In the month of Hispanic Heritage, the Cuban Miriam Miyares, mother of Virginia's Attorney General Jason Miyares, opened the doors of her memory and recounted how she left Cuba 59 years ago, fleeing the oppression of Fidel Castro's dictatorial regime, and arrived in the United States.
Miyares is now 78 years old and left Cuba on October 11, 1965, when he was just 19, heading to Spain, and that same year, he legally emigrated to the U.S., where he became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1982.
The Cuban woman had three children in the United States. One of them is Jason Miyares, who became the first Hispanic to hold a state office in Virginia, winning a seat in the House of Delegates in 2015. And, six years later, he was also the first Latino to be elected to the position of Attorney General of the state, which he currently holds.
In an interview with local media, Miyares recalled the reasons that led her to leave her homeland in search of the freedom she could not have on the island after the Castros came to power.
The story dates back to April 1961, during the days of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. She was a 14-year-old girl when armed men from the regime burst into her home one night looking for her brother Ángel.
His mother asked them to wait and went to wake him up, but -Miyares recounts- that the first room of the house was his, and when "I woke up, I had a young guy in front of me with a gun in my face."
They took Ángel, who did not support the communist regime, from his home at 2 a.m. and he spent four days in detention.
“The oppression and persecution of anyone who disagreed with the policies and ideology of the regime became intolerable. The United States was a beacon of hope, a country where everyone could dream of achieving their goals through hard work and determination,” she said in statements published on the website of Virginia's First Lady, Suzanne S. Youngkin.
After being released, his brother left Cuba for the United States, where he later raised money to get Miyares out of the island in 1965.
"I left Cuba with the clothes I was wearing and a bag, and that was all they allowed me to take," she told the television channel WAVY. "We must realize that for a 19-year-old young woman, it’s a cultural shock. But I knew one thing, I knew that coming here I would have the freedom to do what I wanted to do."
Miyares stated that the Castro regime stripped the family of the house that his grandfather had built, and for that sole reason, it was worth taking the risk of leaving his homeland in search of freedom.
On a trip to Miami, they showed him photos of his hometown. “I look at a house and say, ‘Whose house is that? I don't remember that house,’” he told the television channel. “Someone looked at me and said, ‘Darling, that is your family's house.’ And I left crying because it now looked like a neighbor's house.”
Miyares settled in Virginia in 1987, when his twin sons, Jason and Bryan, were in sixth grade, and his eldest son, Steven, was in his sophomore year of high school.
"My children were taught from a very young age how blessed they were to be Americans and to have the freedom to express their ideas, fight, and pursue their dreams," said the Cuban woman.
Almost 50 years after leaving Cuba, Miyares entered a polling booth and voted for her son, Jason Miyares, to represent her in the Virginia General Assembly.
About her selection, years later, for the position of prosecutor, she confessed: “I was extremely proud and amazed when my son was elected attorney general. I knew that everything I had gone through to start a new life in the United States was worth it to see my children achieve their dreams, something that would not be possible in a socialist country, where the government dictates what you can and cannot do.”
"I have great respect for the United States, my adopted country, which opened its arms to me and so many others throughout many generations who have followed the beacon of hope that this beautiful country is," he stated.
Prosecutor Miyares recalled this Friday the date that marked the beginning of a new life for his mother and planted the seeds that germinated in his own story.
"Today, 59 years ago, a scared 19-year-old girl boarded a plane in Havana, Cuba, with no money, no home, and no idea where her next meal would come from, determined to escape the horrors of Castro's socialism. What was her name? Miriam Miyares," she wrote on her X profile.
"Thank you for being an inspiration and for reminding me every day that the United States is truly the last and best hope of Earth," the prosecutor said.
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