Armando Arocha. (Courtesy of David Smith-Soto)

Adios chico – Remembering the plumber of West Tampa, the Mockingbird of Guira de Melena, Cuba

LAS CRUCES, NM – As an immigrant, the grandson of immigrants, covered by a quilt sewn of Spanish, Jewish, European and Central American patches, each stitched in firmly with ethnicity, I often wondered how it all fits into the American Dream, how to define that quilt, measure it. Now, after my father-in-law, Cuban born Armando Arocha, died last month, I think the best way to understand it is to place it gently over and around the life of a single person like piping on a quilt.

Arocha was 88. He came to Tampa before the Castro revolution looking for a better life for his family. He was the man Fidel said he was fighting for – a peasant guajiro with no formal education who cut sugar cane and drove a truck for a dollar a day. But Arocha had no use for Fidel and made his way in his own way in Tampa.