The Clench of Communist Control hits South Beach

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Our adventure begins in sunny South Beach, Miami in a small corner coffee shop, Restaurante Puerto Sagua, recommended by a local tour guide. We sit down at the counter and order two cafes con leche (of course). We really didn't want or need the coffee, the only reason we entered this particular restaurant was to start conducting our research. We were on a mission. We were looking for Cuban-Americans to interview about their opinions on Cuba and U.S.-Cuban relations. Both of us have no real "research experience" per se, so we were a little hesitant to come out and ask complete strangers to allow us to video tape them answering questions about Cuba and the U.S. embargo (not exactly your typical coffee conversation!).

After about ten minutes we worked up the courage to ask our waitress if she was cubana. She wasn't, but right away she called over a coworker who was. We explained to her that we were teachers doing research on Cuba and we wanted to ask her a few questions...she seemed game, until she realized we wanted to record our little interview with our video camera. In a split second she went from enthusiastic to anxious. You could see she didn't want to let us down, so she left and came back with another coworker who was "more knowledgable and interesting" to interview.

For the purposes of anonymity we will refer to him as "Manolo." After feeding him our spiel, Manolo was very eager to share his opinions and experiences with us. For the next six minutes we picked his brain about his life in Cuba, his move to the United States, his views on the Castro regime and his predictions for the future relationship of these two clashing countries. At the end of the interview he thanked us for including him in our research and went back to waiting his tables. We were stoked! Our first interview- SUCCESS!

As we were finishing our celebratory cheers with our coffee mugs, Manolo came back. He seemed a little...well, worried. He realized that he had stated his full name on the interview and asked us to erase that information. He told us that he still had family in Cuba that were in the process of coming to the United States and he didn't want to jeopardize their move. We told him it wouldn't be a problem and we would make sure to exclude his name from the final version. He seemed satisfied with our response...until, that is, five minutes later when he came back to remind us not to include his name. With the tone of his voice he was trying to come off playful and joking, however you could read in his eyes that he was actually quite aghast...a reaction we were fully unprepared for. We looked at each other and instantly we knew what we had to do.

Before we left we thanked Manolo again, and reassured him he had nothing to worry about...since we had erased the entire interview!

Lesson learned: The clench of communist control has no borders. Even after years of living as an expatriate in "the land of the free" there are still many Cubans who are weary of completely speaking out against communism and the Castro regime.

Tomorrow, we leave for Cuba. Our experience today has us definitely rethinking our approach to conducting interviews and rephrasing our questions...we do not want to jeopardize the safety and intergrity of our future Cuban acquaintances.

Stay tuned for our first correspondence from clandestine Cuba!

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