Next Year In Havana

Marisol is the granddaughter of Cuban exiles and works as a travel writer and journalist. Her character arc takes her from an unquestioning acceptance of her grandmother Elisa’s nostalgic stories of Old Havana to a life in which she is willing to risk everything for love and truth. When Marisol comes to Cuba, she sees herself as an outsider in Miami and a person who has an uncertain relationship with her Cuban heritage. She has an abstract understanding of the pros and cons of the economic embargo against Cuba, but she doesn’t fully understand the impact of the embargo on the lives of ordinary Cubans. Her opposition to the regime in Cuba is mostly a function of accepting the status quo in her community.

Marisol reaches a turning point when she returns to Cuba. She is transformed by the process of discovering the secrets contained inside of the box Ana gives her; traveling through Havana and Cuba to see important historic sights and the daily reality of Cuban life; and her decision to risk imprisonment to get Luis out of Cuba. Having experienced modern Cuba firsthand and seen the sharp edge of what political oppression looks like, Marisol comes to a greater appreciation of the differences between her own experience as an American of Cuban descent and that of people who stayed behind after the revolution. By the end of the novel, Marisol has a more realistic take on Cuba and is committed to using her privilege to effect change through writing.

Beatriz is the beauty of the family, and she is also the most rebellious of the Perez girls. Beatriz is the twin of Alejandro, and her close relationship with her brother and grief when the regime kills Alejandro move her to greater acts of rebellion. At the start of the novel, Beatriz encourages her sisters to sneak out with her to a party outside of Miramar. Beatriz steals money to help Alejandro after Emilio forces her brother out. Beatriz’s rebellions prepare her to be decisive and assertive once the family fortunes change in 1959 with the fall of Batista. Beatriz manages to communicate with her father once he is imprisoned, and she also insists that the family do more to protect her younger sister (Maria) from the executions in 1959.

Beatriz’s greatest rebellion is mentioned briefly in the novel: She participates to assassinate Fidel Castro sometime in the 1960s. Although Beatriz starts out as a sheltered daughter of the Perezes, she emerges by the end of the novel as a potent woman who uses charm, sexuality, and beauty to support the cause in which she believes.

Emilio is the shrewd, conservative patriarch of the Perez family in Cuba. Like many members of the Cuban elite during the 1950s, he is uncomfortable with some of Batista’s actions, but he makes the pragmatic decision not to engage in too much overt opposition because it will hurt his financial prospects. Emilio is forced to change because his efforts to protect his children put him out of favor with Batista. When Batista flees Cuba in 1959, Emilio is left to fend for himself as he is imprisoned. The final straw for Emilio is when the regime kills his son Alejandro. Emilio makes the decision to take his family to the United States, where he rebuilds a life of privilege like the one he left behind. Emilio’s values do not change much over the course of the novel, despite the wrenching decision to go into exile.

Luis is a handsome history professor and Marisol’s love interest. Luis, like many Cubans, wears many hats to survive. He plays music and serves at the paladar to ensure the survival of his family. He pours his love of his country into lectures on the history of Cuba at the university, while his hatred for the oppression he sees in his country appears in an anonymous blog he publishes at great risk to himself and his family. As a child of the Cuban Revolution, Luis feels a sense of frustration that the reality of Cuban life is so blighted with poverty, inequality, and corruption. The most pivotal change in Luis’s life comes when he meets and falls in love with Marisol, whose resources and insistence that he can do good for his country in the United States finally lead him to choose exile.

Magda is the nanny of the Perez children, and she is the one figure in the novel who represents the lives of ordinary Cubans. As a nurse to the children (and Elisa in particular), Magda provides nurturing that Elisa’s parents do not. Magda is the first to learn of Elisa’s pregnancy because of this closeness. When tensions arise between the servants and Mr. and Mrs. Perez during the Cuban Revolution, Magda is the one who moderates these tensions. Magda is not much changed when Marisol encounters her in 2017. She is still a strong woman who stays firm in her beliefs (including Catholicism and Santeria) despite the regime’s opposition to traditional religion. She is a static character who serves as the connection among the generations of the Perez family.

Pablo is Elisa’s love interest in 1958-1959. He is articulate, passionate, and angry in his defense of the rights of the Cuban people. He is a confidante of Fidel Castro and is present at the Battle of Santa Clara, the decisive battle of the Cuban Revolution. Although Pablo began his adult life as a law student, by the time Elisa meets him, he has given up on the law and is instead willing to engage in violence to advance the ideals of the revolution. His one concession to his beliefs is his love for Elisa, whom he loves so much that he intervenes when her father is imprisoned in 1959. When Pablo appears again in 2017, he is a changed man. He lives a materially comfortable life as he receives the spoils of being loyal to the regime. In addition, he no longer believes in violent, sudden revolution. Instead, he believes in working within the system for incremental changes. Over the course of the novel, he transforms from a revolutionary fighter to a bureaucrat.

Castro emerged as the leader of the revolution in Cuba during the 1950s and assumed power in 1959 during the early events of the novel. The historic Castro led the Cuban government from 1959, stepped down due to poor health in 2008, and died in 2016, a year before the events of the novel. A charismatic figure, Castro is mostly off-stage in the novel; his influence is present in the novel in the reactions of the other characters to him.

For Pablo in the 1950s, Castro embodies the hopes of the ordinary Cuban people for equality and freedom from American imperialism. For Elisa, Beatriz, and the other Perezes, Castro is a dictator whose assumption of power marked the end of their comfortable lives. They watch in horror as he presides over trials, and they hold him responsible for the death of Alejandro, so their hatred of him is personal. For Marisol, Castro represents the failures and violence of the Cuban Revolution; these traumas are distant ones for her, however, because she did not live through them. For Luis, who is committed to revolution, Castro is a man whose promises of equality foundered and wandered into cronyism and repression. 

Argentine revolutionary Guevara made common cause with Fidel and Raúl Castro during the brothers’ retreat to Mexico after the failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. Guevara is a significant figure in the Cuban Revolution because he led a decisive victory at the Battle of Santa Clara, presided over the imprisonment in La Cabaña, trials, and/or executions of people like the Perez men; and served as an important intellectual contributor to the ideology that shaped the Cuban Revolution and the regime that followed. Among leftists like Pablo, Guevara is a hero of the revolution. For people like Emilio, Guevara’s violent and brutal enforcement of revolutionary justice was the final straw that pushed them into exile. The historic Guevara died in 1967 in Bolivia while attempting to export Cuban-style revolution.

Batista is a historic figure who became president of Cuba in 1940 and established a dictatorship by the time of the events of the novel. He fled Cuba in 1959 as the tide turned in favor of the revolutionaries, and he died as an exile in Spain in 1973. Like Castro, Batista emerged as a leader who promised reforms that would address the inequality in Cuban society. In the novel, Cleeton represents Batista’s violence, paranoia, and corruption once he assumed power. Batista is another character who exercises enormous influence without ever appearing in the novel.