“Happy new year for everyone……!!! We wish you a year full of love and music.”
So reads the Jan. 2 Facebook post by the band CruzWay, next to a photo of the Cuban group in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Nearly 11 months later, the message has proven more than a shout-out to fans: Love and music, it seems, were also the glue holding together an improbable, slow-motion run to freedom.
“This is a very special moment in my life,” said Anibal Cruz II, lead singer. “We are together, and this is a very special moment for me to enjoy. It’s so great, really great to have them with me.”
The year has proven to be a landmark for the band — Cruz, his sons Anibal III and Alex, their respective fiancées Irisley Luis and Liset Mercantete, and Luis’ brother Jorge. They, along with Anibal II’s wife Enely and his parents, Martina and Anibal Cruz Sr., crossed the United States border in April, seeking asylum and ending a lifetime under the specter of oppression, the last seven years of which saw them fragmented and subsequently reassembled, piece by piece.
“Going out from Cuba in 1998 for the first time, I went to Guatemala as a medical doctor working in a mission, and I saw a different world,” said Anibal II, 49. “When I get back to Cuba again, I was thinking different.”
The saga began in 2003 when after 14 years in practice, Anibal II dropped out of medicine to play music. The move was as much about economics as a step toward defection; though he and Enely were both practicing, under the communist system they never earned enough to own their own refrigerator. (By contrast, the tips alone at the Havana resort where he would soon be singing made them wealthy by Cuban standards).
From Havana, Anibal II took a gig at a Mexican resort in 2006. The money was even better, but more than that, it fed his evolving scheme to defect to the United States. There was only one problem — getting everyone together in Mexico. Even though the Cuban government wasn’t quite as nosy about the family’s changing whereabouts as had Anibal II been a ranking member of the military or government, officials weren’t about to grease the rails, either.
Just to remind him who was boss, Anibal II wasn’t allowed back into the country for 18 months and Enely’s arrival in Mexico took three years.
“I knew (emigrating) is hard, hard work. But this is the real world, my children and my family,” he said. “I would like to live in the real world where you can do what you want to do and you can express what you want to express.”
One by one, family members and fiancées followed, maintaining a consistent story of being in the band, then called Niris Band. Anibal II’s parents also arrived and he remembers clearly telling them of his plans once they got to Mexico rather than risk detection over the telephone. The verdict was they would go together to the United States or not at all.
“This is something like a privilege for me because I’m leaving with my children and my father and mother with me,” he said. “Thanks a lot, my God, that they are alive and healthy.”
Cuban nationals are classified differently than most any other newcomers to America. They are called asylees, and if they reach American soil they can legally seek residency and eventually citizenship. The United States also accelerates their paperwork in order to legally work in the country. Entering through Mexico into Texas, the Cruz family was legally able to live in this country.
Unfortunately, once the family arrived in Arkansas in April, paperwork problems surfaced almost immediately, and Frank Head Jr., Catholic Charities refugee resettlement director in Springdale, and his staff were called in to untangle the paper trail. The effort’s ongoing.
Meanwhile, regular people have embraced the new Sherwood residents crammed into a three-bedroom rented house.
“We have a lot of surprises. Almost everything is new for us,” Anibal II said of life in America. “Something that in particular was so special for us was the neighborhood, because they receive us. They knock on our door and give a plate as a welcome to the neighborhood.”
On Nov. 20 during a Thanksgiving lunch, Diocese of Little Rock employees were treated to a mini-concert by CruzWay and introduced to their story by Head. Employees donated paper goods and cleaning supplies for the extended family.
The family, members of Immaculate Conception Church in North Little Rock, is finding American life an adjustment. How do you, as Anibal III posed, get used to freedom?
“New dreams and new worries, he said. “It takes a little bit to plan what to do with that freedom, to plan your life. We spent a lot of time thinking just to get out of Cuba, so when you are really out and free, you need to know what do to with that.”
In addition to Anibal II and Enely, the other band members are educated and worked as musicians or teachers in Cuba.
Musically, business has been good. Media coverage and word of mouth, along with the group’s willingness to play anywhere, got CruzWay gigs from the Governor’s Mansion to the grand opening of picture framing store, playing popular Cuban song, “Guantanamera,” other Latin music and popular American songs like “Stand By Me.”
“It was a surprise too, because some people told us they don’t know this kind of music,” Anibal II said. “But we found a Latin community here that enjoys it and North American people enjoy it too. It was so glad for me and for the family to hear and see the people dancing and enjoying the music.”