Eduardo F Pelaez

Exit Permit Eduardo F Pelaez

Felipe and Elena had known each other since their childhood days in Camagüey, Cuba. They started dating when they attended the University of Havana and a bright future awaited them. The course of their lives was altered with the implementation of a communist system in their island nation. Although their story as a couple is an imaginary one, it could be that of many Cubans whose careers were severed and whose hopes for a happy life in the country of their birth were destroyed. The narrative, in a series of scenes, some filled with drama, others sprinkled with humor, presents various historical events during the main decades of the Cuban exodus: the missile crisis, the Camarioca boatlift, the storming of the Peruvian Embassy; and difficult situations experienced both within and outside of Cuba: family separation, political asylum, and the required assimilation into a foreign culture. Emotional detachment is presented as the common denominator in the lives of Felipe and Elena: he in exile; she in a homeland that is no longer her own.