Interview with Marie Casamayor-Harvey

Youtube: Excerpts from Marie Casamayor-Harvey's oral history

Erika: This is Erika Alonso. I'm here today speaking with Marie Casamayor-Harvey in her art studio at Winter Street Studios in Houston, Texas. It is Friday, October 7th, 2022. Okay. All right, Marie, let's start off with some background information. Could you tell me your name and when and where you were born?

Marie Casamayor: Marie Casamayor-Harvey. I was born March 10th, 1961 in Cienfuegos, Cuba.

Erika: And tell me a little bit about your parents.

Marie Casamayor: Well my dad is Cuban and my mother is Colombian. My dad was this is in the late 50s, was against the Batista regime. So he was very much involved in the, in the anti-Batista movement. So at one point at one point he was jailed and he was, he came very close to being executed.

He escaped and settled in Colombia. There he met my mom. And they got married and a couple of years later Castro took over. So, Everyone was breathing easier and thought that things would be wonderful again. So shortly after they got married, they moved to Cuba. And then I was born a couple years after they got married. And, inevitably, things were not what people thought were gonna turn out to be. So the struggles continued.

Erika: So you do have a few siblings?

Marie Casamayor: Yes.

Erika: Are you the, are you the oldest?

Marie Casamayor: I'm the oldest, yes. And I was the only one born in Cuba. The rest of my siblings were born in Colombia.

Just to give you a little, a little snippet of my first few weeks of life. Because this is a story that I found out from my mother, one time when I was interrogating her about those first days. When I was a month old, Bay of Pigs happened and the bombs were falling near our house. My mom could hear the bombs and so I was just a month old. She ran with me to the kitchen and performed an emergency baptism with tap water, the good Catholic that she was. And so, and then she ran to a neighbor's house cuz they had a two-story house. So she thought we would be safer on the bottom floor than in our, in our little house in Punta Gorda.

So, reading many years later about childhood trauma I started digging why I have so much anxiety and angst and things like that, and I came across a study about trauma during childhood and your first months of life.

And so immediately this image came to mind that this has affected me my entire life. The, all the, all the struggles within the first six months of my life. They were embedded in me, and that explains a lot of my colors and bold and harsh colors. There's a lot of angst in my work, but I use my work as therapy.

You know, I, I don't want people to look at my work and say, Oh, that poor child or that poor woman so much angst in her life. My images are the result of my experiences. And it's very therapeutic. So when I'm creating I'm in a state of euphoria.

Erika: That's awesome.

Marie Casamayor: I know that's more than you wanted...

Erika: No, no, that's perfect! So a month after you were born, you went you went to Colombia with your parents?

Marie Casamayor: No. We went to Colombia when I was six months old.

Erika: Okay. When you were six months old.

Marie Casamayor: Yeah. My father was, had to seek asylum in the Colombian embassy because pretty much his days were numbered in Cuba.

So thanks to my mom, he, he got political asylum in the, in the Colombian embassy in Havana. So my mom and I fled when I was six months old, and my father followed soon after, when all his paperwork was processed. And then he joined us in Colombia.

Erika: And could you tell me a little bit more about your dad's political-social background? So you said that he fought against Batista?

Marie Casamayor: Yes. And then he was very much involved in political activism against Castro. You know, a lot of people fled soon after they could see through him, in, in his true colors. So my father chose to stay and he was very much involved in the anti-Castro movement.

That was an uphill battle because it, it was just inevitable. And then when, when he got into trouble and, and pretty much they were looking for him to arrest him and imprison him for life. He knew that there was nothing more he could do. So through connections in Colombia from my mom's side of the family, they got him into the Colombian embassy in Havana, where he had to wait for, you know, paperwork to be processed. But once he was there, he was safe.

Erika: All right, so you left Cuba for Colombia?

Marie Casamayor: Yes.

Erika: So where did you live in Colombia?

Marie Casamayor: The first, about the first year of my life— oh, not my life— my first year there, we lived right outside Bogota. My father had connections and he, my father is a civil engineer, he was able to find work. The climate and the weather in, in Bogota was not suitable for him.

He, he had trouble with the altitude and the cold temperatures. So we moved to the northern coast of Colombia to my mom's hometown of Cienaga. And so that's, that's where we spent in the next almost in the next 10 years or so.

Erika: How is Cienaga?

Marie Casamayor: Cienaga I have to tell you, it was the inspiration for Gabriel Garcia-Marquez's fictitious town of Macondo. For his book 100 Years of Solitude. So Cienaga is just this little town between two major cities, between Santa Marta and Barranquilla it's like a town that time forgot. And you know, very prominent families. And so it is described by many as the, the cradle of magic realism.

So, yeah, it it's just this, you know, incredible little town where everybody has these wonderful experiences. You know, a lot of the, the founding families have moved out. But Cienaga remains for that charm.

Erika: Yeah. So it it was lower altitude.

Marie Casamayor: Oh yeah, it was, it was on the coast, yeah.

Erika: And less —

Marie Casamayor: and warm. Warm year round. Yes.

Erika: So tell me about growing up in Colombia. How was school?

Marie Casamayor: Went to private Catholic school. I recall a wonderful childhood surrounded by many friends. My parents. Involved with the Lions Club. So they entertained a lot and attend a lot in, in attended and also sponsored a lot of charitable events, so they were always in the limelight and we always had guests at our house, so I just grew up with those experiences, meeting people that came to visit from all over the world.

And you know, I recall just having a wonderful childhood. Of course, you know, that was my experience as a child. There was a lot of political unrest and I recall hearing things, but it wasn't anything that I felt affected by, you know? It wasn't happening. Things were not happening to us. And then my, my dad always talked about how you know, he wanted to move to the US because it would be safer for us, and also that he wanted to raise us in a, in a safer environment. And then it wasn't until both my mom's parents were deceased that she was open to the idea of moving. And so my father had a brother in Miami and through him, we came to the US.

Erika: So your mom was hesitant at first?

Marie Casamayor: My mom, yeah. She did not wanna leave her parents. And her father had died earlier. And then my grandma died in 1973 and later that year is when we came to the U.S.. I mean, she always used that excuse, I'm not gonna leave my parents. And then you know, at that point she couldn't argue against—that was not an excuse anymore, but, you know, it was, it was a very traumatic move for me in particular. Mm-hmm. At a very critical age. I was 12. I was an extremely shy and introverted child, and so making friends was not easy, just like, you know, pulling me from my, my familiar surroundings. It was very traumatic for me.

Erika: And do you remember the actual leaving, like when you left?

Marie Casamayor: I do remember, and it was, it's very vivid because I had to leave my dog and so that crushed me. It was like at that moment, Yes, we were leaving family and friends behind, but at that moment, all I could think of was my poor doggy thinks I'm abandoning him. Now, we left him with my uncle and he had a wonderful, long life and was spoiled rotten. But to me it was the end of the world. Leaving my dog, abandoning my dog, is the way I saw it. So that, that's one of the, these memories that is, is just been with me my entire life. Yeah.

Erika: Are there any other memories that you can recall sort of around that, that time period?

Marie Casamayor: Yes. You know, because when you, when you are 12 years old and you're surrounded by family and friends and then you leave, you don't think that that was the last time you saw them. So, you know, family members that passed away after that, it's just one of those things that, you know, you think if, if I'd known or if only I could, could have seen them one more time.

So just through the years, you know, family members that we've lost and I didn't have a chance to, to see them again, that that's part of the territory of, of moving from your homeland. Yeah.

Erika: And so when you arrived in Miami, you said that your dad had a brother there.

Marie Casamayor: Mm-hmm.

Erika: Was there any other family?

Marie Casamayor: His, his brother, wife and kids were there.

So that was really our only connection in Miami. And my dad was able to find work and you know, things were okay for a couple years, but you know, my dad being a civil engineer, he relied on work like from the city, public works, construction, things like that. And that started drying up.

And so it, it was not economically feasible for us to stay there any longer. And a good friend of my dad who's also a civil engineer, lived in Houston. And Houston at the time was a booming town so that's how we ended up here, through my dad's friend.

You know, ultimately I've been here since I was 14 years old. Houston has been very good to us. The first few years were lean years because my parents couldn't practice their profession. They had to go back to school. My mom was a high school Biology teacher in Colombia and she had to go back to school to get her teaching certification. And my father had to go back to school to study engineering.

So those few years that while they were going to school and working were a little tough on the family. And then things got done much better after that. So, I mean, I, I do consider Houston my home. I have been here most of my life. Went to school here. I'm now practicing my art here, so, yeah.

Erika: Essentially it sounds like y'all left Colombia mostly due to like you wanted to be in a safer place.

Marie Casamayor: Yeah. Through political, Yeah, political reasons. And in fact, when we arrived in Miami we came as political refugees. Yeah. Now the couple of years that we were in Miami, yes they were, it was a culture shock because I didn't speak the language and I had a very tough time in school.

My junior high there were a lot of Cuban kids, but they had come early. So, you know, I was the new kid in town, no English, and, and the kids were just mean to me. Cause I didn't speak the language. And so those were rough years. Ultimately coming to Houston, then it was another culture shock because Texas is nothing like life in Florida or Colombia.

So it, it took some, some adjusting to get used to life in Texas.

Erika: Could you tell me more about that?

Marie Casamayor: Well, in school, I kept to myself, I, I had this, you know, this thing that, you know, one, I had just started to make friends in Miami and then boom, we move again. So then I thought, I, I, and I see it, I, I, I just like, became extremely introverted.

I thought, I'm not doing this again. I'm not gonna make friends if I'm gonna lose them in a couple years. So I pretty much kept to myself in high school and I, you know, like on purpose. I would sit by myself in the cafeteria and there was this one girl who always, always made a point to find me, and she was very stubborn and determined that we were gonna become friends and to this day we're friends.

But it was all her doing because I, I was just determined that I was just gonna get through school and, you know, and just move on. And I, I really hated high school. I just didn't care for school at all. It wasn't until I got to college that I started liking school cuz I then I felt like I was in my element.

Erika: How so?

Marie Casamayor: It was just people from all over the world, you know, It was a different experience. So I, I made connections with tons of people from everywhere and it just felt like I had arrived.

Erika: So you did not know any English when you came over?

Marie Casamayor: No.

Erika: How, how was that experience of learning a new language, at 12?

Marie Casamayor: It was very tough, but, you know, I was, I was determined that I would be, that I would communicate. It was that need to communicate that, that made it possible. I mean like I remember one time our teacher was out and everybody, the other kids in our, in our ESL group were thinking, How are we gonna tell her that that, you know, this is what we do and da, da, da.

I said, Well, I'll tell her. Mm-hmm. And so I remember telling our substitute or relaying to her somehow that we had a snack break and that she needed to take us to the cafeteria for our break. And then for recess. And so I was the designated leader that day that I would communicate with the substitute, what our schedule was like. And so that's really one of the first times that I remember thinking, Oh, I can do this. I can communicate.

Erika: That's fantastic.

Marie Casamayor: But it was, you know, it's, it's from a need to communicate. There are some people that shut down. My, one of my brothers went through a silent period and he's younger than me, so he just, you know, did not speak for over a year, did not communicate.

In my case, I, I was determined to be heard.

Erika: So you've been in Houston for over 40 years.

Marie Casamayor: Yes.

Erika: I'd love to know sort of how you've seen it change and your thoughts on how it's changed.

Marie Casamayor: Houston, once I got over the shock of being in Texas it was, you know, I started school. Once I went to the University of Houston I felt like I had a lot of doors open up for me.

My, my parents were doing quite well in, in their profession. I started at the U of H with a major in, in architecture, and I was in architecture for about a couple years. I started taking a lot of classes in art history. Before I knew it, all my electives were in art history, and so I made a decision to leave architecture and switch to art history.

And then I started taking a lot of studio. Classes. So by the time I graduated which was five years later, because I couldn't seem to settle on a major I had a degree in art history with minors in studio arts and architecture. Then I did a pivot and, I taught for a while. I, I taught I started teaching in at HISD. Then I went back to school for my master's in education. Since I was already in education, I decided to do my master's and I went to the University of St. Thomas. But in my mind, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in art. And even though I spent many years teaching, I knew that at a certain point I was going to call it a day in the classroom.

And before I became an old lady teaching in the classroom well, I still had energy. So I retired after 25 years teaching and, and now I'm pursuing art full-time.

Erika: Is there a reason why you didn't pursue art earlier?

Marie Casamayor: Well grad school took a lot of time a lot and, and teaching is an exhausting job.

You know, people say, Oh, how nice you get off at 3:30. No, I'm grading papers till 10 o'clock at night and doing lesson plans on the weekend. So in the summers, I would, I would create when I had time, but it became very difficult throughout the school year to, to devote a lot of time. Now, my last few years teaching, I had already started exhibiting and I was spending a lot of time creating.

And then when I got to year 25, it just seemed like a good number to call it a day and, and pursue art as my, as, as my passion.

Erika: And tell me a little bit about your relationship with your parents.

Marie Casamayor: Very close to my parents. Yeah. Growing up very close to my parents and as an adult, very close to both my parents.

I had a very strict Catholic upbringing, going to Catholic school and all that. Which I grew to resent, you know, and when I was about 18, I rebelled just tired of the rules and, and, and following the rules. And it is just, you know, I just rebelled. I started clubbing and partying and, and, and, you know, just everything that my mother had warned me not to do, I was doing.

And so, but it was, it was, Houston was just a thriving place. I was in the underground punk movement and so I followed underground punk bands and all my friends were punks. And I still have punk left in me. I can't get rid of the punk and, you know, it was just it was punks were my tribe. I felt at home.

I had a lot of friends who were musicians and poets, writers, artists, and so it was a community that I felt very safe with. And very much at home with, and easy to exchange ideas with. And so it was, it was a, they feel they filled my need to belong. And Houston has a thriving art scene and music scene, and I’m very much an opera fan and a classical music fan.

So just to be able to attend concerts and operas and museums is just, I, you know, you couldn't ask for a better place to be.

Erika: I'm gonna ask about hurricanes because you have been here a while.

Marie Casamayor: Oh my goodness.

Erika: And you have a good hurricane story or two?

Marie Casamayor: Oh my God. The first time we experienced a hurricane, it was just the most surreal thing. I, I can't even recall which one it was. Maybe it was Alicia. I, I, I, for some reason that's the name I remember.

Waking I, we go waking up at two o'clock in the morning because it was just overwhelming and stepping out of bed into water. And... what is this?

Well, we had like three inches of water inside our home and it didn't go anywhere. It kept rising to the point where we had probably about 10, 12 inches of water before the storm was done, and so that experience was just horrendous. Like I had never in my life experienced, experienced anything like that. So, needless to say, that whole ordeal of removing carpet, removing sheetrock, hiring people to do all of this was just so foreign to me that. It's like one of the most important cities in the country and we're going through this? It's like, why is this happening?

And that was not the first hurricane, first of all.

So there were more, and there were, there were more flood flooding episodes. Once I moved away from home, every time I moved out to an apartment, I made sure it was an area of town that never flooded. And to this day, every time I moved and when I bought my own place, I make sure it was not in an area prone to flooding.

My parents were very stubborn and kept rebuilding after each storm, until Harvey. Harvey totally destroyed their home. And so that, that was it. That was the end of that for them. And so they relocated to Clear Lake. I had been begging them for years to get out of that house just because it was in a low-lying area.

And because even though my father would argue that, Oh no, the city has done so much work now we're, we're, we're fine. We weren't fine. Or they weren't fine. So yeah, that is, Just overwhelming. Anybody that hasn't been through a flood just, they have no idea how frustrating and depressing it is to deal with that.

And you know, family pictures destroyed. I have maybe two photo albums of my family. I have one photo of my grandma. All of these things. Material things you can replace. Furniture, you can replace clothing you can replace, but these memories of your family are wiped out. And I mean, that's what comes to mind mainly when I think of floods.

Erika: Reflecting now, about the move from Colombia to the U.S., Do you feel differently about it now than you did when you were a child?

Marie Casamayor: I do. Especially now with the political climate in Colombia or political climate in Colombia for the last decade or even the last couple of decades. It's, it's so unstable. That moving here, we had a very stable life.

You know, we went to school. All my siblings and I went to college which was expected by the way. There was no excuse of not going to school. We were pretty much told, you're going to school. We don't care what you major in, but you're going to school and I, I think there would've been a lot of disruptions in Colombia trying to go to school.

There were so many instances when I heard of the universities shutting down because of political unrest and, and kids having to miss a semester or a whole school year. Our life was very stable here and I can see why my parents chose to bring us here because we had that stability that was not promised to us if we had stayed there.

Erika: Is there anything in particular that you miss about Colombia?

Marie Casamayor: Family. Yeah, that, that connection with family. It seems like you're not in a rush, like, like, you know, the rat race here where you just work eight to five and then come home exhausted. And this is one of the reasons why I had to leave teaching.

I, I needed to live my life at my own pace. So this urgency and, and being a slave to your job. Life it seems simpler there, you know, and people are more connected to family. Here it's very easy to lose, to lose that. It's not that one way is better than the other, it's just the way the culture is.

People there are a lot closer to their family and friends. And, kinda like they say it takes a village, you do rely on your friends and family a lot more whereas people here keep to themselves more.

Erika: Do you feel like you've been able to retain a certain amount of your culture?

Marie Casamayor: Oh, most definitely. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Erika: And what was the weather and the scenery like, in Colombia?

Marie Casamayor: Well in Cienaga where I, I spent most of my childhood... hot all year long, but that also meant that we could go to the beach every day. So we were very close to the beach and so we spent a lot of time going to the beach.

And we had a favorite place where we used to go on vacation called Rodadero which is near Santa Marta and it is just this gorgeous beach resort. So life revolved around nature a lot and the beach and the mountains. So we had the mountains nearby also, so we would trek to the mountains a lot. And so yeah, you know, you complain about the heat, but it was just we were used to the weather.

The weather was just wonderful. It's not until you move somewhere else and you experience cold weather and you think, Oh, I really like what we had before, all year long. So the scenery was just beautiful. Beaches, rivers, mountains that's, that's really what I remember a lot of nature surrounded by a lot of nature.

Erika: I'm interested about your relationship with your siblings. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

Marie Casamayor: Oh, we're, we're very close. I'm the oldest of four. My brother after me is just two years younger. Then there was a four-year gap and there's another brother. and then a younger sister.

So we're, we're all very close. I have one brother that lives in Brazil. But my other brother and sister live in Houston. So we gather for family events and birthdays and my brother lives in Brazil and comes to visit a couple of times a year. So we gather for holidays you know, birthdays, you name it.

And so those three of us that are here, we gather usually, at my dad's house in Clear Lake. My mom's no longer with us. She passed away a couple years ago. So my dad's 91 and we take good care of him and visit him often. So we, yeah, we're very close. I have a lot of friends that are not close to their siblings at all, and so I, I I don't understand what that's about.

Erika: Is there anything else in particular that you'd like to talk about that we have not covered yet?

Marie Casamayor: Oh my God, I'm sure there's so many stories. You know, I can't think of anything. I do— my parents were very supportive of my, of my art making since I was a child. And my father bought me an encyclopedia of art, which I was consuming at an early age and on Encyclopedia of Music. And so they were always buying me art supplies. And, and so I think when they realized that I had, I had an interest, they were very nurturing, supportive in, in that. So I do have to thank them for that, for nurturing my, my passion for art. And I mean, a lot of people consider me a collage artist. I do a lot of, create a lot of collage works, but I was creating collage when I was five years old. I was cutting everything, magazines, books, you name it, and creating collage. So my mom let me have a wall in our den and she says that I could glue all my collage on the walls

So I plastered the wall with collage works. I made a collage mural in our home, so I, I do, excuse me, I do thank them for nurturing that in me because you know, it was always something that I pursued even through my years of teaching, that was always something that, I could gravitate too.

Erika: Do you feel like art was therapy when you were also a child and through moving and everything?

Marie Casamayor: An escape, most definitely. Therapeutic and an escape because you as an artist know that when we are creating, we are totally immersed by the experience. And so, you know, any troubles just seemed to, to fade away. So yeah, Art was, it was definitely an escape growing up. I was able to just shut out everything and, and focus on, on my images.

Erika: And so now do you feel like how has your experience of moving and leaving your family and homeland and all of that. How is it-- does it come across in your work?

Marie Casamayor: Yes, it does come across in my work. A lot of my, my work is reflection and soul searching. So, you know, a lot of images. First of all, they all have a story.

So when I tell the story, when I dig deep it really in one way or another relates to a deep aspect of my soul. And all of my pieces are really a reflection of, of me and my experiences.

Erika: And you've mentioned, You know, the sort of early childhood trauma that's impacted you with anxiety, do you feel that that has changed you?

Marie Casamayor: Oh, yes. Yes. And it comes through in my work, through my colors and my sharp borders and... but in a way that is, is good, you know. It's not to dwell on it, but to move from it to, to use it as a stepping stone. Most definitely.

I also have a lot of my pieces have been influenced by music. So music was very much a part of growing up. I have my, my favorite composers I, I have a lot of, a lot of my works are representations of, of work by Wägner and Debelio and Beethoven. But...and Alban Berg. I've done a series based on Alban Berg's opera, Wozzeck.

So those are very expressionist works. And so I, I see the colors when I'm listening to, to their music. And so yeah, I do like to portray musical works when I create.

Erika: So I'm thinking about... you had one parent from Cuba, raised in Cuba, Cuban culture. And you had one parent from Colombia, raised in Colombia, Colombian culture.

Marie Casamayor: Yeah.

Erika: So how different are those two cultures?

Marie Casamayor: They're both crazy.

Erika: Yeah. Could you tell me about that?

Marie Casamayor: They're both you know, and they both grew up and my mom on the coast, my father from an island, so the upbringing was very similar you know, raised in the Caribbean, the foods are very similar.

The music, you know, influences each other. So my upbringing wasn't necessarily that, Oh, you know, we're doing Cuban things today or we're doing Colombian things. So it was, it was a very good combination of two cultures. Whereas, you know, sometimes there's no distinction there between one and the other.

You know, it's inevitable sometimes when, when we are celebrating with the Cuban side of the family, the food is more typical of Cuba. And then if we're celebrating with Colombian family members. Then some of the dishes are more typical of the North coast of Colombia, but the cultures are very similar. Definitely, the term 'hot Latin temper' is there on both sides, so yeah, it's there. There isn't one calm parent and one hyper parent. They were both hyper. Whereas with my husband, he is Canadian, so he's the calm part of my storm. So I'm the stormy one. He's the calm one. He, his job is to keep me calm.

Erika: You wanna tell me a little bit about how y'all met?

Marie Casamayor: Actually we met online.

Erika: Yes.

Marie Casamayor: Yes. We met online. I, you know, I was a teacher at the time, so in my circles of being an elementary school teacher, it's not like I was meeting many prospects. Yeah. You know, not a lot of men teach in elementary school.

And so through my clubbing and partying years you know, I was meeting the bad guys, the bad boys. That was thrilling. But you know, when, when you wanna settle down and I had no intention of marrying ever. I just, I was very independent. I bought my own home. I had no intention of getting married.

I joined Match just because I was curious and I had a few friends that, that had joined Match and kind of talked me into it and I thought, Okay, I'll give it six. . And so I started going out with, with a few guys that I met on match and major disappointment, went after the other. And then when this guy came along I had my reservations because he was older.

He's almost 10 years older, and I always dated younger or younger than me, even not just younger than him. So I had my reservations. And a friend convinced me to, to, you know, what the heck, Go out to dinner with him and see what happens. And so we connected from, it was immediate an immediate connection and we started dating.

And…but by the same token, I thought, Okay, this man, he's in oil and gas. So he had a history of moving a lot where his job took him. So I thought, Okay, so he's in Houston now. What's gonna happen if he needs to go back to Australia tomorrow, or Norway or, you know? And so I had my reservations at the beginning that I would not last.

And at one point he did get a job back in Canada, in his hometown. He moved back and we maintained a long-distance relationship, but it was, it was difficult, to say the least. And so he decided actually after a year and a half that he wanted to come back. And so the rest is history. He's very chill, very calm.

I, on the other hand, I'm the hyper one, so it's his job to keep me sane. And so it's, it's actually a very good, a very good combination. He likes to tell people that he's my love slave. When I introduce him to people, he just says, Oh, I'm just her love slave. But he's very supportive of my career and very, very supportive. I mean, hanging shows for me and since he's an engineer, he's very precise when he looks at a wall and measures and, and the hanging is just perfect. So he's it, you know, it's just incredible and, and he just does it because he's very supportive of my career. So he's got one job and that's to keep me calm.

Erika: So you mentioned how you were very independent and I'm wondering if that started when you were in Colombia or do you feel like it was more as a result of coming to a place and being sort of isolated, you know, from the language?

Marie Casamayor: You know, that yeah. Now that you mentioned that probably had an impact on me relying on myself a lot. And I mean, you know, coming to the US at the age of 12 and then just realizing that you're on your own. Since I, I had difficulty belonging at school or, or felt like an outsider. And, and that definitely had an impact on me withdrawing and just doing things on my own. Creating, opening doors for myself.

Oh my goodness, we've covered a lot. I don't even know what time it is.

Erika: I think we're good. Yeah, we can do that—perfect. It's perfect timing. Okay. I'm gonna end it now.

Recording #02

Marie Casamayor: So my father never talked about the experience because I am sure that a lot of this is trauma that he never, you know, never saw a therapist or it is just embedded in him. And that's how he dealt with it. He just sort of, you know, hid it from us. But, at one point he was in front of a firing squad.

This is when Batista was still in power. He had been jailed for his you know, anti-Batista activity. And at one point they had jailed him and they took him and they had him in front of a firing squad. He came seconds from death. It just so happened that a General that drove by knew my grandfather, who was a judge in Cienfuegos and a well-known member of the community, and so he recognized my father as Pedro Casamayor's son, and said, Why are you holding that man?

Why are you, Why do you have that man in front of a firing squad? Release him at once. So I never would've existed. If this man had not stepped in and saved his life and this is something that I never knew. The reason I found out about this is my father's sister told me the story.

She says, Did you know that your dad da- da- da? And she started telling me stories about his, his activism, and his involvement in both the anti-Batista and anti-Castro movement. And this is something I never knew. A lot of this explains anxiety and angst passed down from your parents to you, cuz we are the product.

I do wholeheartedly believe that we are the product and a lot of generational mental anguish comes from your parents' experiences, from your grandparents' experiences. We, it's passed down. I've done a lot of work to overcome generational anxiety and things like that. From reading and taking part in working with a life coach and things like that.

Not to forget it, but to learn to not have it affect me so much in a negative way. It's still there. It still has impact in my life, but it doesn't have to rule my life.

Erika: So have you ever spoken directly with your father?

Marie Casamayor: Yes. He, he doesn't like to discuss it. I, I can tell that it's something that he chooses to forget and that it's what he did because he felt that he had to do it. But as far as him dwelling on it, no. I've asked him many times, to write the stories, to write essays.

He writes beautifully. His grandfather was a writer and so he inherited that gift. But you know, he can tell these wonderful stories and I keep telling him, You need a blog or you need, you know, he'll go on Facebook and go on forever. And I'm thinking, Dad, this is a blog. This is not Facebook material.

And I just, I wish he would, he would write some of these stories down. You know, once he's gone these stories are gone also. Yeah.

Anyway. And he's had a few other brushes with death, but that was the big one.

Erika: That was the big one.

Marie Casamayor: That was the big one. Yeah.

Erika: You want to tell me about the others?

Marie Casamayor: The others more involved accidents. A couple of really bad car crashes. But just miraculously survived both of those. And so I just keep telling him that he has nine lives cuz he's, he's, yeah.

And you know, he's 91 years old. He's very sharp. He still practices engineering. He doesn't work full-time, but he does a lot of consulting work. So he's like, you know, very, very sharp. And he's a walking music encyclopedia. He knows about everything you want to know about classical music and then some.

Yeah, so I inherited that love for classical music, from whom...

Erika: I think that's great that your parents sort of nurtured your creative side.

Marie Casamayor: Yeah, definitely. And all of my siblings and I, we all have some creative aspects but I was really the one that pursued that. Whereas the others maybe went a safe route.

You know, my, my brother that lives in Houston studied economics. My sister went into school administration. And my brother that lives in Brazil studies political science. So, I was the more artistic one or the one that just had to pursue it.

Erika: And I don't know if I already asked this, but have you gone back to Colombia or Cuba?

Marie Casamayor: I did go to Cuba I believe it was 2000, and I went with my dad and with his sister. So we went, we spent some time in Havana. But I always wanted to visit my hometown of Cienfuegos because it was just one of these things that it felt, it was very difficult for me growing up, not knowing what my hometown looked like.

So I had this need to go and so both of them went with me. And I was very grateful to go because I got to see my hometown. The family home that was owned by, by this professor by this point, and he turned it into an Airbnb. But you know, he was so gracious that he took us in and, and showed us what he's done to it.

And so I was, I was very happy to see my hometown and to see where the family came from on my dad's side of the family. That was... I had a need for that. And so now I'm planning a trip to Colombia with my husband cuz I wanna show him where I grew up and, and for him to meet a lot of the family on the Colombian side.

So that's coming up in the next couple of years.

Erika: Exciting.

Marie Casamayor: Yeah.

Erika: So that'll be your first time?

Marie Casamayor: It will be my first time. My mom used to go regularly and, and my dad and my brother have been but now I have this need to go and to, to visit a family and in a few places I remember fondly that I want to see again.

Erika: Which places? 

Oh, well, you know, Cienaga, I'm sure it has changed a lot in the 40 plus, 50 years, I guess. Not quite 50, but 40 plus. And, you know, a lot of the, the founding families have moved away, but I still wanna see what Siega looks like today. Yeah. It's a very picturesque little town and I also wanna visit other cities so I can introduce Robert to life throughout Colombia.