Refugee: Isabel: Outside Havana, Cuba – 1994 (1) Summary & Analysis

Eleven-year-old Isabel Fernandez is giving a few beans to a cat she had found under her house. She hasn’t eaten much more than that for lunch, due to the rationing and food shortages. For years the Soviet Union had been buying Cuba’s sugar for 11 times the price, and had sent food and gasoline and medicine to Cuba for free. When the Soviet Union fell in 1989, however, the support went away, and many people lost their jobs. People began to starve and had slaughtered all of their animals.

Isabel’s next door neighbor Iván greets her, bringing over a dead fish he had found for the cat. He says they need to come up with a name for it, but before they decide, Iván’s father, Señor Castillo, calls him to his shed. Iván insists that they are building a doghouse, but Isabel knows they’re really building a boat to travel to the United States (or el norte, as they call it).

Isabel worries that the Castillos might get caught, because Fidel Castro, Cuba’s president and prime minister, won’t allow anyone to leave the country, or else they are thrown in jail. She knows this, because her father Geraldo, whom she calls Geraldo, had tried to leave and had been thrown in jail for a year when he  was caught.

Isabel notices Geraldo and her grandfather, whom she calls Lito, heading down the road to stand in line for food. She retrieves her trumpet so she can go with them and play on the street corner. She loves playing music, and people often stopped to listen to her—though the only people who are able to give her any money are the tourists.

Isabel begins to play a salsa tune. She tries to listen to her own playing, attempting to identify the clave. Clave is “the mysterious hidden beat inside Cuban music that everybody seemed to hear except her.” She tries to hear the rhythm in the music she is playing, but can’t seem to identify it.