn’t come with me right away–but a little bit about my parents, if you would like to know, my dad is a Spaniard. His family migrated to Cuba. My grandfather and my grandmother on my father’s side migrated from the area of Andalucia in Spain. I do believe that our last name Granado actually comes from the city of Granada, which is the area they migrated from. They arrived in Cuba in about the early 1900’s. That entire family, except for my father, was born in Spain. My father was the only one who was born in Cuba. He was born maybe a month or two after they had arrived in Cuba. On my mother’s side, as far as I know, they are probably third generation Cubans. They’re also from Spain, but they are from the Canary Islands, and so here the families kind of merged at that point. They were married—I would say in the late forties they were married. They had courted each other for many, many years and my dad tells me some of the stories of him going out to see my mom. The families did not seem to really be real happy about this union, but they accepted the inevitable and they were married, and they had my sister and myself. My sister is a year older than me.

Fortunately, in Cuba, we were of an upper middle-class family, so we were rather well off. Some of my most vivid memories are living in a colonial, or –almost a colonial mansion, a very nice place. In the rooms, it seems to me—what I remember about it—the roofs were so high. Looking at the ceiling, I remember—maybe it was just because I was a little kid at the time, but they looked like they were really spacious. There was a veranda around the outside of the house, and many trees in the courtyard, with a fountain in the front. My sister and I both had nannies, so that my mom was not forced to do any of the housework or anything like that. It was quite an experience.

One experience that stands out in my mind is going to visit some of the property that my father had out in the countryside, and I remember that my sister and I—we were just little kids—we’d get out of this jeep that we were traveling in and the peasants in the field would come over to greet us. I remember them taking their hats off and holding them in front of them in a very submissive manner, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind that here I was a little kid, and there were grownups that seemed to really defer to us. It was quite an eye opener, I suppose, even at that stage. My sister went to a very good Jesuit school called Belén in Santiago, and I went to another school as well, a private school for boys called la Salle. Both of those institutions, by the way, are now here in Miami and they are private schools run by () brothers and Jesuit brothers—Jesuit friars here in Miami. So we had a good life, and I can’t complain about that. We had many, many trips, etcetera, to Havana, and just anywhere we wanted to go. We were planning on coming to the US to visit and then later on to Europe, etcetera. My parents had always talked about us going to Europe to study.

Those things didn’t quite come through, because obviously in the year 1959 everything went to hell in a hand basket—at least for my group of people it did—and we ended up here in the US of course. Early on, I can tell you though, that it was quite an exciting time. A very, very exciting time in my life, in ’59, ’60, and ’61 up to about 1960, I would say. But in ’59, it was a time when, I don’t know, there was just an electricity in the air in those years, ’59 and ’58. We had moved out of our large mansion because it was quite away from the city and there were a lot of clashes going on in that area. We had moved into the city to be away from all these clashes. I remember that I was looking down from the balcony up to the main street in Santiago, and we were on the second floor—my dad owned, I believe that it was either. . .an auto parts store or gas station that was on the bottom floor and we were on the upper floor—and we were looking down, and we see when the police stop this suspect, I guess. It was really incredible the way they dragged him into the car and beat him senseless. Then, they pushed him in the back of the car and we were watching all of this happen.

The following day my uncle, whose name was Angel – Angel Luis, he was quite a guy – Angel Luis comes into the house, and – it’s in the middle of the night, you know, we heard a knock on the door – he comes into the house and my mom—my dad wasn’t there because he was traveling that week—my mom opens the door and in comes my uncle and he’s all bloody and he’s a real mess. They come in and they put hot pads on him and they clean him up. Of course, he was with the revolutionaries. He was fighting in favor of Castro against the Batista government and everybody was so afraid that the government agents would come in and kick the door in, and of course if they did they would arrest everybody, etcetera. Well, my uncle hid in the loft of our house for something like a month until he was able to be smuggled out into the foothills where he joined the July 26th movement. The next time I saw him was quite possibly the most exciting day of my life. It was early in the morning, the sun had just come up, and all of a sudden everybody was out into the streets and they were wearing these armbands, which were red and black, and it signified the July 26th movement. All of a sudden everybody was screaming and there was running around and they were just shouting, “It’s over! It’s over!” They were screaming “Viva Fidel!” and “Viva la Revolución!” and all these things. As it turns out, here come the Jeeps down the street, and these incredible looking people are riding on the Jeeps. It was such a romantic type of thing. They were dressed in olive green and they had these berets on, and their armbands, and they were armed to the teeth. They were bearded, every single on of them had a beard, and there was my uncle in the front of the Jeep, and he’s riding there—he’s got a machine gun strapped across his body, and he’s waiting, and lo and behold—it was really an incredible thing, one of those things you never forget. The following week, however, we had another experience that really brought to mind some of the things that were happening. They began to search for individuals that had been collaborators and had been working against the Castro government. What happens is that—we had moved to our secondary house that we had, closer to my grandmother’s house—and I remember my mom, my sister, and I were in the house. Again, my dad was traveling, because he had businesses all over that province. They were chasing this guy, this black guy who had been a collaborator, and I remember that he ran right past the front of our house and took off into this street that was an upgrade, going up a hill. Here he is trying to climb the fence, and these two militia guys come into our house, and they have old World War II rifles, American rifles—Garand, I think, is what they were called, and here they are, they get down on their knees and they are firing at the guy, and I remember that my mom, my sister, and I run into the bathroom, get into the bathtub, and here we are huddled, like this [gestures]. The thing I remember was the smell, of course, the gunpowder smell, and the noise, and I remember that the spent shells would roll down the stairways and they would be—it was incredible—the cartridges were rolling down like that. I think they got him, I don’t know if they did or not because we didn’t go out of that room until much later.

Well, the next real big recollection I have is, the family got together and things developed pretty much the way they would normally with any family. We had some people that were very, very much pro Castro and were very, very communist, because by this time he had declared himself to be communist. Of course my dad was horrified at the idea that here he had collaborated with the Castro July 26th movement. He had been—I didn’t know this until rather recently—he had been a very important gunrunner. He used his trucks and everything to run ammunition and supplies to the rebels. Well, it turns out that the guy was a communist and of course my dad, his relatives had fought in the Spanish Civil War on Franco’s side, so they were terrified of the idea that here were the communists. From Spain there had been so many stories that had filtered into Cuba about what the communists had done with children, which was that they would be separating them from their families and sending them to Moscow to be indoctrinated into the communist ideology.

My parents were very worried about this. Now, they were people of property and all their friends began to leave the island. All their friends began to leave. They were going to Paris, they were going to Madrid, they were going to the US, but, my dad, for some reason, said, “I don’t want to give it up. I don’t want to give up all my properties and everything. I’ve worked so hard for them.” My dad was a self-made man. He was not a wealthy man when he began. He had really worked for everything that he had. Well, the months went by, and all of our partners, all of our friends had left. Virtually the entire upper class of Cuba was gone, and, some of us were still left behind, and properties began to be confiscated. I remember my father coming home one day and he had nothing left. It was quite—quite a moment. I suppose that one could say that, it’s just one of those moments in history that make you grow or break you, and in the case of my dad I am still wondering what it did to him—[whispering] time out. [The tape is turned off briefly].

My dad did not have a great education. If I’m not mistaken, he only went to the eighth grade. . . He was a copious reader. He read anything he could get his hands on. He had a vision of what he wanted to do. He was a hardworking man, and he was good with businesses. He was a people’s person. He could talk to individuals. He started by being a manager in an auto parts place, and then in about a year and a half, they decided to make him a partner, which they did. He did so well as the partner that he bought them out within a year, and so he had his business in Guantanamo. He decided to extend his business over to Santiago, which is a city--larger city—approximately, I’m not sure, maybe twenty, thirty miles away. At that point he decided to go into the gas station business. He had a gas station called—it was an Exxon gas station. It was right on the road to one of these old Spanish fortifications El Morro, because he thought that sooner or later Cuba was going to be a huge tourist attraction, and he wanted to have his businesses there.

Then, he opened up different gas stations. Then he falls in with another gentleman and opens up another business with him where he went out and bought quite a bit of land. And there was quite a bit of land to be had at that time, and he, in the year 1958 he signs a contract with . . . the United Fruit Company. United Fruit Company was putting together different banana plantations, if I’m not mistaken—some sort of fruit. I’m not sure if it was bananas or mangos or whatever it was, but they needed to open the area. They wanted to build a railroad in there, so my dad was providing the railroad ties, the wood that would go across. It was very, very profitable, and he went ahead and opened up a truck company where he would bring in Dodge trucks and other trucks that had been in use in World War II. He would refit them and sell them, and also use them in his own business to bring out the wood. Everything was tremendously profitable, and he was doing very, very well, and he was beginning to have quite a name. Well, as I told you before, the years go by and he loses everything.

He comes home one day, and he gathers us into the living room and tells us the moment has come. We’re gonna have to leave. For him it wasn’t that much of a problem, he was a dual citizen. He was a citizen of Spain as well as one of Cuba, but for the rest of us it would me a little more difficult. By this time things had gotten really very strange and I couldn’t quite understand. They had—the Castro government had come into our private schools and had shut them down. There were good reasons why some changes needed to take place and I recognize them when I look back now with a rather dispassionate look at some of these things, and certainly—you know, private school for example—there were no poor kids that I remember ever seeing in there. There were, in terms of race. . .—maybe I saw one black kid and that was it. Bottom line was that they came in one day, and they gathered up all the priests and told them, “We’ll give you two days to leave the country, and that’s it. You’re outta here.” They took over the schools, so we had no school to go to. I didn’t go to school after that. But of course, I kept reading. I had already read the classics—many of the classics by that time, because it was part of our formal education. My sister likewise, it was one of those things. We also began to notice that our neighbors—the neighbors that we had at that time because our house that we had—the big house—had been confiscated and a number of families went to live there and we decided not to live there. It was funny because they told us, “You can live here, but you can only have this room and this room. The rest will belong to the rest of these people here,” because they felt that a house that large should house as many as six, seven families and that it was a waste to have just one family there. With the business, they offered my dad—they said, “You can remain here. You can stay in this business. You can be the manager, but it’s not your business anymore.” My dad refused.

Well, we took everything that we still had with us, and we decided to head to Havana, where we still had some connections. It was quite a change for me. I was an altar boy at the cathedral in Santiago, and I had always been in that frame of mind where I was involved with the church. I was involved with certain clubs with the young people, and other things, and now we were told to get out, “Go away.” We went to this little apartment that we shared with my mom’s sister in Havana, and they told us “Within three months you and your sister will leave the country.” Well, of course we said, “Well, wait a minute. You say my sister and I—but what about the two of you, mom and dad?” They said, “Don’t worry about us. We’re gonna be right behind you. It won’t take too long, but we’re gonna have to send you out ahead.” And I didn’t quite understand what was going on at the time, as I was—let’s see, this was 1962 and I was about eleven years old at the time. So, I began to really recognize the fact that things had changed terribly, you know, completely things had changed and we in essence were not wanted there.

Finally, the day comes when my mom, the night before, gathered my sister and me and told us, “Tomorrow morning, you and sister are going to be leaving. You will be leaving Cuba and you will be going to the United States, Miami. We will be right behind you. Within a week or two, we will be there.” Well, I remember we gathered our stuff, and by morning we went over to the International Airport. If I’m not mistaken, it was called Jose Marti International Airport at that time, but the name has changed since. It was a really dramatic experience. The plane was a prop plane. It was a Pan Am plane, I’ll never forget that. The stewardesses were really pretty. Really pretty stewardesses, American women—had their hair done, had a beautiful little hat on, and they had [gesturing] “Pan Am,” you know. I remember looking back, and the last thing that I saw of Cuba was that my parents were in this glass enclosure, and they were waving goodbye to us. It’s almost like I didn’t want to look back. It was really an amazing circumstance and place for two young people to be in. I wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but the stewardess, of course, looked at us and said—they didn’t speak any Spanish, but they came out with chewing gum, chicle, and of course the kids—the plane was full of kids. There was just kids, there were no adults on it. It was dozens and dozens of kids our own age.

Well, we get over here to Miami—this was early 1963—and we land in Miami, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. Couldn’t believe my eyes. We were taken from the airport over to a place called Florida City. It was a refugee camp, and when I say a refugee camp I mean really a refugee camp. I mean, there were literally thousands of kids without parents. Thousands of us, and tents were all over the place, and they had sort of like military barracks. The boys were taken to one area, the girls were taken to another. So here for the second time in one day, I’m separated from another person in my family, and I was the type of kid who the only time we were separated from our parents was when we went to spend maybe the night with our grandparents, and that was it. All of a sudden, we were on our own. I’ll never forget, I had my suitcase—which I referred to as my little refugee suitcase—where I had three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear, you know, what they allowed. The government would not allow you to take anything out. I had an envelope, a plastic envelope with pictures of my parents, and some addresses of people that they knew—but I had no relatives here at all. I didn’t know anyone. Catholic Charities was taking care of us, and it was really an amazing thing. It was called Operation Pedro Pan, or Peter Pan. It was the brainchild of a man named Monsignor Walsh, whom I met at that time.

The whole thing was that they were going to get the children out. They wanted to get the children out, because they knew that if the children remained behind, who knew what was going to happen under the Communist regime. There would be little religion, there would be indoctrination. There were a great many fears that people had. Some of them were founded and true, others were, you know, unjustified—but as it turns out, things were what they were. So, there were thousands of us there, and that first week was—I don’t know, I was so busy doing things that I’d never done before that the week went by extremely fast, but by the end of the week I was looking around—I would see my sister everyday when we past each other on the way to breakfast or to lunch, or whatever, and we would talk. I would ask her, “What’s going on? Have you heard anything?” And of course, she’s, “No, nada. I haven’t heard a thing.” Well, two weeks go by, and this thing is going on, and by this time we’re both pretty much freaking out because our parents had promised us that they would be there within two weeks.

Well, three weeks go by and by this time we know that there is something very wrong—something very, very wrong. I spoke to my sister about this not too long ago when we were reminiscing. She lives in Kendall. We were talking about it, and I said, “Well, do you remember the same things I do?” And for some reason her memories don’t quite mesh the way that mine do, but for the life of me—maybe this is just something that is in my mind—but for the life of me I remember that at the end of the three weeks we were called in—I know I was called in—to this office, and my sister was there waiting. One of Monsignor Walsh’s clergy, as he was a priest, called us over. He spoke Spanish, and he told us that unfortunately, you know, our parents were not going to be arriving any time soon, that for some reason or another they were detained. What had happened was that—earlier there was something that was known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, as many of you probably know, and lots of individuals who were thought to be collaborators and anti-revolutionaries were being rounded up. Well, most people who were being rounded up—unbeknownst to me, my father’s name had come up when they had interrogated individuals who were supposedly CIA spies and things like that. Well, my father’s name had come up, and they had taken him into custody and they were interrogating him. What they did, is—he was briefly under detention, but they let him go, because there was no real evidence against him—but what they did is they lifted their visas and said, “You’re going nowhere until we investigate fully whatever is going on,” and so they were stuck completely, without any means to get out. So, it was a real terrible situation for them and my understanding is that my mom became so ill. . .she was very close to death as a result of a number of things that came about, due to the fact that her nerves were shot and everything else. So, it was a horrible time for them. For us it was no picnic, either.

The priest tells us what the circumstances are, and here we are saying, “Well we don’t know anyone in this country. What are we gonna do?” And he says, “Well, Catholic Charities is gonna take care of you. You don’t need to worry about that. You have a number of choices you can make now.” Well, you have to understand that I’m eleven years old, and my sister is twelve. We have no concept about this country at all. I mean, we were sheltered, upper-class kids, and here they are asking us to make this decision that for all intents and purposes was going to really effect the rest of our lives. So, the first thing they asked us was whether we wanted to be with a foster family, or whether we wanted to go to a school. Well, to us, to my sister and I, being in a foster family was almost like giving up. It was like saying that if we go with a foster family it means that we’ve given up the idea of being with our own family. So to us, we just could not breach that gap there. There was just no way that we could go there. Then we said, “Well, wait a minute. Our parents said that they were going to send us to school either in Europe or the US, so probably this is what they would want us to do. Yeah, we’ll go to a school.” And the priest said, “Fine, not a problem. We can send you to any number of schools that we have throughout the country. The only thing is that you cannot remain in Florida, and you cannot go to Alaska or Hawaii. Those are the only three places where you can’t stay—Florida because there are already too many Cubans here as it is. Hawaii and Alaska for obvious reasons, they are too far away and we don’t have an organization there that can take care of you, but you can go anywhere in the US.”

We went to another room and they showed us a map of the US. They said, “Well, here’s a map of the US. Perhaps is there any place in particular you wanna go?” This is what I remember. My sister says it wasn’t exactly like that, but I remember going through the map, and going through and looking at some of these places. I remember seeing the names. The names really stand out to me. I remember that I saw Utah, and I said, “Gosh, that’s a strange name,” because it doesn’t sound right in Spanish. In fact, it sounds like a—you know, [laughs] like a cussword in Spanish, so I said “We don’t want to go there, that place is full of—those people.” I saw California, and I said, “California, wow. Yeah, that’s in Spanish. Everybody there speaks Spanish, we should go to California.” Then I remembered that I had seen a movie with my dad where they had motorcycle gangs in California. “If we go there they might kill us, so let’s not. Let’s not go to California.” My sister’s hanging around, and she says, “Well you know, we’ve gotta decide.” We saw Nevada, and I said, “Nevada. That’s full of snow.” That’s what it means in Spanish, nevada—snow. “It’s full of snow,” I said, “We don’t want to go there. We’re tropical kids.” Arizona, I said, “Whoa, wow—we’ll die of thirst. There’s no water.” I remember that we looked at Colorado—by this time, my sister was saying, “Look. We’ve gotta go someplace.” Colorado sounded great to me. Colorado, I said, “Colorado is my favorite color,” you know, red—colorado, “and I’ll bet you everybody speaks Spanish, because it’s a Spanish name.” We saw New Mexico, and I was intrigued, but then I said, “But my parents said we were going to the US. We’re not going to Mexico—New or old, I don’t care.” So we passed by New Mexico and we ended up in Colorado. I said, “That’s where we wanna go.”

Sure enough, the next morning—and as long as I live, I’ll never forget—it was early, early in the morning. I don’t know how early it was. They woke up at about four something in the morning, gave us breakfast. I got up, I put on my coat, picked up my little refugee bag, and went out to the walkway, and there was my sister. And I remember that she was standing below this light. It was just light—like an incandescent light, and the mist—you know how it is here in South Florida where the mist rises from the surface—and it was cold, but yet it was really humid. Incredible, I remember that. They put us in this car and drove us to the airport, and when we were there, this social worker—I suppose it was a social worker—comes up to us and-- [laughing] It was kind of funny, now that I think about it.

She takes a paper—it was a small paper, but it had glue on the other side—and the social worker takes this, I guess it was a magic marker, or whatever it was, and she writes something in English—I couldn’t read it, I didn’t know how to read English at the time—and she put it on my chest, and she did the same thing for my sister, and put us on this plane. And I remember that on this plane ride to Denver, Colorado—we stopped at Fort Worth, and then we went to Denver—people would go up and down the aisle and they would look at us, and we were sitting there—And I was really just awed by this whole thing happening, it was the first time I had been on a jet plane—this one was a jet plane. Sure enough, we get over to Denver—I saved that paper, I don’t have it anymore but I saved it for a while until I could learn how to read in English, and on it read, “My name is Alfredo Alejandro Granado. I am a Cuban refugee. If I get lost, please send me to--” I think the address was, “—111 Lowell Boulevard Denver Colorado,” is the place where I was going. My sister had another one on her chest as well. And the people would go up and they would look at us, and they would kind of squint and then they would read and kind of go, “awwww,” [laughing] and I said, “Why are these people doing this to us?” It was kind of weird, but you have to understand that at that time, Cuban refugees were a novelty, especially out west. We didn’t really exist to a lot of individuals.

Well, we get over there to Denver, and it was still in May—it was May. It was so different. I had never seen trees like that. I had never seen mountains like that. I mean, we flew into Denver and I—you could see the Rocky Mountains and the snow on the side. We got out of the plane and right away I knew that I was in a different place. The air was not heavy, the air was—was light. And, you know, it wasn’t cold but I could tell that it wasn’t hot, either. There was just something different about it. Well, they kept us waiting there till the afternoon, then somebody came to pick us up. I remember the man, he was one of the tallest persons I’ve ever seen. I mean, this guy was so American. I had never seen an American person like that. He had overalls, and he had sort of like an engineer’s hat on. He comes and picks up our suitcases, and said something to the effect that we needed to go with him. I couldn’t understand him, but he gestured, and he took some paperwork that somebody gave him. And he put us in this car and drove us across Denver. We get over to this place—on the way over I remember looking out and I kept telling my sister, you know, “Look. Look at those trees. I’ve never seen trees like that before,” and some of them looked naked to me. I kept telling her, “Look, those trees don’t have any leaves. What gives here?” And she says, “Don’t worry about it, it’s just one of those things.”

We went into this gravel driveway, and we got out, and I’m not kidding you when I tell you that what I saw was one of the most impressive sights that I had seen up to that point in my life. This was a five or six story building that was built like a Victorian castle, and I swear to God it had gargoyles on the top. And there was this heavy oak door, and there was a sign that was carved into stone above it, and there were trees all around—it was beautiful grounds, but I mean I looked at it and I said, [laughing] “My God, where are we, Dracula’s castle, or what is this?” And we get out, and we walk in there, and lo and behold—it was dark. It was dark inside. These nuns came out to greet us, and they had this habit that covered most of their face, and they had a rosary that was down in the middle, and you know, sash and everything else, and they told us to sit down by the side of the door, which we did. There was a stained-glass window next to it. It was really a beautiful thing. And I could hear the sounds of the mass that was being performed, and I could hear the bells and smell the incense, so I knew what was going on.

After a while, this little girl comes out of the doorway down the hallway, and she comes and talks to my sister for some—she looked at me kinda strange—talked to my sister a little bit in English—my sister didn’t understand, but you know how it is when you’re a refugee or something. You say yes to everything and you smile. And then what happens is that she takes my sister’s bag, and she takes it up a stairway. And I didn’t think much of it, but then what happens is this other gentleman comes into the room, and he and one of the nuns are talking and they’re gesturing at us, and he’s pointing at me. And he’s got paperwork, he’s looking at it. And then, you know, I realize that they’re talking about me and for some reason or another, they had failed to mention in Miami that my sister would be living in one school and that I would be living in another school. They hadn’t told us that they were going to separate us. If they had told us that, you know, we would definitely have said no way. But let me tell you, I put up quite a fight. I mean, and my sister did too—I’m proud of her. I mean, we were grabbing and groping and everything else, but they finally—I mean, what can I tell you. They dragged me off and put me in this van and took me off—and I gotta tell you, truth of the matter is, I thought my life was over. You know, I didn’t know where I was going, I didn’t know where I had been, I didn’t know—I didn’t know the language. I couldn’t speak to anybody.

I get over to this other place and, you know, I didn’t realize that for the next five years this was going to be my home. And I remember there was another sign carved, you know, in stone on the top of the entranceway, and this place was a place that was a little more modern than where my sister was staying, but it wasn’t much better. It was a huge place, and it was called “Saint Vincent’s Home for Boys,” in Denver, Colorado. And there I was. My sister’s orphanage was called “Queen of Heaven Home for Girls,” and so, there we were, separated.

Well, I remember I felt about [gesturing] that size when I walked into that hallway. The hallway, it seemed to me—memories, of course can betray you—but thinking about it, it seemed to me like that hallway was endless, like it would go on for miles and miles. And it was pure white. It was so shiny—linoleum, it was covered in linoleum and it was pure white. And you could see like forever, and there were little kids way down at the end of it, and they looked at you, and I said, “Whoa, what am I doing here?” They told me to go down the hallway, which I did. They had this little guy who escorted me down to this place, and they took me to this dormitory where there were about thirty beds. They were old navy cots, and I remember because it had on it “US Navy: US Government Issue,” and it was stamped on the steel frame. And you know, that first night was probably a really traumatic night for me. I couldn’t believe it. Three, four weeks ago I had been home, and now here I was with thirty other kids that I could not communicate with and who were, as far as I knew, either killers or whatever and I had to hold my own. Well that night, somebody stole everything I owned in the world. I mean, the next—when I woke up in the morning, I had nothing. Nothing. There was nothing in my suitcase, there was nothing—well the nuns came out and they searched everybody, and they were able to get some things back. I got my watch back, but the one thing that really—that told me that I was in a different place and that I better shape up or I wasn’t gonna survive this place, was that they found my little bag with my pictures, and all the pictures were torn up. All the pictures were torn up, and I said, “Oh, man that’s it. I’m gonna kill somebody.” That was the beginning. . .

I was one of the first Cuban kids to go there. As the years went by, more Cuban kids came, but I didn’t know any English, and I’ll tell you—and I know that this may be controversial, but I gotta be honest with you. Some of these ESL classes that we give to the kids here, I don’t know if that’s helping or hurting. I gotta be honest with you, I learned English in something like six, seven weeks. I mean, I learned it because I had to. I had no choice, ok? And I remember, I had a little tiny dictionary that I would carry with me, and I would—if I needed to find something to say, I would look it up—first, my pronunciation was terrible and the kids would laugh at me. Kids are cruel. They would laugh at me, like for example [laughing] I remember one incident where I as asking for the butter—I wanted the butter, alright? And so I said, “Okay, mantequilla, mantequilla—how do I say butter in English,” you know, “Mantequilla, cómo se dice?” So, I look at the dictionary and there it was, mantequilla—butter. But I couldn’t—I didn’t know the pronunciation so I said, “Please--” please, por favor, “Please--” que pase, pass, “Please pass the booter.” And of course, the whole table breaks out into laughter, and they said, “Oh, pass the booter. Okay,” and so they take the butter and they throw it at me, you know, with their knives—that type of thing, and I went through that constantly until I began to learn things.

It was a very strange place, and the worst day in my life in that orphanage was Mother’s Day [pause] I should think. So that first Mother’s Day, you know, thinking back on it as I sat there—there are turning points in your life that either make or break you [pause]. Well, I got through it. Then after that, everything was easy. In fact, it was too easy after that, alright? I made some good friends [pause]. There were a group of kids there who were, these kids were bad to the bone. I mean, there’s—I don’t think that any of them are alive anymore. I think they’re all dead. I know that for a fact one of them got killed robbing a 7-Eleven in Denver. Some of them were real, you know, bad human beings, and sometimes you wonder what made them like that. I think I know. As far as I knew, . . .I was the only one of the kids in that group that actually had parents. All the others were, you know, had gone through a lot and it had made them real mean, real bad.

And that first year was an incredible year. That first year at the orphanage was unbelievable. There were about four other kids who we became really good friends, and the reason why we became such good friends is because we were getting beat up all the time. These four other kids—and they were not Cuban, they were American kids—we became real tight. There were two black kids who were brothers, Ray and Eugene Bradley, and two Mexican kids who were also brothers, it was Johnny and Danny Pedrosa. And it was an incredible group. We called ourselves the 007’s because, you know, James Bond was big at the time. So, we called ourselves the 007’s and we kind of watched out for each other, but the big kids really picked on us mercilessly.

The orphanage was separated into three sections. They were separated into the infants, the juniors, and the seniors. And we were the youngest kids in the juniors section, so the seniors were just merciless on us and the nuns had a system that—I’m not sure that I like that system—and the system was that they would give the tasks to the older kids to do, and they said, “You do it whichever way you wanna do it. You make sure this and this and this gets done.” They were building leadership quality, but what happened is that they picked on us and they made us do everything and they never did anything, and it was just one of those things. So the bigger kids picked on us, on the five of us, and they called us the toilet boys, and our job obviously was to clean the toilets. Now you understand about this, the toilets—we had about thirty-five, forty lavatories—urinals, toilets and showers, etcetera, and it was our job to clean it every day, and of course the seniors made sure that as soon as we had cleaned it, they would come back and dirty it so that we would have to do it again, and the punishment was that—get this. We could not watch Bonanza until we were through with that, and we loved Bonanza. I mean, Little Joe was my hero. I mean I loved that—and Hoss, and—it was just, you know, it was great. And as it turns out, they were just—they were terrible.

There were times when—you know, you learn how to fight. You learn how to fight really well. And one of the very first things I did was to join the boxing team because I wanted to be able to handle myself, and I ended up boxing in the Golden Glove Competition. So, you know, these are some of the things that you learn.

007’s, what a story that is. We got our revenge against the—I mean, I don’t want to take too much time out of this thing, but just so that you see how things turned out, there was a time when we just couldn’t take it anymore. And I remember that the previous week the seniors had come and they had—in the middle of the night they had taken cow manure—because we had pastures out there and all the farmers, the dairy farmers from the area, would donate their cow manure to the fields, and we would have to go out and pitchfork them all over the place. Well they had taken this stuff and in the middle of the night they had attacked our little group with cow manure, and what they had done is they had tied us up to the beds without us really realizing it. While we were asleep, these guys had tied—these guys were devilish—tied us on the bed, and they had brought out, you know, wheelbarrows of the stuff, and dumped it on us. I mean, it was one of those things when you said, “Okay, this is too much.” I mean, they were taking our stuff, beating us up, alright?

We decided to get even with them, and I remember that—it’s probably the highlight of my experience over there. I don’t want to go through the whole story, but we decided to steal the keys that led to the pantry, and the way we—we could only do it one way. There was only one set of keys that we knew of, and they belonged to Sister Mary Gabriel. Now, you have to understand about Sister Mary Gabriel. You see, Mary Gabriel was a mountain of humanity. She [laughing] was the most gargantuan individual I had ever seen in my life. She was well over six feet three, weighed three hundred and some pounds. She could lift us of the floor with one pinky, alright? We were terrified of that woman. I mean, we could tell when she was coming down the hall by identifying the sound on her rosary, and we that when we heard that rosary, we got outta there, alright? She was the only one with the keys, and I said, “Well, the only way we can get back at the seniors is if we steal the key, so how do we do that?”

Well, we followed Sister Mary Gabriel for a week and we jotted down her every move, and sure enough, we found out she would take a shower at exactly the same time that we had “kp” duty, which was kitchen duty, when we were doing the dishes. And I said, “Okay, this is perfect because we’re right next to the pantry. We’ll steal the key there, and maybe we can get it back to her before she notices it’s gone.” Well, how do we do that? Well, we find out she takes a shower at exactly the same time that we’re in kp duty, but somebody had to break into the shower to be able to take the keys from where she hung them. She used to hang it on a nail that she had on the side, and so there it was, that whole bunch of keys. And sure enough, you know, Anthony Pedrosa, who was the smallest of our group, was also the fastest of our group, and we told him, “Anthony, here it is. We’re all in the kitchen. You have to run from the kitchen to the dormitory and back, and you have to do it before she gets out of the shower.” So, we had to time her to see how long she spent in the shower. Consistently over a week, two minutes. That woman took the quickest showers I’ve ever seen. Two minutes. Poor Anthony, he was terrified, but we told him, “You gotta do it. You gotta suck it up and do it.”

The fateful day comes, and I remember we had another little kid at the other end of the hall with a hanky, and we told him, “As soon as she gets in, you wave that thing and he’s off running.” We see the hanky way at the end of the hallway going like this [gestures] and Anthony Pedrosa starts running, and you can see his head pulled back, and I mean, he is really hauling. He gets over there—we had this planned almost like an operation, a military operation. He had a little, you know, towel that he wrapped around his hand so that he wouldn’t make any noise on the keys. He grabs that thing, and I see him running, and sure enough, here he is, he’s running like crazy, and he comes in and he throws the keys at me, and then, you know, I said, “Oh my God. Which one is it?” We had forgotten to figure out which one was the key, and—we were very fortunate, on the third try we were able to open this padlock that opened up into the pantry. I give him the keys back and he runs back and he puts that thing back in, and it was the funniest thing on earth because afterwards—I mean, he gets back and he is white as a sheet, and I’m asking him, “What happened? What happened?” And he goes, [laughing] “You don’t understand, Al. I put the keys back and she opened the shower curtain.” And I go, “She saw you?” He goes, “No, no. She was drying her hair.” And I go, “Oh, wow. My god, we’re so lucky. Thank god.” And he goes, “No, you don’t understand.” She was naked [laughs]. I go, “Oh my god.” And he goes, “Yeah, it was the most horrible thing I’ve seen in my life.” We couldn’t get over it. It was quite an experience.

So we go into the pantry, and I remember we went in and said, “Okay, that’s it. It’s our turn, we’re gonna do this thing.” And the five of us went in there. I remember we were just laughing like crazy, and we go in there and we get on top of this metallic table that they had in the middle of the pantry—and the nuns were very fond of labeling everything that they had for the food for the next day, and they had labeled, you know, “juniors,” “infants,” “seniors.” And the drinks for the seniors were labeled in this large container with a lid on it, and it was the Kool-Aid that they had made for the next day. And we took the lid off and we held hands, and it was almost—I gotta tell you—it was a religious experience. We urinated into that pot, and it was the most incredible thing, it was like a—like a communion of souls. And we put the lid back on, shut down the padlock, and went back to bed, and we couldn’t get—we didn’t get any sleep that night.

I remember I had to serve mass—I was an altar boy—had to do the mass the next day, and sure enough that morning they brought out that pot for the seniors, and lo and behold—it was great. It was the most incredible thing. Of course, you know how it is. It’s no good if nobody else knows about it, so we told some people. We told them, “Hey look. This is what we did.” So the entire juniors, there was about thirty-five us in the junior group—it was just kind of funny if you think about it now how we were all sitting there, because you had to come in and you sat right behind your chair. I mean, you stood behind your chair until a sister told you that you could sit down, and you sat down. Then they told you that you could begin eating and you had to, you know—you said your prayers first, of course. We were all looking like that [gestures] to the side just to wait until they rolled out the cart with the Kool-Aid. And when they began to drink that Kool-Aid, everybody on the junior side just rolled out in laughter, and Sister Mary Gabriel and Sister Mary Daniels would come behind us and they would whack us in the back of the head saying—they were Irish—saying, “You hooligans! You hooligans! Be quiet, you hooligans!” And we were [laughing] going—we couldn’t stop it, you know, we were just laughing. It was great. Well, the seniors found out about it. Of course, somebody told them and they beat the hell out of us, but from that day on, it was great. We knew that we had the ultimate revenge on them. It was—it was alright.

Regardless, years went by and many, many other things happened. I got to see my sister once a month, and there was a point when I—I think maybe around the third year, I was there for about three and a half years—when I stopped writing to my parents. It had become so painful, really, to write to them, that I—because you have to understand that—even to this day I try to think about why I stopped writing them, and I know now why it was. It was that I had to cope with what I was doing. I mean, I—really, I had to survive in this environment, and I was really angry. I said, “Why? Why did they send me here? I don’t want to be here, this place is crap.” And it wasn’t, this place was a good institution, but I couldn’t understand. Today I’m eternally grateful to the nuns. They gave me the discipline that I needed, I guess, in that moment in my life. But it was one of those things. Years went by. I joined the Boy Scouts, I learned how to ski, you know, all those things up there in Denver.

And then one day I remember that Sister Mary Daniel comes to me—she was Mother Superior—Mary Daniels comes to me and she says, “Alfreedo--” you know, they could never pronounce my name, you know, my name is Alfreh-do Granah-do, and they used to call me Alfree-do Granay-do. And she says, “Alfreedo, you’re going home.” And I said, “What are you talking about? Going home?” And she said, “Yeah, you’re mom is going to Miami. She’s been let out of Cuba and she’s going to Miami.” I couldn’t believe my ears. I remember that it was about six-thirty in the evening.

Well, that night I called, you know, my friends the 007’s in, and it was really an amazing episode because, you know, those guys—they were really something. Each one of them brought something that was very personal to them. Ray Bradley brought his best tie, Danny would bring me his little belt that had Indian beads on it. And you know, it’s kind of strange, I’ve never seen any of those guys again, [pauses] but in a way I’m glad I haven’t because the memory I have of them, you know, every time I think of them I see them as these little kids. My understanding is that they have not done well in life. I’ve called the orphanage on a number of occasions and asked about them. I visited the orphanage about ten years ago to see what it was like, and it looked a lot smaller than I remember it. It really did. And the nuns that were there are no longer there. Sister Mary Gabriel passed away. Sister Mary Daniel was so old when I saw her ten years ago it was like, you know, a lifetime had passed. It’s one of those things.

When I got back to Miami—it was my sister and I, back to Miami, [pauses] you know, I walked past my mom. I didn’t recognize her. She recognized me, and it was really amazing because the week before I had gotten my nose broken in a boxing match, you know, somebody had really gotten through me and laid me out. I mean, I got knocked out. It was in a competition, and was bleeding. I mean, I remember when they had brought me to, I had blood all over the place, and my nose was broken, and they had to put a brace on it. And so when I got to Miami, my nose was like [gestures] this, alright, and my eyes were purple and so forth. And my mom recognized me, and here we were in Miami, and it was the beginning of a new episode. It was time for years, and years, and years. We were—let me put it this way—poverty was really something. I didn’t know what poverty was until that, okay, real poverty. We went to a place called the Tower of Freedom to get our refugee goods, and I remember it was blocks of cheese that were stamped, “United States Government. Not for sale to the public.” One thing that I can—you know, we’re at the end of this, and one thing that I want to say is that the experience in the orphanage was—it was really hard. It was hard. I’ll never send my kids anywhere, I don’t care what. And I’ve spoken to my parents about that—my mom passed a few years back, but I got to talk to her about it, and I understand why they did it. Things, you know, times were so different. I would never do it. And it was very hard, but it taught me a lot and I do believe that if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. It certainly taught me English. The Irish nuns were great, [laughs] I remember the first song I learned in English was “O Danny Boy.” It was quite an experience. I’m glad I went through it. It was hard.

[END OF INTERVIEW]