Editor’s note: The following is part two of a two-part series.
Fabio Scott Freyre spent his weeks hungry and unkempt, accompanied by the resonance of his own voice.
For each meal he was fed raw spaghetti, waiting for an undecided judgment day. His outspoken boldness on National Cuban Radio had landed him in solitary confinement, and it seemed that Fidel Castro was determined to keep him there.
But beyond his four prison walls lay a glimmer of hope.
The 1964 Cuban economy had hit rock-bottom. The lack of any work incentive had destroyed the job market. With people starving on the streets, Castro begged Russia to purchase sugar and tobacco at 10 times the market price.
But it wasn’t enough. With nothing left to fund his military and government pursuits, Castro was out of options.
So he started selling prisoners.
A resistance effort in Miami quickly responded. Freyre had been a key leader in the Invasion of the Bay Pigs, risking his life for the renewed freedom of the Cuban people. With the help of his friends and family, the resistance was able to show him freedom’s way.
After nearly 15 months in prison, the Cuban Underground in Miami bought Freyre from Fidel Castro for a total of $100,000. His raw spaghetti diet had turned him into a skeleton; he was 180 pounds when he was captured, but upon his release he had dropped down to 140.
“It was horrific the way Fidel treated political prisoners,” Fabio Freyre Jr. said. “Even today, Cuban citizens are not allowed outside of a four-block radius. You are assigned that radius and you cannot go out of that. This is to prevent people from overthrowing the government. If someone even accuses you of being anti-government, you are put in jail. No questions asked.”
Freyre returned to his family in Connecticut, where he had learned the framework of the Wall Street sugar commodities market. Despite leaving Cuba with nothing but one solitary suitcase, he had ridden the wave of the American dream to success.
“My dad had the vision when he came out of the Bay of Pigs that we could have stayed,” Freyre Jr. said. “He said, ‘We are not getting Cuba back. There are going to be a lot of people in Florida living in the past, trying to reclaim it. We have to move forward.’”
Because of their status as political exiles, the Freyre family faced few obstacles living as immigrants. Mother Silvia Freyre had little difficulty obtaining a driver’s license, and Freyre went to work with no problems.
“I never felt any prejudice, ever,” Freyre Jr. said. “If it was there, I never felt it. I can say that for everyone in my family. Everyone went to college. Everyone is a really productive member of society, but we were first generation. My brothers, they were all born in Cuba. I was the only American-born.”
Yet while his family had no obstacles, Freyre Jr. acknowledges the difficulties surrounding U.S. immigration.
“I thought what happened in Arizona was awful,” Freyre said of SB 1070. “I think our diversity is our strength. Miami was a dump before the Cubans got there in the early 1960s. Now it is a thriving city. Think of all the immigration waves that have helped build this country. It allows immigrants to come in and have a positive influence from every perspective. There’s no country in the world like it. Go to New York and you will hear 20 different languages on one city block.”
Freyre Jr. thinks of himself as American now, having lived in Connecticut since the age of five. He has started his own magazine, been the publisher of Sports Illustrated, and is now the vice president of advertising for Facebook. He has six children, all of whom will likely graduate with a college degree.
Yet even while Americanized, there were times when he felt summoned to his roots.
“I remember talking to my dad when I was in high school. I asked him about the Cuban underground, I wanted to fight. He said that ‘you are not getting involved.’ He didn’t allow us to get involved. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, we didn’t have a clue. He always taught us to move forward. He said, ‘Don’t look back.’”
Today in 2011, Cuba is one of the last bastions of communism left in the world. While the 1959 revolution was carried out in the name of equality by the working class, they are now starving in small, cement huts. Fidel Castro is old and senile, still eating nightly five-course meals in his beachside home.
“If everyone is totally equal, then what?” Freyre Jr. said. “Not everyone is totally equal. The rulers became like the original conquistadors. I pray that within my lifetime the Cuban people experience freedom. Freedom is oxygen. Right now, they have no oxygen.”
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