The Capos: entrepreneurs celebrating freedom

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, August-Sept, 2003 by Anita Savio

In 1966 Manuel Capo and his two sons escaped from Cuba to Mexico and crossed the border illegally into the United States, leaving his wife Aida and their three younger sons behind, one of whom was a political prisoner. Today, they own El Dorado Furniture, a multi-million-dollar business. Latino Leaders recounts their heroic escape to prosperity and freedom

If you need to buy furniture in Miami, chances are your first stop will be El Dorado Boulevard. An innovative shopping concept, it is one in a chain of eight El Dorado Furniture stores owned by the Capo family. As you enter, you find yourself on what resembles an old style street with realistic building facades, old-fashioned street lamps, and benches. Individual storefronts and galleries, each selling a specialized line of furniture, open off the "street." The Boulevard also features live entertainment on weekends, celebrity sign-ins, special treatment for children, and fresh cortadito (Cuban coffee) for the adults. It is a unrivalled furniture shopping experience.

But El Dorado is a chain of furniture stores that started out as a boat.

Luis, the second oldest of the seven Capo brothers, tells how he, his father, Manuel, and his brother, Carlos--all furniture makers in Cuba--made their escape from the island back in 1966.

"We found a boat, half sunken, half rotted out, and for three years we worked on it. We scrounged for good wood to replace the bad and outfitted it with sails. We found an old irrigation pump and we adapted it as a motor. We named it El Dorado."

They had to leave Dagoberto behind. Oldest of the six (Roberto, the baby of the family, had not yet been born), he was serving a prison sentence for spraying anti-Castro graffiti on a wall. Their mother and the three youngest also stayed behind. In the end, it was Manuel, Luis, Carlos, and five family friends who would make the journey.

But they needed a permit to get out of the harbor.

"To get that, you needed to tell the authorities where you were going, what you were going for, what you were carrying, who would be on the boat, and so on."

They invented a story and got the permit, but only for the three family members. The day of departure arrived.

"To get out of the harbor we had to pass a military checkpoint. Normally the solders board the boat--with their machine guns. The five friends were hiding in the boat. As we approached the checkpoint our father leapt out onto the dock with a pork sandwich in hand. There were a bunch of soldiers, but before they could shoot, he held out the sandwich to the first one he saw, offering it to him. The others crowded around, desperate for a bite, forgetting about the boat, and that's how we got out of the harbor."

The eight headed for Mexico, that being the closest landfall from their hometown of Pinar del Rio. On the way, Cuban planes dogged them and used their boat for target practice. But they finally made it to the island of Cozumel, exhausted, penniless, but safe.

From there, they went to a shelter for refugees in Mexico City, and started the paperwork to get their US immigration visas. But they received word their father's mother, already living in Miami, was dying. They decided not to wait for legal status, and instead set out for the Mexican-American border, to try their luck as indocumentados.

"We went to Nogales because someone had told us the border fence ended about a mile outside of town. On arrival, we went to the outskirts of the city and started walking. We walked 20 miles in one direction, then went back in town and walked 20 miles in the other. But there was no end to the fence."

They would have to cross it. They found an American taxi driver who would, for $100 US, pick them up on the other side and drive them to the Tucson bus station. At three in the morning they threw their overcoats over the fence's barbed wire and made it over. Creeping towards their agreed upon meeting place, trying to avoid the shadowy cactuses that loomed in their path, a light went on in a nearby house and a dog began to bark.

The four of them went down on their stomachs, staying frozen for about 15 minutes. But the dog kept barking. Then a man came out of the house, with a shotgun in hand.

"We just started running. I remember my dad had a figure of the Virgen de Caridad de Cobre he had brought from Cuba, and he was clutching it in his hand. We made it to the taxi, but the driver was so scared himself that he started pleading with my dad, 'Lend me the Virgencita, lend me the Virgencita!"

In the end they made it to Miami, where they were about to start a new journey, a journey toward success. Louis continues the story:

"We wanted the American Dream. We rented a small storefront, where we began to build furniture at night. We had gotten day jobs at a factory, and then we would work till two or three in the morning at our own business."

Once, leaving the storefront in the early hours of the morning, worn, dirty, and disreputable looking, a cop accosted them, thinking they were robbing the place.