“No pain, no joy.” -Carlos Eire “A bend of the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn.”
Where these words originate from, I can’t say, but I can say the I have never understood them more because of the inspiring story of Carlos Eire. The memoir of Carlos Eire, Learning To Die in Miami, is a first hand account of a young Cuban refugee boy’s escape from Fidel Castro’s, Castrolandia in 1962. From start to finish Eire recounts as many memories as his conscience and subconscious will allow. In his memoir he focuses heavily on his “nine months and two weeks,” at the “Palace Ricardo.” It is evident to me that Carlos was molded and changed from the experience. In this essay I will focus on this time in Carlos Eire’s life and expose those defining moments from his, “Palace Ricardo” Phase, and argue that not only did it alter his life, it also prepared him and awakened him to his life and years to follow by learning to “bend with the road”. I will also draw from other sources to further illuminate his path to success through this difficult time. To set the tone; when Carlos Eire began his experience at “The Palace Ricardo”, he had already been air lifted from his parents and home in Cuba and shuffled from refugee holding grounds surrounded by strangers where he ate strange food in a strange land. Then he was given to a Jewish foster family. From this place of comfort he grew to love, he was quickly thrown into a house that his parents never hoped for him to end up in. This house was nicknamed by Carlos as, “The Palace Ricardo” an ironic title for a dingy, cockroach and mice infested house full of cynical and dangerous teenagers that was controlled by a selfish and hateful couple he calls, “Lucy and Ricky Ricardo”(to protect their identities). From the moment he steps into this home he is aware that this is not going to be as pleasant as his previous foster situation. Carlos remember feeling himself resisting and trying to “will it away”. However he forges ahead with what fate has dealt him because he has no choice. Acceptance is the first step to recovery from any defeating change. Eire writes,“ I simply accept what happened as inevitable…I don’t care to know, because I prefer to accept it as inevitable and foreordained. It couldn’t have been different.” This marks a clear starting point to a knew life path that begins with a rude but great awakening. Even though Carlos had the right attitude towards his new situation, he described the fist experience of this new home as his “worst nightmare come true. Pure squalor.” Luckily he was armed at birth with his parental influence and heritage already at work in his personality. “Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world with out them.” (Malcolm Gladwell) This directly applies to Carlos Eire’s predicament because the world that shaped him had “vanished” because of Fidel Castro’s presence and changes to his homeland . However he was genetically equipped to handle this upheaval. Eire’s familial support is evident through the amulets he wears that he carries with him at all times given to him by his father; the religious heirloom necklace and the book The Imitation of Christ. To the best of their ability Eire’s parents equipped their son with the armor they felt would be most helpful and protective through hard times. They also demonstrated their support through their unyielding effort to call and write throughout the separation. Unfortunately at Lucy and Ricky’s house, Carlos was isolated from this parental guidance. This could have been a dangerous separation for a young boy going through a sensitive developmental stage in his life because that house was saturated with negative influences. “If you write to your parents never, ever, tell then that anything is wrong.” Lucy demanded, “Tell them that everything is alright and your very happy here. They cant to anything to help you, so it‘s best if you don’t worry them too much about stuff you can‘t fix.” Carlos took this as “good advice”. This means he was now forced to undertake all oppression and poverty of his new life in isolation completely alone. This predicament will ultimately add to his strength of character because of his ability to overcome such a challenge. Additional to the severance of communication from his support system he also experienced rejection from his new foster parents. I think the rejection he experienced is beneficial because he replies mentally with the same categorization. Carlos writes, “Lucy and Ricky make it clear to Tony and me that they don’t like us. Both of them tell us, to our faces, that we are…too refined…and too spoiled.” He realizes its their jealousy and “contempt for anyone who at anytime might have had a life even slightly better or happier than theirs.” This realization in a mature conclusion for a little boy and it is a solidifying his personality from the negativity he sees in the Ricardo’s. Had Carlos fought to identify himself with Lucy and Ricky, he could have ended up unhappy and unable to take care of himself. Instead he learned from their short comings and consciously rejected this influence from molding his personality. This lesson will be extremely advantageous in his ability to build his personality and add to his skill to see right from wrong. However, there was a factual basis for Lucy and Ricky’s claim that they were comparatively “spoiled”. Eire was accustomed to servants doing everything for him and parents providing all necessities and wants. This would not be a helpful expectation at the “Palace Ricardo”. After his first day of school he was nailed with the list of chores that now become his daily reasonability. He must make his own breakfast and lunch with supplies that do not have the necessary nutrition for a growing boy. He must clean his space and everyone else’s, wash the car, and provide his own snack money, clothes and health care. Carlos recounts, “snacks are your problem…clothes are your problem…getting down thirty-five blocks away (for a haircut) is your problem…school”, “staying in touch with your parents,” and, “Your health is your problem too… broken teeth and eye glasses cant be mended, or replaced.” In my opinion a child should ever be so burdened but Carlos rose to the occasion and began to hold himself responsible and no longer expected to be handed everything. And learned he had to work for what he wanted. Thankfully there was a place where he could escape the “Palace Ricardo”. He finds relief at school. “I immediately take to (my teacher) Miss Easterman.” he remembers. He even calls her “motherly”, especially in opposition to his foster mother Lucy. She nurtures his love for learning and his talent for writing. I believe her praise and ability to set up a safe atmosphere for learning was the first influence he came across to lead him to literature, history and ultimately teaching in later life. After Miss Easterman grades a paper that Eire remembers putting a particular amount of effort into, she reacts with praise and calls his work “wonderful”, a reaction he does not receive from any superior in his daily routine at this point in life. She is actually speechless and this reaction inspires great pride and joy in young Carlos to believe that he is indeed becoming an American and is succeeding in assimilating to his new culture. I am certain that this moment was most influential because of the time in his life where this praise was given to him. This extreme positivity is a enormous contrast to his home life, hence this makes a deeper emotional impression and becomes significantly more inspiring and validating because of this difference. This is not the first or the only positive push inspired by Miss Easterman. Carlos remembers receiving a report card that “embarrassed” him and makes him “furious”. She mentioned that he should try harder to get rid of his accent. He knew then that she had only, “good intentions.” Carlos understood Miss Eastrman was encouraging him to try harder because she “believes he is capable”. Though she only meant good this still enraged Carlos. How he handled his rage would make any psychologist proud. Carlos used his rage as positive motivation, a fantastic tool that many adults haven’t mastered. This is not only a healthy emotional response, at this time in American History it is a strong survival skill to sound more American. To sound more American is to appear more American which will open up more opportunities in the professional world in adult life. And in Eire’s immediate circumstance he has discovered a constructive outlet to focus on and channel his energy. In addition to the zeal he obtains from school work he also gained a deep satisfaction for real work. Carlos got a job selling a Cuban Magazine. From his earnings he was able to provide certain luxuries and necessities for himself that he had gone without. He also gained a sense of purpose and a foundation of true belonging and security in his position in the world. “This is why I came here. This is why I am in exile. This is why I have no parents,” he discovered, “so I can sell a magazine. If I stayed in Cuba, what I am doing would not only be impossible but also illegal. Not just the anti-Castro humor I’m peddling, but the very simple act of selling something door-to-door and pocketing a fair share of profits for myself.” Carlos knew had he, “stayed in Cuba….Tony and I would be nothing more than glorified slaves. Both he and I knew this, even though we were just kids.” This was a major step in his personal and physiological change. At this point he transitioned into a boy who was barely surviving to a young person who was beginning to live. Carlos Eire was beginning to own his freedom as a young man and an a true American. This is also his first solid experience of purpose. Furthermore, Carlos discovers another equally influential source of positive cultivation and self discovery at the Public Library. “The world that opens up to me in the Library” he says, it “has no boundaries whatsoever. It’s infinite and eternal. And that boundless expanse calls to me, louder and louder, with every passing day… And no quadrant of that limitless universe calls to me louder than the past. Before I know … I’ve turned into a historian. A historian with taped up shoes and no clue to where he is headed, but a historian all the same.” This is another example of how the contrast of his uninviting home life accentuates the goodness he finds in other places. “The shoes have a lot to do with this life-altering insight, for they make the present look so bleak.” he adds. Through this he implies that there is indeed a bright side to his horrible living situation. His current situation at “The Palace Ricardo” (as represented by his tapped up shoes) was undesirable so he was even more motivated and fixated on the positive outcomes of the discovery he made in the Library of his love for knowledge. We can all recall certain times of adversity in our lives that heavily impact our existence. However short in comparison to our experience on earth these times can seem like a lifetime. And when we make it through these difficult phases we find that our life would not be the same with out them and a new self is born from this challenge. As Carlos leaves this horrible time in his life he realized there are differences that he carried away from this chapter in time. Carlos recalls, “We boarded the Eastern Airlines plane in much the same way as we boarded the on from KLM in Cuba, eighteen months ago. But we’re not the same boys. Far from it. Tony and I have each died at least three times since then. And it’s getting much easier to go through it.” I gather he felt great pride for his survival and accumulation of knowledge despite his bitter circumstances. “The turning point in the process of growing up is when you discover the core of strength you have within you that survives all hurt.” said Max Lerner. I believe that Carlos Eire navigated his life through many twists and turns and gained the knowledge and flexibility to know when to bend and curve with the road which is a fatally important survival skill, a skill he inhabited because of his trials during his “Palace Ricardo“ phase. It is evident as you read Eire‘s memoir that this “bend in the road” was indeed not his last.

Works Cited

Eire, Carlos. Learning to Die in Miami: Confessions of a Refugee Boy. New York, NY: Free Press, 2003

Gladwell, Macolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. New York, NY: Back Bay Books/ Little, Brown and Company, 2008

Lerner, Max. The Unfinished Country. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1959