{"id":260144,"date":"2022-11-10T15:27:37","date_gmt":"2022-11-10T20:27:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=260144"},"modified":"2022-11-10T15:27:37","modified_gmt":"2022-11-10T20:27:37","slug":"cuban-migrant-women-iii-alinas-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/society-cuba\/cuban-migrant-women-iii-alinas-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Cuban Migrant Women (III): Alina\u2019s story"},"content":{"rendered":"

The women of the desert, like the wind<\/em><\/p>\n

blow, make dunes, hills.<\/em><\/p>\n

Gloria Anzaldua<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cMy name is Alina. I am a mother, a woman, black, a migrant born in Cuba. Lawyer, feminist and anti-racist activist\u2026now a writer. My ancestors have put in my body many stories that they tell us. I have recognized these pieces that make me up and break down inhabiting so many other women. I weave words to nit nets. I fog up my mirror to leave messages. I am trying. At least.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Alina Herrera Fuentes<\/strong><\/a> goes through all these identities; and in them her existence is intertwined with that of her women ancestors, although she knows perfectly well how to enter and how to leave; she knows where Alina is in the midst of all the clothes she wears. She came to this time with the mission of naming urgent things, and I dare to say that she is one of the most lucid young voices in the transnational Cuban public debate. Everything she writes is supported by her own weight; at the same time and precisely because of the strength of her pen, I can\u2019t leave anything she writes for later. If Alina says, we listen to her, we read her.<\/p>\n

Ten years ago she left her work and her life in Cuba to go to Mexico to reencounter love. With migration, she has learned to inhabit the margins and in that border space she presents herself and exists, while taking care of her altar how she can, honoring her Afro-Cuban religious ancestry, but also giving herself without fear to the richness of Mexican spirituality. She mothered her son there, whom she decided to give birth to in Cuba for more than one reason, among them: because the island is the place where most of the affections that nurture her remain. She told me this about her migration process:<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I did not intend to emigrate. I fell in love with my current partner and after keeping a distance relationship for two years, there came a time when being away and seeing each other sporadically became unfeasible for us; at that moment I began to consider the possibility of coming to Mexico, where he lived. My first attempt was to apply for a tourist visa at the Mexican embassy, \u200b\u200bwhich was denied. As in Cuba I felt good and fulfilled professionally, my first idea was to go and get to know, try first without much pressure to know if that would be a good place for me or not, because I thought that emigration was a decision that would represent for me a strong uprooting; migrating is an experience that crosses you in many dimensions and in which you gain a lot, it is true, but you also lose and I was aware of that.<\/p>\n

So going for tourism was my idea of a balance between what I would gain and what I would lose, or at least understand what the experience would be like for me, even in the sphere of the couple because that would be a perfect test period to understand how I would feel being in that land, but also living day to day with my partner. But I was not able to go through that experience because, as I said before, they denied me a visa. Why? Well, because of a whole series of prejudices and taboos, and also political restrictions; we know that Mexico has a land border with the United States and that it is a place of passage for many people, in addition to the fact that it is undeniable that in the consulates there is more mistrust of racialized women, which is my case. So many things were against me. We are talking about the year 2011, a time when there was still no free mobility for Cuban citizens, so to apply for a tourist visa to Mexico I had to request an invitation letter from the person who would be responsible for me abroad. That, plus all the documents that the consulate required to grant the visa, I delivered them fulfilling all the requirements, but the answer was negative. After that \u201cno\u201d I mobilized to look for a work contract, which already represented another type of commitment and that had a much greater weight than what it would represent to go just as a tourist, because when you do a work mobility you land and you already have to charge your batteries to work, to adapt to the daily dynamics of the country, which in my case was a territory considered \u201cof the Third World,\u201d with a cultural, labor and contractual dynamics different from the one I was used to in Cuba, where even then I had acted in the branch of law as a prosecutor. That is the moment when my idea of \u200b\u200bthe trip begins to change: I was no longer going to evaluate a territory or a society, I was ready to work and settle there. That\u2019s how I came to Mexico City: for love and for work.<\/p>\n

How was the arrival in Mexico?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The change was very abrupt when I arrived. This is a country, let\u2019s say, not so socially innocuous for women in terms of gender-based violence<\/strong><\/a> and security; things that for someone who comes from a context like Cuba are very terrifying.<\/p>\n

I remember that the first thing my friends \u2014 women \u2014 told me when I arrived was not to go out alone after nine at night, not to ride the subway in tight clothes, no shorts, no necklines, no taxis\u2026they were all a series of codes to get around the city that I had to learn by force. My welcome here, if I had to summarize it, was: \u201cyou came to a war zone because you are a foreigner, a woman and racialized.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the one hand, I attracted a lot of attention because where I lived, which was a fairly multicultural and bohemian neighborhood in Mexico City, not many Afro-descendant people circulated, so sometimes people spoke to me in English thinking I was American, or in Portuguese, thinking I was Brazilian; they almost never considered that I might be Cuban, something that changed a lot in the workplace, where my colleagues did know where I was from and I think that contributed a lot to my experiences of harassment in that work context.<\/p>\n