Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner

By Mario López-Goicoechea

What does a certificate of naturalistion mean to an immigrant in Brexit-plagued modern Britain? How do we navigate the various identity markers we acquire through life? Which ones stand out? Which ones blend in and get forgotten? And why? How does language affect the process of adaptation to a new country? Should writing from an “English as an Additional Language (EAL)” perspective be seen through the prism of aesthetics (writing per se) or identity politics? What is masculinity in the 21st century? How big is the Afro-Cuban scene in London nowadays? Is it time the Cuban government acknowledged Virgilio Piñera’s contribution to the island’s literary canon and apologised for the way it treated the writer? What is the linguistic future of the next Latin American generation?
Throughout almost a hundred pages, I will attempt to answer these and other questions. However, if you finish the book and are left with more interrogative sentences than statements, I will feel just as satisfied. My job as a writer has been done.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781528994316

Book preview

About the Author

Mario López-Goicoechea is a Cuban-born, London-based writer and blogger who has lived in the British capital since 1997. His success as a blogger merited his inclusion in the first anthology of Cuban bloggers called Buena Vista Social Blog (editor, Beatriz Calvo Peña) in 2010. In 2012, Mario published three separate essays on the centenary of Cuba’s foremost playwright, poet, essayist and short storywriter, Virgilio Piñera in The Guardian, Prospect magazine and The Prisma newspaper. For the last twelve years, Mario has built a strong and ever-growing diverse readership. To quote from a reviewer on Medium, Mario produces intelligent writing that seeks to start conversations on difficult issues.

Dedication

To my mother, Valentina Onelia Goicoechea Hernández.

To my children: Adjani López-Rocca (aka AJ) and Yonita Lucienne López-Rocca (aka Yolanda).

This space was initially chosen for the inspiring quote, poem or philosophical thought that would mark the author out as a clever, sensitive and intellectual being. But, bearing in mind that most spiritually-driven literary reflections have been used up on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, the author has decided to leave this space blank for the reader to fill it in with their words of choice. Thanks.

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Copyright Information ©

Mario López-Goicoechea 2021

The right of Mario López-Goicoechea to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528994293 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528994309 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528994316 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2021

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

Level 37, Office 37.15, 1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Arts Council England for their support without which the publication of this book would not have been possible.

I would like to thank my publisher, Austin Macauley, for trusting me and supporting me along the way.

I would also like to thank Deborah Jaffe for her craftsmanship and creativity as a photographer. She managed to capture the essence of the book as well as that of the author.

Note to the reader:

Please, be assured that during the writing, production, printing, publishing, marketing and promotion of this book no £25,000.00 shed was used. Also, no country’s future was played with, jeopardised or harmed in any way. In fact, this book could not possibly have been written without the centuries-old, positive contribution of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of immigrants and their descendants to British cultural, socioeconomic and political life.

Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner

The Secretary of State, in exercise of the powers conferred by the British Nationality Act 1981, hereby grants this certificate of naturalisation to the person named below, who shall be a

BRITISH CITIZEN

from the date of this certificate

It was May, 2005. I, along with what must have numbered hundreds if not thousands of immigrants across the country, was being granted full British citizenship.

The certificate, which I am looking at now, is in a black file carrier, kept on a shelf alongside CDs and books. A fitting location, I would add, which shows my love for both, art and my adopted land. The document reminds me of the imaginary oath I have sworn to this country (I don’t recall being asked to do an actual one) and the duties and responsibilities I share with those born here. It also reminds me of my privileges. Fully deserved privileges I never imagined having in the first place.

On that day in 2005, I was also granted something else­—access to the democratic principles on which the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland were founded. To be clear, I had already gained and exercised these rights in my previous eight years in this country as a long-term resident. I had voted in four elections, including two London mayoral ones, and held two full-time jobs. I had always paid my taxes and contributed to that then-fashionable term, ‘multicultural society’.

Nevertheless, there was a special quality to having these hard-earned rights validated by the certificate I am holding in my hands. It was almost the reverse of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man’s opening passage:

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fibre and liquids – and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. Like the bodiless heads you see sometimes in circus sideshows, it is as though I have been surrounded by mirrors of hard, distorting glass. When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination – indeed, everything and anything except me."

Unlike Ellison, my flesh and bone were perceived and my mind remarked on, but only in certain circumstances. Being an immigrant usually means juggling a multitude of identity markers. Some, you choose. Some, chosen for you. Those that fall in the latter category might not necessarily be at the forefront of the immigrant’s mind when defining themselves. For example, for some inexplicable reason, as soon as I arrived in Britain, I found myself having to define and explain my Cuban identity whenever questioned. Chiefly politically. This usually happened with likeminded people of a liberal bent. Yet, their preconceived notions of what they thought Cubans were and/or Cuba was clashed with the evidence-based reality which I confronted them with. To add an ironic twist to this state of affairs, when the said ‘experts’ in Cuba were challenged by me, they tended to ignore my comments, thus, rendering me invisible. Perhaps Ellison was onto something after all.

***

Fifteen years after that day in 2005, I cannot read this certificate without getting a bit teary. Especially because in recent times, I and many other immigrants have started questioning our role in the modern British society. More importantly, if we have a role at all. There is no point in beating around the bush when there is a big, XXL-sized elephant in the room which changes colour according to which minority group’s turn it is to be scapegoated. Brexit has unleashed a beast that respects no skin colour, race or creed.

In an attempt to ‘take back control’, Brexit has stigmatised us foreigners, legal or not. It has lumped us all together and picked on just one of our many identity markers—that of being an immigrant. It has then proceeded to concentrate all its anger and frustration on that one trait. The outcome has been an onslaught that has conveniently diverted attention from more serious, socio-economic and political issues.

Since 2016, the questions that I have asked myself at times, in the wake of the European referendum are—Would I still have applied for the British citizenship in 2005 if I had known that eleven years after, the UK would go on to vote to leave the EU permanently in 2019? Would I have gone ahead with the whole, labyrinthine process of becoming a naturalised British citizen, if I had known that as a consequence of leave, I and many fellow immigrants were going to be scapegoated? Especially (and this is what sticks in the craw a wee bit), scapegoated for failures that can only be ascribed to a decades-old deficient economic model?

The short answer is yes. I would have still applied to become a British citizen. I used the word ‘privileges’ before. Amongst those, I can include the right to vote and hold a government to account, even if the process is flawed. Also, the freedom of speech that allows me to write this essay, praising or lambasting the UK and its various institutions. The choice to read the newspapers or magazines I read and to have unlimited access to different sources of information, some of which might conflict with long-held views and principles I have. These are rights not to be scoffed at or to be thought of lightly. And yet.

Before May 2005, I would have thought it a pretence to call myself an immigrant, even if in pure lexical terms, I qualify as one. The reason which some might see as banal is not without substance. For the last thirty-odd years, going back to when I still lived in Cuba, I have called myself an atheist. In the last decade or so, that definition has grown to include humanism. In fact, humanism has replaced atheism