CUBAN CIVILIAN ROBERTO SOLIS RECOUNTS OPPORTUNITIES LOST, JANUARY 29TH, 1960

I grew up in the time that Batista still had power in Cuba. He controled the entire nation and was very friendly with America. He tried to make our economy exactly like theirs, he wanted a capitalist system. He thought that if America could prosper so much then so could Cuba working together with America. I lived in a pretty wealthy family for Cuba, in America's standards I would have been considered lower class. My family had enough money to support me and my two brothers. Growing up with Batista in power was a nice life. In Cuba, the main sport is baseball, and my brother and I played baseball everyday that we could because there was not much more that we could do. As me and my brother grew up and got older I started to notice that I was pretty good at baseball, but nothing compared to my brother. I am 6'2 and my brother is 5'5 but he could throw. My brother was a pitcher and could throw up to 96 miles per hour. This took him very far in life, he was taken in on the Cuban national baseball team, but he was never paid very much. He got a good salery but nothing special until one day he got an amazing offer.
My brother was offered a contract to go and play for the once Montreal Expos. He would have been pitching in the minor leagues for a little and then with a little luck he could of pitched in the pros.
The only problem was that my mother would not allow him to leave Cuba. She said that our family needed him here to help pay off all of the bills. My mother told him he can go in a year when things are more stable. This was when the revolution had just started to become a real issue. When Castro started his revoulution things changed dramatically. My family started to have less and less money because more of it was going to Batista and help fight against Castro. My family needed money very badly, so I needed to get a job. The only good paying job I could get now with the war going on was to become a soldier.
I fought for Batista in the revolution and when I came back from my service most of the people in the country were leaning more towards Castro. Batista started to not do so good for our country and the people started believing a new government and leader may be a good thing. The majority of the nation stopped wanting Batista to win and look for Castro to take power of Cuba. Towards the end of Batista's reign of power he started to become very corrupt and everyone knew it. He started to only care about making him self money and building him self up instead of the good of the people. So the people of the country started leaning more towards Castro, which was a bad idea. Although Batista was bad, Castro is crazy.
So when Castro finally took power and the American – Cuban relations started to disinagrate my brother was in real trouble. Our mother finally decided that we were aloud to leave Cuba and go to the United States since things started to go down hill it was too late. My brother and I were able to get to the States because we did not have to play baseball, my brother had to finish out his season with his team. By the time the season ended Castro had already made it illegal for anyone else to leave the country. He finally got to America but he had to do it illegally and it took him a while to get everything set up for him to come over. By then the contract for him to play in the Major Leagues was already gone. His dreams were crushed because of Castro's insanity of not letting anybody leave his country.