The Voices

To date we've researched and filmed many incredible stories, representing the diverse range we are featuring in this documentary. These stories will interweave with one another along a timeline spanning forty-five years - from the roots of Castro's revolution, through the Cold War, and into the present-day headlines. Please click on any name below to see more details:

Lt. Col. Luis Orlando Rodriguez

Neri Torres

Enrique Bassas

Miguel Ordoqui 

Georgie Brooks & Tony Batista

Lizbet Martinez

Lt. Col. Luis Orlando Rodriguez - Was a soldier for the Cuban army under Batista's rule, and was captured and imprisoned when Castro took over. He later made it to the United States, only to return to Cuba to fight in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. He ended up leading one of the first waves of troops onto the beaches. He describes his personal experiences in the battles that ensued. When it was clear they were losing, he and his remaining men ended up wandering the nearby swamps until they were caught.

Since we were the first group to be captured, they traveled us in the back of a truck, with our hands tied, through the middle of Havana... Here you were thinking you were doing something great for your country. And all of a sudden they parade you through the middle of your brothers and sisters - that you were supposed to liberate by risking your life in the process. And these same people were looking at you like you were an animal... and they are throwing tomatoes at you and bottles. And shouting at you and calling you all kinds of names...   like gusanos (worms)...

I felt confused. I was a young man and I didn't understand some of these things. This was a tremendous blow.

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Neri Torres - An Afro-Cuban dancer who tried to defect in 1990 while on tour in Italy, but was caught by her agent in her hotel room and put in a psychiatric ward. She eventually made it to Miami. Now she leads a very prolific and successful Latin dance troop, and has worked with the likes of Willy Chirino, Gloria Estefan, and Marc Anthony. She describes life in Cuba during the seventies and the eighties, and the role of Africans in Cuban culture, religion, dance and music. She is very eloquent on the paternal qualities of the Cuban government and the adjustments Cubans have to make when they face freedom in the United States. She also describes agonizing over the decision to leave her homeland.

I used to sit and hang out on the sea wall, and think about what's beyond the sea. I used to watch the stars and say, 'my God, is there any way I can leave this country?' I love my people. I love my family. But I feel trapped. That's the sensation you have when you live in Cuba. So much water and you cannot go anywhere.

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Enrique Bassas - Enrique came over as a child from Havana in 1962 during an underground operation known as Pedro Pan. Between 1960 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, nearly 14,000 boys and girls aged six to seventeen were sent alone to the United States by parents who could not leave Cuba themselves. Many parents feared the state would claim responsibility for their children, and decided to send them abroad rather than risk losing them to the government.

Enrique recounts the horrific process of picking up the false visa, saying goodbye to his mother and father, and boarding the plane to leave - an experience that shaped the rest of his life. He has since fought against communism in Angola, Vietnam and the jungles of Nicaragua - and has an intense hatred for Castro and all things related to communism.

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Miguel Ordoqui   - An artist who left Cuba on an overloaded boat during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift.

Miguel is very eloquent on art and life in Cuba, the problems of getting supplies, what it was like in the work camps of prison. We filmed him painting a work at his Miami gallery portraying faces with frowns holding up smiling masks. He explained that it represents the state of the people living in Cuba who have to support Castro and his causes on the streets, but secretly vilify the leader in their homes.

It's the two-face.   One face in the street.   Another face in the house.   The two-face of the Cuban people at this moment.   I don't have two faces.   In America I have only one face.   My face.   And I say what I feel. That is the difference.   I'm free.   I paint what I want.

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Georgie Brooks & Tony Batista - A sister and brother from Havana who each separately recount what happened to them the day after the Bay of Pigs invasion. This was a particularly harrowing time to live in Cuba, because Castro had grown deeply paranoid, and violently suspicious of anyone wanting to leave the country. The Cuban police came to their home while they were eating dinner and arrested the entire family. She ended up captive in the city's sports stadium with her mother and hundreds of others that the government rounded up. He ended up in prison with his stepfather. They each thought the others were dead.   They eventually made it to the United States after a nerve-wracking immigration experience.

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Lizbet Martinez   - A twelve-year old music prodigy who left Cuba in a wooden raft with her mother and father during the balseros (rafters) crisis in 1994, carrying only her tattered violin. They were lost at sea for seven days before the Coast Guard finally picked them up...

Once they rescued us...it was a moment you wished you knew their language. That's why I played the violin. That was the only way of thanking them for what they had done.  

So I played it for them and they were just like, Wow! A Cuban girl that knows the Star Spangled Banner. That was just amazing. They started crying.

She and her family were later brought back to Cuba and held at Guantanamo Bay, which was the policy at the time.   Eventually they made it to the United States.

Lizbet describes beautifully what it was like to be a child in Castro's Cuba in the eighties and nineties. She also recounts what it was like to see the United States for the first time, and how amazed she was at all the products available to Americans in stores.

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