On July 11, 2021 I was in Cuba. We walked toward the central square believing, like so many others, that this was the beginning of something. What came was a police charge.
On July 11, 2026 I was in the parking lot of Al Lopez Park, in Tampa, with my family, getting into a car with the Cuban flag across the hood. Five years and about four hundred and fifty miles between one thing and the other.
Nobody organized it, and that is the interesting part
If someone asks me which organization called the caravan, the honest answer is that I do not know, and I do not think any particular one did. It was the date. The eleventh of July means something to any Cuban who was alive and paying attention in 2021, and in Tampa there was a general call to go out. People turned up.
They turned up with what they had: Cuban flags mounted on pickups, United States flags beside them, a silver BMW with the flag painted across the whole hood. Patria y Vida t-shirts. A pizza food truck at the back, because it was that too.
The caravan in line along North Himes Avenue.
The circle
Before setting off, the group closed into a circle and several people took the floor. There was no program and no designated speaker: whoever had something to say stepped forward, said their piece and chanted slogans. One of those interventions stayed with me, and I have it recorded. It was spoken in Spanish; the translation is mine:
“Thank you for being here, thank you for allowing the Cuban exile community to stay alive. It is so important here in Tampa that this is not lost, and that will be thanks to you and to all of us. Every day we have to keep going.”
And shortly afterwards, speaking directly to the island:
“We want to tell the people of Cuba, if you are watching this, that we support you in the best way we can, in the way we know how, by giving you encouragement and giving you a voice.”
16:46. The circle, before setting off.
Two children in the same back seat
There were four of us in that car. My daughter is ten and was born in Cuba: she came with us and she remembers it. My son is eight months old and was born here: all he will know about Cuba is what we tell him.
I could not say which of the two weighs more. But that Sunday they were both in the back of the same car, under the same flag on the hood, and it struck me that this was exactly why we were there.
The difference I will not forget
In 2021, in Cuba, the police came running into the square handing out beatings. In 2026, in Tampa, the police helped our cars pull out in caravan, quickly and in an orderly way.
There was no road closure or anything like it, to be clear. It was simply that they were there to make it work, not to stop it. It is a minimal administrative difference and an enormous moral one, and if you come from where I come from, you notice.
16:59. The caravan rolling along Himes.
What was playing
Inside the car we had Willy Chirino’s “Nuestro Día (Ya Viene Llegando)” on. I did not pick it to look good in an article: it was playing, and there it is on the dashboard screen in one of the photos. There are songs you put on without thinking.
The caravan went down North Himes, continued along Hillsborough Avenue, took SR 60 and ended up crossing the bay over the Courtney Campbell Causeway. One hour and forty minutes, nine miles. There were a good many people. It was beautiful.
Why I tell it in such detail
Because I recorded all of it, and because I have a professional habit: every file carries its time and its coordinates inside. You do not have to take my word for it. The route, the timings and the places come from the metadata, not from my memory, which after five years is no longer reliable for small things.
I published eleven videos and two photographs in this blog’s activism record, separating what the files establish from what only I can offer as testimony. It also says what I do not know: exactly how many people were there, or who is speaking at each moment.
A Cuban in Cuba cannot publish this. I explained it in another article: over there, four-year sentences have been handed down for sharing a call to protest. I can do it because I am here. It is the same thing I said when I started this blog and it is still true: the freedom I enjoy is not a prize, it is a debt.
On July 11, 2027 I will go out again. I hope that by then the commemoration will make less sense.