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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 8, 2015)
Page 4 News It wasn’t only political imprisonment he fled. Earlier that month, demonstrators filled the streets of Havana in protest of the eovani Rodriguez was 21 when he country’s economic crisis following its loss sailed away from Cuba on a of Soviet subsidies. Cuba’s economy had homemade raft. He wasn’t afraid of dived lower than ever before, with massive the voyage, he says, even though his food shortages, daylong power Outages and younger brother, Herminio, died when he even common goods, like clothing and left the island nation on a similar vessel just toiletries, were scarce. four months earlier. Rodriguez grew up in “It was the worst it had ever been,” says what was once the beautiful city of Havana, Rodriguez. It was in the midst of that living only two blocks from the sandy chaotic period that his friends approached beaches where he spent his youth swimming him: “We just made a raft. You want to and fishing in the warm waters where the leave?” He didn’t hesitate. “I said OK. Let’s Atlantic Ocean collided with the Gulf of go.” Mexico. Because of his brother’s recent death, “My childhood was perfect,” he says. “I from attempting the very same journey, was aware of the limitations, but I was Rodriguez decided it’d be best to leave young.” •without saying a word. “It was going to be He was an infant in 1973 when his father too hard for my mom,” he says. was imprisoned for speaking out against the In the early morninghours, they boarded communist government. Seven,years later ; the raft, constructed from inner tubes and that government sent his father to Florida .wooden planks, and pushed out into a calm upon his release, he says. blue sea. Homemade sails and paddles As he grew into adulthood, Rodriguez helped them navigate the waters. The became frustrated with the politics of his weather cooperated and the small crew. country and began to follow in his father’s reached an island in the Florida Keys four footsteps. He and his friends Openly days later without incident. To this day, criticized President Fidel Castro’s regime. Rodriguez doesn’t know which island/they “We were regulär guys. We were just reached. speaking our minds; looking for that The U.S. Coast Guard took the new change,” he says. “Eventually the police arrivals to Miami, where Rodriguez Was. started getting on me because I was ' reunited with his father. But adjusting to life speaking about why it was wrong.” in the United States wasn’t easy. “It was like It was August 1994 when Rodriguez, now a different culture, lifestyle - everything was a wanted man, boarded that homemade raft new, and I got really depressed.” with four of his lifelong friends and set sail He missed h?is family and his home. He for Florida. BY EMILY GREEN STAFF W R IT E R B Planet Portland A periodic series on the personal journeys within Portland’s immigrant communities. phoned his mother upon his arrival in Florida and, predictably, she was angry he had left But the two have remained in close contact in the years since, despite the 2,700 miles between them. Rodriguez says the United States was not What he expected. He was especially surprised, he says, by the racism he experienced. “People came here with an idea that everything was going to be OK,” he says. “It’s true, this is the best opportunities here, sbut people came here (and) they don’t know. They don’t know how to reach the right resource, so it~s easy to get trapped in gangs, in selling drugs, the party life.” With no English language skills or work experience, for a 21-year-old Rodriguez, it was the path of least resistance. For the J first time in his life he started selling drugs and engaging in criminal activity. , He had been living in Miami for about a year when he traveled to Portland to visit a friend. He needed a change, and his friend asked him to stay. He didn’t like the weather, but he says, “Portland was Street Roots • different” He never returned to Miami, but he. soon fell back into the criminal lifestyle. “I started doing the. same thing I was doing in Florida,” he says. “Back in the '90s, my mentality was different. I started selling drugs again and getting in trouble, and I knew that I was poisoning myself, because I started using coke heavy, and I think it was part of howT was killing my depression.” He was living in the Lloyd District and supporting a growing drug addiction, which now included heroin, meth and pills such as Oxycodone and Percocet, by selling cocaine. He learned English bit by bit, on the streets, “the bad stuff first,” he says, which helped him interact with his customers. “Between 1995 (and) 2009,1 wrecked my life,” he says. “In 1997 I had my daughter, and I tried to change, cbut I was already trapped in that life, I didn’t know there was a way to get out of that life back then.” For years he was m and out of jail and prison. “My everyday life was wake up, sell drug, consume drug, same thing. I was living in a self-destruction pattern.” Repeatedly, he’d get released from prison and end up homeless and sleeping on the streets and under bridges. He checked himself into Hooper Detoxification Center on Northeast Grand so many times, he says, he lost count. Each time, Rodriguez says, “It was the end of the road for me. To get to that point, it was really bad. I was like, I do this - or I am going to die.” See BEGINNING, page 5
