Government censorship and dependency. Religious intolerance. The jailing of political rivals and dissidents. Supply problems and emptying shelves. Unaffordable goods. Leaders lying through their teeth. Demonization by race and class. Dishonest, virtually state-run media. 

They’re all frightening hallmarks of communist nations – and Cuban émigrés in Kansas City see it all happening here, as they and their forebears did under Fidel Castro. 

“A lot of the Cubans I know are asking why they risked everything in the ’60s/’70s/’80s to come here if this place would eventually end up falling to communist goons,” one Cuban native and longtime area resident who wished to remain anonymous wrote to The Heartlander unsolicited. 

We checked to see if other Cuban Americans here agree with that sentiment. 

Many do. 

Ali McClain: It brought my parents to tears 

Ali McClain, of nearby Smithville, Missouri, was brought to the U.S. at age 4 by parents fleeing both crippling scarcity and Christian persecution. Despite not knowing the language, her parents were working inside of a month, eventually becoming entrepreneurs and business owners. 

Yet, in the past four years “I actually heard my parents crying and feeling nervous because they said we’re seeing this country go into a socialist [direction] and we don’t like where it’s going.  

“And for the first time in my life, I saw my parents scared – here, of all places, where they felt secure. 

“Now I’m 62 years old and I’m starting to see the same thing I saw as a little girl in Cuba. That’s scary. It’s hard to hear your parents say, and my mother said it before she passed away, ‘What did we bring you girls here for, if this is the direction that America is going in?’” 

In Cuba, McClain says, “we noticed that the shelves kept getting emptier and emptier and emptier” – to the point that her mother couldn’t obtain the goods necessary to nurse more offspring. 

It didn’t help that the goat had to go, either. 

“They ended up getting a goat and they had that in their backyard. Well, eventually they had to get rid of a goat because you weren’t allowed to have any kind of pets whatsoever.” 

As for going to church and trying to hear over the loudspeakers the communists blared to disrupt it, “it got to the point where we couldn’t celebrate any religious holidays whatsoever, not even Christmas, not Easter. Any of those things became obsolete, so they didn’t even want you to practice religion. We were all practicing Catholics, so that was a big deal for us.  

 “You couldn’t have your own private business, because of, course, you’re not supposed to – everybody’s supposed to be working at whatever job the communists designate for you.” 

Class and political warfare celebrated committed communist youths as pioneras – pioneers – whereas others, such as McClain’s family, were derided as gusanos: worms. 

“So, it just got to the point where it was just unbearable to stay there,” she says, noting she sees similarly haunting shortages, dependency and divisiveness lurking over American life today. 

The handout mentality, she says, has flipped JFK’s exhortation to “ask not what your country can do for you” on its head. 

“It’s almost like we’re seeing a repeat of what we had happen in Cuba,” she says. “We’re heading towards a socialist environment.” 

Her parents saw it coming. Though her mother has passed, McClain still talks to her father daily. “We talk about this pretty much every day, because he’s terrified of the direction this country is going in.” 

After her corrections and firearms-instructing career in the Department of Justice, and now teaching DEA agents Spanish, McClain’s parents questioned her decision to run for political office. She explains that it’s to preserve what they brought the family here for. 

And it’s something she’ll fight to save. 

“I’m going to fight for this country and this country’s freedom till the day that I die, because I’ve taken an oath to this country twice in my life: once as an American citizen – and they insisted we all go when I was 18 years old, so we were all adults – and the second time for the Department of Justice.  

“I don’t take the oath that I took to this country lightly. I will fight for this country till the day that I die.” 

Do other Cuban Americans feel the same way? 

“Everybody feels the exact same way,” McClain says. “It’s scary that we’re starting to see what we saw in Cuba 50-some years ago.” 

Gresia Cabrera: We’re further along than anyone thinks 

Gresia Cabrera’s family left Cuba when she was 11 because her father Leonardo was “rebellious activist, an aggressive, rebellious activist.” 

In other words, he was an outspoken Christian – now a grateful, joyful pastor in Kansas City. 

He spent more than three years in a Cuban prison for his faith, before advocacy from Pope John Paul II helped obtain his release in 1998 – with the condition he leave Cuba. 

Gresia agrees with the sentiment expressed by the anonymous Cuban American that communism has more than a foothold in the U.S. today. 

“I do. Unfortunately, we’ve been seeing the signs for a long time,” she tells The Heartlander. “I’ve seen how much propaganda is in the mainstream media in this country, which is all we see in Cuba.” 

Leonardo Cabrera and his daughter Gresia Cabrera

Early on here, she says, “I noticed the mainstream media in the United States glamorizes Cuba. And it also tries to make the dictators and oppressors look like misunderstood leaders who are just looking out for their own people against the evil empire of the United States – which couldn’t be more inaccurate.” 

Hollywood liberals have joined in the adulation of the Castros, she notes. 

“And every year it seems to be getting worse. Now we have full-blown socialist groups all over the United States protesting and advocating for policies in favor of the Cuban regime that in no way benefits the people but benefits the Cuban mafia family that has taken over in every single way.” 

Her fellow Cuban Americans, Gresia says, are “seeing the signs of what they saw happening in Cuba here in the United States, with the monopolization of sectors like the media, everyone saying the exact same words, the repeated messages, the pro-socialist agenda and the growth of government.” 

How does all this make a Cuban émigré feel? 

It gave Gresia PTSD at first, she confesses. 

“I had never felt so helpless in my entire life as I did when I when I lived in Cuba. And then after getting out of Cuba, remembering Cuba would bring back that feeling of helplessness. And I know that there’s so many people suffering the same thing that I did while I was there, and I also felt helplessness over not being able to do something for them at the time.” 

One of the most troubling signs she’s seen in the U.S. is the same “us vs. them” political narrative Castro used to pit Cubans against each other. “So, seeing what’s been happening here, it all starts with division amongst family and friends. It starts out in almost a seamless way. 

“Any person who has lived in freedom all their life wouldn’t think twice about it, but someone like me, who has seen the effect, the outcome of it, it’s very concerning. 

“It was the revolutionaries against everyone else who was anti-revolutionary. And they separated a lot of families. Fidel Castro dehumanized the people who were not idolizing him and gave benefits to the people who were idolizing him.  

“So, they started to create a huge division and gap, to where neighbors and family were turning each other in for not being revolutionary enough, for not being patriotic enough to worship Fidel Castro and snitch on each other if they were not chanting the revolutionary phrases and hymns and all of that.” 

A former city council candidate, Gresia says another hallmark of communism can be found in the demonization and marginalization of landlords, which has come to Kansas City. 

How far down the path toward socialism/communism is America? 

“I think we’re further along than anyone thinks,” she warns. 

Marisel Walston: They think I’m lying or exaggerating 

Marisel Walson wouldn’t go as far as the anonymous Cuban American does in his appraisal, but says, “I do feel that the United States is slowly becoming more and more socialist and our government is trying to shift that way.   

 “Especially as we have seen, you know, our universities. The aim of the communists has always been to infiltrate the education system, and through that bring change to the United States and other countries. And they have kind of, you know, executed that really well because we have all these far-left teachers in schools that indoctrinate our children.   

 “So, I do see where there’s a big risk that that could happen in the United States.” 

Walston, a Republican activist, ironically escaped Cuba in 1979 at age 14 thanks in large part to Democrat President Jimmy Carter’s rapprochement with the Castro regime. It led to reunification with her father, who’d left in 1970 before Castro had tightened his grip on visas. 

Still, that nearly decade lag put a target on the family’s backs in Cuba, where the school would always wonder why the family’s children weren’t part of Castro’s youth organization. 

Increasing dependency on a growing government, and eroding contract law by student loan buyouts by the federal government, are other causes for concern here in America. 

“They’re coming up with things that, slowly, will shift our constitutional freedoms and our way of life if we allow them to do that,” Walston warns. 

Another concern of hers is the “social justice” movement. 

“The whole thing about social justice and economic justice, all that is socialist/communist thought – of making everybody equal, where you [actually] make everybody equally poor,” Walston says. 

 “Those are things that we all talk about amongst ourselves [in the Cuban community], because these are things that we have seen happen in Cuba and Venezuela.” 

What about her fellow Americans who didn’t live under communism and may not see it as a threat here? 

“You know, that’s a conversation that I’ve had with so many of them, because they don’t understand,” she says. “I try to explain to them how it all happened in Cuba. 

“I tell them about what happened in Cuba, how slowly people lost their businesses, they lost their homes and they lost their freedom. And unfortunately, some of them – especially the ones that don’t know me – think that I’m lying or that I’m exaggerating, and think that Cuba is a paradise.   

 “So, sometimes it’s very frustrating, and just really I don’t even want to get into those conversations because it makes me very, very angry.” 

‘It’s happening. Right under your nose.’ 

It was like a post-Russian Revolution scene right out of the movie Doctor Zhivago. 

The anonymous Cuban American’s father, who was a doctor, was taken out of his home at gunpoint one day – forced to treat some soldier’s relative. “Several hours later, he came home and he told my mom, ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’” 

Not too long afterward, “My dad was having his usual office hours where his patients were showing up. And in the middle of the day, with an office full of patients, he excused himself for a minute, went home, got my mom and us four kids, and we went and got on an airplane and flew to Mexico City.” 

Asked why he wrote to The Heartlander about the fears of Cuban Americans today, he says simply, “Well, because what they are seeing now is what they saw in Cuba. 

“We’re talking about a society where there is no rule of law; the rule of law is what the government says is the law,” he says. “If somebody doesn’t agree with the government, they don’t have any free speech.” 

A government run by bureaucrats rather than representatives is a huge concern, he says, along with a one-sided media you simply can’t trust. 

“One thing I remember my dad tell me, he would be reading a newspaper [in Cuba] and he’d have to believe the opposite of what he was reading in order to know what was going on. And of course, our media in this country, like the New York Times, they hailed Fidel Castro as some type of a savior that was going to go in and save Cuba.” 

What would he say to his fellow Americans who would argue communism can never happen here? 

“It’s happening. Right under your nose.”