Sitting on the leather couch of her Miami living room, Uva de Aragon is surrounded by mementos of an island she knew only by memory. For 50 years, de Aragon has undergone the nightly exercise of mapping and memorizing every detail that adorned the hometown she left as a budding 15-year-old.
“My mother was a beautiful lady, unfortunately she had her leg amputated, but she was still beautiful. That is how I think of Havana, still beautiful with a few scars,” said de Aragon, who is the director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
Her exercise proved useful when she turned on the television last Sunday night to see Colombian rocker Juanes in Havana singing: “Los hermanosya no se debenpelear, esmomento de recapacitar, estiempo de cambiar — it’s time to change,” just a few miles from where she was born.
The emotion of watching more than a million Cubans wearing white and echoing chants of peace in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución brought tears to de Aragon’s eyes as she called her two American-born daughters between commercials.
