Interview with Cuban Juan (6.5 years later) - This Time in America

in #story5 months ago

Look who I met up with Friday night!

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Back in January 2018, I first interviewed Juan in Havana, Cuba about the realities of life there. A few months later back home in Minnesota, I got a Facebook message from Juan’s father: Juan had fled to the US where he was being held in a detention center awaiting his asylum hearing. That interview we did helped build his case for political persecution in Cuba, and Juan’s asylum was approved later that year.

Now the software developer lives in Miami and works for an education software company whose parent company is based here in Minnesota. So up here he came this past week, seeing this part of his new country for the first time. And 6 1/2 years after that interview in a park in Havana, Juan and I sat down at this park in Minneapolis. He talked about his experience coming to America, his reflections on life here after these years, and even a few thoughts on what he hopes for his native Cuba.

This new video interview is on the way.

In the meantime, here’s our first one in Havana, where Juan shared openly about life there: