The pair begin to sway, dancing in place.
“He’s copping a feel!”
“I’m so psyched!”
“There are so many story lines.
It’s a universal story, it’s an immigrant story, and it’s a love story.
To be sure, the Estefans' gated mansion isn’t just a testament to affluence.
“My success is not about money,” explains Emilio, a gregarious man with an open smile.
“But the real estate as an immigrant, you always want to have a backup.
Something happens to you, you don’t want your kids to go through what you went through.”
Emilio Estefan was 14 years old when he leftFidel Castro’s Cuba.
With his father, he flew toSpain, his mother’s native country, to get a visa.
Skilled at playing several musical instruments, Emilio soon realized his talents could work in the family’s favor.
“I saw a guy playing accordion in a local restaurant at night,” he remembers.
“I went in and said, ‘Do you mind if I come for lunchtime?
I play accordion, and you just give me food for me and my dad.’
"
The job nourished body and soul.
“Music took me away from the pain.
It took me nine years to raise enough to bring my mom and older brother from Cuba to Miami.
That was nine years apart from my family.”
Castro came to power in 1959, when Glorita, as Gloria was known, was 18 months old.
Fajardo, his family says, was a political idealist: incorruptible and devoted to Batista.
He secretly joined a U.S.-backed effort to overthrow Castro the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
Gloria Fajardo learned to make dinner from Spam, stood in line for government cheese and waited for news.
His ordeal so affected his daughter that decades later it inspired political activism of her own.
And in 2010, she led a Miami march in support of a Cuban opposition movement.
“Silence is a big enemy of morality.
I don’t want our blunders in history to get repeated.”
Gloria was in first grade there, trying to fit in despite not being fluent in English.
But soon her father would be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
