After arriving on a visit to Miami from her native Cuba, Ana Garcia watched her big brother run down the football field and into the endzone as a Coral Gables Senior High crowd roared.

The family celebrated at the Miami Aquarium at the end of 1958. The 10-year-old Garcia didn’t know it would be the last time they would all be together for years.

In Cuba, the very next day, Jan. 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and his rebel forces seized control of an armored train filled with arms and ammunition desperately needed by Cuban government forces.

The revolutionaries had won.

Days later, Garcia’s family traveled home over the 90 miles of ocean separating Florida from Havana.

She remembers parades and festivals celebrating the rebel takeover of the Cuban capital. Still, Roberto Ferrer, Garcia’s father and a local newspaper reporter, felt fear. After a year, he secured a U.S. visa for Garcia, still not yet a teenager, and her mother to move to the U.S.

Welcomed by family, Maria and her mother ended up in Los Angeles, with a growing Cuban population. Still, Garcia struggled to adapt to a very different city and learn English as an elementary student at Precious Blood School. The following year, Garcia’s father arrived in Florida, causing Garcia and her mother to move from California to reunite. But the joy Garcia felt as an 11-year-old girl hugging her parents didn’t last long.

In 1963, on an August morning in Miami, Garcia was awoken by her brother Otto. Their father had died from cirrhosis of the liver. Once she saw her dead father at the hospital, Garcia ran out, crying. She sat at the edge of the parking lot looking out on Miami's beaches, thinking that her dream of her family being together again had disappeared forever.

“It was just sad. I mean, my father tried so hard to get out of Cuba, and all of a sudden, now he’s in the United States,” Garcia said. “We were counting on him, so maybe a little angry because now my mom and I are back to square one, and everything is in limbo.”

She and her mother returned to Los Angeles, where they stayed with their extended family at the intersection of Union and Vermont Boulevard.

Garcia overcame many challenges in integrating into American society, a world away from her upbringing in Cuba. Over six decades later, she and others continue to try to figure out exactly where and how they fit into the mix of peoples and cultures in the United States. But as she has gotten older — she’s now 74 years old — she spends a lot of time figuring out how to keep her version of Cuban culture alive for their immigrant descendants who have become increasingly American.

That’s because their identity was built by hardship. They struggled to learn English and lived as exiles in the early 1960s. Like many fleeing Cubans, they spent years trying to help family members escape even as they tried to build up new lives, incomes, social circles and economic security in the U.S.

In the decades since, that generation of Cubans had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They were born as U.S. citizens and never struggled the way their parents did, and they didn’t feel their trauma.

Garcia explained that for many U.S.-born Cuban-Americans “they don’t see it fully as their culture and they’re not rude or anything, it’s just different for them.”

For many Cubans, their time in the United States was supposed to be temporary. Some of them who flew out of Havana and stayed with family in places like California who helped them get set up. It gradually became clear that Castro’s regime would last, and they couldn’t, or wouldn’t go back to their homeland.

“And by the time I was [at the University of Southern California], there was an acknowledgment that the stay had become permanent,” said Norberto Santana, prior president of the Club Cultural Cubano from 2020-2021.

Nearly two out of three Cubans in this country live in Florida, with the greatest density being in Miami. In California, according to a 2021 Pew Research report, Cubans make up only about 4% (about 97,000 people) — a sizable number in raw terms, but one that can get diluted in a state of nearly 40 million.

One way that people like Santana and Garcia have long worked to strengthen the cultural bonds of Cuban Americans is through Club Cultural Cubano.

Club Cultural Cubano originated in 1968. The club has a long history, creating a sense of community for Cubans in an otherwise isolated location.

“The clubs had such a cultural impact, and it’s where people like me learned how to speak Spanish, about Cuban history and holidays growing up,” said Santana, who is in his 40s.

“The first-generation Cubans that came over were different, they were focused on creating and preserving culture and truly creating a community.”

Born to immigrant parents who arrived in 1962, Santana grew up in Southeast L.A, when around 5,000 to 7,000 Cubans were in the county. He remembered when crowds of Cuban families would attend the club. It was an environment purely for the culture and commemorating it for many individuals who had to flee their country.

“It would be a place to exchange culture through food, music and dancing, but one rule the founders had was there would be no politics discussed, just culture,” Santana said.

Though politics weren’t discussed, many Cubans still believed that Castro would be overthrown and they could return “home.”

Now, that change is more visible for Cubans, especially within the clubs.

Maria Huerta, the current president of the Cultural Club Cubano, said she wrestles with a basic question: “What can I do to bring the youth back?”

Even with her inclusion of dances and entertainment, the organization needs help to get the younger generation interested.

Huerta, 62, has been president for two years and plans to continue for two more, but she feels that the community she grew up with has been lost in California.

At around four years old, Huerta came to America in 1965, where her father was located, after fleeing Cuba from being persecuted by the government for assassination. Though a little girl, Huerta still remembers pieces of Cuba.

“That last grip we had on the island before we were forced to leave, that’s really important to us keeping it alive, because we can never go back home; there isn’t anything for us to claim,” Huerta said.

“So, to me, this club is that island, I’ll keep it alive because it’s important that our roots are remembered and culture.”

Cultural Club Cubano used to have more than a hundred members, but the pandemic mainly affected its often elderly members. Now, membership is around 50.

At the Sociedad San Marti Club in Hawthorne within LA County. Arleen Romero, who has been a member since she was four, is now 52 and the group’s president. similar to the other clubs like Club Cultural Cubano. She, too, finds it a struggle to keep the club alive, which is identical to the different clubs like Club Cultural Cubano.

“Many of the key and pivotal club members have passed away… unfortunately, the unification of the Cuban club society is no longer a thing compared to when I was growing up in the 1970s,” Romero said. Adding that it’s been a problem that has been building up over time because of the mentality many Cubans have, which is “someone else will keep it alive.”

When the club was without a president and was going to be donated as a non-profit last year, Romero decided to step up. She explained that the club was where she grew up and she doesn’t want it to go away, but it’s tiring to lead it while continuing in her a full-time job as the principal of Dolores Huerta Elementary School in Los Angeles.

“I can’t do this forever,” Romero said. “It’s my family. I love the club so much and want to see it succeed, but something has got to give — either when I get tired, somebody else takes my place, or we close the doors because I can’t keep making it work by myself.”

Many of these clubs may have served their purpose, and though presidents like Romero and Huerta love the clubs, younger generations may have other interests and a different identity.

The question is whether there are other ways to help them connect to their heritage.

At a dominoes game event at the Club Culture Cubano, a middle-aged man plays alongside a young girl and an elderly gentleman from the Diehl family.

Alex Diehl, 55, was born in Los Angeles and spent much of his childhood in and around the club. When he was five years old, he says, he started attending the club with his parents and met grown-up Cubans and their kids. The roar of the domino pieces clacking against the tables in the main club room, while he and the other kids would watch TV in another one until they fell asleep.

“Dominoes night was like a party where people were drinking beer, smoking cigars and playing dominoes, while us kids would watch TV here and stay all night,” Diehl said.

“ I remember my parents would wake us up and it would be after midnight, my brother and sister and I walking half asleep to the car smelling like cigars, a normal recurrence.”

For Diehl, the club meant something different than for the grown-ups. It was a window to a Cuba he never knew, the one his parents lived in. As he got older, that window became less vital as he stood in America and grew up in that culture.

“I’m proud of being Cuban, proud to see Cubans excel and learn new things about the country, but it’s hard to relate to my father or the other elders as I never had that experience with Cuba,” Diehl said.

He explains, “I was the only Cuban growing up from elementary to high school. When I got to UCLA, I remember meeting a Cuban girl and was surprised, but at that point, I (had) drifted away from my culture; I don’t even speak Spanish fluently anymore.”

Diehl graduated and married a woman from Wisconsin with a German heritage. His household has little Cuban culture, and he doesn’t speak Spanish there. For many Cubans in places where they make up a small minority of the population, blending cultures is common, leading to natural generational change.

“It’s sad, I don’t have a strong relationship with my Cuban culture, I didn’t understand what being Cuban meant until 8th grade when I noticed my transcript said I was ‘Hispanic’ and I was confused,” said Lola, 18-year-old daughter of Diehl. “I’m technically Hispanic, but not culturally Hispanic.”

Lola didn’t grow up connected to her Cuban roots and struggled with her identity while preparing to attend university.

“Applying to college was difficult for me because I didn’t feel Hispanic or Cuban, but I had to identify myself and apply for scholarships,” Lola said. “ I felt like I was lying and it didn’t feel appropriate, but it is who I am, even if I don’t know what it means.”

For Alex’s father, Luis Diehl, being Cuban has long been his identity and his homeland is the place the 85-year old once fought against Castro’s forces After being imprisoned from 1961 to 1963, he was released to America.

At the time, he says, “The clubs were a strong vehicle for me to lean on for support, we were all friends and living a good life, hardly making a living, but we all worked hard and had each other in the club.”

It is where they think about the tragedy that they believe their country went through, and they got through it, in part, by coming together and being who they are in the clubs.

“It’s important to make sure that your children remember where we came from,” said Huerta. “The whole reason for the clubs is to create a community and keep our culture alive.

“But as far as succeeding whatever is left of us, all we can do is enjoy what we have left,” she said. “Maybe someday the younger generation will be interested in it again.”