Imagine yourself a staunch anti-Castro Cuban exile living in Miami. You were born in Cuba the year the revolution "succeeded" and your parents, both also anti-Castro, did the same thing many other Cubans did back then. Fled to Miami to wait out the Castro storm. "He'll be gone within months" is what they all kept saying.

After a year or so living in exile your father realizes that the only way to get his country back is by force so he joins other Cuban exiles and enlists in what would later be called the Brigade 2506. A planned is hatched, allies are made, and your father goes to train outside the country and eventually goes to war against Castro. He is taken prisoner at the Bay of Pigs and he serves more than two years under brutal conditions in Castro's prisons.

Now, forty or so years later, you are resigned to the fact that the Cuba you left, the Cuba of your parents is long gone. Somewhere deep inside you there is always that little lingering feeling of return, even if it is to see where you were born, but you refuse to do so because you will not go to Cuba while the man who beat and tortured your father is still in power.

So your life goes on. You became an American citizen, proud and thankful for having been taken in with open arms. You were educated here. You married and have a family. You have worked your entire life to be a success. You even became a teacher and taught at a school your parents started to give something back to your community.

Then you become a real estate agent and end up working the fastest growing high end residential area in the city. You love your job and are very good at it.

One day, you sell a house in a deal worked with another Cuban realtor which you have gotten along with fairly well. You are both Cuban exiles after all. And even though that other realtor is young, only about 26 or 27, you feel a certain solidarity because you assume he shares a similar history of exiling as you.

So you sell the house, it closes on closing day and your fellow Cuban realtor asks that you pick up an escrow check at his office. You tell him that you're extremely busy but he insists you come by his office so you can see it.

On your way home you decide to stop by the guy's office. You find a parking spot, walk a block or so through the crowded South Beach streets and enter the building. You take the elevator up to his floor and make your way to his office.

You go in and at first glance the surroundings are beautiful. Tasteful expensive furniture, plush finishes, highly chic working environment. "What a nice office" you think to yourself.

Then, as you are being led to his office in the back, you see something hanging on the wall that at first glimpse doesn't really register. But as you get closer you realize what it is and you get this overwhelming feeling of disgust shadowed by contempt. Up there, on the wall of this high-end, real estate office that is owned by a young Cuban man, is a portrait of Fidel Castro.

You think for a second that it's got to be some kind of anti-Castro poster. A Warholian approach to the contra-revolucion propaganda, the same counter-revolution your father paid dearly for. But it is not. The image on the wall is an homage to Castro. Your blood begins to boil. And as you get to the front door of his private office, you notice, on an opposite wall, the same Warholian take on Che Guevara. He is there on a Campbells soup can not five feet away from you.

You enter the guys office, your body riddled with goosebumps, your ears red from the rise in blood pressure, lightning shoots from your eyes as you stare at this young Cuban man sitting behind a designer executive desk smiling.

He says hi and you just let off on him. You don't remember verbatim what it is exactly that you barraged the guy with because the words came straight from the heart. They didnt have time to process in your mind. He's holding up the check, you snatch it from his hand and start to walk out.

As you pass through the door he mocks you, calls you a gusana imperialista, an imperialist worm. Using the same word - gusana - that the Castro followers used to describe all those Cubans that refused to live under his jack boot and fled the island.

You make it back to your car almost in a daze. Head is spinning, blood pressure is through the roof and you start to cry.

You call your husband, also a Cuban exile, and before he can even say what's up you tear into the story and tell him word for word, point by point exactly what you have just experienced. When you are done ranting, your husband asks you how this young guy could have such a nice expensive office on South Beach at such a young age and having come from Cuban only a few years ago. Where did the money come from? "I don't know" you tell him.

"Well," he says to you, "we should find out. And if it's from where I'm thinking it came from, we are going to need to call someone."

"Who?" You ask.

"The State Department for starters....."

Originally posted at Babalu Blog.