Extension Animal Scientist Embarks on New Beginning in His Native Country

In 2003, Dr. Diego Gimenez closed a long and painful chapter of his life — one that at many critical junctures in his life he never expected to finish.

The chapter began more than 40 years earlier, when his undergraduate career at the University of Florida temporarily was cut short by the fall of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista and the ascension to power of revolutionary Fidel Castro.

Training in Guatemala

Along with other Cuban exiles, Gimenez, a Havana native, suspended his studies at UF and enlisted in training in Guatemala. There he joined a fledgling military brigade composed of Cubans from all walks of life, “from doctors and lawyers to very common people,” Gimenez recalled. All shared one overriding goal — putting an end to Cuban communism.

For Gimenez, whose mother’s family was associated with a long military tradition, there was no question of what was required of him.

“Along with me, there were five first cousins involved in the effort,” he recalls. “It was expected that those of us able to serve would do their part.”

Gimenez, an Auburn University associate professor of animal science and Alabama Cooperative Extension System animal scientist, shared these experiences Tuesday, Aug. 28, with members of the Russellville Civitan Club as part of Extension’s Speaker’s Bureau program.

The Bay of Pigs

The Guatemala training was followed by the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, after which Gimenez was captured and sentenced to 30 years hard labor by the communist regime.

It was an ending Gimenez and other idealistic young Cuban fighters never imagined in their wildest dreams.

“We were so secure,” Gimenez said. “We couldn’t imagine going back to Cuba and not winning. No one could have ever imagined the final outcome.”

South Vietnam Interlude

After being ransomed out of the island in 1963, Gimenez returned to the University of Florida, completed his bachelor’s and master’s degrees, and then embarked for the Mekong Delta in South Vietnam as a USAID livestock advisor.

Following a health crisis shortly before the Tet Offensive, Gimenez was flown back to the United States, where he spent six months recuperating at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C. and, later, in Florida hospitals. But that did not prevent him from returning to Vietnam to develop cooperative efforts between the University of Florida and the University of Saigon.

Getting on with Life

After the fall of Vietnam and the national disillusionment that followed, Gimenez was determined to get on with life. He married and started a family, and returned to Florida to begin his doctorate in animal science.

While his homeland was only 90 miles away from the Florida coast, it receded further and further into back of his mind as he got on with life in America.

Even so, he still made a point to keep in touch with other Bay of Pigs veterans while he was employed with the King Ranch and, later, after he moved to Selma in 1978 to become a regional animal science specialist with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.

The Soviet Collapse and an Opening in Cuba

Then, fate intervened. Cuba’s cash-strapped communist regime reluctantly began opening up to the United States following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For Gimenez, the prospect of closing the circle after 40 years suddenly seemed like a real possibly. One of Gimenez’s friends, a fellow Bay of Pigs veteran who had become a successful attorney, even had developed a relationship with the Cuban mission in Washington.

Would it someday be possible to return to his native country — to see all of those landmarks and family memories he had left behind? He wondered.

Gimenez’s prospects grew brighter after his sons, Diego, III and Henry, both Auburn University graduates, completed a trip to the island in 2002.

Diego, III, who also shared his experiences with the Russellville Civitan Club, confessed that his brother, Henry, was the one most interested in digging into his Cuban roots. A fully assimilated, first-generation American who likes to hunt and fish, he went along for the ride. Nevertheless, he was struck by the absence of many common amenities taken for granted in the United States.

Meeting Castro

The elder Gimenez’s break came in 2003, when he was asked by Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks to accompany him to Havana.

During a meeting with a Cuban delegation in Havana, he even met the man most responsible for his family’s exile and anguish — Fidel Castro.

“We introduced ourselves to Castro, and I remember saying in the most perfect Spanish I was able to summon that I was Diego Gimenez with Auburn University. Castro’s first reaction was to turn to his interpreter and say, ‘He speaks Spanish perfectly.’

“When he turned again to face me, I replied, ‘I haven’t forgotten it, Mr. President,’ and I just continued walking by.”

An American citizen for almost 30 years, Gimenez has forgotten neither his native language nor his commitment to the Cuban people.

And while the visit and the personal interaction with Castro provided a long-waited closure of sorts, it also marked the beginning of a new dialogue with the people of 21st century Cuba — an opening, Gimenez hopes, will result in a strong economic relationship among Auburn University, the state of Alabama and the people of his homeland.

Gimenez hopes to embark on another Cuban trip sometime soon with fellow Auburn faculty members to establish stronger educational partnerships on the island.

For now, though, he is happy to have completed a chapter of his life fraught with a measure of anger and bitterness and to have started a new one filled with hope and goodwill.

Posted by Jim Langcuster at August 31, 2007 08:25 AM