MIAMI — Anyone who thinks Cuban-Americans think alike on Cuba hasn't taken a close look at the community lately, poet Richard Blanco says.
Blanco, who celebrated a multicultural America by reading his poem "One Today" at President Barack Obama's second inauguration, was raised in Miami, the son of exiles who fled shortly after Fidel and Raul Castro's 1959 revolution.
Now 46, Blanco says his generation straddles a sharp generational divide: feeling personally the pain their parents endured, but also free to leave their baggage behind.
"There is a public face of what the exile community stands for, but on an individual level, Miami Cubans have changed a lot, and there are also many different experiences," Blanco told The Associated Press in an interview on Thursday. "Those lines have become very blurry."
Polls show younger Cuban-Americans and newer arrivals increasingly favor abandoning Washington's embargo against the communist government. Older generations are more likely to keep condemning anything seen as supporting the Castros.
Obama's surprise move to begin restoring ties to Cuba made Blanco realize just how profoundly his world view has developed around the idea that his family's homeland would remain cut off for years to come. But after five decades of despair and dashed hopes, many Cuban Americans are themselves conflicted over the sudden possibility of real change, he says.
That turmoil was evident when Obama's vow to work with Congress to end the embargo prompted scattered protests in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Yet privately, some other older exiles applauded the announcement, acknowledging that U.S. attempts to isolate Cuba have failed to bring down the Castros.
Younger Cubans living in the U.S. aren't monolithic either — some remain hesitant to reach out to Cuba, deterred by the suffering of their parents and grandparents.