Foreign relations of Cuba needed oil. Relations between the countries deteriorated rapidly. In April 1961, following air attacks preparing for the Bay of Pigs Invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles, prime minister Fidel Castro declared Cuba to be a socialist republic, and moved quickly to develop the growing relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. In 1962, Cuba was expelled from the Organization of American States. Shortly afterwards, many nations throughout Latin America broke ties with Cuba, leaving the island increasingly isolated in the region and dependent on Soviet trade and cooperation. Following the establishment of diplomatic ties, and after the Cuban missile crisis in
Dreaming in Cuban the wake of the revolution just as many did in 1961. Celia acutely feels the absence of her granddaughter in Cuba, and she is saddened by the nomadic existence of her children, but she is powerless to change these things. Lourdes uses the exile as an attempt to ignore her past in Cuba and bury the memory of her rape. Her vision of Cuba is frozen at that point in the past. Only in her return to Cuba is Lourdes able to revisit the memory of her rape and her lost child. Pilar grows up with a longing to return