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Voices from Exile 63
ernment, “surrounded by spies and seeing my youth vanish
without ever having been a free person,” as he would later
recount in his searing autobiography,
Before Night Falls
.
I had lived my childhood and adolescence under Batista’s dictator-
ship, and the rest of my life under the even harsher dictatorship of
Fidel Castro. I had never been allowed to be a real human being in
the fullest sense of the word.
. . . . I lived in terror in my country and with the hope of some-
day being able to escape.
A chance to escape arose in 1980. Facing growing unrest on
the island, Castro allowed Cubans who wanted to immigrate to
the United States to be evacuated by boat from the port of
Mariel. However, the regime barred dissidents like Arenas
U.S. Coast Guard boats escort a small boat to Trumbo Point in the Florida Keys, 1980.
Between April and October of 1980, thousands of Cubans left Mariel harbor to travel to
the United States. Among them was the writer Reinaldo Arenas.