Before Night Falls

Arenas’s grandfather has an avid interest in politics. He is an anticommunist who belongs to the liberal, reformist Orthodox Party, then led by Eduardo Chibás. Arenas’s grandfather supports Chibás because he denounces rampant corruption and greed. Rare for a peasant his age, Arenas’s grandfather can read; he reads a Latin American magazine called Bohemia that opposes dictatorships.

Through a strange connection, Chibás dies by suicide on the same day that lightning kills Arenas’s great-grandmother. The lightning conducts through the antennae to the radio pressed to her ear—the same radio Arenas’s grandfather installed years prior to listen to Chibás. These twin deaths spell misfortune for Cuba and for Arenas’s family: Fulgencio Batista exploits Chibás’s death to crush the Orthodox party and resume power in a military coup in 1952 (Batista had previously reigned as a de facto dictator following his 1933 Sergeants’ Revolt).

Batista’s dictatorship exacerbates poverty, prompting some of Arenas’s family to emigrate to the United States. Arenas’s mother works for a period in Miami during the ‘50s caring for the babies of Cubans working in factories. His mother’s occupation hurts Arenas: “I imagine her trying to comfort [the babies] in her arms, trying to give them the love and affection she so seldom had time to give me, or perhaps was ashamed to show” (83).