Comedian Chris Garcia’s search to discover who his Cuban immigrant dad really was LA comedian Chris Garcia is the first American-born child of a pair of Cuban refugees. Garcia’s dad died in 2017 from Alzheimer’s, and he processed his grief through comedy.
Now he tells his dad’s full story in a new podcast. His dad fled Cuba in the early days of Fidel Castro’s reign. He spent months in a forced labor camp cutting sugarcane. He was even in a psychiatric hospital where he received electroshock therapy. It was all to flee Cuba to give his wife and kids a better life in the United States.