What does Cuba metaphorically represent to Beatriz in the novel, When We Left Cuba?

A larger setting than the other locations critical to the plot of the novel, the country serves as a place and even, metaphorically, a person for Beatriz. “Cuba is in its own way a difficult subject for all of us, any mention of Alejandro’s death avoided by all” (47). She and Eduardo and the other members of the Perez family think of Cuba as a person they had to abandon and leave behind when they fled Fidel Castro’s takeover. Unable to return, the Perez’s and other Cuban extradites can only revisit Cuba through their memories. Characters speak of Cuba as if she were an old lover. They are reminded of their country in the faces of those who had to leave it. “‘It is beautiful. The beaches, the countryside, the mountains, the city, all those old Spanish buildings—' in my memory, I see the island exactly as it was, rising over the Malecon. “It’s the closest thing to paradise. On the surface, at least’ (55). For the characters of Cleeton’s novel, Cuba exists in the senses that trigger their memory of it. The sounds of the waves crashing on the shore reminds them of the very waters that brought them to the US.