Almost at the same time on Wednesday morning, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke from Washington while Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, spoke from Havana. Both were addressing the people of Cuba. The former highlighted the date, May 20, as the day “the Cuban flag flew for the first time over an independent country” in 1902, an image preserved in a period photograph that forever enshrined the birth of the republic. The latter, however, said that date should be credited for only one thing: “Having planted in Cubans of that era an anti-imperialist sentiment.” Rubio invoked 1902 as an epic moment, but Díaz-Canel asked the people not to forget that May 20 marks the day of U.S. “intervention” and “interference” in Cuba. That has been the narrative between Washington and Havana to this day: two governments wrestling over the meaning of history.

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When she first saw the news on Facebook, she thought it had to be one of those hoaxes that circulate on social media. It was too implausible, an absurdity. But shortly afterward the principal of the school where she works forwarded to the teachers’ group chat a message that opened with the classic tone of a war dispatch: Information from the Revolutionary Government. Then she had no doubts. The information was real. The CIA director had just met in Havana with the senior leadership of the Cuban security and intelligence apparatus.

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One day in April, Diana Mogollón arrived at a place of which she knew almost nothing. She felt frustrated, sad, and did not want anyone to come near her to talk. At that point she was the newcomer among all the detained migrant women, until at night she saw a young woman come in, looking very young and quiet, with a protruding belly that her clothes could not hide. “She came in and sat to one side; the room was very full.” There were about 70 women inside, sleeping on mats with barely any space, under unsettling lights that stayed on 24 hours a day. Mogollón felt sorry for the young woman. “I told her: girl, if you want, sit on this side because they won’t trample you there.” They began to get to know each other, to tell each other their lives.

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