“There is a boat waiting for you at the port of Mariel, he said, pausing a bit to gauge our reactions. He went on. Are you ready and willing to abandon your country at this time?”

Although Castro allowed the Mariel boatlift, those who chose to emigrate were seen as traitors to the communist cause, often called gusanos (worms). The officer’s use of the word “abandon” rather than “leave” here is deliberate: He wants to convey his disapproval of Ojito’s family’s desire to leave Cuba.

“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know that my family’s most cherished ambition was to someday, somehow leave Cuba, as most of the people we knew had already done.”

This passage speaks to the history of the Cuban diaspora. Castro’s regime, although it set out to equalize the economic playing field in Cuba, upended the lives of many, including ordinary (not affluent) families like Ojito’s. Cubans who remained in Cuba were subject to constant surveillance, were not free to make their own career choices, and faced frequent food shortages. It is against the backdrop of this deteriorating national climate that Ojito’s family and others like them decided to leave.

“In the Cuba of the 1970s, even children knew that no loyalty was more important than that owed to Fidel Castro and the revolution. Before I learned my multiplication tables, I memorized Che’s final letter to Castro, the one in which he tells him that he has to leave Cuba because he was made for the struggle, not for the spoils of victory.”

This passage speaks to the way that Castro’s regime used schooling as a space of indoctrination. Students were taught that first and foremost their loyalty was to the regime and its communist project, and students like Ojito who believed in God were ostracized.