Next Year In Havana

Over the next few weeks, Pablo and Elisa must content themselves with communicating by letter. Nevertheless, Elisa finds herself falling more and more deeply in love with him, despite the seeming impossibility of overcoming being on opposite sides of the revolution. Elisa goes out to lunch with Ana, who puts her friend’s worried silence down to anxiety about what is happening with Alejandro. Ana has been told like everyone else that Alejandro is studying abroad, but she seems to sense the truth. Elisa does not at first dare to tell her friend about Pablo.

The lunch ends when the two women must hit the ground to avoid gunfire. As they walk home, they pass the bodies of two men killed with these shots. Elisa is relieved that neither of the men is Pablo or her brother. It is impossible to tell these days who is responsible for the violence. Ana drives them back to Miramar, and the two friends wonder if or when the violence will ever end. After the early promise of being a progressive leader, Batista became a dictator, and the country is now controlled in part by American mobsters. When Ana and Elisa arrive, Pablo is there waiting for Elisa beside his car. Elisa begs off from going to Ana’s house.

Pablo has come to say goodbye. He is leaving Havana tomorrow. They go down to the beach, and once again they argue about whether violence is the right way to free Cuba. Elisa cannot imagine turning on her family, while Pablo tells her that he is willing to die to free the country from Batista and the Americans. His confession causes Elisa to recoil, especially once she realizes that he is probably in the city to undermine the elections that are coming up because he believes the vote will only provide more cover to Batista. Elisa cries as they part, but Pablo encourages her to believe they (and the revolution) have a chance.

Back in the present, Marisol is shocked by the contents of Elisa’s letters. For all of Marisol’s life, Elisa was staunchly opposed to the revolution and Castro—a stance typical of Cubans who started life over in America. Marisol cannot reconcile this part of Elisa with the one of a girl falling in love with Pablo. Marisol talks with Luis (who is sporting a black eye for some reason) later that night and tells him that she wants to find out what happened to Pablo. Luis discourages her from doing such research because it may bring her and his family to the attention of the regime. They share several drinks, so many that they are hung over the next morning, and Marisol feels more and more attracted to Luis even though he is a married man. Luis agrees to take her sightseeing tomorrow so she can do research on her article. They will also likely look at some of the places Elisa mentioned in her letters.

The next day Luis takes Marisol to the tourist parts of Havana but also to the parts of Havana where ordinary Cubans live out their lives. Marisol is struck by the contrast between the obvious cheer of the Cubans and material poverty she sees around her. Another contrast she notices is between the beautiful tourist parts of the city, which have benefited from the influx of convertible Cuban pesos (CUC), and the parts of the city inhabited by ordinary Cubans. Luis explains in whispers that there is a growing economic divide between those who get paid in CUCs and those who do not.

The impact of the tourist industry on Havana since the loosening of travel restrictions with the death of Fidel Castro is obvious in Old Havana and makes Marisol uneasy as she considers her own comfortable life as a Cuban exile. Nevertheless, Marisol is moved to tears in Old Havana when she sees the Cathedral of Havana, a church where many important events in the Perez family took place. Later, they head to Vedado to eat lunch, and Marisol sees firsthand the lives of Cubans outside of the tourist zone. Obvious signs of how hard life is—ration books, Luis’s comments about the black market—force Marisol to admit that although she and Luis share a Cuban heritage, the differences between the lives of those who stayed in Castro’s Cuba and those who fled are so great that to be Cuban means two different things for them.

Luis convinces Marisol to go to the Malecón for one last stop. Marisol grows even more aware that she is attracted to Luis. At the Malecón, the desperation of people attempting to provide services to tourists is hard to reconcile with Elisa’s stories of the Malecón, which Marisol sees as “the beating heart of Havana” (141). Night begins to fall, and as music and the sea make their sounds in the background, Luis asks if Marisol is dating anyone and touches her hand. She tells him she is not dating.

Luis and Marisol return to the house, after which Marisol seeks out Ana. Ana agrees to answer Marisol’s questions about Elisa and the mysterious Pablo. Ana explains that times were difficult and polarized during the days before the Perez family left. The Perez family members were long-standing supporters of Batista, so Alejandro’s defection was a blow to the family. Elisa never shared the identity of her lover with Ana, probably out of a sense of shame for associating with someone so opposed to Perezes’ interests but also out of a desire to protect all involved from knowledge that might make them vulnerable to the authorities.

The thing Ana asks Marisol to understand is that life in Miramar was opulent, but everyone else lived terrible lives marred by inequality and injustice. The injustice was so obvious that there were lots of Alejandros who joined the revolution and thus found themselves on the opposite side from their families. As far as the identity of Elisa’s lover, Ana knows he was older. She also launches into a story about an important event that happened before the Perezes fled Cuba.

Back in 1959, Aguero, Batista’s favored candidate, wins a fixed election. No one is happy about this outcome, although Elisa’s parents seem less tense. Some Cubans settle into resignation, but the revolution escalates elsewhere. Elisa’s lifeline is the letters she receives from Pablo and writes back to him, but these come with less frequency and then stop altogether. One day while Elisa is out shopping, Alejandro accosts her and tells her why: Pablo is in the notorious prison La Cabaña, held as a prisoner so the authorities can extract information about Fidel from him.

Desperate to save her lover, Elisa agrees to Alejandro’s plan—she will ask her father for help. Although Elisa claims that Pablo is merely a friend, Emilio immediately sees through her lie. He is disappointed to find that Elisa is yet another child who opposes him and is bringing unwelcome attention to the family from Batista, who is at his most dangerous now that the people’s displeasure with his regime is boiling over. Emilio extracts a promise from Elisa. In exchange for Emilio’s efforts to inquire about Pablo, Elisa is to cease all contact with Pablo. Emilio makes no promises about getting Pablo out, but Elisa is so desperate that she makes a show of accepting the deal.

Ana explains that this story is all she knows, but she tells Marisol that Magda, the nanny of the Perez sisters, may know more. Magda lives outside of Havana, a few hours away by car. When Marisol asks what it is like for Ana to have lived as one of the Cubans to stay in the country, Ana explains that the country’s descent into authoritarianism was gradual enough and her family was privileged enough that it took a long time for her to understand how bad things could get. After Batista left and Fidel assumed power, the regime took the Rodriguez family’s rum business. Ana’s family left, but Ana stayed behind with her husband, a photographer who wanted to document the revolution, and they became even more grounded in Cuba when Ana got pregnant. The process of losing all material wealth came slowly. In the end, everyone was equal in their poverty.

Luis interjects at this point to say Fidel lived an opulent life while the people suffered, however. Luis remarks bitterly on the two-tier class system in revolutionary Cuba—it is like something out of George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Luis argues that the true outcome of the revolution was not equality for all, but rather the rise of the black-market entrepreneur. Luis rails against Cuba and Castro’s theft of the country from the people despite his promise of revolution. Luis explains that there are people who feel like him, but they keep such discontents quiet. Their lives are so precarious, and all Luis really wants is freedom. The poisonous control of the regime makes even speaking about discontent punishable with imprisonment, and the country is riddled with informants that make speaking freely dangerous.

Marisol recognizes at once that this portrait of Cuba is the one on which she was raised as well. Luis explains with great passion that the Cuban government owns everything. If Luis ever left the country, he would be forced to give up everything to them, the house, even family portraits. Every bit of Luis’s energy is consumed with surviving—just as the regime intends—, and Luis fears the day they grind the last bit of hope for freedom out of him. The loosening of diplomatic relations with the US isn’t improving matters, either. There are two Cubas—one for tourist consumption and one for the rest of the Cubans. Cubans are not even allowed in certain parts of their country because they have been ceded to tourism.

The conversation takes a personal turn when Luis reveals that he is divorced from his wife. Marisol is shocked because Cristina led her to believe otherwise. When she tells Luis about her misunderstanding of Luis’s marital status, he quickly realizes that she thought he was a married man who had no problem pursuing a woman outside of his marriage. After a moment of awkwardness, Luis convinces Marisol to come with him to the university in the morning when he goes in to teach his history class. He promises her a tour of the island as well, including a beach trip.

Back in 1958, Emilio manages to secure Pablo’s release. Elisa meets up with him at the house of Guillermo, who held the party where they first met. Pablo shows obvious signs of having been tortured. When Elisa explains what she asked of her father, Pablo lashes out by explaining that others without such connections will be executed tomorrow. He sorrowfully tells Elisa that there is likely no hope for their relationship because of the politics that stand between them. Pablo intends to retreat to the mountains with the other rebels instead of fleeing the country. Their situation seems hopeless.