Escaping to a Different World
Mercedes cannot remember life without discrimination. She was born in Havana in 1954, and her early childhood was a time of insecurity and upheaval. When she was only seven, Mercedes and her brother fled Cuba with only the clothes on their backs to live with relatives in Chicago. As she walked onto the departing plane, the little girl watched the faces of her parents fade, along with her hope of ever seeing them again. Then seven months after she arrived in Chicago, her parents were able to join her, and it seemed that maybe things would be all right. But rather than returning to normalcy, Mercedes and her family had stepped into a world of hardship.
Her father, a prosperous lawyer and business owner in Havana, ...
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