Rumbauts of Las Villas

OUR ROOTS AND OUR BRANCHES
THE RUMBAUTS OF LAS VILLAS

The Rumbauts of Las Villas

Our grandfather Bienvenido had the Rumbaut name on both of his parents’ sides. The first Rumbaut we can trace on his father’s side is Casiano Rumbaut, his grandfather. Casiano married Candelaria de la Cruz in the 1860’s and had Vicente Ramón Rumbaut Cruz.

Casiano was born in Güines, in the province of La Habana. He was a land owner. He had two brothers, one of whom never married and lived in Cienfuegos.

Candelaria was born in Camarones, near Cienfuegos.

Vicente Rumbaut de la Cruz

Vicente Ramón Rumbaut de la Cruz was probably born on June 6, 1845 in a rural area of what was then the province of Las Villas. He was a blue-eyed man of medium build who was known as a guitar player and singer who made up his own verses. He became a carpenter and married his second cousin Manuela Yanes Díaz, a strong-jawed, hefty woman known as Doña Manuelita. They had six children:

1. Vicente de la Cruz Ramón, born May 3, 1885

2. Bienvenido Ambrosio, born March 20, 1891

3. Ana Consuelo Micaela, born May 8, 1901

4. Ramón, who died in childhood of smallpox

5. Salvador, who also died in childhood

6. Ricardo Juan, born March 27, 1908

Doña Manuelita was tall and severe in her behavior, very formal and dignified. Nonetheless, she is described as encantadora by those who remember her. She was very religious, proper and strict. She believed that Cuba needed the U.S. porque los cubanos no saben nada, and did not advocate independence. Manuela once met José Martí and was impressed by his eyes: tenía ojos muy penetrantes. She wore long skirts with long-sleeved blouses, covered by a white lace long vest. She had a huge baúl in the house full of books.

In 1895 fighting had broken out between rebel Cuban troops and Spanish forces. Vicente and Manuela were forced to leave their home in the countryside in Potrerillo, near Cumanayagua. They put their few belongings and their children in a carreta or ox cart and traveled to Cienfuegos, where they had relatives. Ramón, one of the children, fell victim to the smallpox then epidemic on the island, and died en route.

José Elías Bustillos and Manuela Josefa Castellano, who were padrinos at the wedding of Salvador Yanes Rumbaut, took Vicente and Manuela in until they could afford their own home many years later. Some of the children were farmed out to other homes. Bienvenido was raised with his aunts Luisita and Carmen Yanes, [Manuela Josefa, Salvador, Luisita and Carmen are all mentioned under The Other Rumbaut Line below] on Tacón street near the school of the French Dominican friars. At that school taught Father Regis, a very cultured man, who greatly influenced the development of Bienvenido. He admired Father Regis and mentioned him frequently.

Vicente Rumbaut de la Cruz died in Rodas, May 16, 1915.

Vicente Rumbaut Yanes

Vicente, the oldest son of Vicente and Doña Manuelita, had light colored eyes, the characteristic Rumbaut dimple in the middle of his chin (barba partida), thin lips, and brown hair parted down the middle, partially hiding the deep indentations of the also characteristic early baldness on either side of his head. He was conductor on the train to Castillo de Jagua and station chief at various stops, in particular at Cruces. He married María Toledo de la Rosa, who was the same age as he. They had five children, plus one who died in infancy:

1. Alicia

2. Vicentico

3. Miguel

4. Luis Manuel

5. Laura

6. Héctor

Alicia de la Caridad Fidela was born April 24, 1914. The following year her grandfather Vicente died. The recipe for getting rid of baby Alicia's colic was watered-down rum with sugar. Alicia married Oscar Labadié. They live together with sister Laura in Havana.

Vicente Juan Gilberto (Vicentico) was born July 12, 1917. He was married three times and adopted one child, Julio, who has been very successful in the U.S. Vicente was the padrino of Rubén Gustavo Rumbaut, oldest grandson of Bienvenido. He died of a heart attack in Puerto Rico.

Miguel Angel Germán was born October 11, 1919 in Cruces. He died the following year.

Luis Manuel Felipe was born February 6, 1922 in Cienfuegos and still lives there. He married Ana J. Oliver Sánchez (Cuquita) and produced Luis Jacinto Rumbaut, born January 3, 1959, and Jorge Luis Damián Rumbaut, born September 27, 1963 in Cienfuegos. Cuquita wrote a short biography of Bienvenido, which was referenced for this history.

Jorge Luis maried Marta Castillo, who had Inez Rumbaut Castillo in Cienfuegos on March 13, 1984.

Laura María was born January 5, 1924 in Cienfuegos. Her uncle Bienvenido was her padrino. Laura and Alicia have both kept up with family history, and provided many details for this account.

Héctor Félix Salvador was born June 23, 1926. He is a dentist in Madrid. He married Lydia (Bebita) Herrera Sotolongo Chacón, who was born in Cuba. They had one child, Pedro Vicente Ignacio Rumbaut Herrera-Sotolongo, born April 9, 1950 in Havana. They divorced and Héctor remarried a Spanish woman, Conchita Luna. They traveled to many parts of the world.

Vicente died on July 17, 1947 of heart failure in combination with serious asthma that had plagued him his entire life.

María’s sister, Andrea Avelina Toledo de la Rosa, was 103 when she died in 1992. Rubén Gustavo Rumbaut and his sister Carmen had met her the year before in Havana, where she lived in the same Vedado apartment with Alicia and Laura. Although blind, she had an extraordinarily clear mind, and recited from memory an unpublished verse that Bienvenido, at the age of 14 or 15, had written some 80 years earlier to Andrea’s other sister Carmen:

Tu peseta prontamente
Te envío, Carmen, amiga
Por si muero de repente
No quiero que nadie diga
"Dejó una cuenta pendiente."

Consuelo Rumbaut Yanes

Consuelo married Carlos Gilí, the owner of a pharmacy. They had three children:

· Josefina is the oldest and became a pharmacist. She had one child, Teresita.

· María Consuelo de Jesús (Maruja) was born April 17, 1935 in Cienfuegos. She now lives in Miramar. She had a child named Rubén.

· Carlos Manuel José (Carlitos) was born in Cienfuegos on November 26, 1938. He passed away in 1984. He was a well-known actor in Cuban television. He married Josefina Méndez, a prima ballerina in Cuba. They had a child named Víctor Manuel Gilí Méndez.

Ricardo Rumbaut Yanes

Ricardo, the youngest son of Vicente and Doña Manuelita, was born in Cienfuegos. He married Antonia (Nené) Lindenmeyer Alvarez. They had four children:

· Ricardo

· Roberto

· Berta

· Carmucha

Ricardo Antonio was born April 29, 1938. He is an architect. He married Carmen Berrayarza (Cuqui) and they had Ricard and Alain. Ricard was born in 1963. He was a nuclear technician working on the plant in Cienfuegos. Alain, born in 1967, is a technician living in Cienfuegos. Ricardo’s second marriage was to Moraina Rodríguez. They have a son, Adrián Rumbaut Rodríguez, born 1973, who is a graduate of the National School of Art, works in graphic arts as a painter and has won several honors for his work. He lives with his wife and children in Cienfuegos.

Roberto Flavio Clemente was born in June 22, 1939. He had typhoid fever, complicated with encephalitis, which left him debilitated. However, he grew strong and became a rower and a rowing trainer. He was in the Olympic rowing team one year. He married Berta Caballero and had two sons, Roberto and Eduardo. Roberto Andrés (Robertico), born 1963, was Dean of Physical Education in Cienfuegos but is also working on a doctorate now in Mexico, having married Ana María Rivero and produced a daughter, Anet Beatriz. Eduardo Esteban is a physician in Cienfuegos.

Berta was known as muy peculiar as a child. She grew to be a lively adolescent, very social and attractive, but with emotional problems. She married Arnulfo Lajes, who left for the US in 1959 and then sent for her. She flew to Spain, where she stayed a while before reuniting with Arnulfo in Florida. She gave birth (with a lot of complications) to their child, Richard Anthony Lajes, in 1970. They subsequently divorced. When Richard was about nine they returned to Cienfuegos. Berta continued getting worse and was occasionally hospitalized until her death. Richard moved back to Miam.

María del Carmen Brígida de Jesús Rumbaut Lindenmeyer (Carmucha) was born February 14, 1948. Carmucha was also known as "Bolita" and "Coqueta" as a child. Carmucha married Orlando Peña Romero and has one son, Orlando Peña Rumbaut, born July 23, 1985. Orlandito, or Orli, moved to Miami. Carmucha received a Ph.D. in education and worked at the Ministry of Education, sometimes as an administrator, sometimes as a teacher, for 23 years. She and Orlando live in Havana.

Antonia (Nené) Lindenmeyer Alvarez

Nené was the mother of the above Rumbaut Lindenmeyer children. Her own father, Alfonso Lindenmeyer, was born in Germany. Alfonso kept a secret wine cellar. Alfonso's first marriage produced two children. One of his granddaughters by that marriage is Silvia, who lives in Miami.

Alfonso's second marriage was to Sara (Sarita) Alvarez, who spent a lot of time tending the sick. They had three children:

· Antonia (Nené)

· Sara was a very Catholic yet very tolerant thinker. Orlando once convinced her to get into a bathing suit and go to the beach - the one and only time in her life! Sara died in Cienfuegos.

· Alfonso died in Miami. His wife, Teresa, still lives in Miami.

Nené died in 1992. She had suffered from arthritis that deformed her and caused her much pain. After she broke her hip in a fall the hospital had no pins for the bones. A body with a pin was exhumed; the pin was sterilized and implanted. However, Nené died of infections soon after that. What her family remembers most about her was her kindness and generosity.

By then Ricardo was already in his eighties, and was left to learn to cook and clean in a seriously deteriorated economy with a totally disabled daughter. His biggest dreams, which he was never to fulfill, were to visit his family in the United States and to publish his manuscript on the history of sports in Cienfuegos. He died in the native city he loved in November, 1997.

Bienvenido Rumbaut Yanes

Bienvenido was welcomed at his birth by his parents Vicente and Doña Manuelita with a name meaning "welcome.” He was born in San Juan de los Yeras, near a mount called the Pico de Potrerillo (a potrero is where horses are raised). There are no others with the same name in the family.

He was a scholar and loved to read, especially literature. He loved the other arts as well, and was often heard singing. He liked the songs of musicals from the U.S., such as "Indian Love Song," and those of Nelson Eddy, the singer, and Victor Herbert, the composer. Later in life one of his favorite songs was “¿Qué me importa?” by Mario Fernández Porta.

It was in Rodas as a young man where he met Zoila Rosa López Fundora, a beautiful, voluptuous woman. She looked very Spanish, a brunette with short stature and fine features. When he asked her father Hermenegildo for her hand in marriage he told him to forget it, for he had “nothing to offer.” He set out to make something of himself. He had been appointed administrator of a sugar factory at a young age, but now he sought out a career.

He traveled to the U.S. and studied English and pharmacy at Ohio State University in Columbus. He paid for his schooling by dishwashing at an Italian restaurant and by other odd jobs. He returned to Cuba and became the regente of a pharmacy. That did not mean he spent a lot of time there, as he was usually available just in a supervisory capacity. He was more interested in journalism and in civic activities.

He entered journalism after World War I. He wrote for "El Comercio" where he was made director at age 29 or 30. He also wrote for "La Correspondencia". He wrote poetry from when he was a young man until he died. Some of his writing has survived, especially his poetry, of which there are over two hundred complete poems.

Bienvenido was a key figure in the cultural life of Cienfuegos, and no history of the city is complete without mention of him. For several years he was the president of Cienfuegos' "José Martí Club". He also helped found a civic and cultural organization named "El Ateneo". This organization played a large role in the annual "culture week" celebrated in Cienfuegos on the fourth week of April. He was also the town librarian for several years. In the 1950’s he arranged to have the remains of the city’s founder, D’Clouet, flown to Cienfuegos to be interred there in a civic ceremony.

At the Escuela de Comercio in Cienfuegos he became a professor of English. There he co-wrote a book on Business English with two other professors.

He died in Havana on August 29, 1966. He was a Mason; on the morning of his funeral a group of Masons came to his house to conduct a ceremony. He is buried in the old cemetery of Cienfuegos. His sister-in-law Nené is buried next to him. His brother Vicente was buried in the newer cemetery of the city.

The Other Rumbaut Line

Bienvenido’s mother, Manuela Yanes, had a Rumbaut grandmother. She is the first Rumbaut in our family that we know of in Cuba. Her name was Concepción Rumbaut, and she married Salvador Yanes. These two must have been born in the late 1700’s, because their first and only child, Salvador Yanes Rumbaut, was born in 1815.

Salvador the son studied medicine and was married twice. He was 49 when he married his second wife, Agustina, who was second cousin to him. Her full name was María Agustina Luisa Díaz Castellano, daughter of Felipe Santiago Díaz and Manuela Josefa Castellanos.

Salvador married Agustina in Cumanayagua on January 1, 1864. They had six children:

1. Luisa Josefa Teófila (Luisita) had blue eyes. She was physically paralyzed but a beauty to look at. She lived with her parents all her life and died without issue.

2. María del Carmen Genoveva (Carmen) rode horseback into the battles of the War of Independence to deliver food to her brother Salvador. She bore a child out of wedlock named Olympia Yanes. Olympia became known as "La Niña" and never had children. Carmucha (María del Carmen Rumbaut Lindenmeyer) remembers a story told to her about La Niña: that Nené was unable to give milk early after Carmucha was born, and Carmucha was fussing in hunger, and La Niña apparently gave the newborn Carmucha sweet coffee through an eyedropper and nearly caused her death.

3. María Cristina Clotilde married Antonio Capote. She died relatively young, the cause being said to be overwork. She had been known for her beauty. Vicente Rumbaut, her brother-in-law through Manuela, loved her very much.

4. Salvador Antonio Brígido died March 30, 1898, fighting in the War of Independence. Luisita and Carmen could have requested the pensions which their brother’s death would have granted them, but they never moved on it.

5. Ramón died August 5, 1896, also during the war.

6. Manuela Josefa was born in Yaguaramas.

Agustina’s great-grandchild, Alicia, remembers that it was always said that the family had stored away the slipper from our noble ancestor from Flanders.

Agustina died on July 17, 1920. Her husband, Salvador, died earlier, in Potrerillo, on March 4, 1892 at the age of 77.

Starting Over in Exile

Castro’s takeover of Cuba in 1959 decisively changed the lives of all Cubans, and the Rumbauts and Rieras were no exception. After the new government was in power long enough to start showing its stripes, Rubén Darío became critical of it, writing newspaper articles and giving radio interviews concerning the latest government initiatives. It became more and more apparent to Rubén and Carmita that the country was turning into a system where they did not want to raise their children. They quietly slipped out of Cuba with their five children on July 16, 1960, claiming that they were visiting Miami so Rubén could attend a medical convention.

Although they believed their exile would be temporary, they still had to build a new life in a country where they had no contacts, no employment, and knew little of the language. They had left all their possessions in Cuba and had a mere $450 on hand. Rubén had no income for a long time, and the debts that began to build up then would not be paid off for many years to come. He started taking courses in English and Medicine so that he could pass an entrance exam, which could eventually allow him to practice in the U.S.

Back in Cuba, Gustavo and Charo were making their own plans to leave. Businesses were being nationalized, their owners having no say in the matter. The Rieras went to New Orleans in October, 1960. Four months later, the factory and their house were appropriated by the government. They visited the Rumbauts in Miami before moving to North Carolina. The Rumbauts received many visitors in those days; as they were one of the earliest ones to leave in that first wave, their rented house became a beachhead of sorts. Friends and family fleeing the island would end up there to get their bearings, some staying longer than others.

The Rumbauts moved to New Mexico, where Rubén D. had a career opportunity and where the climate could alleviate Carlos’ asthma. After five years in Albuquerque and another five in Topeka they moved to Houston. By then the boys had gone to college and the first two had moved to opposite coasts. Miryam moved to Tulsa and the rest wound up in Central Texas: Austin, San Marcos and San Antonio.

When Michelle was the only child left at home, Carmita took the first job she had ever had in the US. She was 50, lacked strong English skills and any higher than a high school education. But she had math and accounting abilities, as she showed her prospective employer by passing their math ability test with a perfect score and time to spare, which was a first in the history of the bank. She also possessed extraordinary social skills, including an elegant command of the Spanish language. She began as an entry-level clerk, but rose to vice-president of the International Department of Texas Commerce, one of the largest banks in Texas. By the time she left she had a large and loyal staff under her, and they were handling half a billion dollars worth of accounts.

Rubén finally quit his clinical practice of psychiatry by the end of 1995. His career started off slowly in exile, taking several years before he could practice in the U.S. at a level comparable to what he was practicing in Cuba, then another four before he was board-certified. Yet he became nationally recognized and widely respected in psychiatry, taught at medical school for several years, and kept a flourishing interest in writing in both languages. He continues to add to his prolific opus of articles, books, poems, eulogies, book reviews and book chapters. At the 1995 National Convention of the American Psychiatric Association in Miami, Rubén was awarded the Simón Bolivar Award and selected as Special Lecturer. It was the first time in 150 years of APA history that a convention lecture was delivered in Spanish.

In June 1996, Rubén and one hundred of his colleagues celebrated the Golden Anniversary of their medical graduation. It would be the last time that Carmita travelled to Miami.

She died on January 14, 1997 in Sugarland, Texas, where she and Rubén had retired. She left eleven grandchildren by blood or marriage. Through her bout with cancer, she helped the family, both nuclear and extended, to reunite and heal. Her last two years were a tribute to her best qualities of dignity, grace and humor. In a moving ceremony on a boat off the Florida Keys in July, 1997 Carmita's many family members said goodbye to her ashes.

The Rumbaut Rieras

The children of Rubén Darío and Carmita each have a few words about their own lives:

Rubén Gustavo was born September 19, 1948 in Havana. He enrolled in the 8th grade in a Miami parochial school in 1960 in the month that he turned 12 years old. Because he knew no English, that first year in the USA is only a blur to him: but in Cuba he loved to play baseball, and that skill came in handy later that year when he won his school’s Most Valuable Player award (“baseball has been very, very good to me,” he has said). He continued his education in Albuquerque, St. Louis, and Boston, before settling down in San Diego, where he lived for over 20 years, was married and divorced, and built up his career as a sociology professor. He has written widely about immigrant and refugee families, in effect making a profession out of reflecting on his own experience. In 1992 he married Irene Tienda, herself the daughter of Mexican immigrants, and moved to Michigan, where they had a son, another Rubén Darío, on September 25, 1993. They live Ivine, CA.

Luis Eduardo was born October 27, 1949 in Havana. He never quite fit in his new country of residence, having had the odd luck to go through culture shock and adolescent angst while the country was turning upside down in the 60’s: the Kennedys, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X; Vietnam and civil rights; Bob Dylan and the Beatles; and hippiedom. By the mid-1970’s, having recovered enough to become a lawyer, he was ready to go back to Cuba. After a couple of trips there he saw it made more sense to stay and use his English-language and legal skills in the U.S. On June 2, 1983 he had a daughter, Jazmín, with Beatriz Pérez Gómez, from El Salvador. On November 2, 1993 he had a son, Luis Ernesto, with Elda Betancourt Delgado, from Mexico City. Both were born in Washington, D.C. Occasionally Luis still plays a little guitar, tres and cuatro, and writes for the Spanish-language press in D.C.

Carlos Alberto was born on November 11, 1950 in Havana. He suffered asthma and other serious diseases during childhood. His playmates called him “Borracho” in Cuba and “Hangover” in Miami, perhaps because he was characteristically slow to respond. After getting a degree in philosophy, Carlos spent ten years in the restaurant business. He was married to Hendle Pendleton and they had one child, Sasha María, on February 20, 1972 in Austin, Texas. Sasha moved to Texarkana after completing college but later moved back to Austin. Carlos was a software developer until he retired. He married Marilyn Hinton in 1981; they adopted Andrea Rose two days after her birth on June 19, 1989.

The three boys graduated from college during the height of the military draft for the Vietnam War. None of them was drafted. Rubén got a medical deferment for a pin in his ankle, just two weeks before he was due to depart for a second exile, this time to Mexico. Luis got a high number in the draft lottery. Carlos was recognized as a Conscientious Objector.

Miryam was born June 17, 1953 in Havana. She was seven when the family arrived in Miami. She quickly learned English at school. She enjoyed music and played flute in the high school band. She met Jerry Bentley in high school when they were both 17. They married in 1973 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Jessica Lynn was born August 5, 1976 and Joshua Miguel on January 17, 1979. Miryam was trained as a registered medical assistant and later worked as a medical transcriptionist. She suffered from duodenal ulcers and later Crohn’s disease from the age of 23 through 37, at which time she had an intestinal resection surgery and went into remission from Crohn’s disease. Jerry and Miryam divorced in 1995 after 22 years of marriage. Jessica and Joshua have both started families of their own.

María del Carmen was born June 24, 1955 in Havana. She was only five when the family left Cuba on her Saint’s Day in 1960. She decided to change her name to Carmen María Rumbaut as she grew tired of jumping to attention every time the nuns called out “Mary,” a common name in Catholic schools. She considers herself to have a very adaptable personality, as she adapted to more than seven different schools in two different languages by the time she graduated high school. She obtained her Bachelors and Masters Degrees in Social Work at the University of Texas, and specialized in counseling sexually abused children. Ten years later, Carmen decided to obtain her J.D. at the same university, and has since dedicated her law practice to protecting civil rights. Her other interests lie in painting and music, particularly Cuban rhythms. She married three times and had no children. What she would most like to see in her lifetime is “world peace.”

The sixth child, Michelle, came as a complete surprise three years into the exile. She was born July 29, 1963 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when both parents were 40 years old and struggling to rebuild a career and their financial security. Despite the added hardships Michelle brought, she was welcomed as the “baby” of the large family. She turned out to be like her mother in many ways: their looks, their likes and even their jiribilla. Michelle obtained her degree in hospital administration (combining her parents’ medical and business influences) in San Marcos and San Antonio. For years she has been assistant administrator at the hospital in Seguin, a town close to where she lives. In 1986 she married Dugan Taylor and had two boys, Clinton Travis (born July 15, 1990) and Keegan (born August 16, 1993). Michelle is currently married to Dr. Steve White and living in Seguin, TX.