The suitcase his father never let anyone open. The secrets inside would change everything.
At his father's funeral in Miami's Little Havana, Lorenzo finds the battered brown leather suitcase that sat untouched in the closet his entire life the one he was forbidden to open. Inside: stacks of vintage photographs of his father, his Uncle Carlos, and faces he has never seen. They pull him into a story he was never told. His father's story.
The Suitcase from Cuba is a feature screenplay set in the late 1950s, when Batista's regime reached into every corner of the island. Nestor, a shopkeeper in the small town of Rincón, Las Villas, says what everyone thinks: the dictator has to go. When his brother Carlos is dragged away by Captain Varona's soldiers, Nestor is plunged into a world of corrupt officials, secret police, and impossible choices. His fight for his brother makes him a target and it makes him a revolutionary.
From the cells of the Isle of Pines prison to the safe houses of old Havana, Nestor joins a hidden network of fighters: Olga, the woman he loves, who wears the enemy's uniform while working for the revolution Moises, a seventy-year-old shopkeeper with nothing left to lose. Regina, his own sister, a firebrand of Vedado and Mr. Jay, an American cattleman who is anything but. Together they torch bus terminals, black out Havana, sabotage an electrical plant, and smuggle guns to rebels across the island risking everything for a free Cuba.
Then the revolution comes. And it betrays them.
When the communists seize the country they bled for, Nestor and his comrades refuse to stand down. The G2 secret police hunt him as a traitor led by the very man who once shared his prison cell and won his pardon. His sister Regina denounces him, swearing she will shoot her own brother. His wife Gladis loses their baby and is evicted from their home with forty-eight hours' notice. Nestor escapes across the Florida Straits on a sailboat running silent, is rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard, and lands in the Florida Keys where the CIA trains him for a desperate mission back into Cuba. Midnight landings, a lighthouse keeper who risks his life, a rescue under fire, and a friend lost to the sea: this is the story of ordinary Cubans who refused to surrender their dream.
Told in full screenplay format across 176 scenes from the cane fields of Las Villas to the nightclubs of Havana and the streets of Little Havana The Suitcase from Cuba is a family saga, a revolution thriller, and a love letter to a homeland. It ends where it began: a son on the edge of his father's bed, holding the last photograph, finally understanding why his father never stopped believing his family would one day return to a free Cuba.
Dedicated to Ernesto Gonzales (1928-1996). Written by Domingo L. Gonzales
For readers of Cuban-American history, fans of revolutionary drama, and anyone who has ever wondered what their parents carried in silence.
Sign-In
Cart