Downtown Los Angeles is home to the the nation’s largest affordable senior housing project. Angelus Project is home to more than 1400 people over 62.
One of them is 89-year-old Don Miguel Borrayo. He’s from Cuba and he pays close attention to what happens there. In November, he got some news he’d spent his life waiting for: the death of Fidel Castro.
Miguel leads something of a spartan life, each day is the same as the one before. In many ways, his life now is a product of the 17 years he spent inside a Cuban prison for a foiled assassination plot against Fidel Castro.
In 1978, after 17 years of forced labor, Miguel was released. He was sent to Miami as a result of talks between Cuba and the Carter administration. He arrived there at the age of 52, carrying only the clothes he wore and a small black-and-white photo of his mother, Conchita. He later found out that he was the very last on that list of political prisoners to be freed.
“Life is such a wonderful thing. What happens in life is something that you don’t understand,” he says.
Miguel’s story