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I'm pictured above at a much younger age
wearing the mandatory school uniform
of the "Communist Pioneers"

I was born in the heart of La Habana, Cuba. My mother gave birth to me at the "Hospital del Sagrado Corazon" (Hospital of the Sacred Heart) located in the Vedado district of the city of Havana. Ethnically, I'm mostly Catalan and Spanish Galician.

Having been born in Castro's Cuba of the 1970's, I never saw the bustling and prosperous Havana of my parents and grandparents. Instead, I was born in a land where rationing of food and other essentials was grudgingly accepted by a vast majority of the people as a common fact of daily life. This was a land that had once been fairly wealthy, but was now poor and mismanaged. Still I was luckier than most. The brief period of time I spent in Cuba I lived in a great home, located in the "Luyanó" district of Havana, with a wonderful and loving family.

My family and I left Cuba in 1980, because of Fidel Castro's Communist Revolution. We left during what became known as the Mariel Boatlift. More than 100,000 people left the island of Cuba during this exodus. Conditions in Cuba had deteriorated so much by 1980 that my parents figured it was better to leave, by whatever means possible, than to stay. And so we left. What awaited us here in the United States was completely unknown to us.

Eventually my family settled in New Jersey. We adapted and overcame the challenges presented to us by this new and very different society. We eventually became U.S. Citizens. I attended public schools my entire life. I went on to attend college at Jersey City State College (renamed New Jersey City University) where I majored in History, and minored in Political Science. Now I'm working for Jean Martin, a professional services firm based in the town of Guttenberg, NJ.