51 pages • 1 hour read
Next Year In Havana
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Chapters 15-20Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 15 Summary
With the news that Luis is not married, Marisol eagerly gets ready for her day out with him the next morning. Ana gives Marisol Magda’s address and encourages Marisol to ask Luis to take her there after their day at the university. Marisol hitches a ride to the university with Caridad (Luis’s mother), and the woman’s cool, curt responses make it clear that there is no love lost between the two women.
At the university, Marisol finds herself growing even more attracted to Luis as she watches the reactions of his students to his passionate lectures on Cuban colonial history. After the lecture, Marisol asks Luis if they can visit Magda. Luis cautions Marisol. It is possible the government is observing her movements because of who she is (a journalist and daughter of a family that was pro-Batista). Digging for information on Pablo might be dangerous. Marisol goes ahead with the visit. She also agrees to break the trip in two, which will require spending the night alone with Luis. Marisol is excited by the prospect but also begins to wonder if their budding relationship is just a fling or if it can become something more.
Luis drives Marisol to the beach at Varadero, about which Marisol has heard many stories from her grandmother. At the beach, Luis and Marisol share their first kiss. Afterward, Marisol tells Luis about how strong her grief is now that Elisa is dead, and Luis tells Marisol about how he and his wife just slowly drifted away. Although working and living with Cristina is awkward, their situation is common because of the housing shortages and financial difficulties families face. Luis also shares a little about growing up as a relatively privileged boy when his father was alive and serving in the military, then experiencing a rapid deterioration in his life once his father died fighting for Cuba in Angola. Marisol enjoys this time with him, but her awareness that their relationship may only last for a short time is always there hovering over every interaction.
Chapter 16 Summary
December 1958 arrives, and Elisa grows increasingly worried because she hears no news of Pablo beyond letters that sporadically arrive when a family gardener brings them to Elisa. Elisa spends her days bickering with her sisters and socializing with Ana, whom she finally tells that she is dating someone. Beatriz takes Isabel to task for secretly getting engaged to Alberto, an accountant of middle-class background. Beatriz thinks Alberto and Isabel are so different that they will never be happy together and that Isabel should hold out for a better man.
Pablo finally returns to the city, and he looks fit. He and Elisa make love for the first time one night in his house. He explains to Elisa that having her to come back to is what inspires him as he fights deadly battles alongside Fidel. Elisa expresses her uncertainty about whether it is all worth it and the likely outcome of the revolution now that Batista has cracked down even more. Their time together ends when Pablo gives Elisa his grandmother’s diamond ring. They are engaged, but they are uncertain that they will see each other again after their parting.
Chapter 17 Summary
Marisol and Luis check into a resort hotel, and Marisol cannot help but wonder if some of the strange looks they get is because the hotel staff and other guests assume that Marisol is there to buy sex from Luis. She has all the trappings of a rich sex tourist, and she even starts to wonder if Luis feels uncomfortable about their different economic backgrounds. She is relieved when he tells her that he just feels uncomfortable enjoying such luxury when most Cubans cannot afford basics. Luis can’t offer complete reassurance to Marisol about whether their relationship can survive her returning home. Their attraction for each other is so powerful, however, they finally make love despite the complications of their positions. In this more modern setting, it is Marisol who makes the first move.
In the wake of their lovemaking, Elisa and Luis talk about the difference between Cubans who stayed in Cuba and the exiles like the Perezes. Luis tells Marisol that some things have improved a little under the Castros, but the truth is that black Cubans and women still lack the equality promised by the Cuban Revolution.
The failure of the Castros to deliver on their promises inspires hate and discontent in people like Luis, while people like Marisol and her extended family hate the Castro regime for dispossessing them. Marisol explains to Luis that there is a generational divide, however. Older Cubans exiles born in Cuba tend to support the trade embargo that has led to some of the difficult economic conditions Luis describes, but some younger Cubans have less of a personal hatred for Fidel Castro and do not support the embargo.
In this moment of vulnerability, Luis shares a secret with Marisol: He writes an anonymous blog that could well get him or his family members jailed or killed. His true identity came to the attention of the regime because they put him under closer surveillance when Marisol, a journalist, arrived and started socializing with him. Marisol is devastated and fearful when Luis tells her that the black eye he sported on the night they drank together was a warning from the regime.
Chapter 18 Summary
The Perezes are at a New Year’s Eve party when the news comes that the rebels have won and that Batista has fled Cuba with his favored supporters. The family leaves immediately, and Elisa realizes that the family may be in danger. The Perezes were not considered loyal enough to have been included in Batista’s exile, but they also may be the targets of the rebels because of their status. Meanwhile, a carnival atmosphere takes over the city as people celebrate the moment of freedom between the end of Batista’s regime and that of Castro.
Chapter 19 Summary
Marisol and Luis head to Santa Clara the next day to visit Magda. As they drive there, Luis talks about the difference between the myth and reality of the Battle of Santa Clara, when 300 rebels destroyed 3,000 of Batista’s soldiers. Batista’s men were tired of fighting and demoralized by the collaboration of locals with the rebels. It was no wonder the rebels, led by Ernesto “Che” Guevara, won. Marisol confesses that going to Santa Clara is a pilgrimage designed to ground her in the geography of Cuban and family history in a way that being the granddaughter of Cuban exiles and living within Cuban-American culture have not.
The hardest part for Marisol to grasp is that while she and her family are always holding on to the idea of “Next year in Havana” (229)—returning to the old country they left behind once the regime finally falls—the Havana to which they wish to return is gone. In its place is a modern Cuba that has little to do with what the exiles remember. Marisol confesses to Luis that she feels like a tourist in Cuba. Luis reassures her by telling her that this feeling of discontent is quintessentially Cuban. Luis and Marisol arrive in Santa Clara with an hour to spare before their visit with Magda, so they visit the landmarks associated with Santa Clara.
Magda lives in a squalid, packed apartment complex, and the difference between the Rodriguez home and Magda’s bothers both Luis and Marisol. After an emotional embrace, they all sit down to talk. As she looks around, Marisol is shocked to discover signs of Magda’s Catholic and Santeria faiths, “quiet act[s] of defiance” (232) that speak volumes about the resilience of people like Magda.
Magda is a legendary figure in the lore Elisa passed down to her granddaughter, and as Magda shares story after story with Marisol, Marisol comes to realize how strong a woman Magda was. Magda tells them that in the days before the Perezes fled, it was clear that they were about to leave. Things had gotten so bad that Elisa finally confessed to Magda that she was in a relationship with Pablo. Magda shocks Marisol when she explains that Elisa probably confessed in the end to the relationship because she was pregnant. The baby had to have been Marisol’s father, Miguel.
Chapter 20 Summary
Back in 1959, the city is on general strike and the ordinary people of Havana are increasingly letting their anger over the dominance of the elites out. The rebels under Guevara are on their way from Santa Clara to Havana, a 600-mile journey. Fidel installs Manuel Urrutia Lleó as president. There are riots and looting in some instances. Despite the city being on edge, Elisa feels she must find Pablo. She confides in Magda one day when Magda discovers her getting dressed in casual clothes so she can slip out. Magda accompanies her to Pablo’s place, but no one is there when they arrive. On the way back, they run into a mob. They manage to make it home, however. Magda demands to know why Elisa is so intent on pursuing Pablo. Elisa responds by telling Magda that she is pregnant. Magda hovers over Elisa after that and plies her with extra food for the baby.
Meanwhile, Emilio grows worried as Castro’s group—the 26th of July vanguard—disbands the city police force and takes over, turns the American tourists out, and opens the casinos to livestock. Emilio warns everyone that while Castro is promising freedom, what is coming is more oppression.
Chapters 15-20 Analysis
This section is dominated by the parallel romance plot of the two couples of the novel and the accelerating Cuban Revolution in the 1959 portions. Cleeton’s plotting in these chapters underscores the degree to which even the most personal of interactions are shaped by politics.
Pablo and Elisa finally consummate their relationship with one night of lovemaking that Elisa snatches through subterfuge. For them, the central battles of the revolution prove to be the greatest challenge to their ability to be together. They are on different paths at this moment because Elisa sees Havana and Cuba as being in the midst of a dangerous dissolution, while Pablo sees the country as being on the cusp of becoming what it should be. When the revolutionary forces win at Santa Clara and Batista flees, Elisa’s fear of him and Pablo’s absence tie her even more firmly to her family. The Battle at Santa Clara symbolizes all that she fears. Her pregnancy, which she reveals to Magda, is the tangible sign of how trapped she is between her hope for a life with Pablo and her hope that her family can survive.
For Marisol and Luis, the complications are different, but they are no less dangerous. The trip to Santa Clara marks a turning point in Marisol’s relationship with Luis, Cuba, and her understanding of her family’s history. At the hotel with Luis, Marisol is forced to recognize that she approaches Santa Clara and the geography of Havana differently than Luis. Her relationship with Luis is one in which she holds a great deal of the power by virtue of her wealth and her American passport. She has much greater mobility than he does, and (from the outside, anyway) their relationship looks remarkably like the exploitative economic ones that exist between sex tourists and local sex workers. Marisol’s initial, tentative reaction to Luis results from her sense of guilt as she recognizes her own privilege.
Beyond recognizing her privilege, Marisol comes to understand that her “return” to Cuba is no such thing. Returning to one’s homeland is an exile’s dream, one Marisol recognizes as impossible because the exile’s homeland exists in imaginary time, not reality. When Marisol goes to Santa Clara, she sees Santa Clara as a Cuban-American, a person who has experienced the revolution only from a distance. The difficult conditions under which Magda lives make Marisol see the real-world impact of the embargo.
When Magda reveals that Elisa was pregnant in 1958, she completely upends Marisol’s identity; Elisa’s stories, the foundation of Marisol’s sense of herself as the granddaughter of Cuban exiles, are revealed to be both partial and false. Elisa’s whirlwind courtship with Juan Ferrera covers over the fact that Marisol’s biological grandfather was a revolutionary. The encounter with Magda, especially Magda’s access to a more complete story of the last days of the Perezes in Cuba, shows Marisol that the Cuban heritage to which she clings is based on oral traditions that come through Magda, who is an ordinary Cuban woman, not one of the elite. Marisol sees this strength as Cuban, not something that belongs to Perezes. Luis also labels Marisol’s sense of uncertainty and unease as Cuban. These two alternate means of identifying as Cuban—ones that are not necessarily rooted in the literal ground of Cuba or Perez family history—eventually prove key to Marisol’s identity as Cuban-American.
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