Chapter 12: Anita – Return to Cuba

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Anita addresses the reader directly, reluctant to describe Cuba to those who cannot understand exile. She describes her 1980 return as part of a US artist delegation meant to soften relations between the countries. At a welcome dinner, she feels the gap between American and Cuban artists: the Americans boast about credentials and commerce while the Cubans give guarded answers. She notices Marco, a Cuban painter, and through her friend Jomar, they arrange a late-night meeting at his studio.

Marco shows them landscapes but then reveals his secret work: monochromatic blue nudes of his imprisoned boyfriend. He paints them for himself because showing them would be dangerous. Anita is shaken by this honesty. She realizes that her own art in New York was designed to win approval, not to tell her truth.

During a government trip to a nature preserve, she cannot sleep. She goes outside before dawn, walks in the rain, and strips naked. She covers herself with the red earth, letting it permeate her skin and hair. She tastes the soil and lets the rain wash it away, feeling cleansed. This is her first silueta made for herself, with no documentation.

She decides to stay in Cuba. She bribes the guide Rezza with the Bulgari earrings Jack gave her. Rezza arranges a visa extension. Anita remains for a full year, reconnecting with her grandmother, her family, her orishas, and creating cave sculptures and beach figures—most of which wash away.

Key Events

Anita, Jomar, and their delegation arrive in Havana for a cultural exchange.
At the Hotel Nacional dinner, Anita observes the Americans’ obsession with commerce and validation.
Marco invites Anita and Jomar to his studio, where he shows illicit nude paintings.
Anita realizes her own art was a performance for acceptance, not an expression of truth.
During a rainstorm, Anita performs a ritual: she strips, covers her body with Cuban red earth, and lets the rain wash her clean.
She bribes guide Rezza with Jack’s diamond earrings to extend her stay.
Anita spends a year in Cuba, making art that she allows to be destroyed by nature.

Character Development

Anita de Monte: Undergoes a profound transformation. She moves from being an artist who shaped her work for white approval to one who creates purely for herself. Her ritual with the earth marks a spiritual rebirth and a reclaiming of her Cuban identity.
Marco: A Cuban artist who risks punishment to paint the truth. His courage forces Anita to confront her own compromises. He values personal expression over marketability.
Jomar: Serves as a bridge between Anita and Marco. His own pain over family rejection aligns with the evening’s confessions.
Rezza: Initially seems a government shill but proves pragmatic and willing to bend rules for a price. He knows about Jack, showing how Anita’s American life follows her.
Jack Martin: Though absent, his earrings become the currency of Anita’s liberation. They symbolize the costly power imbalance in their relationship.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

Exile and Belonging: Anita feels alienated from both America and Cuba. She is too American for Cuba, too Cuban for America. The ritual with the earth tries to resolve this split.
Authenticity vs. Performance: Marco’s secret paintings embody art made for truth. Anita’s earlier work was packaged to win approval. The silueta she makes in the rain is her first authentic piece.
Ritual Cleansing: The act of covering herself with red mud and letting rain wash it off is a baptism. It purges the need for external validation and reconnects her to ancestral land.
Cost of Freedom: Anita trades Jack’s earrings for her visa. The material gift becomes the means to break from the man who gave it. Freedom has a literal price.
Spiritual Journey: References to Yemayá, the ceiba tree, and orishas ground Anita’s year in Cuba in a religious tradition she had only known through iconography.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter is the emotional and spiritual heart of Anita’s story. It explains why she stayed in Cuba for a year, the period that produced her most authentic work (cave sculptures, beach figures). It directly contrasts with Jack’s world: where Jack buys influence, Anita gives away his jewels to gain independence. Her decision to let her art dissolve into nature rejects the commercial gallery system she previously courted. This flashback also clarifies her later ghostly presence in the narrative; she returns to Cuba as a place where she was most fully herself.

Study Questions and Answers

1. Why does Anita refuse to describe Cuba in English?

Anita states that the poetry of her experience—the feel of Varadero sand, the smell of the air, her spiritual initiation under a ceiba tree—can only be communicated authentically in Spanish. By drawing this linguistic line, she asserts that genuine understanding of exile requires effort and cultural intimacy. The reader who does not speak Spanish is kept at a distance, a deliberate choice that mirrors the exclusion Anita often felt in America.

2. What does Anita realize about her earlier work, and how does Marco’s art prompt that realization?

Anita realizes that her Iowa River performance—burying herself in mud to fit in—was a metaphor for her lifelong attempt to become American enough. The reaction of rejection from Tilly and the establishment proved that even when she literally buried herself in American soil, she was still not accepted. Marco’s painting of his boyfriend, hidden from authorities, reveals a model of art made solely for personal truth. His courage exposes Anita’s own work as packaging designed to win approval, not to speak honestly.

3. Why does Anita bribe Rezza with Jack’s earrings, and what does this action signify?

Anita uses Jack’s gift—the Bulgari earrings—to buy her freedom to stay in Cuba. The earrings had cost her emotionally (they were part of a manipulative exchange with Jack). By giving them away, she severs a material tie to him and to the American art world that Jack represents. The bribe shows that she values autonomy over luxury. It also demonstrates her resourcefulness and her understanding that in Cuba, everything has a work-around—for a price.