It was the first real election the Cuban had ever experienced.
Yoel Diaz, 37, who just received his green card, watched in awe as Americans took to the polls on November 8, while his wife, Marissa, 34, video-recorded his reaction. He seemed deeply stirred.
New immigrants from dictatorships like Cuba have many moments like this upon first arriving in the U.S.
Marissa saw it in her own family when they came to this country years ago, before there was social media.
She now wants to record the emotional milestones of her husband as he experiences freedom for the first time.
Observing the polling station, Yoel is heard saying in Spanish, “You know what I see? Different opinions. Each person votes for who they want, for what they want, something I never had.
“Just that you can think differently is a positive. Because in my country we don’t have that.”
Yoel, a former educator from Pinar del Rio, a tobacco center in western Cuba, told The Epoch Times:
“I cannot even put to words the difference between not only the economic outlook but also the subsequent moral outlooks of the two countries. Communism—Cuba is both ideologically communist and economically socialist—has a huge effect on the psyche and mentality of individuals. It gives a monopoly of opportunity and dreams to a central authority who makes those decisions for you.”
The couple met six years ago when Marissa returned to Cuba to visit family. She and Yoel hitchhiked to her grandmother’s town, Guane, together—hitchhiking is normal in Cuba—a place she'd always wanted to visit.
After they hit it off, they began the process of immigration to bring him to the States. But that was impeded when the pandemic hit. He finally arrived a year ago; they now live together in Phoenix, Arizona.
Yoel is now experiencing what Marissa’s parents, and countless immigrants like them, have experienced arriving for the first time.
“I have seen my own family come from Cuba to the U.S. and their reactions,” Marissa said. “I wanted to document those moments for us and also for the world to see what it’s like coming from a socialist country like Cuba to a country like the United States.”
Such moments are far from insignificant for newcomers like Yoel.
He visited Time Square for the first time in Manhattan last fall; his facial expression and body language, recorded by Marissa, speak volumes.
Watch Yoel’s sublime reaction upon receiving his first paycheck working for UPS in America:
Marissa records as they relish the milestone occasion in the car. He shows her the check; his joy is palpable, bubbling to the surface and gushing forth like a fountain. The paper he holds is symbolic—his dream has come true.
“I prefer this than Fidel Castro,” he tells Marissa, before examining the taxes deducted. “Fidel took more, communism took more.
“This is my first hourly paycheck that I feel every hour counted, that every hour has an importance in my life.”
Marissa told the newspaper:
“In Cuba, as a professor he only made $13 a month. With $13 you could only really buy a few groceries. Your work isn’t valued at all. He feels here that with every hour spent working he is at least valued and can now buy more than just ‘a few groceries.’ It’s a start of a new life of opportunities he could’ve never had under the Cuban regime.”
Yoel added:
“There’s a saying in Cuba that the Cuban Dream is north. In other words, it’s to leave your own country and travel north. That is vastly different than the connotation of the American Dream—where the dream is that you have the opportunities in this country.”
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