An Immigrant’s Perspective

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Eulalia “Lala” Mooney, who spoke at a recent Tea Party meeting. Lala, as she likes to be called, fled Castro’s Cuba as a 21-year-old college student in 1961. She has a story to tell.

In 1961, Eulalia Suarez was a student attending Villanova University in Havana, Cuba, where her father was a professor of engineering. While life in communist Cuba wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, she, her parents, and 13 siblings managed to live fairly well on her father’s university salary.

Two years earlier, the dictator, Fidel Castro, overthrew the dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and that, Eulalia says, was when things started falling apart. Castro, the USSR’s puppet, stripped the country of everything American. He nationalized private industry and implemented Socialist reforms. Life got harder but was still bearable.

That all ended on April 17, the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion. Castro immediately imprisoned 120,000 Cuban nationals, including Lala, her father and two siblings. Lala believes this was because of her father’s university status and his vocal protests against the Castro regime. After two months of imprisonment, she and her family were released and were able to leave Cuba for America.

In 1999, Lala was able to return to Cuba as a missionary with her church. What she found there sickened her. She describes the Cuba that she returned to as a third world country where people live in abject, government-sponsored poverty. The government controls everything, and nothing works. Its people have been reduced to stealing and prostitution to survive. Many depend on the 2 million Cubans in America who send over money and goods.

Once the world’s leading sugar exporter, Cuba now has to have sugar imported from Brazil. Food is rationed to the point that a monthly government ration of food will last an individual about four days.

Lala laughs when she hears left-wing pundits talk about a conservative “War on Women.” In Castro’s Cuba, where foreigners and party members are the only people with money, women sell themselves and their children to survive. These are not lower class, uneducated women but doctors, engineers and architects. They sell themselves for food, clothing, medicine, fuel for heating – just about anything. Castro would brag about this. He said that prostitution is patriotic and that Cuba has the most educated prostitutes in the world.

In Castro’s Cuba, pretty much every woman has had at least one abortion. The average is eight. They don’t call it abortion; they call it “interruption.” It’s about as common as a young child losing a tooth. Cuba also has one of the highest suicide rates among women in the world. It is one of the few countries where women successfully commit suicide at a higher rate than men.

Cuba’s nationalized health care is pathetic. Medicine is extremely scarce. Lala would make up small bags of aspirin to give as gifts. A typical hospital would have one thermometer per patient wing and one blood pressure machine per floor. Doctors would have to go to the black market for medicine and supplies. Payment is usually made in barter.

Lala also speaks of Cuba’s war on Christianity. Christians are seen as the enemy. Religious services may not be practiced in public. Funeral processions require written government approval, which is rarely granted. Church bulletins must be inspected and approved by the government.

Lala sees parallels between the Cuba she fled in 1961 and America today. Castro was a smooth talker, too. He was an excellent politician who would create enemies, then nullify the peoples’ liberties in order to protect them from these perceived enemies. She sees this happening today with our First and Second amendments. She sees the Administration circumventing the Press, interfering with religious freedoms and attempting to disarm us. She finds this frightening because she knows that America is the final refuge for people seeking freedom from oppression. She speaks to many different organizations sounding the alarm for liberty. Look her up on YouTube. Her story is compelling.

Lala is a naturalized, American citizen who married and raised four children in this country. Her youngest, Alex Mooney, is running for Shelly Capito’s congressional seat in the 2nd district. He knows his mother’s story. He, too, is worried. He, too, wants to protect the Constitution his mother swore allegiance to many years ago. He’s been endorsed by many conservative organizations including the Republican Liberty Conference, and the Tea Party Express. He has an A+ rating with the NRA. Check him out at