They remember being ushered away from their parents with dozens of other children. They remember the room of glass that made a few feet feel like miles. They remember waving goodbye to their parents, unsure of the next time they would meet.
As they prepared for bed, “Breaking News” flashed across the TV: “Fidel Castro has died at 90.” Isabella Prio, a second-generation Cuban-American, was at her Miami home during Thanksgiving break from her junior year at Boston College when then-president of Cuba Raul Castro announced his brother’s death
Just off of Avenida 23, one of Havana’s busiest streets, lies a small shop, its storefront minimally decorated like most others in communist Cuba. The interior is organized like a small jewelry store, with a glass countertop display case separating patrons from a woman in a lab coat, darting in and out from the back room.
African influences are often lost when listening to Latin music. Cuban rhythms would be empty of the clave and the drums without the creativity, imagination and strength of the Yorùbá people who were forced to leave their homes as slaves. Today, those sounds still beat as the heart of the island.