Cubans in Minnesota ready for warmer U.S. relations

In 1990, 26-year-old Felix Versaguis set out on a 90 mile journey to freedom, paddling an inner tube from Cuba, hoping to make it to Florida.

Through storms and an often relentless sun, Versaguis and his friends paddled inner tubes tied together for days until they were finally picked up by a boat and, later, a helicopter, off the coast.

Twenty-four years after that hard journey, Versaguis is happy to hear President Barack Obama's plan to open an embassy in Havana.

"It has been some many years of this tension between the two countries," said Versaguis, a Spanish teacher at North Hennepin Community College. "I think that if they move in that direction, it will be good for both countries."

While Cuban Americans across the nation wait to see the effects of Obama's decision to normalize relations with Cuba, some in Minnesota already are celebrating what they see is a great step forward.

About 3,600 people in Minnesota identify themselves as Cuban, including an estimated 1,000 who are Cuban-born, according to the last Census.

One of the state's most famous Cuban Americans, Minnesota Twins great Tony Oliva, was ecstatic when he heard the reports Wednesday.

"I said, 'Oh my goodness this is good news.' I've been waiting for that for 50 years. I think it's beautiful," Oliva said, adding that opening travel between Cuba and the United States will help establish friendly relations between the countries.

Obama's plan does have its critics, including many Republican lawmakers, who say they'll resist lifting the trade embargo on Cuba that's been in place for more than 50 years.

For Joe Nunez, who was born in Cuba, but moved to Minnesota when he was a toddler, Wednesday's news reminded him of arguments he had with his mother at their South Minneapolis kitchen table in the 1970s over Cuba's Castro regime.

"My mother, as one of a generation who felt that the Castros had stripped what she loved of her country, was fairly vehement that the country be isolated," he said. "From a fairly early age, we'd push back."

Nunez, then a teenager, understood her position but thought opening things up would be better.

"Those of us in the younger generations, for good or bad, we don't have the visceral hatred for the Castro regime that many of our parents and grandparents sincerely had," he added.

He says he thinks younger Cuban Americans are more supportive of a new approach.

Roberto Fonts, 57, came to the United States in 1980 during the Mariel Boatlift mass emigration from Cuba and moved to Minnesota soon after. Wednesday was an emotional day for him as he heard the president's call to normalize relations with Cuba.

"I actually had tears in my eyes," said Fonts, who runs a communications business in St. Paul. "This is something I've been expecting to hear for a long time."

The move could help push Cuba toward being a free nation, he added. He called it a "very profound step towards a world that works for everybody."