On a Sunday morning in 1961, two recent Cuban exiles to Miami with the same face meet in a Cuban bakery and order the last pastelítos de guayaba. The bakery clerk mistakes them for brothers. Manuel “Mickey” Llanso and Hugo San Román are both orphans. Mickey’s foster father is a tobacco farmer; Hugo’s foster parents owned a cannery before Fidel Castro nationalized the industry. While waiting to see who will be served the last pastelíto, the two recent exiles find solace in each other’s recollections of growing up in la patria—the homeland. The two part ways; Hugo takes the last pastelítos de guayaba, leaving Mickey to bring dessicated meat pies back to his American girlfriend. The two men meet again several months later at a hotel to meet American military recruiters. Mickey and Hugo soon begin training for an American-backed invasion by Cuban exiles of la patria—the infamous Bay of Pigs Invasion—and join a ragtag group of other Cuban exiles-turned-insurgents. After Mickey learns that Hugo unwittingly slept with his American ex-girlfriend, the two men fight. Upon orders from higher-ups at the training camp, the two are forced to reconcile their differences by hauling a log into a nearby volcano. Their exercise is thwarted by rain, but the two men bond over their shared history as orphans, even speculating that they are indeed long-lost brothers. The men are deployed in San Blas, and begin their invasion. On their way, they encounter a farmer boy who shoots a snake. Mickey greets the boy and takes his snake. Upon their return, the exiles recall childhood memories, smells, places, and family figures. As they venture deeper into la patria, Hugo and Mickey grow closer. Hugo begins to consider Mickey his “twin.”
Mickey is shot in battle by the farmer boy they encountered on their first day in Cuba. Hugo is jailed for several months, then returned to Miami in a Cuba-U.S. deal. Hugo learns that Mickey died from his injuries and soon meets Mickey’s grieving foster father. Wracked with survivor’s guilt, Hugo returns to Miami, where he is branded a traitor by the local Cuban exile community. After Hugo’s foster family’s business in Miami tanks, his foster parents leave him a thousand dollars and abandon him. Hugo goes to Mickey’s apartment and sorts through his belongings. Hugo reflects on the bond he created with Mickey. Regardless of whether or not they actually were related by blood, Hugo concludes, their bond was real. Hugo takes some of Mickey’s sleeping pills left behind in his apartment and falls asleep.