Lourdes del Pino Puente Character Analysis in Dreaming in Cuban

Lourdes is the eldest of Jorge and Celia’s children. She’s Felicia and Javier’s sister, Rufino’s wife, and Pilar’s mother. When Lourdes was born, Celia was so depressed over Gustavo, her former lover, that she refused to bond with her daughter, claiming she would never remember Lourdes’s name. However, Lourdes has a close bond with Jorge, and she grows up as the most conventional, devout, and well-behaved of the del Pino children. She marries Rufino Puente and has one daughter, Pilar. While she’s pregnant with her second child, Lourdes suffers a miscarriage and is dispossessed of her land and raped by Revolutionary soldiers soon after. Lourdes makes a new life in New York City, opening successful bakeries, becoming an auxiliary policewoman, and engaging in anti-Castro politics with other Cuban exiles. She continues talking with the ghost of her father, Jorge, after his death, having been especially close to him in life. Lourdes sometimes eats and diets obsessively to cope with her grief. As a Catholic, she hounds her daughter, Pilar, relentlessly for her rebellion and unconventionality. Yet deep down, she truly loves Pilar, even supporting Pilar’s provocative artwork when others threaten to destroy it. Though Lourdes is almost a caricature of conservative anti-communist beliefs, she is also deeply reflective about her grief, fiercely loyal, and capable of deep love. However, she never fully reconciles with her mother or with the trauma she associates with Cuba.

Lourdes del Pino Puente Quotes in Dreaming in Cuban

The Dreaming in Cuban quotes below are all either spoken by Lourdes del Pino Puente or refer to Lourdes del Pino Puente. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Passion, Romance, and Marriage Theme Icon

That's it. My mind's made up. I'm going back to Cuba. I'm fed up with everything around here. I take all my money out of the bank, $120, money I earned slaving away at my mother's bakery, and buy a one-way bus ticket to Miami. I figure if I can just get there, I'll be able to make my way to Cuba, maybe rent a boat or get a fisherman to take me. I imagine Abuela Celia's surprise as I sneak up behind her. She'll be sitting in her wicker swing overlooking the sea and she'll smell of salt and violet water. There'll be gulls and crabs along the shore. She'll stroke my cheek with her cool hands, sing quietly in my ear.

Related Characters: Pilar Puente (speaker), Lourdes del Pino Puente, Celia del Pino

Page Number and Citation: 25

Explanation and Analysis:

My mother says that Abuela Celia's had plenty of chances to leave Cuba but that she's stubborn and got her head turned around by El Líder. Mom says "Communist" the way some people say "cancer," low and fierce. She reads the newspapers page by page for leftist conspiracies, jams her finger against imagined evidence and says, "See. What did I tell you?" Last year when El Líder jailed a famous Cuban poet, she sneered at "those leftist intellectual hypocrites" for trying to free him. "They created those prisons, so now they should rot in them!" she shouted, not making much sense at all. "They're dangerous subversives, red to the bone!" Mom's views are strictly black-and-white. It's how she survives.

Related Characters: Pilar Puente (speaker), Lourdes del Pino Puente (speaker), El Líder / Fidel Castro, Celia del Pino, Rufino Puente

Page Number and Citation: 26

Explanation and Analysis:

But what could I say? That my mother is driving me crazy? That I miss my grandmother and wish I'd never left Cuba? That I want to be a famous artist someday? That a paintbrush is better than a gun so why doesn't everybody just leave me alone? Painting is its own language, I wanted to tell him. Translations just confuse it, dilute it, like words going from Spanish to English. I envy my mother her Spanish curses sometimes. They make my English collapse in a heap.

Related Characters: Pilar Puente (speaker), Celia del Pino, Lourdes del Pino Puente

Page Number and Citation: 59

Explanation and Analysis:

Lourdes considers herself lucky. Immigration has redefined her, and she is grateful. Unlike her husband, she welcomes her adopted language, its possibilities for reinvention. Lourdes relishes winter most of all—the cold scraping sounds on sidewalks and windshields, the ritual of scarves and gloves, hats and zip-in coat linings. Its layers protect her. She wants no part of Cuba, no part of its wretched carnival floats creaking with lies, no part of Cuba at all, which Lourdes claims never possessed her.

Related Characters: Lourdes del Pino Puente, Rufino Puente

Page Number and Citation: 73

Explanation and Analysis:

Her daughters cannot understand her commitment to El Líder. Lourdes sends her snapshots of pastries from her bakery in Brooklyn. Each […] strawberry shortcake [is] proof—in butter, cream, and eggs—of Lourdes's success in America, and a reminder of the ongoing shortages in Cuba. […]

If only Felicia could take an interest in the revolution, Celia believes, it would give her a higher purpose, a chance to participate in something larger than herself. After all, aren't they part of the greatest social experiment in modern history? But her daughter can only wallow in her own discomforts.

Related Characters: Celia del Pino, El Líder / Fidel Castro, Lourdes del Pino Puente, Felicia del Pino

Page Number and Citation: 117

Explanation and Analysis:

Last Christmas, Pilar gave her a book of essays on Cuba called A Revolutionary Society. The cover showed cheerful, clean-cut children gathered in front of a portrait of Che Guevara. Lourdes was incensed.

"Will you read it?" Pilar asked her.

"I don't have to read it to know what's in it! Lies, poisonous Communist lies!" Che Guevara's face had set a violence quivering within her like a loose wire.

"Suit yourself," Pilar shot back.

Related Characters: Lourdes del Pino Puente (speaker), Pilar Puente (speaker), Celia del Pino

Page Number and Citation: 132

Explanation and Analysis:

A lumpish man charges Liberty with a pocketknife, repeating his words like a war cry. Before anyone can react, Mom swings her new handbag and clubs the guy cold inches from the painting. Then, as if in slow motion, she tumbles forward, a thrashing avalanche of patriotism and motherhood, crushing three spectators and a table of apple tartlets.

And I, I love my mother very much at that moment.

Related Characters: Pilar Puente (speaker), Lourdes del Pino Puente

Page Number and Citation: 144

Explanation and Analysis:

My mother told me that Abuela Celia was an atheist before I even understood what the word meant. I liked the sound of it, the derision with which my mother pronounced it, and knew immediately it was what I wanted to become. I don't know exactly when I stopped believing in God. It wasn't as deliberate as deciding at age six to become an atheist, but more like an imperceptible sloughing of layers. One day I noticed there was no more skin to absently peel, just air where there'd been artifice.

Related Characters: Pilar Puente (speaker), Lourdes del Pino Puente, Celia del Pino

Page Number and Citation: 175

Explanation and Analysis:

After we were married, I left her with my mother and my sister. I knew what it would do to her. A part of me wanted to punish her. For the Spaniard. I tried to kill her, Lourdes. I wanted to kill her. I left on a long trip after you were born. I wanted to break her, may God forgive me. When I returned, it was done. She held you out to me by one leg and told me she would not remember your name.

Related Characters: Jorge del Pino (speaker), Lourdes del Pino Puente, Celia del Pino, Gustavo Sierra de Armas

Page Number and Citation: 195

Explanation and Analysis:

Lourdes del Pino Puente Character Timeline in Dreaming in Cuban

The timeline below shows where the character Lourdes del Pino Puente appears in Dreaming in Cuban. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Celia changes the subject, asking about Felicia’s sister’s message. Felicia says that, according to Lourdes, the nuns claimed that Jorge ascended to heaven “on tongues of fire.” As Felicia hugs... (full context)

Lourdes wakes up at four a.m. beside her exhausted husband, Rufino. She puts on her large... (full context)

History and Personal Identity Theme Icon

Lourdes leaves a note demanding her daughter’s help at the bakery after school, and then she... (full context)

Lourdes unpacks and organizes the day’s cakes and pastries, reserving some sticky buns for herself. As... (full context)

After this call, Lourdes spends a flustered, distracted morning trying to deal with customers. When she gets a reprieve,... (full context)

After Lourdes closes her shop, she goes to the Sisters of Charity hospital to see Jorge’s body.... (full context)

Lourdes’s daughter Pilar doesn’t come home that night. Lourdes bakes and eats sticky buns while calling... (full context)

...None of her nursemaids lasted very long, all claiming that Pilar was bewitched. At dawn, Lourdes walks across the Brooklyn Bridge, headed south. She thinks about the sad family memories associated... (full context)

...her since she was a baby. She remembers sitting in her Abuela Celia’s lap when Lourdes announced that they were leaving Cuba. Celia called Lourdes a traitor to the revolution, while... (full context)

Lourdes has always said that Celia could leave Cuba if she wanted, but that she’s too... (full context)

...asleep at night, telling stories of her life. She also encourages Pilar in her art. Lourdes, however, thinks Pilar’s abstract art is morbid and forbids her from attending a prestigious art... (full context)

...Pilar knows her parents aren’t getting along, partly because her dad doesn’t like the way Lourdes runs her business. Lourdes tends to hire down-and-out immigrants for cheap wages, then fire them... (full context)

...she’d stay and teach her daughter survival. When their daughter was born, Jorge named her Lourdes. Celia handed Lourdes to Jorge by one leg, saying, “I will not remember her name.” (full context)

...girl, whom she’s named Felicia. Celia promises that this time, she’ll be a good mother. Lourdes is now two and a half and asks Jorge whenever he calls, “When are you... (full context)

...believe the intense heat. She knows she can’t call Rufino’s parents because Abuela Zaida hates Lourdes and would send Pilar home, complaining that her mother can’t control her. She figures her... (full context)

Pilar walks to Blanquito’s house and hears her Abuela Zaida, whom Lourdes claims had all her sons out of wedlock before moving to Cuba from Costa Rica,... (full context)

...that if it weren’t for late-night talks with Abuela Celia, she’d be more afraid of Lourdes. Celia has explained to Pilar that her mother is sad and frustrated about things she... (full context)

Lourdes Puente. Forty days after Jorge del Pino’s burial, he reappears. Lourdes can’t see him, but... (full context)

When Lourdes gets home, she feels like she’s losing her mind. She fears she’s “exhausted reality,” and... (full context)

The next day, Lourdes throws herself into her work. She has a new trainee, Maribel Navarro, whom she coaches... (full context)

When Lourdes and Rufino left Cuba, they didn’t know how long it would last. Lourdes was supposed... (full context)

Two months before that, Lourdes had been pregnant with her second child. Out in the fields with her horse, she’d... (full context)

Some time later, Rufino was in Havana on business when the soldiers returned. They gave Lourdes a deed declaring that the Puentes’ family estate now belonged to the revolutionary government. She... (full context)

A few days after the incident with Maribel, Lourdes looks at the various businesses in her bakery’s neighborhood. She buys some sticky dates from... (full context)

As Lourdes approaches home, she smells Jorge’s cigar again. He asks Lourdes if she’s forgotten him. Lourdes... (full context)

...would gather holy water with which to baptize a neighbor’s chickens. Her father and sister Lourdes participated enthusiastically in mass, while Celia, who distrusted churches, stayed home. (full context)

...Her daughters don’t understand Celia’s love for El Líder. Celia feels offended by the photos Lourdes sends of her successful bakery in New York. Meanwhile, Felicia doesn’t care about the revolution,... (full context)

1975. Lourdes walks her five-block beat in Brooklyn. She’s become the first auxiliary policewoman in her precinct,... (full context)

Lourdes has rarely had to use her nightstick. Once, she had to break up a fight... (full context)

...adjusted to life in the United States—he wanted to be back on the farm. So Lourdes got a job, even though many Cuban women of her age and class would consider... (full context)

Lourdes and Rufino barely speak anymore, and her husband is no longer familiar to her. Lourdes... (full context)

Last Christmas, Pilar gave Lourdes a book of essays about Cuba called A Revolutionary Society. Its front cover is a... (full context)

As Lourdes continues on her beat, she sees a figure running toward the river, jumping over the... (full context)

...mother is Mexican, saw Pilar in a club and casually started speaking Spanish to her. Lourdes hates Max’s beads and long hair and immediately rejects him, but Rufino is friendly to... (full context)

...she doesn’t like someone—she thinks that this is the only she has in common with Lourdes. (full context)

Lourdes recently bought a second bakery and is going crazy with patriotic themes, given the upcoming... (full context)

...both Cuba and Celia fade inside Pilar, and she can only imagine what they’re like. Lourdes won’t talk to Pilar about Celia, and Rufino can’t tell Pilar much about her. (full context)

Lourdes commissions Pilar to paint a pro-American mural for her Yankee Doodle Bakery grand opening. Pilar,... (full context)

...image with the “punk rallying cry, I’M A MESS.” Pilar booby-traps her studio in case Lourdes spies on her work, but Lourdes never does. Lourdes has even taken out a full-page... (full context)

...opening, the new bakery is full of patriotic decorations, a Dixieland band, and free desserts. Lourdes brags to customers about her daughter, the artist, causing Pilar to sweat. At noon, Lourdes... (full context)

...however, is upset when he learns about Celia’s protesting. Celia is hurt by Jorge’s and Lourdes’s bond and believes that Lourdes is punishing her for the early years of neglect. (full context)

1977. A month ago, Lourdes stopped eating—she’s lost 34 pounds. During a long morning walk, Lourdes thinks about Pilar, away... (full context)

Though Lourdes didn’t plan to stop eating—she’s simply repulsed by the smell and sight of food nowadays,... (full context)

Lourdes disapproves of Pilar’s painting, but when journalists question her about it, she becomes even more... (full context)

By Thanksgiving Day, Lourdes has lost 118 pounds, meeting her goal. Today, she’ll eat for the first time in... (full context)

The next day, Lourdes is back to eating sticky buns. On a family outing to the Frick Museum, she... (full context)

Pilar looks at lots of old photographs of Celia, which Lourdes keeps hidden. In the pictures, Celia looks like she could be either happy or sad.... (full context)

Pilar feels much more connected to Celia than to Lourdes, even though they haven’t seen each other for 17 years and no longer communicate at... (full context)

Lourdes’s Yankee Doodle bakeries have become meeting places for “shady Cuban extremists” to discuss anti-Castro politics.... (full context)

1979. These days, Jorge speaks with Lourdes less and less, and she can’t hear him as clearly. She grieves her father’s death... (full context)

A month later, in winter, Lourdes and Jorge walk together on the Brooklyn Bridge. Jorge says that he can’t return after... (full context)

...Jorge kept traveling because he couldn’t bear Celia’s indifference to him. He wanted to take Lourdes all for himself, but Celia loved her. Jorge also tells Lourdes about Felicia’s death. Lourdes... (full context)

...after her bath with the sacred herbs, she paints. On the ninth night, she calls Lourdes to tell her they’re going to Cuba. (full context)

In 1956, Celia writes to Gustavo, speaking approvingly of Lourdes’s new boyfriend, Rufino, a wealthy young man who isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty... (full context)

Later that year, after Lourdes is engaged to marry Rufino, Celia complains to Gustavo about Don Guillermo’s pro-American views. She... (full context)

...initiated this, Jorge began to cry. Meanwhile, Zaida is ruining all of Celia’s plans for Lourdes’s wedding. Rumors abound regarding rebels looking to oust Batista, especially their leader, who has a... (full context)

Pilar and Lourdes arrive in Havana. Their taxi driver tells them that a busload of asylum-seekers have crashed... (full context)

...they reach Abuela Celia’s house, Pilar notices how neglected it looks. They go inside, and Lourdes recoils from Celia’s bedside photo of El Líder. Pilar finds her grandmother sitting on her... (full context)

Lourdes and Pilar bathe Celia and wash her hair. Celia says nothing as Lourdes scolds her... (full context)

Lourdes huffs about the photo of El Líder placed over Jorge’s photo and flings the picture... (full context)

Lourdes. Lourdes sees destruction and decay everywhere she looks, and it pains her. Last night, her... (full context)

After dinner, Pilar had danced sloppily with Ivanito. The boy was a wonderful dancer, and Lourdes couldn’t resist taking a turn, instinctively remembering the moves. A crowd gathered to watch, and... (full context)

Lourdes drives to the old Puente ranch, which now appears to be a home for the... (full context)

...of the I Ching and invites everybody in the family to ask it a question. Lourdes asks, “Will I see justice done?” She sounds angry, but she looks at Ivanito with... (full context)

...Celia understand that “freedom […] is nothing more than the right to a decent life.” Lourdes interjects with complaints about political prisoners, land theft, and persecution of Catholics, but Celia never... (full context)

Lourdes has been making such a nuisance of herself in front of the neighbors that the... (full context)

Lourdes. When Lourdes hears about the refugees at the Peruvian embassy, she drives to Havana. A... (full context)

Celia walks along the beach with Lourdes, Pilar, and Ivanito. Lourdes goes back inside the house and smokes a cigar, thinking that... (full context)

Very early the next morning, Lourdes wakes Ivanito. She’s laid out clothes for him and packed him a bag. They speed... (full context)

Pilar. When Celia discovers that Ivanito and Lourdes are gone, Pilar borrows Herminia’s car, and they rush to Havana. Celia tells Pilar that... (full context)

Dreaming in Cuban

Lourdes del Pino Puente Character Analysis

Lourdes del Pino Puente Quotes in Dreaming in Cuban

Going South Quotes

A Grove of Lemons Quotes

The Meaning of Shells Quotes

Enough Attitude Quotes

A Matrix Light Quotes

Daughters of Changó Quotes

Lourdes del Pino Puente Character Timeline in Dreaming in Cuban