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Maria Teresa Suárez Gable was born in Cuba in 1956 and grew up in Dos Caminos, a small, historic town in the San Luis Municipality within the Santiago de Cuba Province. Like any child, Maria enjoyed the simple pleasures, like playing jacks, walking to the bakery to get fresh bread with her sister, or playing outside with friends. Cuba was her home—the only one she ever knew—until Fidel Castro took power in 1959, and everything began to change.

In 1967, when Maria was just 11 years old, she and her family fled to the United States through the Freedom Flights, known in Spanish as Los vuelos de la libertad. Arriving in a new country without anything to their names or knowledge of the language, Maria and her family faced a new set of challenges. However, one thing was for certain—in the United States, they could be free.

Maria’s life in Cuba and her parents’ resilience inspired her to write From Communism to Freedom: A Young Girl’s Journey to ensure that the story of her family’s perseverance lives on for generations to come.