The Cuban Crazy House Story
1980
A true story written 10/2010 and Re-written 9/2015
Howard Yasgar
In October of 1980, that was when the Mariel Boat lift took place.
Mariel is a port city on the north coast of Cuba.
Fidel Castro had decided to allow anyone who wanted to leave Communist Cuba could leave.
At first it seemed like a humanitarian gesture on his part.
When he announced it, thousands of Cubans bought or rented boats in Miami and in the Florida keys, all intending to go to Mariel and bring their family members to Miami.
Even the big shrimp boats from the Key West went there thinking they could make money hauling Cubans to Miami.
However, Castro, being a pretty clever fellow, besides from letting regular Cubans leave the island, he also emptied out all his prisons and mental institutions, allowing everyone to leave Cuba for the United States, all at the same time.
For companies like mine, located in Miami, we thought it was an excellent opportunity for us to hire some talented employees. We knew they would all need jobs once arriving in Miami.
We were able to take advantage of this unique opportunity, and we did hire a few of them.
Some of the refugees arriving in Miami, were entrepreneurs and they immediately opened up small businesses.
Because our company was in the automotive electrical business several of these new business men came to us to buy repair parts.
One day one of our new Cuban customers came by, and I took him for a walk around our shop to acquaint him about what we did.
As we walked around I saw that he had focused his eyes on one of our employees.
As he was leaving the customer said to me, “You should be very careful”, I asked him why?
he said, “When I was in Cuba I once visited the insane asylum which he referred to as the “Casa de Los Loco’s” or crazy house, and he said he recognized one of our employee’s named Jorge as being a patient in the insane asylum there.
I told him that we had not had any problems with Jorge, but I appreciated him telling me.
About two days later I was approached by the employee Jorge.
Jorge said that he had seen me showing a new customer around the company.
Jorge said, “I want to warn you, please watch out for him, once when I was in Cuba, I had visited the insane asylum and I recognized that fellow, he was a patient there.”
It appears they both were in the crazy house at the same time.
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