MIAMI—Isabella Prio was born in Miami, is 20 now and a junior at Boston College who fully expects to return to Cuba someday and help shape the island’s future. But she’s never been to the country where her grandfather was once president and refuses to visit until it’s a democracy.
Cherie Cancio, 29, also was born in Miami and runs tours to the island for young Cuban-Americans eager to explore their heritage.
Two daughters of exile. Both passionate in wanting to affect change in a country that has been in the grasp of the Castro brothers’ authoritarian rule for decades, but very different in their approaches.
For the hundreds of thousands of children like Prio and Cancio born of Cuban exiles—some two and three generations removed from the island—Fidel Castro’s death potentially opens a door to a world long off-limits. Or at the least, it seems to bring it within closer reach.
Millennial Cuban-Americans say Castro’s death at the age of 90 symbolically offers hope for improved dialogue between the countries. Some thought the dialogue had begun under President Barack Obama, who visited Cuba in March. But with President-elect Donald Trump, the future of diplomacy between the two countries is uncertain.
“It’s definitely in the hands of the young people to take it over,” Prio said. “We just have to be careful about how we go about it.”
How that dialogue will unfold is anyone’s guess, and while attitudes are shifting, the community is still divided on the best way to chart a new course for the island—or whether Miami’s exiles even should play a role.
Prio, a finance and marketing student, still won’t visit until the Castro regime steps down, and democracy is restored. For now, she’s disappointed when she sees friends’ photos of Cuba on Instagram and Facebook. Her views are more in line with people her parents’ and grandparents’ age.
“Young Cuban-Americans really want engagement on the island,” said Guillermo Grenier, a professor of sociology at Florida International University in Miami and a lead investigator of the FIU Cuba Poll, an annual poll of Cuban-Americans co-sponsored by the Cuban Research Institute.
Still, said Grenier, “how younger Cuban-Americans feel about Fidel Castro dying is kind of independent” of their interest in engaging with the island.
