
Deeply ingrained in Raul Valdes-Fauli's family lore is the November 1960 day when an agent of Fidel Castro's revolution showed up at his family's Pedroso Bank in Havana, with a machine gun, and demanded they leave.
Calling his father and uncle gusanos — or worms, a Spanish-language term coined by Castro to denigrate those fleeing the island — the agent seized the bank and in an instant dispossessed a family that arrived from Spain in the 16th century.