You can learn communism from a book. My family learned it from prison, exile, confiscation, and decades of separation.

Castro’s revolution did not simply change Cuba’s government. It tore families apart.

Members of my family were imprisoned for opposing Castro. Others were forced into exile. Families that had built lives and accumulated property watched the government take what they had. Relatives were separated for decades. My grandmother could not even return to Cuba to bury her own mother.

That history shaped how I understand freedom, government power, and what happens when political ideology becomes more important than human dignity.

For some people, communism is an economic theory to debate.

For Cuban families like mine, it has names, faces, prison cells, empty homes, lost years, and relatives we could never get back.

🇨🇺 Freedom is not an abstraction when your family has lived without it. 🇺🇸

A clip from the “Finding Your Spine Podcast” with Dr. Chase Spears.