Cuba News and Information

A 23-year-old Hialeah man has moved from a local community college to Yale in just three years after leaving Cuba.

BY NOAH BIERMAN

Luisel Peña, fresh from Cuba, sat in an English night-school class in Hialeah High School three years ago with migrant workers and others seeking a glimmer of American success.

‘’I didn’t know where, I didn’t know when,’’ said Peña, 23. ``I just knew I wanted to go to school and get an education here.’’

Peña zipped through the steps to American prosperity. This month, he moves from the cot next to his parents’ bed to a dorm at Yale University.

‘’It’s amazing,’’ said his father, Luis Peña, who took English classes with Luisel but is not yet fluent. ``In only three years he can make this huge leap.’’

The facts alone sound overwhelming—he just finished community college and he’s about to enter one of America’s bastions of privilege and prestige. But Peña projects a calm modesty that makes his accomplishments seem inevitable.

‘’A lot of people think because he came from Cuba, he’s disadvantaged,’’ said Daphne Bareket, a close friend and former classmate. `` . . . But he doesn’t see himself that way at all. So I don’t see him that way at all.’’

Peña’s story begins in Pinar Del Rio, a small city in western Cuba.

‘’When he was 1, the first thing he grabbed wasn’t a toy, but a book,’’ his mother, Maria Elena Peña, said in Spanish.

His parents divorced when he was 2. In 1992, Peña’s father came to visit his brother in Hialeah and stayed, leaving behind a career as a civil engineer to work in construction.

Back in Cuba, Peña kept reading. He especially likes Italian author Umberto Eco, whom he calls one of the best living authors in the world. He studied English, learning how to read and write but he did not feel confident speaking.

Luisel’s father became a U.S. citizen and visited Cuba five years ago to tell his son he wanted him to move to Miami. Luisel was indifferent. He would miss friends. But his parents believed he needed to leave the island to fulfill his promise.

Something else happened on that visit. His parents fell in love again and decided they would remarry nearly two decades after their divorce. Luisel left Cuba on Aug. 22, 2002, his mother 18 months later.

Luisel Peña—who was 20 and didn’t know anyone except his father—took jobs at Best Buy and Spec’s Music while studying English.

PICKED MIAMI DADE

He also searched local colleges on Google and decided Miami Dade College gave him the best and most affordable opportunity. When he went to the Wolfson campus to apply, an admissions clerk erroneously told him he would have to wait a year to avoid paying out-of-state tuition. He learned eight months later that was a mistake.

But Peña wouldn’t end up paying anything. His grades in Cuba, entrance exam scores and an interview qualified him for a scholarship at the school’s three-year-old honors college.

The honors college offers small classes, intensive academic advising and seminars. The program enrolled 363 students last year and cost about $1.5 million a year to run. Many honors college graduates go on to local universities. Others have attended Georgetown, Wisconsin, Columbia and elsewhere.

Peña read books—architecture, chemistry and philosophy—into the night. His mother recalls waking up hourly to brew coffee until 6 a.m. One B blemished two years of otherwise perfect report cards.

In March 2004, he earned one of 40 Miami Dade spots at a 10-day global seminar in Salzburg. The trip was a turning point. He does not like to dramatize the despair in Cuba, but the isolation there confined him, he said.

‘’Growing up in Cuba, you think your life is not really closely related to the life of the greater international system,’’ Peña said. ``It’s like Cuba and outside of Cuba. There’s nothing else.’’

In Salzburg, he sat next to people from around the world discussing politics and economics. He returned home with a new sense of voice. He joined the model United Nations club and traveled to New York. He started a philosophy club.

And, most profoundly, he co-founded a group to bring awareness of Sudanese genocide. As president, he organized a conference that linked Miami Dade’s six campuses by television. When he attended a national college genocide conference in Washington, D.C., he and co-founder Bareket were the only students from a community college.

Despite moving among increasingly worldly crowds, Peña continued to empathize with other students just beginning their American education. He got a job at Miami Dade’s Wolfson campus as a tutor, helping mostly non-native English speakers write papers.

Students respond to Peña because they know he shares their experience, said Caridad Castro, coordinator of the campus writing program.

Peña applied to Yale and other top-flight national universities at the urging of Alexandria Holloway, dean of the honors college. Holloway said many of the talented, mostly immigrant students at the honors college are reluctant to apply to universities outside Miami, apprehensive about leaving family.

A RARITY

Yale has few students from community colleges. Last year, 700 students—from four- and two-year colleges combined—applied to transfer to Yale, said Dorie Baker, a Yale spokeswoman. Of those, only 24 were accepted.

‘’Clearly, they’re pretty exceptional people,’’ Baker said.

Peña’s parents were excited about Yale, but only realized the depth of his accomplishment when they learned President Bush had attended.

Peña, who will major in philosophy and math, hopes to become a doctor or lawyer and to find a career in human rights.

Yale is granting Peña a full scholarship. But first, he has to get there.

He applied for a Southwest Airlines scholarship that offers plane tickets to needy students, but hasn’t heard back from the company.

If the airline doesn’t come through, Peña says he’ll find some other way to get to Yale.

Bernie, puhleeeeeze, had he not come to the U.S. he may have not realized his full potential.  He’d probably have been paying for school by cutting sugar cane or some other demeaning job required by the government. . ..

Hell, I offered to pay for his plane ticket to Yale!

By the way, is your kid smart enough to get a full ride at Yale?

Matt Lawrence, Author
Dyng to Get Here: A Story of Coming to America
http://www.mattlawrencebooks.com

Matt...Your ignorance of Cuba is truly astounding. Since when do Cubans have to pay for their education by cutting sugarcane? What planet are you from, Matt? And how do you explain the fact that per capita, Cuba has way more professionals (doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists...) than the great U.S.A.? There are a lot of things you can criticize Cuba for, but you are a fool to aim at its educational system. But keep pumping your book… p.s. Did you pay for the ticket to Yale?

Matt...Your ignorance is truly pathetic. Cuban Pioneers working in sugar cane fields? I just shared this one with my Cuban neighbors here in Centro Habana, and they broke out laughing. You gringos are really out to lunch. How much time have you actually spent in Cuba? But then again, as you said, your books are pumping out the TRUTH...what modesty.

Matt, it is not surprising that in your value system, monetary considerations of primordial. Such is the general thinking in the United States. Everything has a price and everything is based on consumption. Such is the parochial world view that plagues the US population...the same population in which 52% thinks Saddam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center tragedy. Ignorance is bliss…
Regarding lunches however, you fail to point out the Cuba is the only country in the Third World that guarantees all children up to the age of seven one liter of milk per day and has a universal school lunch program. There are millions of malnourished children in Latin America, but none are Cuban. How do I know this? Because I work for the United Nations Development Program here in Havana. Come to Havana and see for yourself...your next book might actually be more enlightened.

Alas the thread is closed. Oh, by the way Matt, imports and exporst ARE NOT “aid”. The United States DOES NOT send any aid to Cuba. Cuba buyes powerdered milk from US producers, in cash, without any credit. That is how it pays for the sustenance of its children. Why do Cubans get on rafts to go to the United States? It is very simple, although I am not sure you will understand it: Cubans go for the same reason that Mexicans, Colombians, Jamaicans, Puerto Ricans, etc go....They are all poor countries (with differences between Cuba and the others, which I already elucidated) whose people have bought into the “American Dream”. This has nothing to do with socialism vs. capitalism, but the fact that after several hundreds of years having a hardworking, entrepreneurial population, very favorable natural resources, along with stealing/exploiting the Third World, the USA has become a very wealthy country that is attractive to anyone from the Third World. Getting there is a great “individual” solution to someone from a poor country (minus the crime rate, drug rate, and lack of universal healthcare). Too bad the American way of life is completely environmentally unsustainable on a global level. But you guys keep on eating your cake while refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol… Ah, but this is another matter. The thread is closed…
p.s. By the way, where can I buy your books? 

Bernie…
I asked Matt where I could buy his books because I get the impression that his books are just as bad as his arguments on this website and that he probably doesn’t even have a serious distributor. He thus needs to pump his books in these discussion groups. But then again, maybe reading one of his books would be good for a laugh. All I can say is that he DOES NOT understand Cuba…