A Cuban exile reflects as the island’s communist era nears its end.

If a dove arrives/ At your window, /Treat her with affection/ For she is my own self./ Tell her your loves,/My darling life,/Crown her with flowers,/ For she belongs to me. —Sebastián Iradier, La Paloma

I grew up listening to a beautiful classic folk song about Cuba, La Paloma (The Dove), beloved of my parents and their circle. It’s about a sailor who falls in love with the island and a beautiful woman on it. I didn’t hear it much over the past 40 years while becoming totally Americanized. But Cuba never left me like I did her at age six.

For one thing, my father was making a prestigious mark at Georgetown University teaching and writing about Cuba’s descent into Marxist hell—much to the irritation of his old school chum, Fidel Castro. And dad started at a time—the late Sixties—when many college students deemed Castro a Byronic hero, and anti-capitalist fervor was at its peak. …

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