Cuba cracks down on goods in travelers' luggage

[Judi Lynn]

38. N.Y. Times: Best of Friends, Worlds Apart

Best of Friends, Worlds Apart



[font size=1] Librado Romero/ The New York Times [/font]

Joel Ruiz Is Black.
Achmed Valdés Is White.
In America They Discovered It Matters.

By MIRTA OJITO

MIAMI -- Havana, sometime before 1994: As dusk descends on the quaint seaside village of Guanabo, two young men kick a soccer ball back and forth and back and forth across the sand. The tall one, Joel Ruiz, is black. The short, wiry one, Achmed Valdés, is white.

They are the best of friends.

Miami, January 2000: Mr. Valdés is playing soccer, as he does every Saturday, with a group of light-skinned Latinos in a park near his apartment. Mr. Ruiz surprises him with a visit, and Mr. Valdés, flushed and sweating, runs to greet him. They shake hands warmly. But when Mr. Valdés darts back to the game, Mr. Ruiz stands off to the side, arms crossed, looking on as his childhood friend plays the game that was once their shared joy. Mr. Ruiz no longer plays soccer. He prefers basketball with black Latinos and African-Americans from his neighborhood.

The two men live only four miles apart, not even 15 minutes by car. Yet they are separated by a far greater distance, one they say they never envisioned back in Cuba.

In ways that are obvious to the black man but far less so to the white one, they have grown apart in the United States because of race. For the first time, they inhabit a place where the color of their skin defines the outlines of their lives -- where they live, the friends they make, how they speak, what they wear, even what they eat. "It's like I am here and he is over there," Mr. Ruiz said. "And we can't cross over to the other's world."

It is not that, growing up in Cuba's mix of black and white, they were unaware of their difference in color. Fidel Castro may have decreed an end to racism in Cuba, but that does not mean racism has simply gone away. Still, color was not what defined them. Nationality, they had been taught, meant far more than race. They felt, above all, Cuban.

More:
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/race/060500ojito-cuba.html



[font size=1]Joel Ruiz, left, who fled Cuba several years ago by boat, now lives in Miami and works in a
bar at night. Achmed Valdés, right, also came over by boat with his wife Yvette. His mother
lives nearby in Miami and he works as a truck driver, delivering mattresses throughout
Florida.

Librado Romero/ The New York Times [/font]