Blog Post: Tony Lazaro Ruiz

He was insane by local standards. By and large, the Cuban-American community he so ardently holds dear regards him as a pathetic hermit. Delfín González, great-uncle of controversial 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elián González, turned the boy’s Little Havana home into a memorial in November of 2000. Many still deem it a shanty excuse of a museum. My friends and family reproached me for choosing to visit the old Elián home for my photography project. It would not portray our people well. Delfín was labeled overzealous. He was the village idiot clinging desperately to the remnants of a long-forgotten event. He was a broken man seeking solace in the preservation of the relic of his family’s brief fame. These assumptions were as much my own as they were my relatives’.I was hesitant to approach the home. After taking photographs of the exterior, I was lucky enough to spot Delfín himself exit to retrieve something from his car. He graciously invited me in. To my surprise, he never prodded me for a donation, never pressed me with political questions, nor took advantage of my attention by preaching his own political agenda. He introduced himself in the main room, welcomed me to look around and take photographs, and was about to excuse himself when I asked him to show me around and talk about the memorabilia.

I found myself far more interested in him than in the memorial. I focused on photographing Delfín as he answered my questions. I was asking him about Cuban life in his youth, about the infamous early-morning raid in 2000 to extract Elián from the home, and about his position on diplomatic relations with Cuba.

The portrait that emerged was sincere and moving. Delfín was an engaging subject with an enormous heart. He says he converted the home into a memorial because he felt compelled by a sense of civic duty. Despite my initial doubts, he did represent Cuban-America, and the amalgamation of Cuban national pride and American nationalism characteristic of the Miami I know and love, but that outsiders often misrepresent or don’t understand. In 2006, Republican Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo made headlines when he candidly stated:

“Look at what has happened to Miami. It has become a Third World country. You just pick it up and take it and move it someplace. You would never know you’re in the United States of America. You would certainly say you’re in a Third World country” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/30/politics/main2217944.shtml).

Delfín González challenged the assumption that Miami is a backwards city with citizens fervently resistant to assimilation. What was wrong with the United States administration in 2000, Delfín explained to me, was that they neglected the human element; they were so fixated on the “politics” that they failed to consider what was best for Elián. “In Cuba, Elián may be treated like royalty, but he will ever have true freedom and liberty,” he said. “Living here, he would have had liberty, which is the most essential human necessity of all.”

Cuban-American culture was the topic of my photography project for Jim Hubbard’s Visual Communication for Social Change course at USC. We examined participant-produced photography, and, as part of our course, critically considered whether or not it empowers participants, helps them to make better sense of their surroundings, and captures reality more objectively. While these are all points of contention among critics and proponents of the field, my experience has affirmed everything positive about this method. As a participant-producer, the camera empowered me to ask the questions I couldn’t otherwise, as if I held around my neck a black box that instantly gained the subject’s trust, implied my right to be “here” and ask “you” questions. The project allowed me to reexamine my assumptions about this man, whose reputation was so deeply rooted in the local narratives that I was almost discouraged from walking up to his home in the first place. And finally, I acknowledge that my photography project is biased in favor of my heritage. However, it fosters an objective understanding of the subject in the sense that it shall become a crucial piece of the greater body of work on the topic. When examined together with the multitude of subjective work on the subject matter, participant-produced work is vital for a truly objective understanding of the topic.