By Madeline Baró Diaz
Miami Bureau

MIAMI GARDENS · When Fidel Castro took power in Cuba, his government seized and silenced some of the country's beloved institutions, from prominent religious schools to funeral homes.

In the four decades that followed, Cuban exiles in South Florida restored much of the Cuba of their memories by re-creating those lost treasures.

Many places and associations in the Miami area have their roots in pre-Castro Cuba, among them La Liga Contra El Cancer, or The League Against Cancer, a respected Miami charity with an annual telethon.

Founded in Miami in 1975, La Liga was modeled after a similar organization created in Havana in 1925. The Havana center grew to include an oncology center and operated until Castro came to power in 1959.

Another example is the popular El Dorado furniture chain and its opulent showrooms. Its owners, members of the Capó family, first became known to Cubans with the Casa Capó chain of furniture stores, which dated to the 1920s in Cuba.

Two of the most enduring symbols of Cuba re-created in Miami-Dade County are Belen Jesuit Preparatory School and St. Thomas University, which have churned out prominent and successful graduates as their predecessors did in Cuba.

"Cuba was a modern nation not far behind from the United States or other modern nations in the 1950s," said Ricardo Pau-Llosa, a poet and art critic who was among the last children to celebrate their first communion at the original Belen in Havana. "The re-creation of these businesses and institutions are a way of paying homage to the splendor of the Cuban Republic."

Agueda Ogazón attended the Universidad de Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Havana in the 1950s. A private university, Villanueva offered students the opportunity to finish their degrees without worrying about student-led shutdowns, such as the ones that set back students at the public University of Havana.

Ogazón was among the last graduates of Villanueva, earning a business degree in 1958. Today she is a business administration professor at St. Thomas University where she keeps old pictures of Villanueva in her office.

"I think this is the closest I could get to my campus, where I graduated from," she said. " ... The wave of people who knew Villanueva looks up to this place as a link to Villanueva."

Villanueva was founded in 1946 and shut down by Fidel Castro's government in 1961. The Augustinian priests who established the school left the country and founded Biscayne College in Miami. Biscayne College was later rechristened St. Thomas University, in honor of its Cuban heritage.

For years, former Villanueva students were able to continue their studies in the United States because the school sent copies of its records until 1959. Those records helped Ogazón obtain a master's degree at Hofstra University and later a doctorate at Florida International University.

Today, the Villanueva records that survived are at the St. Thomas library, where Marta Gutierrez tended to them for years. Gutierrez, a former Villanueva employee who has worked at St. Thomas since 1963, said the new school is not exactly like its namesake, but it's still a source of pride for Cuban exiles.

"Even though it is not the same ... many people like the fact that their children continue the tradition," she said.

Cuban exiles have also sought to re-create Belen Jesuit, first established in Cuba in 1854. There it grew to be a 60-acre facility with 1,200 students known as "The Palace of Education" and had dreams of becoming an institution of higher learning.

"Fidel Castro shattered that dream," said Javier Riera, director of development for Belen, now located in southwest Miami-Dade.

Castro himself was a graduate of Belen in Havana, but after coming to power expelled the Jesuits, who brought Belen with them to Miami, first conducting classes at a downtown Miami church and later moving to a Little Havana building.

Today the all-boys school is on a 30-acre site where students attend classes in classrooms with high-tech equipment.

Several South Florida businesses also had their start in Cuba. Bernardo García Funeral Homes is such a household name in the Cuban community that it is part of jokes told at Little Havana theaters. The first Bernardo García funeral home was founded in Havana in 1915 and the company is now in its fifth generation of family operation.

Castro's government seized the family business and much of the García family came to Miami, said Peter Martin, vice president of the company and great-great-grandson of the funeral home founder.

Martin's grandfather and great-grandfather started all over in Miami, opening a funeral home in 1976. At the time, they filled a need for traditional Cuban funerals, which include all-night wakes, Martin said.

Today, three generations continue to run the company, which has four locations in Miami-Dade and does about 2,000 funerals a year.

"We're like a pillar," Martin said. "Even though generations have passed and we're on our third generation in this country ... we see that same warmth, that same care, that same personal touch that's meant so much to us."

Madeline Baró Diaz can be reached at mbaro@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5007.

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