52 pages • 1 hour read
Mirta OjitoFinding Mañana
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Napoleón Vilaboa”
Outside the Peruvian embassy, Napoleón Vilaboa contemplated the situation. The return of so many exiles from Miami would be difficult for the Castro regime. Cubans with advanced degrees lived like paupers compared to their exiled relatives, even those with much humbler professions. It had become increasingly clear to the general population that the revolution had not delivered on its promises. Vilaboa, who lived in Miami, was in Cuba to participate in talks about the crisis at the Peruvian embassy. He’d grown up in Cuba and had even fought in Castro’s army, but he fled to the United States when it became clear to him that Castro’s regime would never guarantee Cubans freedom or even be able to meet their basic needs. After visiting the embassy, Vilaboa hatched a plan to get many Cubans to the United States. So far, the American government had shown a marked lack of interest in the crisis, but Vilaboa knew that the Cuban community in Miami was paying attention. They were hopeful that the situation would spiral out of control and that the US would even invade Cuba, ending the Castro regime forever. Vilaboa thought that perhaps Cubans in Miami could be persuaded to charter boats to go pick up their relatives, as well as the embassy refugees, and bring them back to Florida.
Vilaboa had grown up in a successful family. His parents were immigrants from Spain and his father owned a marble business. His academic interests had been encouraged and he had grown up in a home that valued ideas and dialogue. Although his parents were staunch supporters of Batista, Vilaboa favored the burgeoning political movement led by Fidel Castro. Ultimately, he’d grown disillusioned with Castro, and had been part of the Bay of Pigs invasion after immigrating. He’d been apprehended and arrested, and after his release and return to the United States, he’d joined the military, hoping that the US would be able to free his homeland. As the years passed, it became clear to him that the United States did not have a concrete plan for Cuba, and he left the military. Still, he wanted to help Cubans. Using his network of contacts, he was able to work with officials within the Castro regime and even met with Castro himself. When President Carter announced his intention to welcome 3,500 Cuban refugees and Castro indicated his willingness to allow exiles in Miami to charter boats to retrieve their family members, Vilaboa felt that his efforts were finally paying off. He got in touch with key people within the Spanish-language radio community, and although some distrusted him for his cooperation with the Castro regime, he gained publicity for his plan, which involved a flotilla of small, chartered boats sent from South Florida to the port of Mariel in Cuba to bring back refugees.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Leaving Cuba”
On April 22, Ojito’s father showed her mother the previous day’s paper. In it, there was a small story about a group of boats that left the port of Mariel carrying refugees destined for Florida. Ojito’s father quickly went to call his brother in Hialeah, a Cuban area on the outskirts of Miami proper. His brother was already making plans to charter a boat to come and get Ojito’s family, and her parents began to prepare to leave Cuba for good. The atmosphere was tense in Havana and throughout the country. Castro openly encouraged violence against those who wished to emigrate, and neighbors were often pitted against each other. There were even incidents of fatal brutality against the would-be immigrants, and Ojito recalls several murders in her neighborhood. Castro organized massive rallies, especially during the annual May Day celebrations, and published a list of those who had requested an exit permit. Ojito characterizes the early days of Mariel as a kind of “civil war.” She and her family shared their exit plans with no one and tried to act as though everything was normal.
Right before they were about to leave, the police arrived at Ojito’s home and hassled the family. There were also tense exchanges with pro-Castro neighbors, but they managed to make it out without violence. The family was taken to the launch point, and after spending their first night away from home on the cement floor of a dirty building, they began their journey. They were not, however, immediately able to leave Cuba. They had to proceed through several more ports, detention facilities, and what looked like “tropical concentration camps” (181). They were subject to repeated searches, and bathing facilities were severely limited. Finally, Ojito and her family were ready to disembark, and they saw their boat, The Valley Chief. Because every Cuban exile who sent a boat to pick up family members was also required to take passengers from among those waiting at the Peruvian embassy, 200 men boarded The Valley Chief with Ojito and her family. At the very last moment, the motor stopped working, and Oswaldo headed out to see if he could find a mechanic.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Captain Mike Howell: Sailing Mañana”
Oswaldo, tired and frustrated, found a boat captain and asked if he could tow the Valley Chief to Key West. The man, Mike Howell, was itching to get out of Cuba after spending a tense week arguing with uniformed men. Mike had grown up in New Orleans with his mother, an abusive stepfather, and several step-siblings. He’d become Catholic, his birth father’s religion, as a teenager, and then joined the Army at 17. Both institutions took him away from his chaotic family and gave him purpose. When the United States began sending troops to Vietnam, Mike volunteered. He became a helicopter pilot. After flying many missions without incident, he was critically wounded in a firefight, and his arm had to be amputated. When Mike returned to the United States he enrolled in college but encountered difficulty among his classmates because he had been a soldier in a very unpopular war. He quit just six credits shy of earning a degree, got married and then divorced, and then drifted, unsure of what to do. Finally, he decided to buy a boat and give chartered cruises. He had some experience boating on Lake Ponchatrain as a child and thought he would enjoy the work.
On April 26, Mike was approached by a Cuban man looking to rescue his relatives from Cuba, and although he was unsure about taking his boat into international waters, he agreed to help the man. He declined to take payment, thinking of it as a good deed. However, the next day he read about the flotilla of boats headed to Cuba from Florida and began to wonder about the legality of the entire operation. After calling his elected representatives and speaking to a journalist friend, he found out that the flotilla was perfectly legal. On April 30, Mike set sail for Cuba from his home port of New Orleans. After some difficulties at sea, Mike arrived in Mariel on May 4. It was typical for boats to remain in the harbor for days while their passengers’ paperwork was sorted out, and an informal economy sprang up to sell food, water, and fuel to the flotilla. Public support for the boatlift was growing, and even President Carter indicated that the United States would welcome all the refugees with open arms. Within a month, nearly 60,000 refugees made their way across the Florida Straits to the US. The massive numbers of refugees posed an administrative problem, and Carter’s response was not without controversy. As American officials bickered, boats filled up the harbor at Mariel. Mike was ready to leave. When he was asked to take the passengers from the beleaguered Valley Chief, he did not want to. After a tense exchange with the Cuban government that involved guns being pointed at Mike, he agreed. He and several members of the media gathered to look at these passengers and realized that the rumors were true: Castro was sending prisoners and societal “undesirables” mixed in with the families of exiles and the refugees from the Peruvian embassy. This was in part why Castro agreed: He wanted to “empty” his prisons and send “undesirables” to the United States. The situation was still tense, but Mike was finally permitted to leave Mariel.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
This set of chapters introduces Napoleón Vilaboa and details the role that he played in the planning and orchestration of Mariel. It further depicts the importance of family networks through the way that Ojito’s uncle Oswaldo and other Cuban Americans helped to organize safe passage for their Cuban relatives. It describes Castro’s violently anti-exile policies and introduces the Mañana’s captain, Mike Howell.
Ojito includes Vilaboa in this section because, like Sanyustiz and Benes, he played a pivotal role in the Mariel boatlift and his story illustrates life under Castro’s rule. A young intellectual during the revolution, Vilaboa had joined Castro and had taken a role in his post-revolution administration. He, like Benes and others, watched with chagrin as Castro reneged on his promise of democracy, and fled to the United States to escape living in an authoritarian dictatorship. In Miami, he rose to prominence and became part of the successful Cuban American community that would only grow in years to come. It was in no small part through the influence of this community that the US government sought to improve relations with Cuba and that events like the Mariel boatlift were possible. Vilaboa and other men like him were able to use their newfound power, influence, and success to help their friends, family members, and fellow Cubans back in Cuba. Ojito honors the role that they played in the history of the Cuban American diaspora by including their stories alongside her own.
Cross-Border Cuban Family Networks became instrumental in the Mariel boatlift, and the author illustrates this theme through the story of her uncle Oswaldo. As soon as her parents realized that emigration was possible, they got in touch with Oswaldo. He had been “horrified by the conditions on the island” (168), especially the “rundown buildings and dirty and often-out-of-order public restrooms” when he visited and was eager to get his family out (168). He, like thousands of other Cubans in South Florida, rushed to charter a boat to go and rescue his relatives. For years, these families had been able to do little other than provide financial assistance and emotional support to their loved ones in Cuba, but now because of policy changes, they could help their families emigrate. Without the presence of these networks and the pressure that they placed on the US government in its foreign policy decisions, events like Mariel would not have been possible. Vilaboa further credited cross-border family networks with turning public opinion toward emigration: He knew that “the presence of Cuban exiles on the island would transform Cuba” because the exiles showed Cubans that a better life was possible in the United States (137).
The author describes Castro’s escalating response to the crisis, showing how Political Repression in Castro’s Cuba endangered those who wished to leave. In addition to encouraging neighbors to hurl insults at the gusanos among them, Castro began to openly call for violence against the would-be exiles. Ojito recalls beatings and even murders occurring during this period. Tensions were especially inflamed during the annual May Day celebrations. May Day, a holiday celebrating workers, is especially important in communist countries, and Castro successfully leveraged the pro-revolutionary fervor that it stirred up to influence public opinion against emigration. Ojito recalls being truly fearful for her safety during this chaotic time. Although violence had been a suppression mechanism often employed by the Castro regime, never before had it been so open, or so openly called for by Castro himself.
Finally, this set of chapters introduces Captain Mike Howell and begins to detail Ojito’s journey away from Cuba, introducing the theme of Exile and Identity. Ojito provides a rich backstory for Howell, detailing his years in Vietnam and his difficult re-entry into an American society that had grown hostile toward its soldiers. Mike struggled to find his own sense of identity in the years following the war, and it was not until he began to work on a boat that he began to feel grounded. There is a parallel here to Ojito’s own experiences in exile: It was not until she found her voice as a journalist that she felt a clear sense of identity and purpose. For Howell, the Mariel boatlift was a humanitarian project. He wanted initially to take passengers to South Florida without charging a fee. He saw his role as a helper rather than a businessman, and years later Ojito would recall this kindness when she sought him out for an interview.
