by Ailene Croup for PiCK News

Reporter/editor's note: I met Magaly “Maggy” Ickes in 2003 when I interviewed her while working for the Bedford Gazette in south central Pennsylvania. She was a Cuban refugee. Her story began with Fidel Castro’s six-year revolution culminating in 1959 with the overthrow of Cuban Prime Minister Fulgencia Batista. Under Castro, Cuba became a socialist state.

 

Maggie’s story

Thanks to a woman Magaly (Falcon) Ickes calls her guardian angel, she is able to tell her story and express her gratitude for the gift of freedom.

Her guardian angel made it possible for her to survive three brutal years in Fidel Castro’s labor camp where she worked cutting sugar cane and picking vegetables, awaiting her turn at America and freedom.

Maggie, who is now a resident of Dutch Corner, in south central Pennsylvania, was only 6-years-old when Fidel Castro became dictator of Cuba. The date was July 26, 1959.

“It was a day I won’t forget. He called it our independence day,” she mocked.

“Everything was rationed. You were given a passport-type book and you could get a pound of coffee, one of meat, sugar, rice and other staples per person, plus a liter of milk for a family to last a month.”

She and her father, Jesus Falcon, supplemented those rations by using slingshots to hunt for frogs and small birds, “Like the ones you see on cows backs,” she explained. They weren’t allowed to own guns.

“The only thing I didn’t eat when I was in Cuba was a snake.”

Families didn’t have the most basic necessities, no toilet paper, no soap, not even a Band-Aid.

“The worst thing, though, was not being allowed to worship God,” Maggie said.

During the first year of Castro’s reign, Cubans could leave freely - if they had the money. But, by the time he declared the island government socialist in April 1961, Castro had already nationalized the United States oil refineries and banks in Cuba. The U.S. had broken off diplomatic relations and placed a partial embargo on the island nation, excluding medicines and food.

Maggie’s father, a road builder, got paid less and less after Castro came into power.

In the early part of 1966, six years after Castro had become dictator of the island just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, Maggie’s father decided he didn’t want to live in Cuba anymore and refused to join the Communist Party.

This set the grueling path marked with personal sacrifice, but one that eventually led to freedom for the Falcon who lived in the tiny town of Entronque de Fierro.

Cubans could leave the island and relocate in America if they had someone in the United States who would sponsor them. Maggie had two uncles in Virginia who would sponsor the Falcon family. The uncles were her mother’s brothers, Sergio and Antonio, whose last name oddly enough was Castro.

Her father applied to leave the country and the family was given a number. It was 104,684. It was called their “nuclear” number.

The senior Falcon rejected the alternative - escape. He told his family he wouldn’t do that because they would all be imprisoned, probably for life if they were caught.

“It was like declaring war on Castro when you applied to leave,” Maggie said. “They called us worms, imperialists, traitors and Yankees.”

Those words would be nothing compared to what they would endure the next three years.

Until the Falcon’s nuclear number came up, two members of the family would have to work Castro’s sugar cane and vegetable fields. The reason, “Before you have the ham, you have to have the ham bone,” Maggie said, repeating Castro’s dictum.

Maggie would serve the family’s time because her mother, Lidia, was still nursing her youngest brother. Her older sister, Maria, 17, had chosen to stay in Cuba because she was engaged. The next in line was Maggie, 12.

Her mother would stay behind and care for the children including another sister named Maria, 10, Jesus, 7, Jorge, 5, and Jimmy, 3.

Boys who were between the ages of 15 - 27 were not allowed to leave. They were obligated to serve in Castro’s military during that time.

Time was running out for Maggie’s brothers.

One week after Maggie’s father applied to leave Cuba and move to the U. S., dump trucks pulled up to their home to get her and Jesus Falcon. He was taken to one side of the island and Maggie to the other.

For the next three years, Lidia would have no news of her husband or daughter. She did not know if they were dead or alive. Nor would father and daughter know the fate of each other or of their family.

The cane fields where they would live had been turned into concentration camps. There were chicken coops as shelters for the 250 woman in Maggie’s camp.

That’s where she met her “angel.” Mercedes, an ex-prostitute, a beautiful black-haired, green-eyed woman about 30 years old.

“When I got there, I knew no one. I was terrified. There were all these women there. We were taken off the truck at the gate and told to report - to give our name to the guard,” Maggie said.`

“Hi. My name is Mercedes,” the black-haired woman told Maggie.

“HI. My name is Magaly.”

“I don’t have any children. You will be my baby,” Mercedes declared.

Maggie wasn’t sure what to think of the woman who had taken her under her wing.

“Who knows? She could have been crazy.”

In Cuba, a girl wasn’t considered a woman until her Quinceanera or 15th birthday.

“That is an important time for every girl. Your family gives you a huge party. It’s when you become a woman. You can wear make-up, shave your armpits and legs and wear panty hose. I was just a girl.”

Maggie would miss those times. She would also miss the guidance and direction of her mother. Mercedes wasn’t her mother but the closest thing to a mother she would have until her nuclear number came up.

She put her arm around Maggie and guided her to her chicken coop. She said Maggie would sleep on the top bunk.

Guards followed.

“That’s when she told the armed soldiers, ‘Anything you want to do to her (Maggie) you can do to me instead.’ But, they made me watch, Maggie said. At that time, I didn’t believe much in God.”

Maggie never lost sight of Mercedes. “No matter where she was, I was there.”

While the sugar cane matured, they picked garlic, onions, radishes, watermelon, grapes or whatever other produce was ready to pick. Swinging a machete was a strenuous job for the frail, young girl.

Prisoners were given daily quotas.

“Sometimes it was four rows of cane, sometimes six or more. As soon as Mercedes finished hers, she would help me with mine. I was never beaten.”

Mercedes took all punishment and physical abuse directed at Maggie. However, Maggie still wears the scars on her hands from the machete she used.

“I am an ex-prostitute,” Mercedes told Maggie. “I didn’t have children because I didn’t want to embarrass them. God never gave me a child. He gave me you.”

Food was scarce and they were hungry. Some meals were just rice, some were beans with bones. Sometimes there was split pea soup with bones.

“The fresh bones were okay but sometimes they would have bugs in them because of the heat.” Mercedes took the bugs out.

Maggie, at 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighed just 85 pounds. Mercedes kept her clothed, making things for her out of burlap sacks.

Finally, she’d served her time. Maggie was 15 when her number came up.

“I hadn’t known any other life for three years. I didn’t want to leave Mercedes. Though I’d never called her mother, she’s the closest thing to a mother that I could have had.”

The guards called Maggie’s name and put her outside the gates. It was up to her to find her way home.

“I didn’t know where I lived or how to describe it.”

She hitchhiked her way back home. A semi driver picked her up, then found another ride for Maggie with another driver when he had to let her off. That driver did the same.

“They all shared food with me and never touched me. God was there protecting me. I didn’t know it then.”

When she finally made it home, she was told by neighbors that her sister was married and had a two-year-old boy. Her mother and the rest of the family had been kicked out of their home. Maggie’s father had made it back before her. While they waited for her return, the family accepted the generosity of neighbors who let them sleep on their porches and gave them food.

Maggie caught up with her family.

“We never went to sleep hungry. Mom would cut things in little pieces so everyone had some.”

The next obstacle was to make it to the airport and no one in town was allowed to help them.

“We walked and hitchhiked to the airport. When we got there a day-and-a-half later, they checked every orifice of our bodies,” Maggie remembered.

The refugee plane left Cuba for the U.S. twice-a-day, at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. It was three days before the Falcon family’s name was called.

They were among 150 Cuban refugees onboard the four-prop plane which left Cuba for the U.S. on Feb. 14, 1969, at 3 p.m. The stewardess announced when the plane left Cuban airspace.

Maggie smiled as she recalled a moment forever preserved in her memory.

“The stewardess came out and said, ‘Welcome to the United States of America’ in broken English. Everyone screamed. The cheering and clapping shook the plane. We landed in the United States at 3:45 p.m.”

Passengers were taken to “The House of Liberty” in Miami, which was a warehouse-style building where doctors examined them and took chest x-rays, gave them shots and sent them on to their family.

Maggie was given vitamins and medicine for worms. The rest of her family members were given a clean bill of health. They were all given one outfit, flip flops and her father was given $25.

They arrived in Washington, D.C. National Airport, now Ronald Reagan International Airport.

“When we got off the plane, there was snow. We had never seen snow. We started eating it from the tops of cars and we all got strep throat.”

The Falcons lived with their uncle, aunt and three children in a one-bedroom apartment in Arlington, Virginia.

“My uncle said he lived in a residence in Virginia. In Spanish, residency refers to a sprawling estate-type home. We didn’t know.”

They went to churches, the Salvation Army and anywhere they could find people to help them. A month later they were able to move out. The children went to school. Maggie attended school for two days.

“Everyone sounded like chickens. I was 15 but I was too old for school. I had seen too much.”

She enrolled in beauty college and became a hairdresser.

The family didn’t settle in Florida because, Maggie said, her father wanted his children to learn to speak English.

Maggie became an American citizen when she married her husband Bill Ickes, who was a D.C. police officer. Her mother’s greatest wish was to become a U.S. citizen. It wasn’t to be. When she went to take the citizenship test, the only English she spoke was “yes, hi and ‘I don’t know.’” Maggie explained. When she was asked if she was ever a Communist, she said, “I don’t know,” meaning she didn’t understand. She was denied citizenship.

Maggie’s father refused to apply for citizenship when his wife was denied.

Her sister left her Cuban husband and came to the U.S. in 1980 during the Mariel Boatlift. Her mother made the arrangements. She found a shrimp boat captain who would bring her daughter and two grandchildren for $1,000 apiece.

Lidia Falcon managed to raise the money and worked out a deal to pay her own way by cooking for the captain of the boat. For each person who left the country, Castro forced the rescuers to take 10 prison inmates with them.

When the boat finally left Cuba, there were more than 250 aboard, and Lidia was cooking for all of them.

Maggie remembered her mother left before Mother’s Day that year. She didn’t return from Cuba until June 10. The shrimp boat was lost at sea for 40 days.

Maggie has two cousins who also escaped from Cuba. Their homemade vessel, a car body filled with inflated inner tubes, is in a museum in Key West, Florida.

Cubans planned their escape to the U.S. even though they may be caught and imprisoned for life in Cuba. The risk was worth the possibility of freedom in the United States, Maggie said.

She doesn’t know what happened to her guardian angel. Mercedes wrote to her six months after she left and asked her to send rings so she could marry a colonel in Castro’s army. Maggie sent them. But, because of Mercedes’ new status as the wife of a Communist colonel, she was never able to contact Maggie again.

“People don’t live long in Cuba,” she said.

Maggie, who is now 63, has lived with her husband, Bill, in Dutch Corner, Pennsylvania, since 1992.

Her parents are both dead now as is one brother, Jorge. Maggie makes a point of keeping in constant touch with her brothers and sisters.

She has no immediate family left in Cuba and is thankful because she considers the Castro brothers to be terrorists.

Fidel has a brother, Raoul, who Maggie predicted would take over in the event of Castro’s death.

“Things won’t change because he’s been his brother’s right-hand man since Fidel took power. Unless they’re both gone, there’s no hope for Cuba,” Maggie said. “What he (Fidel) has done to the people of Cuba isn’t human.”

With Castro’s death and the recent events in Cuba, the country of her birth, Maggie expressed these thoughts:

“It’s hard to watch them glorifying him (Fidel Castro). He was nothing but a criminal. People in Cuba don’t know there are better things out there. They don’t know any better.

“Lots of people still have moms and dads in Cuba. They are still poor and necessities are expensive and must be purchased on the black market.

“I didn’t feel anything when Castro died, no unhappiness, no sadness. I just say thank you Lord that he is gone.

“I tell you, Ailene, you really have to be a good, good Christian, a perfect Christian to believe God would forgive everything he’s done - for all the lives he’s taken.”

Recently, Maggie realized her “American dream,” of owning her own business. She opened up a small pet grooming business in her home.

She is often asked to speak and share her story. Her message is to be careful not to take freedom for granted - all freedoms.

“To me I’m Cuban only because I was born there. I think most Cuban-born Americans wouldn’t go back. This is my country. I am proud to be an American and I value my freedom and being able to worship God.”