On January 1, 1959, Mariano Guas, 13 years old, was at home in Havana when he learned that Cuba's dictator, Fulgencio Batista, had fled the country. "It was a gloomy scene. I was scared," he recalls. "I didn't know what to expect or what it meant. But it didn't take long to realize my life was about to change." Young Mari started boarding school in Mississippi a few months later, and he never lived in Havana again.