Dreaming in Cuban

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of racism and sexual assault.

Felicia is marching in the Sierra Maestra mountains with a group of guerillas. She is hot and sweats profusely. Lieutenant Rojas, her commanding officer, does not sweat, and she urges Felicia and those in the rear to march faster. Felicia finds her work with the military difficult and the food inedible. She is there because, although she cannot access the memory, she has been told that she attempted to kill herself and her son Ivanito. Ivanito was consequently sent to boarding school, and Felicia found herself with this unit of rag-tag misfits whom Lieutenant Rojas is attempting to turn into real soldiers. Felicia has been encouraged to become a “New Socialist Woman” (107), but she is largely unmoved by the project of communism. She sees little utility in a system that purports to improve the lives of its citizens but ultimately represses them and fails to provide the basic necessities of life. She is troubled by her mother Celia’s fidelity to El Líder. There is something unpleasantly fanatical about her mother’s devotion to Cuba’s dictator, and she cannot match her mother’s enthusiasm for communism.