This is the fictionalized story based on historical events. Luis, a 14-year-old Cuban is trapped in Habana with his younger sister and recently widowed mother during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Luis and his family moved away from their beloved home in the countryside of Pinar del Rio to Cuba's capital La Habana. Instead of the fresh start they had hoped for, they found themselves under the control of people and circumstances who made life hopelessly miserable. Luis' only ally was Leiru, a mystical white-haired man who offers him protection and guidance.
Two years earlier, Cubans had celebrated Fidel Castro's overthrow of the repressive dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The young revolucionario promised to bring democracy and prosperity to the Caribbean island. Even though, Cuba had among the highest standard of living and literacy rate in Latin America, most of its 6 million people lived in grim poverty.
Most everyone in Cuba, along with the entire world, supported Castro. They hoped that the long-fought Revolución would bring all Cubans a better life.
But by 1961 this dream had become another nightmare for many Cubans, rich and poor. Without elections, Castro had appointed himself Supreme Commander of Cuba. His government quickly cemented close ties with the Communist Soviet Union. The USSR used Castro's populist appeal outside of Cuba to show communism as the best solution to the region's many corrupt and oppressive dictatorships.
Castro began seizing without payment local businesses and foreign investments, most of them American-owned. To protect its financial interests and to fight communism so close to its shores (Cuba is as close to the Florida Keys as Philadelphia is to Washington D.C.), the United States government enforced its self-proclaimed Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 decree to oppose European influence in the Americas. On January 3, 1961, the U. S. government severed diplomatic relations with Castro's government. On April 17, 1961 President John F. Kennedy sponsored the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of the island by CIA-trained Cuban exiles trying to overthrow Castro.
By then, many Cubans had begun to realize that they had traded a right-wing dictatorship for Castro's equally repressive communism. For most, there was no way out. To leave the island legally, passage had to be paid in scarce U.S. dollars. Getting the necessary papers from the Castro government was a long and humiliating process. Most Cubans, however, saw no alternative but to accept their fate.
Among the hundreds of thousands trapped in Habana during those times of chaos and danger, were Luis and his family. This is Luis' story of courage, awakening and personal triumph shared by people of all ages, in all corners of the world.
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