Next Year In Havana Quotes

That’s the thing about death—even when you think someone is gone, glimpses of them remain in those they loved and left behind.

Life is too short to be unhappy, to play it safe. To do what is expected of you rather than follow your heart

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is decide to leave when it is no longer wise to stay.

We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.

Havana is like a woman who was grand once and has fallen on hard times, and yet hints of her former brilliance remain, traces of an era since passed, a photograph faded by time and circumstance, its edges crumbling to dust.

You never know what’s to come. That’s the beauty of life. If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected pleasures.

You speak of passion, but what about companionship, mutual respect, friendship? Why do people always seize on the spark that can peter out as the measure of a relationship?

To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world - the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon - taken from you. They exist on the other side of a wall - there and not - unaltered by time and circumstance, preserved in a perfect memory in a land of dreams.

The line between hero and villain is a precariously fragile one.

revolutions don’t care much for broken hearts and shattered dreams.

You speak as though politics is its own separate entity,” he says. “As though it isn’t in the air around us, as though every single part of us isn’t political. How can you dismiss something that is so fundamental to the integrity of who we are as a people, as a country? How can you dismiss something that directly affects the lives of so many?

The Americans preach liberty, and freedom, and democracy at home, and practice tyranny throughout the rest of the world.

Loyalty is a complicated thing — where does family fit on the hierarchy? Above or below country? Above or below the natural order of things? Or are we above all else loyal to ourselves, to our hearts, our convictions, the internal voice that guides us?

... but the older you get, the more you learn to appreciate the moments life gives you. Getting them certainly isn't a given, and I feel blessed to have carved out a life here where I could be happy even if it wasn't quite the happiness I envisioned, if the things I dreamed of never quite came to pass.

At the end of the day, the only thing you have left is what you stand for. If I said nothing, if I did nothing, I could not live with myself. I would not be a man. This is the position I choose to take, and for better or worse, I will accept the consequences of my actions.

To be Cuban is to be proud—it is both our greatest gift and our biggest curse. We serve no kings, bow no heads, bear our troubles on our backs as though they are nothing at all. There is an art to this, you see. An art to appearing as though everything is effortless, that your world is a gilded one, when the reality is that your knees beneath your silk gown buckle from the weight of it all. We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.

Terrible things rarely happen all at once, she answers. They're incremental, so people don't realize how bad things have gotten until it's too late.

For some, there is only one true love. But not everyone is lucky enough to have that love work out for them. And for some, the love we cannot have is the most powerful one of all.

You think you know someone, imagine you know them better than anyone, and then little by little, the fabric of their life unravels before your eyes and you realize how little you knew.

Terrible things rarely happen all at once,” she answers. “They’re incremental, so people don’t realize how bad things have gotten until it’s too late. He swore up and down that he wasn’t a communist. That he wanted democracy. Some believed him. Others didn’t.

If she’s happy, that’s all that matters,

I am Cuban, and yet, I am not. I don’t know where I fit here, in the land of my grandparents, attempting to recreate a Cuba that no longer exists in reality. Perhaps we’re the dreamers in all of this. The hopeful ones. Dreaming of a Cuba we cannot see with our eyes, that we cannot touch, whose taste lingers on our palates, with the tang of memory. The exiles are the historians, the memory keepers of a lost Cuba, one that’s nearly forgotten.

Angry’ is the easiest emotion,

I worry I’m surrounded by madmen who desire to burn the world down without thought for the consequences of their actions, without regard for all the innocent lives that will be charred by the flames.

On the surface, ojalá translates to “hopefully” in English. But that’s just on paper, merely the dictionary definition. The reality is that there are some words that defy translation; their meaning contains a whole host of things simmering beneath the surface. There’s beauty contained in the word, more than the flippancy of an idle hope. It speaks to the tenor of life, the low points and the high, the sheer unpredictability of it all. And at the heart of it, the word takes everything and puts it into the hands of a higher power, acknowledging the limits of those here on earth, and the hope, the sheer hope, the kind you hitch your life to, that your deepest wish, your deepest yearning will eventually be yours.

For many being Cuban is something they carry with them in their hearts, something they fight to preserve even when all they have are their memories. When they left, they couldn’t take anything with them. No photographs, no official documents, no family heirlooms or mementos. That kind of exile makes you angry.

The United States isn’t perfect; there’s injustice everywhere I turn. But there’s also a mechanism that protects its citizens—the right to question when something is wrong, to speak out, to protest, to be heard. It doesn’t always work, sometimes the system fails those it was designed to protect, but at least that opportunity—the hope of it—exists.

I was caught between two lands—two iterations of myself—the one I inhabited in my body and the one I lived in my dreams.

Even in a country where everyone is supposed to be equal, there are clear disparities between those who have little and those who have less.

Never forget where you come from. You come from a long line of survivors. Trust in that when things get hard. And in each other.

That’s the thing about families. They always tell you the truth, even when you’d almost prefer the lie.

If everything happened the way we wished, the way we planned, we’d miss out on the best parts, the unexpected

The exiles are the historians, the memory keepers of a lost Cuba, one that’s nearly forgotten.

Guantanamera

To be Cuban is to be proud—it is both our greatest gift and our biggest curse.

You learn the deepest truths about yourself when you fail at something.

That’s the thing with grief—you never know when it will sneak up on you.

You can’t live your life to please others if you’re not proud of yourself.

And so, the beauty of life here—the simplicity of it—is also the tragedy of it.

At the end of the day, the only thing you have left is what you stand for.

On good days, I am hopeful. On bad days, I wonder why I bother. But isn’t that the point? They’ve created a system to wear you down so you’re so tired from the weight of it, fighting lines and bureaucracy and the things you need to make it through each day, you don’t have any fight left.” He takes a deep breath. “It’s difficult spreading your message when the government censors certain words in communications.

There are natural pauses in conversations when one speaks of family estrangement—the inadequacy of words to convey the unnatural state of breaking from those to whom you are bound in blood, the pauses physically manifesting themselves in an empty chair at an ostentatious dining room table that hailed from Paris. I know all about those pauses—a relationship severed at the knees, a sibling lost to ideology, a family forever fractured.

I told myself being a Perez meant more than being Cuban, that my responsibility to my family, to do what was expected, to be the woman my parents wanted me to be meant more than fighting for what I believed in, for speaking out against Batista's tyranny. And the whole time we were pretending our way of life was fine, the "paradise" we'd created was really a fragile deal with a mercurial devil, and the ground beneath us shifted and cracked, destroying the world as we knew it. Fidel has shown us the cost of our silence. The danger of waiting too long to speak, of another's voice being louder than ours because we were too busy living in the bubbles we'd created to realize the rest of Cuba had changed and left us behind.

And so occasionally, we do exceedingly foolish things like sneaking out of the house in the dead of night, because it’s impossible to stand near the flame consuming everything around you and not have some of that fire catch the hem of your skirt, too.

The problem with revolution, with the wave of violence it carries with it, is that it's like a flash flood - it sweeps everything away, and nothing looks the same as it once dd. And you think this is good, change was what you wanted in the first place, change was what you needed. But suddenly you have a country you must govern, people whose basic needs must be met. You must stabilize a currency... reform a constitution. Those are not the things young men dream of. They dream of dying for their country; dream of honor in battle. No one dreams about sitting at a desk and arguing over phrases.

person, the buildings towering before us. Many of the exteriors are adorned in vibrant colors—coral, canary yellow, and turquoise—the sun bathing them in an amber glow. The walls match the flashy cars surrounding us, the paint on the structures peeling in places. Clotheslines hang from intricate wrought iron and stone balconies, clothes flapping in the breeze; power lines zigzag across buildings. People are stacked upon one another here, crammed into any available space, spilling from the buildings.

There is somewhat of a divide between the Cubans who left and the Cubans who stayed. There is affection and worry for family members and friends who remained behind, the intrinsic need to help anyone leave Cuba, but there is also a schism, Some believe those who stayed contributed to Cuba becoming what it is now, and in doing so, bolstered Fidel's power and legitimized it. People like my grandmother saw that as another betrayal-One that hurt especially because it came from her fellow Cubans. It is much easier to forgive a stranger than it is one you love.

Despite the new impediments that DeWolf faced, he became more powerful than ever. On December 4, 1795, his ship the Juno sold seventy-five slaves valued at $19,390 at an undisclosed location in the West Indies. Then, on January 9, 1796, this same ship landed in Havana and sold the remaining slaves from the same voyage, valued at $25,105. The next entry on the ship log for that year showed that DeWolf subcontracted with thirty-five different individuals to fulfill their requests for slaves. This exhibits an incessant need to obtain free labor at any cost, even illegally. DeWolf typically charged an average $40 consignment fee for each slave ordered, to be delivered to the original requester, along with a 5

Your grandmother—you said she was all you had. Is that why it’s so important to you to find him?” I nod. “Losing her has been harder than I imagined. I should have realized it would be, but she was always so vibrant, seemed so much younger than her years, and I suppose I took for granted that she would be around a long time. Would see me get married, hold my child in her arms.” A tear trickles down my cheek and I bat it away. “I hate that she’s not going to be here for all of these moments. That she won’t be here to sing ‘Cielito Lindo’ to my child like she did to me when I was a little girl. There’s this giant hole in my heart. I miss her arms around me, the scent of her perfume, the smell of her cooking.

Marita Lorenz, born on August 18, 1939, in Bremen, Germany, was best known for her undercover work with the CIA. She was the daughter of Captain Heinrich Lorenz, master of the S/S Bremen IV, a German passenger ship, and her mother, an American actress, was related to Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Arriving in Havana on her father’s ship in 1959, she met Fidel who talked about improving the Cuban tourist business. It was obvious that he was taken by the beautiful 19-year-old brunette, and upon hearing that she was fluent in multiple languages, asked if she would translate some letters for him. She happily agreed and although continuing on to New York, she was persuaded to return to Havana to do the translations. When Castro arrived in her room, he revealed his true motives, which at the time repelled her. The next day when Castro reappeared things were vastly different.

Hope is all you have to cling to when the world around you evokes every other emotion.

All are equal, but some are more equal than others,” I muse.

We can’t always know the people we love as well as we think we do, Marisol. Our love is tangled up in our expectations, our perception of reality. And you never know what people really think. They often keep their deepest emotions locked away.

To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world—the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon—taken from you. They exist on the other side of a wall—there and not—unaltered by time and circumstance, preserved in a perfect memory in a land of dreams.

It is a strange time to be Cuban, to feel the stirrings beneath your feet, hear the rumblings in the sky, and to continue on as though nothing is happening at all.

Terrible things rarely happen all at once,” she answers. “They’re incremental, so people don’t realize how bad things have gotten until it’s too late.

The irony of the revolution is that it sought to eradicate capitalism, entrepreneurship, but the revolution’s greatest legacy has been the rise of a new breed of Cuban entrepreneurs. The black market thrives.” “So where does Orwell in Cuba fit

Traveling with us did have its advantages. Before Barack’s presidency was over, our girls would enjoy a baseball game in Havana, walk along the Great Wall of China, and visit the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio one evening in magical, misty darkness. But it could also be a pain in the neck, especially when we were trying to tend to things unrelated to the presidency. Earlier in Malia’s junior year, the two of us had gone to spend a day visiting colleges in New York City, for instance, setting up tours at New York University and Columbia. It had worked fine for a while. We’d moved through NYU’s campus at a brisk pace, our efficiency aided by the fact that it was still early and many students were not yet up for the day. We’d checked out classrooms, poked our heads into a dorm room, and chatted with a dean before heading uptown to grab an early lunch and move on to the next tour. The problem is that there’s no hiding a First Lady–sized motorcade, especially on the island of Manhattan in the middle of a weekday. By the time we finished eating, about a hundred people had gathered on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, the commotion only breeding more commotion. We stepped out to find dozens of cell phones hoisted in our direction as we were engulfed by a chorus of cheers. It was beneficent, this attention—“Come to Columbia, Malia!” people were shouting—but it was not especially useful for a girl who was trying quietly to imagine her own future. I knew immediately what I needed to do, and that was to bench myself—to let Malia go see the next campus without me, sending Kristin Jones, my personal assistant, as her escort instead. Without me there, Malia’s odds of being recognized went down. She could move faster and with a lot fewer agents. Without me, she could maybe, possibly, look like just another kid walking the quad. I at least owed her a shot at that.

Throughout history, we’ve always been dependent on an outside benefactor—Spain, the United States, the Soviet Union, Venezuela.

Then Chavez came to ‘save’ us, sending Fidel tens of thousands of barrels of oil each day in an unholy alliance. They were friends, and in that friendship, we found ourselves beholden to yet another foreign power. Once Chavez died, we faced uncertainty again. And now we’re opening up dialogue with the United States after nearly sixty years of hatred on both sides—perceived hatred, at least,

War is never anything other than bad, and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.

The City of Boston allowed us to dock at the dilapidated Mystic Wharves, right next to where the ships from the Havana Line used to tie up. Without knowing it, we were witnessing the end of an era. Steamship companies that connected Cuba with the United States were dwindling, as commercial aviation came into its own. The Havana Line was already gone, and the New York & Cuba Mail Steamship Company, commonly called the Ward Line, was a shipping company that operated from 1841 until 1954 and ran “Whoopee Cruises” during the prohibition years. Because of a number of accidents, including the fire on the SS Morro Castle off Asbury Park on September 8, 1934, the company was left hanging on by a thread. In the mid-1950’s it was still possible to buy a round trip passage from Miami to Havana for about $45.00, which was a bargain, even in those days.

We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel." - Elisa Perez, Next Year in Havana

Batista was a harsh president. He loved sugar, loved the money that flowed into the country from overseas, but he didn’t love the Cuban people. He wanted to be king over a people who didn’t want to be ruled.

Does he feel it—this thing between us—too?

He will kiss her and everything will change.

Never forget where you come from. You come from a long line of survivors. Trust in that when things get hard.

Happy New Year, Cuban Style In Havana, Christmas of 1958 had not been celebrated with the usual festivity. The week between Christmas and New Year’s was filled with uncertainty and the usual joyous season was suspended by many. Visitations among family and friends were few; as people held their breath waiting to see what would happen. It was obvious that the rebel forces were moving ever closer to Havana and on December 31, 1958, when Santa Clara came under the control of “Che” Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, the people knew that Havana would be next. What they didn’t know was that their President was preparing to leave, taking with him a large part of the national treasury. Aside from the tourists celebrating at the casinos and some private parties held by the naïve elite, very few celebrated New Year’s Eve. A select few left Cuba with Batista, but the majority didn’t find out that they were without a President until the morning of the following day…. January 1, 1959, became a day of hasty departure for many of Batista’s supporters that had been left behind. Those with boats or airplanes left the island nation for Florida or the Dominican Republic, and the rest sought refuge in foreign embassies. The high=flying era of Batista and his chosen few came to a sudden end. Gone were the police that had made such an overwhelming presence while Batista was in power, and in their place were young people wearing black and red “26th of July” armbands. Not wanting a repeat of when Machado fled Cuba, they went around securing government buildings and the homes of the wealthy. Many of these same buildings had been looted and burned after the revolt of 1933. It was expected that Fidel Castro’s rise to power would be organized and orderly. Although the casinos were raided and gambling tables overturned and sometimes burned in the streets, there was no widespread looting with the exception of the hated parking meters that became symbolic of the corruption in Batista’s government. Castro called for a general “walk-out” and when the country ground to a halt, it gave them a movement time to establish a new government. The entire transition took about a week, while his tanks and army trucks rolled into Havana. The revolutionaries sought out Batista’s henchmen and government ministers and arrested them until their status could be established. A few of Batista’s loyalists attempted to shoot it out and were killed for their efforts. Others were tried and executed, but many were simply jailed, awaiting trial at a later time.

those who keep a tight rein on power.

History professor. Musician. Waiter. The legacy of the Cuban revolution - donning many hats to stay afloat. For some, the love we cannot have is the most powerful one of all.

There is an art to this, you see. An art to appearing as though everything is effortless, that your world is a gilded one, when the reality is that your knees beneath your silk gown buckle from the weight of it all. We are silk and lace, and beneath them we are steel.

Life is too short to be unhappy, Marisol. To play it safe. To do what is expected of you rather than follow your heart.

If things don’t look the way you anticipated, you change your expectations. It’s an easy way to avoid being disappointed.

Our love is tangled up in our expectations, our perception of reality. And you never know what people really think. They often keep their deepest emotions locked away.

in Miramar. It’s loud, even in the hallway, the walls offering

how my body shifts once he’s around, my attention gravitating toward him. It seems supremely unfair that these pings of energy, these sparks flying around me, have found a target they cannot—and should not—have.

Have faith, Marisol. You could be good for each other. It might seem impossible now, but trust me, you never know what the future can bring.

Despite the way we left things, the uncertainty of us, I cannot stop hoping our relationship isn’t finished.

He is not a careless man, and whatever the future holds, I know he will be careful with me.

I’m forever caught between two languages. I learned Spanish before anything else, grew up speaking both languages at home and at school. In my most vulnerable moments, the ones when I feel things most deeply, when I hope, when I fear, when I love, it’s the Spanish that comes to me first.

Marisol. Do not ask me to choose between who I love and who I am. I fear it would not reflect well on either one of us.

They ensure we’re so preoccupied with the daily struggle that there’s little left over for the most important one, for taking control of our future.

All are equal, but some are more equal than others,

We’re all citizens of no country now, all orphans of circumstance.

You speak as though politics is its own separate entity. As though it isn't in the air around us, as though every single part of us isn't politics. How can you dismiss something that is so fundamental to the integrity of who we are as a people, as a country? How can you dismiss something that directly affects the lives of so many?

Terrible things rarely happen all at once,” she answers. “They’re incremental, so people don’t realize how bad things have gotten until it’s too late. He swore up and down that he wasn’t a communist. That he wanted democracy. Some believed him. Others didn’t.” “Did you—” “Believe? Support Fidel then?” I nod. “No.

could, I fought for what I believed in. But I’m an old man now. The older you get, the more you realize that change—meaningful, lasting change—doesn’t always come with violence and bloodshed, but with reform, however slow, however gradual.

But then again, what is certain in this world? Governments change, regimes fall, alliances shift. With so much that lies out of our hands, it seems like love is the easiest and only thing worth trusting.

voice cracks. “I haven’t seen them in a while, though. I’ve been away.” There’s a hint there, a thread of family discord I’m uncomfortably familiar with lingering behind his words. There are natural pauses in conversations when

We are Rome, and this is the Coliseum,

Santeria gods and goddesses. It’s a quiet act of defiance,

To be in exile is to have the things you love most in the world—the air you breathe, the earth you walk upon—taken from you. They exist on the other side of a wall—there and not—unaltered by time and circumstance,

How do you gain any power in a world where a few control all of it if you aren’t willing to wrest that power from them?

The best thing to do, the smart thing, the way to survive in Havana is to keep your head down and go about your daily life as though the world around you isn’t creeping into madness.

I could not put this book down!

Why do people always seize on the spark that can peter out as the measure of a relationship?

the older you get, the more you learn to appreciate the moments life gives you. Getting them certainly isn’t a given, and I feel blessed to have carved out a life here where I could be happy even if it wasn’t quite the happiness I envisioned, if the things I dreamed of never quite came to pass.

Disappointment shoots through me with a particularly lethal and effective stab. Silence fills the kitchen as we stare at each other. Here I feel the resentment I feared when I first planned my trip to Cuba, the unspoken censure that I am not a real Cuban, that I am a traitor to my people because my family left this country behind.

You’re the romantic, the dreamer, the one who’s searching for something.

Nineteen and a pampered bird in a gilded cage.