VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Miriam Miyares is passionate about America and individual freedom, and she raised her son to appreciate the same outlook.
Jason Miyares became the first Hispanic to hold statewide office when he was elected to the Virginia House in 2015, representing northeastern Virginia Beach, and the seeds of that journey were planted by the actions of his mother fleeing oppression in Cuba.
Her story began with a knock at the door.
“My mother went to see what they wanted,” Miriam Miyares said. “It was 2 o’clock in the morning, and she opened the door, and he said, ‘We’re here to get Angel away,’ my brother’s name was Angel, and my mother said, ‘Wait a moment while I wake him up.'”
It was an April evening in 1961, the United States had just launched the ill-fated invasion against the government of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
“And the first bedroom, it was my bedroom, and I woke up and I had a guy, a young guy in front of me with a gun in front of my face,” she said.
Miriam Miyares was 14-years-old when armed men loyal to Castro raided her home and arrested her brother Angel.
“He said if the Yankees win, you will have no way to know it, because you will be machine-gunned before you ever see it,” she said.
The “Yankees,” or United States government, had trained 1400 Cuban exiles to storm their homeland. The Bay of Pigs invasion was a disaster, easily crushed by Castro’s troops.
“We were very concerned he was going to be killed,” she said. “Because during Bay of Pigs they take him from home in the middle of the night and take him away, and he was gone for four days, had no idea where he was.”
Miyares said her brother made the mistake of not openly supporting the Castro regime.
“They come after anybody who is not necessarily integrated as they call it, with the government,” she said. “‘Cause [if] you are not with them, you’re against them. There’s no middle ground.”
Angel was later freed, then left his homeland for America. He raised money to bring Miriam in 1965.
“I left Cuba with the outfit I had on, and one bag, and that was all I was allowed to leave with,” she said. “You have to realize for a 19-year-old that it’s a cultural shock. But I knew one thing, I knew that coming here, I would have the freedom to do what I wanted to do.”
To Miyares, the promise and uncertainty that came with freedom was worth the risk of leaving Cuba. Castro’s government had taken their Victorian home built by Miriam’s grandfather.
“I went to Miami one time for a reunion, and they were showing pictures of my hometown,” she said. “I saw this house, and I said, ‘who’s house is that? I don’t remember that house.’ Somebody looked at me, and said ‘Honey, that’s you family’s home.’ And I left crying, because it looked like a tenement now.”
The loss of the family home impressed upon Miyares that people should be protected, not terrorized by the law. That was not lost on one of her three sons, now, the attorney general of Virginia.
“That was one of my earliest memories was my mother coming in our kitchen and teaching me the pledge of allegience for her own naturalization ceremony,” said Jason Miyares, who was elected attorney general of Virginia as a Republican in 2021. “And almost 50 years to the day after she left in 2015, she was able to go into a voting booth and get a ballot with my name on it and was able to vote for me to represent her in the oldest democracy in the western hemisphere, the Virginia General Assembly. That is indeed the American miracle.”
Now 78, Miriam Miyares reflects on the others who tried to make a better life, but never made to American shores.
“When I go in the Caribbean, there is not a time that I go in front of the water I [don’t] think how many of my people have died trying to cross these waters.”
“You don’t do that if you’re happy. You don’t do that if the government is helping you,” she said as her brown eyes widen to emphasize her point. “You only do that when you are desperate.”
But Miriam Miyares will forever have a bond with her native Cuba, surpassed only by a love for America.
“Because,” she said, “this country’s a miracle.”