Welcome to the Free Cities podcast.
My name is Timothy Allen and this is the official podcast of the Free Cities Foundation.
Hello and welcome to this episode number 138 of the Free Cities podcast.
Yes, hello to you all. I hope you're having a phenomenal week.
We're enjoying beautiful summer weather here in the UK.
Very fortunate indeed for our two Spanish exchange students currently living with us.
We're eating outside every evening, swimming in the river after school.
late night kids playing in the long grass in the fields very perfect here indeed in fact it's their
first time in the uk too um i haven't got the heart to tell them that it's not always like this
but anyway let's not forget as always today's show is sponsored by our most fantastic supporters
and the purveyors of the best luxury freedom oriented communities in latin america veritas
village that's the coronado panama edition of veritas village and the reason i've said that
is because guess what they've just announced a new community in panama that's a chirokee veritas
village only a few minutes drive from a costa rica border new location same situation solar
powered homes close to nature but also to amenities full of freedom lovers health and
Convenience on your doorstep. There's a new hospital just seven minutes away from the new location.
International airport within 30 minutes for easy travel.
Grocery stores, hardware stores and anything you would need is within five minutes.
You're basically living in the tranquility of nature with all the modern conveniences just around the corner.
And you're surrounded by people like yourself.
Lovers of freedom who just want to be left alone.
www.ecovillages.life forward slash free cities for more info that will take you to the page
advertising the Coronado development you'll have to send them a message through that page if you're
interested in the new Cherokee village it's brand new hot off the presses they haven't even created
a page for it yet that's kind of how they roll they have a lot of interest from people who already
own properties in their other villages so if you want to get in on that send them a message through
that page write today's show and it's a conversation with somebody who most definitely voted with their
feet and left their home country to search for a better life something you might be thinking of
doing mylene salawaraya and i should say salawaraya because that's how you pronounce it i just sound
stupid when I do it. Mylene Salawarrea is a former Cuban who fled the communist country in 2001
to build a new life and family as a US citizen. She shares her experiences living in Cuba
and then living in America, drawing comparisons between life under a communist regime
and the current state of affairs in the US. Now I'm going to refer to The Fountain Apps
episode summary here for the lowdown not my normal ai but since i've started hosting the podcast with
them there are all these new features and i've just ended up using them they're pretty good
now fountain says the key topics in this conversation are cuba and america political
indoctrination in education government overreach and regulations erosion of freedoms and individual
rights, refugee experience and immigration and defunding the government and promoting freedom.
Sounds about right. Mylene is very vocal about drawing attention to the dangerous things
that she sees emerging in the US, which were huge red flags familiar to her from her experience with
the communist regime back in Cuba. Obviously, something to be aware of if you are a freedom
lover like myself and especially if you live in the US but also applicable to your own government
organization. Many thanks to Mylene for your time and for helping me out so much on our last trip to
the USA when we recorded this conversation and also many thanks of course to Trey Franzoy for
supporting us so generously on that trip and bringing us out to the leadership program of
the Rockies in Colorado. Many thanks also to my new subscribers who chose to support the show with
a premium subscription on Fountain. I'm genuinely happy about this. Thank you, Dovidas, Cousin Vinny,
Matthias, Bullish Mike, Christopher Albanese and CB. Many thanks for swelling the Free Cities
podcast strategic bitcoin reserve they're all pledging six dollars a week now as subscribers
and as such a subscriber you get early access to some shows like last week's episode with ben gunn
it was so long i had to split it into two and as a subscriber you've got the second episode
immediately seven days before everyone else and as a result you also get bonus episodes of which
last week because you'd already heard the second part of the ben gun episode you had a brand new
conversation with one of my favorite bitcoin og's gg the second part of that conversation
will be coming soon and in fact the second part is is even better than the first seems to happen
a lot in my podcast don't know why that is anyway one comment from a subscriber this week remember
I'm only going to say the comments from people who subscribe.
Not everyone else, unfortunately.
Man's got to earn a buck.
Right.
Cousin Vinny says, what a coincidence.
I look forward to talking to Ian soon about his thoughts on governance and what he knows about NOSTA.
Bitcoiners and great minds think alike or not.
We'll see.
P.S. BTC Sessions has no content on YouTube.
how long is it going to take for us to leave these platforms even if it means bringing only a fraction
of our audience with us right cousin vinnie there is talking about my conversation with ben gunn and
and he's talking about by the looks of it ian underwood who is a free stater who i had a
phenomenal conversation with that's episode 129 and yes i did know btc sessions he's a very popular
Bitcoin YouTuber. I did know he had been taken off YouTube. He's back on now.
But long term, yes, I think moving to platforms like Nostra, which are decentralized,
makes the most sense if you're a freedom lover. If you're not, stick with the old ones. Anyway,
right. Time for the show. Have a phenomenal weekend, people, and really, truly be thankful
for what you've got if you can but also you could just you know sit back relax and enjoy
my conversation with Mylene Salabaria
I haven't got any specific thing I want to talk about
but based on what we've been speaking about
you know over the last few days
because we've spent quite a lot of time together
I think Cuba might be a nice little starting point because you are someone, correct me if I'm wrong, who's experienced life in Cuba and life in America.
Yes.
And you can kind of compare and contrast them quite well.
I surely can do.
And what I'm particularly interested in, of course, is what relevant lessons you can learn from living in Cuba under that particular regime.
What are the lessons that you can apply to what you can currently see in the US?
Because I know, you know, a lot of, well, a lot of people, let's say, are unhappy with the way that America appears to be, the trajectory that America at least was on.
Maybe there's a big turning happening now, it's hard to say.
But certainly, if you look at the America of old, the America of the founding fathers, there are some people that are genuinely concerned that it's not the America that they want.
I think you're one of them as well, aren't you?
Yes.
I mean, when you were born and raised in a communist dictatorship, like I was, I mean, I left Cuba in 2001 as a young adult.
If you think about it in a trajectory of lifetimes, it wasn't that long ago.
For good or for bad, you have like this trauma embedded in your head where your radar to see these red flags is like on 24-7.
And granted, when you are born and raised and brainwashed and indoctrinated in a communist country like I was in Cuba,
It takes a little learning curve to be able to articulate the message and the explanation, the logical, factual information behind it.
But I can tell you for a fact that you can literally feel it in your gut when you see those things.
Obviously, after being in the United States for 23 years, I'm doing all the trajectory of professional work that I have done.
And I'm able to articulate that a little bit better, I hope, with accent and whatnot.
It's not the same when I first came to the United States with this idea that, you know, I'm literally coming to the land of the free, the home of, you know, the freedom, the things that I'd never had in Cuba before, which still is the case.
But it is in a very, very delicate situation.
And like I usually tell people when I'm doing my speaking engagements and presentations, tyranny not always knocks on your door wearing green fatigues and carrying a Russian AK-47 like it happened in Cuba before I was born.
And I was able to realize and firmly believe that nowadays, even more as an American citizen, because nowadays the way that you see it in the United States is just via bloated big government and overregulation and constant infringements on the laws of the free market and the individual natural rights that we have granted by the Constitution and the founding principles of this country.
When you say it's a kind of gut feeling, let me tell you my version of that.
Because during COVID, during the pandemic, there were so many things happening that I disagreed with.
And whenever I saw them, I was like, oh, God.
And recently, for example, in the UK, there was a bird flu virus, kind of scare, let's say.
and I felt that same
is that what you're talking about?
Yeah, that's kind of
So something you lived through in
Cuba and when you see it here
it doesn't
have to be as overt as many
Americans might think. Exactly.
So come on then, what are the things that give
you the... I mean I can give you for example
the case
of education and
you know the progressive, the radical
progressive left
infiltration in the education system. Now that I, you know, I'm a mom, I have two American-born
children. I was able to see that funny thing that you mentioned COVID because that was the great
awakening for, I would say, the biggest majority of American parents when they realized what was
happening with our children in school. And for me, it was like some sort of like trauma flashbacks
when I started seeing that because I was like, oh, my God,
this is the same way that I went to school all my life in Cuba
from kindergarten until I graduated from law school.
It was like this constant indoctrination and brainwashing from the government.
And now I'm realizing it's exactly the same thing.
It's just here we have it in English and with Wi-Fi.
But was it the same things?
I mean, like what was it?
By things I mean, yes, it is like this completely separation and movement away from the basics of academic instruction, of the proficiency that students need to have on each grade level of a school.
And you can see the total and constant infiltration of political agendas and ideologies that do not have a place in an elementary classroom or a middle school or a higher school.
I think it was last month, the national organization that tracks the proficiency rates of students all over the United States released the numbers from last year. It's like over a third of American students are technically illiterate. They cannot read at grade level. They cannot do math at grade level.
And then I know it's because they're not even public schools. They're government control and grant schools funded by taxpayers. But again, we've reached a point where we have been talking this weekend in so many topics that still a larger majority of my fellow Americans are not even ready for that conversation yet.
They don't understand the role that family and parents' independent decision from whatever the government wants to put into the classroom plays in the academic development of a student.
So it doesn't really matter what's being taught then.
You just mean that it's a reflection of a political agenda.
Of course it is.
The academic proficiency of the students stopped being a priority a long time ago.
and it is political dynamics what is behind it
because it's the teacher unions the one that are calling the shots.
That's why we call them cartels.
That's what they are.
The teacher unions operate in the United States
like cartels that are being funded by their members
and they are in bed with the most radical left line of politics
in the United States.
That's something I wonder why.
Why is it that the radical left is...
This is started, gosh, this is started decades ago.
And that's another thing that I tend to debate with people here in the United States a lot,
because in this short-term memory mindset that we live, people tend to think that,
oh, it's this administration or it's the previous one.
Oh, if we get a new administration, this is going to change.
Yeah, we're kind of like just buying ourselves.
some time for eight years, some of the systemic problems of government over-regulation and
control in our lives, again, using education only as one example, started decades ago.
There is an excellent documentary that when I talk about this, I always recommend people
to watch because it has a huge segment that does like this history backtracking on it.
It came out in 2021 and is titled, Whose Children Are They?
The first two segments of that documentary explore that historical question, how the person that founded the biggest teachers union in the United States spent years living in the Soviet Union and literally taking notes and copying the model of the way that the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist Party control education for generations and generations, which is the same thing with Cuba.
You know, that was the educational system I went through.
So it goes back then.
Back then, there is one famous, I think it is in that documentary too,
one famous quote from this guy that was leading the union saying that,
I will worry about the students' proficiency and their needs when they are union-paying members.
I mean it from the mouth of their own babes We got it right there In Cuba though what kind of stuff was being taught that was obvious or no no I mean like for example if you if you look at the current education system in most countries you see a number of unusual things being taught in particularly the sexuality stuff like you say
obviously not really relevant certainly not at most stages it's not really relevant but
um and so what kind of things were being taught in cuba that were just
like red flags how much time do you have i have 27 years of testimonies to give you
just i just want to understand whether there's a like because i i don't a lot of the a lot of the
A lot of the strange stuff that gets taught now, I struggle to understand why it's being taught.
I think the end goal, it's really not that different, Tim.
There is nothing new under the sun.
You know, things and methods just change, especially with technology.
But at the end, when we do that traveling back in memory lane, you can see that the steps, the goals that they want to achieve are the same.
Like in my case, for example, in Cuba, we had a student record. It was in paper. It was not in computers like they have them today in every school district in America, where, yeah, there was one or two pages that they would include your academic information and all that.
But every year they would fill out pages and pages, putting information about your parents' political affiliation, whether there were members of the Communist Party or not, whether my mom, the women, were members of the Federation of Women, whether they participated in the so-called voluntary work on the weekends.
And I use air quotes because, yeah, it's voluntary. It was mandatory. If you wouldn't go, you would get in trouble.
So religious affiliation, there were segments where they would ask you if you heard your parents say anything negative or bad about Fidel Castro, about the Communist Party, about the government.
I mean, and they were, it was like the oldest version of the data mining that we see with technology and children in government control schools nowadays.
Again, I can speak for the examples that I have seen by myself in the United States,
but it's happening all over the world, including Latin America.
So that's just like one example.
It's that kind of like divide and conquer to be able to control the mindset of younger
students.
The brainwashing becomes easier when you put your children to fight against their parents.
The classic example that we have today with this gender ideology is because you have schools, government employees and teachers that are constantly whispering into our children's ears that we are the enemy.
And if we don't reaffirm their gender confusion or whatever it is that they're going through their teenage years, then we are the enemy.
And then the government bureaucrats are their lords and saviors.
That's exactly the same thing.
the Cuban government and the Communist Party did when I was in middle school and high school in Cuba.
So you think it's that overtly understood? It's not a random thing that's happening. This is
very much a... I don't believe in coincidence. All this is very well done on purpose because,
again, the more younger generations you brainwash and you detach. I mean, the nuclear family is the
foundation of the Western civilization. When you look at any history of any communist totalitarian
uncentralized regime in the world.
The steps of what they do, they're always the same, Tim.
They start by removing your...
First, they come in and they sell you hope and change.
Then after you took that first bait, then they come after your guns.
And then they come after the big companies.
And then first is the American companies because they were the evil ones.
And then they were the big Cuban companies because this is, you know, they are like rich
and bourgeois people that don't care about the working class.
And then they came after the small businesses.
Like my grandmother used to have a little restaurant.
I mean, she didn't have anything to do with the big scheme of politics or social politics they were trying to impose.
But at some point, they came after her small business too.
And then you're seeing the same thing here.
But like I say, ironically, the method and the goal is the same.
It's just that in here we have it in English and with Wi-Fi.
when you say came after her small business how do you mean like overtly taxing it regulating it
oh no they completely confiscated it was expropriated okay right that's very far down the
line right what what example do we see anything close to that happening here like i don't know
about specific examples but i think that one i have another one that i i can think of that it was
for me, like another, you know, tip in that awakening is I remember when I was living in Cuba,
the political prisoners or people that, you know, were being investigated by the police and all that,
they would go to your house without a warrant, search everything. Even if they found evidence
of you committing a crime or not, they will literally empty your refrigerator and the food
that you have inside. And the police officers will keep all that. You could have been, you know,
declare innocent at the end of whatever time the trial went to and still you never saw your things
back and you have no idea of the multiple cases of similar examples that i have seen right here
in the united states it's with the same thing and then you have to go back to court and battle to
get your property back on what grounds though on the ground whatever it is it could be for example
Let's say that you have a business that you're battling lobbies that, you know, are using money and, you know, the state, what is it, the state monopoly on force to their advantage to support the big companies or the big business that they want to support.
If someone else comes and tries to do something like a small business entrepreneur, they're going to use those political influences, those lobbies to crush the competition.
I mean, it's the definition of colluding with the power of the state to crush your competition and violate the rules of an actual free market.
Right. They come and they rate you, they take your property, and then you have to engage into another legal battle to try to get your property back.
I came to this country thinking that here you're innocent unto proven guilty because I come from a place that operated the opposite.
As an entrepreneur in this country for many years with many colleagues, clients and people that I have seen, it's been very disappointing to realize that the same things that I run away from in Cuba are happening right here in the land of the free.
Like the example of the schools and the indoctrination in the government control of schools that are being paid by my own taxes.
What about, so how does it work then in the case of, like you have here in the US, obviously, you know, the Bill of Rights, you have the, you know, the amendments, you have these things which seem to at least secure this future.
They secure a future which isn't that.
So how does that same ideology undermine all that stuff and get away with it in the end?
Because we human beings, we Americans have fell asleep in the wheel.
We fall asleep in the wheel and we allowed a government to grow uncontrollably and to take the reins of aspects of our life that should have been our own responsibility.
responsibility. And now we're not talking about 10, 2,000 people. We're talking about generations
of America, of Americans, that even though we have these great founding principles in this country,
these younger generations, they truly believe that big government is going to solve all their
problems. They have been brainwashed and indoctrinated in government-controlled public
schools since they were younger, that whatever they cannot achieve is always going to be the
fall of someone else or the fall of someone that has a different skin color or someone
that has a different income or different type of business.
And then the government is the only one that can come and save you from that.
So the fundamental concept that our freedoms, our natural rights do not come from the government,
quite the country, that idea has been lost and continue to get lost in many generations
of America to the point that they don't realize that that state, that big government they think
is their savior, is actually the country. That's the one that has the monopoly and force to infringe
on their rights on a daily basis. I always like to explain it to people like the story of the
frogs in the boiling water, right? They're sitting in there little by little, generations and
generations of frogs, they don't realize that somebody back there is cranking up the hot water.
They're just sitting in there, you know, with the margarita, with the colorful umbrella. Oh,
I'm leaving the land of the free. And I have the Second Amendment and I have the Constitution and
this and that. They might even think at some point that the water is getting hot, but they are unable
to see that whoever is controlling that knob is not an individual enemy. It is an ever-growing
state that day by day is infringing on their freedoms a little bit more. By the time they
open your eyes, it's going to be like Cuba, it's going to be too late. You can vote yourself into
the government being your savior in whichever modern form of collectivism and government
control we can have today, but you can only shoot your way out.
So, tell me the story about how you came from Cuba.
Like, is it a simple story? Probably not.
Oh, no.
So when I left in 2001, the whole system was quite different from what it is right now.
I was in a tropical plantation.
I needed to request permission from the slave master to leave the island.
And you had to submit an application on a petition, you know, to be able to leave.
and they would send you back in the mail like a little white card saying that you know you were
able to go wherever you were going did you have a passport uh yeah i have to pay i have to do and
pay a cuban passport as well as this but then you need to have somebody outside of cuba to pay for
everything because to travel you have to pay all that in u.s dollars in cuba you get paid in cuban
And with the levels of inflation even now, even back then, the currency exchange in the black market was like, I think it was like 185 Cuban pesos for one dollar.
So we were only able to do that because there was family that had already left and they financed everything.
I was supposed to go to Netherlands.
That's where I lived when I first left Cuba.
I lived in Amsterdam for almost six months.
We were supposed to go there to a wedding.
But the party has been so good that they're still waiting for me to go back.
Is that how you worked it?
That's how we did it.
So who were the people getting married that you knew then?
It was my former mother-in-law.
She was married with a Dutch guy, which is true.
I mean, they're still married.
And we were supposed to go there to attend their wedding.
So the government genuinely thought you were just going to come back?
I mean, it was a bit obvious, isn't it?
I don't know.
But yeah, exactly.
That's how they would do it.
They will give you the authorization to leave Cuba for only three months and then you will have to go back.
But here is there's so many like really sick and twisted caveats in all their processes.
And again, you know, you fast forward time now, 20 years is different.
But at this, I mean, at the same time, it really not much has changed.
They don't want people to leave because that's, you know, the labor that you have.
They just use this system that I call the pressure cooker. When things get too hot, they kind of like let people go a little bit and then they cramp it back again. That's how we end up, you know, with the Marielle Bull lift in 1980. That's when how we end up with the rafter crisis in 1994 during the Clinton administration. I was in Cuba when all that happened.
So, again, going back to the process, we did that. You have to back then, I don't think it is like that right now, but back then when I left, the minute that you submit the application to ask permission to leave, they would fire you from your job.
Immediately.
Yes.
Lovely.
So I spent almost a year unemployed because I used to work in the tourist industry, which is controlled by Gaesa, which is the biggest military conglomerate that controls 98% of the economy in Cuba.
And they took their sweet time to give me the response on that.
I finally got it.
And then we left.
I graduated from law school in December of 2000.
I never registered with what would be the equivalent of the board or the Ministry of Justice to actually, you know, practice law in Cuba.
Because I knew the minute I did that, I was going to be in the database professionals that they have and they will have never let me go.
So I graduated in December of 2000 from law school.
I boarded a plane in Havana International Airport on January 21st of 2001.
And I have never looked back since then.
And I presume that was always the plan.
Yeah, of course it was always the plan.
So when you got on that plane, or was it, you flew out, I take it.
Were you excited?
I mean, were you happy?
It was, I mean, and now that I think of it, there was two really like, what is a life changing airport experience.
The first one was when I left Cuba, and the second one was when I came from Amsterdam to the United States as a refugee.
The first one, it was like, I mean, like any Latino family, can you imagine the telenovela of the goodbyes in the airport?
And I'm the only child of my mom and my dad.
I always give credit to my father for my adventurous life and nomad tendencies because he was the one that always instilled me.
to be like that and to do that and not to be afraid of doing those things.
And I remember there was like this glass hallway that, especially in international departures in Cuba,
that once you go there, you know, all your goodbyes and everything has to be before.
And as everybody started to get, you know, crying and this and that,
I remember my dad held me through my shoulders like this and he just literally got on my face
And he was, you're going to turn around and you're going to walk to the end of that hallway.
And I do not want you to look back.
You have no future in here.
Your future is on the other side of that glass.
He's a good father, actually.
Makes me quite emotional.
It's.
And I couldn't because I knew if I turned back, it was going to be crying a river.
And it was my dad.
It was my dad, the one that told me that.
And before him, it was his brother, my uncle.
He passed away before I left Cuba.
They were the generation that they truly believe in the hope and change that they were sold in 1959.
And when dad told me that in the airport, all the images that I have in my head was my uncle, his brother's face in his deathbed in a hospital in Cuba.
He got us. We're three cousins that we all were raised together.
My dad and my uncle are brothers, and my aunt and my mom are sisters.
So we even have the same last names because it was a brother marrying, you know, the sisters.
And I remember that he got us, all of us, around his bed and he told us.
Back then, I didn't even know I was going to leave Cuba.
Teodoto told us, you girls need to get the hell out of here.
This is not what I fought for.
You're all young.
You have an entire future and life.
ahead of you, you're not going to find it here.
I don't know how you're going to do it.
I want you always, to all of you, the four of you,
to stay safe, but you need to get the hell out of this mess
because you have no life in this country.
And dad did the same version at the airport when he told me that Wow You know as a father that a
But it's what you're supposed to do.
But it's a deeply painful thing to do.
It is.
And my dad, dad is not a man of many words.
You know, he's like a very quiet person.
He doesn't speak too much unless he has had two cua libris or two mojitos.
And that's all he said.
Like, I mean, I can't, it's like a picture that I have ingrained in my brain.
His face in mine, him holding my shoulders and telling me,
you're going to walk away in that hallway and I don't want you to turn back
because you have no future here.
So what did you, what was it like on a plane though?
I mean, what did, you know, like how did you feel?
I don't know, like a deer in the headlights type of thing.
I mean, I have flown before.
I think that I briefly told you about that when I lived in Libya when I was a kid.
So the whole thing of, you know, flying and traveling, being internationally, being in other countries and all that was not completely a foreign concept for me.
The problem or, you know, not problem, but the point in this case when I left Havana, it was that I knew I was leaving, Tim, but I didn't know when I was going to go back.
I never knew where I was going to end up being able to stay.
I didn't know when I was going to see my family or my parents again.
And I had my entire life in stuff in two suitcases and I only had $200 in my pocket.
Wow.
So that was literally a leap of faith.
But was America part of the plan or was it just like get to Europe and see what happens?
It was kind of like part of the plan, yeah.
But initially, since I have two siblings in Germany, one of my cousins had already left Cuba like six months before I did, and they were in Spain.
And then it was, you know, the ex-husband family in Amsterdam.
We were kind of like open the idea to explore Europe first because we already had family there.
And only when we realized that there was not a way, there was not a path to, you know, to legal refugee status or anything like that.
Back then, we still had the Cuban Adjustment Act in the United States.
And that's when we decided, you know, to do the second leap of faith and try to seek that, you know, refugee status and protection in the United States.
And that's when the second part of the airport stories come in.
We spent like almost six months in Europe, like I told you, trying to find a way.
we find out that it was not going to be possible to actually be approved for any type of asylum or refugee status.
And then when we learned that the United States still had the Cuban Adjustment Act,
which was completely eliminated by the Obama administration, I don't know if you're familiar with it,
but it basically gave you like a temporary legal status when you were a Cuban escaping, you know, the communist regime.
You will be like in a probation time, 100 days and one, I think it was 100 days and one day, a year and something, where you had to prove that you were either going to school, that you have learned English, that you were working, that you didn't have, what is it, criminal records or anything like that.
And then they will grant you the right to apply for the residency.
You needed to do tests, interviews and all that, pay a lot of fees to immigration authorities here in the United States.
And then you could get your green card and be a legal permanent residence for five years.
And then after five years, you will go through a similar process to then apply for your naturalization, do another exam, several interviews, pay all the fees and become an American citizen.
That's what I did in 2009.
so it reached a point where it was yeah we realized that the way it was coming to the
United States it was like the longest non-stop flight that I ever had in my life all the way
from Skippo Airport in Amsterdam to Miami the caveat with this you know refugee path status
that you have for Cuban Americans is that you need to literally be standing on American soil
to qualify for that.
And these apply also for people
that will come in the homemade raft.
Like if they rescue in the ocean,
they send you back to Cuba.
If they find you in a plane,
they send you back to Cuba.
So you literally have to be standing
on American soil.
The deckway that connects the plane
to the airport always
is not considered American soil.
Oh my God.
So that was probably the longest walk
that I have ever done in my life.
I was sick.
I was like running a fever.
I think I was having some sort of like, you know,
respiratory infection or something like that.
So I was miserable.
But then it was, I was traveling with my then husband
and he didn't speak English.
I was the only one that spoke some English.
I learned to speak English in Cuba,
working in tourism, was able to practice it more.
And obviously living near Amsterdam,
which is a dual language country,
you know, I was able to get even more fluent. So I had to take one for the team. And I was the one
that walked through those hallways in Miami International Airport after, I don't know how
long I prayed in that jet bridge, like, oh, my God, I don't want anybody to stop me. If they stop me
here and they ask me, they're going to send me back because I already knew that that was not
considered, you know, part of the what is a wet food, dry food policy that you have to be standing
on American soil to be granted the opportunity to seek that, you know, that protected status.
So I had to be the one walking in that long customs hallways, getting to the, you know,
the usual little desk stand with the person on the other side with the glass.
And all I have was my American passport.
I mean, my Cuban birth certificate in my pocket.
And I remember that I just get it out of the back pocket of my jean and try to put it like under the little glass.
And my hands were like shaking like this.
And I finally was able to put it.
And all I had to, all I was able to order in that moment was, I am Cuban and I need the protection of the United States government.
And that was like the second big leap of faith.
I became an American citizen in 2009 and I have not looked back since then.
Wow. So needless to say, you're heavily invested in the country.
Of course I am. Of course I am. Because even though I make fun of it and I call it the irony, it's like, can you imagine making that kind of decision as someone, you know, who was born and raised in an island prison, completely controlled by the government, looking to give my future children a chance at something different?
Imagine how do I feel now as an American by choice with children that were born in the United States and seeing the way that things are turning, the same thing that I escaped from.
I mean, what would be the point? And that's why I always tell everybody, this is the hill where I am happily going to die on, because I didn't start my life with two suitcases and $200 in my pocket for my American-born children to end up living in the same disaster I have to run away from.
Fair enough. I've got a question about refugees.
what makes what's the difference between someone appearing on someone crossing the border in you
know like the Mexican border and someone coming in like you did what what distinguishes is someone
as an illegal immigrant and someone as a refugee it depends on the United States immigration
legislation at that moment and it's such a convoluted disaster that that's why we have
the issues with immigration that we have in this country, because again, there has been a huge need
for immigration reform for many, many years, and it has not been done yet. Even with the case of
refugees from Cuba, it has changed so much. This Cuban Adjustment Act legislation that allowed me
to find a path to citizenship when I was able to make it to the United States was abolished by the
Obama administration, and now it's completely different. They're doing something that they
call a parole or like a temporary status. And then the whole process of requesting or doing a process
of political asylum is even harder because in that case, you really have to demonstrate that
you have been in prison. And this applies to everybody, not only to QA, that you're being
politically persecuted by the government of the country you're running away from. But again,
it's so convoluted and it's such a disaster. And the United States government doesn't have
anybody else to blame by themselves. Because having a path and an immigration reform that is
based not only in that component of humanity that has always been, you know, the top goal or the top
principle of this country that was built on by immigrants too, but also one that is embedded
with free market rules and based on the needs of the economy and the market. And you talk to people
and a lot of them know that that's what the country needs,
but nothing gets done.
So briefly talk me through what happens when you appear as a refugee
and with just your birth certificate, probably handwritten, I would imagine.
I spent my first three days in the United States,
I spent it at the immigration detention center in Crom in Homestead in Florida
that because you have to go through, you know, processing and all that. And then they call
your, they connect you with your families or your relatives and they come on and pick
you up. The funny thing about this adventure is my parents didn't know the dates when I
was coming from Amsterdam to Miami. I never told them because, you know, they ping the
phone calls. They can hear you. They listen to the conversations. They, I mean, they still
do that nowadays, probably with better and more advanced technology, but they still do that. And I
didn't want, you know, to give away anything, number one, to the Cuban government. And number
two, I didn't want to worry my parents either. I mean, what they were going to able to do, nothing.
And then I, so I started a phase that I described to people like living inside a washing machine.
Imagine one of those front-loading washing machines and you are inside and somebody pushes
the start button on it and then everything is like this like the first five years that I live
in Miami that's how I remember them from learning how to use a microwave to learning to write a
check to doing like two extra years of English classes you know like the higher levels because
I already spoke some English when I got here it was everything was like that it was like being
inside a washing machine trying to cut up not only with technology, but even with concepts and
things that I could not even make up in my head. And that's why it was just so convoluted.
I never went back to law school. You know, the common law system in the United States is
completely different from the one that we studied in Latin America. But I did get the recognition
of my degree. And then I was able to just go straight into a master's programs. And that's
how I ended up studying mass communication and journalism at Florida International University.
I didn't have any kids then, so I did that master full-time in evening classes, where I was still
working full-time because somebody had to pay, you know, the rent and the expenses and all that.
And then when I graduated in 2004, I got a job offer for a newspaper in Colorado. I packed my
apartment, everything in a truck, drove. There were no, I didn't even have a cell phone back then.
It was one of those fleet motorolas that you have to load the car with the credit to be able to make phone calls.
I remember I printed the driving directions at the public library on MapQuest, and I had the papers in the truck.
And then I drove all the way to Greeley, Colorado, and that's where I started my life working in the newspaper.
I was already in Colorado when I became an American citizen.
I got my mom out of Cuba, living in Colorado, the same with my dad when I became an American citizen.
I did the family reunification program.
They were already retired, and that's how I brought them to live with me.
Wow.
So I didn't know you were a journalist.
You didn't mention that over the last few days.
Just like a local journalist?
I was working.
I worked for almost four years, I think it was.
There is a big newspaper in northern Colorado called the Greeley Tribune.
and in 2004 they launched like a weekly edition of the newspaper that was in Spanish.
So they hired me to be their investigative reporter for the Spanish edition
and also to be obviously doing community outreach
because I by then was fully bilingual
and also to be like the in-house translator
and they could flow the stories between the English and Spanish edition
without having to outsource that content.
Is there a big Spanish-speaking community in Colorado?
It is, yeah.
It is, especially on the north side.
And I would say in the entire state, but in that area where I was, yes.
Because, you know, I mean, in places like Miami and stuff, you notice it.
I haven't noticed it here.
Not that I've had a good look around, but I didn't realize that.
Yeah, there is a lot.
And that's how I end up here.
The kids were born in Colorado.
Like I said, when I got my parents out of Cuba, they came straight to Colorado.
Granted, we still have family and cousins and aunts and longtime friends in Miami and all, you know, all over.
the country, but that has been our home base for the last 20 years.
Do you go back to Cuba at all?
No.
Haven't been back once?
I can't.
Right now, I can't.
But did you go back before?
I went only once before I started working as a journalist. After that, especially because
at the same time that I was working for the newspaper, I started writing a lot of political
commentary about Cuba. I started doing a lot of public speaking and presentations about
how life under communism really looks like,
to the point that not that long ago,
we were looking for some family documents,
and I just learned that I don't show up in any database
of the birth registries in Cuba.
Really?
Why would that be there?
I don't know.
That's an excellent question,
but I'm not going to risk it going back there.
I was going to say, yeah.
Because the more that I have been involved working with politics,
I started in Colorado locally up to the point in the last three years that I have been doing nationally and internationally too.
I know that my name is out there in some of one of their lists and I'm not going to risk it.
I have two kids to raise and they're way, way more worth it than going back to that hellhole.
Okay, let's talk a little bit more about what you see here in the US and what we should be looking out for, according to what you know from experience.
Obviously, you said there's quite a number of red flags in there, just even in the education system.
What else are you noticing currently that might lead us down or lead you down?
I think, I mean, we could use like so many different examples in different fields.
However, the core issue of all of those examples is the same.
It is a government that has grown completely out of control, a system of checks and balances
on separational powers that is completely corrupted, the lack of turn limits that made
politicians do their post careers to get themselves rich instead of representing and protecting
not only what is established as the grounding fundamental rights that we have in this country,
but also as the minimum respect to the free market and the respect to our private property,
the way that is enshrined in the United States Constitution.
And then you have, which I think, in my opinion, is probably the biggest one, which is the regulatory state.
The regulatory state, everybody's looking now in social media and in the news,
what Doge is doing with the United States government.
And you see people getting up in arms.
Oh, my God, I didn't know that this was happening.
Like, where were you looking at?
I mean it been written on the wall since the New Deal started And I am the person that is still learning about American history and politics And just and that the thing you have like this bloated federal government where like the whole idea of separation and local control it being lost in corruption and lobbyism and whatnot
And then when you combine all that, like I said, you don't get collectivism via Green Fatigue and AK-47s.
You get it via unelected government wankers passing regulations and legislation that day by day and little by little infringe on your individual rights, on your constitutionally protected right to private property, on the forces that should rule the market, the free market economy.
And that's where you see in so many examples, not only in education. I mean, I use that one because it's kind of like one of the most recent ones. And because my kids are still, you know, school age kids, it's the one that is really close to me.
But it's like the whole taxation system that we have in the United States.
I mean, let's not even go there because we're going to have to be sitting here like for three days in a row.
You know, it's like, well, yeah, I have property rights because they're constitutionally protected.
But yeah, when I learned that if you don't pay the property rights on the property taxes on your house, then your house is never yours.
You're literally leasing it from the government.
And that's exactly how you own a house in communist Cuba.
is exactly the same thing.
Okay, then what do we do?
What do you do?
How do you make government smaller?
I'm ready to go galt,
but 99% of the people around me
are not ready for that conversation.
All right.
Give me the strategy long-term, though.
As an outsider looking in,
and we have the same problems back in the UK, obviously.
It's just that here they're more obvious because you have a foundational kind of your country's founded on principles which would be against what's going on.
At least we don't even really have that.
But what would a good plan of action be?
Because it seems very hard to imagine that a government might make itself smaller, which is basically…
It's never going to happen.
I mean, the bigger they are, that's literally their cash cow.
So I think the way that we could start, and again, this is not going to be an overnight solution.
We're not going to fix in one administration what has been being built up, destroying the principal grounding foundation of this country for the last three decades.
But I think a good starting point would be like a multifaceted approach of several things.
Number one, things like what is happening now with the cleanup, like literally spring cleaning at the swamp in Washington, D.C.
But at the same time, you need to have some sort of like outreach, education, very purposeful plan where you need to start teaching younger generations of America the way the government should be.
Because right now we don't have that either.
We have, like I was saying before, three or four generations of young Americans that in these government-controlled public schools, all they have learned is that the government is their savior.
And any problem or anything that they have is not going to come from their own volition and individual responsibility, but it's the government, the one that is going to save them for it.
So it has to be, you know, like a multifaceted approach that at the same time that you're cleaning up the mess, you need to be educated and teaching new Americans what being an American really should be.
Wow. I don't think I've ever heard anyone speak like that, actually, say it in that way.
um it's a i mean i know we're in a battle of ideas but um you know europeans we we all think
i suppose when we look at america we think it's a big blob of freedom lovers actually it is you
know let me take you let me take you to a point that i actually argue very often when i'm talking
about this you know whether it's presentations that i'm doing for high school kids or whether
it is conferences for business people or like, you know, think tanks, freedom oriented organizations
like this one, is that we basically took our freedom for granted.
That's a fact.
And that's why we are in the regulatory mess that we are nowadays in the United States.
However, perspective is a great equalizer team.
Yes, we have a lot of problems.
The country is not perfect.
But when you look at the rest of the world, and this is how I explain it to the high school kids, I always tell them, look at the traffic direction of the homemade raft in the Florida Strait when Cuban are, you know, trying to float and make it to the other side.
In which direction do you see the influx? Do you see a bunch of Americans jumping into homemade raft made with inner tubes, getting away of Key West because this United States is so evil and going to Cuba and Venezuela because everything is so free and wonderful there?
Or do you see the masses of Cubans like I've seen with my own eyes, my neighbors, my childhood friends jumping into those pieces of wood and raft that many of them we've never seen before?
We don't even know if they're alive simply to try to take a chance at having a better life in the United States.
So, yes, it is a fact that we have a lot of problems here. But again, when you look at the rest of the world, America is still, you know, that what is it, the Chinese city on the hill. It's still the beacon of freedom.
The problem that I see is that if we don't get responsible about it, the window of opportunity for that light to be still on on top of that hill is getting smaller and smaller.
It's getting smaller and smaller.
And it's something that only civic duty engaged individuals and being active and proactive, especially in the local politics and the things where you as an engaged citizen can actually have some impact.
That's where the difference can be made, in my opinion.
It's true what you say about look at the direction of the flow of individuals.
But we have the same argument when we talk about economics.
That's what I was going to say.
You see these people that are, I don't know, super experts into it, or like we call them the wise saviors thumping their chest in the United States.
Oh, no, you cannot build a phone and pay somebody in Cuba or Venezuela or, I don't know, Singapore, $2 an hour.
And I'm like, do you have any idea what $2 an hour meant for me when I was in Cuba?
When I started working in tourism at the same time that I was going to law school, I was being paid dishwashing, working in the kitchen, $2 per shift.
And they were 12-hour shifts.
So are you going to tell me from the comfort of your million dollar house in New York and your brand new car that you are the one that is going to decide that I cannot make two dollars in Cuba?
You're comparing not even apples to oranges.
No, you're not even in the same farm field of what you're talking about.
And that's what I mean by perspective.
And the same thing applies not only to the market and economics and labor.
Or it also applies to this whole concept of America still being, you know, the beacon of freedom, because it is no other country in the world, especially in the Western world, has ever been built in the foundational principles that we have in this country.
And I find it ironic that you usually have to take somebody that came from the darker side.
That's what I always tell the kids.
You cannot take it for granted because I never had it until I came here.
I come from the darker side of this equation.
And trust me, it's not pretty there.
So if you don't get moving, if you don't get awakened, if you don't get red pill, whatever phrase they're using these days, you're going to lose it.
And by the time that you open your eyes and you realize that you lost it, it's going to be too late.
It's going to be too late.
Yeah, I've often thought, talking about signs, you know, predicting the future,
and going back to what you were saying about watch the flow of traffic, is it going in or out?
You see that more and more governments around the world talking about exit taxes now and things like that.
And it's the same thing.
You know, it's exactly the same thing. I think if governments were overt about stopping people from leaving, there'd be an uproar.
But if they slap a tax on you and say, look, sure, you can leave Germany, but it's going to cost you 65% of your net worth, you know, and it's happening, you know, like these conversations are happening more and more in different places, talking about it back home in the UK even.
and it's all a response and this it's always bugged me about things like that it's always a
response to the call for a government to become more competitive you know it's like okay people
are leaving they're going somewhere else so the government's first thought should be okay we need
to do better here because we're not really attracting people but no no their answer is
let's use our force because governments operate as control freaks they do not operate as you know
free market forces mindset they don't it's funny isn't it i mean i often tell people this who come
on this podcast but i've been on a pretty long journey of understanding you know that many things
that we take for granted now are a scam like you know and one by one you really like the first big
one for me was because i'm a bitcoiner was like wow fiat money is a scam you know but the the kind
a final boss is the government's scan, you know, not in totality, but in its current form.
Because even a small government, I think, ends up becoming a big government. I'm not sure there's
ever going to be a small government that just stays small. We only need to look back in history.
It's the same cycle, Tim. Again, there is nothing new under the sun. Look at how,
Well, we talk so often about how cities, states independently years, years ago in Europe and all that, how everything became Rome, how big Rome became, how corrupted it became, how it crumbled.
And then you have the same cycle over and over again.
The only difference this time is I think that we as individuals have the power to become more aware, educated and awakened in a sense about it.
And obviously technology is a great equalizer for it.
But whoever wants to do psychology and philosophy, trying to find a good side of the government and the state, it's in the wrong line of investigation because that's never going to happen.
Exactly because of what you said.
When they see something that is running away from them, like we're seeing, you know, in the UK, how high wealth productive individuals and company are literally running away from it.
Like you said, they don't look inward to see, oh, what can we do or what can we change?
They go into more power and more control.
Why? Because the government and the state are not producers.
They are moochers.
They get rich.
They get corrupt.
They manipulate.
They do everything they do because we, the taxpayers, are the ones writing the checks.
The minute they have to operate the government like a child would do a lemonade stand on the weekends, their whole premise would change.
But by now we know that that's not how they operate.
You'd be a great advocate for the free cities movement.
You're basically spinning all our talking points.
I know you're in a different world.
I mean, I already have been doing that on my own. It's like I tell everybody when they ask me what I do for a living, I'm like, I'm a normal entrepreneur. I'm, you know, especially working in outreach, engagement, communications and things like that as a consultant is like I get to pick the causes, the clients, the companies that I want to invest my time and my talent because I want to be on the side of the producers.
I do not want to have to do anything with feeding the monster that is destroying our concept and our way of life in the United States.
I refuse to do that.
You did just now, just before you said that, you did allude to the fact that maybe this time is different.
When you were talking about the cycles, you know, like, say, Rome,
you were alluding to the fact that with the current technology we have and that maybe this time is different.
Maybe it's not that the empire collapses and then something comes out of the flames.
I don't know.
What do you think?
I think the way or the reason why I think this time might be different is basically because of technology and how fast technology works nowadays.
And I mean, look at how many examples in the free cities movement do you have with people talking.
I am not like a science person.
You can see it by now.
I'm very into our letters, communications and whatnot.
And even people like me, I'm like fascinated by, for example, the ocean energy recapture
technology that can you imagine how much you can grow and apply things like that when it's
in the framework of private companies and private individuals wanting to voluntarily
engage in solving something like that?
Look at the examples of eggs, SpaceX and Elon Musk and what they have done in a short
period of time what the NASA was never able to promote or with millions and millions in budgets
paid by American taxpayers. So that's what I want to be hopeful. And I think my hope is going to be
placed heavily in that combination of how fast we can get good technology with so many examples that
can support something like that combined with having brilliant minds and people that are
individuals that are freedom oriented, individuals that operate in their mindsets and the things that
they built and they do as producers and not as moochers. That's where my hope is. And that's what
I meant when I was telling you earlier that maybe this time it's going to be different,
not because the collapse could be avoided. I'm still a little bit, you know, I don't know,
reluctant about it but because we are going to be able to come up with better choices and better
options faster and hopefully in a better way than it has happened before my i have my own particular
spin on that which is um my my preferred future i think in the i mean we're all after a smaller
government right this is this is obviously yep the the kind of the net result we're all looking for
and for me personally i see that defunding the government is the way is the way you get that
and the way you defund the government is you use bitcoin that would be it i know i know not everyone's
a bitcoiner but if you understand how bitcoin works you see the reason we're in this situation
now is because they can print money with a button exactly yeah and we need that needs to be sorted
someone might say right you need to sort of stop on printing but that seems very hard you need
actually to create something which has been created that um that as long as it's adopted
and this is the here's the tricky point if it's an if it's adopted um it's unprintable but it
needs to be adopted and i'm almost certain the war of ideas will revolve around that at some point
it's definitely going to be a big factor on it um probably not the only one but probably the one
that we're going to see moving and actually impacting change the fastest, because it's
probably the fastest and the most effective way to defund the state.
There's so many other ways.
I mean, people can do so many things at their own individual level, too.
But at the same time, you as a person have to be in that mindset, in that position.
Some people reach it for one event right away.
Some people go through a journey.
I think that that was the wonderful thing, quote unquote, on that wonderful of the pandemic
and COVID and what they tried to do.
I mean, if people don't get that this, that that was a testing ground of the state to push
boundaries and see how much more people could take without, you know, revolting against themselves.
Again, I don't know in which planet they were living because that was the veil came down. It's
like all the true colors were out in the open when that happened. I remember I was between Colorado
and South Carolina and I will get blue in my face talking to people that I consider very
very intelligent, smart professionals, accomplished entrepreneurs and business owners
falling for it like if they were kindergartners. And I'm like, am I the only crazy Cuban that is
seeing what is happening here? And then I was trying to explain them and they would tell me
exactly that. Oh, no, that's just crazy Cuban theories. And I'm like, oh, OK, let's see what
happens. And then you and I can resume this conversation if you make it at the end of this
tunnel. But that's the sense of the state. That's the only thing they do. They use their
monopoly on force and power to get bigger, to get more money and to crush the competition.
That's the best way to explain it. Go on then quickly then before we go,
because I can see we've been talking a long time. I was telling you, I think Bitcoin is one of the
solutions. You said it's what you think is one of the solutions. How else do you defund the
government then what are that what other what other ways of um moving outside of the
aura of a government i think i think that finding ways to escape the tax plantation is crucial too
it doesn't matter it doesn't matter whether you are you know a tesla executive or whether you are
a small business owner with a little cafe with three tables and two restaurants.
Finding ways to, you know, starve the beast, literally.
Finding ways to do it in whatever is the little scope if you can do it inside the United States if you have a way to do it in another part of the world becoming part of a truly freedom liberty group a tribe in a sense
I think the fact that we have to undo the generations of brainwashings in younger Americans,
that's something that needs to be done, too.
Because you're not going to find freedom-oriented, enlightened individuals willing to do that if they have been brainwashed for 12 years of their life thinking that the government is the one that is going to give them everything.
Or thinking that, oh, I got free this or free that.
I'm like, no, if the government is giving you something for free, that means that somebody else produced that money and the government took it by force via taxation from them.
So it's actually somebody else gave you that as a gift, and the government is just being the middleman on it.
So it has to be, I mean, I don't know, I don't have like a golden answer solution.
I think that leading by example, in a sense of whoever, again, can do whatever step you can into that, because you literally have to put your money where your mouth is.
And I think that that's usually the best driver of change, whether it's within your family, whether it's within your community.
Actually, probably starting with your family is the number one.
That's where you can actually plant the seeds of change for something like this.
it's like like you say uh that if it's a battle of ideas it's a decentralized battle as well
because once the ideas are out there they form a inverted commas army from the ground up
and you know even what you're seeing currently with doge and what's happening there these are
still individuals acting on their own accord and deciding to do that and there plenty of them by the looks of it And not that I would say great the government sorting out the government because i don think that the solution but at least you see individuals operating in that way and it a good example for a mass movement the
only thing i worry about and i don't know what you think about this is are there enough people
that care enough i mean back home at least people who are into freedom and liberty they're we're a
minority and i think will always be a minority i don't think it's necessarily everyone's cup of
tea and most people are quite happy to live inside a cage as long as they get left alone
and even when the cage gets really really small you know as long as they get their three free
meals they they still will choose the cage because doing otherwise requires courage yes requires
not being afraid of taking a leap of faith like the ones that I have taken in my own life before.
The thing is that the most wonderful things in life are usually on the other side of that leap.
But no, you're never going to have 100 percent, you know, compliance or support of individuals behind this idea.
But that's the whole point of not being a herd and being like a decentralized society.
I think it's one of the main reasons why every time you see big governments, everything you see, totalitarian regimes and things like that, one of the first things that they immediately attack is the nuclear family.
And they attack the nuclear family because they know that once all those principles and that those connections are spread apart, number one, they can control the younger ones better.
and then number two, it's harder for the older generations to rebuild from the ground up,
the way that you were saying. So that's why I'm like, what happened in the schools and what
happened with the destruction of the nuclear family, it's not a coincidence, it's not a random
thing It very well planned because that how the state and the government keeps getting bigger and keeps staying in power That a good place to leave it in fact And I think ironically we got a lot of very vocal youngsters all around us now
You know, this is an entrepreneur's kind of conference.
It's like one of the ladies explained to me, it's a bit like The Apprentice.
They're all coming up to pitch their ideas.
It's great. It's been great.
I have been seeing them practicing their elevator speeches and their presentation.
It's great to see they're doing that.
Exactly. And I'm happy to have them in the background.
I don't know, but they are quite loud.
Anyway, Maylin, thanks. It was great talking to you.
And I genuinely was touched by your story of leaving Cuba.
I think, you know, most of us don't really connect with the refugee story
because refugees are often, you know, them and us.
Or something that you only see on the news far away from you.
Yeah, but, you know, this country is a country full,
literally to the brim of various types of refugees.
And I think, you know, in Europe we don't connect with that in the slightest.
So thank you for sharing that.
Like I said, I was deeply moved, in fact.
Thank you for having me.
Yeah, I know.
It's crazy.
I mean, it was hard. It was probably one of the harder things that I have done in my life.
But at the same time, I haven't looked back since then.
I do not regret one single thing.
The good, the bad, the ugly, the hard, everything in between.
It's made me who I am today.
Brilliant. And hopefully there's been plenty more people like yourself.
Thanks for spending the time.
Thanks for having me.
And I'll see you next time.
Okay.
I don't know where I'll be.
All right.
That one's good.
Thank you.