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The Cuban singer-songwriter Willy Chirino shared an emotional tribute to his father, Dr. Wifredo Chirino Llorens, on Facebook this Sunday, describing the plight of a man whom the Cuban Revolution tore away from his homeland at the peak of his life, a man who was never able to fulfill his dream of returning.
The message accompanied an old photograph of Dr. Wifredo Chirino Llorens, a law graduate from the University of Havana, and coincided with the celebration of Father's Day.
"A model man with a life full of sacrifices to graduate as a lawyer from the University of Havana," Chirino wrote.
"In the moments when he was beginning to see the fruits of his efforts, his life was shattered, and he had to leave the land he loved and start from scratch in the U.S.," he added.
According to the artist, his father arrived in the United States without speaking English and had to work picking tomatoes in Homestead and in factories, in a Miami of the early 1960s that was not yet the bilingual city it is today.
Despite the adversities, Dr. Wifredo Chirino Llorens never lost his dignity. "Always holding his head high and never overwhelmed by what he had to endure," his son recalled.
However, exile left a wound that never healed. "He never adjusted to life outside of Cuba and died at 66, always dreaming of returning to his beloved Cuba," wrote Chirino, summarizing in one phrase the fate of an entire generation.
The singer-songwriter linked the tribute to his song "Para mi viejo," which he recorded with Leoni Torres and released on June 18, 2021, as a gift for Father's Day. The music video was made in black and white, featuring photographs from the family albums of both artists.
“The song captures everything it meant to me, and today I miss it more than ever,” Chirino confessed, inviting his followers to listen to it on his YouTube channel or any digital platform.
Willy Chirino himself is well acquainted with the exile he describes: born in Consolación del Sur, Pinar del Río, he left Cuba in August 1961 at just 14 years old through Operation Peter Pan. In a interview published on June 21, 2020, the singer stated that he thanks his father every day for having made the decision to take the family out of Cuba.
The story of Dr. Wifredo Chirino Llorens reflects the experience of thousands of Cubans who were stripped of their professional future and their homeland by the dictatorship, and who died in exile without the regime ever returning what was taken from them.
"That’s my old man," Chirino concluded his post, with two words that encapsulate pride, pain, and a nostalgia that has no expiration date.
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