Refugee: Isabel: Straits of Florida – 1994, 1 day (2) Summary & Analysis

Geraldo, Señor Castillo, Luis, and Amara try to figure out why the boat’s motor won’t start, while Iván and Isabel scoop water out of the bottom of the boat because the sock with which they plugged the bullet hole has soaked through. Teresa and Señora Castillo sleep in the front of the boat.

Lito talks to Isabel and Iván as they work, telling Isabel that he has a brother, Guillermo, who lives in the United States. In the 1970s, the U.S. airlifted political dissidents from Cuba to the U.S., and Guillermo chose to go as well. But Lito decided to stay because Cuba was his home. He says, then, that it was a mistake to leave on this “sinking coffin,” because Cuba isn’t worse now than it ever was. Iván then asks if Cuba would ever get better.

Lito says that they should have waited to leave Cuba, but Isabel is adamant that Geraldo would have been arrested. Lito counters, accusing Geraldo of risking his life and the lives of his family to go to the United States. And, Lito continues, Geraldo is taking Isabel away from her roots. He asks Isabel how she’s going to learn to count clave in Miami. Teresa wakes up and assures Lito that Miami is just “North Cuba.”

Isabel worries about what Lito said—she has never been able to count clave, but always assumed it would come to her eventually. She wonders, now, if she will ever hear it. Isabel thinks, “Like trading her trumpet, had she swapped the one thing that was really hers—her music—for the chance to keep her family together?” Suddenly, they hear the rumble of an enormous tanker, heading right for them.