Driena Sixto says she has a family history of running away from big governments, and she means it literally. Her grandparents left Spain to get away from Francisco Franco and went to Cuba, established themselves, had businesses, had properties, until Fidel Castro took all of it and left them with basically nothing except the one house. Her grandfather died young of a heart attack, which her father has always blamed on losing everything he worked for.
Her father grew up against the dictatorship, and it put him in prison, arrested as a political dissident. Her parents had already met and married in Cuba, and they made the decision this whole conversation rests on: they were together ten years and would not have children on the island, not until Cuba became free or they could leave. When her father got out he went to the United States embassy, said he was an actual political refugee, and got a visa to come here legally. He has never been back.
So Driena Sixto and her sister were born here, raised on the history of Cuba and of socialism and big government, and taken to remembrance events where they learned about boats full of women and children shot down by the Castro dictatorship. In her last year of college she found Turning Point, started in 2016, and grew into overseeing Florida and then several states.
She grew up in Hialeah, which has the most Cubans of any city outside Cuba, and her description of it is the line worth the clip: Cuba, but with freedom. Freedom can be lost in just one generation, she says, which is why every single generation has to do its part to preserve it.
Watch the full conversation at jennybethshow.com. The Capitol switchboard is 202-224-3121. More at teapartypatriots.org.
00:00 — Her Family History of Running From Big Government
00:24 — Franco's Spain to Cuba
00:44 — What Fidel Castro Took
01:05 — Her Father in Prison as a Political Dissident
01:22 — Ten Years Married, and No Children in Cuba
01:38 — The Refugee Visa at the United States Embassy
02:06 — Remembrance Events and the Boats That Were Shot Down
02:25 — The Aversion She Had to Politics
02:53 — Finding Turning Point in Her Last Year of College
03:33 — Building Turning Point Action
04:58 — Hialeah: Cuba With Freedom
06:02 — Freedom Can Be Lost in One Generation
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