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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