The Citizen

Cuban Uses Freedom to Write

Tuesday, May 16, 2006 3:47 PM MDT

Teresa Dovalpage spent the first 29 years of her life on the communist island of Cuba dreaming of freedom. She studied English and read the few American authors still on library shelves in Havana. Now 39 and a naturalized citizen here, she is using her freedom to write. The doctoral candidate at the University of New Mexico has written three novels, a play that will be performed in Chicago, and various articles since 1999. She is now working on her memoirs of life in Cuba.

"This is almost like a reincarnation, coming into a different life," she says. "It wasn't hard to leave Cuba. I studied English because I always wanted to come here. This is the land of opportunities."

In her past life, she earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Havana, then a master's in Spanish literature. She got a teaching position, making the equivalent of $15 dollars a month, about the time the Soviet Union collapsed. Immediately, the Cuban economy plunged into even more difficult times since subsidies from the former communist bloc stopped.

"When we lost our subsidies, there was less food, no gas for transportation," she says. "It had always been bad, but now there were no public buses for a long time."

The government issued bicycles, but the dilapidated streets made bike riding difficult. "Cuban camels" emerged: two buses bound end-to-end to save gas. The struggle for economic survival overshadowed any hopes of political change in Cuba.

"When you are in that kind of situation, it's difficult to think in terms of the big picture of politics in the world," she explains. "The common citizen is too busy trying to get food to think about that."

Fidel Castro opened the country to some tourism, but that brought prostitution and a double economy because tourists brought dollars. The exchange rate at one time was 100 pesos to one dollar. Now it is about 25 to one. A normal salary is 200 pesos a month, or about eight dollars.

"Most of the people who graduated (from college) when I did worked as tourist guides, waitresses, cab drivers and made much more money than I did working at the university," she says.

The political climate did not change.

"I didn't even dare to talk about politics in Cuba because it was dangerous," she says. "If I made comments in front of my students, I would have lost my job."

A small revolt happened in 1994, but was quickly put down. Castro announced anyone who wanted to could leave, on home-made rafts. Thousands of rafters risked the open seas.

The economic struggles continued with almost daily blackouts, lack of refrigeration, transportation troubles.

"Sometimes words can't describe it," she says. "Now I look back and wonder how did we make it. It's not just the material problems, it's the whole environment."

In September 1994, someone asked her to serve as an interpreter for an American who could not speak Spanish. Hugh Page came to Cuba with Pastors for Peace to meet with religious leaders and to interview Castro on immigration issues. Though he was 42 years her senior, and a retired psychologist, they discovered they had much in common and had read many of the same books, especially on spirituality.

"The thing that really knocked me over about Teresa was she showed me a huge closet in her house stacked floor to ceiling with books," he says. "She had read every one of them. I admire readers and there's hardly anything she hasn't read."

She told him she would like to come to America, but had to be married first, or intended to get married. "I told her, I think we can arrange that."

As for their age difference, "My saying is, if she dies, she dies," he jokes.

They got married in Cuba in August 1995. She combined their names to Dovalpage.

He returned to San Diego and petitioned for her to come to the United States. It took him six months to complete the paperwork.

She got her visa in February 1996, and came to San Diego first. She soon realized her ideas about America, based on books like "Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis, were out of date. She used old fashioned words like "gentleman caller" instead of boyfriend, "parlor" instead of "living room."

"There weren't many modern books by American authors in Cuba, so my picture of American society wasn't really right," she says. But by 1999, she was writing herself. In less than two years she completed her first novel, "A Girl Like Che Guevara," a novel about a young girl who at first thinks she wants to be like the communist icon, but later changes her mind.

She and her husband moved to New Mexico in 2002. In 2003, she completed a second novel "Posesas de La Habana" about four generations of women in a house during a blackout when a thief enters.

The books were both published in 2004. She was invited to speak at Rutgers University and her publishers sent her to Miami twice to promote the books. The movie of Che Guevara's life "Motorcycle Diaries" came out the same year. She wrote an article published in Hispanic magazine on the truth about Guevara, the Argentinean guerrilla who supported Castro's fledgling communist movement and became martyr to the cause when killed in Bolivia. In Cuba, instead of saying a pledge of allegiance, children are still taught to recite "We pioneers want communism. We will be like Che."

"Che despised the U.S. and saw Americans as his enemy, but I got hate mail from that article," she says. "People were insulted because they see him as an idol."

She completed a third novel, in just eight months last year, about a Spaniard who travels to Cuba and meets a younger woman. She sent it to an agent in Barcelona and is waiting to see if it will be accepted.

A Southwest folk tale "La Llorona," about the ghost of a wailing woman who appears around water, inspired her to write a play about a Cuban woman who marries a New Mexico man and has some encounters with ghosts. An independent theater group in Chicago accepted it and plans to perform it in November.

As for her future, she is working on her doctorate in Latin American literature and is writing her memoirs of life in Cuba.

She realizes her journey has not been like other immigrants' since she married an American who takes good care of her, she says. "This has been a dream come true, but I can't say because of my own efforts. I haven't had to fight for my dreams the way most immigrants do."

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