Patria 1959
- Patria's turn. She updates us: Minerva and Manolo now have more than one baby, Mate and Leandro are moving around a lot, and Dedé and Jaimito continue with their bankruptcy run. Mamá has built a new cottage on the main road and Dedé and Jaimito are in the old family house.
- After eighteen years of marriage, things start shaking up for Patria.
- Her son, Nelson, now seventeen, shows up drunk with Minerva, Manolo, and Leandro on New Year's. They are happy about the news that Fidel and Raúl Castro and Ernesto "Che" Guevara have entered Havana, Cuba (more info on that right here).
- Pedrito and Patria have their own celebration, and a few weeks later she's pregnant. She wants to name the baby Raúl Ernesto after the Cuban revolutionaries.
- Patria asks the priest to help her enroll her son in a seminary in the capital because he wants to go where the action is, but she wants him to be safe.
- Pedrito wants him to stay and learn farming, but Nelson isn't interested, and besides, it is not safe for young men in the countryside because the SIM (the Servicio de Inteligencia Militar (Military Intelligence Service—a bunch of terrifying assassins working for Trujillo) was rounding them up. He agrees to let the boy go.
- Patria is very worried and goes to the priest, Padre de Jesús, but he doesn't have any answers for her.
- Mate has a new baby, Jacqueline, so Patria isn't sure about her, but she does know that Minerva, Manolo, and Leandro are up to something.
- Minerva asks Patria to keep her six-month-old baby, Manolito, because she needs to be on the road a lot. She agrees.
- The boy is a cover story; Manolo and Minerva say that he is sickly and has to live with his aunt Patria because of the climate. Whenever they are stopped on the road they can say they are going to visit him.
- She lets them hold meetings on her and Pedrito's land, but they don't come into the house to avoid compromising the family.
- Nelson comes home from school and wants to join the revolutionaries, but they keep sending him on silly errands to keep him out of trouble.
- He tells his mother that they are expecting an invasion the next month, and she is relieved to know he'll be safe in school.
- Five months pregnant, Patria leaves Manolito with her mother and goes on a pilgrimage with her church group to Constanza, in the mountains.
- Noris refuses to join her mother because she'd rather stay home and prepare for a friend's party, so Patria has to go alone with the old ladies.
- Patria has sent a letter to the director of Nelson's school, Padre Fabré, asking him not to give Nelson permission to leave the grounds. His aunts find out about it when they try to take him out for the weekend and tell him. Patria is just trying to keep him safe, but everyone is mad at her.
- The trip goes ahead after some delays because of travel restrictions, and the invasion still hasn't happened. They arrive at a convent in the beautiful mountains and have their retreat.
- On June 14, everyone is in the church when explosions suddenly start booming everywhere. The women hide, and then gather together when it gets silent.
- After a while five men in camouflage come running towards them, chased by peasants and soldiers. Patria watches one of them get shot in the back and die, and has a feeling that it is her son.
- She cries the whole way home, and then decides she will join the revolution.
- The family meets her on the road and the invasion continues six days later. It is a miserable failure.
- The priests, Padre de Jesús and Brother Daniel, call a special invite-only meeting of the Christian Cultural Group. They decide to start a Church Militant group, the Acción Clero-Cultural (Clerical-Cultural Action, ACC), to spread the word among the peasants that they must support the revolution in order to go to heaven.
- Patria delivers little Raúl Ernesto and introduces him to the revolutionary group. She invites them into the house.
- Pedrito is worried because the government can take everything you own if you harbor enemies of the regime, according to a new law.
- He and Patria fight, and he tells her that they can't meet on their land anymore. She tells him that Nelson doesn't want the land anyway, and that they must protect him by letting him and the others meet there.
- They make up in bed (oh, yeah).
- The ACC merges with Manolo and Minerva's group, and Manolo becomes the president. They call themselves the Fourteenth of June Movement in honor of those killed in the first invasion.
- The group begins making bombs in Patria and Pedrito's home, stockpiling ammunition and weapons, and planning their attack.