Culture and the Cuban State: Participation, Recognition, and Dissonance under Communism 1498522238, 9781498522236

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Culture and the Cuban State

Culture and the Cuban State Participation, Recognition, and Dissonance under Communism

Yvon Grenier

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2017 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-2223-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-2224-3 (electronic) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Prefacevii Acknowledgmentsxxvii List of Abbreviations

xxxi

1 Revolution and Cultural Will

1

2 Don’t Cross This Line

61

3 Jesus Diaz, the Unintentional Deviationist

105

4 The Curator State

127

5 How to Write From Mantilla, Of the Small Heresies of Leonardo Padura

161

6 Faking Criticism

187

Conclusion237 Bibliography243 Index269 About the Author

285

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Preface

This is a book about governance, cultural policy and political mobilization of cultural actors in communist Cuba. The goal is to contribute to knowledge on the nature and limitations of political participation in dictatorial regimes,1 by focusing on the cultural field in Cuba. Specifically, the book examines cultural policy, participation and censorship in Cuba from three angles: -- the evolution of cultural policy since the revolution -- the connection between cultural policy and political development -- the extent to which cultural actors are agents for change, for the reproduction of dominant values and institutions, or a mix of both. I raise two questions. First, what is the role of cultural agents in the production of both stability and change in Cuba, and concomitantly, what does the regime do to co-opt actors and control the production of politico-cultural forms? Second, when and how do writers and artists actually push for more “space” and deploy their expressive powers in a way that challenges the status quo? I argue that the Cuban regime uses arbitrarily and elusively defined spaces for semi-autonomous expression and participation as a way to achieve cooperation, control and stability. In an insightful article on economic reforms and the “gatekeeper state” in Cuba from 1989 to 2002, political scientist Javier Corrales argues that “behind the pretence of market reforms, the Cuban government ended up magnifying the power of the state to decide who can benefit from market activities and by how much.”2 It deployed a system of “formal and informal controls,” alternatively using tactics of “openness and rigidity” to achieve its goals.3 Similarly, art critic and essayist Boris Groys sees continuity rather than a rupture in the liberalization of the economy in the post-communist world. For vii

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him, “privatization proves to be just as much an artificial political construct as nationalization had been. The same state that had once nationalized in order to build up communism is now privatizing in order to build up capitalism. In both cases private property is subordinated to the raison d’état to the same degree—and in this way it manifests itself as an artifact, as a product of state planning.”4 For instance, self-employment—the famous cuentapropistas (or “on-your-own-ists”) in Cuba—in this environment does not confer independence from the government. Rather, it makes the beneficiaries more beholden to the government. I consider these claims concerning economic reforms useful to explain tactics of openness and rigidity in other policy areas as well, such as culture. Here, too, the state decides when and who can benefit from increasing market activities, and by how much; who can publish, sell and travel abroad, and who can be visible and audible on the island. This problem ties into the new scholarship on dictatorial regimes, which takes a close look at practices and institutions where agents apparently enjoy increasing autonomy, negotiating with the regime and pushing for change. This happens typically in so-called “hybrid” regimes of one sort or the other: softauthoritarian, competitive authoritarian, electoral authoritarian, late socialist, post-totalitarian (like Cuba), semi-authoritarian or semi-democratic. The key policy area for scholars of twenty-first-century authoritarianism is often the electoral system, looking at the possible benefits and perils for a regime to open the doors to opposition parties. The case of Cuba suggests that political relaxation can take place in a policy area or field, too (e.g., the economy, culture, politics), in large part but not exclusively resulting from public policies, and not just in what Jennifer Gandhi calls “nominally democratic institutions”—such as the electoral system. The rationale is the same: as Jennifer Gandhi points out, autocrats need “compliance” but also “cooperation” from key sectors of society. That may require some give and take at various levels of governance and in all relevant fields, and not just at the institutional level.5 I also make the case that a closer look at the disposition and mobilization of cultural actors reveals that while they can never be fully controlled by any government, and therefore can be seen, as they have been at least since Plato, as a potential irritant for government officials, cultural actors appear to be at least equally motivated by another time-honored historical disposition: the quest for recognition and participation. Somewhere between non-conformity and conformity, risk taking and risk aversion, writers and artists may contribute to the detotalitarianization of the collective mind, either by challenging the regime on its political terrain or simply by opting out of propagandistic schemes. With or without fervor, they appear to be mostly seeking accommodation with the regime in place, and like the rest of Cubans, much of their time and energy is devoted to struggle (luchar), invent (inventar), obtain (conseguir) and revolve (resolver).6

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It has often been said that Cuba punches above its weight in international affairs and media attention. This is clearly reflected in the massive output in “Cuban studies.” While the literature on Cuban culture is abundant, it is significant that recent studies by political scientists on cultural policy and the political mobilization of cultural actors in Cuba are relatively few. The recent work of French political scientist Marie-Laure Geoffray, discussed in this book, is solid, as are the works of sociologists Velia Cecilia Bobes and Sujatha Fernandes. Scholars in history and cultural studies are the major contributors to knowledge on culture and politics in Cuba. Exiled Cuban historian (now living in Mexico) Rafael Rojas is without a doubt the most important scholar on the issue of the politics of culture in Cuba. His productivity is phenomenal and his insights were often the starting points of my own reflections on Cuban politics and culture.7 Cuban politics is not studied much in Cuba, for reasons that I discuss in the last chapter.8 Foreigners (often Cuban-Americans) produce most of the available scholarly literature on the subject. Political analysis of the cultural field in Cuba is also scarce on the island, though the time-honored tradition of the “essay” in Cuba means that many “intellectuals” write about culture and politics, though generally not from a political science or academic perspective. The fact that so much of the secondary sources used in this book originate from outside Cuba could be seen as problematic. The reality is that the scope of what can be said is wider outside than inside the island. Much of what is written in the United States is not particularly hostile to the Cuban regime, whereas genuinely critical political analysis of the Cuban regime cannot be found in regular Cuban publications. The dearth of data collection in Cuba represents a challenge for all students of Cuban affairs. Accordingly, we all tend to rely (perhaps too much) on public speeches by Cuban officials, starting with public official no.1: the effusive Fidel Castro. This is arguably one of the reasons why so much of the official narrative about the recent history of Cuba is adopted as solid foundation for analysis. For instance, US Cuban Studies seems to be built on the notion that Cuba is permanently “in transition,”9 that the “revolution” never ends, or both (the revolution is permanently in transition, “reinventing” itself, etc.). Few Cuba specialists resist the temptation to echo the regime’s propaganda in calling “revolutionary Cuba” what is in fact an ossified fifty-some years old communist government.10 The title for my book would have sounded better as “Culture and the Cuban Revolution,” echoing an expression used both in Granma and in Cuban studies. But it would have been inaccurate, since in my view the Cuban revolution ended in 1961 at the latest. One day we will know much more about how decisions have been made since 1959 if Cuban archives are made available to researchers, as it happened in Eastern Europe and Russia. In the meantime we need to be very careful using the available sources.

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One can find many accounts of how Cuba has been opening up since Raúl took over from his older brother in 2006 (officially in 2008), how the state is retreating from some sectors of the economy, and how “civil society” is reemerging in a post-totalitarian environment, while the political system remains dictatorial and rigid.11 It is hard to blame opposition groups for not creating more space for contention, because they continue to be mercilessly repressed by the regime and they have a hard time unifying their forces.12 It is more common to credit the individuals and groups who have favored gentle pushing through discussions and reforms, like Espacio Laical, Cuba Posible, Observatorio Crítico, Laboratorio Casa Cuba, Centro de Estudios Convivencia [presented by its director Dagoberto Valdés as the first independent “think tank” in Cuba], Corriente Agramontista, La Comisión Coordinadora de Encuentro Nacional Cubano, Centro Cristiano de Reflexión y Diálogo). Independent reporting and blogs are booming in Cuba (14ymedio, Periodismo de Barrio, Havana Times, La Rosa Blanca, Cuadernos de Pensamiento Plural) and most cultural actors have been opting out of teque (official rhetoric) for roughly twenty-five years.13 Suffice to read novels, to see the works of visual artists and especially to listen to some of the underground rap, hip-hop, reggae and reggaetón produced in the past quarter of a century to realize that if explicit confrontation with the actual political leadership or the official ideology is still rare, most cultural actors now refuse to be used as propagandists for the regime. For Cuban social scientist Rafael Hernández, visual artists were the first (in the early 1980s) to breach some previously taboo topics that eventually percolated, cautiously, into social sciences since the late 1980s.14 Academics have less leeway to poach outside the party line, but even they have familiarized themselves with non-propagandistic approaches over the past two decades. In sum, a country without freedom of expression is not necessarily one where freedom cannot be expressed, in oblique yet significant ways. New Yorker journalist Alma Guillermoprieto recently wrote: “Perhaps no other community felt the regime’s intolerance and persecution more consistently over the years than artists.” Writers and academics also come to mind. But with the current opening, she adds, “they are finding a sense of renewed opportunity and purpose in the Cuban moment.”15 She is right. Observers point out that cultural actors are not only the prime movers of recent liberalizing trends, they are also the main beneficiaries. They were the first to be allowed to travel and sell their work abroad during the 1990s. They were also the prime beneficiaries of the legalization of the dollar and the rise of tourism. Even in a purely command economy, as is the case under communism, members of the elite (which in many ways official artists and writers are part of) typically have privileged access to durable consumer goods such as apartments, houses and cars. This trend has intensified since the 1990s, this time involving the state acting less as a benefactor than as a gatekeeper, allowing

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deserving cultural actors to benefit from access to a global market (as clients or for financing projects like films) in exchange for their loyalty or silence. Cuban writer in exile Antonio José Ponte called this the “Putinization of Cuban art.” For him, “Residents outside or within the country enjoy sufficient economic autonomy so as not to be dependent on the regime. They mostly rely on the advantages of dual nationality. . . . They defend their economic privileges above the fate of anyone, even . . . above their own work.”16 Blogger Yoani Sánchez similarly paints a grim portrait of “The Good Intellectual” in Cuba: He hides, in some symbolic passage of his theatrical script, in the parable of a verse, or in the barely visible little figure in the corner of the canvas, that dose of criticism that later will allow him to boast that he “never remained silent.” He knows censorship very well, the simulation and fear that corrode one’s work, but he responds angrily to whomever reminds him. What do you want? That I go work as a construction worker? He spits at anyone who criticizes his excessive concessions. He prefers to address the erotic rather than the political, the past and not the present, to recreate the classics rather than his contemporaries. Once his name was on the black list, and the grey list, but now they honor him and give him medals. He has access to internet in his own home, and for a few years now he has enjoyed a weekend, all-expenses paid, at an hotel in Varadero.17

One of the occasionally dissonant voices in Cuba, writer Arturo Arango, wrote: “The figure of the classical intellectual such as Zola, or, in more contemporary terms, like a Monsiváis, Poniatowska, Saramago, Benedetti and Galeano, among the leftists; a Paz or a Vargas Llosa among right-wingers, these opinion-makers, who enjoy a vast popular audience, have not been allowed in Cuban politics.”18 What is in fact “allowed” varies from one period, individual and context to the next. A certain amount of dissonance can be tolerated for recognized scholars and “intellectuals,” at the right time and the right place, which basically means occasionally, in officially sanctioned (and controlled) venues, with very little (if any) spillover in the media. This keeps everybody on his or her toes, and creates a tension that is useful for the state. The state can pick and choose winners, experiment with ideas and ideological positions, and foment competition for hegemony within the cultural field. And in a “nation” where perhaps 20 percent of the population lives in exile, the dissidents are few on the island, and they don’t tend to be academics or “intellectuals.” What Maurizio Giuliano said years ago still seems valid: “In Cuba there are no Havels or Sakharovs.”19 Since he officially replaced his brother as president in 2008 (and head of the PCC in 2011), Raúl Castro has opened up the economy and cultivated a rapprochement with the United States. He seemed to have realized that, to use Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s famous expression, “For things to stay

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as they are, things will have to change.” Among the most important reforms undertaken under Raúl’s administration, one counts a series of no-nonsense measures that show how much of an outlier Cuba was in the twenty-firstcentury world of nations: for instance, the permission to use cell phones (great for independently produced art and media) and to sell houses, and the termination of the infamous “exit visa,” except for doctors, in January 2013. Since December 17, 2014, foreign press—including the Miami Herald—can get visas and report from the island more than any time before. (Independent journalists are still persecuted and censored.) The dismissal of about 700,000 workers from state payrolls, the tolerance of a small but growing “non-state” sector (responsible for 28% of total employment),20 the opening of a Special Economic Zone in the Port of Mariel, all indicate a will to modernize the current model. President Obama’s visit in March 2016 and a significant loosening up of the US embargo also hint at a turn in Cuban politics. The spirit of reform seems to extend beyond the economic or foreign policy domains. The 2015 Freedom House report on Cuba highlights the following: Some state media have begun to cover previously taboo topics, such as corruption in the health and education sectors. The national newspaper Granma has begun to publish letters to the editor from the public on economic issues, and state television, while generally a mouthpiece of the PCC, recently inaugurated a new program, Cuba Dice (Cuba Says), that features “man-on-the-street” interviews. A number of publications, especially those associated with the Catholic Church, have emerged as key players in debates over the country’s future, including Espacio Laical, Cuba Posible, Palabra Nueva, and Convivencia. Low-circulation academic journals such as Temas are similarly able to adopt a relative level of openness and critical posture.21

On February 28, 2008, Cuba signed International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, but never ratified them. Clearly, much more needs to be done to witness a genuine liberalization, let alone democratization, in Cuba. To begin with, the fundamentals have not changed significantly. According to Freedom House, “Cuban workers do not have the right to strike or bargain collectively, and independent labor unions are illegal.” Moreover, “the Council of State has complete control over the courts and the judiciary” and “Cuba does not grant international humanitarian organizations access to its prisons.” Finally, “freedom of movement and the right to choose one’s residence and place of employment are restricted. In violation of International Labour Organization statutes, Cubans working abroad, in the export processing zone at the Port of Mariel, or for foreign companies on the island are not paid directly, but rather through the Cuban state in Cuban, or nonconvertible, pesos.” The government

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continues to crackdown on dissidents (the Ladies in White in particular) and on human rights activists (CubaLex, Hablemos Press, the CCDHRN, Estado de Sats, among others), most of the time for short detention periods. In fact, there is evidence that the regime has increased control and repression since the 7th Congress of the Communist Party (PCC) in 2016.22 Though the “exit visa” was abolished, Freedom House indicates: “reforms gave the government broad discretionary powers to restrict the right to travel on the grounds of ‘defence and national security’ or ‘other reasons of public interest.’ Such measures have allowed the authorities to deny exit to people who express dissent.”23 Various members of the Cuban opposition traveled to Puerto Rico in August 2016 for the second Encuentro Nacional Cubano, while others (like activists Iván Hernández y Félix Navarro) were denied permission to leave.24 Similarly, academic freedom is restricted in Cuba, and again, according to HRW, despite the elimination of exit permits in 2013, university faculty, especially those in the social sciences, must still obtain permission from their superiors to travel to academic conferences abroad. The Freedom House report mentions the case of activist Manuel Cuesta Morúa, who in 2014 was prevented from traveling to the United States to present at the Latin American Studies Association conference. “Two prominent Cuban-born U.S. academics, economist Carmelo Mesa-Lago and sociologist Jorge Duany, were denied visas to attend a conference in Cuba in 2014.” The country still has one of the Western Hemisphere’s lowest Internet penetration rates—only 5 percent of the population—but in recent years Cuba has seen a number of developments in information and communication technology (ICT) capabilities, such as the increased number of independent bloggers and independent news outlets.25 The government still “restricts access to ICTs by making connections prohibitively expensive and controlling content,” according to Freedom House. According to the 2016 Human Rights Watch Report on Cuba, “Despite the release of the 53 political prisoners in conjunction with the agreement to normalize relations with the US, dozens more remain in Cuban prisons, according to local human rights groups.”26 The economic opening seems to benefit the military (via Gaviota, the tourism company it controls) and foreign corporations as much as, or perhaps more than, the small private sector.27 Recent cases of censorship, like the spectacular one against visual artist Tania Bruguera, less than two weeks after the Obama-Castro diplomatic agreement of December 17, 2014, remind observers that plus ça change, the more the fundamentals remains the same in “revolutionary” Cuba.28 According to the 2015 FREMUSE Report on Censorship and Attack on Artistic Freedom, Cuba was one of the ten top violators of artistic rights in that year.29 Censorship and apparent liberalization are arguably not polar opposites: they are the two sides of the same coin. This kind of paradox is fascinating beyond

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its immediate implications in the cultural field. While the policy on public expression remains clear for the most part, the exact contours of what is tolerated is as blurry and alterable as it ever was, arbitrarily going back and forth. The only certainty, and it is a considerable one, is the certainty of power— where it flows from and how pervasive it remains in all parts of society. While the book includes an interdisciplinary dimension it is primarily written from a political science perspective. It does look at the political dimension of works of art, literature and social sciences, and examines cultural and intellectual trends, but it does not propose an original contribution to art history or literary criticism. Colleagues in the humanities enjoy talking about politics; I return the compliment by mobilizing analytic tools of the discipline to better understand the politics of culture in Cuba. The basic methodology used in this book consists of qualitative analysis of primary texts and interviews, as well as a critical reading of secondary sources. Dozens of semi-structured interviews were realized in Cuba, the United States, Canada and Spain. I rarely mention the interviewee by name to protect his or her identity. Much of the primary and some of the secondary sources were accessed at the Cuban Heritage Collection of the University of Miami. Access to information in Cuba is limited for obvious reasons: absence of critical media (except for emerging independent digital media),30 no free access to archives, and very limited freedom of expression on the island. It is not yet possible to document cases of censorship in Cuba as Robert Darnton did for Bourbon France, British India and Communist East Germany in Censors at Work, How States Shaped Literature (2014).31 Even then, says Darnton, “only rarely are the archives adequate, because censoring took place in secret, and the secrets usually remained hidden or were destroyed.”32 This book does not offer a comprehensive history of cultural policy in Cuba. The goal is to contribute to knowledge in the area, by challenging some common assumptions and by proposing a fresh look at the political evolution of the cultural field in Cuba. The approach in this book is mostly inductive, drawing lessons from emblematic life experience of writers, artists and academics who have two fundamentally clashing ambitions: to deploy their skills and creativity in a highly politicized environment, while supporting or avoiding confrontation with the regime in place. The individuals I focus on come from different generations but all became adults in the wake of the 1959 revolution. Two are visual artists, two are writers with significant involvement in the film industry, and one is an academic and the director of what is considered the most “critical” social sciences magazine in Cuba. In my discussion of these case studies I always comment on the larger context (the historical moment, generation, group characteristics), so the book ends up offering a fairly broad analysis of the cultural field as a whole.

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One advantage of focusing on cultural actors is that they are fairly loquacious. To know their views, one just has to start by collecting them, in journals, magazines, books and online publications. What is remarkable about their views and works is the intensity of their engagement with their country and its ongoing cultural and political development. Perhaps this is a common for a country that is not at peace with itself. As a matter of fact, many hyphenated Cubans who have lived abroad for many years are equally enthralled by the nation’s destiny.33 For all the talk about postmodern art in Cuba, the country is literally stuck in modernity, with primary concerns about national identity, sovereignty, material well-being, basic freedom and security. These modern concerns are omnipresent in the so-called New Cuban art, where they are at once localized and transcended by postmodern aesthetics. This confers New Cuban art a trendy “glocal” cachet that simultaneously insinuates and defuses “content,” as we shall see in chapter 4. We also know that in authoritarian regimes, what actors say or express publicly may not reflect exactly what they think. In the Soviet Union, according to Cécile Vaissié, “most literary leaders were famous for ‘saying one thing, thinking another and then doing yet another.’”34 Cuban art critic (now living in Spain) Iván De la Nuez comes up with a similar imperative for Cuban writers: “To say less than we think, to write less than we say, to publish less than we write. This is our fate.”35 The “double talk”—“bajo techo todo, en la calle nada [under the roof, everything, in the street, nothing]”—is a puzzle for the analyst. Uncritical public statements by cultural actors in Cuba cannot a priori be considered as lies. Simply, one never knows for sure if (or the extent to which) a statement is truthful or not. It is gratuitous and unfair to assume that all cultural actors in Cuba are sycophants or supporters of the regime, who opt to stay in the country (assuming they have had the option to leave) because “The revolutionary government built up a reserve of legitimacy during the early 1960s that for many people has never been exhausted.”36 It would be a grave mistake to assume that Cubans who live in Cuba are still there because they are not critical of the situation they live in. In fact, “under the roof,” Cubans in Cuba can be as critical of the regime as anybody on “Calle Ocho” in Miami. It is not reasonable either to assume that if criticism of the regime and its “historical” leadership is largely absent from the public domain, after more than five decades of uninterrupted rule, it is simply because nobody feels the need to do so. Authoritarianism, censorship and repression are part of the Cuban reality. How actors deal with this reality and how it translates differently from one person or period to the next are where things become complicated and require a refined approach. To begin with, there are many reasons why one would choose to stay in one’s own country. The most common ones in Cuba since 1959, in no particular order, have been that it was illegal to leave, that one would lose everything and not

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be allowed to come back, and of course that it is always hard to leave family and friends behind. One thing is clear: the moment Cubans leave the island for good many turn into vocal opponents of the Cuban regime.37 Peer pressure undoubtedly plays a role in exile, too. It is difficult, though not impossible,38 to cheer for Fidel in Miami. Peer pressure is not the same as the manifold web of legal and emotional pressure and constraints experienced by victims of censorship under a dictatorship.39 To make one more point about my approach, it is apropos to mention that I am a comparativist and when appropriate, I propose comparisons with most similar cases either in communist countries or more generally in authoritarian, totalitarian and “revolutionary” ones. Cuba is less singular than many Cubans and Cuba specialists seem to believe. The way censorship and self-censorship work in Cuba, the motivations of cultural actors, the official ideology combining Marxism-Leninism and nationalism, the anti-imperialist and anti-US official stances and the prevalence of caudillism are all familiar to observers of dozens of countries around the world. Nationalism is a fig leaf hiding two realities from Cubans (and Cubanistas): they are more Latin American than they think, and their political system is still more Eastern European and Russian in design than they are officially willing to admit. Cuba is an island; Cuban studies do not have to be.40 This book does not “apply” a theory; rather, it uses conceptual tools and theoretical insights in a fairly eclectic way. The most significant influence comes from the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002), specifically his “field theory.” It is used less as a theory in the conventional sense than as a loose series of insights and conceptual tools for the analysis of cultural production and symbolic interaction. For Bourdieu, a field is basically a “microcosm” (he also uses the term “arena” and “autonomy”), featuring its own distinctive rules (or “internal structure”) and actors, which in turn is connected to other fields and embedded in wider social constructs. A theory of fields is also a theory of inter-fields relations. A field is not a priori dissimilar to what sociologists sometimes call a “sphere” (as in the “economic sphere” or the “political sphere” for Max Weber) or what political scientists call “policy community,” though the theory of fields does not imply a high degree of consensus, organization or institutionalization. Furthermore, it pays special attention to the symbolic dimension of social interactions—what Bourdieu, after Marcel Mauss and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, calls “habitus.” For Bourdieu the cultural field in the West became increasingly inwardly oriented (what he calls fermeture or “closure”) as it emancipated itself from its traditional patrons (the church and the aristocracy). Consequently, social patterns and markers of distinction tended to be reproduced with a higher degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the larger social construct. What that means concretely is that “What happens in the field is increasingly linked to the specific history

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of the field, and therefore it is more and more difficult to deduce it directly from the state of the social world at that particular moment.”41 The field theory can be applied to any fields (political, cultural, economic) or sub-fields (e.g., literary, theater, music), each with its own set of “internal structures.” This allows Bourdieu to analyze cooperation and conflicts with careful understanding of both micro and macro levels. One can imagine, in the case of Cuba, that the cultural subfield of literary production is influenced by rules that belong to both national and transnational literary genre, whereas the field of musical production would be more predominantly shaped by national tradition.42 There is no such thing as a fully autonomous field—even the field of “Cuban politics” is part of larger fields: global trade, international relations, etc. In other words, a field is always a subfield. The point here is to give oneself the tools to be serious about both the internal structures of a given type of activity and representation and its connections to other types in a structure of power where individuals and groups are not equal. The field theory was conceived for the study of a democratic and developed country (France) and countries with similar characteristics. Other sociologists have used and adapted the “field theory” to their time and place.43 In fact it can travel fairly easily if one keeps the concepts and sociological insights and treat the theoretical part with caution. For instance, in an answer to the question of how one can “define the limit of the political field,” Bourdieu answered “recognition by journalists,” who act as gatekeepers (his word in English).44 Needless to explain, the part about journalists is irrelevant for Cuba, though the idea of a gatekeeper is interesting. He also said that “The presence or existence of an agent in a field is recognized by the fact that he [sic] transforms the state of the field (or that the field changes a lot if the agent is removed).” 45 He used the example of the Front National, a far-right party that in his view was shaping the political discourse in his country (as a matter of fact, it still does today). Again, fields in Cuba are not so autonomous that one actor (other than the comandante en jefe) or group can effectively change the political field in quite the same way. Bourdieu also says that “The political field has a peculiarity: it can never be completely autonomous.”46 In Cuba, only the political field can claim a high level of autonomy. With some adjustments, a modest version of this theory is helpful to clarify and organize the data on the politics of culture in Cuba.47 An approach that understands society as a collection of interlocked fields organized vertically by political power is useful to understand this country’s politics. Neither the purely state-centered approaches nor the ones that magnify the growing autonomy of civil society quite capture what sociologist Haroldo Dilla calls the “subordinated negotiations” between cultural agents and the state.48 Needless to explain, the cultural field is a methodological construct, a concept, rather than an immediately observable fact. The definition needs to be fairly

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far-reaching because in its broadest sense, culture is produced and reproduced by everybody, both in the country and beyond (e.g., the diaspora), and not just by writers, artists and academics living in Cuba. What is more, no government policy is free of cultural impact; in other words, all policies are cultural policies. This seems especially true under a totalitarian or post-totalitarian regime, where the parts only mean something as part of a whole. Bourdieu’s concepts of positions and dispositions help to distinguish the motivation from what actors actually say or do, a necessary distinction in a society where double language and mandatory political communion are common. In the cultural field in Cuba, one finds indicators of both high and low institutionalization: high institutionalization because the state organizes the field from above, directly (Fidel or Raúl) or via institutions like the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Education, state-controlled cultural organizations or various kinds of mass organizations; and simultaneously, one finds significant instances of low institutionalization, because interactions and habitus are shaped by informal and shifting rules. Authoritarian control of public expression is achieved both by censorship, a centralized and organized function of the state, and by self-censorship, which is an uncodified and unspoken habitus. To further complicate the matter, one finds in Cuba cultural actors who are artists/writers with positions in the cultural bureaucracy, bureaucrats with literary or artistic ambition, academics/intellectuals active in the PCC, artists who are elected members of the legislature and so on. Both the formal and informal habitus are shaped by that crisscrossing of state and society, all organized in a way that favor some competition for recognition by the political leadership. Politics in Cuba is both predictable and somewhat fluid in its application. In part inspired by the field theory and social movement theory, political scientist Marie-Laure Geoffray offers an analysis of what she calls the emerging “micro-arenas of contention” in Cuba.49 Though she does not focus specifically on the cultural field, as I do, it is significant that most of the contending actors she looks at are cultural actors. Geoffray identifies four of those micro arenas: dissident, contentious, critical and diaspora. “Dissidents directly confront the government, find the socialist regime to be illegitimate, and call for free and fair elections. Contentious voices accept the socialist heritage as legitimate, but they disagree with the current socialist rule. Critical voices remain within authorized boundaries and do not question the government’s legitimacy.”50 This typology is interesting and useful, though the line between “critical” and “contentious” is not easy to draw. It is also unfortunate to reserve a venerable concept such as “critical” for the least critical positions, especially when one thinks that officially, Cubans are encouraged by their government to be critical.51 In sum, this operational definition comes close to defining “critical” as its antonym. What is more, it may be

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problematic to think of these micro-arenas only in terms of how hard actors challenge officials and push for change, without considering how it may be useful for the state to tolerate and even benefit from the presence of different types of mild “opposition.” Much of what is a priori conceptualized as the dawn of a new self-reflective civil society can also be examined as the result of state management of public expression. For instance, the state may grant some autonomy and broader limitations for a cultural or social sciences journal read by the few in Cuba and abroad, while granting virtually none for the government-controlled media. Geoffray interestingly talks of the “heteronomy” of these micro-arenas vis-à-vis the Cuban state, as well as “their poor connectivity and interactivity,” hence strongly suggesting patterns of horizontal fragmentation and enduring strategic control of these “arenas” by the state. Culture and the Cuban State is an essay on cultural policies and on writers, artists and academics who have endeavored to occupy the limited available space for participation. They occasionally striked a dissonant note and stepped on the wrong side of the “red lines,” wittingly or not. Two of them (Díaz and Bruguera) eventually crossed the line, becoming (especially Díaz) “dissidents.” It is not clear at this point that Bruguera will be allowed to return to Cuba, an option Díaz never had from his exile in Madrid. I deliberately chose case studies that illustrate what has been a dominant trend within the cultural field for decades. Though new forms of non-conformity and even resistance appear to be more tolerated than before, there are also signs that this can change very quickly. In other words, this is a book on those who try, most of the time, to play by the rules, as a way to explore those rules. It is not a book on dissidents, though I like to think that it helps understand how one can become a dissident in a country like Cuba. In the first two chapters I propose an interpretative framework for the analysis of the politics of culture in Cuba. This framework concerns the rulers and their policies, the “revolutionary” culture, the “parameters” within which actors are allowed to express themselves, the presence of competition among actors and groups for recognition by the political leadership, and the adaptive strategies of cultural actors in an environment characterized by risks and uncertainty. To understand cultural policy one needs to understand the overarching logic that shapes political mobilization and restriction to public expression more generally. The subsequent chapters look at specific cases of cultural actors in the visual arts, literature and academia. With Jesús Díaz (chapter 3) we have a writer and intellectual who came of age with the revolution and shared its ideals, before becoming a no less unflinching voice for the opposite camp. Visual artists José Toirac, Kcho and Tania Bruguera (chapter 4) were born in the late 1960s (Kcho in 1970) and represent three different forms of cultural participation: cautious exploration of the critical

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space available for Toirac, not so cautious for Bruguera, and a peculiar mix of official kitsch and depoliticization for Kcho. Highly successful writer Leonardo Padura (chapter 4) came of age during the harsh 1970s. A bit more explicitly than Toirac, he explores all the nooks and crannies of available discursive space, to expose some of the ruins of official narrative and public policies. The last chapter turns to a remote corner of the cultural field, academia and in particular the social sciences and humanities. Academics do not “sell” their books and articles to foreign buyers, in dollars, and they trade in a language that is largely analogous to the one used in the political realm. I show that what they do is controlled much more closely and directly (using similar language) than the work of visual artists or writers. And yet academic work requires critical thinking and imagination, and academics seek recognition and participation as much as artists and writers do. I conclude with some final remarks on this book’s contributions and limitations. NOTES 1. Milan M. Svolik defines dictatorship as “an independent country that fails to satisfy at least one of the following two criteria for democracy: (1) free and competitive legislative elections and (2) an executive that is elected either directly in free and competitive presidential elections or indirectly by a legislature in parliamentary systems.” Castro’s Cuba fails both criteria. Jennifer Gandhi adds another sine qua non condition for democracy: “an alternation in power must have taken place.” Cuba under Fidel and Raúl fails that condition as well. Milan M. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics 2012), 22; Jennifer Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship (Cambridge University Press, 2010), 12, note 11. 2. Javier Corrales, “The Gatekeeper State: Limited Economic Reforms and Regime Survival in Cuba, 1989–2002,” Latin American Research Review 39, no.2 (1994): 46; I use Jacques Zylberberg’s conception of the state, as a central organizational system of mandatory inclusion, acting on a population within a territorial space constructed militarily and legitimized symbolically. 3. Corrales, “The Gatekeeper State,” 50–51. 4. Boris Groys, Art, Power (The MIT Press, 2013), 166. Groys also claims that “privatization is not a transition but a permanent state, since it is precisely through the process of privatization that the private discovers its fatal dependence on the state: private spaces are necessarily formed from the remnants of the state monster. It is a violent dismemberment and private appropriation of the dead body of the Socialist state, both of which recall sacred feasts of the past in which members of a tribe would consume a totem animal together.” Groys, Art, Power, 167.

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5. Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship, xviii. 6. Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb, Cuba in the Shadow of Change: Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revolution (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2009), 81. 7. Rojas’ books on Cuba include El arte de la espera, notas al margen de la política cubana (Colibrí, 1998); Un banquete canónico (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000); José Martí, la invención de Cuba (Colibrí, 2000); La política del adiós (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2003); Tumbas sin sosiego (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006); Motivos de Anteo, Patria y nación en la historia de Cuba (Colibrí, 2008); El estante vacío, literatura y política en Cuba (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2009); La máquina del olvido, mito, historia y poder en Cuba (Taurus, 2012); and Historia mínima de la Revolución Cubana (Turner, 2016). He also has an interesting blog, Libros del crepúsculo (http://www.librosdelcrepusculo.net/). As an historian and a liberal-minded intellectual, much of his work concerns the use and abuse of history by the Castro regime, to “unperson” (to use Orwell’s term) dissidents, ignore the diaspora’s contribution to Cuban culture, defang critical thinking and dim collective memory of inconvenient parts of Cuban history. His brother Fernando is vice-minister of culture in Cuba and his father, Fernando Rojas Avalos, was president (Rector) of the University of Havana from 1980 to 1992. 8. As one of the few “political scientists” in Cuba said: “We do not have as of yet a complete history of the political order existing in Cuba since 1959. We do not have at our disposition a political history of the country, a proposal of periodization. We do not have a history that, at least, gives us an inventory of the most relevant political events. Therefore, all colleagues who are engaged in the study of the country’s political reality are forced to make small historical incursions, precisely because there is no possibility of referring to a sufficiently consistent repertoire of political data to save themselves the need to historicize.” Juan Valdés Paz, “Ciencia política: un estado de la disciplina,” first presented during a conference organized by Rafael Hernández at the Centro Juan Marinello in 1999, then published in Rafael Hernández ed., Sin Urna de Cristal, Pensamiento y cultura en Cuba contemporánea (La Habana: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello, 2003), 153. 9. The number of books and articles with “Cuba in transition” in the title is rather astonishing and the Annual proceedings of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (who should know better) is entitled “Cuba in Transition” since 1991. 10. What Rafael Rojas says about Cuban historiography is also valid for Cuban studies outside Cuba: “To advance critically, the new Cuban historiography will have to operate with a new concept of ‘revolution’ that rejects its identification with all the synonyms in the official discourse. Revolution cannot mean the same thing as patria, nation or socialism, nor can it function as a metaphor for power—Fidel, Raúl, the Party—or as another name for the regime.” Rojas, La máquina del olvido, 170. 11. See for instance Rafael Rojas, “La democracia postergada, pluralismo civil y autoritarismo político en Cuba,” in Velia Cecilia Bobes ed., Cuba ¿ajuste o transición?: impacto de la reforma en el contexto del restablecimiento de las relaciones con Estados Unidos (Mexico city: FLACSO, 2015), 145–161. 12. There are dozens of opposition organizations in Cuba. Among the best known groups one finds the Las Damas de blanco, Todos marchamos, Unión Patriótica de

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Cuba, Estado de Sats, Alternativa Cuba 2018 (#Otro18), and the umbrella organization Mesa de la Unidad de Acción Democrática (MUAD), which regroup a number of organizations such as Somos Más, Plataforma Femenina Nuevo País, Arco Progresista, Centro de Apoyo a la Transición, Partido Demócrata Cristiano de Cuba and Solidaridad de Trabajadores Cubanos. Other organizations have recently left the MUAD: Unión Nacional Patriótica de Cuba (UNPACU), Frente Antitotalitario Unido (FANTU), Observatorio Cubano de Derechos Humanos (OCDH) y Fundación Nacional Cubano Americana (FNCA). The most important NGO in Cuba is the Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos y Reconciliación Nacional de Cuba, founded by former political prisoners and dissidents in 1987. It is illegal but it manages to report on repression on a monthly basis. Armando Chaguaceda, “Frente al Leviatán tropical, hay gente empoderada que sueña, lucha, y avanza,” Diario de Cuba, 26 de abril, 2016. http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1461763540_21976.html; Yusimí Rodríguez López, ¿La Mesa (de la Unidad de Acción Democrática) cojea?, Diario de Cuba [digital], July 17, 2016, http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1468701637_23909. html. 13. See Sonia Behar, La caída del hombre nuevo: narrativa cubana del período especial (New York: Peter Lang, 2009). 14. As he puts it: “Was it not literature, art, theater, and the cinema, that introduced into the public sphere the inquiry into religious revival and racial prejudice, sexual orientation, intergenerational differences, the new perspective on migrants, and in general the phenomena associated with the crisis, from prostitution to drugs, before any of the social sciences?” Rafael Hernández, “Hacia una cultura del debate,” in Ultimo Jueves, Los debates de Temas (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 2004), 11. Visual art was also responsible for introducing the “postmodern” narrative into social sciences and humanities during the 1990s. Alexis Jardines, La filosofía cubana in nuce. Ensayo de historia intelectual (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2005), 229. 15. Alma Guillermoprieto, “Cuba: The Big Change,” The New Yorker, May 12, 2016. In this book all the translations are mine unless indicated otherwise. 16. Antonio José Ponte, “La putinización del arte cubano,” El País internacional, 19 July 2015). 17. Yoani Sánchez, “The Good Intellectual,” Huffington Post, February 15, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/the-good-intellectual_b_1279646. html,. 18. Elizabeth Mirabal Llorens y Carlos Velazco Fernández, “Una travesía desde los márgenes, entrevista a Arturo Arango,” Revolución y Cultura 4 (2009): 16. 19. Giuliano, El caso CEA, 138. 20. Pavel Vidal Alejandro, “Small and Medium Private Enterprises: A Bridge for Cuba–U.S. Relations,” OnCuba (digital magazine), June 23, 2016. http://oncubamagazine.com/economy-business/small-and-medium-private-enterprises-a-bridgefor-cuba-u-s-relations/. Accessed July 28, 2016. 21. Freedom House, “Cuba,” in Freedom in the World: The Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties (Lanham, ML: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 183.

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22. Rafael Rojas, “La contrarreforma cubana,” El País, October 13, 2016, p.14; Marlene Azor Hernández, “El terrorismo de Estado en Cuba,” Cubaencuentro, March 6, 2017. Accessed March 6, 2017. http://www.cubaencuentro.com/opinion/articulos/ el-terrorismo-de-estado-en-cuba-329064 23. Freedom House, “Cuba.” 24. Reinaldo Escobar, “Iván Hernández y Félix Navarro, impedidos de salir de Cuba ‘por segunda vez,’” 14ymedio, August 11, 2016, http://www.14ymedio. com/nacional/Ivan-Hernandez-Felix-Navarro-Cuba_0_2051794808.html. Accessed August 15, 2016. 25. Among others, La Aldea Maldita,  Periodismo de Barrio, Cachivache Media, El Estornudo, Cubanet. See Ted A. Henken, and Sjamme van de Voort, “From Cyberspace to Public Space?: The Emergent Blogosphere and Cuban Civil Society,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader: The Revolution Under Raúl Castro, Edited by Philip Brenner, Marguerite Rose Jiménez, John M. Kirk, and William M. LeoGrande (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). Pp. 99–110. 26. See https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2016/country-chapters/cuba 27. “Stripped of the high-minded rhetoric, the fundamental tendency of the new dispensation in U.S.–Cuban relations is toward collaboration between U.S. corporations and military gatekeepers on the island, in which profits take priority over the basic human rights of the Cuban people.” In “Cubans don’t benefit from American business—Castro does,” The Washington Post, September 16, 2016. https://www. washingtonpost.com/opinions/cubans-dont-benefit-from-american-business—castrodoes/2016/09/16/674e32b2-79e5-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html?utm_term=. d67ac1fd1f3d 28. Ryan McChrystal, “Cuban Artists Still Condemned to Silence,” Index on Censorship, 12 January 2016. https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2016/01/cuban-artistsstill-condemned-to-silence/. Accessed November 14, 2016. 29. See Art under Threat, Freemuse Annual Statistics on Censorship and Attacks on Artistic Freedom in 2015, pp.42–43. Available: http://artsfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Freemuse-Annual-Statistics-Art-Under-Threat-2015.pdf. For an excellent summary of cases of censorship in Cuba since 1959, see Rafael Rojas, “Breve historia de la censura en Cuba (1959–2016),” La Razón, January 30, 2017. Accessed January 30, 2017: http://www.razon.com.mx/spip.php?article336011. 30. Exception to the rule, a rather bold speech in favor of more journalistic freedom was recently delivered by the assistant director of Granma newspaper, Karina Marrón, during a meeting of the Cuban Journalists Association (UPEC) in Santa Clara in July 2016. It has been reported that journalists ask for censorship to end. Reported in Havana Times by Pilar Montes, July 4, 2016. 31. Robert Darnton, Censors at Work, How States Shape Literature (W.W. Norton & Company, 2014). 32. Darnton, Censors at Work, 14. 33. Here a comment made about late communism in East Germany by Marilyn Rueschemeyer seems relevant to the Cuban case: “It is probably fair to say that intellectuals and artists in the GDR identified intensely with their society, even if in opposition to it. And their art had a particular importance, in opposition or in support

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of the system, depending on the audience. The arts revealed a more complex world, ambiguities and tensions in the system, individual striving and anomy, a world that had less public discussion in the media. That was a crucial reason for the importance of art, its importance to the audience that followed it, and its importance to the authorities who worried about its impact on the society.” Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Victoria D. Alexander, Art and the State: The Visual Arts in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, MacMillan, 2005), 142. 34. Cécile Vaissié, Les ingénieurs des âmes en chef, littérature et politique en URSS (1944–1986) (Paris: Editions Bélin, 2008), 460. 35. Quoted in Francis Pisani, “Grogne des intellectuels, exaspération des citoyens, Les artistes cubains dans l’île des merveilles,’” Le Monde Diplomatique, August 1991, pp.24–25. 36. Nicola Miller, “A Revolutionary Modernity: The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution,” Journal of Latin American Studies 40 (2008): 675–696. 37. For Parvathi Kumaraswami and Antoni Kapcia, “Firstly émigré memoirs inevitably tend to have a selective memory, eliminating any commitment to the Cuban system, and any reference to the opportunities which the Revolution brought, and inevitably focusing on the problems, restrictions and pressures—that is, everything which supposedly drove them out.” These authors are not as alert to tease out cases of selective memory in the island. Kumaraswami and Kapcia, Literary culture in Cuba (Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), 40. 38. See for instance the work of Cuban journalist Edmundo García, based in Miami. 39. As Cuban-American artist and essayist Coco Fusco wrote: “Numerous behindthe-scenes conversations I have had over the years with journalists, scholars and tourists who travel to Cuba suggest that many are perplexed by the lack of transparency in conversations there, or fear that if they are open about their own criticisms, they will lose access to the island and their sources. In short, there are many reasons why people inside and outside Cuba remain silent on the subject of state power, just as there are many reasons why artists who mouth revolutionary rhetoric in Cuba completely reject it when they go into exile.” Coco Fusco, Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (London: Tate Publishing, 2015), 11. 40. “Mundo soñado” [Dreamed World, 1995], an installation by Cuban artist Antonio Eligio Fernández (“Tonel”) presented in the Fine Arts Museum, in Havana, consists of a gigantic world map made of dozens of small replicas of Cuba. I can be forgiven to think that this oeuvre represents, perhaps sarcastically, the idea of Cuba as being the center of the world. 41. Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art, Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (Paris: Seuil, 1992), 338. 42. For literature, Bourdieu tells us that “The science of cultural works presupposes three operations as necessary and necessarily linked as the three levels of social reality which they apprehend: first, the analysis of the position of the literary field (etc.) within the field of power, and its evolution over time. Secondly, the analysis of the internal structure of the literary field, etc., a universe obeying its own laws of functioning and transformation, that is to say, the structure of the objective relations between the positions occupied by individuals or groups in competition for

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legitimacy. And finally, the analysis of the genesis of the occupants of these positions and their habitus, that is to say, the systems of dispositions which, being the product of a social trajectory and a position within the literary field (etc.), find in this position a more or less favorable opportunity to be actualized (the construction of the field is the logical pre-requisite to the construction of the social trajectory as a series of positions occupied successively in this field).” Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art, 298. 43. For instance Doug McAdams and Neil Fligstein retooled the theoretical framework and examined the “racial politics field” in the U.S. (1932–1980) as well as the “mortgage policy field” (1969–2011). See their A Theory of Fields (Oxford University Press, 2012). The field theory is loosely applied to the case of Mexico by Alicia Azuela de la Cueva in her book Arte y Poder (Fondo de Cultura Económica y El Colegio de Michoacán, 2006). 44. Pierre Bourdieu, Propos sur le champ politique (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 2000), 38. 45. Bourdieu, Propos sur le champ politique, 61. 46. Bourdieu, Propos sur le champ politique, 62. 47. The work of Pierre Bourdieu is not well known in Cuba. One specialist is sociologist Marlene Azor Hernández, who now lives in Mexico. See her article “El intelectual hereje. La recepción de la obra de Pierre Bourdieu en Cuba,” Temas 43 (July–Sept. 2005): 124–129. There is not much on Bourdieu’s “reception” in Cuba, other than a few articles, a thesis completed at the University of Havana, and a recent book by Irina Pacheco Valera, Imaginarios socioculturales Cubanos (Havana: Editorial José Martí, 2015). 48. Haroldo Dilla, Letter published in Consenso Desde Cuba, Revista Digital, Polemica intelectual, 2007. http://www.desdecuba.com/polemica/articulos/101_01. shtml. 49. Marie-Laure Geoffray, “Transnational Dynamics of Contention in Contemporary Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Studies (February 2015): 5. 50. Geoffray, “Transnational Dynamics,” 7. Of course Geoffray realizes that these terms are contentious. 51. According to Robert Darnton, the adjective “critical” was taboo in East Germany. Darnton, Censors at Work, 161. One assumes that much depends on what the adjective is applied for.

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of chapters 3, 5 and 6 appeared in press before. Many thanks to Cuban Studies, Literal and the Revista Mexicana de Administración Pública y Análisis Político for giving me permission to reproduce them in this book. I am indebted to the University Council for Research of St. Francis Xavier University for providing financial support over the course of the work on this manuscript. I owe thanks to friends and colleagues who have kicked my tires in various academic and not so academic venues: José Antonio Aguilar, Marlene Azor Hernández, Roger Betancourt, Vincent Bloch, Roberto Breña, Elizabeth Burgos, Armando Chaguaceda, Olga Connor, René Costales, Alfred Cuzán, Jean Daudelin, Haroldo Dilla, Cristopher Domínguez, Carlos Espinosa, Ana Faya, Ted Henken, Sussette Martínez, Aldo Menéndez, Victor Mozo, Silvia Pedraza, Ricardo Porro, Enrique Pumar, Arch Ritter, Annabelle Rodríguez García, Brenda Rose, Soren Triff, Dagoberto Valdés and Cristina Warren. I am grateful to visual artist José A. Vincench for giving me permission to illuminate the cover of this book with his “Untitled: S/R,” from the series “ Seems abstract but it is not” (Abstracto parece pero no es, 2005), collage with newspaper Granma and oil on canvas, a splendid rendition of the Santa Rita church in Habana, in front of which wives and other female relatives of jailed dissidents (the Women in White) have been gathering to protest on Sundays since 2003. The thinly veiled homage to a bolder form of political engagement handsomely exemplifies the always-precarious possibility of dissonance in contemporary Cuban art.

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This book is dedicated to the memory of my first mentor, Jacques Zylberberg (1939–2010).

List of Abbreviations

CDR

Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución) CEA Centre for the study of America (Centro de Estudios sobre America) CEAP Center for Public Administration Studies (Centro de Estudios de Administración Pública) CEAP Center for Studies of Political Alternatives (Centro de Estudios de Alternativas Políticas) CED Centre for Demographic Studies (Centro de Estudios Demográficos) CEEC Centre for the Study of the Cuban Economy (Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana) CEHSEU  Center for Hemispheric and the United States Studies (Centro de Estudios Hemisféricos y sobre Estados Unidos) Centre of Martí Studies (Centro de Estudios Martianos) CEM Center for Sociopolitical and public Opinion Studies (Centro de CESO Estudios Sociopolíticos y de Opinión) Center for International Economic Research (Centro de CIEI Investigaciones de Economía Internacional) Center for Research in the World Economy (Centro de CIEM Investigaciones de la Economía Mundial) International Migration Research Center (Centro de CIMI Investigaciones de Migraciones Internacionales) Center for Psychological and Sociological Research (Centro de CIPS Investigaciones Psicológicas y Sociológicas) National Council of Performing Arts (Consejo Nacional de las CNAE Artes Escénicas) xxxi

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CNAP

List of Abbreviations

National Council of Plastic Arts (Consejo Nacional de las Artes Plásticas) CNC National Council of Culture (Consejo Nacional de Cultura) CTC Confederation of Cuban workers (Confederación de Trabajadores Cubanos) CTCC Theory and Cultural Center “Criterios” (Centro Teórico Cultural “Criterios”) DOR Department of Revolutionary Orientation (Departamento de Orientación Revolucionaria) EGREM Cuban Recording and Music publishing Company (Empresa de Grabaciones e Ediciones Musicales) EIR Schools of Revolutionary Instruction (Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria) FCBC Cuban Fund of Cultural Properties (Fondo Cubano de Bienes Culturales) FEU Federation of University Students (Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios) FLACSO Latin American Social Sciences Institute (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) ICAIC Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (Instituto Cubano de Arte e Industria) ICEC Cuban Institute for Cultural Studies “Juan Marinello” (Instituto de Cubano de Estudios Cultural “Juan Marinello”) ICL Cuban Book Institute (Instituto Cubano del Libro) ICM Cuban Music Institute (Instituto Cubano de la Música) ICRT Central Institute of Radio and Television (Instituto Central de Radio y Televisión) INIE National Institute of Economic Research (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Económicas) INRA National Institute of Agrarian Reform (Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria) ISA Higher Institute of Art (Instituto Superior de Arte) ISRI Advanced Institute of International Relations “Raúl Roa García” (Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales “Raúl Roa García”) MINFAR Ministry of Armed Forces (Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas) MININT Ministry of Interior (Ministerio de Interior) ORI Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas) ORI-PURS Revolutionary Integrated Organizations—United Party of the Socialist Revolution (Organización Revolucionaria Integrada—Partido Unificado de la Revolución Socialista)



List of Abbreviations

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PCC Cuban Communist Party (Partido Comunista de Cuba) PSP Popular Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Popular) PURS Unified Party of the Socialist Revolution (Partido Unificado de la Revolución Socialista) SCIF Cuban Society of Philosophical Research (Sociedad Cubana de Investigaciones Filosóficas) SNTAE National Union of Arts and Entertainment Workers (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Artes y Espectáculos) SSH Social Sciences and Humanities UJC Communist Youths Union (Unión de Jovenes Comunistas) UMAP Military Units to Aid Production (Unidad Militar de Apoyo a la Producción) UNEAC National Union of Cuban writers and Artists (Unión de Artistas y Escritores de Cuba)

Chapter 1

Revolution and Cultural Will

Since the first weeks in 1959 the ambitious goal of the new regime in Cuba has been to create “a new man in a new society.” Here “new regime” means the one led by Fidel Castro and his close collaborators, not the formal government led for a few months by powerless “members of the pusillanimous bourgeoisie,” as Ernesto “Che” Guevara called them in a famous article published in Uruguay in 1965.1 Official documents talk about the revolution as “the most important cultural fact of our history.”2 Since 1959 cultural policy has been conceived as a branch of education policy (it was under the supervision of the Ministry of Education for a decade), and the first to be educated were the artists and writers themselves, for as Che Guevara said: “The superstructure imposes a type of art in which it is necessary to educate artists”.3 This mindset was nothing new in global history: revolutionary, communist and/or totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century typically saw culture as a key battlefield in the construction of the new order. Art and literature should be “popular” in two complementary ways: it should be easily accessible to the many and at the same time, it should educate, or at least keep the masses away from politically damaging counter-narratives.4 Of course it should also entertain, as it does everywhere, otherwise it wouldn’t reach the masses. The goal is mandatory participation of the masses, mobilized and channeled by the government for the fulfillment of government policies. Historian Lilian Guerra aptly called this kind of regime “grassroots dictatorship.”5 “Mass Dictatorship” would also be appropriate to describe this type of inclusionary dictatorial regime.6 Modern authoritarianism is always the rule of the few in the name of the many, but self-proclaimed “revolutionary” regimes typically strive to penetrate society and shape minds like no others.7 Leaders of self-proclaimed “revolutionary” and totalitarian regimes see themselves as enablers of an authentic cultural revolution. This has been true 1

2

Chapter 1

whether they were communist, fascist, or even Islamist (in 1986, Ayatollah Khomeini established the Supreme Council for the Cultural Revolution in Iran). This translates to a series of policies, institutions and transactions that completely reshape the cultural and educational fields. The ambitious new rulers soon realize they need artists, writers and “intellectuals” to change “man,” reshape societal identity and purge the collective memory of inconvenient episodes of the past.8 New cultural actors are mobilized, especially from younger generations and previously disenfranchised sectors, while purges are carried out in existing cultural institutions like schools, universities, or publishing houses. By doing so, the new patron-state secures loyalty from a new class of “revolutionary” parvenus, who become indebted to the state for their upward social mobility. For instance, historian of Russia Sheila Fitzpatrick shows how by the mid-1930s in the Soviet Union, “the sociological and political configuration of the intelligentsia was being changed by the emergence of a new cohort of graduates from Soviet institutions of higher and technical education. These were the vydvizhentsy—‘yesterday’s workers and peasants,’ many of them communists, who had been mobilized for further education during the First Five-Year Plan in a crash program initiated by Stalin and Viacheslav Molotov.” For her, “The oppressive cultural orthodoxies and deadening spirit of conformity that took root in the professions in the 1930s must in part have reflected the needs and insecurities of the vydvizhentsy: it is the poorly trained and inexperienced professional, after all, who wants to be told exactly how to do a job and what model to follow.”9 The historical setting is generally one of transition and crisis, and often of war and scarcity. As historian Richard Overy observed, looking at the case of Nazi Germany and the USSR under Stalin: “In an economy of absolute scarcity, control over the supply of paints, marble, paper, canvases, brushes and musical instruments gave an exceptional power to the cultural authorities to promote and restrict the very act of artistic creation.”10 War and revolution have in common the urge to unite the people against the enemy and to value selflessness in the pursuit of higher common ideals. Writers, artists and academics repay their absence in combat by becoming soldiers on the cultural front. And Cuban communism, more than perhaps any other communist experience, has been a communism of war, of permanent mobilization and state of siege.11 During the twentieth century, self-proclaimed “revolutionary” regimes were typically “built” in developing and middle-income nations, where the level of social mobilization, measured by indicators such as literacy and cultural participation, was “middle range”; i.e. neither noticeably high nor low. In that setting the new state found a limited (in comparison to the most developed countries) but sufficient amount of highly educated individuals to recruit for its ambitious projects of social engineering. The pressure to participate for educated individuals is typically high, both for ideological and for



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mobilizational (they are needed) reasons. Not all accepted of course: In Cuba, after the triumph of the revolution, many writers, artists and professionals left the island or were penalized for their opposition or lack of revolutionary enthusiasm. And yet, most accepted with fervor their new historical mission to revolutionize the minds and souls of their fellow citizens. As Milovan Djilas once said, recalling his experience as Marechal Tito’s close adjunct in Yugoslavia: “Totalitarianism at the outset is enthusiasm and conviction; only later does it become organizations, authority, careerism.’” In China, according to Chang-tai Hung, “The founding of the PRC created an unprecedented euphoria and a sense of hope among many intellectuals and artists.” He also points out that the “majority of veteran intellectuals and artists […] recalled with great excitement their days in the young PRC.”12 In Cuba, Rafael Rojas talks about the “mystical acquiescence” of most intellectuals to La Revolución in 1959–61, including unlikely candidates such as anthropologist Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969) or writers José Lezama Lima (1910–76) and Virgilio Piñera (1912–79).13 Piñera, who was soon persecuted for his homosexuality and for his lack of revolutionary fervor, wrote with eloquence in 1959 about “the viril beauty of the Revolution.”14 Rojas’ explanation for this phenomenon is interesting. For him, Cuban intellectuals were guilt-ridden because of their previous lack of political commitment and civic vocation. They seized the moment as an opportunity for “collective atonement” and amendment for their guilt of “nihilism, apathy, frivolous and provincial simulacrum of cosmopolitanism, and an inveterate absence of civic vocation.” Given that, “the Cuban intellectual proposed, as Marx called for, to change his role of educator for one of educated. In that perverse capitulation his services were assumed, from the first years, as a penance or a sacrifice and not as a spiritual contribution to the new regime.”15 Talking about the First Congress of Cuban Writers and Artists in 1961, Cuban writer Heberto Padilla (1932–2000) remembers: “The congress ended its sessions by giving unanimous approval to the new government.”16 The motto of the meeting was “To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture.” It could have been “to defend culture is to defend the Revolution.” The Armed Forces and the Ministry of Interior started publishing literature and awarding literary prizes (to pedestrian realist socialist novels like Manuel Cofiño López’s Relatos de Pueblo Viejo), a sensible policy if the mission of cultural agents is to “defend” the regime. In that spirit, starting in the early 1970s, the new regime strongly encouraged the publication of detective novels, featuring heroic state security police (Seguridad del Estado, under the MININT) trouncing various kinds of CIA agents, delinquents, and counterrevolutionaries. Unlike non-mobilizational forms of autocratic government, communist regimes always appear to care deeply for culture and humanity. In the

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USSR and Cuba, they were also, initially, allowing cultural actors, including avant-garde artists, to compete for recognition by the new leadership in an ambiance of contagious audacity and creativity. But the new “engineers of the soul” (Stalin’s USSR) and “soldiers on the Cultural Front” (North Korea) gradually realized that the political avant-garde cared for massification and political instrumentalization of culture, not for avant-garde art or for art tout court. Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, who remained an enthusiastic advocate of the Castro regime for almost a decade (he has been known for his starkly critical views since), reflects on the enchantment and disenchantment of writers during the process of consolidation of socialism, or “revolutionary” military regime like Juan Velasco Alvarado’s in Peru (1968–1975): Thanks to the Revolution and to the fast-tracked nationalization, writers hitherto ignored or even despised by an uneducated society and its unsophisticated rulers, suddenly see all the doors open to them. Newspapers, radio stations, cultural institutes, publishing houses and ministries give them a thousand marvels as they become part of an historical process and great social change. Marvels like a large national audience through the media, a good salary, official travels to represent the country abroad, and finally many honors and benefits, give them the illusion of being part of the enthralling machinery of power. Out of generosity or naivety, necessity or desire to reach the top, they fall one after the other, adding to their condition of writer the status of government official. Little by little, sooner or later, depending on the strength of their vocation and their level of integrity, they end up, one after another, discovering the truth of their situation: docile executors of a power that does not consult nor listen to them; unconditional instruments of the powerful, their only function is to protect the leaders, and to acclaim them—if need be with sophisticated classical quotations—and if this is done spontaneously and freely, out of conviction, all the better. In this game, inevitably, the most self-respecting lose their positions, while the most cynical—which does not mean the most mediocre—take the cake. The operation is not even planned from above; it results from a situation immune to change, and in which socialism is no different than previous systems: power does not reward work but submission.17

For all the talk about the romantic period of the revolution, under the sway of the likes of Che Guevara rather than the old communist party (the Popular Socialist Party [PSP]) operators, the Sovietization of Cuban culture started in the early 1960s and took its full institutional form in the first Soviet-like constitution of the regime in 1976.18 The result of this process was predictable: sooner rather than later came the systematic censorship for the few who cherished autonomy and critical thinking, and for the many, a certain democratization of access to official cultural production. As Polish writer and diplomat Czesław Milosz (1911–2004) once wrote about realist socialism (the



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ideal-typical cultural policy of communist regimes): “it strengthens modest talents and mutilates great ones.”19 In Cuba, even Carlos Alberto Montaner, a fierce opponent of the regime, acknowledges: “No government in the whole history of the republic has done more to promote Cuban culture.” Montaner immediately adds: “But also none has done more to repress it.”20 In sum, a grassroots cultural dictatorship replaced a fractured cultural republic, twice depoliticized by the Batista dictatorship and by its own nonchalant attitude toward both public policies and the masses. For a self-proclaimed “revolutionary” regime, the ideological use of the socialist and revolutionary narratives to regulate culture involves a risk. Recalling French poet Paul Valéry’s bon mot that “two mortal dangers threaten humanity: order and disorder,” one can argue that order (the state) and disorder (rebellion, insurgency, imagination and autonomy) represent a danger for each other. They require very different sets of skills and dispositions. Under the oxymoron “revolutionary government” one typically finds in the official rhetoric numerous calls for unwavering obedience to the leader and the party, and simultaneously a celebration of rebellion and criticism—what Cuban politician Carlos Rafael Rodríguez (1913–97), in a speech to art students in 1967, called “an everyday spirit of non-conformity.”21 It didn’t take much time for the mystique of the permanent revolution and continual struggle to become clichés, or to use Boris Groys’ gifted expression, to realize that “those involved in the struggle are in fact not struggling at all but have simply ossified in battle position.”22 Faking revolution in an established and conservative regime involves risks just like faking democracy does in a pseudo-democracy. In both cases one promises something that cannot be delivered: deliberative participation.23 In theory at least, socialism (or communism) and revolution are not only compatible with criticism: they are the product of criticism. Communism is a humanistic ideology that celebrates struggle and liberation. It is theoretically impervious to dogmatism and alienation. In his closing statement at the 1968 Cultural Congress of Havana, Fidel Castro could say “there is nothing more anti-Marxist than dogma,” to an elated audience of hundreds of national and international intellectuals. A witness describes how “the left wing artists from 70 different countries, many of whom are weary of left wing dogma, rise to their feet as Castro confirms at last what they’ve always wanted to believe: that real communism and free intellectual enquiry are not merely compatible but essential to each other.”24 Another leap of faith is needed to believe official statements on how the revolution freed writers and artists from the tyranny of supply and demand (i.e. capitalism). The idea that writers and artists become free when copyrights and the market are replaced by complete state control of the production and distribution process is a variation on the idea that the state as a repressive apparatus disappears under communism, or that state ownership and people ownership are one and the same. It is a

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compelling narrative though, if one accepts the faulty premises, as many intelligent people did since the Bolshevik revolution. Revolutions tend to empower societies, if only symbolically, giving citizens a sense of political ownership of their country. Theda Skocpol talks about modern revolutions as events that promise “popular involvement in national political life.”  Mexican poet and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz (1914–1998) famously described the Mexican revolution (in fact a series of civil wars without a clear avant-garde or program) as an “encounter of Mexico with itself.”25 Regimes that wish to use revolution as the main source of legitimacy need to adopt political institutions that celebrate popular sovereignty and “participation.” Mass organizations and mobilizations are tools of choice for the rulers, and so are discursive strategies that involve “staging of political dramas” and “creation of plausible narratives and public rituals about political life.”26 In the case of Cuba, the revolutionary myth was born with the belated and frustratingly incomplete struggle for independence during the late nineteenth century, and therefore predates the 1957–59 revolution against dictator Fulgencio Batista. In fact, it has been the dominant mobilization myth of modern Cuba.27 The current regime presents itself as the last and never-ending episode of a long revolutionary quest for sovereignty. This is an asset for the regime, for it has successfully entrenched the idea that, to paraphrase Fulgencio Batista himself, the revolution is the only source of political legitimacy. Self-proclaimed “revolutionary” regimes often make basic education and higher education more accessible to the many, as schools and universities are invested with a political mission to indoctrinate and mobilize. They often improve education “quantitatively” (measured by indicators such as literacy rates, enrollment in schools and universities, and the like), if not so much “qualitatively” (oppressing control of social sciences and humanities, political screening for access to universities, poor treatment of educational professionals generally, hostility to critical thinking). Education, like the revolutionary myth, is a double-edged sword for the mobilizing regime: it gives people resources that cannot be fully controlled by the state. The recent examples of successful non-violent revolts in Egypt and especially in Tunisia show the strong correlation between gains in human development on one hand and the capacity for social mobilization on the other, especially in the age of social media and the Internet. In China, according to Edward Wong, the critical, socalled “hooligan” literature developed in the 1980s by writers like Yu Hua, Mo Yan and Su Tong remains marginal until the “spread of the Internet in the late 1990s that really opened the floodgates.” Wong quotes the managing director of Penguin China, Jo Lusby, saying, “The Internet created all, and I say all, the literary trends that took off in 2005 and afterward.” Education comes with a repertoire of codes, information and critical skills that can be mobilized for change with an adequate structure of opportunities.28



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If the mid-nineteenth-century revolutions in Europe were labeled as “revolutions of the intellectuals,” the successful twentieth-century revolutions were not typically led by them and even less likely to reward them with real positions of power. It is worth noticing that the great men of letters and artists of modern time were not particularly enamored with democracy and were in fact, quite often, some of the most enthusiastic devotees of the guillotine. Even if they are educated and inspired by revolutionary ideals, that does not necessarily make them rebels or free thinkers, to say the least. In Cuba, writers and artists were noticeably depoliticized prior to the 1957–58 revolution and few writers or artists participated in the armed struggle against Batista (Baeza Flores, Leví Marrero, Jorge Valls, Carlos Franqui). Che Guevara famously reminded intellectuals and artists of the “original sin” of not being “authentic revolutionary.”29 According to Virgilio Piñera, writers and artists were mostly concerned about their own interest after the departure of Batista. For him: If a Revolution succeed and seizes power, the writer and the artist must ask these necessary questions, which will necessarily be at odds with their concern for the strictly personal: In view of the fait accompli that is a triumphant Revolution, will I have to change my ways of thinking? Will I keep my freedom of speech? Am I ready to serve the Revolution? So far they have not asked themselves these questions; they are only fixated on their own personal issues.30

Revolutions of the twentieth century were macho events that made use of the pen but celebrated the sword. Communist parties rarely make their top positions available to intellectuals (the Italian Communist Party being a possible exception), especially if they are in power.31 Still, they value intellectuals’ participation, though as agents of reproduction rather than criticism, precisely because the regime’s legitimizing principle is not one of crude exercise of power, but rather one of epic battle for justice and human development. One thing intellectuals have, ideal-typically, is a philosophy of history, which in theory distinguishes them from policy wonks, boutique ideologues, and “thought leaders.”32 In a country like Cuba under Castro, the milieu of intellectuals operate under the rule that criticism, philosophy of history and official ideology are all in sync, but in reality, from time to time they are not, if only because realpolitik does not operate in the long term. Hence, intellectuals have been recipients of privileges (if not power) but they were also the prime victims of communist and revolutionary regimes when they fail to negotiate the latest turn of orthodoxy. The level of loyalty expected from cultural actors in a self-proclaimed “revolutionary” regime varies from one country to another. Many variables can be taken into account: how institutionalized power is, the importance of

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personal connections, how famous an artist, writer or intellectual is at home and abroad, the mood of the moment, the ruler’s dispositions toward culture and erudition. Frederick II of Prussia, Tsar Nicolas I, Hitler and Stalin had a genuine interest in arts and letters. According to Overy: Hitler’s relationship with culture was more direct than Stalin’s, for although Stalin read almost all the literature, watched all the films and viewed thousands of paintings generated during his dictatorship, he was not the self-conscious “artist-ruler” that Hitler pretended to be. The young Hitler had flirted with an artistic career in pre-war Vienna, where he eked a living out of producing simple watercolors and dreamt of a place at the Vienna Academy of Art to train as an architect. This was enough to turn the later politician into a self-appointed authority on culture.33

Fidel Castro was bookish (he was especially interested in biographies of great men) but he was (like his brother Raúl) personally indifferent to arts and literature. Late in life, his apparent fondness for visual artist Kcho was exceptional (more on this in chapter 4), as was his friendship with Colombian writer Gabriel García Marquez.34 All the same, he consistently acted on his belief, common to all communist rulers, that cultural actors must be systematically mobilized to fulfill the objectives of the regime. Whether one could talk about “Cuban intellectuals” depends on how the term is defined.35 As was suggested earlier, in Cuba to be a bona fide public intellectual “within the revolution” is ultimately impossible. But one can still fake it, to some extent, either by virtue of occupying a top position in the cultural field and being recognized as such abroad (e.g., Miguel Barnet, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Rafael Hernández), or because of a propensity to use the space available to cautiously and occasionally formulate dissonant views (e.g., Arturo Arango, Leonardo Padura, Eduardo del Llano, Mayra Espina Prieto). Communist countries typically grant some privileges to their elite, and the cultural field is no exception. Kim Il-sung gave filmmakers and crews preferential food rations and housing. Post-totalitarian communist states grant privileges indirectly by giving actors more space to express and enrich themselves. In Vietnam, say Nguyen Qui Duc, “The people who now run Vietnam’s publishing houses, film festivals and cultural exchange programs are artists—many of whom were once censored under communism—and they have been co-opted by the lure of condos, cars and washing machines.” What is more “the new enforcers of these old restrictions are driven less by ideological purity than by a mixed bag of political correctness and marketdriven concerns.”36 In today’s Cuba successful artists are part of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population. The dollarization of the economy from 1993 to 2004 (and



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the Convertible Peso, roughly equal 1 to 1 to the US dollar, since 2004), as well as the expansion of touristic enclaves in the economy since the 1990s, matched the selective opening of the cultural field to global market forces since the early 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union (and its annual four billion dollars-a-year subsidy to the island) the government was too preoccupied with the economic situation (not to mention the balsero [rafters] crisis, the sinking of a tugboat in Havana Bay, and the riots in Havana) to spend much time micro-managing artistic production. So it cut the cultural field some slack, if only “by omission.”37 By necessity more than by choice, the post-Soviet period saw the erosion of a key organizational principle of Cuban politics, according to which everything is either mandatory or forbidden. The cultural field benefited from this benign neglect, and the state learned to make the best of the necessity to relax its control. Previously censored authors and artists such as Pablo Armando Fernández (1930- ), César López (1933- ), Antón Arrufat (1935- ), or Antonia Eiríz (1929–1995) could be celebrated during their lifetime. Remarkably, many responded with forgiveness, even gratitude. Surgical depoliticization of the canon has also been used by the government to selectively pardon prerevolutionary or Cuban-American writers, thereby absolving itself for the Kafkaesque ostracism of these authors in the past (and not just in the 1970s). Deceased authors of the “insilio” (internal exile)38 like José Lezama Lima (1910–1976) and Virgilio Piñera, censored for decades in part because of their homosexuality, have been rehabilitated and their work can be discussed in small circles, although their books are still hard to find in bookstores. Sulfurous authors such as Manuel Granados, Guillermo Rosales, and especially Guillermo Cabrera Infante have recently emerged with extreme caution from total internal embargo, in Cuban cultural magazines, but again, their books are not in circulation in the country. The literature on the impact of the Soviet Union’s collapse on Cuba is extensive. The Cuban state had to make concessions (reminiscent of Lenin’s New Economic Policy of 1921) to face the multifaceted challenges of a collapsing economy. As was his wont, Fidel Castro gave a name to the emergency policies he adopted to save his regime: the “Special Period in time of Peace” (1989). The 1976 constitution was amended in 1992, if only because reference to the Soviet Union had to be elided.39 Cubans got to elect their legislators directly. Greater tolerance of religious freedom was another evidence that in tough times, the Castro regime learned to loosen up petty control for the greater good of the regime’s sustainability. Ideologically, a tighter nationalization of Leninism allowed the regime to navigate past the Soviet shipwreck. As Tony Judt once remarked in a comment on post-Soviet Eastern Europe, nationalism and Marxism-Leninism share a similar “syntax” (collective identity, threatened by an external agent).

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Cuban communism retained a strong nationalist component all along, which could be revived in hard times, as was done in Russia and Romania.40 In Cuba the syntax points to the same enemy: the United States. In sum, far from weakening the regime, the downfall of the Soviet Union made possible an upgrading of the Castro regime. Historian Tony Judt wrote: It is one of the curiosities of Communist reformers that they always set out with the quixotic goal of reforming some aspects of their system while keeping others unaffected—introducing market-oriented incentives while maintaining central planning controls, or allowing greater freedom of expression while retaining the Party’s monopoly of truth. But partial reform or reform of one sector in isolation from others was inherently contradictory.41

Perhaps contradictory, but in Cuba, the “special” regime has been in place for a quarter of a century now, so it is no longer a transient or transitory period: it is the new regime in Cuba, and as a matter of fact, it works. In part because the political response to the economic crisis mobilized all the regime’s energy, cultural actors were simultaneously deprived of resources and of attention, freeing them up to do more with less. Cultural production came to a standstill at the beginning of the 1990s, but like the economy, it recovered somewhat in the second half of the decade. Cultural agents found themselves in the position of artists in early modern time, who had to wean themselves off disappearing traditional support to embrace a new patron: the market. Except that in Cuba, there is only one market for highbrow art—the foreign market—and access to its bounty has been limited and gradual. The gatekeeper state has acted as a “curator” of this cultural opening, determining the time and place where writers and artists can present their work and to whom (see chapter 4).42 Cuban writer Leonardo Padura contends that the three major features of the post-Soviet period for writers and artists have been “the winning of space by the creators to express themselves,” the “crisis of cultural production” (particularly in the first half of the 1990s) and last but not least, “the massive (voluntary) exile of Cuban artists.”43 The massive exodus of artists and (to a lesser extent) writers and academics during the 1990s reduced the competition for recognition in Cuba and made the ones who stayed more valuable in the eyes of the regime. What Padura presents as a “winning of space,” presumably earned by, not merely granted to, “creators,” could be seen as mutual accommodation with the state. The nineties substituted the carrot for the stick, the carrot being things like permission to travel and to sell one’s work abroad for hard currencies. For Le Monde’s columnist Paulo Paranagua, “The gap widens between creators with access to the international market and the lower clergy, public officials of cultural institutions. That does not appeal to everyone. Especially



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as the success of some fuels the jealousy of others.”44 The best-known Cuban writers from the island (Marilyn Bobes, Daniel Chavarria, Pedro Juán Gutiérrez, Leonardo Padura, Senel Paz, Ena Lucía Portela, Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera) have been able to publish abroad (Reinaldo Arenas was jailed for doing that in 1974) before being published in Cuba by a Cuban press. Their books are usually not available in Cuban bookstores. In fact, except for children books, hagiographies of Fidel and the Che, political pamphlets, and a handful of books by a few absolved authors, almost nothing of value is available in Cuban bookstores. While this is caused in part by economic factors, one only needs to compare the “best” bookstores in Havana to second-best bookstores in, say, any mid-sized Mexican cities (or the Havana book fair to Guadalajara’s) to measure the crisis of literary culture in Castro’s Cuba. For decades Cuba exported its opposition (about 15% of the population, roughly the same percentage in East Germany’s exodus from 1949 to 1961 or Somalia since 1991); now it also exports mildly critical art and literature, thereby defusing tensions on the island and reaping both political capital and dollars through heavy taxation. Art is not covered by the US embargo since the Berman amendment of 1988, though artists and curators have faced restrictions, red tape and uncertainty about visas.45 It was the first sector of the economy to open itself up to market forces and it still is the only one in which Cubans can deal directly with foreign buyers.46 No other non-state actors could collect foreign currencies for their work. For many of them, living in Cuba with dollars (and since 2004 Peso Convertible or “CUCs”) with a safety net provided by state cultural institutions make living in Cuba an attractive alternative to either the dim and more competitive world of exile or the seclusion of internal exile. As Marie Laure Geoffray puts it, “most artists and intellectuals are co-opted that way.”47 Artists who play by the rules have been able to leave and return to their country, on their own, for two decades. Ordinary Cubans—including ordinary artists and writers—were only granted this basic universal right (see Art.13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) in January 2013, while “exiled” Cubans are still denied the right to return to the island. In the Cuban film Habanastation (Ián Padrón, 2011), which deals with the issue of inequality in contemporary Cuban society, the rich guy who drinks wine, drives a medium-sized SUV and travels abroad is a successful jazz musician. As it has happened before, the opening of space of the 1990s was accompanied by its opposite: the closing of space in visual arts and to some extent in academe, culminating with the closure of the Centre for the Study of America (CEA) in 1996. For Rafael Rojas, The repressive turn in cultural policy manifested itself in many ways between the late 1980s and early 1990s: closing of alternative publications such as

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Naranja dulce, Proposiciones, Albur or Memorias de la postguerra, closure of autonomous projects of artistic and intellectual sociability like Castillo de la fuerza, Arte Calle, Hacer, Paideia or the Teatro Obstáculo of Víctor Varela; arrests and beatings of writers and artists who radicalized aesthetically and politically, like poets María Elena Cruz Varela and Rolando Prats Páez or artists like Ángel Delgado, Juan Sí González or Jorge Crespo.48

New repressive laws were adopted in 1996 and 1999, and then came the crackdown of the “Black Spring” of 2003, targeting seventy-five human rights activists, as well as dozens of famous cases of censorship, most recently against filmmaker and playwright Juan Carlos Cremata (more on this later).49 While there is some opening here, and some oppression and repression there, actors stand on their toes trying to figure out the paths that lead to the carrot or the stick. Cuba in the 1950s was characterized by what Samuel Farber called “uneven modernity.”50 While it featured a high rate of illiteracy and poverty in the countryside, especially in the Eastern part of the island, the country also boasted a rich urban culture, starting with the capital Havana, where the cultural life was one of the most vibrant and sophisticated in Latin America.51 According to Guillaume Carpentier, prior to the revolution Havana had 135 movie theaters (more than in Paris or New York), a number that went down to twenty in the early 1960s because of nationalization, neglect and power outage. Cinema critic Michael Chanan also mentions that during the time of the urban insurgency, the urban underground began bombing cinemas, and “some of the audience was frightened away.”52 On the musical life before 1959 (number of conservatories, musical schools and teachers), scholar Robin Moore contends that Cuba was, quoting a UNESCO study, “in proportion to its population, the country with the largest number of musical conservatories and academies in all Latin America.”53 Moore also writes that “the 1950s was a decidedly international period in which bands toured constantly throughout the Americas and Europe, and foreign pop stars—Josephine Baker, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Xavier Cugat, Carmen Miranda, Pedro Infante, the Trio Los Panchos, Ima Sumac, Libertad Lamarque—appeared just as often on Cuban stages.”54 The visual arts counted on many fine artists, including the internationally renowned Wifredo Lam (1902–1982). During the democratic years (1944 to 1952) Cuban art was supported by the government via the Cultural Direction of the Ministry of Education, “under the leadership first of sculptor Jesús Casagran, and later essayist/historian Raúl Roa.”55 Cuba was also the most important center of commercial radio and television production in Latin America. The Castro regime took full advantage of this: during the 1960s, the “revolution” was the most televised ever.56



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In literature, five of the eighteen greatest modern Latin American writers of the “Western canon,” according to literary critic Harold Bloom, were Cubans: Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980), Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929– 2005), Severo Sarduy (1937–1993), Reinaldo Arenas (1943–1990), and José Lezama Lima (1910–1976). Except for Arenas (born in 1943) and Cabrera Infante (born in 1929), both of whom became fierce opponents of the Castro regime, the others wrote their oeuvres before the revolution and often abroad (Carpentier and Sarduy). The Biblioteca José Martí was founded in 1901 and moved from the Castillo de la Real Fuerza to the current building, Plaza de la Revolución, in 1958. Magazines such as Ciclón (1955–1957) Orígenes (1944–1956) and to a lesser extent Nuestro Tiempo (1951–1960) featured debates between a liberal or republican tendency (Jorge Mañach, Roberto Agramonte, Elías Entralgo, Humberto Piñera Llera, Rafael Esténger, Francisco Ichaso, Luis Aguilar León…), another marxist (Juan Marinello, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Mirta Aguirre, Raúl Roa, Nicolás Guillén, José Antonio Portuondo…) and yet another Catholic or Christian (Gastón Barquero, Rafael García Bárcena, José Ignacio Lasaga, Medardo Vitier, Dionisio de Lara, Mercedes y Rosaura García Tudurí…)57

Cuban higher education and academic life boasted significant achievements prior to 1959 as well. The disciplines of history (Manuel Moreno Fraginals, Ramiro Guerra, Julio Le Riverend, Raúl Cepero Bonilla, Leví Marrero, Herminio Portell Vilá), philosophy and sociology (Enrique José Varona y Pera, Roberto Agramonte, Elías Entralgo, Rafael García Bárcena, Raúl Roa) and anthropology and ethnology (Lydia Cabrera and Fernando Ortiz) were well developed and respected. Among the social sciences institutes created prior to 1959, one counts the following: Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País (1792), Archivo Nacional (1840), Ateneo de La Habana (1902), Academia de la Historia de Cuba (1910), Sociedad de Conferencias (1910), Academia Nacional de Artes y Letras (1910), Club Atenas (1917), Academia Católica de Ciencias Sociales (1919), Sociedad del Folklore Cubano (1923), Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura (1926), Academia Nacional de Ciencias Sociales (1928), Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos (1936), Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad (1938), Sociedad de Estudios Históricos e Internacionales (1940), Movimiento Cubano por la Paz (1949) and the Academia Cubana de la Lengua (1951).58 The coup of Fulgencio Batista in April of 1952 brought to an end a short but significant experiment with democracy (1944–1952), leaving in disarray a whole generation of politicians nominally committed to the ideals of both democracy and revolution.59

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What endured after the rupture of 1952 was 1. a revolutionary tradition, which started with the wars of independence of the nineteenth century, continued with the revolution of 1933 and established itself as the lieu commun of all Cuban politicians (including Batista) to this day; 2. the collapse of the democratic sectors of the political class (in particular, the democratic left), after years of corruption and mismanagement by the “generation of 1933” in power; and 3. the persisting weakness of political institutions and the rule of law, in a country that became nominally independent three-quarter of a century after most Latin American nations, and fully independent only after the abolition of the Platt Amendment in 1934. Batista’s coup was successful in good part because what he was overthrowing was so fragile. Castro’s own coup against other anti-Batista sectors, from late 1958 to 1961, can be explained in the same way. Thus a middle-income country, with moderately high level of social mobilization, could be conquered relatively easily by a minority military action, and in particular by a leader who, with amazing ease, could change the direction of the revolutionary movement from an anti-Batista, pro-democracy and pro-reform movement (as expressed in all the manifestos and public declarations of the 26th of July Movement prior to 1959), to a one-man political show of extraordinary proportion, who quickly fastened the country (the “revolution”) to the Soviet bloc. This is how he became the Kerensky, Lenin, and Stalin of the Cuban revolution. Fidel Castro could have chosen another model in 1959–60: a Mexican-style one-party (or one-party dominant) state, or even a democracy. What could have prevented him from doing so? This echoes a statement made by Rafael Rojas twenty years ago: In fact, Fidel Castro is the only person with full political rights in Cuba. He is free to communicate with society, directly or through the media, for as long as he deems necessary; he is free to receive foreign politicians and business executive and do business with them; he is free to think and speak in public about the future of his nation; he is even free to have bourgeois fantasies, to live in the world of jetset, to be frivolous, revisionist, heterodox and even to criticize the Revolution. Fidel Castro is, in fact, the only person that can be counterrevolutionary or anticommunist in Cuba.60

It has been said that a cause or effect of the 1959 revolution was the weakness of the democratic left. In fact, the whole political class in Cuba, including Batista, saw itself as on the left and “revolutionary.” Fidel Castro



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was a natural product of the dominant political culture of his time. This triumph of political will was possible thanks to his extraordinary leadership skills, without a doubt, but also, among many possible factors, because of a unique combination of circumstances present in Cuba at the time: i.e. high social mobilization, multiclass opposition to Batista, and low level of political coherence and institutionalization in the country. The history of the continent contains multiple examples of successful minority and military actions—starting with Cortés, Pizarro, and Bolívar—and the foco theory, a concoction of Bolivar, Louis Auguste Blanqui, and Lenin imagined ex post facto by Che Guevara and Régis Debray, was its contemporary theorization.61 When assessing why the foco strategy failed almost everywhere else it was attempted, Trotsky’s bon mot on the Bolshevik coup of 1917, about the revolution being like “hitting a paralyzed man,” captures the Cuban case as well. In other Latin American countries, the disciples of Che faced counterinsurgency monsters, not a “paralyzed man” as Batista’s inept dictatorship could be described. The unique experience was only repeated in tiny Grenada and in Nicaragua.62 It is a hallmark of what Lezlek Kolakowski called the “revolutionary spirit” to feature a monistic and integrated perspective on politics and society. Though each part of the new government had a specific function, the parts only made sense as parts of a whole, with a single direction and orientation. The new Cuban “army” (more precisely, men in arms under the Castro brothers’ command) was one of the two key institutions of the new regime during its first years, the other being National Institute of Agrarian Reform— or INRA, the Spanish acronym. The INRA, founded on May 14, 1959, was a parallel government presided over by Fidel and co-headed by Che Guevara. In fact all government institutions were parallel to the prime source of metapower: Fidel himself. The revolution was a cultural revolution; the army was a pillar of the new political avant-garde, so it acquired its own cultural responsibilities at the onset. By October 1959 the army was busy organizing literary events, awarding prizes, and printing poetry.63 And of course, the army was the source of witch-hunts against counterrevolutionary artists and writers, via the army’s magazine founded by Che Guevara, Verde Olivo. According to Lillian Guerra, old communist leaders “received army uniforms, even if they never participated in the war against Batista” and the “PSP congressman Joaquín Ordoquí became a comandante charged with supervising the army’s cultural affairs.”64 For Heberto Padilla, “Raúl had been fascinated with the Chinese Cultural Revolution. He wanted to place the ideological direction of the country in the hands of the armed forces, as had been the case in China, because he thought the best way to impede the unruly liberalism of certain militants was

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through the general militarization of culture.”65 Interestingly, with Raúl now in charge, this predominance of the army is more blatant than ever. OSSIFIED IN BATTLE POSITION Soon after the triumph of the revolution, and even before it officially embraced socialism, the new Cuban state quickly opted for Soviet-style corporatist institutions in the cultural field. To recall, the basic component of cultural policy in the Soviet Union were, according to Tatiana Fedorov and Nina Kochelyaeva: -- “creation of a broad network of state cultural institutions with a strong educational component -- formation of a strict, centralised administration and ideological control system -- enactment of corresponding regulations; and -- support for classical or high culture that was perceived as loyal or neutral in content.”66 These authors also point out that priority was given to “those cultural instruments with the greatest potential to disseminate information: radio, film, the press and, from the 1960s onwards, emphasis was placed more and more on television.” Furthermore, the main task of a system of so-called “creative unions” was “to control the artistic community and intelligentsia and organise their professional activities according to the needs of the Communist Party.”67 In Cuba the existing cultural organizations were nationalized or replaced by new ones sanctioned by the new political leadership. Public exhibitions, print material or performances became virtually impossible without government authorization. As Fidel Castro mentioned in a famous 1961 speech (more on this in a moment), “Even INRA was carrying out cultural extension activities.” The two most important institutions founded right away were the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), as early as March 1959, and the National Union of Cuban writers and Artists (UNEAC), created in August 1961.68 To be member of either of these two organizations became practically mandatory if one wished to engage professionally with the arts. Other key institutions include the Casa de las Américas (April 1959), the National Council of Culture (January 1961), a Ministry of Culture avant la lettre, which remained under the supervision of the Ministry of Education until 1971.69 These key cultural institutions—and the various unions that represent their members, like the National Union of Arts and Entertainment Workers



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(SNTAE)—were handed over to trusted collaborators of Fidel Castro, many of them members of the PSP, like Joaquín Ordoquí, Alfredo Guevara, Blas Roca, Nicolás Guillén, Edith García Buchaca, Juan Marinello, José Antonio Portuondo, and Mirta Aguirre. Important communist leaders like Carlos Rafael Rodríguez (some say no.3 of the regime, if there ever was such a thing70) and Osvaldo Dortícos (President of Cuba from 1959 to 1976), who had primarily economic and diplomatic responsibilities, also participated in the elaboration of cultural policy.71 Alfredo Guevara, a friend of Fidel since college years (they were both witness—some say Fidel was a participant—to the violent Bogotazo in Colombia in 1948), and Guillén became the first presidents of the ICAIC and the UNEAC, respectively.72 A compañera of the M-26 (and wife of the minister of education Armando Hart), Haydée Santamaría, was entrusted to lead the Casa de las Américas.73 This was a time when Castro was publicly saying he was “olive green” rather than “red,” occasionally allowing himself to attack communists and letting the M26 daily Revolución do the same. One direction, two tendencies: the pattern was set early on, as will be discussed later. The number of new cultural institutions created in the first few years of the new regime is truly impressive. The year 1959 saw the creation of the news agency Prensa Latina (June 8), the National Theatre (June 12), the Cuban National Dance Ensemble, the National Folklore Ensemble, and the National Choir.74 In 1960 the National Symphony Orchestra was reorganized and the National printing office of Cuba was created, making itself immediately visible by printing and distributing four million copies of El Quijote, with illustration by Pablo Picasso and Gustave Doré.75 On February 6 of that same year the Cuban Cinematheque was established. The Cuban Recording and Music publishing Company was created in 1962; the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in 1963. The Cuban National Publishing Company was founded in 1962; in 1967 the few government-controlled publishing houses were amalgamated to form the Cuban Book Institute (ICL), with writer Alejo Carpentier as its first director, and El Quijote, its first book published. The National School of Art was founded in February 1962 and the Higher Institute of Art (ISA) in 1976.76 The project to build an architecturally innovative campus for the various schools (Modern Dance, Plastic arts, Dramatic Arts, Music and Ballet) on the site of a symbol of the old regime (the country club in the Havana suburb of Cubanacán) confirmed the ambition of Fidel Castro to make culture an important field of revolutionary transformation. It turned out to be the only noticeable architectural “achievement of the revolution,” and not for long: the project was cancelled by Fidel Castro midway through the construction and Soviet-style monstrosity became the norm since the mid-1960s.77 In the wake of the first Communist Party congress in 1975 leading to the adoption of a new Soviet-like constitution in February 1976, the National

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Council of Culture (CNC) was replaced by a new Ministry of Culture. Fidel Castro was apparently reluctant to adopt such an institution, preferring to leave culture under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. Article 38 (1) of the new 1976 constitution stipulates: “The State guides, promotes and sponsors education, culture and science in all its manifestations.” Divided in eleven “national directions,” the new ministry oversees an impressive number of Institutes, Centers (“Wifredo Lam,” “Alejo Carpentier,” “Juan Marinello,” “Dulce María Loynaz”), National Councils, Foundations and Enterprises of various kinds, with thousands of members. The first minister of education (1959–65), Armando Hart (with the ICAIC’s Alfredo Guevara as his deputy), remained in that position from 1976 to 1997. He was followed by a former president of UNEAC, Abel Prieto (1997–2012), who was at first seen by many as a good advocate for artists and writers and who returned to this position in 2016. More recently, the ministers of culture Rafael Bernal Alemany (2012–14) and Julián González Toledo (2014–2016) adopted a low profile in the cultural bureaucracy: their promotions or activities were rarely mentioned in the official media or by the writers and artists I interviewed. Unlike Hart and Prieto (prior to his current mandate, since he returned to this position in 2016), neither was nominated to the Politburo.78 A sort of UNEAC for young artists and writers under the age of thirty-five, the Association Hermanos Saíz, named after the brothers Sergio and Luis Saíz, killed in 1957, was created in 1986 (it had existed as a “brigade” since 1962), the year of Fidel’s new mot d’ordre: “the Rectification Process of Errors and Negative Tendencies.” One should also count the Casas de Cultura, which sponsors and supervises cultural activities, museums, and galleries. Their mission is “to favor the development of activities of a patriotic character which contribute to the political and ideological formation of [the Cuban] people.”79 The organization of cultural activities is parallel to other policy areas: one finds a Castro at the top, followed by his close collaborators of the moment (Raúl being the closest when Fidel was in power). The Ideological Department of the PCC (previously known as the Department of Revolutionary Orientation) directly controls the Central Institute of Radio and Television, while the party and state security have their agents in every organization, cultural or otherwise. Cultural apparatchiks are typically members of the party nomenklatura (the president of the Casa de las Américas is member of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers, while the head of UNEAC is member of the Council of State) and official artists, writers and academics often find themselves in the legislative assembly or the Council of State, like visual artist Kcho and poet/literary critic Roberto Fernández Retamar. At the operational level, the main institutions in the cultural field (the UNEAC and the ICAIC) have enjoyed some autonomy over the years.



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Art and literature are probably not activities that can be totally controlled by the state. Even a hard to impress observer of the intellectual scene in Cuba like Carlos Alberto Montaner wrote: “The National Writers and Artists’ Association, the Cuban Film Institute, the Office of Publishing Houses of the Ministry of Culture, and the Casa de las Américas are breeding grounds for badly controlled inconformity. It is the intelligentsia that best perceives the brutal distance between Cuban reality and revolutionary rhetoric.”80 But historically, the critical factor for operational autonomy has not been distance from political control, but rather proximity, i.e. personal connection with Fidel or Raúl, as well as international fame.81 For instance, in his discussion on the persecution of homosexuals during the 1970s, Peter Johnson writes: “The Cuban Ballet partially escaped this measure due to director Alicia Alonso’s great influence with Castro and her international stature in the dance world.”82 Another good example is the filmmaker Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, whose movies sometimes irritated the Castro brothers. He could escape censorship (if not self-censorship) because of his fame and his personal relations with el comandante en jefe. His 1994 hits Fresa y chocolate and Guantanamera (with Juan Carlos Tabío) are always mentioned as evidence of cultural liberalization in Cuba during the 1990s, even though the official level of tolerance for Gutiérrez Alea’s work was evidently not the norm.83 The leaders of the UNEAC and the ICAIC, and sometimes the minister of culture, have made choices that proved to be unpopular with the political leadership. Furthermore, they have been able to protect, up to a point, some writers or artists who had fallen in disgrace (such as Jesús Díaz, as will be discussed in the next chapter). But they were more often instrumental in abetting political control of cultural activities. The Cuban state now appears to be highly institutionalized, except (and this is important) at the top. If, since the 1990s, one finds an increasing level of operational autonomy in the cultural field, it is essential to reiterate that the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), and most importantly Fidel and now Raúl Castro, have enjoyed complete strategic control of all mobilizational organizations in the country.84 As Che Guevara put it: “The initiative generally comes from Fidel or the high command of the Revolution and it is explained to the people who take it as their own.”85 For him, At the head of the immense column—we are not ashamed or intimidated to say it—there is Fidel, followed by the best cadres of the Party, and immediately after, so close that one can feel its enormous strength, goes the people as a whole: a strong bloc of individuals that moves forward toward a common goal; individuals who have reached an awareness of what needs to be done; individuals who struggle to emancipate themselves from the realm of necessity and to enter the realm of freedom.86

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Since the institutionalization of 1976, the central role of the Cuban leadership and the PCC in providing politico-cultural orientation to the state, the mass organizations and the Cuban nation is reiterated in all official documents directly or indirectly concerning cultural policies in Cuba: the Constitution of 1976 (and its amended versions in 1992 and 2002); the “thesis and resolutions” of congresses of the PCC concerning art, literature and culture; official declarations during cultural events; speeches by ministers of culture; and last but not least, speeches by Fidel Castro, most importantly his 1961 speech “Words to Intellectuals.”87 In most documents or proclamations on culture, one finds the routine quotation from Fidel Castro or views explicitly drawn from what Armando Hart once called “the substance of Fidel’s thought.”88 As did his successors, Hart always talked about cultural policy in Cuba as “Fidel’s cultural policy”89 and the revolution as “Fidel’s Revolution.” He portrays the mission of the Ministry of Culture as follows: “The main mission of the Ministry of Culture will be political and will provide orientation to the economy, the administration, as well as practical means for the development of culture. That is the mission that gives it more authority; the ideological, moral, political, revolutionary authority that Fidel has over us.”90 For fifty-six years, to escape from Fidel (and then Raúl) Castro’s control and freely express critical views, one would need to leave the island and be prepared to never come back. Within the revolution, not much is allowed; outside the revolution, everything is, except the right to get back “within.” The Cuban legal and constitutional framework follows the modern republican language of rights. As in most modern dictatorial regimes,91 Cubans are constitutionally “free” to agree with the government; as a matter of fact, they have the “right” to actively support its policies and benefit from them. They are not free to publicly criticize the government and its policies, however. According to Cuban laws, that could easily be construed as treason as well as a threat to national security.92 This is hardly original. Modern dictatorships are never against freedom per se; they are against freedom to disagree with the political leadership, a.k.a. the “people.” President and people are one and the same. French proto-totalitarian revolutionary Saint Just put it succinctly: No freedom for the enemies of freedom! The idea is simple: one creates a “within” that represents a legitimate space for public expression, and an “outside” for actions and thoughts deemed illegitimate. In a speech delivered in 1935, Benito Mussolini famously said “everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State.”93 On August 3, 1968, Leonid Brezhnev said “Each Communist party is free to apply the principles of Marxism-Leninism and socialism in its own country, but it is not free to deviate from these principles if it is to remain a Communist Party.”94 Radical socialism and communism always have a problem with freedom because



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unlike democracy, it is an end, not a mean, and one cannot build socialism if everybody is free to oppose socialism. Even in the “Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art” (1938) signed by André Breton and Diego Rivera (but written by Leon Trotsky and Breton), a text often considered as the proof that free art is compatible with Marxism and revolution, the call for “complete freedom in art” is offset by the caveat that “the revolutionary state has the right to defend itself against the counterattack of the bourgeoisie, even when this drapes itself in the flag of science or art.” After all, the “supreme task of art in our epoch is to take part actively and consciously in the preparation of the revolution.”95 Belgian political scientist Léo Moulin (1906–1996) aptly said that totalitarians always say openly what they think. Hence, the 1976 constitution stipulates: “Citizens are granted freedom of speech and press according to the aims of socialist society.” Complete state control of the media is the best guarantor of this kind of liberty: “The material conditions for its exercise are assured by the fact that the press, radio, television, cinema and other mass media are state-owned or socially owned” (Art.53). Nationalization of all independent printing shops by 1964 is not presented as a menace to autonomy and free speech, quite the opposite. The “Rights of assembly, demonstration and association” are exercised in “mass and social organizations” [i.e. state-led organizations] “in which its members enjoy the widest freedom of speech and opinion, based on the unrestricted right to initiative and criticism” (Art.54).96 In other words, “within” official channels, freedom to support the government is absolute. Article 39 reads: “Artistic creation is free provided that its content is not contrary to the Revolution.”97 On the other hand, “Artistic forms of expression in art are free.” Section “e” affirms that “creative and investigative activity in science is free”—without qualification. WHO IS WITH HIM AND WHO IS NOT? Whether scientific activities or purely artistic expression (i.e. the “form,” not the “content”) are genuinely free in Cuba can be discussed later,98 but suffice to summarize here that the framers of the 1976 constitution conjugate the ideal of freedom, one that no genuine modern revolutionary movement can renounce to, with the dogma that it can only be protected and nurtured in a monistic way by the state. Fidel Castro enunciated this dogma quite openly fifteen years earlier, and his words always carry more weight than the laws or the constitution itself. This speech, known as “Words to Intellectuals” (1961), is the most important document anchoring the cultural policy in Cuba.99 In Cuba it is discussed often and with utmost veneration, as if it was a sort of revolutionary hadith (the words of the prophet in Islam), with one

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objective: to prove that Fidel was right then and all along. Mistakes made since then were a result of a failure to properly comprehend his message.100 In this much-discussed speech Fidel Castro famously drew a line between “within” and outside (or “against”) the revolution, but kept to himself the secret of where the line is. That gave him the ultimate and exclusive right to determine on what side of the line Cubans are, either a priori, in present time or a posteriori. To begin with, Words to Intellectuals is a typical Fidel Castro speech: long and repetitive, it makes effective use of anaphoras (repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses) and perorations (“fear the judges of posterity! Fear the future generations, which in the end will have the last word!”). In it, Castro constantly answers his own questions, making real dialogue superfluous.101 At first the speech features a faux nonchalant tone, which helps to anchor the hint that the speaker will talk for as long as he deems necessary. The points are not made directly and clearly, but by salvos of words and formulas that gradually draw the contours of what is being expressed. Fidel may be a good speaker but his speeches are humorless and monotonous mots d’ordre that leave no doubt about who is in charge while obfuscating the policy implications of what is being said. This two-and-a-half hour speech (relatively short by his standards) was delivered during the last of the three meetings (June 16, 23 and 30) between writers and artists, on one hand, and political officials on the other.102 These reunions were made necessary to clear the air in the literary and artistic community after the regime’s first overt act of censorship, against a short (13 minute) and apparently innocuous cinéma vérité film/documentary, produced in December 1960–January 1961. “PM” (for “Pasado Meridiano”) simply features scenes of Havana nightlife.103 There are no comments, only great music and folks having a good time—ostensibly, rather than building socialism or defending the revolution against US aggression, as was the order of the day a few weeks after the Bay of Pigs invasion. As writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante wrote, “It is a cinematic mural about the end of an era.”104 It was realized by two young filmmakers, Sabá Cabrera Infante (brother of Guillermo) and Orlando Jiménez Leal, associated with one of the two groups competing for Fidel’s recognition in the cultural field.105 “Unless we are mistaken,” Fidel said in one of his opening comments, “the basic problem hovering in the background of the atmosphere here was the problem of freedom for artistic creation.” He went on to say, “This matter has been brought up more than once by various writers visiting our country” (he mentioned Jean-Paul Sartre and C. Wright Mills). This may have suggested that the source of concerns were to be found abroad rather than in Cuba. The claim made next is incongruous. Essentially, Castro suggests that true revolutionaries cannot reasonably have doubts or concerns about their own freedom



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under the “revolution” (i.e. under his regime). The revolution is also a cultural revolution and everybody should happily participate in it. What is never clear is the status of those who do have doubts and concerns and who therefore are not true revolutionaries. He says that they are not necessarily counterrevolutionaries though, a nuance always emphasized by observers who want to present this speech as evidence of his tolerance. Castro talked about “doubt” that “remains for writers and artists who, without being counterrevolutionaries, do not feel revolutionary either.” Here he is not articulating a pluralist perspective, in which both revolutionaries and non-revolutionaries could have similar rights and could be equally welcomed in the new Cuba. As Fidel Castro repeats incessantly in his speech, using slightly different words, the revolutionary path is the way of the present and the future, the only legitimate way. The revolutionary “puts something above all other issues; the revolutionary puts something above even his own creative spirit: he puts the Revolution above all else and the most revolutionary artist would be the one who is willing to sacrifice even his own artistic vocation for the Revolution.” To be revolutionary “is also an attitude towards life, being revolutionary is also an attitude to the existing reality, and there are men who are resigned to that reality, there are men who adapt to that reality and there are men who can not resign themselves or adapt to that reality and they try to change it, that’s why they are revolutionaries.” To those who are “resigned,” or for whom artistic creativity is important in and of itself, for those individuals, concludes Castro, “the Revolution can be a problem.” Are they a problem for the revolution? Without saying that explicitly, the door is clearly open for this interpretation: We the people must think first about ourselves; that is the only attitude that can be defined as a truly revolutionary attitude. And for those who cannot have or do not have that attitude, but who are honest people, it is for whom exists the problem to which we referred, and just as the Revolution constitutes a problem for them, they also constitute a problem for the Revolution, a problem that the Revolution must worry about.106

The revolutionaries, for Castro, are “the vanguard of the people.” The rest are either followers, individuals who may be “honorable” though not revolutionaries, or plain counterrevolutionaries. As he states in the most famous passage of this speech, the latter have no rights: The Revolution must only repudiate those who are incorrigibly reactionary, who are incorrigibly counterrevolutionary. Because the Revolution understands the interests of the people, since the Revolution signifies the interests of the entire Nation, no one can rightly claim a right against it. I think this is very clear. This means that within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.

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Against the Revolution nothing, because the Revolution also has its rights and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist and nobody can be against the right of the Revolution to exist. There wouldn’t be an exception in the law for artists and writers. This is a general principle for all citizens.107

British scholar Antoni Kapcia suggests that a misunderstanding can derive from a poor translation from the Spanish. He says that contra means “against” rather than “outside” (I have seen both translations by reputable authors). The difference is fundamental for him: For his statement indicated not “if you are not with us, you are against us” (which the use of fuera would have meant) but the more inclusive “if you are not against us, you are with us.” This is not mere semantics, for one characteristic of the Revolution’s processes subsequently has, indeed, been its “argumentalism” […], its willingness to allow and even encourage internal debate, within clear parameters and behind metaphorically closed doors (my emphasis).108

For Kapcia, “exclusion and a ‘hard line’ have tended to be applied only to those publicly going beyond those ‘doors’ and those parameters.”109 Here Kapcia is disingenuous, for as he should know, there was never a clear line between in and out, between “not being with us” and “being against us.” How did PM become “against us” and not merely “not with us” for instance? What “internal debate” was encouraged when Fidel Castro delivered his speech, with his pistol on the table? The fact of the matter is that most cases of censorship—I am discussing a few in this book—victimized individuals who were not opposed to the regime and who could not straightforwardly be called “counterrevolutionaries.” More to the uncertainty created by this “in” versus “out” approach to free expression, although there has never been any doubt about who was in charge in Cuba under Fidel, the chains of command within the government apparatus and within the cultural field are made of many levels of authority, where negotiations and competitions do take place between individuals, and where opportunities to interpret “the substance” of Fidel’s thought are real, all of which create an additional layer of uncertainty to the “Against the Revolution nothing” mot d’ordre. One has rights unless one doesn’t, one can speak one’s mind unless one can’t, one doesn’t have to be a revolutionary but since not being a revolutionary is not clearly differentiated from being a counterrevolutionary, the best strategy for survival and recognition cannot be clearer: follow the leader/La Revolución. There are additional fascinating passages in this speech. About the state’s role in culture, Castro says: “It is a duty of the Revolution and of the Revolutionary Government to feature a highly qualified entity that stimulates, encourages, develops and provide orientation, yes, provide orientation to



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the creative spirit.” He defends the embattled CNC in the wake of the PM censorship scandal, comparing its role to other state agencies, including the police, to prove that its existence is normal and necessary, then he makes the only joke of the speech (if this was a joke) about how the CNC, like the state, could one day disappear, in an early reference to Marxist-Leninist theory on the withering away of the state under communism: The existence of an authority in the cultural order does not mean that there is a reason to worry about the abuse of that authority, because wouldn’t we want or desire that cultural authority to exist? In the same way, one could wish that the Militia did not exist, or the Police did not exist, that the Power of the State did not exist, or even that the State did not exist, and if someone is so concerned about the existence of even the most minimal state authority, in that case, don’t worry, have patience, for one day will arrive when the State will cease to exist altogether. (APPLAUSE) 110

After admitting he didn’t even see PM, he focuses on the only important question for him: “one could have a discussion on whether or not the decision was just or fair. But there is something that nobody call into question and that is the right of the Government to exercise that function, because if we challenge that right, it would mean that the Government does not have right to review the films that are going to be presented to the people” (my emphasis). The CNC is right to determine what can be presented, for “among the intellectual or artistic expressions some have a certain importance for the education of the people or for the ideological formation of the people, which is more important than other types of artistic manifestations”. In other words, this is not an aesthetic or even ideological question: what is at stake is power. Though Fidel Castro is not explicitly subscribing to socialist realism, and one can dig out two or three quotes from him or Che Guevara that suggest a certain openness to a more liberal conception of the arts, he clearly advocate an art that is political, revolutionary, “constructive,” and “optimistic” (“A pessimist could never be a revolutionary”), very much like socialist realism. Daura Olema García’s novel Maestra voluntaria, for instance, fits the bill perfectly and was given an award by the UNEAC as early as 1962.111 The speech ends on a crescendo on how revolution is “the most important event of the century for Latin America,” and how it will fight and defeat cultural deprivation (“We will wage a war against cultural deprivation. We are going to unleash an colossal struggle against cultural deprivation”), how it is already accomplishing so many great things that indeed, how could anyone refuse to embrace it, or worse: how could one consider leaving the country? In fact, those who are not capable of understanding these things, those who let themselves be deceived, those who allow themselves to be confused, those who allow themselves to be confused by lies, are those who abandon the Revolution.

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What about those who have abandoned it, and what shall we think about them, other than with sorrow? To leave this country, a country in full revolutionary effervescence, and to seek refuge in the entrails of the Imperialist Monster, where no manifestation of the spirit can survive? And they have abandoned the Revolution to go there. They have preferred to be fugitives and deserters from their homeland than to be even only spectators. And you have the opportunity to be more than spectators, to be actors of that Revolution, to write about it, to express yourself about it.112

No wonder many who were present concluded that for Fidel Castro, if one is not 100 percent with him/the revolution, choosing instead to be “fearful, selfcentered, destructive and pessimistic,” as Par Kumaraswami summarizes,113 then one cannot be too far from “objectively” being a traitor, a diversionist, a deviationist, or more plainly, a counterrevolutionary. “Words to Intellectuals” is remarkably similar to Mao’s Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art (1942), which Fidel Castro mentions at the beginning of his speech in a puzzling statement: “I must confess that in a sense these issues caught us a little unprepared. We did not have our Yenan conference with Cuban artists and writers during the Revolution. Actually this is a revolution that was born and came to power in a time, it can be said ‘record.’ Unlike other revolutions, it did not have all the main problems solved.”114 Leaving aside the strange idea that revolutionaries usually find solutions to pressing problems before they seize power, it is notable that Fidel Castro knew about Mao’s speech of 1942 and conceivably found inspiration in it. Like “Words to Intellectuals,” Mao’s series of “talks” were prompted by concerns among artists regarding the revolutionary movement and its implications for art and the role of intellectuals in China. The “Talks” became a foundational statement for the cultural policy in China for decades. Both Fidel and Mao urge artists to subordinate individual or purely artistic concerns to the promotion of collective interest of the “working people” (Mao) or the “revolution” (Fidel Castro). Mao’s rhetoric is more explicitly Marxist: he talks to his “comrades” about the “petty-bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.” Fidel Castro talks like a proto-Marxist and a Latin American populist about the “people” led by “revolutionaries.” In fact, most of the time he skips the “people” altogether and just talks about the Revolution, subject and object of the historical moment. Both Mao and Fidel Castro present art and literature as important—they talk about the need for a “cultural army” (Mao) and a “cultural revolution” (Fidel Castro)—but subordinate to “politics” and the revolution. For Mao, In our struggle for the liberation of the Chinese people there are various fronts, among which there are the fronts of the pen and of the gun, the cultural and the military fronts. To defeat the enemy we must rely primarily on the army with guns. But this army alone is not enough; we must also have a cultural army,



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which is absolutely indispensable for uniting our own ranks and defeating the enemy.115

Or again: Literature and art are subordinate to politics, but in their turn exert a great influence on politics. Revolutionary literature and art are part of the whole revolutionary cause, they are cogs and wheels in it, and though in comparison with certain other and more important parts they may be less significant and less urgent and may occupy a secondary position, nevertheless, they are indispensable cogs and wheels in the whole machine, an indispensable part of the entire revolutionary cause. 116

Their position toward non-revolutionary artists is similar. Mao said: The petty-bourgeois writers and artists constitute an important force among the forces of the united front in literary and art circles in China. There are many shortcomings in both their thinking and their works, but, comparatively speaking, they are inclined towards the revolution and are close to the working people. Therefore, it is an especially important task to help them overcome their shortcomings and to win them over to the front which serves the working people. 117

As was mentioned above, a priori Fidel Castro does not require—read: La Revolución does not require—artists and writers to be “revolutionaries.” Petty-bourgeois and non-revolutionaries, with their misplaced self-interest and concerns, can be reeducated, if they are not “incorrigibly counterrevolutionaries.” “As long as they do not persist in their errors,” offered Mao, “we should not dwell on their negative side and consequently make the mistake of ridiculing them or, worse still, of being hostile to them.” History proves that neither Fidel nor Mao was very patient with those crooked timbers of humanity, when they failed to shed whatever prevented them from becoming total servants of the new state. Last but not least, both Mao and Fidel Castro denied they were against freedom in art or in public expression, and at the same time affirmed that artists are not free to express views that are contrary to the policies they defend. For Mao: We want no sectarianism in our literary and art criticism and, subject to the general principle of unity for resistance to Japan, we should tolerate literary and art works with a variety of political attitudes. But at the same time, in our criticism we must adhere firmly to principles and severely criticize and repudiate all works of literature and art expressing views in opposition to the nation, to science, to the masses and to the Communist Party, because these so-called

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works of literature and art proceed from the motive and produce the effect of undermining unity for resistance to Japan.118

And again: In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic. According to the political criterion, everything is good that is helpful to unity and resistance to Japan, that encourages the masses to be of one heart and one mind, that opposes retrogression and promotes progress; on the other hand, everything is bad that is detrimental to unity and resistance to Japan, foments dissension and discord among the masses and opposes progress and drags people back.119

In other words: Within the revolution, meaning in support of the revolutionary avant-garde, everything is allowed, in fact it is encouraged; against the revolution, a category that could include not being “helpful” to the cause, nothing is allowed. Almost half a century after the Words to Intellectuals, a man considered as a “critical intellectual” in Cuba, cultural critic Desidero Navarro, asked the following questions during a conference on cultural policy in Cuba (more on this later) sponsored by the Casa de las Américas: Today, the cultural and social life of the country has once again put on the table many more concrete questions that, even after “Words to the intellectuals,” were left without a broad, clear and categorical answer: What phenomena and processes of Cuban cultural and social reality are part of the Revolution and which are not? How to distinguish which cultural work or behavior acts against the Revolution, which in favor and which simply does not affect it? What social criticism is revolutionary and which is counterrevolutionary? Who, how and according to which criteria, decides the correct answer to these questions?120

These would have been timely questions in 1961; they are strikingly naive and possibly disingenuous in 2007. The idea defended in Cuba and sometimes abroad that the Cuban cultural policy grounded in the 1961 speech “guaranteed full freedom of artistic expression to all but open enemies of the revolution”121 only makes sense if one accept as self-evident that homosexuals, fans of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Catholics, Jehovah Witnesses, filmmakers who produce documentaries on Cubans drinking and dancing in bars of Havana, young people with long hair, and even cultural ambassadors of the regime like signer Pablo Milanés (who ended up in labor camp in the 1960s) are or were unmistakenly “open enemies of the revolution.” To repeat, this kind of interpretation, defended by the regime and many academics, prevents one from understanding how so many individuals who were silenced sincerely thought of themselves as “revolutionaries” and were stunned and outraged to be accused of ideological diversionism, improper conduct, or



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counterrevolutionary activities. While there is no doubt that supporting a return of Batista and his regime (which basically nobody did) would instantly turn one into an “open enemy of the revolution,” it is no less clear that criticizing Fidel (and now Raúl) and his policies, even in the name of the revolution, would result in the same effect. HIS MAJESTY PLAYS THE KEYS In his fascinating book on the Haile Selassie dictatorship in Ethiopia, Polish reporter and writer Ryszard Kapuściński explains how the emperor used “factions and coteries” to his own advantage: The Palace divided itself into factions and coteries that fought incessant wars, weakening and destroying each other. That is exactly what His Benevolent Majesty wanted. Such a balance assured his blessed peace. If one of the coteries gained the upper hand, His Highness would quickly bestow favors on its opponents, restoring the balance that paralyzed usurpers. His Majesty played the keys—a black one and then a white one—and brought from the piano a harmonious melody soothing to his ears. Everyone gave in to such manipulation because the only reason for their existence was the Emperor’s approbation, and if he withdrew it they would disappear from the Palace within the day, without a trace. No, they weren’t anything on their own. They were visible to others only as long as the glamorous light of the Imperial crown shone upon them.122

This reminds us that dictatorships are monistic (they follow a single governing principle) but they are not monolithic (they contain factions, tendencies, etc.). For their own stability they need to deal effectively with factions (in Madison’s sense) of various kinds (ideological, institutional, clannish). How they handle that determines their chance of survival. In the domain of policies, two main tendencies seem to emerge everywhere: on one hand the hardliners or “conservatives,” and on the other reformists, often called “liberals.” This distinction has obvious limitations: Hardliners may want some great leap forward rather than “conserving” the status quo (e.g. Fidel’s “revolutionary offensive” of 1968), and so-called liberals who operate within these regimes rarely are ideologically or philosophically liberals. Furthermore, in Cuba during the 1960s, according to Iván de la Nuez, the “Guevarists” were “liberal” in culture but dogmatic in economic policy, whereas the orthodox communists were the opposite.123 By overemphasizing the importance of a pendulum in the policy-making process, alternatively rewarding one or the other tendency, we can lose sight of the fact that this limited pluralism represents not only a problem to manage but also an opportunity to keep “factions” in check.

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Totalitarian regimes have in common to undergo a period of experimentation with cultural policies in the first few years of the regime, conceivably because they have more urgent challenges to sort out. For instance, under Anatole Lunacharsky (1875–1933), director of the Commissariat of Enlightenment (Narkompros) from 1917 to 1929, certain sectors of the cultural field in the USSR enjoyed some autonomy from the government for about fifteen years.124 In Nazi Germany, according to Toby Clark, by 1937, the Nazi leadership made clear its rejection of modernist art, and avant-garde artists were excluded and thoroughly persecuted. But this was preceded by some years of debate among senior Party officials. Josef Goebbels argued that some artists of the German Expressionist movement, such as Emil Nolde (1867–1956), Erich Heckel (1883–1970), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) represented a national spirit in German art, which could be embraced by the Third Reich.125

While these early “revolutionary” years are remembered more fondly than the subsequent years of regimentation of writers and artists, under the banner of “realism socialism” or Nazi art, their open-endedness and radical ambiance turned out to be largely an illusion. No, the new “revolutionary” governments didn’t care about modern art or avant-garde art—though Hitler and Stalin (unlike Fidel Castro) did care a great deal about art. Avant-garde writers and artists were simply victims of their own romantic craving for total change.126 Subsequent periods of thaw seem more deliberate, especially when it coincided with the departure of particularly brutal totalitarian rulers like Stalin or Mao. But the same leadership could manage it: for instance, in Ceaucescu’s Romania, the 1970s saw the dawn of a so-called “new democracy.” According to Romanian writer Norman Manea: “All kinds of novels and poems were published, in very large editions, that ‘unmasked’ abuses from past as well as more recent times, signed by official authors, well paid and two-faced. The manipulation of these ‘charges’ by the system was a basic premise of the ‘dialectical’ and vigorous ‘debate’ that the Power encouraged.”127 Similarly, in East Germany, in December 1971, during the Eighth Party Congress, Erich Honecker promised “no more taboos in art and literature,” a remark contingent on a “strong commitment to socialism” that had no practical effect.128 It is commonly believed that the history of communist Cuba can be characterized by its economic policy and as a pendulum between periods of revolutionary idealism and liberal pragmatism. Economist Carmelo MesaLago distinguishes between “idealist” periods (1959–66, 1986–90, and 1997–2006) and “pragmatist” periods (1971–85, 1991–96, and since 2008), all under the same leadership.129 It seems convenient to think in similar terms for the cultural field, with the “liberal” 1960s and the dogmatic 1970s, followed by more open 1980s and more conservative 1990s (in academia and



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the visual art at least).130 Under the leadership of Raúl Castro the country is generally considered to be more pragmatic and “liberal” than under Fidel, though the last two years have seen an increase of repression and restrictions, which suggests that the pendulum continues. Some talk about a transition from socialism to state capitalism131; others prefer the term military dictatorship, to characterize Raúl’s men in the armed forces replacing Fidel’s, and running the big business conglomerates on the island. These are not unambiguous indicators of liberalization. Even after Fidel’s passing, some experts talk about how a new Trump administration may reinforce the “fidelista wing of the party.”132 In the cultural field, a new dynamic emerged from the confluence of the economic crisis, the reluctant opening to global market force and foreign direct investment, and a set of dispositions in the cultural milieu that encourage retreat from political controversies or even politics tout court, and attraction to the booming global art market. Rather than successive “periods” or “decades” of opening and closing of the space for public expression, it suggests, more than ever before, that the pendulum is not only taking place “vertically” over time, but “horizontally” and selectively from one individual or group to another. Looking back at the history since 1959, this interpretation has merit to at least qualify the dominant interpretations. In Cuba it is acceptable to identify the seventies, in particular the five years—the “Five Grey Years” or Quinquenio Gris—from the National Congress on Education and Culture (April 30, 1971) to the creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1976, as the only period of harsh cultural repression in Cuba. Whether those years were “gray” or “black,” lasted for five, ten, fifteen (Mario Coyula’s Trinquenio Amargo)133 or many more years, is open to discussion, but 1971 is generally agreed upon as the year when a bad turn was taken. The repression of those years was caused by bad cultural apparatchiks who were in charge of cultural policy and constituted a deviation from the blueprint enunciated by Fidel Castro in his Words to Intellectuals (1961).134 The year 1968 seems to be a turning point in Cuban politics though, with Che Guevara’s death, Fidel’s public support for the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the so-called “revolutionary offensive,” a Cuban “great leap forward” that destroyed the last residues of private property and intensified the regimentation of cultural actors. Indeed the year was one of hardening of cultural policy and censorship. Carlos Ripoll compared the year 1967 to “the ‘year of Protest’ (1956) in the Soviet Union, when Vladimir Dudintsev succeeded in publishing ‘Not From Bread Alone’ and Pasternak presented his manuscript of Dr. Zhivago without being punished.”135 Much is made of the fact that the “hardliners,” based in the army and its magazine Verde Olivo, confronted more “liberal” cultural apparatchiks in the

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UNEAC, ICAIC, or the Casa de las Américas during that period. Indeed writers like José Lorenzo Fuentes, Delfín Prats, Heberto Padilla and Antón Arufat were “parametered” soon after receiving awards from the UNEAC (the same happened to Reinaldo Arenas in 1967).136 The UNEAC juries included foreigners, who could be blamed by the regime for these decisions. The UNEAC practically came close to apologizing during its congress in September of 1968, when its President Nicolás Guillén reiterated that the writers and artists’ responsibilities “shall not be different from that of our fellow soldiers… the defense of our country.”137 The 1970s were indeed repressive. Fidel’s famous closing speech at the first National Congress on Education and Culture (April 30, 1971), a long rant against “pseudo-leftists,” “intellectual rats,” and homosexuality (among other targets) seemed to paraphrase similar outbursts by Hitler or Lenin.138 Still, the contrast between the 1960s and 1970s is probably overstated in the literature. In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam (1995) writes that in the United States most of the sixties took place during the 1970s. In Cuba, much of what is associated with the infamous 1970s started right away after the triumph of the revolution. Many critical authors acknowledge that the grande noirceur started at the end of the 1960s rather than in 1971.139 But the myth of the liberal first ten years of the regime (incidentally, not unlike the myth of the non-totalitarian Lenin in 1917–22) is tenacious. A few facts need to be remembered. The death penalty, revolutionary tribunals and suspension of constitutional rights were written into law in the second half of 1959.140 The infamous “Acts of repudiation” (government mobs harassing opponents) started in 1960. The University Council was abolished in July 16, 1960, to be replaced by a Board completely controlled by the government. Academic freedom disappeared during the early 1960s. Independent or semi-independent cultural magazine was shut down during the first half of the decade (Lunes de Revolución in 1961; the independent cultural magazine El Puente in 1965). Dissonant malgré lui cultural supplement El Caimán Barburdo (under the directorship of Jesús Díaz) and El Sable (a graphic weekly supplement to Juventud Rebelde) were taken down by the government during the 1960s. In theater, art and architecture repression and intimidation had already wreaked havoc by the middle of the decade.141 In an interview realized in 2015, theater director Juan Carlos Cremata-Malberti said: Cuban theater in the 1960s suffered something from which it has not been able to recover. The witch-hunts exterminated not only all that was seen as innovative, “politically incorrect,” “ideologically suspect,” controversial, homosexual, hippy, strange, experimental, but even what might have been truly revolutionary. This sowed fear. And when one sows terror, the harvest of terror, fright and anguish is irreparable and remains for a long time. It takes years to



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eliminate it—martyrs and an infinity of thwarted projects. The normal evolution of thought is paralyzed and artistic projects are frozen. People hide and accept a Kafkaesque situation, absurd processes, and repressive and senseless measures.142

The infamous cultural commissars of the seventies had their counterpart in the first half of the 1960s: former PSP leader Edith García Buchaca. In her book La teoría de la superestructura, la literatura y el arte,143 García Buchaca rails against modern art, “preoccupied with describing the reactions and psychological abnormalities of drug addicts, homosexuals, prostitutes and the mentally ill.”144 According to Loomis: Largely upon the instigation of powerful PSP member Edith García Buchaca, a year before their downfall [in 1964], a large work by Tomás Oliva, which had won a prize at the Sao Paolo Biennial, was removed from the Teatro Blanquito. A mural by Guido Llinás in Maceo Park was also attacked as ‘counterrevolutionary’ in a denunciation lead by Osmay Cienfuegos. And in another act by Edith García Buchaca, a mural in the Naval Hospital by Hugo Consuegra was completely destroyed. For whatever reasons, the avant-garde and the experimental in certain kinds of art were not particularly welcome.145

The labor camps called Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP) were put in place in 1965 and lasted until 1968. According to writer Heberto Padilla: The camps were the creation of Raúl Castro, who thought he had discovered in Bulgaria new and efficacious methods for “curing” homosexuals. In fact, the procedure was quite rudimentary. It was purest Pavlov—pleasure and revulsion being produced by particular erotic stimuli. For instance, they would show a film of two men having sex; when the patients’ pulse was at its height and he was at the point of orgasm, an electric shock would be applied. The procedure would be repeated frequently, until a conditioned reflex of repellence had been achieved.146

Initially the idea was that whoever could not fulfill active military service had to contribute with labor in the field. But homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses and political opponents found themselves the target for UMAP recruitment.147 The so-called liberal “1960s” saw the boom of puritanism, with its exaltation of family values and homophobia, its censure of short skirts for females and long hair for males, and censorship of jazz, rock and “elvispreslism” (speech by Fidel le 13 mars 1963).148 Some filmmakers did realize some of the best films made in Cuba during that period (i.e., Santiago Alvarez, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Humberto Solás, Pastor Vega), but others were censored (i.e., Néstor Almendros, Fausto Canel, Roberto Fandiño, Sarah Gómez, Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Eduardo Manet). The list of playwrights (e.g., Antón

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Arrufat, Roberto Blanco, Antonio Benítez Rojo, Abelardo Estorino, Eugenio Hernández Espinosa Virgilio Piñera, Vicente Revuelta, José Triana), novelists and poets (e.g., Juan Arcocha, Reinaldo Arenas, Néstor Díaz de Villegas, Daniel Fernández, Eduardo Heras León, José Lezama Lima, César López, Heberto Padilla, Carlos Victoria) and painters (e.g., Servando Cabrera, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Raúl Martínez, Manuel Mendive, Antonia Eiriz) who were persecuted during the 1960s is rather long. The battle surrounding the cultural supplement Lunes de Revolución, directed by Guillermo Cabrera Infante, and the censorship of the short film PM constitute early cases in point. Lunes was the literary supplement of the daily Revolución (1959–65), the official newspaper of the 26th of July Movement directed by Carlos Franqui. It was published clandestinely during the insurgency and expanded in 1959 to include a television channel (Canal 2) and a publishing house (Ediciones R). The last issue came out in November 1961. As mentioned earlier, the ban of PM in May 1961, officially approved by the ICAIC, was the first open act of censorship against a work of art in the new Cuba.149 If PM was the first act of censorship, the elimination of Lunes de Revolución signaled for many the end of a certain tendency in the cultural field: the radicals associated with the 26th of July Movement, who competed with the PSP leadership for recognition by the leader; and on top of that, personal rivalries within these camps: the “liberals” Cabrera Infante and Carlos Franqui against communists such as Edith García Buchaca, Mirta Aguirre and Alfredo Guevara, not to mention tensions within these camps; i.e. between Guevara—who as an openly gay person was an unorthodox member of the party—and the very orthodox García Buchaca, between Guevara and Blas Roca (true name was Francisco Calderio) and so on.150 French journalist Ania Franco reported on these quarrels: “‘In truth, all these people hate each other,’ M said to me a little later. I’m surprised. ‘You have political differences? No, politically everyone agrees; those are no more than the eternal small rivalries between Lunes [de Revolución] and the ICAIC for the direction of the future Ministry of Culture.’”151 Gordon-Nesbitt, who always “defends the revolution,” seems to agree: “it is clear, that, rather than this conflict being explicable in simple Manichean terms—of good versus bad, freedom versus Stalinism—it may be understood as the result of a clash between youthful personalities and their disparate histories and beliefs about how culture should be developed within the Revolution.”152 It is still worth remembering that it was a period of great flux involving individuals who were in their early to late thirties, with little to no experience in “government” and cultural policy. The fact that many intellectuals who identified with the regime and the radical left didn’t embrace a Stalinist model shouldn’t be a surprise, since the M26 was not openly pro-communist during the revolution and since the PSP was in fact an old ally of Batista. Hence one



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can read in the 26th of July issue of Lunes (1959) and article signed by Carlos Franqui stating this: We do not want to manufacture a directed state culture. It would be stupid. The example of totalitarian countries has shown that without freedom there is no culture. But the example of the underdeveloped or colonial countries shows that a national culture cannot be born without the initiative and protection of the State, cultural institutions, and the understanding of a people that supports it. […] It is necessary to create an appropriate instrument that has autonomy, which does not depend on anyone, to promote Cuban culture. Let’s not have a bureaucratic or political organization, let’s have it led by intellectuals, artists, scientists, creators who are capable of projecting the cultural work that the nation needs (p.12).

But in 1961, conceivably as a result of increasing pressure to conform to the new communist orthodoxy, Lunes published glowing special issues on North Korea (August 7) and Romania (October 16). But it was too late: its fate had been sealed in June (Fidel’s meeting with intellectuals) and approved by the first congress of writers and artists in August.153 The last issue (November 1961) celebrates Picasso: interestingly, an unorthodox communist. A year later, some of Lunes’ main contributors had joined the foreign service and were posted abroad (Heberto Padilla, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, César Leante, Manuel Díaz Martínez, Pablo Armando Fernández), others continued to publish in Revolución (Roberto Fernández Retamar, Ambrosio Fornet, Herberto Padilla, Edmundo Desnoes).154 García Buchaca was purged in December 1964 and remained under house arrest until 1973, but it is difficult to imagine how she (and other PSP leaders) could have taken over the cultural field in the first years of the regime without the imprimatur of Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl.155 Orthodox communists had their ups and downs in the following years and decades. Fidel and Raúl Castro used them in different roles over the years, including the role of counterrevolutionaries in late 1967 (the socalled “microfactions” affair).156 Again, Kapuściński’s insightful portrait of Emperor Haile Selassie’s rule, in particular his description of how he dealt with ideological purists, applies perfectly to Fidel Castro: “Desirous of His Majesty’s approbation, they tried to introduce absolute order, whereas His Supreme Majesty wanted basic order with a margin of disorder on which his monarchical gentleness could exert itself. For this reason, the extremists’ coterie encountered the ruler’s scornful gaze when they tried to cross into that margin.”157 Another possible comparison: Richard Wolin reminds us that the Nazi regime preferred to deal with public intellectuals who were broadly in agreement with Nazi principles, rather than with pure ideologues. Pure ideologues were in fact considered as harder to control than more flexible, pragmatic and detached “public intellectuals.”158

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The fact that “socialist realism” was not imposed right away in the 1960s, as the only possible paradigm in the cultural field, mightily impressed many intellectuals of the time (Susan Sontag and Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance) as a sure sign that Cuban communism was uncharacteristically open and tolerant.159 But as Dopico Black demonstrated, during the 1960s and of course 1970s, “Whether or not the norms that Cuban literature must adhere to in order to achieve official sanction are termed socialist realism, the effect is similar: reality is reduced for political purposes.”160 Socialist realism was neither officially endorsed nor practically rejected; rather, cultural agents were left to figure out how to conform to a cultural policy that encouraged conformity and uniformity. All of this makes little sense from the perspective of ideological coherence but makes perfect sense from a perspective of power. Gordon-Nesbitt claims that the debate about socialist realism ended with the publication of “Socialism and Man in Cuba” (1968) by Ernesto Che Guevara. She uses the example of José Lezama Lima’s masterpiece Paradiso, saying that the orthodox communists wanted to ban the novel but quoting Carlos Ripoll, she says that Fidel “disregarded angry protests by Cuban communists and personally authorized the publication of Paradiso.”161 The lengthy baroque novel was indeed published in 1966, but it was soon withdrawn when homosexual passages were discovered (i.e. ex post facto) by cultural commissars. It was not republished in Cuba until October 1991.162 The presence of many groups and tendencies, vying for recognition by Fidel, never meant that the cultural field was genuinely open and pluralistic. The cultural field in the early 1960s was suffused with fanaticism, in which artists and authors were often “caught in the ideological crossfire at the beginning of their careers,” some with tragic consequences.163 The revolutionary enthusiasm of the 1960s made many observers forget or downplay that these were years of strident intolerance and civil war.164 Che Guevara was clear on the official hostility to pluralism: “We cannot oppose socialist realism to ‘liberty’ because liberty does not exist yet.”165 Fidel himself told Lee Lockwood: “An enemy of Socialism cannot write in our newspapers—but we don’t deny it, and we don’t go around proclaiming a hypothetical freedom of the press where it actually doesn’t exist, the way [those in the US] do.”166 In some ways, the advent of Soviet-like orthodoxy in the 1970s, like the commencement of socialist realism in the USSR in the 1930s, marked the decline of strident altercations and the beginning of a more peaceful and predictable politico-cultural environment.167 As singer Silvio Rodríguez once said: “I believe that the 1970s were in fact kinder than the 1960s.”168 One can argue that the late 1970s and early 1980s were periods of relative tolerance compared to previous years, but the least we can say is that the evidence is contradictory.169 It could just be that by 1971, the obvious targets of censorship had already been dealt with one way or another.



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In sum, the 1970s were repressive, but so were the years prior to and following the so-called Quinquenio Gris. They were worse in some ways— stricter parameters and more obstacles to travel abroad at least for some cultural actors, suppression of copyrights in 1968 (restored with Ley No.14, de 28 de diciembre de 1977),170 perhaps a higher number of blacklisted writers and artists—but the logic behind the cultural policy of the time was no different than what was put in place in the aftermath of the 1959 revolution and what can be found in “Words to Intellectuals.” The cultural theory magazine Criterios (1972) and the movie Ustedes tienen la palabra (1973), both considered dissonant, were products of the early 1970s. In sum, the view that the Quinquenio Gris was just a big misunderstanding of la política cultural de Fidel is convenient to rulers in Havana, but it is not strongly supported by evidence. While one could to some extent identify “periods” of greater or lesser autonomy for actors, it seems clear that there is a certain logic to having two tendencies competing for recognition, with for each of them, the prospect of winning battles but never the war, because the emperor does not have any interest in having complete peace among his subjects. Over the past fifty-five years, hardliners and liberals have competed for recognition in the cultural field. Though Fidel and Raúl Castro seemed to prefer the hardliners most of the time, the more “liberal” tendency could not have survived for all these years without their approval. Rafael Rojas accurately unpacks this phenomenon: “This polarization between ‘orthodox’ and ‘guevarist,’ ‘dogmatic’ and ‘liberal,’ ‘hard-core’ and ‘reformist,’ sometimes more fictitious than real, has served the power elites […]. Thanks to this pendular logic and supplanting a rectification with another, the revolutionary elites have managed to survive the exhaustion of the enthusiasm of the masses.”171 One more time I find myself agreeing with Rojas’ insights, though my formulation is different. Rather than “periods” it seems preferable to talk about opening and closing as the yin and yang of a logic in public policy. The emphasis on periods, arbitrarily divided in decades (1960s, 1970s, etc.) or following policy announcements by Fidel or Raúl (“Rectification,” “Special period,” the “Actualization of the model,” “Draft Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy,” the “New Economic Model,” etc.), can numb judgment about the continuity in policy. It also trains observers of the Cuban political scene to not fully appreciate the simple fact that Fidel and Raúl have been in power for more than half a century. The maximum length of most administrations in democratic countries is usually eight to ten years. So to better appreciate how many changes have taken place in Cuba—a lot if one peruse the rather abundant literature on “Cuba in transition”—one would need to compare this not with one but several consecutive administrations in most countries. How is “playing piano” useful from a governance perspective? One can see several possibilities. First, it allows power to autonomize itself from any

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particular groups, and preserve its overarching authority. The regime can even reject all tendencies and thus confirm its supreme authority in the field of revolutionary wisdom. Hence Alfredo Guevara examined the tendencies of “dogmatism and liberalism,” from his position as cultural apparatchik, and commented that “both have always intended to speak in the name of the revolution, thus introducing their anti-revolutionary views in a debate where each one finds the justification of its existence in its opposite.”172 Guevara was of course above that fray. Another power broker, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, once stated: “Although liberalism is dangerous and complacency unacceptable, intolerance and dogmatism are even more dangerous in the field of culture and science.”173 The first minister of culture, Armando Hart (1976–97), also talked about his opposition to both the “dogmatics” and the “freethinkers.”174 For his part, one of the most loyal “intellectuals” of the regime, Roberto Fernández Retamar, already knew in 1966 how condemnation of dogmatism can be used to prop the government: Dogmatism would predominate one moment and recede, defeated, the next, but it was an evil that lay in wait for the Revolution, supported by comfort and ignorance, because it dispensed with the need to think and furnished apparently easy solutions to intricate problems. Anti-dogmatism, for its part, justified its vigilant presence by the measure to which dogmatism was a threat; but its sympathetic mask could cover for those who prefer to say that they are combating dogmatism who cannot openly say they are combating the Revolution.175

Signals of opening and closing are typically sent to the population in an arbitrary and entirely unpredictable manner. The dramatic policy initiatives adopted recently in Cuba were not even submitted to the legislature (which meets only a few days a year anyway).176 This grants the regime some flexibility and keeps everybody, except the ruling elite (in Cuba, for decades, except the Castro brothers), guessing what will come next. Furthermore, it allows the regime to play the role of its own opposition when it is convenient: for instance, when comes to time to admit “mistakes,” to discover that el comandante didn’t know about them or was misunderstood. Again, the trend was set during the first few years of the regime. As Carlos Ripoll said: “March 1962 found the liberal reformers and the Marxists debating over solutions to the administrative problems that had come to plague the country …. In the next five years both factions, liberals and Marxists, scored victories in the realm of the arts, but neither could claim to have prevailed.”177 Second, the presence of tendencies gives the regime an opportunity to experiment with policy alternatives and narratives. In his insightful essay about cultural policy of communist countries, Hungarian writer Miklós Haraszti has this to say about nominally critical space for discussion: “Debates between the lines are an acceptable launching ground for trial



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balloons, a laboratory of consensus, a chamber for the expression of manageable new interests, an archive of weather reports. The opinions expressed there are not alien to the state but are perhaps simply premature. This is the true function of this space: it is the repository of loyal digressions that, for one reason or another, cannot now be openly expressed.”178 He remembers that János Kádar, the Hungarian Communist leader from 1956 to 1988, once said: “in the one-party state care must be taken to ensure that the party is also able to be its own opposition.” Paraphrasing the typical artist and writers, Haraszti says: “We are that opposition. Sometimes we encourage certain tendencies within public opinion; at other times we seek to counter them. Often, in this way, ‘meanings’ are created that point beyond the consensus of the moment. And not infrequently our views can be read ‘between the lines.’ Such views might even become part of the common good: they may gain recognition in official newspapers, decrees, and textbooks.”179 This is probably not typical of communist rule but it certainly fits the Cuban case. Rafael Rojas demonstrated how “the economic and cultural controversies of the 1960s were very useful to Fidel Castro and his collaborators.”180 Similarly, talking about Cuban artists, Sujantha Fernandes writes: “Negotiation with the state can amplify the scope of what is possible in cultural politics, but it also helps to delineate the boundaries of what is officially permissible.”181 The very fact that the field (any field in fact) can open and close at the Comandante’s whim, keep the various groups guessing and competing in a climate of uncertainty. Third, opening up allows rulers to turn the page on the government’s past “errors.” It gives the green light to some sectors in the field of culture to examine problems that the government is publicly committed to solving. That is where the Studies Centre on the Amercas (CEA, 1989–96) or journals such as Pensamiento Crítico (1967–71) and Temas (1995– ) come into play. Furthermore, a carefully calibrated thaw makes possible reconciliation with, and reintegration (even celebration) of, individuals (dead or alive) previously censured on the Procrustean bed of parametración (Antón Arrufat, Miguel Barnet, Pablo Armando Fernández, Reynaldo González, César López, Nancy Morejón, Virgilio Piñera, Delfín Prats, among many others). Opening up lets some steam out, allowing the leaders and their winning coalition of the moment to regroup and to mend fences with key sectors of the cultural field. Fourth, because all tendencies need to identify with Fidel and Raúl, what may seem like “opposition” is mostly self-positioning to win recognition by the political leadership. Cuban social scientist and intellectual Esteban Morales Domínguez recently wrote on his (official) blog: “Television does not sufficiently use its potential within the intelligentsia, to debate and clarify the issues of greatest interest to the population.” Then he adds: “It is necessary that the open criticism, as was proclaimed by Raúl Castro, cease to be little more than a political orientation and a slogan.”182 Also on his blog,

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writer and film director Eduardo del Llano supports the idea of a “a free and legal opposition press,” only to add that it would be good for Raul, who himself called for a more vigorous press. Del Llano takes the opportunity to maul independent journalists, pitching in for an old government favorite: the distinction between legitimate opposition and counterrevolutionaries. Another example: in an interview writer Senel Paz said: “Remember that Soviet and Eastern European socialism did not crumble or collapse because of the undeniable social and other achievements that were publicized, as ours were too, in marvelous positive images. It collapsed for reasons that were never discussed. There was an aspect of reality the expression of which was prohibited; there was no image or, rather, only a captive image amounting to the fallacy that such a reality didn’t exist because it couldn’t be expressed.”183 In other words, talking about problems gives a chance to solve them and improve the regime in place. Fifth, an important dimension of this policy is that no tendency ever prevailed forever, each has felt the squeeze of the state at one point or another. Again, this is not unique to the Cuban case. In China, for instance, “The Hundred Flowers Campaign, mounted by the CCP between 1956 and 1957, saw the Party granting greater freedom of expression to intellectuals and artists. But when the increased freedom gave rise to a series of sharp criticisms of the government, the Party reversed its policy and, in mid-1957, initiated the AntiRightist Campaign, which eventually led to the political persecution of more than half a million intellectuals, artists, and skilled people.”184 Hedrick Smith describes “the game” in the Soviet Union as “a constant struggle between liberals maneuvering for more elbow room and conservatives trying to hold the line, in which the outcome can depend on influence, personality and collusion among factions more than on actual content.”185 The last episode of the “game” led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. After decades of fairly erratic, partial and capricious swings between opening and closing in the cultural field, and not only over time but horizontally from one subfield and individual to the next, individuals and groups become risk averse. “You never know how far you can go,” said Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, whose popular detective novels are a blistering study of the hardships and shady dealings of daily life in Cuba. He added, “Sometimes it seems as if spaces open and then close again.”186 During my most recent trip to Cuba, I was told repeatedly that the “space” was closing up somewhat since the Obama-Castro accord and that it could close completely at any time. Sixth, clear indicators of what counts as a “hardliner” or “liberal” view, and who their exponents are, can be hard to pin down in regimes where, contrary to appearances, the official ideology does not stand on its own. The foundation of communist states is power, not ideology. Ideology is, in fact, a



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malleable resource in the hand of rulers. It is used to signal orientations and locus of power.187 Years ago, sociologist Jeffrey Goldfarb looked at the interplay between various politico-cultural tendencies in communist Poland and concluded that the line “between officially supported propagandistic expression and officially repressed dissident expression” could not be drawn neatly. He found that “public expression supported by the party and state does not necessarily mirror party values, and public expression repressed by the state is not necessarily dissident. Official policies with direct influence on public expression do not simply have the one dimensional consequence of promoting supportive expression and repressing politically dissident expression.”188 In North Korea, admittedly an extreme case of totalitarianism, one finds no real aesthetic or political difference between artists who are purged and those who are not, according to Tatiana Gabroussenko. For her: the degree of ideological dissent in the activity of the North Korean literary ‘soldiers’ was virtually zero. Close investigation of supposedly heretical texts whose authors were purged for alleged ideological transgressions provides no proof of any ideological defiance. North Korean literature appeared to be remarkably homogeneous in terms of ideological and Party loyalties, and all writers, including the victims of the political campaigns of the 1950s, eagerly responded to Party demands.189

When the so-called “Cultural Revolution” started in the USSR, coinciding with the onset of the Five-Year Plan in 1928–29, historian Sheila Fitzpatrick explains that “Members of the intelligentsia were harassed, humiliated, removed from their jobs, and in some cases arrested. They found no effective way to fight back, and (outside the small circles of ceaselessly warring ‘proletarians’ and ‘leftists’ in the arts) most seemed too intimidated even to try.” And she adds, “A sense of powerlessness and vulnerability, familiar from the Civil War, returned. But this time the threat was more psychological than physical, and the victims often seemed pained and surprised that the Soviet regime did not recognize their loyalty to it.”190 In Cuba, too, censorship of one sort or the other hits individuals who thought they were behaving “within the revolution” and in fact were striving for recognition by the state. Most were not dissident and didn’t fully realize how dissonant they were. Many continued to strive for recognition. What Antón Arrufat says about writer Virginio Piñera could apply, with some minor adjustments, to many other writers and artists (starting with himself): “If he was marginalized for nine years, he was not, as has been stated abroad, a persecuted. He continued his work as a translator at the old Instituto del Libro, in his apartment, walking the streets. … It was a permanent trait of his person, since, in the first months of the triumph

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he integrated himself in the process, until his death, he has being willing to participate.”191 In Cuba, as mentioned earlier, individual factors such as personal connection and international recognition can trump ideology in defining what crosses the line and what doesn’t. In other words, an analysis of the cultural and political development that rests too much on the idea of a pendulum between “liberal” and “hardline” periods can mask an important phenomenon: there might not always be a clear difference between the two. In some authoritarian countries one finds real fragmentation of power and influence, which may result in contradictory signals coming from various parts of the public administration. In Iran, according to Houchang E. Chehabi Under [former President Seyyed Mohammad] Khatami, the Ministry of Culture, which controls censorship and issue licenses for newspapers and journals, adopted more liberal policies, inaugurating a period of press freedom and diversity. But the Judiciary, headed by a conservative ally of the Leader, used its powers to close down newspapers and indict and jail reformist journalists and editors who had incurred the displeasure of conservatives. For every newspaper that was closed down, the Ministry of culture would issue a new license and the newspaper would appear under a new name.192

Although the presence of more or less “dogmatic” or “reformist” individuals and tendencies certainly exist in Cuban politics, there is no similar fragmentation of the political system and meaningful discrepancies cannot survive for long “within the revolution.” Though this seems unlikely at the present time, the pendulum can swing back to a full-fledged period of “rectification.”193 If and when this happens, writers and artists could be mobilized again. As Haraszti wrote about postStalinism: “the artist, a soldier armed with paint-brush or pen under Stalinism, is, after de-Stalinization, demobilized and returned to civilian life. He remains, however, very much on active duty, in the reserves, as it were, always aware that his status might change the moment war is declared.”194 In spite of some important adjustments and accommodations in cultural policy over the past quarter of a century, the fundamental parameters remain unchanged and unnegotiable. NOTES 1. Che Guevara said: “In January of 1959 the Revolutionary Government was established with the participation of several members of the pusillanimous bourgeoisie. The presence of the Rebel Army constituted the guarantee of power, as a



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fundamental factor of force.” Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” Pensamiento crítico, no.14 (March 1968): 82. The article was first published in Marcha (Uruguay) in March of 1965. 2. Cuba, Política cultural (La Habana: Ministerio de Cultura, 1977). 3. Ernesto Che Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” Pensamiento crítico, no.14 (March 1968): 91. 4. Georgina Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression: Intellectual Freedom in Postrevolutionary Cuba,” Cuban Studies, 19 (1989): 111. 5. Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971 (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 13. 6. See the two volumes on “Mass Dictatorship in the 20th Century”: vol.1 Mass Dictatorship and Modernity, ed. Michael Kim, Michael Schoenhals and Yong-Woo Kim (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013) and vol.2 Every Day Life in Mass Dictatorship, Collusion and Evasion, ed. Alf Lüdtke (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2016). 7. Levitsky and Way’s claim that revolutionary regimes are more “durable” reminds me of the pre-late 1980s theory that communism could not be overthrown from within. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, “The Durability of Revolutionary Regimes,” Journal of Democracy, 24, no.3 (2013): 5–17. 8. One of the great specialists of the French revolution, François Furet, noted that revolutionaries strive to rewrite history, “hence the revolutionary reconstruction of the aristocratic hydra, which constitutes, a contrario, a redefinition of social values, an immense message both liberating and remystifying, one that we would be wrong to consider as an historical analysis.” François Furet, Penser la révolution française (Paris: Folio, 1985), 181. 9. Also: “The vydvizhentsy, sent to study during the first Five-Year Plan and entering the professional and administrative elites from the middle of the 1930s, were more typically beneficiaries of the Great Purges than victims.” Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front, Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992), 11, 13, 14. 10. Richard Overy, The Dictators, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (Allen Lane, 2004), 363. 11. Régis Debray considers this “absence of hypocrisy” appealing for Europeans: “Cubans practised its military values decently and directly, without needing a Ministry of Truth emblazoned with the words ‘War is Peace’ like the one in George Orwell’s 1984. That warlike socialism curled its lip at Peace Movement soppiness, ‘sincere democrats and people of goodwill,’ Muscovite mir i droujba (peace and friendship) lullabies, youth hostel posters of handsome boys and girls trekking round the glove with red scarves and knapsacks. By putting the professionals of violence in the front rank that proto-communism, not yet labelled, had proudly and naively assumed the role of midwife of History. Our consumer societies play war down. Societies of force, however weak they actually are, played it up.” Régis Debray, Praised be our Lords, the Autobiography. Trans John Howe (Verso, 2007): 50–51. 12. Djilas is quoted in Tony Judt, Postwar, A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin, 2007), 200; Chang-tai Hung, Mao’s New World, Political Culture in the Early People’s Republic (Cornell University Press, 2011), 19–20.

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13. Rafael Rojas “El intelectual y la revolución: Contrapunteo cubano del nihilismo y el civismo,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 16/17 (Spring–Summer 2000): 86. 14. Virgilio Piñera wrote for Revolución (the newspaper of the 26th of July Movement, led by Fidel Castro) and its cultural supplement Lunes de Revolucíon from 1959 to 1961, but under a pseudonym (“El Escriba”) because of his well-known homosexuality. See Piñera, “El arte hecho Revolución, la Revolución hecha Arte,” Revolución, November 5, 1959, p.2, reproduced in Las palabras de El Escriba: artículos publicados en Revolución y Lunes de Revolución (1959–1961), Ernesto Fundora and Dainerys Machado ed (La Habana: Ediciones Unión, 2014), 107. 15. Rojas “El intelectual y la Revolución,” 86. 16. Heberto Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other, A Memoir, trans. Alexander Coleman (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1990), 50. 17. Mario Vargas Llosa, Le dictionnaire amoureux de l’Amérique latine (Paris: Plon, 2005), 253–254. 18. Interestingly, a specialist of Soviet-Cuban relations, Mervyn J. Bain, demonstrated that prior to the triumph of the revolution, the Kremlin took considerable interest in Cuba and “did not suffer from ‘geographical fatalism,’ as has traditionally been thought. See Bain, From Lenin to Castro, 1917–1959, Early Encounters between Moscow and Havana (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). 19. Czesław Milosz, La pensée captive, trans. from Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and André Prudhommeaux (Paris: Gallimard, coll. Essais, [1953] 1988), 206. 20. Carlos Alberto Montaner, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution (Transaction Publishers, 1999), 129. Talking about East Germany after 1989, Marilyn Rueschemeyer estimates that “whole infrastructure of about 400 local galleries and 39 state-run galleries collapse after the end of the regime.” For recognized artists the collapse of communism represented a “loss of privileges.” She also points out that “after unification, the number of east Germans visiting museums and smaller galleries dramatically decreased.” Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Victoria D. Alexander, Art and the State: The Visual Arts in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, MacMillan, 2005): 138–140. 21. Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, Problemas del arte en la Revolución (La Habana: editorial Letras Cubanas, 1979), 26. 22. Boris Groys, Art, Power (The MIT Press, 2013), 169. 23. Ivan Krastev has some illuminating comments on how “faking democracy can both strengthen and weaken authoritarian regimes.” In Ivan Krastev, “Paradoxes of the new authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 22, no.2 (April 2011): 5–16. 24. Arnold Wesker, “Aie Cuba! Aie Cuba!” Envoy (November 1969): 220, quoted in Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture, The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution, Foreword by Jorge Fornet (PM Press, 2015), 226–27. 25. Octavio Paz, Itinerario (Mexico: Fondo de cultura económica, 1993), 100–101. 26. Edward Schatz, “The Soft Authoritarian Tool Kit, Agenda-Setting Power in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,” Comparative Politics 41, no.2 (January 2009): 207.



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27. Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006), 65. 28. Edward Wong, “Chinese Director’s Path From Rebel to Insider,” International New York Times, August 13, 2011. This is not to say that higher levels of literacy will necessarily lead to democratization. See Willa Friedman, Michael Kremer, Edward Miguel and Rebecca Thornton, “Education as Liberation?” NBER Working Paper 16939, April 2011. These authors found that “there was little evidence that having more education made them more engaged in civic life or political organisations.” Reviewed in “Degrees of democracy,” The Economist June 25, 2011. 29. Che Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” Pensamiento Crítico, no.14 (March 1968): 94. A rather appealing formula which polemicist Carlos Alberto Montaner turns upside down: “the revolution was born with an ugly original sin: It was extremely uneducated.” Montaner, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, 121. 30. Virgilio Piñera, “Pasado y presente de nuestra cultura,” Lunes de Revolución, no.43, January 18, 1960, pp.10–12, reproduced in Piñera, Las palabras de El Escriba, 184. 31. In 1936 Stalin started to use the term “intelligentsia” to represent one of the three main entities in society (aside the workers and the peasants). However, by intelligentsia he meant the cultural and administrative elite of society (himself included). Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front, 15. 32. See the new book by Daniel W. Drezner, The Ideas Industry (Oxford University Press, 2017). For Drezner the “thought leader” is optimistic, whereas the true intellectual is always somewhat pessimistic and somber. In that respect the official intellectual is closer to the former than the latter. 33. Overy, The Dictators, 355. See also Cécile Vaissié, Les ingénieurs des âmes en chef, littérature et politique en URSS (1944–1986) (Paris: Editions Bélin, 2008), 33. 34. Angel Esteban and Stephanie Panichelli, Gabo y Fidel: el paisaje de una amistad (Madrid: Espasa, 2004). 35. On this see Enrico Mario Santí, “Cuba y los intelectuales: una reflexión necesaria”, Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 3 (Winter 1996/1997): 36. Nguyen Qui Duc, “The New Censors of Hanoi,” New York Times, April 27, 2014. 37. Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, “Larval Actors, Uncertain Scenarios, and Cryptic Scripts: Where is Cuban Society Headed?,” in Changes in Cuban Society since the Nineties, Ed. Joseph S. Tulchin, Lilian Bobea, Mayra P. Espina Prieto and Rafael Hernández, with the collaboration of Elizabeth Bryan (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2005), 36–37. 38. The concept of “the inner imigration” was coined by Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer. See Silvia Pedraza, Political Disaffection in Cuba’s Revolution and Exodus (Cambridge University Press, 2007), 3–8. 39. Law-decree no. 145 of November 17, 1993, on the conditions of labor for creators of literary works, acknowledges the status as worker of creators whose artistic work is not linked to an institution, and at the same time establishes a Ministry of Culture registry for such works. Law-Decrees No.105 (August 5, 1998) and

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No.144 (November 19, 1993) had established these same rights for visual artists and musicians, respectively. As stated on a Cuban government’s website on cultural legislations, these law-decrees recognized the possibility of artistic work performed independently from a state institution. See Esther Whitfield, “Truths and Fictions: The Economics of Writing, 1994–1999,” pp.21–36 in Hernandez-Reguant, ed., Cuba in the Special Period. 40. Groys mentions that “even the name of the country ‘Russia’ was erased and substituted by a neutral name lacking any cultural tradition: Soviet Union.” And yet, Soviet cultural policy was always more nationalist than internationalist. Groys, Art, Power, 155. 41. Judt, Postwar, 603. 42. Guillermina De Ferrari, “Cuba: a Curated Culture,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 16, No. 2 (August 2007): 219–240. 43. Leonardo Padura Fuentes, “Living and Creating in Cuba: Risks and Challenges,” in A Contemporary Cuba Reader: Reinventing the Revolution ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008), 350. 44. Paulo Paranagua, “L’écrivain Leonardo Padura critique la bureaucratie et l’anti-intellectualisme à Cuba,” Le Monde, Blog, September 22, 2014. http:// america-latina.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/09/22/lecrivain-leonardo-padura-critiquela-bureaucratie-et-lanti-intellectualisme-a-cuba/ 45. According to Fernandes, “After the collapse of the Soviet Union, these barriers began to break down. In 1988 the US Congress amended the embargo to allow the exchange of informational materials. But according to Sandra Levinson, director of the Cuban Art Space at the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City, the official description of “informational materials” did not include original Cuban art.(1) Levinson and the Center for Cuban Studies, as well as the lawyer Michael Krinsky and the critic Alex Rosemberg, were part of a successful lawsuit brought by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee against the US Treasury Department and the Office of Foreign Assets Control in 1991. After the lawsuit, the importation and sale of Cuban art was legalized, and artists and curators began traveling back and forth between Cuba and the United States.” Sujatha Fernandes, Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press, 2006), 142–43. In 1997 Cuban artist Kcho was denied a visa to attend an exhibition of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. For a discussion on the legal dimension of the embargo on Cuban art, see Whitfield, “Truths and Fictions.” 46. According to visual artist Alejandro González Díaz, in “1994, the register of artists was reopened, offering a large number of artists and craftsmen (who did not have it so far) the prospect of commercializing their works. On the other hand, the National Council of Plastic Arts, the UNEAC, the Hermanos Saiz Association and other similar institutions, processed requests for trips abroad without temporary restrictions.” Alejandro González Díaz, “Producción estética y política cultural,” Revista Encuentro (Summer–Fall 2009), 174. 47. Marie-Laure Geoffray, “Symbolic Emancipation in Authoritarian Cuba,” in Changing Cuba/Changing World, compiled by Mauricio A. Font (Bildner Center for Western Hemisphere Studies, 2008), 112.



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48. Rojas, “Breve historia.” See also Rafael Rojas, “Memoria de Paideia,” CUbista, Summer 2006. Rojas is himself a member of the “generation of the 1980s” who went to exile during the 1990s. Alexis Jardines, La filosofía cubana in nuce, ensayo de historia intelectual (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2005), 230 49. Rojas, “Breve historia.” 50. Samuel Farber, The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 16. 51. Talking about the Havana of Guillermo Cabrera Infante’s best novels, Rafael Rojas writes that one can find in them “the genetic code of Cuban culture” that interested him: “an anti-authoritarian culture—opposed to Batista’s dictatorship, although reluctant to any totalitarianism—, liberal and democratic, universalist and patriotic, sensual and lucid, frivolous and intelligent. That Havana, of Jorrín and Perez Prado, Rita Montaner and Beny Moré, Amelia Peláez and René Portocarrero, Virgilio Piñera and Jose Lezama Lima, the Havana of the port’s bars and the clubs of the Rampa, the Tropicana and Teatro Estudio, that of Bohemia and Cinemateca, was, for Cabrera Infante, a small infinity, an inexhaustible symbolic reserve, which would always be there, resisting the communist present from the republican past.” Rojas, Tumbas si sosiego, 261. 52. Guillaume Carpentier, “Les ruines de la révolution,” Le Monde (Paris), December 31, 2008, p.14; Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 118. See also Yeidy M. Rivero, Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950–1960 (Durham, London: Duke University Press, 2015). 53. Robin D. Moore, Music and Revolution, Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (University of California Press, 2006), 36. 54. Moore, Music and Revolution, 42. 55. Alejandro Anreus, “Historical Close-Up: Modern Painters at MoMA, 1944,” Cuban Art News, April 1, 2014. http://www.cubanartnews.org/news/historical-closeup-modern-cuban-painters-at-moma-1944/3592. Accessed August 27, 2016. 56. Ivan de la Nuez, “Del ‘yo’ al ‘nosotros,’ los principios del arte y el arte de los principios en la Revolución Cubana (1959–80),” in Carlos A. Aguilera ed. La utopía vacía: intelectuales y estado en Cuba (Editorial Leykam, 2005), available online: http://www.eforyatocha.com/2007/10/16/la-utopia-vacia-intelectuales-y-estadoen-cuba-ivan-de-la-nuez/. See also Rafael Rojas, Historia mínima de la revolución cubana (Madrid: Turner ediciones, 2015). 57. Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, 107. 58. Rolando Zamora, “La sociología en Cuba hasta 1959: un panorama,” Temas 24–25 (January–June 2001): 119–122; Orieta Alvarez Sandoval and Alfredo A Alvarez Hernández, “Las ciencias sociales en la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba (1962– 1981),” Tiempos de América: Revista de Historia, Cultura y Territorio 9 (2002): 74. 59. See Charles D. Ameringer, The Cuban Democratic Experience: The Auténtico Years, 1944–1952 (Gainsville: University of Florida Press, 2000). 60. Rafael Rojas, “Políticas invisibles,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 6/7 (Fall–Winter 1997): 27. 61. Debray, Praised Be Our Lords, 104–105. Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805– 1881) was a French socialist activist who decades before Lenin argued that the

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socialist revolution must be carried out not by the proletariat or the masses but by a small army of professional revolutionaries. 62. Both the New JEWEL Movement and the Sandinista Front were mesmerized and manipulated by Fidel Castro. The first ended in a coup “within the revolution” and a US invasion; the second to a civil war and a US intervention. To their credits, the Sandinistas stepped down after an electoral defeat. The case of Venezuela is different and more complicated. Suffice to say that for all its intimate links with the island, Chavista Venezuela has not (yet) adopted the full Cuban model. 63. Guerra, Visions of Power, 81. 64. Guerra, Visions of Power, 82. 65. Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other, 102. 66. Tatiana Fedorov and Nina Kochelyaeva, Russian Federation (Compendium: Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, February 2013). http://www.culturalpolicies. net/down/russia_022013.pdf 67. Fedorov and Kochelyaeva, Russian Federation. 68. No doubt the UNEAC would have been created earlier if writers had not been fighting each other so fiercely for recognition by Fidel. Contrastingly, Gordon-Nesbitt contends that the first Congress took place only in October because of the Bay of Pigs of April 1961. Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 153. 69. On the historical background and the first decade of the Casa de las Américas, see Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia, Fulguración del espacio, Letras e imaginario institucional de la Revolución Cubana (1960–1971) (Buenos Aires: Beatriz Viterbo Editora, 2002). 70. Luis Martínez-Fernández has an interesting theory about the role of the “third man” in Castro Cuba. See his Revolutionary Cuba, A History (University Press of Florida, 2014). 71. The president of the CNC was the professor Vincentina Antuña, who had collaborated with the M–26 but was not a member of the PSP, unlike the CNC’s vicepresident, Edith García Buchaca. 72. Curiously, on the Cuban Communist Party’s website, the UNEAC is presented as a “non-governmental organization.” Suffice to mention that the current president of UNEAC, Miguel Ángel Barnet Lanza, is member of the CP Central Committee. The union of journalists (Unión de periodistas de Cuba) also presents itself as such, though no cultural activity is more controlled by the state than the media. 73. As Montaner quipped, Fidel “planted Haydée Santamaría, who had nothing to do with culture but a lot to do with Fidel, which is what interests the Maximum Leader. The old party—a group that can read and write without stumbling too often— now dispenses culture. And Fidel controlled it through the services of the good lady who one day, tired of contradictions, put a bullet in her head.” Montaner, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, 122–23. 74. Jaime Saruski and Gerardo Mosquera, The Cultural Policy of Cuba (UNESCO: Studies and Documents on Cultural Policy, Les Presses universitaires de France, 1979). 75. A common trend in the cultural policies of communist country was the fondness for the “classics,” deemed politically inoffensive. Thus, “Stalin was the driving



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force behind rehabilitating the classics in literature and music, In music the nineteenthcentury Russian composers Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka and Borodin were revived after their eclipse by musical modernists in the 1920s, but so too were Beethoven, Brahms and Schubert. The Russian classics of Tolstoy, Pushkin, Chekhov and Turgenev (but not Dostoevsky, considered too “complex”) were issued in millions, including half-a-million copies of War and Peace distributed to the population of Leningrad during the wartime siege to keep up their resolve, when what they desperately needed was fuel and fool.” Overy, The Dictators, 366. The always perceptive Miklós Haraszti puts it this way: “Classical genres carry an almost political authority. There are no scandals in opera. The artist there is like a museum guard who knows that he is handling national treasures.” Miklós Haraszti, The Velvet Prison: Artists under State Socialism, foreword by George Konrád; trans. from the Hungarian by Katalin and Stephen Landesmann with the help the Steve Wasserman (NY: Basic Books, 1987), 106. 76. Saruski and Mosquera, The Cultural Policy of Cuba, 39. 77. Gordon-Nesbitt candidly describes the decision-making leading to this project: “In 1961, Fidel and Che were enjoying a game of golf at a requisitioned country club in Cubanacán, on the outskirts of Havana, discussing ways in which the momentum of the literacy campaign could be extended into the promotion of cultural sactivities. Surrounded by rolling hills on all sides, they decided to use this unique site as a centre for creative education, and the National Art Schools (ENA) were born.” Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 83. Of the three great architects enthrusted with this project, Cuban architect Ricardo Porro (whom I interviewed in the Fall of 2008) fled to exile to France in 1966 and of the two Italian architects who worked with him, Roberto Gottardi and Vittorio Garatti, only Gottardi stayed and worked in Cuba (Garatti was forced to leave in 1974). John A. Loomis, Revolution of Forms, Cuba’s Forgotten Art Schools, updated edition, Foreword by Gerardo Mosquera (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2011). I highly recommend the award-winning documentary Unifished Spaces, by Alysa Nahmias and Benjamin Murray. See http:// www.unfinishedspaces.com/ 78. Prieto was excluded or was not reinvited to be a member of the Politburo and the Central Committee of the CP during the 6th Congress of the party, in April 2011. 79. Armando Hart Dávalos, Resolución no. 32/78: Resolución que reglamenta las actividades en las Casas de Cultura, Havana: Ministerio de Cultura, 1983, p.26, quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, note 128, p.97. 80. Montaner, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, 128. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, Michael Chanan writes “When the Soviet influence began to prevail, with the effect of somewhat constraining traditional forms of public debate (sic), ICAIC retained its own voice, and became a vicarious surrogate for a public sphere diminished by ideological orthodoxy and technocratic dirigisme, balancing its output between affirmative films and those that reserved the right to critically question stereotypes and aporias.” Chanan, Cuban Cinema, 357–8—my emphasis. 81. In the words of Michael Chanan, “cinema in Cuba came to occupy a unique cultural space as a major site of public discourse that at the same time enjoyed a de facto autonomy because of a privileged relation to the source of power and authority.” Chanan, Cuban Cinema, 17.

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82. Peter T. Johnson, “The Nuanced Lives of the Intelligentsia,” in Enrique A. Baloyra and James A. Morris eds., Conflicts and Change in Cuba (University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 162. 83. Le Monde’s columnist (and specialist of Latin American cinema) Paulo Antonio Paranagua paints a portrait of him as a pioneer of critical expression “within” the revolution: “Tomás Gutiérrez Alea opened several roads. He directed the first film premiered by ICAIC, Historias de la Revolución (1960). He avoided epic glorification ever since, privileged a mixture of feelings and nuances, managed to express himself with a contained humanistic emotion. He was the most sensitive and critical chronicler of Castro’s socialism, from Las doce sillas (1962) to Guantanamera (1995). He was an opponent of the bureaucracy, the senile illness of communism, from La muerte de un burócrata (1966) to his last film. It was he who presented in a more acute way the dilemmas of the intellectuality before the revolutionary change, in Memorias del subdesarrollo (1968). He was one of the first to face “machism-leninism,” an affective and social trait that has its political dimension in patriarchy and paternalism (Hasta cierto punto, 1983). He was the first to denounce on the big screen in Cuba itself discrimination against homosexuals, as a symptom of a general intolerance (Fresa y chocolate). He looked in history for the keys to navigate contemporary trends (Una pelea cubana contra los demonios, La última cena). He suggested the possibility of a regression, contrary to the belief in the ineluctable progress of mankind (Los sobrevivientes,, 1978). Paulo Antonio Paranaguá, “Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (1928–1996) Tensión y reconciliación,” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, no.1 (Verano 1996): 79. On the limitations to Gutiérez Alea’s critical account, see Martín López and María Encarnación, Homosexuality and Invisibility in Revolutionary Cuba: Reinaldo Arenas and Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Tamesis, 2015). 84. One of the “theses” of the first Congress of the Communist Party stipulates that “UPEC and UNEAC must contribute to the ideological and political protection of our writers, artists and journalists; to make sure that each one of them, with their labour and their oeuvres, contribute meaningfully to the struggle against all the residues of the old society; to fight for the creation of new cultural and artistic values ​that reflect the work of the Revolution and help the construction of socialism.” In La lucha ideológica y la cultura artística y literaria (La Habana: Editora Política, 1982), 33–34. 85. Ernesto Che Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” Pensamiento crítico, no.14 (March 1968): 83. 86. Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” 97. 87. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1961/19610630.html 88. Armando Hart Dávalos’s speech, in “Documentos fundamentales del IV Congreso de la Unión de escritores y artistas,” supplement of La Gaceta de Cuba (March 1988), 3. 89. Armando Hart Dávalos’s speech, in Protección del Patrimonio Cultural, Compilación de textos legislativos, Consejo Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural (Cuba: Ministerio de Cultura, 2002), 20. 90. Armando Hart Dávalos’s speech, in Protección del Patrimonio Cultural, 8–9. 91. Likewise, the Chinese constitution promises its citizens’ freedom of speech and demonstration (Art. 35), freedom of religion (Art. 36) and the right to criticize the government (Art. 41). North Korea’s constitution guarantees its citizens



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“democratic rights and liberties” (Art. 64). The key concept here is “modern” authoritarian regime (the rule of the few in the name of the many) rather than premodern (rule of the few in the name of the few). Saudi Arabia’s constitution does not pretend to guarantee any of these rights for instance. See Tom Ginsburg and Alberto Simpser eds., Constitutions in Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge University Press, 2013). 92. According to Amnesty International: “Cuban authorities often misuse a number of laws to harass and imprison activists. They include Article 91 of the Criminal Code which provides for sentences of ten to twenty years for anyone who “in the interest of a foreign state, commits an act with the aim of damaging the independence or territorial integrity of the Cuban state”. According to article 72 of the Criminal Code “any person shall be deemed dangerous if he or she has shown a proclivity to commit crimes demonstrated by conduct that is in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist morality” and article 75.1 states that any police officer can issue a warning for such “dangerousness.” The declaration of “dangerous disposition” can be decided summarily, and is being increasingly used as a means to incarcerate government critics. In Amnesty International, “Cuba: Human Rights at a Glance,” September 17, 2015. https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2015/09/ cuba-human-rights-at-a-glance/ 93. Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism (1935). Retrieved from http:// www.worldfuturefund/org/wffmaster/reading/germany/mussolini.htm 94. Quoted in Judt, Postwar, 422. 95. André Breton and Diego Rivera, “Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art” (1938). Available online: https://www.marxists.org/subject/art/lit_crit/works/ rivera/manifesto.htm 96. See for instance the case of the independent print shop of the literary magazine El Puente closed down during the 1960s. Alberto Abreu Arcia, La cuentística de El Puente: y los silencios del canon narrativo cubano (Valencia: Aduana Vieja, Octubre de 2014), 34. 97. Art. 39 also stipulates that the state “bases its educational and cultural policy on the advances of science and technology, Marxist and Martian ideas, as well as Cuban and universal progressive pedagogical traditions.” 98. Suffice to say for now that in his 1971 closing speech to the Congress on Culture and Education, Castro said: “a revolutionary people, a revolutionary process evaluates cultural and artistic works according to how useful they are to the people, what they contribute to man, and how they meet man’s needs and contribute to man’s liberation and happiness. Our evaluation is political. Aesthetical values must have substance. Aesthetic values cannot exist when there is hunger, where there is injustice. There can be no aesthetic values when man’s well-being, liberation and happiness are lacking. This cannot be. For a bourgeoisie, anything can have aesthetical value—anything that entertains him, that amuses him, that helps him to linger in his laziness and boredom as an unproductive bum and parasite. [applause]” “Castro Speech, Resolution Close Education Congress,” May 1, 1971, Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC), University of Texas. LANIC translation. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/ db/1971/19710501.html)

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99. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961,” Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Center (LANIC), University of Texas. LANIC translation. http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1961/19610630.html 100. In his recent memoirs writer Pedro Juan Gutiérrez subscribes to this lieu commun: “In a meeting with intellectuals, around 1962 (sic), Fidel said ‘with the Revolution everything, against the Revolution nothing.’ And immediately opportunist officials emerged, climbers and opportunists, who determined on their own, which work of art was ‘against’ and which ‘for.’” Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Diálogo con mi mismo (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 2015), 32. 101. Writing almost fifty years ago, Lee Lockwood said of Fidel that he “unfold his thoughts in long, repetitious, convoluted sentences of baroque syntax whose meaning is carried forward almost as much by the cadence of the phrases as by the connotations of the words.” In Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel, An American Journalist’s Inside Look at Today’s Cuba in Text and Pictures (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990 [1967]), 68, quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 161. 102. Were present, in addition to Fidel Castro, Cuba’s nominal president Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, the minister of education Armando Hart Dávalos, the ICAIC’s president Alfredo Guevara, the members of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura and other government figures. 103. For a comparison, it is interesting to point out that the first fictional work to be banned under Lenin’s censorship laws, Zamyatin’s novel We (1924), was a dystopian and futuristic novel with some obvious political overtone. The movie PM, on the other hand, is hard to label as “political” even when taking the context into account. See Orlando Jiménez Leal and Manuel Zayas, El Caso PM, Cine, poder y censura (Editorial Hypermedia, 2012). Available online: https://editorialhypermedia.files.wordpress. com/2014/10/el-caso-pm-ebook-seleccion.pdf. 104. Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Mea Cuba (Barcelona: Alfaguara, 1999), 68. 105. Guillermo Cabrera Infante was the editor in chief of Lunes de Revolución. The film was made in the studio of Revolución. It came under attack by the rival group, led by old communists (the Partido Socialista Popular, 1925–61) such as Edith García Buchaca (Consejo Nacional de Cultura) and Alfredo Guevara, the president of the ICAIC. PM was presented on a television channel controlled by the Lunes group during the Spring of 1961, and then was banned. 106. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961.” 107. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961.” 108. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961.” 109. Antony Kapcia, Havana, The Making of Cuban Culture (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2005), 134, quoted by Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 165. 110. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961.” 111. One should keep in mind that the parameters of socialist realism were never completely clear in the Soviet Union, beyond its vague principles of overall optimism about the revolutionary movement and legibility for the masses. In its mission to depict workers and peasants happily constructing socialism, realism socialism was propagandistic rather than realist. See E. Dobrenko, “Socialist realism,” pp. 97–115 in E. Dobrenko & M. Balina (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Russian



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Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Octavio Paz, “Re/visiones: la pintura mural” (1978), reproduced in his Obras completas, vol.7: Los privilegios de la vista II, Arte de México (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994), 222. 112. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961.” 113. Par Kumaraswami, “Cultural Policy and Cultural Politics in Revolutionary Cuba: Re-reading the Palabras a los Intelectuales,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 28, no.4 (2009), 535, quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 165. See also Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, 166. 114. “Castro’s Speech to Intellectuals on 30 June 1961”; Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, May 1942, available online: https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-3/ mswv3_08.htm 115. “Talks at the Yenan Forum.” 116. “Talks at the Yenan Forum.” 117. “Talks at the Yenan Forum.” 118. “Talks at the Yenan Forum.” 119. “Talks at the Yenan Forum.” 120. Desiderio Navarro, “¿Cuántos años de qué color? Para una introducción al Ciclo,” in Centro Teórico-Cultural (2008), La política cultural del período revolucionario: Memoria y reflexión, Ciclo de conferencias organizado por el Centro TeóricoCultural Criterios, Primera Parte (Havana: Centro Teórico-Cultural), 19. 121. Doreen Weppler-Grogan, “Cultural Policy, the Visual Arts, and the Advance of the Cuban Revolution in the Aftermath of the Gray Years,” Cuban Studies, 42 (2010): 145. 122. Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor, Downfall of an Autocrat, trans. from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 29. 123. Ivan de la Nuez, “Del ‘yo’ al ‘nosotros,’ los principios del arte y el arte de los principios en la Revolución Cubana (1959–80),” in Carlos A. Aguilera ed., La utopía vacía: intelectuales y estado en Cuba (Editorial Leykam, 2005), available online: http://www.eforyatocha.com/2007/10/16/ la-utopia-vacia-intelectuales-y-estado-en-cuba-ivan-de-la-nuez/ 124. In August 1918 modernist (and Jewish) Marc Chagall was appointed by Lunacharsky as the Art Commissar of Vitebsk. Victor Margolin, The Struggle for Utopia, Rodchenko, Lissitzky, Moholy-Nagy, 1917–1946 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 84. 125. Toby Clark, Art and Propaganda in the Twentieth Century (Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 62–63. 126. See Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond, trans. Charles Rougle (Verso, 2011). 127. Norman Manea, On Clowns: the Dictator and the Artists (Grove Press, 1994), 67. 128. Robert Darnton, Censors at Work, How States Shaped Literature (London and New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2014), 199. 129. See Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Pérez-López, Cuba under Raúl Castro, Assessing the Reforms (Lynne Rienner Publication, 2013).

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130. Cuban academic Desiderio Navarro wrote: “conventionally employing the not so exact designation of periods with round numbers, we can say that the interventions and critical spaces of the 1960s (1959–67) were erased in the 1970s (1968–1983); the politico-cultural ‘errors’ committed against these interventions and spaces in the 1970s were superficially recognized and immediately erased in the 1980s (1984–89); and, finally, the new interventions and critical spaces of the ‘80s were erased in the 1990s.” In Centro Teórico-Cultural (2008), La política cultural del período revolucionario: Memoria y reflexión. Ciclo de conferencias organizado por el Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios, Primera Parte (Havana: Centro Teórico-Cultural, 2008), 21–22. 131. Rafael Rojas, “La democracia postergada, pluralismo civil y autoritarismo político en Cuba,” in Bobes, Velia Cecilia ed., Cuba ¿ajuste o transición? Impacto de la reforma en el contexto del restablecimiento de las relaciones con Estados Unidos (Mexico city: FLACSO, 2015), 146. 132. Ted Piccone, “The Post-Castro Era Is Officially Here,” Brookings, November 26, 2016. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2016/11/26/the-postcastro-era-is-officially-here/?utm_campaign=Brookings+Brief&utm_source=hs_ email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=38262017. Accessed November 28, 2016. 133. See Mario Coyula, “El Trinquenio Amargo y la ciudad distópica: autopsia de una utopía,” paper read by the author during the March 19, 2007, conference on “La política cultural de la Revolución: memoria y reflexión” organized by the Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios, La Habana. http://www.criterios.es/pdf/coyulatrinquenio. pdf. Accessed March 10, 2017. 134. For variations on that theme, see Centro Teórico-Cultural (2008), La política cultural del período revolucionario. It is also a common position among foreign observers of Cuban cultural policy: for example, Doreen Weppler-Grogan, “Cultural Policy,” 143–165; Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution. For a critical perspective, see Ponte, Villa Marista en plata. 135. Carlos Ripoll, “Censors and Dissenters in Cuban Culture,” in Irving Louis Horowitz ed., Cuban Communism 5th edition (Transaction Books, 1985), 394. 136. According to Antonio Benítez Rojo, Arenas’ manuscript El mundo alucinante “was ‘lost’ by the Cuban Book Institute in 1968 and published in Mexico a year later.” Heberto Padilla, who won the UNEAC prize in 1968 for the collection of poems Fuera de juego, recalls: “The jury was heavily pressured by the Writers’ Union and the police, but to no avail. Neither Lezama Lima nor J.M. Cohen nor José Z. Tallet nor Manuel Díaz Martínez gave in to the strenuous suggestions that my book be disqualified. It won the prize unanimously, but the award—consisting of a trip to the Soviet Union and one thousand pesos in cash—was never given to me.” The UNEAC denounced the book, refused to hand over the prize money or the promised trip to the Soviet Union. Arenas’ novel won the Médicis prize in France in 1969. Antonio Benítez Rojo, “Narrativa de la Revolución cubana de Seymour Menton” [book review], Vuelta (Mexico) 111 (February 1986): 43; Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other, 131; Rojas, “Breve historia de la censura en Cuba”. 137. Quoted in Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression,” 111. Writing about the international art exhibition called the May Salon, held in July 1967, in Havana,



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Enrico Mario Santí writes: “After their visit to Havana and participation in the Salon de Mai, the invited artists donated their works, which were soon housed in a new Museum of Modern Art, located in La Rampa, in the building of the former Funeral Caballero. On March 13, 1968, known as Revolutionary Offensive Day, Fidel Castro delivered a speech marking the beginning of the country’s definitive Stalinization. From that moment, all small businesses were confiscated, craftsmen and small trades disappeared, a “dry law” was declared, and bars, cafes and even the popular guaraperas were closed down. One of the contributions of the Directorate of Culture to this new “offensive” was to send, the day after the speech, a brigade of police to destroy with axes the pieces that the artists invited to the Hall had donated and that kept the Museum. It was not the first time that modern art ended up being considered ‘degenerate.’” Enrico Mario Santí, “Mi reino por el caballo: las dos memorias de Lisandro Otero (1),” Encuentro de la cultura cubana, 16/17 (Spring–Summer 2000), 172. 138. Hitler: “From now on—I assure you—all those cliques of babblers, dilettantes and art crooks which lend support to each other and are therefore able to survive, will be eliminated and abolished.” In Herschel B. Chipp ed., Theories of Modern Art, A Source Book by Artists and Critics, with contributions by Peter Selz and Joshua C. Taylor (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), 482. Lenin: “Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames and paintings, and prostitution as a ‘supplement’ to ‘sacred’ scenic art?” In V.I. Lenin, “Party Organization and Party Literature,” Vol. 10 in Lenin Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965), 44–49. 139. Rafael Rojas, “Entre la Revolución y la reforma,” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 4/5 (Spring–Summer 1997): 130–131; Samuel Farber, “La izquierda y la transición cubana En diálogo con El hombre que amaba a los perros, de Leonardo Padura,” Nueva Sociedad 238 (March–April 2012): 81. 140. Jeannine Verdès-Leroux, La lune et le caudillo, Le rêve des intellectuels et le régime cubain 1959–1971 (Paris: L’arpenteur, 1989), 195. 141. Loomis, Revolution of Forms; Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression.” 142. See “Censorship as Usual. Coco Fusco interviews Juan Carlos Cremata,” Cuba Counterpoints, November 24, 2015. http://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/2740 143. Habana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura, 1961. 144. Quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 128. 145. Loomis, Revolution of Forms, 122. 146. Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other, 129. 147. According to Dr. Maria Elena Solé (1941–2013), who was a psychiatrist employed by the Cuban Armed Forces to study “rehabilitation” of homosexuals in the UMAP, this was an initiative of Fidel Castro, not Raúl. She was interviewed by Abel Sierra Madero in Cuba (March 20, 2012); the text of this interview, edited by Sierra and by Lillian Guerra, is available in Cuban Studies 44 (2016): 357–366. 148. Verdès-Leroux, La lune et le caudillo, 280. 149. First communiqué of ICAIC prohibiting PM “makes it clear that it is ready to rectify it as soon as there is a request in this regard, signed by any mass organization of the Cuban people: CTC, FEU, Rebel Youth Association, Democratic Women’s

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Federation, etc.” In “Texto de la Communicación enviada por el ICAIC a la associación de escritores y artistas,” May 31, 1961. See text in http://manuelzayas.wordpress.com/actas-de-censura-de-pm/. Retrieved December 12, 2015. See the “Acuerdo del ICAIC sobre la prohibición del film PM,” in William Luis, Lunes de revolución, Literatura y cultura en los primeros años de la Revolución Cubana (Madrid: Verbum, 2003), 223. 150. Luis, Lunes de revolución; César Leante, “La muerte de ‘Lunes de Revolución,’” Revista Hispano–Cubana, no.2 (2006): 75–88. In his memoirs, Heberto Padilla claims “Guevara used the film [PM] as a pretext to gain control of the cultural sector.” As he recalls, “PM was shown to hundreds of artists and writers in one of the studios of the Casa de las Américas, the cultural center of the Revolution. We were too unaware to discern the intentions of Alfredo Guevara. He had organized his radical shock troops in order to confront the liberals, who had gathered there under the auspices of Carlos Franqui. This group, in charge of the weekly literary and artistic review Lunes de Revolución, represented a brand of irrational spontaneity that was synonyous with right-wing reaction. The literary critic Mirta Aguirre, lesbian and Communist as it happens, led the attack on the Lunes group with the words: ‘That’s the way it all started in Hungary!’” Padilla, Self-Portrait of the Other, 52. 151. Ania Francos, A. La fête cubaine (Paris: Julliard, 1962), 92, quoted by Verdès-Leroux, La lune et le caudillo, 475. 152. Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend Culture, 179. See also Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, 179–180. 153. Interview with Pablo Antonio Fernández in Luis, Lunes de revolución, 163. 154. Interview with Pablo Antonio Fernández in Luis, Lunes de revolución, 163. 155. Loomis, Revolution of Forms, 122. 156. “Between the end of 1967 and January 1968, the old Stalinist Aníbal Escalante was purged for a second time and after a political trial was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for having organized what in reality was no more than a discussion group. His ‘microfaction’ had been meeting to analyze the shortcomings of the Cuban economy from an orthodox Soviet perspective and was friendly with a number of Soviet and Eastern European diplomats. These meetings were taking place at ta time of tension between the Cuban government and the Soviet Union, including a serious reduction in economic aid by the Soviets, who were trying to force, and finally succeeded in obtaining, a modification of Cuba’s foreign politcy and domestic economic policies. It was clear that the Cuban government leaders were unwilling to openly debate the criticisms of the old Communists, which in fact predicted the economic debacle of the 1970 campaign for a ten-million-ton sugar crop.” Farber, Cuba since the Revolution of 1959, 21. 157. Kapuściński, The Emperor, 29–30. 158. See Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason, 93. 159. See Rafael Rojas, Fighting over Fidel: the New York Intellectuals and the Cuban Revolution (Princeton University Press, 2015); also Verdés-Leroux, La lune et le caudillo. 160. Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression,” 117. 161. Quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 208.



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162. As Peter Johnson wrote: “Cuban literary critic Cintio Vitier directed a critical edition (Madrid: CSIC, 1988) unavailable for general distribution in Cuba.” Same fate for the other great Cuban writer of this generation, Virgilio Piñera, who’s “Cuentos (La Habana: Bolsilibros Union, 1964) appeared after censors removed the short story ‘El Muñeco’; the text was published in Buenos Aires in 1956. In 1967, UNEAC published Presiones y diamantes, but it was withdrawn from the bookstores. Lezama Lima and Piñera remained silenced and marginalized, only to be rehabilitated’ after death through the publication of their work.” Johnson, “The Nuanced Lives of the Intelligentsia,” 162, note 20. 163. Linda S. Howe, Transgression and Conformity, Cuban Writers and Artists after the Revolution (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004), 186. An interesting comparison can be made with the USSR during the 1920s, with radical groups like Proletkult (Proletarian Culture), under the leadership of Alexander Bogdanov, and RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers). The competition for recognition between various radical and avant-garde groups came to a monistic end with the adoption of socialist realism as the alpha and omega of official cultural production in Stalin’s USSR. 164. Joanna Swanger, Rebel Lands of Cuba: The Campesino Struggles of Oriente and Escambray, 1934–1974 (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015). 165. Che Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” Pensamiento crítico, 14 (March 1968): 93. This text appeared first in the Uruguayan weekly Marcha, on March 12, 1965. 166. Lockwood, Castro’s Cuba, 111, quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 173. 167. Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front, 10–11. 168. Quoted in Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, 11. 169. As Nicola Miller concludes, “Arguably, each decade had its instances of repression and its possibilities for liberation.” He adds: “In a long history of difficulties, it is hard – and in any case to many Cubans this may seem pointless – to identify the worst of times.” Nicola Miller, “A Revolutionary Modernity: The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 40 (2008): 681. 170. Reproduced in Nuiry Sánchez, Nuria, and Graciela Fernández Mayo ed., Pensamiento y política cultural cubanos, Antología t.4 (La Habana: Ministerio de Cultura, Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1987), 53–62. 171. Rafael Rojas, “Entre la Revolución y la reforma,” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, 4/5 (Spring–Summer 1997): 133. 172. Alfredo Guevara, Tiempo de Fundación (Sevilla: Iberautor Promociones Culturales, 2003), 173. 173. In “Documentos fundamentales del IV Congreso de la Unión de escritores y artistas,” suplemento de La Gaceta de Cuba (March 1988), 7. 174. “Intervención del compañero Armando Hart, Ministro de Cultura, en la inauguración del Forum de Crítica e Investigación Literaria,” La Gaceta de Cuba (March 1987): 3. 175. Fernández Retamar, “Hacia una intelectualidad revolucionaria en Cuba,” Letras Cubanas, 2004 [1966], p.280, quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 132.

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176. Samuel Farber mentions a few major decisions that were made, in the past two years, by President Raúl Castro “without even a token gesture toward seeking approval from the assembly”: the decision to lease state land to private farmers; the decision to eliminate limit on state salaries; the decision to expand self-employment; the announcement of a massive layoff state employees, etc. Samuel Farber, Cuba since the Revolution of 1959, A Critical Assessment (Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books, 2011), 30. 177. Carlos Ripoll, The Cuban Scene: Censors and Dissenters (Washington, DC: Cuban National Foundation, 1982), 4. 178. Haraszti, The Velvet Prison, 145. 179. Haraszti, The Velvet Prison, 143. 180. Rafael Rojas, “Entre la Revolución y la reforma,” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, 4/5 (Spring/Summer, 1997): 132. 181. Fernandes, Cuba Represents, 151. 182. Esteban Morales Domínguez, “Et reto de la intelectualidad,” in his blog: http://www.estebanmoralesdominguez.blogspot.ca/, August 2, 2012. 183. Magda Resik, “Writing is a sort of shipwreck: an interview with Senel Paz,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 96, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 85–86. 184. Chang-tai Hung, Mao’s New World, Political Culture in the Early People’s Republic (Cornell University Press, 2011), 4. 185. Smith, The Russians, 509. 186. Quoted in Victoria Burnett, “Blurring Boundaries Between Art and Activism in Cuba,” The New York Times, January 23, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/ arts/design/in-cuba-artistic-freedom-remains-an-open-question.html 187. Haifeng Huang, “Propaganda as Signaling,” Comparative Politcs, 47, no.4 (July 2015): 419–444. 188. Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, “Social Bases of Independent Public Expression in Communist Societies,” American Journal of Sociology, 83, no.4 (1978): 921. 189. Tatiana Gabroussenko, Soldiers on the Cultural Front, Develpments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary policy (University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai’i, 2010), 168–9 190. Fitzpatrick, The Cultural Front, 7. 191. Antón Arrufat, “Lanzando un fogonazo,” La Gaceta de Cuba (July 1987), 19—my emphasis. 192. H.E. Chehabi and Arang Keshavarzian, “Politics in Iran,” in G. Bingham Power jr. et al., Comparative Politics Today: A World View, 10th edition (Pearson, 2011), 554. In an article for The Associated Press about the imprisonment of Iranian Filmmaker Keywan Karimi, journalist Adam Schreck writes that Karimi is one of several artists, poets, journalists, fashion models and activists who have been arrested in a crackdown on expression led by hardliners who oppose President Hassan Rouhani’s more moderate policies and efforts to promote greater openness with the outside world.” In “Iranian Filmmaker Imprisoned for a Year Over His Work,” The New York Times, November 24, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/11/24/world/ middleeast/ap-ml-iran-expression-crackdown.html?ref=world “



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193. For analysis of the interesting contrast between the Cuban “rectification” and the Soviet’s “glasnost,” see Mervyn J. Bain, “The Glasnost Effect on Soviet/Cuban Relations,” Journal of Transatlantic Studies 2, no. 2 (2004): 125–42. Incidentally, the term “rectification” was also used in China: “Rectification Movement (Zhengfeng yundong) was the Maoist leadership’s answer to widespread obstruction or passive implementation of a whole range of New Democratic policies.” David Holm, Art and Ideology in Revolutionary China (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1991), 87. 194. Haraszti, The Velvet Prison, 97.

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Few would dispute the view that in Cuba certain topics cannot be discussed or debated publicly. Nobody could openly and publicly criticize Fidel Castro (or Raúl), let alone make fun of him. We have here a solid indicator of authoritarianism: whether or not it is possible to publicly lampoon the president. Certain parts of the official narrative about the regime and the revolution are also shielded from public scrutiny. Concomitantly, “dissidents” or the “opposition” cannot be named as such in official public spaces: they are “mercenaries” and “counterrevolutionaries.” Here is another indicator of authoritarianism: whether or not it is possible to publicly and respectfully talk about the opposition to the president. In Cuba, artists, writers and probably all public figures are followed and monitored, something that is not denied by the regime but cannot be talked about publicly.1 Intelligence and counterintelligence are arguably the most formidable policy accomplishments of the Cuban state. With the help of the Soviet Union and its client states, the Castro regime built one of the most efficient spy agencies in the world. On top of the organizational chart, one finds the MININT (1961), which reports to the Council of State (and its president Raúl Castro). The Ministry features a Security Division, headquartered in Villa Marista in Havana (the Cuban “Lubianka” notorious for its detention of political prisoners), the Intelligence Directorate (also known as G2) and the National Revolutionary Police. This Police is supported by neighborhood snoop organizations called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR-1960), which operated for decades as a “collective system of revolutionary vigilance” (Fidel Castro) in every neighborhood (they have lately fallen into disuse). The Cuban Armed Forces boasts its own “intelligence” (the Directorate of Military Intelligence) and “counterintelligence” units (Directorate of Military Counterintelligence). If one adds to this formidable 61

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bureaucracy the presence of the PCC in all organized sectors of Cuban society, including the cultural field, one can appreciate that surveillance and control enlists a large percentage of the Cuban population. Until the recent (and very limited) availability of Internet and the increasing possibility to travel from and to Cuba, access to information and to resources for diffusion of information was completely controlled by this formidable surveillance and control bureaucracy. Even today most Cubans don’t know much about the existence and activities of opposition groups, independent journalists and critical blogs operating in Cuba, while they are very well known to Cuba observers abroad. The Castro regime turns a blind eye to the circulation of an offline “weekly package”—a terabyte of foreignmade television programing, films, music and ads from www.Revolico.com, Cuba’s take on Craigslist—as long as the clandestine operation stays out of pornography and alternative politics. Needless to explain, suppression of speech is a common feature of all authoritarian regimes. It is invariably a very complex and far-reaching activity. What Serbian novelist Danilo Kiš said about censorship in Yugoslavia applies to Cuba as well, for instance. In his country, censorship was performed by individuals and institutions that “serve other functions as well— the editorial board of a publishing house or a newspaper—or in the person of the editor of a book or periodical, or the director of a publishers imprint, or a reviewer, professional proofreader, and so on.”2 Talking about some of the challenges one faces when attempting the scope and breadth of “censorship” activities, Robert Darnton argues: “The list could be extended indefinitely, covering legal and nonlegal sanctions, psychological and technological filtering, and all sorts of behavior, whether by state authorities, private institutions, peer groups, or individuals sorting through the inner secrets of the soul. Whatever the validity of the examples, they suggest that a broad definition of censorship could cover almost anything.”3 Surveillance and censorship are not merely a “policy” or a top-down activity: it “pervades institutions, colors human relations, and reaches into the hidden workings of the soul.”4 It concerns not only limitations to free speech but also the ways in which actors understand constraints and deal with them. It comprises both certainty and uncertainty, hence the constant reference in the literature on the subject to the notion of “space” being available, negotiated or taken away, and how one has the sense that at times there is more or less of it. Thus, public expression works somewhat like a black market, regulated by the state (as the Chinese say: “one eye open, one eye shut”), and with which one becomes familiar, though rarely with complete certainty, through trial and error. Between the censor-in-chief at the top and the candidate for censorship at the bottom, there are multiple layers of controls that are the object of interpretation and negotiation. The censor at the lowest possible level is objectively closer, in terms



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of shared interest, to the candidate for censorship than to his superiors, in what can be characterized as a pyramid of compromise, fear and retribution.5 In a few publications of mine, I propose to distinguish the more fundamental and rigid limitations to free speech, which one can never trespass, from the lesser, “venial” ones. I call them, respectively, primary and secondary parameters.6 This allows a more specific characterization of censorship in Cuba. The term parameter—also parametraje, parametración, parametrados: that is, the action of being “parametered”—has been commonly used in Cuba since the mid-1960s to signify political restrictions to public expression. No distinction is made, explicitly or implicitly, between primary and secondary parameters in Cuba: I propose this distinction as a working hypothesis. The primary parameters shield the meta-political (foundational) narrative of the regime from cross-examination. It features three dogmas. First, the revolution is an ongoing process, not a past event, and it is irrevocably geared toward the “construction of socialism and the progress toward a communist society” (Art. 5 of the Cuban Constitution). To make that even more clear, in 2002 Art. 3 of the Constitution was amended to add that socialism was “irrevocable” and that the country “will never return again to capitalism.” Articles 62 and 65 of the 1976 were already equating opposition to communism as illegal and as “treason,” which is “the worst crime.” Although the regime is now mostly institutionalized (though it took seventeen years to reach that goal), it presents itself as a movement as much as a political system. Within the totalitarian paradigm, this emphasis on the movement rather than the state is closer to the Nazi model than to either the fascist or communist worldviews. For Richard Wolin, “Mussolini, who always emphasized the specificity of Italian traditions, stressed the preeminence of the state. This emphasis was foreign to the worldview of National Socialism, in which the state was often perceived as a bureaucratic impediment to the authenticity of the ‘movement.’”7 The emphasis on the charismatic leader, on the other end, gives Fidel’s Cuba (not so much Raúl’s Cuba) an hybrid style that mixes features of both communism and fascism.8 The revolution as a movement is a unifying force, and what fosters individuation and divisions is counterrevolutionary.9 To repeat, there is no “opposition” and no “dissidents” in Cuba: only mercenaries and counterrevolutionaries. In his perceptive analysis of Soviet totalitarianism, French political philosopher Raymond Aron calls this the principe unitaire (principle of unity). Unity, one-party state and revolution are the holy trinity of dictatorial rule in Cuba. Fidel Castro, in a famous 1971 speech, talks about Cuba’s need for “unanimity” and “monolithic strength.” His last words of that speech are typical of the way he conceives participation in Cuba: “And that is why we ask you if you agree. [Applause] Then, let those who agree raise their hands. Good. And following the congress’ tradition, is anyone opposed? Very good.

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Then we wish you, comrades, the greatest success in carrying out the program outlined by the congress. Fatherland or death. We shall win.” Similarly, in a 2012 speech Raúl Castro said: Let us not forget that only the Party, as an institution that includes the revolutionary vanguard and assures the unity of Cubans in all times, only the Party, I repeat, can be the worthy heir of the trust deposited by the people in the only Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, comrade Fidel Castro Ruz […] To renounce the principle of a single party would simply mean to legalize the party or the parties of imperialism in our homeland, and to sacrifice the strategic weapon of unity for all Cubans, which realized the dreams of independence and social justice for the generations of patriots who have fought from Hatuey to Céspedes, Martí and Fidel.10

As Samuel Farber also wrote, as early as 1954, Fidel Castro wrote to Luis Conte Aguero, then his close friend: “Conditions which are indispensable for the integration of a truly civic moment: ideology, discipline, and chieftainship. The three are essential but chieftainship is basic … the apparatus of propaganda and organization must be such and so powerful that it will implacably destroy him who would create tendencies, cliques, or schisms, or would rise against the movement.”11 Farber also quotes from an interview Fidel gave to Sandinista leader Tomás Borge in which he says, responding to a question about Stalin’s merits, that Stalin “established unity in the Soviet Union. He consolidated what Lenin had begun: party unity.”12 This revolutionary mythology (myth: “sacred history of origins”—Mircea Eliade) is arguably the core of the master narrative in Cuba.13 Bourdieu’s insights on how language can be used as a resource for distinction and control (the mots d’ordre [watchword], the idées-force [guiding ideas]) work well in this context. This use of the word revolution as a constant mot d’ordre is probably unique: leaders of the Soviet bloc, China, North Korea or Vietnam do not or did not constantly refer to the government as “the revolution” the way Cuban leaders (and strangely, most Cubanistas) do.14 The regime absolutely needs this myth long after it stopped making any sense because it needs the constant battle (even in ossified form) and the siege mentality to justify its conservatism, its rigidity, its war economy and its constant need of economic help and subsidies from abroad. At its core the official ideology in Cuba is an ideology of war, one that could accomodate a wide variety of ideational templates.15 For actors, cultural or otherwise, it is possible to ask the revolution, a sort of totem or Etre Suprême, to live up to its own ideals (for instance, to generate more equality, better education, etc.), if it is done in a constructive fashion (i.e. within the parameters and in a way that fosters “unity”). It is notable that even in exile Fidel Castro’s opponents tend to defend the 1959 revolution and



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some of its first achievements. Few do not mind to be perceived as “counterrevolutionary”; in fact most like to present themselves as truer revolutionaries than the ones in power, who “stole” the revolution. In that sense, Fidel Castro has largely succeeded in framing the political discussion according to the criteria of “within” versus “against” the revolution, putting his opponents on the defensive. Second, the revolution is teleologically embodied in the persona of Fidel Castro and now, by extension, younger brother Raúl.16 From the onset, the revolutionary regime was a Fidel Castro regime. From Santiago de Cuba, on January 2, 1959, Fidel Castro appointed the President of the Republic, Manuel Urrutia Lleó, giving him (and his cabinet) no real power. He also appointed Urrutia’s successor on July 17. He single-handedly overturned decisions made by the military tribunals. To publicly pass judgment on Fidel (and Raúl) was and is to criticize the Revolution, and vice versa. That is why the Cuban state can best be characterized as an organization with two superposed layers: a purely Latin American style of dirección that is caudillistic and charismatic, and underneath a gray, Soviet-style bureaucracy. If in other communist countries the state is the administrative agency of the communist party, in Cuba the state and the party are the administrative agencies of la revolución de Fidel, that is, a sort of “deep state” led by Fidel and now Raúl, plus their close associates of the moment.17 None of the official party—the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations (ORI), the United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution (PURSC) in 1962 and the PCC in 1965— ever gained the institutional standing of their counterparts in the Soviet bloc. As Raúl Castro said in his closing speech to the 6th Congress of the PCC, “Fidel is Fidel and he does not need any official position to occupy, forever, a top place in the history, present and future of the Cuban nation.” The equivalence between the leader/regime and the “revolution,” understood as a principle guiding a process, is for the population a sign that “Fidel’s revolution” is off-limit for scrutiny. While the name of Fidel and now Raúl resonate in all descriptive or celebratory narratives concerning the “revolution,” Cubans say quién tu sabes (who you know) or simply gesture to suggest striking a beard when alluding to the darker side of life under his rule. In her terrific book on literature and politics in the Soviet Union, Cécile Vaissié interestingly suggests this: “The decision-making process […] is difficult to pin down, especially because power is rarely named: writers say ‘Up’ or ‘Them.’ Now, a power seems all the more powerful and frightening because it is poorly identified: in some traditions, the one whose name is not pronounced is God.”18 Third, the official narrative on the US “blockade” cannot be challenged publicly. In Cuba the US embargo is also called “genocide.” Restrictions to political and civil liberties, as well as economic hardship, have been officially

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blamed on the US bloqueo for half a century. Resistance to US imperialism is a key-mobilizing factor in Cuba and many observers have wondered how the Castro regime could survive a complete normalization of relations with the United States. It is significant that soon after President Obama left Cuba in March 2016, the official media, led by Fidel Castro, mounted a systematic counter-offensive against the US president.19 Perhaps all regimes do have a “master narrative”: the republican ideal and the droits de l’homme in France, democracy in the United States (until Trump), multiculturalism in Canada and so on. But in democracies, the master narrative, such as it is, is not exempt from scrutiny. In a dictatorship, the primary parameters are really about protecting the power and policies of individuals at the top, typically in the name of higher but malleable ideals that are easy to espouse and hard to contest, like “revolution” and “sovereignty” under Castro (or “peace” under Stalin). In that mindset, opposing the power and policies of individuals at the top is tantamount to being a counterrevolutionary, a traitor (or a war-monger). This is not to say that criticism of some sort is impossible—hence my next point about “secondary parameters”—but rather, that criticism of the master narrative, as well as its embodiment in the persona of the maximum leader, is strictly forbidden. This principle is well summarized in a popular phrase in Cuba, one could “play with the chain, but not with the monkey.” The secondary parameters delimit political participation within the regime; i.e. what can be said and done, how, where and when. To modify Fidel Castro’s most famous admonition in Words to Intellectuals: Against the Revolution, nothing is tolerated; within the Revolution, it depends. Like the primary parameters, they are mostly “unwritten rules” but they are more elusive.20 Even the official poet of the revolution, Nicolás Guillén (1902–89) was censured in 1991.21 A change in the primary parameters would probably indicate a situation of regime change; changes in secondary parameters (e.g. periods of “opening” and “closing,” shifting definitions of what is permissible) are simply a rule of the game in authoritarian regimes. The distinction between primary and secondary parameters helps us to understand that change and continuity, on one hand, and openness and rigidity on the other, are not opposites but rather the yin and yang of monistic rule in Cuba. Made of both implicit and explicit rules, the parameters are a constant source of uncertainty because in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, implicit rules are never clear and explicit ones tend to change quite arbitrarily.22 Crossing the line delineated by the secondary parameters can be construed as a venial offense. At times this can be redeemed—unlike disrespect of primary parameters (mortal sin!), which can’t.23 These two forms of transgression mark the difference between dissonance and dissidence.



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Based on the available evidence, it is possible to posit that within the realm of public expression in Cuba, and most specifically in the cultural field, one can (1) publicly deplore errors made by middlemen in the past; (2) publicly lament the poverty of criticism and debate on the island as a consequence of internal problems within the cultural field and the media; and (3) constructively examine social problems in Cuba, especially if they have already been publicly identified as such by the political leadership, without discussing their domestic political root causes.24 The first shows progress; the second and third shield the regime’s infallibility from errors made by the bureaucracy. Government officials can make mistakes, and the population can help to identify those, as long as culprits are bureaucrats, microfactions or “dogmatists ensconced in the cultural institutions.”25 As they use to say in the Spanish Golden Age: “Long life to the king, death to the bad government!” Twenty years ago Cuban scholar Ambrosio Fornet wrote that the modus operandi of “art and literature of the Revolution” has been equally fostered by caution and audacity, in a climate of trust and tension, it has maintained an equilibrium that is not typically expressed in declarations or manifestos but in daily practice, in small skirmishes and concrete works. The difficult and continually renewed consensus in which writers, artists, and cultural institutions are always engaged, sometimes supported and sometimes harassed by bureaucrats and officials, has undergone various dramatic transitions in the last three decades.26

This is typical of the kind of “criticism” allowed within the secondary parameters: he talks about small skirmishes, consensus building, with inconveniences caused by bad apples. Nothing really that seemingly deserves to be called “dramatic transitions.” No consideration is made of writers who were incarcerated for their lack of aptitude for consensus building, like Reinaldo Arenas, Heberto Padilla, María Elena Cruz Varela or Raúl Rivero. Fornet is also the author who coined the expression “Five Grey Years” (Quinquenio gris), in reference to an almost dark period tainted by some malevolent bureaucrats back in the 1970s.27 Another example: on his blog, social scientist Esteban Morales Domínguez recently wrote: “Criticism is encouraged (Raúl Castro has explicitly encouraged it) but at the same time it is blocked. It seems that there are two policies, the one promoted by our President and the one adopted by an entrenched bureaucracy, even against the general current.”28 Same pattern: the president represents the opposition against blameworthy elements of his own bureaucracy. Within such parameters, in officially recognized publications, what can be publicly said about the challenges facing the country is limited but not insignificant. This kind of discussion is mostly found in highbrow cultural magazines (Revolución y cultura, La Gaceca de Cuba, Cine Cubano, Arte

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Cubano), academic journals (Temas, Criterios), and closed-door colloquia like Temas’s monthly Ultimo Jueves. It can also be found in literature, cinema, popular music and the visual arts, in more or less organized fashion. Some “independent” groups and initiatives are emerging, such as Tania Bruguera’s Instituto de Artivismo Hannah Arendt, the Club de escritores independientes or the G-20 (a group of Cuban filmmakers), but it is hard to guess how effective and sustainable these organizations are. The space between this kind of dissonance and what can be found in the propagandistic outlets (any newspapers, radio or television shows, blogs like La Jiribilla, Cubadebate, Cubahora, La pupila insomne29) basically marks the boundaries of the secondary parameters. One more general comment needs to be made about the parameters. They limit not only what can be said but also to whom. Public discussion is fragmented in Cuba and the various fields (social, culture, education, economy, military) are linked to the top (the political leadership) much more closely than they are to each other. To reach the public in general is the exclusive mission of the political leadership and the media it controls. Discussions or “debates” within the cultural field tend to stay in-house: they do not percolate in the media. Writers and artists developed common codes to say or allude to the unsayable, and manage to be understood by each other, but censorship and self-censorship work like a well-oiled machine. Again, none of this is specific to Cuba. Talking about the life of intellectuals in the USSR in the 1970s, Hedrick Smith talks about “the timid silence of the intelligentsia, their fawning fear of the police and political authority, their turning to walks, to feasting and to drinking as a substitute for intellectual freedom and activity, their penchant for philosophizing during drunken bouts and their inaction afterward, their compulsion for hiding the flaws of Russian life from foreigners, the double-talk they use to appease the powers-that-be, their readiness to toady to Authority.”30 Heavy drinking may be more typical of Russia, and nowadays most Cuban writers, artists and academics do not mind talking about the flaws of Cuban life to foreigners, as long as it is done in private. But the “double-talk” and the “readiness to toady to Authority” are germane to the Cuban case. Beyond these general indicators, the contours of permissible and unpermissible discourse remain fluid. To what extent does the past offer guidance for the present and future? The past doesn’t even offer straightforward lessons for the past itself, since the censored are usually left in the dark about their sins. Antón Arrufat, a famous parametrado, wrote this: “I was committed to writing Los siete contra Tebas, a crime due to untold reasons and for which I had to pay unspecified period of time. Who should tell me and who should forgive me? I never knew. That is, never officially, as I suppose these things should be known, but by rumors, comments and doors that were kept closed.”31 Since they are not formally accused of anything, they don’t have the option



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to recant.32 As Ponte said: “Beyond the strict conversation with the police the authorities always avoid making pronouncements.”33 This being said, the secondary parameters have changed over the years. Homosexuality and “racial separatism” are no longer considered beyond the pale.34 Havana now boasts a John Lennon park in Havana (his music was banned during the 1960s). One also needs to take into consideration factors like personal connections within the cultural field and with the political leadership, national and international reputation, timing or foreign pressure. Marie-Laure Geoffray convincingly demonstrates that punk rock activist Gorki Aguila (leader of the group “Porno para Ricardo”) was freed from jail after a short successful transnational campaign for his liberation.35 Less well-known or connected individuals pay a higher price for their insubordination (in fact they are less likely to even try); unknown ones, especially in the provinces, face rigid barriers. For Antonio Benítez-Rojo (1931–2005), who held high positions within the cultural bureaucracy before he went to exile: “if a literary work is promoted, prohibited, or tolerated, its treatment is due largely to the degree of esteem its author deserves in the eyes of the state. I could name dozens of writers whose literary works were at some time rejected, impounded, prohibited, partially censored, or criticized in Cuba for purely extra literary reasons.”36 Famous artists such as Pablo Milanés or Silvio Rodríguez’s son Silvito (aka “Silvito el libre”) can afford the occasional off-the-cuff criticism of their government. But they know better than to cross the line too often or to go too far. Mariela Castro voted no to a legislation that didn’t go “far enough” to protect pluralism of gender identities, for instance, but she is a staunch opponent of pluralism tout court. Cuban writer Arturo Arango makes an interesting observation on how the regime strives to maintain a working relationship with famous writers and artists who are important for the country’s image abroad, as long as they do not infringe upon fundamental political rules: It is also undeniable that there is greater respect for those artists and writers who have achieved a certain prestige. They are cared for, protected, and efforts are made to make sure that conflicts do not provoke definitive ruptures between the system, the institutions, and creators. Let’s say that on both sides there is greater bargaining power. I mean, of course, those conflicts that are based on art, literature; not the ones that take place in the pure field of politics, even if the protagonists are writers or artists. In such cases, as we know, the rules of the game are of a different nature and have varied little.37

Since so many living Cuban-born artists live abroad, it is important for the regime to treat the ones who are famous and who remain in the country with some mansuetude. In summary, the secondary parameters have changed, perhaps inevitably, over a period of more than half a century. Today as in the past, some

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insubordination is possible within secondary parameters, and criticism is a seed that can grow and have unforeseen implications. Primary parameters are not that flexible however. But again, nothing is cast in stone. One can imagine that what can be said publicly about the embargo could change in light of the rapprochement with the United States for instance. (It hasn’t yet.) The death of Raúl (not only him stepping down) could unleash real changes as well. But as of now, the primary parameters, which have been in place for decades, seem destined to be in place for at least as long as the last of the two brothers is still actively involved. How do cultural agents handle the parameters? In two ways: either by taking some risk, but more often by avoiding them. By cultural agents I mean the writers, artists and academics but also their handlers, the “bureaucrats” who are in charge of allowing or disallowing their initiatives. They can be reprimanded as much or more if higher officials decide that what they were too lenient. Low-level censors do not merely censure: they help cultural actors finding ways to make the product acceptable, for their mutual benefit. Risk-taking invites censorship, whereas risk aversion feeds self-censorship, a more common and effective form of state control. For Benítez-Rojo: “The external control of freedom of expression is a real, physical limitation of the role of the writer within society. The limitations of internal control are much more effective because the limiting agent is the writer himself. If the first level of repression aims to silence dissidence in Cuba, the second level indirectly mutes it.”38 He also confessed that when living in Cuba he didn’t have the “vocation of a political martyr. . . . One writes within a limit. Maybe it is possible to go a little further. One doesn’t know . . . . One places himself within a marginality, but a tolerated marginality.”39 Self-censorship is not practiced only by writers, artists and academics, it is the modus vivendi of all Cubans, who were all born with a little police inside, as is often said in Cuba. All Cubans were Pioneers (grades 1 to 9 in school), with white and red uniforms, pledging every morning to “be like the Che,” that is, a “rebel” who happens to be absolutely loyal to the government. The figure of the Pionero and the accompanying theme of obedience are a common motif in Cuban art.40 On Cuban television they watched detective series like “Tras la huella,” “Día y noche”, “UNO” and “Su propia guerra,” in which antisocial elements and counterrevolutionaries are unmasked and tracked down all around the island thanks to an elaborate network of spies and informants. A neighbor, someone who sells on the black market, even a friend or a family member could be informing State Security. To be careful what one says in public, what one acquires and from whom, is second nature to Cubans. At the same time almost everybody is poaching across the line of legality, becoming potentially guilty rather than presumed innocent for the state. The dual apparatus of primary and secondary parameters, clear and



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unclear rules, “planned” everything and constant improvisation, characterizes the real modus operandi of the entire “system” in Cuba. Actors in the cultural field are just more self-reflexive about it. Censorship is a multifaceted phenomenon. To begin with, it is enshrined into law since both the Constitution and the 1987 Penal Code criminalize peaceful opposition. Articles 72 to 90 of the latter define the crime of peligrosidad, or “dangerousness,” not only as a crime that was perpetrated but as any antisocial (read: antisocialist) “crime” that an individual may have a “special proclivity” to commit. Article 144 prohibits all criticism, in writing or in public, of (1) all low-ranking government leaders (three months to a year in prison, a fine or both) and (2) criticism of Fidel, Raúl or other top officials (two to three years in prison).41 The Ideological Department of the PCC’s Central Committee and the State Security systematically sift through collective activities throughout the nation to detect emerging forms of improper conduct. Within that illiberal framework, the business of censorship is carried out in an arbitrary, non-transparent and often unpredictable ways. An author could be told that the timing for publishing or producing x or y is not appropriate, that the program has changed for unknown reasons. Perhaps a film will be presented but only in one cinema, or in several but only for a few representations, or not at all (“not the right time”) or in cinema but not on television. Things may change, as they sometimes do, so one is told to be patient, and refrain from asking too many questions. Official cultural institutions can simply ignore a writer or an artist (to “unperson” someone, as Orwell said in 1984), at least for a while, like novelists Wendy Guerra and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, while allowing them to publish abroad.42 A book may be published but not distributed, or distributed in very small quantity (typically: one day during the International Book Fair of Havana).43 For instance, author Leonardo Padura is celebrated abroad and on the island, where he received the Premio Nacional de Literatura in 2012, but his books are almost impossible to find in bookstores. An author may not be invited to publish anymore and forbidden to travel (Lezama Lima during the last years of his life). Some artists or genres are favored in the media (the Trovadores Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola; the Grupo de Experientación Sonora directed by Leo Brouwer), while others are not (singers and songwriters Frank Delgado or Pedro Luis Ferrer). Social scientists may lose their jobs or be denied the privilege of traveling abroad. Artist and art critic Coco Fusco writes: Between 1988 and 1990, numerous exhibitions were censored, artworks were confiscated and artists whose content, tactics or personal style tested the boundaries of revolutionary decorum were subject to mysterious retractions of invitations, intimidating interrogations and politically motivated rumor campaigns.

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Party official sometimes used a divide-and-conquer strategy, soliciting negative appraisals from their peers of artists under suspicion. A stern warning was usually enough to get artists to alter their conduct and thus avoid losing the privileges they had accrued as shining examples of the revolution’s munificence.44

Writers, artists and academics have been asked to sign petitions against some of their colleagues or to defend the regime against criticism from their peers abroad.45 I know of no better description of the web of censorship than the one offered by Cuban visual artist Tania Bruguera on her blog (more on her in chapter 4). In May 2015 she attended, as a member of the audience, a public discussion on censorship at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana. This was not long after she was denied entrance to the same museum to see the exhibit of artist and friend Tomás Sánchez. On the blog of her Artivism Institute Hannah Arendt, she tells the story of how the director of the museum (Jorge Fernández) intervened to “try to equate the censorship that occurs in Cuba and the institutional censorship that happens internationally, as if they appear the same.”46 She raised her hand and made a few points about the differences between cultural censorship in Cuba and in democratic countries: “If censorship is universal it is, therefore—I interpret—, normal,” she thought. Fernández “almost said that ours was the fault of the blockade, while assuring (here I paraphrase) that the ‘exaggeration’ given to acts of censorship in Cuba is the product of the ill intentions of the enemies of our country.”47 Bruguera writes that Fernández responded to her intervention with a personal attack against her. In her response she starts by agreeing with Fernández about “the existence of censorship in other places,” giving examples of her own experienced in other places, but refuses to compare them to censorship in Cuba. She explained that in a democratic country, “the artist has the right to refute this censorship in a public way (sometimes even within the same institution that censored them) and how that becomes a public debate and not a muzzle that is placed upon everyone to avoid speaking about it.” She discussed “how the censored work can find other institutions in the same city in which to be exhibited and sometimes immediately, as there is often a type of solidarity around such work; because everyone knows that when you accept that a work is censored, you are complicit with the censoring and consequently lose artistic grounds of freedom, which affects us all.” Furthermore, she points out that in other countries, in her own experience, “the censorship is limited to the artwork. The institution perhaps will not exhibit your work, but it does not go beyond that.” In Cuba, on the other hand, the censorship occurs with all the weight of the government, using all the power of their institutions, extending that power to all aspects of a person’s



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life. Censorship gives the political police the right to go to the place where you work; to contact your friends to insinuate that the impact of censorship can involve them too if they question it; to persuade your friends and colleagues that you are no longer trustworthy. The police impress upon them that this is the beginning of a trip through purgatory which no one knows how long it will last nor what other consequences it may have, nor whom it will drag with it. It gives them the right to get involved in your family circle and to destabilize it; to say things that are ridiculously bold—for instance that you are a member of the CIA or a member of the Cuban State Security police, depending on whom they want to scare—to prevent them from defending you. Censorship in Cuba is vindictive, resentful, arrogant, holistic and is a way of being detained in a cell of punishment.48

Bruguera highlights a few more aspects of censorship in Cuba. For her, Censorship in Cuba is internationalist, it reaches even the places where others defend you, in other countries. It arrives, as a staff member from the Cuban embassy, who goes to the university where a professor who has defended you teaches; it arrives as the voice of a travel agent who clarifies that if you do not want to have trouble during your trip you should not get in touch with the censored person; it arrives with an invitation to exhibit your work in the [Havana] Biennial or the National Museum to whomever is in disagreement with censorship, with the hope that you may be silenced in exchange for a career boost; it arrives with discrediting rumours everywhere about the person being censored to create a state of opinion that debunks arguments against censorship thus casting the censored one in a despicable light indefinitely.49

Another aspect is emotional blackmail: The Cuban artistic medium is endogamous, we all know each other, and we all have a history between ourselves. People who enforce cultural censorship are people we have built relationships with over the years. They are not abstract characters that no one knows anything about. They could have been your professor, your boss or your work colleague, the bureaucrat  that has worked for decades in the cultural sector, the curator that once invited you to exhibit, a friend, and for some it might have even been a lover. Many times you selfcensor due to, precisely, the gratitude you have for or the value that this relationship has held, which always becomes personal. You self-censor to avoid getting someone else involved in a problem, one who is also trying to expand the uncensored spaces, and you don’t want to be that person who “ruins it all.” But the political police and the censors know this very well and many times they send to “talk to you” the person you don’t want to harm, as a way to neutralize you. But it is that same person—who every time they meet the person who is against the act of censoring—makes it clear, before offering his opinion, that the censored one is a “friend” they love, admire, and know very well so that

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afterwards they can discredit and create doubts about the censored one in ways not even your worst enemy could. This person actually feels that they have the authority and legitimate capacity to interpret and explain the “real” intentions of their “friend” that has been censored. The conclusion is always the same, that your censored “friend” was censored for a reason, because of a problem of judgement, of common sense, of a miscalculation, of using too much intensity, etc. As if the person’s principles and the medium of the artwork were common sense, as if an artist had to wait for an order or directions to take on a subject that affects them and that they want to express, as if works of art have to have a low level of intensity to be art. It is they, the political police and the censors, who respond to each argument with a personal focus, as if the problem is the person and not the system. This is the strategy that censors use to absolve themselves of their own responsibility for their actions.50

A type of censorship that is apparently destined to prosper in the age of the gatekeeper state is illustrated by the recent case of Rafael Alcides, a wellknown poet from the 1950s generation. He recently renounced his UNEAC membership and returned the Commemorative Medal he received as a founding member of the organization. He did this when Cuban authorities censored him, preventing entry into the country of his own books published abroad. “In view of the fact that my books are no longer allowed to enter Cuba, either by Customs or by mail, which is the same as prohibiting me as an author, I renounce to my UNEAC membership,” Alcides wrote in a letter to UNEAC’s president Miguel Barnet.51 Books deemed undesirable in Cuba can still be published and circulate abroad, generating fame for their authors and revenue for both the writer and the state. This often (but not always) makes tolerable the restrictions placed on the circulation of their works on the island. If a case of censorship is publicly discussed, it will be within the confines of a small group, and only if nobody challenges the assumption that censorship can only happen because of devious cultural bureaucrats or because of a misunderstanding of Fidel policy. Thus, after affirming that censorship no longer exists in Cuba, John Kirk52 adds: “This does not mean, unfortunately, that there are not still ‘hardliners’ seeking to limit cultural expression, nor functionaries determined to protect their sinecure by criticizing any work they might consider the least bit unorthodox.”53 Without narrow-minded apparatchikis in government, who could be blamed for “errors”? Fidel and Raul themselves can certainly admit mistakes and “rectify” them. The “revolution” is adaptable and grows from its lapses but can never be wrong on the fundamentals. To solve problems one always needs to mention Fidel and Raúl as the original inspiration. Under dictatorships, the most effective and sustainable form of censorship is self-censorship. As Bao Pu, the publisher of the New Century Press in Hong Kong, says about censorship in China: it “works before the writer even starts



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writing. Why write a piece that you know will never get published?” He gives the example of Western writers who wish to publish their work in China and who “are not immune to the country’s more rigid standards.” For instance, China scholar Ezra F. Vogel “reluctantly cooperated with publishing house censors. The Mainland Chinese version of his biography on Deng Xiaoping omitted a number of adjectives about Mao Zedong and entire passages about Deng, but Mr. Vogel has said that the deletions were necessary to reach an audience hungry for mostly unexpurgated history about their country.”54 Here censorship and self-censorship are woven together, with authors and censors working together toward a common goal: to get the book published. Self-censorship is more effective than censorship if the regime keeps people guessing what lines cannot be crossed, and if actors seek recognition and participation (i.e., if they want to “stay in the game”). Because the secondary parameters are not clearly and permanently established, the most cautious position is to stay away from controversies. To repeat, beyond some general indicators, it is somewhat predictable but never entirely clear what can be safely said, and who is entitled to strike a dissonant note. The right time (rarely) and the right place (small meeting, small outlet, low circulation) are slightly more predictable, but uncertainty remains a key factor. This explains why Cuban leaders routinely upbraid journalists, artists and intellectuals for not taking all the space available, for not speaking up and being more critical. In his closing speech at the first National Conference of the PCC (February 2012), Raúl Castro condemned what he called the “false unanimity” in the media (which of course are completely controlled by his government), taunting people to “tell the truth” and being more critical. He said: “It is necessary to get used to tell the truth upfront, to look at each other’s in the eyes, to disagree and argue, to disagree even with what the leaders say, when we consider that reason in on our side, logically, in the right place, at the right time and done appropriately, that is to say in meetings, not in the corridors.” Fidel and other top officials made similar statements repeatedly for more than fifty years.55 Among them, the secretary of the Central Committee and director of the Department of Revolutionary Orientation of the PCC, Carlos Aldana (purged in 1992), said in his speech to UNEAC members in 1988 that they should reject “paralysis and stiffness,” and decry the fact that until recently “The UNEAC virtually acted as an appendage of the Party.” How to get out of this “marasmus”? By fostering debates, which according to Aldana was already taking place everywhere on the island, this resulting “from critical approaches and theses developed and reiterated by comrade Fidel, and from the transformations that have derived from them, whose essence is the perfection of our socialism.”56 Here we have another solid indicator of authoritarianism: if the government complains about the docility of the media, if cultural actors are accused of using less space than is allowed, it

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means that they are scared and that for them the potential benefit of pushing the envelope is not worth the risk. Even though artists are generally pretty shrewd when guessing the parameters, it is still perilous to “play with the chain.” To repeat, art exhibitions have been censured and cancelled; artists have been and still are reprimanded and sometimes jailed. After signing a public letter calling for democratic reforms in 1991 (published abroad, in the Miami Herald, on May 31), poet María Elena Cruz Varela was dragged out of her house by police and pages of her political writings were shoved down her throat. The performance artist Angel Delgado got six months in jail for publicly defecating on a copy of the daily Granma, during the exhibition El objeto esculturado (1989). As Luis Camnitzer reflects, the exhibition at the Castillo de La Real Fuerza in February of 1989 was closed “when it was found to include a portrait of Fidel Castro in drag with large breasts and leading a political rally, and Marcia Leiseca, the vice-minister of culture, was relocated to the Casa de las Américas.” The graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado Machado, better known as “El Sexto” (The Sixth), was arrested in December 2014 for walking toward the Central Park to present a “performance” with two pigs named “Fidel and Raúl Castro.” Most spectacularly, on December 30, 2014, less than two weeks after the historical agreement between presidents Castro and Obama, the government denied performance artist Tania Bruguera permission to stage an open-microphone event in the Revolution Square, detaining her (and confiscating her passport) along with up to dozens of government opponents. The government, via the National Council of Plastic Arts of Cuba (CNAP), showed its ability to renew its rhetoric, if not its behavior, by denouncing her for attempting to disrupt the negotiations with the United States and siding with elements reproved by President Obama! Bruguera, who lives mostly in the United States and has performed in the United States and Europe, went farther than ever before to test the parameters, but her status as an internationally known artist who lives mostly abroad gave her a shield unavailable to most artists on the island (see chapter 4). It is noteworthy that although Bruguera saw some of her works censured in the past, she had managed until then to have a good working relationship with cultural officials. Often, the victim momentarily ousted from an organization (a cultural supplement, a jury, a research center) could be given permission to join another organization in the field, in some other (more modest) capacity: for instance, becoming translator (Heberto Padilla), librarian (Antón Arrufat), civil servant (César López), worker in a steel foundry (Eduardo Heras León) or collaborator in film production (Jesús Díaz). To repeat, they would not necessarily be told explicitly why they were being silenced; simply, one’s work would no longer be recognized by the only cultural and publishing authorities in the country, the ones owned and controlled by the government. One could be in



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Kafkaesque limbo for years. In any case, only a few cultural caudillos have been able to provide this kind of protection to some of their peers, by virtue of enjoying contact with the leader.57 Injustices committed by the state against certain individuals can be regretted if those individuals are not deemed “counterrevolutionary” (i.e. if they never explicitly challenge the master narrative). Since the 1990s, a number of hitherto frown upon authors like Eduardo Heras León, Fernando Ortiz, José Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, Eliseo Diego and Dulce María Loynaz were gradually rehabilitated.58 Otherwise, the non-political part of their cultural contribution, if they are writers or artists, can be redeemed, while the overall judgment concerning them as human beings typically remains negative. If that person is still in exile, a fortiori a vocal opponent, then s/he is described as having profound moral or psychological flaws: the person is vain, disturbed, greedy, vindictive, etc.59 Or, the individual is “unpersonned,” such as when Minister of Culture Abel Prieto commented about hundreds of exiled artists in this way: “With the exception of one or two of the National Ballet’s dancers, everybody else has no value for the Cuban culture.”60 The regime acts as a gatekeeper of collective memory, selectively choosing what may be remembered at any given time. NON-CONFORMITY AND THE QUEST FOR RECOGNITION Much of the published material on the public role of artists and writers in general suggests that they are hard-wired to seek freedom from constraints and freedom to express their unique individuality.61 Since at least Plato (see the 10th book of The Republic),62 it is common to think that artists, if they are true to their unique calling, will consciously or not challenge dominant values and institutions. The evidence for this view is scant. To begin with, artists could hardly be critical of the powerful before their emancipation from traditional patronage of church and state in the nineteenth century.63 This, by the way, did not prevent many of them to produce art that was both great and defiant of dominant norms, if indirectly and with subtlety. Furthermore, the relations between cultural actors and the market and its constraints are, to say the least, ambiguous. When they were indeed very political and opposed to values and institutions of their time, writers and artists were often cheering for other values and institutions that were liberticidal and not particularly kind to free art and uninhibited imagination. What Benjamin Péret called “the dishonor of poets” sadly represents an important chapter in the contemporary history of relations between art and politics.64 Still, a distinction can be made between art and artists, in the sense that artists can unwittingly, through their work, challenge the status quo. This is

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probably true throughout history but particularly in our time, because criticism is a major organizing principle of contemporary art. As art critic Boris Groys suggests, modern art is “a field strictly structured according to the logic of contradiction.”65 Even when artists apparently toe the line and show no particular interest for upending established norms and institutions, their work can insidiously erode routinized perceptions and trigger dissatisfaction and new level of consciousness. This is what Karl Marx meant when he said that French conservative novelist Honoré de Balzac was a “revolutionary” writer. In the same fashion, humor can surreptitiously challenge the doxa and nurture disenchantment with the status quo. In art, as in other forms of expression, everything is permitted in revolutionary Cuba. Except when it is not. The Constitution stipulates: “Artistic creation is free, as long as its content is not contrary to the Revolution. The forms of expression in the arts are free.” Form and content are hard to dissociate in arts. So, who is to make the call on “form” and “content,” and who figures out what is acceptably “within” the revolution and what is not? We know the answer: the revolution herself decides, that is to say, en dernière instance, Fidel and now his brother Raúl. Still, the “form” evinces a “content”—the content of the form—and confers to artistic production a shield as well as a weapon unobtainable in other forms of public expression.66 Sociological or philosophical imagination similarly tends to foster critical thinking. As Goethe wrote, “A certain polemical thread runs through any philosophical writing.”67 Here what is critical is the content of the content, so to speak. The social sciences and humanities examine social relations and can hardly overlook issues such as social exclusion, inequalities, poverty, social constraints, as well as the use and abuse of power, and still be social sciences and humanities.68 In sum, creative thinking and artistic imagination naturally lead to critical thinking, but it can also, even simultaneously, nurture ideological cravings that tilt in the opposite direction. Cultural actors can be the rulers’ worst enemies or their most gullible fans (or a ruler’s worst enemy and another one’s gullible fan). Writers, artists and intellectuals have often been the most enthusiastic supporters of autocracy, especially totalitarian ones, though they have also been the first to be persecuted by these regimes.69 Fidel Castro’s most scandalous show trial was mounted against a poet (Heberto Padilla). In a denouement that echoes the Daniel and Sinyavsky trial of February 1966, Fidel Castro made Heberto Padilla famous and raised the critical profile of literature and writers by mounting a Stalinist show trial against this poet, to no obvious advantage to himself and his regime.70 The “new” or “soft” dictatorships of the twenty-first century have supposedly learned not to sweat the small stuff, concentrating instead on stifling organized sectors of the opposition and eliminating checks and balances, with minimal use of violence.71



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And yet, the market-Leninist regime of China still goes out of its way to persecute writer Guo Jian and visual artists Chen Guang and Ai Weiwei, to name only a few examples. Open societies can deal, indeed welcome, artistic, literary, sociological or philosophical criticism, with all the pluralism and the pluralism-inducing impulse they generate. This is not to say that art, literature (including literature of ideas) and academic research cannot rock the boat in free societies. They can, but sporadically and in a much more indirect and subtle way than in a non-democratic society. Under a dictatorship, especially under a totalitarian one, cultural production is a prime target of government control. A fairly common motif of 1960s and 1970s essays on art/literature and politics in Latin American was that the artists and writers’ mission is to be the conscience of the impoverished, the voice of the voiceless.72 This was proclaimed by prominent novelists of the boom, for instance in “Literature is Fire” (1967), Mario Vargas Llosa’s acceptance speech of the Rómulo Gallegos prize in Venezuela as well as in Carlos Fuentes’ essay La nueva novela latinoamericana (1969).73 To oppose injustice and to fight for liberation on behalf of the masses was the mission of the writer (and the artist) in Latin America. But not in Cuba. Cuban writer Roberto Fernández Retamar declared that Vargas Llosa’s call for permanent criticism was “counterrevolutionary” in the Cuban context.74 Cuban writer and cultural commissar, Lisandro Otero, publicly said “The duty of the intellectual in a genuinely revolutionary society is to obey.”75 In the same vein, Cuban historian and diplomat José A. Portuondo (1911–96) proposed this distinction between being a “rebel,” a position he associated with the Lunes de Revolución group, and a “revolutionary”: That group [rebels] was the one that animated, fundamentally, Lunes de Revolución, and featured a somewhat anarchic and a little beatnik tone, a little young angry men [in English in original] tendency of the magazine. This resulted in adopting an ill-defined aesthetic position. When you read Lunes de Revolución every week, you could see that it was constantly swinging between a promarxist or philomarxist position and a frankly existentialist one, and, finally, that its commitment was to follow the latest fad adopted by rebel groups from abroad. Naturally, it is one thing to be rebellious and another to be a revolutionary. They are two different things. The rebel is, in general, an individualistic type that takes position against this and that, a sniper who does not rely on a firm conception of the world and, above all, who does not act in concert with a mass movement. Contrastingly, the revolutionary is part of revolutionary organizations, with a firm and absolutely scientific conception of the world, and moves forward towards the radical transformation of a whole system of life. The contrast is quite large.76

In this quote a situation of fairly limited pluralism in the journal is treated as incoherence. Lunes certainly considered itself as revolutionary but its very

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relative autonomy was suspect. To be a revolutionary in official Cuba is to follow the government line, no discussion. This attitude started to change during the 1980s, especially in the subfield of visual arts. Since the 1990s the most common disposition in the field of cultural production is no longer to be the mouthpiece of the regime. The new mission is to engage somewhat critically with some of the issues Cubans are dealing with, within the parameters but sometimes with a desire to test the secondary parameters and expand the “space” for free expression. With a delay of about a quarter of a century, some Cuban writers and artists finally accepted, apprehensively, the mission that other Latin American writers and artists gave themselves back in the 1960s, becoming, par défaut, the voice of the voiceless, the critical conscience of Cuban society. Interestingly, this happened precisely at the time when other Latin American countries underwent their transition to democracy, and therefore when “intellectuals” could no longer self-appoint themselves to speak for the masses. Cuban writers and artists living on the island still have a long way to go before they reach the level of intellectual independence and eagerness to skewer dominant views and institutions of their Latin American and Caribbean counterparts. In one of the most convincing analyses of the cultural field as a cradle of independent thinking and budding resistance to officialdom, sociologist Sujantha Fernandes writes: “With formal political activities prohibited, critical debate began to be relegated to the sphere of arts and culture, where, perhaps surprisingly, the state tolerated greater diversity and freedom of cultural expression.”77 She examines what she calls the semi-autonomous “artistic public sphere,” where artists can “negotiate with the state” and make gains unobtainable to other non-state agents. In doing so, they not only “amplify the scope of what is possible in cultural politics”; they also “help[s] to delineate the boundaries of what is officially permissible” in the polity as a whole.78 Cultural policy is about more than “culture” narrowly defined: it concerns public expression more generally and affects the legitimacy and sustainability of a regime that, at least nominally, presents itself as the avant-garde of a genuine cultural revolution. After the late 1990s, she argues, “there were increasing attempts to use the arts as a way of reincorporating and reintegrating the Cuban people into a new hegemonic project.”79 Fernandes’ interpretation is interesting but it underestimates the possibility that selectively liberalizing the cultural field, within uncodified but generally well-understood limits, can serve the best interests of authoritarian rulers. This is better understood by Marie-Laure Geoffray, who writes about “a game in which the regime tries to control and monitor more ‘liberal’ spaces, and in which the protagonists of those spaces have understood that they can play with borders and therefore constantly try to expand the spaces they have managed to create.”80 Both Fernandes and Geoffray take too lightly the



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willingness of most cultural actors to “stay in the game,” to be recognized, to participate, even to contribute to the machinery of censorship.81 The concept of recognition, as in the quest for recognition by writers and artists, allows us to see beyond the theorem “pressure for space versus resistance” and include this third element, arguably at least as important as the critical disposition. If creative activities of the mind tend to generate, at least potentially, counter-discourses on established norms and institutions, are they not also affected by a human disposition to be recognized by society for what one does? As a good student of Hegel, Francis Fukuyama wrote, “What truly satisfies human beings is not so much material property as recognition of their status and dignity.”82 This is conceivably true, even truer for cultural actors since their status is almost entirely determined by recognition by peers, the market and the relevant authority. Under a dictatorship, recognition of some sort by the state is a sine qua non condition for existence as cultural actor. If one looks at twentiethcentury totalitarian regimes, one finds writers and artists pushing for more freedom but also striving to be recognized by the powerful. In The Rest is Noise, Alex Ross discusses numerous cases of artists who desperately sought to be recognized and respected by totalitarian regimes. For instance, Russian-French-American composer, pianist, and conductor Igor Stravinsky, “who had yet to acquire the more or less liberal views that he would boast in America, grumbled back in 1933 that he was being unfairly neglected in the new Germany, in spite of his ‘negative attitude toward Communism and Judaism … not to put it in stronger terms.’”83 Ross points out that avant-garde composer Alban Berg “lacked sympathy for Hitler’s program, but he was not above tailoring his résumé in order to meet Nazi requirements.” According to Ross, “in 1933 he discussed the challenges of the new German marketplace with his pupil [Theodor W.] Adorno, who himself had no desire to leave Germany, despite his partly Jewish background. Adorno advised Berg to advertise his pure Aryan origins to the Reich Music Chamber, and also to distance himself from any notion of Jewish solidarity, ‘about which one can have so few illusions.’”84 According to historian Richard Overy, “most cultural producers in Germany and the Soviet Union continued to write, paint, carve or compose within the parameters of form and content permitted. Most of those who chose not to do so went voluntarily into exile.”85 About East Germany, Robert Darnton concludes: “the writers who remained never abandoned their socialist convictions. Despite the recurrent episodes of repression, they generally held on to their determination to work within the system.”86 Talking about the very interesting case of Wolfgang Hilbig, a poet and, from the West’s perspective, a “dissident,” whose work became the object of debates within the cultural bureaucracy of the GDR about the limit of permissiveness, Darnton

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writes: “The Hilbig affair, and all the others that appear in the archives, did not involve any opposition to socialist principles, government policy, or Party leaders. Like all the authors labeled in the West as dissidents, Hilbig tried to work within the system until he reached a breaking point; and even when he published his work in West Germany, he did not reject the fundamental ideals of the GDR.”87 Similarly, historian Tony Judt has this to say about Italian artists under Mussolini: Inevitably, many Italian intellectuals (especially younger ones) had accepted support and subsidies from the Fascist state: the alternative was exile or silence. Elio Vittorini himself had won prizes in Fascist literary competitions. Vittorio de Sica was a well-known actor in Fascist-era films before becoming the leading exponent of post-war Neo-Realism. His fellow Neo-Realist director Roberto Rossellini, whose post-war films were distinctly Communist in their political sympathies, had just a few years before made documentaries and feature films in Mussolini’s Italy with help from the authorities, and his was not an isolated case. By 1943 Mussolini’s rule was the normal order of things for the many millions of Italians who had no adult memory of any other peacetime government.88

Universities require freedom of inquiry to function normally, but these medieval institutions have also proven to be remarkably adaptable, including to dictatorial rule. As Michael Grüttner writes in a conclusion to a collection of essays on Universities under Dictatorship: “Universities were undoubtedly victims, for they suffered from purges, the destruction of traditional structures, and the loss of autonomy. But they were also in many cases pillars of the regime and beneficiaries who knew how to use the new political situation to promote their own interests and to accentuate their indispensability.”89 Grüttner points out that it would be “quite wrong to assume that twentieth-century students as such were antidictatorial in general. In the period between the two world wars students spearheaded fascist opposition movements in many European countries—not only in Italy, Germany, and Spain, but also in Portugal and Rumania.”90 Throughout the twentieth century, concludes Grüttner, “the idea that intellectuals resist dictatorship because they suffer from dictatorship has repeatedly proved an illusion. Motivations for ‘the treason of the clerks’ (Julien Benda) varied. Alongside occasional ideological agreement and frequent career aspiration stood the expectation that one’s own research would profit. Others hoped to take leading roles in the new system.”91 One could also look at the odd case of artists or writers who censured their own work in order to please a government from another country, as Chilean poet Pablo Neruda did to better fit in Stalin’s Russia.92 The cultural actors’ quest for recognition by the state can be reconciled with efforts to be recognized by fellow artists, writers and academics if many



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of them are enthusiastically supporting the regime in place—as was apparently the case in Cuba during at least the early 1960s—or if they stop short of offering enthusiastic support but refrain from any overt form of opposition. In Romania under dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu (from 1974 to 1989), a strategy called “resistance through culture” allowed “intellectuals” to investigate the classics of literature and philosophy, sometimes with veiled criticism of the status quo, with the tacit approval of the political leadership.93 After the downfall of the regime Romanians were to be informed that the country was full of what Lavinia Stan calls “passive opponents,” who could now pretend that they “resisted” the dictatorship.94 In countries ruled by dictatorial regimes, groups and individuals either (1) toe the line; (2) voice criticism only at the right time and the right place; (3) voice criticism any other time and suffer the consequences (harassment, loss of privileges, marginalization, internal exile or imprisonment); or (4) “exit” the country,95 an option that many scholars, writers and artists choose in Castro’s Cuba.96 When one focuses on writers, artists and academics who lived and who are still living in Cuba, and who have opted for options 1 to 3, one is taking out of the equation hundreds of other members of the Cuban “nation” who have chosen to live abroad and who typically have much more critical views of the Cuban regime.97 Actors who live under dictatorships (and not only the cultural types) may seem more risk averse and conservative to observers because the more critical ones are abroad, in jail or in the cemetery. As was mentioned earlier, roughly 15 percent of the Cuban “nation” lives in exile. That is an impressive fact in itself. What government, including democratic ones, couldn’t stay in power for a long time if it could export such a big chunk of its opposition? PARAMETERS AT WORK Interviews with “rehabilitated” Cuban artists and writers provide interesting illustrations of how parameters are dealt with in contemporary Cuba. One can look, for instance, at a collection of interviews realized in Cuba, with the help of UNEAC, by Canadian professor John M. Kirk and Cuban writer Leonardo Padura Fuentes.98 The “stars interviewed belong to the Cuban cultural ‘establishment’ in that they enjoy support, prestige, and official recognition.”99 However, many “have suffered censorship, and some have been persecuted.” They have suffered various degree of censorship and also vary in terms of how reconciled they now are with the regime. In any case, the readers of Kirk and Padura’s collection should make no mistake: “without exception, all expressed their belief that the situation for intellectuals had improved in recent years.”100 Padura admits that “None of this means that the traditional

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phenomena of censorship and self-censorship have disappeared from Cuba. The freedom for all cultural figures on the island, as Antón Arrufat explained, is conditioned by the political and social reality of the country.”101 Here the word “reality” seems to suggest life’s contingencies or objective limitations, not political will. Silvio Rodríguez (1946–) recalls how silly it was to have been personally censored, in the early 1960s, for publicly expressing admiration for the Beatles. We are told that the main culprit—a single individual named Alberto Batista—now lives in Miami. What really bothered Rodríguez was not the interdiction to sing: it was the accusation that he had nothing to do with the revolution: “I was mad, really mad, because nobody—absolutely nobody— had the right to exclude me from the revolution.”102 About the present (the book was published in 2001) he deplored “the lack of communication and of information in Cuba” and the lack of “freedom.” It is worth recalling that in March 2010, Rodríguez suggested that the “r” of revolution should be dropped, that an “evolution” was now in order. It is a very “revolutionary” perspective in a country like Cuba to renounce the “r.” Nevertheless, his comments remained vague, the “evolution” appearing to be mean extending the revolution. In February 2008, he made waves by calling for greater freedom to travel. As the most famous singer of the Nova Trova and probably Cuba’s most famous cultural ambassador in Latin America, no doubt he can afford a bit more space than the ordinary “cultural worker.” Most significant, the other famous Trovador, Pablo Milanés, made critical comments around the same time while performing in Spain. He said “one must condemn [the government] from the human perspective if [dissident Guillermo] Fariñas dies [in hunger strike].”103 Milanés, who was briefly a victim of the labor camps in the 1960s, affirmed that “ideas must be discussed and engaged in battles of ideas, they should not be incarcerated.”104 Affirmations such as these are not explicit challenges to the primary parameters but they are still meaningful in a country like Cuba. The case of Antón Arrufat (1935– ) is well known. For many years he was prevented from publishing and sent to work at the municipal library in a suburb of Havana, where he was not allowed to receive visitors or messages or to write. This lasted nine years. Then, he “wrote a letter to Fidel.” Twenty-two days later he got a reply and a job as editor of the magazine Revolución y Cultura, though he could not publish for one more year. In 1981 his novel La caja está cerrada was published in Cuba. As he puts it: “My rehabilitation had begun, and it has continued to this day.” He was awarded the Carpentier Prize by the Cuban government at the Ninth International Havana Book Fair in February 2000. Arrufat recalls “in my case no leaders ever told me why they objected to my work. Instead, they broke all communication with [Heberto] Padilla and with me. There was never the slightest



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effort at conversation or negotiation. Not even the slightest lobbying. It was simply conveyed to us that we had committed an error and that they had to punish us, making an example of us as a warning to others.”105 Asked if he ever received an apology: “Here in Cuba, errors are rectified in silence.” Then he puts a lid on it: “Without a doubt, the matter has been rectified. After the Ministry of Culture was founded, things improved under Armando Hart. Some matters became more flexible, more intelligent. I was slowly rehabilitated, I started to publish, they gave me several awards, and I was allowed to travel abroad again.”106 In an interview published in 1981 Arrufat remains silent on his years of persecution, limiting himself to say: “If there have been misunderstandings between the Revolution and I, these misunderstandings have not led either of us to a complete separation.”107 Pablo Armando Fernández, ex-coeditor of Lunes de Revolución and editor of the UNEAC magazine Unión (1987–94), won the National Prize for Culture in 1981, the Critics’ Prize for Campo de amor y batalla in 1985 and Cuba’s 1996 National Prize for Literature. The editors point out that “for almost three decades he was one of the black sheep of the Cuban cultural fold. He was savagely attacked by the cultural commissars, who forced him to work for nine years in a printing press. Then they refused to publish his work for fourteen years and would not allow him to leave the island for another thirteen years.”108 Fernández’s overall assessment remains tame: “After all that I’ve been through, I think I have the right to publish a book entitled ‘The Book of Infamy.’ It would not be fair to do so, however, because these events have nothing to do with the revolution per se.”109 Censorship does not exist today in Cuba “anymore,” in his view. Then he proceeds to attack what he calls “literature of exile.” Nancy Morejón, the Afro-Cuban “poetess of the revolution” with top positions in the cultural institutions of the regime (like Casa de las Américas and UNEAC), hardly sees any problem in the cultural field except for the fact that bookstores do not have a special stand to display books (such as hers) that received prizes.110 And yet, she too was parametrada in the 1960s. She has good things to say about Heberto Padilla the poet but as an individual he lacked “maturity” (very much part of the official position on Padilla). Errors were committed on both sides. She adopts the official line on freedom: “I feel that Cuban writers today are demanding things that simply cannot be conceded in a period like this. . . . Moreover, ‘freedom’ has many facets, and many people think that they have to make demands on the state for their freedom.”111 Roberto Fernández Retamar is director of Casa de las Américas and the Center for Martí studies, as well as a member of the National Assembly and the Council of State. He was nominated as the first secretary of UNEAC in 1961. He won the National Prize for Literature in Cuba and an award from the Latin

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American Studies Association in 2008. Retamar is as “official” an intellectual as one can be in Cuba. He too admits that “errors” were committed in the past, for instance, in the government’s “hostility” toward homosexuals, though in his view this problem was not “invented by the revolution.” Lunes de Revolución was “in the hands of a person [Carlos Franqui] who, despite literary ability, was profoundly disturbed. He was also a professional liar, as can be seen in his nonliterary texts.”112 After roundly attacking Padilla, he admits that the affair should have been “handled with more tact.”113 This view, also found in Alfredo Guevara’s memoirs, is part of the official position on Padilla and the “affair.” Film director Fernando Pérez denies that there were ever “parameters” to be mindful of at the ICAIC, but then qualifies: “I believe that the press, television, and radio, as mass media, are subject to a form of control that is much stronger than we face in the cinema, theater, literature, and other arts.” He adds: “That is not to say that everything is ideal with cinema. The most serious problems that have arisen have to do with showing films. ICAIC has occasionally come up against restrictions on the showing of certain films. Moreover, in those areas of the country that have to do with cultural matters, other approaches—often held by far more conservative bureaucrats—have at times considered films as being inappropriate.”114 He gives the example of the critically acclaimed film Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas, but adds: Before that however, there was a film called Techo de vidrio (Glass Roof), which was filmed in the 1980s by Sergio Giral, a Cuban director who later left for the United States. His film deals with the theme of a bureaucrat who commits acts of corruption. At that time, such topic was unheard of. And so, when it came time to show the film, it was decided by the bureaucrats that it was not appropriate to do so.115

He talks about Alicia and deplore the way it was “handled.” The film was denounced as “counterrevolutionary”: A press campaign was unleashed in which film critics did not participate. Rather, there were other journalists who led a violent and, I believe, inappropriate attack on the film. […] All of this provoked a crisis between those working in the film industry and those levels of the government with whom we disagreed about the film. Indeed, things reached such a point that the very existence of ICAIC as an institution was in danger.116

As usual, mistakes were committed in the past by bad apples; censorship does not exist except when it does; and the present is better than the past. The literature on the cultural scene during the 1990s never fail to mention the importance of Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s movie Fresa y chocolate (1994), based on Senel Paz’s short story  El Lobo, el bosque y el hombre nuevo (1990), as a breakthrough. It openly and critically deals with the controversial



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issue of homophobia in Cuba. The movie is invariably presented, even by a Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, as the evidence of liberalization of culture in Cuba during the 1990s. The film was definitely a sign of progress in Cuba, but one should remember that Gutiérrez Alea uncommonly met both conditions for getting a bit more space within the cultural field: he was internationally renowned, and enjoyed Fidel’s personal recognition. In dictatorial regimes, the political is personal.117 Furthermore, the movie itself meets an important condition: the action takes place during the 1970s, so it denounces past errors. Gutiérrez Alea, who was never a member of the PCC, always said that he was neither a counterrevolutionary nor a dissident.118 Asked what can be done to address the irremediable “crisis” he sees looming in the country, he answered like a teen in a beauty contest: “Well, a situation of crisis sometimes generates a reaction, an answer. I believe that the only way to overcome it would be—and perhaps I am responding to a very idealistic Christian sentiment— through understanding and love between men [sic].”119 Fresa y chocolate was apparently shown on Cuban television only once since 1995, by one local TV network. Meanwhile, since the first case of censorship against PM in 1961, many films were partially or totally censored. Among the known cases one can include El Bautizo (Roberto Fandiño, 1967), La ausencia (Alberto Roldán, 1968), Tránsito (1964), La jaula (Sergio Giral, 1964), Un día en el solar (1965), El huésped (1966), Una pelea cubana contra los demonios (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1971), Hasta cierto punto (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, 1983), Techo de vidrio (Sergio Giral, 1982), Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (Daniel Díaz Torres, 1991), Un día de noviembre (Humberto Solás, 1992), Cerrado por reformas (Orlando Rojas, 1995), Monte Rouge (Eduardo del Llano, 2004), the series Crematorio (Juan Carlos Cremata, 2013) and most recently Santa y Andrés (Carlos Lechuga, 2016), which examines homophobia and political intolerance during the 1970s, something usually permitted within the secondary parameters, though this time Lechuga went farther and deeper in his critique than Gutiérrez Alea did.120 Documentaries were also targeted, like Despertar (Ricardo Fegueredo, 2012) and La vaca de mármol (Enrique Colina, 2013).121 In 2011, visual artist Pedro Pablo Oliva, winner of the National Arts Award in 2006, publicly stated his preference for a multiparty system on Yoani Sánchez’s blog and in a television interview in Miami. This comes close to crossing the line of the primary parameters. With this intervention he instantly (though maybe not permanently) became persona non grata in the art establishment. He was stripped of his position in the Provincial Assembly of People’s Power (mostly an honorific position). More importantly, he had to close his popular art workshop. As his case became well known in Cuba and abroad, he received some support from fellow artists, from the vice-minister

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of culture (Fernando Rojas) and from the Union of Young Communist’s newspaper Juventud Rebelde.122 The government tried not to provoke a complete and spectacular rupture with a prominent and much loved artist from Pinar del Rio. On his blog, Oliva insisted that he supports the Revolution, that he is not a dissident and never accepted support from abroad.123 All he wanted was the right to express his views, which he obviously thought was his natural right “within the Revolution”. In September 2014, censorship struck Oliva again. This time the president of the CNAP (Rubén del Valle) came in person to announce the “decision” made (typically, Oliva is not told by whom) to cancel his upcoming exhibition Utopías y disidencias. Del Valle was sad to say that “The current context … did not guarantee favorable conditions from a point of view that was emphasized as subjective.” Oliva’s public declaration on the episode is revelatory: “I wonder if this is not another sign of the need to change our cultural policies.”124 As if the government’s assault on freedom of expression could be addressed by fine-tuning cultural policy! As Fidel Castro said in “Words to Intellectuals,” to explain the principle of “within/against” the regime: “This is a general principle for all citizens.” In 2013, the leader of the Cuban jazz-fusion combo Interactivo Robertico Carcassés improvised lyrics calling for “direct presidential elections,” “freedom of information” and “the end of the blockade and the auto-blockade” during a televised concert in front of the US Interests Section in Havana. Cuban officials suspended Carcassés from performing on the island “indefinitely,” but he was not incarcerated, perhaps because other musicians, including Silvio Rodríguez, publicly defended him. Geoffray wrote “The fact that singer Robertico Carcassés voiced criticisms of the Cuban political system during an open air concert on 13 September, 2013, in favor of four Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States, clearly shows that there is a shift in discursive norms as far as criticism. Moreover, the fact that Cuban authorities did not really sanction the singer (a few threats of censorship) also demonstrates that such criticism has become more tolerated (thus blurring the distinction made by Grenier between first and secondary parameters).”125 Indeed, Carcassés’s criticism was bold, considering where and when it happened, even when weighted against his declaration on not being a “dissident” and condemning both the US “blockade” and the incarceration of the five “heroes.” Other members of the music establishment made public comments about the need for change in Cuba over the past few years: Rodríguez himself, Pablo Milanés, and Carlos Varela, to name a few. But irreverence toward officialdom is much more common in the fringe of the music industry in Cuba: rappers, reggaeton, hip-hop and punk rock artists more or less marginalized or persecuted by the government, like Ruben Cuesta Palomo, aka “Candyman”; Maikel Castillo Pérez, aka Oksobo “El Dkano”; José Manuel



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Borlo aka “Mucho Manolo”; or Gorki Aguila.126 According to the 2015 Freemuse Annual Statistics on artistic freedom, In April 2015 a group of Cuban hip-hop artists were expelled from the Cuban Rap Agency (ACR). In an open letter sent out on 28 June 2015, the group denounced Minister of Culture Julián González Toledo for deteriorating Cuban hip-hop both inside and outside the country. The group also said that the Cuban Institute of Music made “promises that never came true,” and that Cuban hip-hop is being censored more than ever. Some of the artists stated that the real reason of their expulsion was their participation in Panama in the Summit of the Americas, a set of international summits organized by the Organization of the American States bringing together leaders of countries in the Americas. The hip-hop artists who participated in the summit were Soandry, Hermanos de Causa, Renovación Urbana, Maikel y El Fonky, La Alianza, Raudel Escuadrón Patriota, Ruta 11, Bárbaro el Urbano, Charly Mucha Rima, Cuentas Claras, Carlitos P and P, Yimi con Klase, and Onda Libre.127

In fact, music being the most popular art form in Cuba, singers and musicians are probably best positioned in the cultural field to act as agents of change in the country. It is also more delicate to censure or imprison a truly popular artist, especially if she continues to identify with the “revolution,” condemns the US embargo and subscribes to an official campaign such as the one on the “Cuban five.” Geoffray has a point, but she should not forget that he was censured and that like Gutiérrez Alea, his profile gives him some privileges. Another interesting source of insight is the so-called “emails war,” that is, the exchange of heated emails among Cuban cultural actors, in January and February 2007, in reaction to the appearance on television of several infamous cultural commissars from the seventies (Luis Pavón Tamayo, Armando Quesada and Jorge “Papito” Serguera), especially Pavón (the “five gray years” are often referred to as the “Pavonato”).128 After a relatively free exchange of emails among individuals who had access to intranet or Internet (which is to say a fairly small group of well-positioned intellectuals), a group that soon included some members of the diaspora, the government had to react. Government institutions (Ministry of Culture, ICAIC, Casa de las Américas) and the Centro Teórico-Cultural Criterios successfully contained and defused the crisis when they channeled the discontent toward closely monitored conferences. The emails were eventually published on the website Consenso, but the affair was basically ignored in the Cuban media. Institutions like ICRT and UNEAC vaguely granted that some errors had been committed, but were more forthcoming in reaffirming, to use the words of the ICRT declaration, that “we will not be divided neither by the errors nor by those who want to take advantage of them to damage the Revolution. The

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Martian, anti-dogmatic, creative and participatory cultural policy of Fidel and Raúl, instituted with ‘Words to the intellectuals,’ is irreversible.”129 The discussion in and around this email exchange basically focused on the mistakes of the past and the desire not to repeat them.130 To strike a careful balance between admitting some errors and salvaging the cultural policy (not to mention the political leadership) the regime leaned on mildly critical but reliable intellectuals like Ambrosio Fornet and Desiderio Navarro. In a long statement about the errors committed in the area of cultural policy during the “Five Grey years” (an expression he coined), Ambrosio Fornet mentions Fidel Castro’s “Words to Intellectuals” as “fortunately” the “main organizing principle of our cultural policy” over the past decades, “except during the dramatic interregnum of the pavonato.”131 Fornet talks about the First National Congress of Education and Culture (April 23–30, 1971) and about a Commission of that Congress as a turning point that allowed a certain faction to take over most of the cultural field, with only a few organizations like UNEAC and ICAIC preserving some autonomy. For Fornet the nightmare ended on November 30, 1976, when the new Ministry of Culture was created and Armando Hart became minister. Desiderio Navarro goes a bit farther: In my article, “In media res publicas” I have talked about the responsibility of politicians and the limitations of the critical role of the intellectual–above all in the years in which culture was conducted by Luis Pavón–but this is only half the problem. The other half–worthy of another article–is the responsibility of the intellectuals: without the silence and passivity of almost all of them (not to mention the complicity and opportunism of more than a few) the “Five Grey Years” or the “Pavonato,” as many now call it, would not have been possible, or, in any case, would not have been possible with the great destructiveness it had.132

He suggestively raises the question of why “at just this singular moment in the history of our country when all our people hang on the convalescence of the Commander-in-Chief, is this sudden and glorious media resurrection of Luis Pavon produced?” In other words, not only is Fidel innocent of the Pavonato, as if he had been out of the country from 1971 to 1976: now adversaries within the field take advantage of his convalescence to bring back deposed bureaucrats.133 At least two lessons can be drawn from the “wars of the emails.” First, cultural actors (mostly writers) reacted to the possible return of a group that had officially been repudiated. They were shocked because, as Ponte puts it, the government-controlled Cuban television was breaking “the agreement of silence.”134 In that sense, even though this mini-revolt was highly unusual and noteworthy, the participants’ reaction was literally conservative. Second, the crisis was easily contained, as actors seemed disposed to



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think of it as an internal conflict within the politico-cultural field, without questioning the political leadership. Pavonismo is just Pavonismo: a misadventure for which Pavón and bureaucrats of his ilk are entirely responsible.135 The fact that Pavón received his orders directly from Raúl was not and could not be mentioned in the discussion. This is how, as writer and art critic Orlando Hernández quipped, the “collective catharsis of a minority” became the “ridiculous complaints and suggestions box of the ministry of culture.”136 A more recent case of robust exchanges of views on cultural policy and censorship, this time involving a less submissive group of cultural actors (filmmakers and playwrights), illustrate how protest can be expressed within the parameters. In June 2015 an adaptation of Eugène Ionesco’s play “Exit the King” by filmmaker and playwright Juan Carlos Cremata was withdrawn after a few presentations. The resemblance between the king and Fidel or Raúl was too obvious.137 Cremata vehemently protested, in a scathing response to a spokesperson of the National Council of Performing Arts (Andy Arencibia Concepción), who explained the Council’s decision to “suspend” the play.138 Cremata was censured before (e.g., his adaptation of Rogelio Orizondo’s play La hijastra in 2012) and he figured “this time they went too far.”139 Cremata signals that La hijastra was censured for examining a problem (the “social indiscipline”) that Raúl Castro himself mentioned publicly a few months later. “Raul could say it in his speech, but the theater could not. We were not allowed to talk about it. Raul was applauded, of course. Who dares to contradict him?” He uses bold language: In the name of a “national socialism” we are restrained, repressed, sanctioned, gagged, run over and hidden. That is fascism all the way. Pure. Absolute and integral. The same kind that burned books and stigmatized races, sexes, colors and even thoughts or ways of being. And it is also apartheid. […] My “politically incorrect” steps in cinema are not well regarded by the nomenklatura and by the opportunistic, lackluster, and mediocre bureaucracy that calls the tune these days.140

Tough words, but again, who is at fault? Mostly, bureaucrats, who block artists from emulating Raúl’s policy. It is not clear who he means by “nomenklatura.” In any case, the situation was bad enough for him to lose his professional accreditation in September. On October 30, 2015, filmmaker Enrique Colina published (on the Internet) a letter against censorship, focusing on the Cremata case.141 He does not mince words either, talking about “artistic censorship practiced in Cuba during these fifty-six years” rather than referring to the usual “five” years of forty years ago. This mindset is in full display in his denunciation of “Ukases and bureaucratic diktats”: “Recently

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and in contradiction to the appeal made by the highest level of government to examine reality with critical sense, honesty and ethical commitment, recognizing that unanimity of criteria is a fallacy of simulation, attacks have been launched against a writer.” Here he is talking about writer Leonardo Padura and the censorship of the film (Return to Ithaca) based on his script. Again, “The highest instance of government” is right. Whether the intellectuals and artists involved in these and similar episodes truly believe that political leaders and the regime in place are never responsible for acts of censorship and repression, one cannot be entirely sure. But this is clearly a pattern that was established in the early days of the regime.142 This kind of mindset is far from being specific to Cuba: it is in fact a common feature of dictatorial regimes. In his essay on “King of Kings, Elect of God, Lion of Judah, His Most Puissant Majesty and Distinguished Highness the Emperor of Ethiopia,” Haile Selassie (1892–1975), Polish reporter and writer Ryszard Kapuściński makes a point that is central to my claim: policy mistakes are never blamed on the emperor, in fact the dominant narrative is always that bad decisions are made behind the emperor’s back. Kapuściński calls this “magical thinking.” This passage is worth quoting at length: The magical aspect is that the highest one is endowed, often unconsciously, with divine characteristics. The supreme one is wise and noble, unblemished and kindly. Only the dignitaries are bad; they cause all the misery. Moreover, if the one on the top knew what his people were up to, he would immediately repair the damage and life would be better. Unfortunately, these crafty villains pull the wool over their master’s eyes, and that is why life is so hard, so low and miserable. This is magical thinking because, in reality, in an autocratic system it is precisely the one on the top who is the primary cause of what happens. He knows what is going on, and if he doesn’t know, it’s because he doesn’t want to know. It was no accident that the majority of the people around the Emperor were mean and servile. Meanness and servility were the conditions of ennoblement, the criteria by which the monarch chose his favorites, rewarded them, bestowed privileges on them. Not one step was taken, not one word said, without his knowledge and consent. Everyone spoke with his voice, even if they said diverse things, because he himself said diverse things. The condition for remaining in the Emperor’s circle was practicing the cult of the Emperor, and whoever grew weak and lost eagerness in the practice of this cult lost his place, dropped out, disappeared. Haile Selassie lived among shadows of himself, for what was the imperial suite if not a multiplication of the Emperor’s shadow? Who were gentlemen like Aklilu, Gebre-Egzy, Admassu Retta, aside from being H.S.’s ministers? Nobodies. But it was precisely such people the Emperor wanted around him. Only they could satisfy his vanity, his self-love, his passion for the stage and the mirror, for gestures and the pedestal.143



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The failure (or the impossibility) to address the central issue of all policies in Cuba (Fidel and Raul’s power) leaves only one more option to explain problems (in addition to blaming bureaucrats), one that is encouraged: selfcriticism. For instance, in an interview published in 1997 author Senel Paz deplores the lack of criticism in Cuba but adds: “we revolutionaries don’t always know how to debate among ourselves, so what should be a discussion of ideas, a polemic, is often simplified, vulgarized, and turned into a confrontation, sometimes even becoming a race to see who can first accuse the other of being a counterrevolutionary.”144 He continues: “I believe we are much freer than we often think we are and that we should start to demonstrate this to ourselves.”145 Then he identifies the problem as “not so much a problem of literature and art as one of cultural politics, that is, a political problem.” He blames “politicians” for “mistakes” made but adds that “luckily this is all water under the bridge for today’s writers, who feel no resentment or animosity.”146 Typically, mistakes were made in the past and “politicians” do not refer to the only politician that matters in the country, but to public officials who come and go and have no lasting authority of their own. The point to be made is not that writers and artists ought to be (or secretly are) hostile to the regime, and that any other position is necessarily inauthentic and a product of duplicity and oppression. The claim is more modest but more solid analytically. It is that in any serious examination of cultural policy and intellectual life in Cuba, it takes a huge detour to avoid talking about who is ultimately responsible for making decisions in the country. “Who you know” can only be evoked as an eternal source of greatness. NOTES 1. Twenty years ago, Cuban author Manuel Díaz Martínez wrote: “In Cuba, a policeman is assigned to every writer or artist of some significance, a ‘psychiatrist,’ a kind of at-home confessor, usually with a degree of lieutenant, who watches, analyzes and guides his sheep to protect it from the charm of the counterrevolutionary wolf. From time to time, this ‘brother of the coast’—as we also call them—entrusts some simple mission to his pupil to prove his fidelity to the homeland, that is to say, to Fidel, as we all know.” It is still true today. Manuel Díaz Martínez, “La carta de los diez,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 2 (Fall 1996): 26. 2. Danilo Kiš, Homo Poeticus, Essays and Interviews, Foreword by Susan Sontag (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 90. In Cuba the Ministry of Culture and the artists and writers unions (UNEAC, ICAIC) play that kind of role in the system of surveillance. 3. Robert Darnton, Censors at Work, How States Shaped Literature (London and New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2014), 17. The concept is so slippery that it could become equivalent of social constraints and peer pressure. For a polemical

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illustration of this confusion, see Stanley Fish, There is No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing Too (Oxford University Press, 1994). 4. Darnton, Censors at Work, 243. 5. As Cuban (and censored) filmmaker Miguel Coyula said in a recent interview, in response to a question about censors and censorship, the problem is that the “censor who is at a lower level [...] is afraid of how that can be interpreted at a higher censorship level.” In “Miguel Coyula, el cineaste que no eiste,” Bach Media, online publication: http://bach.media/en/miguel-coyula-cineasta-no-existe/. Fear is key, but negotiations and compromise based on that fear are also an essential part of the modus vivendi in the cultural field. Miklós Haraszti says this about late communist cultural policy: “Today every artist is a minor politician of culture. We prepare our innovations so as to bid competitively for the creation of an official aesthetic. In our eyes the state represents not a monolithic body of rules but rather a live network of lobbies.” Haraszti, The Velvet Prison, 78. 6. Yvon Grenier, “The Politics of Culture in Cuba,” in Handbook of Contemporary Cuba: Economy, Politics, Civil Society and Globalization, vol.1, ed. Mauricio Font and Carlos Riobó (Boulder: Paradigm Press): 173–190. 7. Richard Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason, The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 183. 8. Régis Debray recounts how after listening to a speech by Fidel in 1966, Italian writer Alberto Moravia (1907–1990) exclaimed: “A true Mussolini!” Régis Debray, Praised be our Lords, the Autobiography. Trans John Howe (Verso, 2007): 83. 9. For Rojas, “The idea, so rooted in the mentality of the Cuban political class, that the Revolution is a state of permanent war against internal and external enemies, makes it virtually impossible for Cuba to foster a legal culture of opposition.” Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006), 387. 10. Closing speech by General Raúl Castro Ruz, First secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the State Council and the Council of Ministers, First National Conference of the Communist Party, Palacio de Convenciones, January 29, 2012. 11. Samuel Farber, Cuba since the Revolution of 1959, A Critical Assessment (Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books, 2011) 31. Farber is quoting from Luis Conte Aguero, 26 cartas del Presidio (Havana: Editorial Cuba, 1960), 73. 12. Farber, Cuba since the Revolution of 1959, 32, quoting from Tomás Borge, Un grano de maíz (Havana: Oficina de Publicaciones del Consejo de Estao, 192), 76. 13. Though he does not talk about the revolution as a “myth,” Rafael Rojas talks about the “saturación simbólica” of this concept in the past fifty years. Rafael Rojas, La máquina del olvido, Mito, historia y poder en Cuba (Mexico City: Taurus, 2012), 169. 14. To mention a few recent examples: Pierre Sean Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012); Soraya M. Castro and Ronald W. Pruessen, Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States and the World (University Press of Florida,



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2012); George Lambie, The Cuban Revolution in the 21st century (London ; New York : Pluto Press, 2010); Joaquín Roy, The Cuban Revolution (1959–2009): Relations with Spain, the European Union, and the United States (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Philip A. Brenner ed., Contemporary Cuba reader : reinventing the Revolution (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008). 15. A fascinating new book makes the case that violent events of various kind (war, revolution, state collapse, epidemics) is the only “great leveler” of inequalities because when the economy collapses, the rich lose the most. Reduction of inequalities in Cuba after the 1959 revolution was arguably caused by the civil war and the open season on productive forces, more than by successful social policies. See Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequalities from the StoneAge to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017). 16. As Raúl Castro said in his opening speech to the 6th congress of the CCP (April 2011): “The Communist Party of Cuba will be able to be, for all times, the worthy heir of the authority and unlimited confidence the people have in the Revolution and its only Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro Ruz, whose moral and indisputable leadership do not depend on any formal position.” 17. Fidel’s caudillism is mistaken for a healthy push back against “bureaucratization” in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 40. 18. Cécile Vaissié, Les ingénieurs des âmes en chef, littérature et politique en URSS (1944–1986) (Paris: Editions Bélin, 2008), 33. 19. Fidel Castro, “El hermano Obama,” www.granma.cu, March 29, 2019. 20. Antonio José Ponte, Villa Marista en plata, Arte, política, nuevas tecnologías (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2010), 74. 21. According to Eliseo Alberto, “During the winter of 1991 an ‘ideological cadre’ of the Communist Youth recommended to the editor-in-chief of a student tabloid that he did not publish the poem ‘Tengo’ by Guillen on the cover of the magazine, because it could lend himself to misunderstandings. In the poem, almost a hymn of revolutionary justice, the then National Poet said he was happy because he could already stay in a hotel room, without having to say yes [in English in original]. In 1991 Cubans banned us from accessing three–, four– or five–star hotels, reserved entirely for tourists with dollars in their pockets. The poem was not published.” Eliseo Alberto, Informe contra mi mismo (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1997), 129. 22. To offer a comparison: On August 10, 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Culture released a “blacklist” of 120 songs to be banned in the country. According to a Freemuse Report, “The “blacklist” seems to be very arbitrary. In some cases, a band with a blacklisted song can still perform at concerts, as long as they do not play that particular song; in other cases, bands are completely banned from performing altogether. The list not only includes Chinese artists, it includes songs from foreign artists as well. Although it remains a mystery exactly where the threshold is set for a band being partially or completely banned, there are some issues that are considered particular politically sensitive thus making them red flags for the “blacklist.” Foreign acts that publically support Free Tibet—an organization that campaigns for the freedom of Tibet and Tibetans—or Falun Gong—a spiritual practice considered illegal by Chinese authorities—are under no circumstances allowed to perform in mainland

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China. The list is also under constant revision. Bands and songs seem to be put on the list or removed ad hoc depending on the political situation in China.” Art under Threat, Freemuse Annual Statistics on Censorship and Attacks on Artistic Freedom in 2015. Available: http://artsfreedom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/FreemuseAnnual-Statistics-Art-Under-Threat-2015.pdf., 21. 23. In his memoirs Régis Debray, who was in Bolivia with Che Guevara, contends that with Fidel one can have a second chance, but not with Che, who “hammered himself and others with the same compulsive energy.” In Che’s utopia there is no secondary parameters. Debray, Praised Be Our Lords, 104–105. 24. This is a common theme in the novel of the special period. See Sonia Behar, La caída del hombre nuevo, narrativa cubana del período especial (New York: Peter Lang, 2009); Ariana Hernandez-Reguant, ed., Cuba in the Special Period: Culture and Ideology in the 1990s (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 25. Weppler-Grogan, “Cultural Policy,” 146. 26. Ambrosio Fornet, “Introduction,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 96, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 11. 27. Coincidentally, in a recent book on the Chinese’s “cultural revolution,” author Frank Dikotter calls the 1971–76 period the “grey years.” In The Cultural Revolution, A People’s History, 1962–1976 (Bloomsbury Press, 2016). 28. Esteban Morales Domínguez, “Et reto de la intelectualidad,” in his blog: http://www.estebanmoralesdominguez.blogspot.ca/, August 2, 2012. 29. These blogs compete with growing independent digital media, which are not legal and not readily accessible on the island because of limited Internet connections, but they are produced in Cuba and are likely to become more influential. 30. Hedrick Smith, The Russians (Ballantine Books, 1984), 520. 31. Antón Arrufat, “Pequeña profesión de fe,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 20 (Spring 2001): 5. 32. To offer a comparison: Hungarian Marxist philosopher György Lukács served as a minister in Imre Nagy’s anti-Soviet government (1953–55) until the Soviets suppressed it. “Although Nagy and others were secretly tried and executed, Lukács was eventually permitted to recant and to resume his philosophical work.” Darnton, Censors at Work, 193. 33. Ponte, Villa Marista en plata, 234. 34. Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression,” 128. 35. Marie-Laure Geoffray, “Transnational Dynamics of Contention in Contemporary Cuba,” Journal of Latin American Studies, (February 2015): 16. 36. Antonio Benítez-Rojo, Comments on Dopico Black’s “The Limits of Expression: Intellectual Freedom in Postrevolutionary Cuba,” Cuban Studies, no.20 (1990): 171–2, quoted in Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 296. 37. Elizabeth Mirabal Llorens y Carlos Velazco Fernández, “Una travesía desde los márgenes, entrevista a Arturo Arango,” Revolución y Cultura 4 (2009): 13. This is a rather candid statement from an occasionally dissonant Cuban intellectual. But again, it concerns errors committed in the past and the situation, we are told, has much improved. 38. Quoted in Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression,” 136. Former journalist for Granma Roberto Alvarez Quiñones makes a similar comment about censorship



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in the media: “There are visible MININT Counter-Intelligence Officers who control the movements and any unorthodox attitude of journalists and all staff in each media outlet, especially keeping an eye on relations with foreigners--the fellow who served Granma when I was there was called Denis and died recently--, but the regime’s leadership does not need censors because every journalist carries it inside like a chip inserted in his brain: self-censorship. Every Cuban communicator has on the floor an imaginary line that can never be crossed, if he wants to continue in the profession.” See excellent interview with Alvarez Quiñones: Jesús Hernández Cuellar, “Cuba, Autocensura y Desinformación, Diálogo con Ex Periodista de Granma,” Interview with, Contacto, http://www.contactomagazine.com/articulos/manipulaciondelainformacion0209.htm 39. Interview with Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression,” 133. 40. See for instance the series “Obedientes” by Samuel Riera. 41. The Cuban Penal Code is available online: http://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/laws/es/cu/cu004es.pdf. 42. For writer Wendy Guerra: “One of the ways Cuba’s socialist system has to disqualify you has always been to disappear your name.” Quoted in Jon Lee Anderson, “Private Eyes,” The New Yorker, October 21, 2013. 43. This book fair is an important cultural event in Cuba. According to official statistics, there were up to 2,270,223 visitors in 2014, with 1,124,982 books sold. Anuario Estadístico de Cuba, 2014, Cultura, Edición 2015, Oficina Nacional de Estadística e Información, p.13 44. Coco Fusco, Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (London: Tate Publishing, 2015), 22–23. Fusco also points out that “the Cuban legal definition of social dangerousness extends to those who associate with persons who have already been identified as undesirables: therefore, partaking in suspect art events and socialising with suspect persons implies a certain risk” (p.96). 45. After the incarceration of seventy-five peaceful human rights activists (fourtytwo of them part of the Varela Project) during the “Black Spring” of 2003, and in response to the international campaign of denunciation of this crackdown, two dozen of Cuban artists, writers and intellectuals signed a petition to defend the Castro regime, namely Alicia Alonso, Miguel Barnet, Leo Brouwer, Abelardo Estorino, Roberto Fabelo, Pablo Armando Fernández, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Julio García Espinosa, Fina García Marruz, Eusebio Leal, Nancy Morejón, Senel Paz, Silvio Rodríguez, and Chucho Valdés. In the Soviet Union, the fairly common practice of publicly and collectively attacking someone from inside the same social group, namely writers, was called “prorabotka.” Vaissié explains: “Everyone must publicly denounce the errors allegedly committed by a third party, overwhelm the blameworthy peer, in short uniting in a collective criticism to arrive at the final catharsis: the ‘culprit’ recognizes his mistakes and rolls himself in the mud before all, swearing he will never do that again.” She summarizes the process in four steps: “Sin—Confession—Atonement—Redemption.” See Cécile Vaissié, Les ingénieurs des âmes en chef, littérature et politique en URSS (1944–1986) (Paris: Editions Bélin, 2008), 56–57. 46. Tania Bruguera, “The Effort to Normalize Censorship in Cuba,” Blog #2, June 5, 2016, translated by Lissette Olivares. artivismo.org/blog.

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47. Bruguera, “The Effort to Normalize Censorship in Cuba”. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. See “Rafael Alcides renuncia a la UNEAC por obstáculos a la entrada de sus libros a Cuba,” El Diario de Cuba, July 2, 2014: http://www.diariodecuba.com/ cultura/1404334956_9336.html 52. Professor Kirk was awarded the Medalla de la Amistad (Friendship Award) by the Cuban Council of State in 2001, an honor he richly deserved. See Granma, December 2015, 2011, no. 349. 53. Kirk and Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, xxiv. 54. Alexandra Alter, “China’s Publishers Court America as Its Authors Scorn Censorship,” International New York Times, May 28, 2015. 55. Raúl publicly called for more critical media a few weeks after the “CEA case.” For Giuliano, this was perceived “As favorable comments to greater freedoms of expression, and conciliatory towards Cuba’s increasingly restive intelligentsia, in light of the resentment generated by the CEA Case” Maurizio Giuliano, El caso CEA: Intelectuales e inquisidores en Cuba. ¿Perestroika en la isla? (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998), 108. 56. In “Documentos fundamentales del IV Congreso de la Unión de escritores y artistas,” supplemento of La Gaceta de Cuba, March 1988, p.8. 57. Some say that Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, a (rare) personal friend of Fidel, had that kind of influence. See Angel Esteban and Stephanie Panichelli, Gabo y Fidel: el paisaje de una amistad (Madrid: Espasa, 2004). 58. For Rafael Rojas, “The amnesia that embodies the totalitarian order is equally reflected in the demolition of monuments of the old regime that in the consecration or casuistic restoration of some statues. The expulsion of Gastón Baquero, Lydia Cabrera, Jorge Mañach and Severo Sarduy from the literary community of the island in the 60s, 70s and 80s is as symptomatic of totalitarian amnesia as the ‘recovery’ of these four authors from the 1990s.” Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, 40. 59. Curiously, this practice is adopted by many foreign academics as well. For instance British cinema critic Michael Chanan always presents excesses by the regime as understandable errors given the context, whereas “liberal” opponents (“sorry rump of liberal”), like Heberto Padilla are “hysterical.” Padilla’s arrest and show trail is characterized as the “unfortunate events concerning the poet Heberto Padilla,” and selective use of quotations from Jorge Edwards are used to suggest Padilla was deranged. Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minesota Press, 2004), 312–313. 60. Quoted in Gerardo Arreola, “Silvio Rodríguez, contra prohibiciones en Cuba,” La Jornada (Mexico), February 6, 2008. 61. For George Steiner, “all serious art, music and literature is a critical act.” It is a “counter-statement to the world,” that involves “concentrated, selective interactions between the constraints of the observed and the boundless possibilities of the imagined.” George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 11. 62. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates proposes that “the first thing” to do is “establish a censorship of the writers of fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction



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which is good, and reject the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their children the authorized ones only. Let them fashion the mind with such tales, even more fondly than they mold the body with their hands; but most of those which are now in use must be discarded.” (The Republic, by Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. It is available online at guetenberg.org. But that edition lacks page numbers. The passage is found on p. 132 of a KayeDreams edition, dated 2009 available, at googlebooks. Spelling has been corrected for modern usage.) Quoted by Cuzán, “Totalitarianism in the Tropics,” 2. 63. For Haraszti: “Only since the middle of the last century has art been seen as synonymous with anti-authoritarianism. Only then did art become the recognized symbol of the protest of individual consciousness, questioning the order of the world.” Haraszti, The Velvet Prison, 13. 64. For a classic on the subject, see The God that Failed, A Confession, ed. by Richard Crossman (Harper and Brothers, 1949); also Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason. 65. Groys, Art, Power, 2. 66. See Hayden White, The Content of the Form, Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (London and Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1987). 67. Quoted in Wolin, The Seduction of Unreason, 112. 68. In 2010, the Iranian government “restricted the number of university students who would be admitted to programs in the humanities, because, according to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini, study of the humanities ‘promotes skepticism and doubt in religious principles and beliefs.’” Stephen Pinker, The Better Angels of our Nature (New York: Viking, 2011), 365. 69. For a classic on the mission and responsibilities of the intellectual in the time of wars and revolutions, see Albert Camus, L’homme révolté (Paris: Gallimard, 1951). 70. Lourdes Casal ed., El Caso Padilla: Literatura y Revolución en Cuba (New York: Ediciones Nueva Atlántida, 1971). 71. See William J. Dobson. The Dictator’s Learning Curve, Inside the Global Battle for Democracy (Anchor Books, 2012); and Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, Lucan, “The Rise of Competitive Authoritarianism,” Journal of Democracy 13, no.2 (2012): 51–65. 72. See for instance Claudia Gilman, Entre la pluma y el fusil, debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 2003). 73. Mario Vargas Llosa, “La literatura es fuego” (1967), reproduced in his collection of essays Contra Viento y Marea, 1 [1962–1972] (Barcelona: Seix Barral, 1986), 132–137; Carlos Fuentes, La nueva novela hispanoamericana (Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz, 1969). See also Maarten van Delden and Yvon Grenier, Gunshots at the Fiesta, Literature and Politics in Latin America (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009). 74. Roberto Fernández Retamar in “Diez años de Revolución: el intelectual y la sociedad,” Casa de las Américas 10, no.56 (1969): 7–52. For a convincing critical portrait of Retamar, see Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, 282–310. 75. Speech by Otero during the 4th congress of the UNEAC, in “Documentos fundamentales del IV Congreso de la Unión de escritores y artistas,” La Gaceta de Cuba (March 1988): 2.

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76. José A. Portuondo, Itinerario estético de la Revolución Cubana (La Habana: Letras Cubanas, 1979), 14. 77. Sujatha Fernandes, Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press, 2006), 40. 78. Fernandes, Cuba Represent, 151. 79. Ibid,40. 80. Geoffray, “Symbolic Emancipation in Authoritarian Cuba,” 13. 81. Antonio José Ponte, “Censura y G–20,” Diario de Cuba [digital], January 16, 2015. 82. Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (Free Press, 1999), 18. 83. Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise, Listening to the Twentieth Century (New York: Picador, 2007), 350–351. Ross mentions the interesting case of German composer Karl Amadeus Hartman, who he describes as “one lonely force of noncompliance” who “coded his music with messages of opposition.” He then shows that the “codes” were in fact “invisible to Munich Nazi operatives.” See also Michael H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1999). 84. Alex Ross, The Rest is Noise, 252. He also discusses cruder cases such as fellow Austrian composer Anton Webern, who “foresook his onetime socialist views to become an unashamed Hitler enthusiast,” and of course Richard Strauss, who served as president of the Reich Music Chamber from 1933 to 1935. 85. Richard Overy, The Dictators, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia (Allen Lane, 2004), 363. 86. Darnton, Censors at Work, 200. 87. Ibid, 176. 88. Tony Judt, Postwar, A History of Europe Since 1945 (Penguin, 2007), 209. 89. Michael Grüttner, “Concluding Reflections,” in John Connelly and Michael Grüttner ed., Universities under dictatorship (Penn State University Press, 2005), 295. 90. Grüttner, “Concluding Reflections,” 294–295. 91. Ibid 287–88. 92. As Patrick Iber writes: “As he traveled through the Soviet bloc, he pledged to reedit his old surrealist poetry, which many of his fellow writers most admired, because it employed forms that the bourgeoisie used to separate itself from the people artistically.” Patrick Iber, Neither Peace nor Freedom, The Cultural Cold War in Latin America (Harfard University Press, 2015), 74. 93. There was also “resistance through eating,” “resistance through humor,” “resistance through stocking” on scarcely available food … Lavinia Stan, “Women as Anticommunist Dissidents and Secret Police Collaborators,” in Florentina Andreescu and Michael Shapiro ed. Genre and the (Post) Communist Woman (London: Routledge, 2014), 86. 94. Stan, “Women as Anticommunist Dissidents,” 87. 95. Exile was not so common an option for Soviet writers and artists; suicide was more common than in Cuba, where suicide appeared to be more common among “revolutionary” politicians. See Cabrera Infante’s famous article “Entre la historia y



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la nada (Notas sobre una ideología del suicidio),” in his book Mea Cuba (Barcelona: Alfaguara, 1999): 157–205; as well as Louis A. Pérez, Jr. To Die in Cuba: Suicide and Society (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). 96. I am leaving aside an important dimension of life in non-democratic countries: the parallel life, the double-speak, the “shadow public” (the social equivalent of the “shadow economy”) and the “rumors” studied by authors like Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb, Marie-Laure Geoffray and Vincent Bloch. These phenomena are relevant to the study of parameters but in the private domain. One could also examine the phenomenon of “everyday forms of resistance” studied by James Scott, which also concerns the occupation of “space” tolerated by the regime or ignored because it falls under the radar of censorship and control. See Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb, Cuba in the Shadow of Change: Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revolution (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2009); Geoffray, “Symbolic Emancipation”; Vincent Bloch, Cuba, une révolution (Paris: Vendémiaire, 2016); James Scott, Weapons of the Weak, Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale University Press, 1987). 97. Here it is worth recalling that on January 13, 2017, the so-called “wet foot, dry foot” policy, which allowed Cubans who could reach American soil to stay and apply for permanent residency, was terminated by the departing Obama administration. 98. Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution. 99. Ibid, xvii. 100. Ibid, xxiii. 101. Leonardo Padura, “Epilogue: Living and Creating in Cuba, Risks and Challenges,” in Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, 183. 102. Quoted in Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, 10. 103. Guillermo Fariñas is a political dissident and Sakharov prize recipient who held two hunger strikes in 2006 and 2010, both to protest against the detention of prisoners of conscience. 104. Quoted in El Nuevo Herald (Miami), March 13, 2010. 105. Quoted in Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, 31. 106. Ibid, 33–34. 107. Arrufat in Emilio Bejel, Escribir en Cuba, Entrevistas con escritores cubanos, 1979–1989 (Río Piedras, Puerto Rico: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1991), 12. 108. Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, 78–79. 109. Ibid, 88. 110. Ibid, 111. 111. Ibid, 117. 112. Quoted in Kirk and Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, 127. 113. Ibid, 128. 114. Ibid, 162. 115. Ibid, 162–163. 116. Ibid, 162–163. 117. Hedrick Smith wrote that the mildly critical movie The Red Snowball Tree (1974) by Vasily Shukshin was released in the Soviet Union “because Brezhnev was moved to tears by it.” Smith, The Russians, 511.

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118. See “Tomás Gutiérrez Alea entrevisto por Michael Chanan” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 1 (Summer 1996): 76. 119. “Tomás Gutiérrez Alea entrevisto por Michael Chanan,” 76. For a convincing interpretation of the movie as a call for reconciliation with (and redemption of) the regime, see Enrico Mario Santí, “Reconciliación: fresa y chocolate” (1998), in his book Bienes del siglo, sobre cultura cubana (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2002), 296–312. 120. To justify the censorship of the film the director of ICAIC Roberto Smith had this to say: “The decision concerning the film is a matter of principle. Regardless of its artistic results and the possible intentions of its creators, the film presents an image of the Revolution that reduces it to an expression of intolerance and violence against culture, and it makes irresponsible use of our patriotic symbols and unacceptable references to comrade Fidel.” Cubanet, April 26, 2017. https://www.cubanet.org/ opiniones/la-censura-de-los-censurados/ 121. See Arturo Arias-Polo, “Cuba tiene una larga historia de censura al cine,” El Nuevo Herald, February 7, 2016. Accessed February 1, 2017: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/america-latina/cuba-es/article59224673.html. 122. See “El caso de Pedro Pablo Oliva abre un debate sobre la intolerancia en la isla,” Blog de Heriberto Leyva, June 2, 2011. https://heribertoleyva.wordpress. com/2011/06/02/el-caso-de-pedro-pablo-oliva-abre-un-debate-sobre-la-intoleranciaen-la-isla/ 123. On his personal blog, May 23, 2011. http://www.pedropablooliva.com 124. “Declaración de Pedro Pablo Oliva sobre la cancelación de la exposición 'Utopías y disidencias', Diario de Cuba, Sept. 19, 2014. http://www.diariodecuba. com/cultura/1411145496_10479.html 125. Geoffray, “Transnational Dynamics,” 17. 126. Yosmany Myeta Labrada, “‘Candyman’, la leyenda censurada,” 14ymedio, 13 August 2016. http://www.14ymedio.com/nacional/Cuba-cubanos-musica_ urbana-Unpacu-Candy_Man-oposicion_0_2052394751.html. Accessed August 13, 2016. 127. Art under Threat, 42–43. See also Tanya L. Saunders, “Black Activism: Cuban Underground Hip-hop and Afro-Latino Countercultures of Modernity,” Latin American Perspectives, 39, no.2 (March 2012): 42–60. Saunders’ work is useful, once one has cut through a rather thick screen of theoretical and ideological assumptions. For a recent example, see Mario J. Pentón, “Santiago de Cuba Artists use Reggaeton to Speak out and Attract Youth,” The Miami Herald, August 8, 2016. http:// www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article94348677. html#emlnl=The_Americas. The article talks about the song “Hay un pueblo,” featuring young artists affiliated with the dissident group Unión Patriótica de Cuba. 128. For a critical assessment of this episode see Ponte, Villa Marista en plata. 129. Quoted in Ponte, Villa Marista en plata, 121. 130. Some went a bit further, like independent journalists and soon to be bloggers Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sánchez. Sánchez, undoubtedly the most famous independent blogger in Cuba, was still fairly unknown at the time. She launched her blog Generación Y three months later.



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131. Fornet, Ambrosio. “The Five Grey Years: Revisiting the Term” (2007), in Translating Cuba, July 5, 2014. https://translatingcuba.com/ the-five-grey-years-revisiting-the-term-ambrosio-fornet/. 132. Navarro, Desiderio. 2007. Letter published in Consenso Desde Cuba, Revista Digital. http://www.desdecuba.com/polemica/articulos/101_01.shtml. 133. For Weppler-Grogan, “the pavonato, as the cultural regime imposed by Pavón is often referred to, violated the cultural policies that the revolution had implemented in 1961.” Weppler-Grogan, “Cultural Policy,” 145. 134. Ponte, Villa Marista en plata, 62. 135. Gordon-Nesbitt, who normally adopts the official line, concedes that “Questions remain about why, having achieved notoriety for his pseudonymous views in the FAR magazine, this former army officer had been appointed to run culture [sic].” Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution, 297. 136. Quoted in Ponte, Villa Marista en plata, 115–116. 137. One scene seemed designed to recall a well-known page of Cuban history, when President Fidel Castro tripped and fell after leaving the stage at a ceremony, breaking his left knee and fracturing his arm. For Cremata: “Things happened that we could have never foreseen. At the last minute, and only to guarantee better visibility, we put a platform at the foot of the throne, and when the leader fell, there was a general surprise, because everyone saw in it Fidel’s famous fall. I swear that we did not plan it, just like we did not foresee that the show would be censored.” In “Censorship as Usual. Coco Fusco interviews Juan Carlos Cremata,” Cuba Counterpoints, November 24, 2015. http://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/2740. 138. “Juan Carlos Cremata: 'Esta vez han llegado demasiado lejos',” Martinoticias, July 12, 2015. http://www.martinoticias.com/content/carta-cremata-rey-muere-cartacuba/98688.html 139. “Juan Carlos Cremata: ‘Esta vez han llegado demasiado lejos.’” 140. Ibid. 141. Enrique Colina, “Sobre la censura y sus demonios,” 14ymedio, October 30, 2015. http://www.14ymedio.com/opinion/censura-demonios_0_1880211967.html 142. In Informe contra mi mismo (1997), a generally lucid reflection on the evolution of cultural policy in Cuba, Eliseo Alberto talks about the old PSP leaders, who soon dominated the cultural field in the early 1960s, as if they, and not Fidel, were in charge. “Soon hopped into the car these old politicians of the Popular Socialist Party, who were seasoned conspirators in intrigue and censorship, came to add fuel to the fire of incomprehension. The power of this group had no limit. They came to control the organs of the written, radio and television press, the propaganda apparatus of all ministries, institutions and mass organizations, the national education system, including universities and arts schools, the so-called Department of Revolutionary Orientation, Provincial governments, the Union of Writers and Artists, scientific and technical research centers, diplomatic posts and the nefarious National Council of Culture. The party was able to reconquer the José Martí Library and send Dr. Freyre de Andrade to retirement, while Alfredo Guevara, Haydée Santamaria and Alicia Alonso managed to escape the wrath of ‘the comrades.’” Alberto, Informe contra mi mismo, 160–61—my emphasis.

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143. Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor, Downfall of an Autocrat, trans. from the Polish by William R. Brand and Katarzyna Mroczkowska-Brand (New York: Vintage International, 1989), 154. 144. Senel Paz, in Resik, “Writing is a sort of shipwreck,” 87. 145. Magda Resik, “Writing is a sort of shipwreck: an interview with Senel Paz,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 96, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 89. 146. Senel Paz, in Resik, “Writing is a sort of shipwreck,” 88.

Chapter 3

Jesús Díaz, The Unintentional Deviationist

Many years ago exiled Cuban writer and art critic Iván de la Nuez made a comment that is at the origin of this chapter. He said: “The history of Cuban culture during the Revolution cannot be written without the commitment and the multiple and encompassing work of Jesús Díaz. The curious thing is that without it, it is not possible to write the history of the Cuban exile either.”1 The Cuban writer and filmmaker Jesús Díaz (1941–2002) was a major player on the politico-cultural scene in Havana and Madrid. He was a pure product of the Cuban Revolution: he benefited from it, but he was also victimized by the regime he wanted to serve. He left the island in 1992 and became a prominent dissident, first in Berlin and then in Madrid, at a time when scarcity and despair led many artists and (to a lesser extent) writers to leave the country en masse. His work and itinerary are frequently discussed in the scholarship on Cuban culture and politics, though rarely in a comprehensive and systematic way.2 Díaz himself published an article and gave interviews in which he tells his story.3 The portrait that emerges from Díaz’s testimonial and from secondary sources is one of a man who was both a fervent (even zealous) supporter of the Castro regime for most of his adult years in Cuba, but also someone known for his independence of mind and his propensity to test what Lilliam Collmann, in the only in-depth monograph available on Díaz, calls the “limits of revolutionary expression in Cuba.” This portrait ties in neatly with a fairly common perspective in the literature on Cuba, that is, that the cultural field enjoys a precarious but unique measure of autonomy; that for all their loyalty to La Revolución, Cuban artists and writers find ways to be critical of the status quo and to push for more space “within the revolution.” The case is made here that Díaz’s work and itinerary in Cuba illustrates a desire not so much 105

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to test the limits of the permissible but to occupy the space available and to seek recognition by the cultural and political leadership. Jesús Díaz was only seventeen years old when the Batista dictatorship fell. He took some classes offered by the government’s newly organized Schools of Revolutionary Instruction (EIR), which enabled him to teach Marxism in the department of philosophy at the University of Havana. Through purges and emigration, the university had quickly been drained of its politically incorrect elements—about two-thirds of the academic staff4—and was being rebuilt to reflect the new political reality in the country. The Soviet influence was felt at the beginning (Díaz talks about the arrival of a Spanish communist in the department) but this was a time when Cuban intellectuals favored unorthodox European and Latin American Marxism over numbing Soviet “manuals.”5 In 1966, Díaz won the Casa de las Américas award for a collection of short stories entitled Los años duros, a vivid rendition of episodes of the civil war following the victory of 1959. Díaz used his early celebrity as a writer to become a successful cultural leader, at a very young age, in the new Cuba. As he remembered years later: “The revolution was determined to start from scratch, and in the early 1960s a group of ignorant young people were coopted for it.”6 Until his rupture with the regime in 1992 and his successful reincarnation as a prominent cultural figure of the Cuban democratic opposition in Madrid, Díaz’s political itinerary in Cuba can best be characterized as follows: devotion to the regime (in official language: to the Revolution) during the 1960s and ostensibly during the 1970s and 1980s as well; an inquisitorial propensity to judge and pulverize his political opponents within the cultural field, especially during the 1960s and fading afterward; a penchant for occasional dissonance vis-à-vis the most rigid and philistine communist line; and a relatively open conception of artistic freedom and intellectual debate, within the communist paradigm. Díaz was, all the way to his exile, a pure product of his time and place. At the age of twenty-four and with a few friends and collaborators, Díaz founded and became the first editor of the cultural magazine El Caimán Barbudo (1966–1967 under his directorship), the monthly supplement of the communist youth daily Juventud Rebelde. Díaz had been in charge of the cultural pages of this newspaper since 1965. After seventeen issues under his directorship (the last issue in August 1967), he and his collaborators were removed from their positions—according to Díaz—for breach of political orthodoxy. A review of the material published under Díaz’s directorship reveals a robust devotion to the regime’s master narrative (the never-ending and victorious Revolution, its identification with Fidel Castro) and a desire to explore what undogmatic Marxism (officially the kind of Marxism embraced



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by the regime) has to offer to the discussion on the meaning and implications of the Cuban revolution.7 Díaz talks about a “particularly paradoxical situation” on the island: “There was no press freedom in Cuba, but Havana was the cultural meridian of Spanish America.”8 For him “Politics had not yet fully invaded the fields of artistic and literary creation and would not do so until two years later, as a result of the UNEAC prize for the book of poems Fuera del juego, by Heberto Padilla, and for Anton Arrufat’s play Los siete contra Tebas.”9 Alejo Carpentier published El siglo de las luces (1962) and José Lezama Lima, Paradiso (1966), perhaps the two most famous novels published in modern Cuba. Díaz points out that both were vice-presidents of the Unión de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC), “at the time chaired by Nicolás Guillén, another great of our letters.” Apparently, the complete erosion of liberties did not overly concerned Díaz, as long as the cultural field was freer of interference. Díaz remembers that El Caimán Barbudo enjoyed a certain “margin, very narrow, it is true, that made possible some dysfunctions and surprises.”10 This was a privilege, according to him, because of his excellent relations with the bosses of the Communist Youths Union (UJC), his friends Miguel Rodríguez Varela and Jaime Crombet. That narrow room for maneuver was used in issue number 15 (June 1967) to publish Heberto Padilla’s mordant criticism of Lisandro Otero’s new novel Pasión de Urbino.11 That novel was considered for the Spanish Biblioteca Breve award at the time, but another Cuban novel won: Tres Tristes Tigres, by the former editor in chief of Lunes de Revolución (terminated in 1961),12 Guillermo Cabrera Infante. In that short but extraordinary article, Padilla pours scorn on Pasión de Urbino (“un salto a la banalidad”) and its “bureaucratic” author (Otero was vice-president of the Cultural Council at the time) and praises Tres Tristes Tigres (“One of the most brilliant, ingenious and profoundlly Cuban novels ever written.”13 There can be no doubt that it was audacious to publish such blistering attack against Otero in a Cuban publication, even if la redacción (chiefly Díaz, with Victor Casaus, Luis Rogelio Nogueras and Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, who at the time were students in Letters and Arts at the University of Havana) refuted Padilla on the same page. The debate continued under the El Caimán Barbudo’s new administration (issue 18, March 1968), starting with a longer and thoughtful rejoinder by Padilla.14 Díaz and his colleagues “of the outgoing editorial team” replied again, in a subsequent issue (no. 21, June 1968), under the new editorial team, with a text entitled “El yogi y el comisario” (Díaz, 1968). In it, Díaz and his coauthors continue to inveigh Padilla and Cabrera Infante: the first is accused of being “dishonest” and the second of living abroad and flirting with the counterrevolution. For Díaz the government used the pretext of the controversy over Pasión de Urbino to fire him and his team. In the first issue of El Caimán Barbudo

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post-Díaz, the UJC Secretary General Jaime Crombet salutes the old administration as “revolutionary” and willing to “serve the Revolution,” but he prefers the new policy of “observing” and “studying” rather than “theorizing” and “polemicizing.”15 Díaz affirms that under his directorship El Caimán Barbudo was “autonomous” and for this reason “Permanently harassed by the leadership of the UJC.” He insists that his team never accepted censorship.16 Without the personal support of key individuals in the UJC, he recalls, his administration would have been terminated much earlier.17 He wrote in 2000: “I do not want to say that El Caimán Barbudo in his first period was a dissident publication. It was not at all. But it was a dissonant publication.”18 How dissonant? Díaz mentions seven examples of dissonance (out of seventeen issues): five cases of youthful insouciance in style (Díaz, in his mid-twenties, was the oldest member of the team) with two more substantial ones: Padilla’s two articles (in fact only one was published under Díaz’s directorship).19 The only truly dissonant note in Díaz’s El Caimán Barbudo was Padilla’s very short notice, published (audaciously) but disapproved in a longer rebuttal by Díaz’s editorial team. The other major journal in which Díaz was directly involved in a leadership position was Pensamiento Crítico (issues 1 to 53, February 1967–June 1971). Pensamiento Crítico (motto: “to think with our own head”) was produced by a handful of young intellectuals in and around the department of philosophy of the University of Habana. It was directed by Fernando Martínez Heredia, who was also director of that department between 1966 and 1969. Up to fifty-three issues were published in forty-nine volumes (double issues: nos. 2–3, 18–19, 34–35, 49–50). The editorial board comprised social scientists and amateur philosophers.20 They were interested chiefly in examining the various trends in the Marxist, Leninist and national-revolutionary repertoires, all of which “from the point of view of the Third World” (Editorial, 1967:1). If they had a genuine interest in philosophy beyond these immediate ideological concerns, there is very little evidence of it in Pensamiento Crítico.21 Díaz points out that Pensamiento Crítico was an “autonomous” journal, in the sense that it was never an official organ of the PCC, as many observers (especially in communist countries) wrongly assumed. It is also true that it identified with the “new left” and dispensed with wooden “Soviet” interpretations of Marxism. In the summer of 1971 Pensamiento Crítico and the entire department of philosophy of the University of Habana were shut down by the politburo of the PCC; according to Díaz, for “ideological diversionism.” Even the building where it had its offices (K and 27th Street in Havana) was destroyed. For Díaz, “Shutting down Pensamiento Crítico was more significant and serious than the end of the first period of El Caimán Barbudo.”22 Díaz explains that the “inexplicable impunity” Pensamiento Crítico seemed to enjoy for a while



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was probably due to the new turn of orthodoxy of the revolution around the time of the so-called “Revolutionary Offensive,” veering slightly away from a strict Soviet observance.23 It was conceivably difficult to determine where was the line not to be crossed since Cuba was not exactly becoming hostile to the Soviet Union. After the failure of the “ten million tons” harvest in 1970, the Soviet accepted to increase its support to Cuba, but according to Díaz, at a price: both Pensamiento Crítico and the whole Department of Philosophy of the University of Havana had to go.24 Pensamiento Crítico was a more substantial publication than El Caimán Barbudo. It offered to its readers texts signed by Marxist as well as nonMarxist authors discussed by leftists at the time: Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Oscar Lewis, Gregorio Selser. The most frequent signature was André Gunder Frank. This was a time when the Cuban government was openly courting anti-imperialist and leftist forces worldwide and for Artaraz, “it was mainly through the journal Pensamiento Crítico that this objective was pursued after 1967.”25 The National Press released one hundred thousand copies of Don Quijote, and much of the classics of national and Western literature (Proust, Kafka, Tolstoy, Dos Passos, etc.).26 In Cuba as in other communist countries, the political leadership needed to fulfill the promise of bringing highbrow culture to the masses. During relatively “liberal” times, classics were seen (perhaps wrongly) as relatively safe for the established order. If Pensamiento Crítico could be considered “heretical,” it was only in comparison to the mainstream Soviet model, against which it was competing within the cultural field.27 For a few years, Pensamiento Crítico was in sync with the dominant cultural and political trend of the time. Díaz wrote a grand total of one (very long) article in Pensamiento Crítico. “El marxismo de Lenin” was presented as a chapter from a forthcoming book. According to a witness who was in and around the University of Havana and Pensamiento Crítico at the time, Ana Faya, this book, which is not listed in any of the biographical notices on Díaz, was actually published: “its publication coincided with the shut down of the department of philosophy and all the books were burnt (literally). Some of us managed to rescue a few copies and hid them in our homes.”28 Díaz talks about Lenin’s bold approach in the face of daunting challenges, like the collapse of production in Russia, famines, corruption and bureaucratic paralysis. For him Lenin was a visionary leader who understood better than anybody the need to properly handle the revolts of “nationalities” and the nature of the anticolonial and anti-imperialist struggle. Lenin also called for a “cultural offensive against bureaucracy.” Díaz waxes eloquent about the party’s “depuración” between 1921 and 1922.29 But most important, for Díaz, Lenin responded to the economic crisis with the New Economic Policy (NEP), basically reintroducing some market mechanism in the countryside to release productivity. Lenin understood the importance of

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material incentives directed at individuals.30 This text could be interpreted as a veiled criticism of several trends at the time in Cuba (the text was written in 1969), like the attempt to eradicate the last vestige of private enterprise and material incentives. It was a counterpoint to the most dogmatic views within the PCC and the army’s Dirección Política, but it was still well within the official parameters.31 In sum, if Pensamiento Crítico was an intellectually refreshing alternative to some of the other publications available in Cuba at the time, critical it was not, or not very much. Overall, Díaz wrote very few essays either in Cuba or in exile, even in the journals and magazines he edited. In El Caimán Barbudo he published an article in June 1967 (issue 15) in which he laments the absence of a “genuine popular theater” in Cuba, and two articles castigating Heberto Padilla and Guillermo Cabrera Infante. In an interview with Mariano Rodríguez Herrera published in Casa de las Américas in March of 1966, Díaz refuses to support socialist realism or even the idea of a Marxist aesthetic. In his answers to pressing questions on the influence of Marxist philosophy on his literary work, Díaz is ardently supportive of the Cuban revolution, Fidel and Che, but he remains evasive on the key issue of the logic of artistic creation and the autonomy of the artist. When he writes fiction, he explains, he tries to “escape from” philosophy, though he also says that everybody has a philosophical position, knowingly or not.32 In July 1966 the magazine Bohemia published the responses of established and rising Cuban writers and intellectuals, including the young Díaz, to a series of questions on literature and politics in the new Cuba. Díaz’s answers boiled down to this: artists and writers must embrace La Revolución while preserving high artistic and literary standards. For him “political propaganda can and must use some artistic forms, this is licit and necessary, but confusing propaganda with art, or reducing the role of revolutionary art to that of poster art, is unacceptable.”33 In “Para una cultura militante,” Díaz discusses Che’s view on the “original sin” of “many intellectuals and artists” in Cuba—such as the idea that they did not join the armed struggle against Batista.34 Díaz didn’t join either, but he does not disagree with Guevara. In a text written with social scientist Juan Valdés Paz and first published in Casa de las Américas in 1970, he reiterates the view that “The Cuban cultural avant-garde … did not live up to the demands of the struggle against Batista’s tyranny.”35 In fact, his list of “sinners” is longer. For him, during the insurrectional process, it was not only the intellectuals who did not participate. After the Revolution there have been very different attitudes among them. And if one finds one who is exiled and another one fought in the Bay of Pigs; if one has the pervert and exhibitionist homosexual type, there is also someone else who fulfills his social and revolutionary obligations; if there is the one who is in his “limbo,” far the course of events, there is also the other



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who managed to adapt his voice and his work to the voice and the work of the Revolution.36

Perhaps his best-known polemic during that period took place in the spring and summer of 1966. It concerned the literary group associated with the publishing house and magazine named El Puente.37 In the April-May issue of La Gaceta de Cuba (issue 50, 1966) Díaz attacked the group El Puente as “liberaloid attitudes” and “hounded by the most dissolute and negative fraction of the acting generation.”38 Díaz led the charge against the group for being insufficiently committed to radical politics (though its members were not “against the revolution” at all).39 In a rejoinder to a response by El Puente’s co-editor (Ana María Simo), Díaz calls her “dissolute” and uses the same word for her, the visiting US poet Allen Ginsberg and the founder of El Puente, José Mario Rodríguez—all three homosexuals.40 Mario was sent to a labor camp (UMAP) in the province of Camagüey; others were arrested (René Ariza, Manuel Ballagas), and Ana María Simo ended up in a psychiatric ward for “lesbianism.” But two other parametrados, or members of the group, Nancy Morejón and Miguel Barnet, were rehabilitated years later and in fact became official cultural spokespersons of the regime. In sum, the political leadership liquidated both El Caimán Barbudo and Pensamiento Crítico because Díaz and his associates lost the battle for recognition within the cultural field at that particular time, not because of fundamental political deviation from the master narrative or because its contributors consciously sought to challenge the rules of the game. Like so many writers and artists of his generation, Díaz was censured (twice) by the regime but remained loyal to the regime, arguably in the hope of being vindicated and rehabilitated in the future. For all his zeal in denouncing the poor revolutionary credentials of others, Díaz’s fall from grace, as Lillian Guerra puts it in her excellent book, showed that “criticism of another on behalf of the state did not necessarily immunize anyone from the same treatment or its consequences.”41 REHABILITATIONS (1971–1992) From exile Díaz wrote that after what he calls “our attempt to use critical thinking” in Pensamiento Crítico, his “generation” (of artists, writers and intellectuals) “has been, against your will, a generation of silence.”42 In 1971 he was sent to the countryside to work in a sugar mill, an unpleasant experience he describes in his novel Las iniciales de la tierra. He became ill and depressed. But he recovered when the director of ICAIC, Alfredo Guevara (who was a close friend of Fidel Castro since before the revolution), offered him employment and some protection. Significantly, as the country

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was entering what many observers consider as the most repressive period of cultural policy in Cuba, Díaz joined the PCC and assumed a leadership party position within the ICAIC. For the second time in his young career as a public intellectual in Cuba, Díaz joined the long cohort of writers and artists in process of rehabilitation. The history of Cuban cinema since 1959 is a good illustration of what happened in the cultural field more generally. Fidel Castro understood right away the importance of cinema and documentaries for political socialization. The law that created the ICAIC recognized that cinema constitutes “an instrument of opinion and formation of individual and collective consciousness.”43 Succinctly, the revolution became the number one actor in Cuba. Film apparatchik Alfredo Guevara wrote in 1960: “The Revolution is the central character and must live. It is this beloved character that matters to us: Who haunts you? What obstacles must you overcome in order to achieve your goals? Who betrays you? Who supports you? What are your plans?”44After 1958, the sheer number of films and documentaries produced in Cuba augmented exponentially, but within strict political parameters. What should not be taken too lightly is that these kinds of dissonant productions are undertaken and accomplished, now and again, and that ever so cautiously, creators manage to be creative within official parameters. For Michael Chanan, a specialist of Cuban cinema and a champion of ICAIC and its mission, the institute “welcomed independent minded artists and intellectuals, […] figures like the writer Jesús Díaz and gave them the benefit of sharing a collective identity based on the combination of political engagement and artistic freedom.”45 Asked how he explains that he was censured as a writer for fourteen years but was allowed to produce films, Díaz talks about some “fissures” in the system and mentions the influence and protection of two cultural apparatchiks: Haydée Santamaría in Casa de las Américas and Alfredo Guevara of the ICAIC. The space he was granted was very narrow: “Alfredo tells me clearly that I am ‘burned,’ that all they offer me is a shelter.”46 Remarkably, without any training or experience in filmmaking, he became a successful director of films and documentaries in less than a decade after the coup against Pensamiento Crítico. Díaz realized a few short documentaries abroad (in Nigeria, Benin and Guyana) and started contributing in various ways to the production of films and documentaries in Cuba. Most significant, he was one of the contributing writers (with Aldo Busto Hernández, Luis Felipe Calvo Bolaños and Eduardo del Llano) in Daniel Díaz Torres magical-realist masterpiece Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas (1991); he produced the important documentary 55 hermanos (1978) and two full-length films of his own: Polvo Rojo (1981) and Lejanía (1985). He also contributed occasionally with his essays to the ICAIC’s magazine Cine Cubano.



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By the standards of what is considered politically daring in Cuban cinema (think of the works of Daniel Díaz Torres, Humberto Solás or Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, for instance), Díaz’s films are moderately audacious in content, if not in form. Perhaps his most memorable contributions were 55 hermanos (silver medal at the International Leipzig [GDR] Festival for Documentary and Animated Film in 1978), as well as Polvo Rojo and Lejanía. As he recalls: “If I had breakthrough in cinema, it was thanks to 55 hermanos.”47 The documentary, significantly entitled 55 hermanos (not 55 gusanos [worms] as they were more commonly called by the political leadership), covers the first visit to the island of fifty-five US citizens whose Cuban-American parents had sought exile in Miami during the 1960s. The camera follows the hermanos as they meet family members and former neighbors. The documentary features abundant teque by Cuban officials, including Fidel Castro, and the narrative effortlessly espouses the official line. And yet, as film critic Paulo Paranagua wrote, this was a time when “dialogue” and “reconciliation” were dirty words in both Havana and Miami: “La apuesta de Jesús Díaz … fue la de que podía darle caras y vivencias a esta problemática en un documental del ICAIC, cuando ello era imposible en cualquier otro foco audiovisual de la isla.”48 In Polvo rojo, a US-owned nickel plant in the city of Moa is taken over by the people and American managers are forced to leave. For the first time, Cuban employees need to figure out quickly how to manage the plant by themselves. One engineer, a Cuban, somewhat begrudgingly decides to stay and help, driven by his hatred for his foreign bosses. Against all odds, the plant reopens, and the crowd shouts “Long live the Revolution!” and “Long live Fidel!” A common theme in Díaz’s work, however, finds its way in the plot: one family is divided by the local triumph of the revolution. The emotionally unstable wife of one of the “good” Cubans abandons her husband and her child to leave Cuba with her pro-American lover. The sorrowful scene with the departing wife, who is clearly upset to leave her child behind, doubtlessly resonated with many Cubans. The departure of the managerial staff and other counterrevolutionaries is greeted by the crowd with shouting of “Let them go!,” a scene that evokes the fresh memories of the “acts of repudiation” during the Mariel exodus. Paranagua contends that in this movie, Díaz is in fact reproving the impetuosity of the Cuban people and the lack of practical knowledge and preparation of its leaders.49 In Lejanía Díaz takes another look at the same problem: the relations between Cubans of the island and the diaspora.50 A Cuban-American mother returns to the island to visit the son she abandoned many years ago when she moved to the United States. She is a shallow and racist bourgeois parvenu who always thinks about her own individual interest first and foremost— indeed, to the point of abandoning her own son. She is accompanied by her niece, who also left Cuba, but as a child. The son, now a young man, finds her

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visit disconcerting but he gets along well with his cousin. The message here is fairly clear: good relations with the exile are possible, preferably if his or her exile was not deliberate. The son remains polite, respectful and moderately affectionate toward his mother. Unlike his entourage, he affects disinterest for all the glittery consumer goods she brings as gifts from the United States. The message is possibly provocative: some Cubans (though not the main character) are spellbound by American consumerist culture. According to David Craven, “A small but powerful sector of the Communist Party sought to prevent the film’s release because of the way it admitted venality among some party members, while also casually conceding that consumer goods still unattainable by the average Cuban were readily available to Cuban exiles in the U.S.”51 While Díaz had some success in the film industry, he was first and foremost a writer. Elizabeth Burgos wrote about Díaz: “If one reads your books the way they should be read, extracting from them what they ‘mean,’ in the first three, written before your rupture with the regime, one finds all the interrogations and doubts that overwhelmed you and let us presage the conflict and the coming falling-out [with the regime].”52 His most ambitious work of fiction published in Cuba is a long novel entitled Las iniciales de la tierra, translated into English, French, German, Swedish and Greek. The history of the publication of this book is itself exemplary of how books get published (or not) in Cuba. He wrote a first version (entitled Biografía política) between 1971 and 1973, which was rejected for publication by the Ideological Direction of the PCC, an act of censorship according to Díaz. A second version was finally published fourteen years later, in 1987. According to Rafael Rojas, who knew Díaz well, intellectuals close to Díaz’s Caimán Barbudo and to Pensamiento Crítico created the pressure to allow the publication of the novel.53 In an interview published in 1999 Díaz explains that he sent the manuscript “to the literary prize that the Ministry of the Armed Forces called that year, and I remember that the jury was José Antonio Portuondo, who died. He spoke very well of the novel. But she told me that the other two jurors had flatly rejected her, for ideological reasons.”54 Encouraged by Portuondo, he then sent the manuscript to a competition organized by the Casa de las Américas in 1973. He was asked to withdraw his manuscript from the competition, without explanation. Twelve years later, the minister of culture Armando Hart asked the ICAIC’s president Alfredo Guevara to read the manuscript to see if it could be published. At the end of that year Díaz was authorized to publish the novel, at which point he decided to do a substantial rewriting. It was first published in 1987 in Spain, by Editorial Alfaguara and soon afterward in Cuba. Díaz confirmed that he identifies with the main protagonist in Las iniciales, Carlos Pérez Cifredo.55 Pérez Cifredo’s family is torn apart by the Cuban



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Revolution: his father and brother choose the side of the counterrevolution, while his mother adjusts to the new reality. Similarly, Díaz’s father seriously considered accepting a position in the pharmaceutical industry in the United States, but finally decided to stay, unlike many members of his family.56 Pérez Cifredo wants to serve the Revolution but he doesn’t always know how and he struggles to find his true self in the midst of torrential historical events. The novel opens as he fills out a questionnaire for readmission to the PCC and closes with Carlos standing before a panel of party members charged with assessing his merit to be nominated as an “exemplary worker.”57 The all-too-human Carlos goes through life matching the epochal stages of the revolution with his own bouts of dogmatic fervor, “rectifying” his own mistakes as best as he can along the way. The novel is open ended (the panel’s final decision is left to the reader’s imagination) and can be read as a critique of some aspects of political development in Cuba. For the French literary critic Françoise Barthélémy, it was the first time that a Cuban writer was allowed to be critical of the Revolution in Cuba.58 Las Iniciales never challenges the regime’s master narrative but one can see how the novel was “dissonant.” It is dotted with illustrations of how ideological fervor and government impetuosity can lead to individual mistakes. One can read sentences like this: “Laughter always had a corrosive background that threatened order and took away the strength needed for larger tasks.”59 The pastiche of a Marxist-Leninist critique of Cervantes’ Don Quixote is caustic and hilarious.60 The main protagonist often seeks personal gain (access to a car for instance) or at least maneuvers to avoid punishment, which suggests a gap between private lives and public discourse. In an interview realized in 1988 but published only recently, Díaz says: “I only wanted to salvage certain memories, certain anxieties, certain tensions. After writing the novel, I realized that it is a reflection on intolerance, about that permanent habit of judging others that was inculcated to us, as perhaps an inevitable paranoia produced by a certain stage of class struggle.”61 Nobody explained to him why his novel was censured for fourteen years. When he asked about it, he was told: “If you want your novel to be published, never repeat that question.”62 More than a decade later, when Díaz was in exile, the very orthodox Cuban cultural magazine La Jiribilla sarcastically pointed out, its publication in 1987 was a resounding success. J.D. gave many interviews. Only between 1987 and 1989 the documentary entries of the National Library record 28 notes, articles, reviews and commentaries on the novel in 20 publications of our country. Of course, these truths do not fit the legend of a writer “marginalized” and “forced to silence.” With that record of collaboration and success in Castro’s Cuba, no one can pretend to be a Cuban Kundera or Solzhenitsin.63

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His last novel written in Cuba, entitled Las palabras perdidas,64 expressed, according to Díaz, “an attempt to translate into fiction the experience of El Caimán Barburo.”65 It explores a common theme in his work from exile: the personal experience of disillusion. In this bildungsroman, the three idealistic characters (as it turns out, Díaz and his two close collaborators in El Caimán Barbudo)66 launch a new literary magazine—El Güije ilustrado— and dream to marry literature with radical politics. In the novel the three friends celebrate the literary works of Carpentier, Lezama, Guillén, Piñera y Diego. Under Díaz’s leadership El Caimán Barbudo didn’t seem to have such a vibrant passion for pre-revolutionary writers and was much more concerned with political positioning and ideological debates. In her interview with Díaz, Lilliam Oliva Collmann signals that in her view El Caimán Barbudo was more “militant” than El Güije Ilustrado. Díaz’s response is interesting: “The Güije Ilustrado is fiction. Anyway, your interpretation is probably correct, although it was not the Cuban government’s interpretation because from there they sent me packing. What you see as very militant, they saw as very liberal.”67 In 1990, Díaz asked a friend (the Belgian poet Jan Portante) to take a copy of the manuscript out of the country but it was confiscated at the airport. Díaz himself took the manuscript to Berlin in February 1991.68 EXILED MALGRÉ LUI: THE REINVENTION OF JESÚS DÍAZ (1992–2002) Díaz left for Berlin in February, 1991, on a one-year grant as “artist in residence,” offered by the German Academic Exchange Service. He never saw Cuba again. In December, the Soviet Union collapsed without much resistance, an event for which the government of Cuba was curiously ill prepared. The country had already entered the so-called “Special period in time of peace,” officially announced in Granma on August 29, 1989. The 1990s were a period of great hardship and scarcity for most Cubans, including writers and artists. Many prominent writers and intellectuals left the island at that time, although Díaz left with the intention of returning to Cuba. There can be no doubt that the decision to leave one’s country, perhaps forever, is a difficult one to make. According to Rosenberg Weinreb it is typically the culmination of a long and complex process of what she calls “progressive revelation.”69 Díaz’s “revelation” was indeed progressive. In retrospect and from exile, Díaz identified moments going back to the late 1960s when his political faith was put to the test: for example, the death of Che, Fidel’s support of the Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia, the disastrous ten-million-ton campaign of 1970, the closure of Pensamiento Crítico and the Ochoa trial (1989). At the end of the 1980s and then in exile, he confessed to



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friends that he could not contemplate leaving his family behind and doubted his capability of adaptation to a foreign country and culture at the autumn of his life.70 For all his artistic and sometimes political acts of dissonance, Díaz was an official intellectual in Cuba and “living in truth,” to use Václav Havel’s expression, was a hard and costly option. Díaz’s rupture with the fidelista state came as a result of a public speech he gave in Switzerland on February 2, 1992. He was participating in a roundtable organized by a left-leaning Swiss publication (Woken Zeitung). Somewhat unexpectedly the event turned into a debate on Cuba between Díaz and Uruguayan essayist Eduardo Galeano.71 The organizers may have seen it coming: months before Díaz had given an interview to Der Spiegel (issue 41 of 1991), in which he presented as “tragic” the alternative “Castro or Washington.” Several weeks later, his text, “The snake’s rings” (Los anillos de la serpiente), was printed in the Spanish daily El País (March 12) and reproduced in several newspapers in other countries as well. It was even published in the UNEAC’s La Gaceta de Cuba, followed by a blistering rebuttal by one of Díaz’s old collaborators (in El Caimán Barbudo and Pensamiento Crítico), social scientist Fernando Martínez Heredia. Then came an “unofficial” letter of condemnation by the minister of culture Armando Hart, in which Díaz was called a traitor who deserves nothing less than the death penalty. The letter, which circulated in Cuba, was never formally sent to Díaz. For his “treason” Díaz was expulsed from the PCC and the UNEAC. That letter made Díaz a Cuban exile. As Díaz put it: “I did not stay away. They kept me out, not an insignificant detail, I figure.”72 In his fateful text Díaz condemns the “criminal” US “blockade,” but he also condemns tourism “apartheid” on the island and goes as far as calling “criminal” the regime’s official slogan “Socialism or Death.” Last but not least, he calls for an end to the “blockade” in exchange for the convocation of a plebiscite on the island on the political future of the country. This was (and still is) taboo in Cuba, and it squarely put him out of the game). (A few years later, during a conference on Cuba organized by the Olof Palme International Center in Sweden, he dropped the demand for an end to the “blockade” as a condition to trigger a process of democratization on the island.73 Díaz said he knew that the Cuban government wouldn’t like his talk, “But I did not think the answer would be Armando Hart’s letter. I could not imagine that.”74 Again, in retrospect, he said “at that time, 1991, 1992, I believed that there was a greater margin within the island than the one that actually existed.” In a letter to Miguel Rivero, he wrote: “I did not come here to stay. Moreover, if there was a minimal possibility of debate in Cuba I would have returned. I tried to open that space with ‘Los anillos de la serpiente,’ which you know. However, Galeano, Hart and ultimately the Cuban government got in my way. After the letter from the Minister I was left stranded, to return would

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have meant to go to jail and I confess that I did not have the courage. I blame myself often for not being imprisoned in Cuba and I become depressed.”75 In 1992 Díaz moved to Madrid where he invested his extraordinary talent and energy in a new cause: democratization in Cuba and reconciliation of the Cuban nation.76 From a “consenter” he became a “dissenter,” to use Silvia Pedraza’s terminology.77 In other words, the former fidelista firebrand continued to be fully engaged but in the other camp, where he was sometimes met with rancor.78 In 1992 Díaz moved to Madrid where he founded, in 1996, probably the most important Cuban émigré journal: Encuentro de la cultura cubana (1996–2009).79 The journal (and the digital version Encuentro en la red created in 2000) features a cultural and political focus and the dominant perspectives are liberal and social democrat.80 Though it was conceived as an independent organization, with link to “no party or political organization from Cuba or the exile,” the project was financed primarily by the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy and foundations of the Spanish government.81 The goal of the Encuentro project was to provide an “open space” for debate, dialogue and perhaps reconciliation between Cubans of the diaspora and Cubans from the island, though not the Cuban government.82 In an interview, Cuban writer and, for years, director of Encuentro, Antonio José Ponte (now co-director, with Jesús Díaz’s son, of the digital publication Diario de Cuba), characterized the relations between exile and islanders as “dialogue without fraternity.”83 Without fraternity, constructive dialogue proved to be elusive. But as literary critic Roberto González Echevarría, a frequent contributor to Encuentro, wrote: “I am convinced that Jesus wanted Encuentro to be as broad as possible in its inclusions. Writers residing in Cuba who did not publish in it did not did this choice on their own. When I proposed to my dear friend Miguel Barnet that it was him who asked me the questions for an interview of mine that Jesus was going to publish, Barnet refused. Jesus had no objection to publishing Barnet in Encuentro.”84 Díaz and his team tried to connect with Cubans on the island, where the journal could be distributed only clandestinely.85 According to Annabelle Rodríguez García, a Cuban-born resident of Madrid who was de facto executive director of Encuentro for years, the copies were passed on between a fairly large network of individuals, through friendly embassies and church networks.86 Anecdotal evidence suggests that the journal was fairly well known in Cuba and probably contributed to stimulating discussions about sensitive public issues on the island. Encuentro’s distinctive goal to unite the Cuban nation in a sort of transnational cultural and political republic spoke to Díaz’s patriotism and idealism. It also illustrates how writers can continue to participate, if clandestinely, in the political and cultural life of their nation, as Díaz (and José Martí, to name the most illustrious) did from exile.



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It is hardly surprising that for more than three decades a Cuban intellectual such as Díaz tried to fit in and refrain from questioning the regime’s master narrative. The mission of the intellectual in Cuba is to support the socialist project, not (as in the rest of Latin America) to criticize the government. And yet, it seems that Díaz’s itinerary can be seen as a measure of what could be said and couldn’t be said for three decades in Cuba. What is fascinating is how a savvy cultural figure like Díaz could unwittingly cross the line of the permissible again and again. This is indicative of three interlocked features of cultural policy in Cuba, which deserve further investigation: the elusiveness of the parameters within which expression is allowed or tolerated, the capacity of the politico-cultural field to rehabilitate some of its lost sheep, and the writers and artists’ enduring quest for recognition by the cultural and political leadership on the island. NOTES 1. Iván de la Nuez, “El intelectual, el corazón y la piel,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana, 25 (Summer 2002), 42. 2. Lilliam Oliva Collmann, Jesús Díaz, el ejercicio de los límites de la expresión revolucionaria en Cuba (Peter Lang Publishing, 1999); Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006), 310–323. 3. Jesús Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión, a propósito de la quiebra de El Caimán Barbudo y la clausura de Pensamiento Crítico,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana, 16/17 (Spring–Summer 2000): 106–119; Lilliam Oliva Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” Cuban Studies 1, no.29 (1999): 155–75; Jorge Luis Hernández, “Jesús Díaz o la memoria salvada” [interview with Jesús Díaz (1988)], reproduced in La Gaceta de Cuba 20 (November–December 2013): 22–23. 4. Kepa Artaraz, “El ejercicio de pensar: the Rise and Fall of Pensamiento Crítico,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 24, no.3 (2005): 348–66. 5. Rafael Rojas, El estante vacío, literatura y política en Cuba (Barcelona: Anagrama, colección Argumentos, 2009), 72. 6. Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión,” 112. 7. Liliana Martínez Pérez, Los hijos de Saturno. Intelectuales y Revolución en Cuba (1959–1971) (Flacso, Perrua, 2006), chapter 5. 8. Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión,” 107. 9. Ibid, 106–107. 10. Ibid, 107. 11. Jesús Díaz, “Sobre Pasión de Urbino: tres generaciones opinan.” El Caimán Barbudo 15 (June 1967): 12–14. 12. To recall, Lunes de Revolución was the literary supplement of the daily Revolución (1959–65), the official newspaper of the 26th of July Movement directed by Carlos Franqui. The “Lunes affair” is discussed in chapter 1 and is not immediately

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relevant for this particular chapter on Díaz, who never wrote in its pages, except to say that the end of Lunes (and the heterodox radical socialist tendency it represented) meant that by the time Díaz became a significant player, the cultural institutions were firmly in the hands of orthodox communists. 13. Heberto Padilla, “Sobre Pasión de Urbino,” El Caimán Barbudo 15 (June 1967): 12. See also Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Mea Cuba (Barcelona: Alfaguara, 1999), 41–42. 14. Heberto Padilla, “Respuesta a la redacción saliente,” El Caimán Barbudo 18 (March 1968): 3–5. Padilla went on to create, between 1968 and his incarceration in 1971, what historian Rafael Rojas called the “subversión simbólica más eficaz que ningún intelectual haya logrado en toda la historia del socialismo cubano.” Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006), 272. 15. Issue 21, June 1968, no pages. Many issues of ECB have incomplete information such as page numbers and volume, issue. 16. Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión,” 109. 17. Ibid, 109. 18. Díaz, Jesús, “El fin de otra ilusión A propósito de la quiebra de El Caimán Barbudo y la clausura de Pensamiento Crítico.” Encuentro de la cultura cubana, 16/17 (Spring–Summer 2000), 111. 19. Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión,” 110–111. 20. Other than Díaz, who was a member of the editorial board from the first to the last issue, and Fernando Martínez Heredia, the other board members were: Aurelio Alonso Tejada, a member of the editorial board from no.1 to 53, 1967–71; Thalía Fung Riverón, member of the editorial board from no. 1 to 36, 1967–1970; Ricardo J. Machado Bermúdez, a member of the editorial board from no 1 to 6, 1967; José Bell Lara, member of the editorial board from no. 2 to 53, 1967–1971; and Mireya Crespo, a member of the editorial board from no 44 to 53, 1970–1971. 21. For Cuban philosopher (exiled since 2011) Alexis Jardines, “During its five years of existence, Pensamiento Crítico did not publish anything of—or about— Ortega and Gasset and, strictly speaking, it published only three articles of philosophy.” Alexis Jardines, La filosofía cubana in nuce. Ensayo de historia intelectual (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2005), 225. 22. Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión,” 111. 23. Ibid, 113. 24. Ibid, 116–117. 25. Artaraz, “El ejercicio de pensar,” 356. Not to forget that the Tricontinental was established in 1966, the Latin American Solidarity Organisation in 1967, the Cultural Congress (to which many Western intellectuals were invited) took place in 1968. 26. Rojas, El estante vacío, 10. 27. Artaraz, “El ejercicio de pensar,” 355. 28. Personal communication, April 26, 2013. 29. Jesús Díaz, “El marxismo de Lenin,” Pensamiento Crítico, 38 (1970): 13. 30. Díaz, “El marxismo de Lenin,” 29. 31. Collmann, “Jesús Díaz”; Elizabeth Burgos, “La carta que nunca te envié.” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 25 (Summer 2002): 59–60. Carlos Ripoll wrote that



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Pensamiento Crítico as “the only remaining journal permitted to print interpretations of Marxist-Leninist doctrine that deviated from the official line.” Problem is, there were not one but two lines, and Pensamiento Crítico was right in between, in fact probably more in sync to the dominant one. Carlos Ripoll, The Cuban Scene: Censors and Dissenters (Washington, DC: Cuban National Foundation, 1982), 8. 32. Mariano Rodríguez Herrera, “Premio Casa de las Américas 1966, Diálogo con Jesús Díaz,” Bohemia, no. 11 (March 1966): 20–21. 33. Jesús Díaz, “Para una cultura militante,” Bohemia (September 1966): 35–38. 34. Díaz, “Para una cultura militante,” 35–38; Ernesto Guevara, “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba.” Pensamiento crítico no.14 (March 1968): 94. 35. Jesús Díaz and Juan Valdés-Paz, “Vanguardia, tradición y subdesarrollo,” in Literatura y arte nuevo en Cuba. Mario Benedetti, et al. ed. (Barcelona: Editorial estela, 1971), 67. 36. Díaz, “Para una cultura militante,” 37. 37. The writers associated with El Puente included poets José Mario Rodríguez, Isel Rivero, Ana María Simo and Reinaldo García Ramos, as well as future cultural commissars Miguel Barnet and Nancy Morejón. See José Mario, “La verídica historia de ediciones El Puente La Habana 1961–1965.” Revista Hispano Cubana 6 (Winter 2000): 89–99; Silvia Cezar Miskulin, Cultura Ilhada: imprensa e Revolução Cubana (São Paulo, Xamã/ Fapesp, 2003); Ana María Simo, “Respuesta a Jesús Díaz,” originally published in La Gaceta de Cuba. 51 (June-July, 1966), reproduced in Polémicas culturales de los 60, Graziella Pogolotti ed. and introduction (La Habana: Editoriales Cubanas, 2006), 369–82; Alberto Abreu Arcia, La cuentística de El Puente: y los silencios del canon narrativo cubano (Valencia: Aduana Vieja, 2014). 38. Mario, “La verídica historia,” 95. 39. Many years later, Díaz wrote: “it was in a sense logical that we should collide for reasons of self-assertion and literary jealousy. Nevertheless, I remember with displeasure my participation in that controversy, which took place in La Gaceta de la UNEAC. Not because I was more or less aggressive with other writers, but because in my request I mixed politics and literature and I did it wrong; I acknowledge it and I apologize to Ana María Simo and the other authors who may have felt wronged by me back then.” Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión,” 108. 40. Jesús Díaz, “Respuesta a Ana María Simo,” Originally published in La Gaceta de Cuba 52 (August–September, 1966), reproduced in Polémicas culturales de los 60, Graziella Pogolotti ed. and introduction (La Habana: Editoriales Cubanas), 383–90. 41. Lillian Guerra, Visions of Power in Cuba, Revolution, Redemption, and Resistance, 1959–1971 (University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 232. Here one can observe some similarities between the Cuban and the Soviet experience. Díaz’s trajectory echoes the efforts of Proletkult (Proletarian Culture) and RAPP (Russian Association of Proletarian Writers) during the 1920 to become the cultural avant-garde in the new socialist republic. As one historian puts it, the leaders of these organizations “often tried to present themselves as full representatives of the Party and emphasized their closeness to the Soviet nomenclature. However, they were never officially recognized in that capacity. The attempts by these radical groups to usurp power in the literary world proved to be short-lived. Both organizations were disbanded by the authorities (Proletkult in the mid-1920s and RAPP in 1932), after which the Party

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bureaucracy established its supreme control over literary matters in Russia.” Tatiana Gabroussenko, Soldiers on the Cultural Front, Develpments in the Early History of North Korean Literature and Literary policy (University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai’i, 2010), 172. 42. Jesús Díaz, interview with François Maspéro, first published in Le Monde, May 29, 1998, reproduced in Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, 10 (Fall 1998) 102. 43. “Acuerdo del ICAIC sobre la prohibición del film PM, May 31, 1961.” (1961), http://manuelzayas.wordpress.com/actas-de-censura-de-pm/. “By trucks and boats, on mule-back or with the aid of draught animals the cinema reached places where it was completely unknown. The travelling cinemas have given more than a 1.5 million shows to about 200 million spectators.” Jaime Saruski and Gerardo Mosquera, The Cultural Policy of Cuba (UNESCO: Studies and Documents on Cultural Policy, Les Presses universitaires de France, 1979), 16. 44. In Alfredo Guevara, Tiempo de Fundación (Sevilla: Iberautor Promociones Culturales, 2003), 77. 45. Michael Chanan, Cuban cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minesota Press, 2004), 362. 46. Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” 160. 47. Ibid, 162–63. 48. Paulo Antonio Paranagua, “Diálogo y contemporaneidad en en cine de Jesús Díaz,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 25 (Summer 2002): 31. It is not clear how and when his views evolved on this topic prior to his exile in Spain. In an interview with Emilio Bejel realized during the 1980s (not clear when exactly), Díaz had this to say about Mariel: “La salida de un poco más de cien mil cubanos por Mariel no es gran cosa, ni significativa en absoluto el fracaso del socialismo en Cuba, como han querido hacer creer nuestros enemigos.” In Emilio Bejel, Escribir en Cuba, Entrevistas con escritores cubanos, 1979–1989 (Río Piedras, P.R.: Editorial de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1991), 56. 49. Paranagua, “Diálogo y contemporaneidad en en cine de Jesús Díaz.” 50. Díaz evokes his experience as director of Lejanía in the first novel he wrote in exile, La Piel y la máscara (Anagrama, 1996). 51. David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (Yale University Press, 2006), 86–87. 52. Burgos, “La carta que nunca te envié,” 53. 53. Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, 317. 54. Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” 156. 55. Ibid, 162. 56. Personal communication with Díaz’s son, Pablo Díaz Espí, January 7, 2013. 57. At least another Cuban novel is built on a similar plot: In Lisandro Otero’s Arbol de la vida (1990), the protagonist aspires to become a member of the Communist party but he is rejected. 58. Françoise Barthélémy, “Rêver d’être un héros,” Le Monde diplomatique 404 (November 1987), 34. 59. Jesús Díaz, The Initials of the Earth (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006), 229.



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60. Here is the hilarious quote on the political correctness of Cervantes: “When everyone was asleep he put down his textbooks and took up Don Quixote. He wasn’t planning on reading the whole thing, it was too long and after all it was a novel, it couldn’t teach him anything about life; he simply needed to become informed so he could argue about it. He skimmed through several random chapters and was left in growing confusion. The hero turned out to be ugly, skinny, ridiculous guy, who sometimes made you laugh, and other times made you sad because he was always mistaken (in reality, he wasn’t a hero, he put on airs like he was a hero) and he fought for justice without knowing the laws of history, or taking into account the masses, or objective and subjective conditions, or the correlation of strength between the exploiting and the exploited, and he mixed up antagonistic contradictions with nonantagonistic ones, principal with secondary, internal with external, because at base he didn’t even know what a contradiction was, and therefore, couldn’t understand the inevitability of periods of accumulation of strength, he was incapable of transforming quantitative change into qualitative change, making the leap, and exercising the negation of negation over the historical process to promote a spirallike development; he was, finally, a petit bourgeois (a pharmacist, or rather, a druggist) who hadn’t been able to commit class suicide, and maintained his anarcho-individualist character by trying to take justice into his own hands. He believed he was a hero, but he didn’t have the slightest sign of humility, modesty, or self-critical spirit. He even had a servant! All of this was due (as the author himself naively confessed) to a mountain of badly assimilated reading that had made him go mad, and at the end, when he recovered his sanity, that very same Cervantes recommended the prohibition of those tomes.” Díaz, The Initials of the Earth, 230. 61. Hernández, “Jesús Díaz o la memoria salvada,” 23. 62. François Maspéro, Review of Díaz’s novel “Parle-moi un peu de Cuba” [Dime algo sobre Cuba] in Le Monde, May 29, 1998. This is not an isolated incident. For Gordon-Nesbitt, writer “Eduardo Heras León—who was removed from both his professorship at the university and his position on the editorial board of the literary journal, El Caimán Barbudo [. . .] and sent to work in a factory far from Havana, but nonetheless remained loyal to Fidel and the Revolution—remembers being trapped in a Kafkaesque situation in which he stood accused of something unspecified, lacking the means to defend himself or provoke a dialogue about it. As evidence of this, Heras cites a report, written for the university (which was itself undergoing scrutiny, particularly its Department of Journalism) by Armando Quesada, Director of Theatre at the CNC, which found the group around El Caimán Barbudo to have ‘fallen into positions of evident ideological diversionism.’” Eduardo Heras León, “El Quinquenio Gris: Testimonio de una Lealtad,” read by the author at ISA in relation to the cycle of events entitled “La política cultural del periodo revolucionario: memoria y reflexión”, May 15, 2007, quoted in Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, To Defend the Revolution is to Defend Culture, The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution, Foreword by Jorge Fornet (PM Press, 2015), 296. 63. Pedro De la Hoz, “La Saga/Fuga de J.D. (I),” La Jiribilla (2001), http://www. lajiribilla.cubaweb.cu/paraimprimir/nro1/019_imp.html, reproduced (w/d) on Marc Guiblin’s webpage: http://marcguiblin.perso.neuf.fr/jdiaz_jiribilla.htm

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64. Published in Barcelona by the publisher Destino in 1992), it was the runner-up for the Nadal literary award in Spain. 65. Collmann, Jesús Díaz, 134. 66. In an interview Díaz says that “Las palabras perdidas in reality is a book whose main motivation is the death of my best friend, the poet Luis Rogelio Nogueras, whom we affectionately knew as the Red, not because he was a communist but because he was a redhead.” The other two main characters in the novel are “el Gordo” (Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera) and “El Flaco” (Díaz himself). All three were in the editorial board of El Caimán Barbudo. Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” 164, 167. 67. Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” 167. 68. Collmann, Jesús Díaz, 126. 69. Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb, Cuba in the Shadow of Change, Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revolution (Miami, Fl: University Press of Florida, 2009), 132. 70. Díaz, Interview with François Maspéro; Burgos, “La carta que nunca te envié,” 56–57. 71. Andrés Simmen, “Tras la muerte de Jesús Díaz.” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, 25 (Summer 2002): 67. 72. Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” 164. 73. Jesús Díaz, “Dieciséis notas sobre el desequilibrio cubano.” In Bipolaridad de la cultura cubana, 76–84. Estocolmo: Centro International Olof Palme, 1994. 74. Collmann, “Entrevista con Jesús Díaz,” 151–152. 75. Jesús Díaz, “Correspondencia especial,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana 25 (Summer 2002). 76. Díaz published five novels in exile: Las palabras perdidas (1992) La piel y la máscara (1996), Dime algo sobre Cuba (1998), Siberiana (2000) and Las cuatro fugas de Manuel (2002) were published for the first time in Madrid in 2002 but it was written in Cuba. The first was written in Cuba. All these novels are somewhat biographical, and literally “say something” about Cuba. 77. Silvia Pedraza, Political Disaffection in Cuba’s Revolution and Exodus (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 16–18. Spanish writer Manuel Vásquez Montalbán had this to say about Jesús Díaz as a dissident: “Jesus Diaz sees himself as a convert: he reprimands us for how tepid our anticastrism is. He reproaches us to have failed to ‘deprogram’ ourselves, as he did himself. But maybe we were not as programed as he was.” Manuel Vásquez Montalbán, Et Dieu est entré á La Havane, trans. Monique Beguin Clerc and Jean-Pierre Clerc (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1998), 252. 78. See for instance the criticism of Díaz by exiled Cuban writer Zoé Valdés and the response by Díaz’s son Pablo. Valdés was arguably returning Jesús Díaz’s favor, for he (some would say gratuitously) savaged Valdés in writing while in exile. Zoe Valdés, “Dormir de un solo lado y bajo techo de vidrio.” Valdés blog, January 5, 2012, http://zoevaldes.net/2012/01/05/dormir-de-un-solo-lado-y-bajo-techo-devidrio/; Pablo Díaz Espí, “Tres pasados, un presente.” Diario de Cuba, January 13, 2012, http://www.diariodecuba.com/opinion/9076-tres-pasados-un-presente.



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79. Other notable publications of the Cuban exile include Exilio, Noticias de Arte, Escandalar, Areíto, La Nuez, Linden Lane Magazine and Mariel. 80. Encuentro en la red was an initiative of Díaz’s adopted son Manuel (also main character in his novel Las cuatro fugas de Manuel). 81. It was too tempting for some observers to compare Encuentro to Encounter [1953–91], the Anglo-American cultural magazine of center-left persuasion covertly sponsored by the CIA. See for instance María Eugenia Mudrovcic, “Estrategias de intervención y pensiones políticas en la cultura latinoamericana de la pos guerra fría,” Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 35, no. 69 (2009): 241-61. Leaving aside the relative importance of each sponsor, Encuentro presents its sponsors as follows: “Along the way, various sponsors started supporting the project: the Pablo Iglesias Foundation of the PSOE (Spain), the Olof Palme International Center (Sweden), the National Endowment for Democracy (United States), the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Fundación Caja Madrid (Spain), The Ford Foundation (United States), General Book Directorate of the Ministry of Education and Culture of Spain, Junta de Andalucía (Spain), The Open Society Institute (Spain) and, recently, the European Commission; Without ceasing the continued support of the AECI. In addition to these sponsorships, institutions such as the aforementioned Ortega y Gasset Foundation, the Casa de América, the Complutense University of Madrid, the General Society of Authors of Spain (SGAE), and the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid; The Center for Contemporary Culture in Barcelona; The Juan Carlos Center of New York University (NYU) in New York; The Letras Libres magazine and the National Palace of Fine Arts, in Mexico City; The Spanish Cultural Center and the Tower Theater in Miami; The Casa de Colón, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, have hosted seminars, conferences and presentations organized by Encuentro.” See Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 25 (Summer 2002), special issue on Jesús Díaz. 82. “Presentación,” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 1 (1996): 3. 83. Personal communication, June 26, 2009. 84. Roberto González Echevarría, “Los díaz de Jesús” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 25 (Summer 2002), 107. According to his son Pablo Díaz Espí: “More than the topic of immigration, I believe that his interest always revolved around the idea of ​Cuba as a single nation, including the island and the diaspora; idea that found itself crystallized in the postulates of the magazine Encuentro. Whether it was in his literature, his cinema or his work as an editor, the subject of the division of Cubans, of society, this theme was constant preoccupation for my father. From a very young age, in 1959, he faced the dilemma of staying or leaving the country, because he had an offer to go into exile, through a job in a medical company where he worked at that time. He decided to stay, but a large part of his family left. In spite of all this, however, I believe that his interest in the subject of the participation of Cubans, rather than personal, obsessed him from the intellectual and political perspective.” Personal communication, January 7, 2013 85. Rafael Alcides, “Trueques en La Habana,” Encuentro en la red, February 15, 2002. In Eduardo del Llano’s satirical short film  Monte Rouge, two state security agents inspect a critical intellectual’s home and find a copy of Encuentro in the closet!

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86. According to her, “Encuentro quarterly journal printed 4500 copies of each number during the last years (probably 2002 to 2008) except in 2009, when the financial crisis exploded. From this amount, nearly 2000 were sent to Cuba through different channels: friends who traveled from Europe, mainly artists, professors, cinema people, writers, photographers, academicians, etc. and also through any Embassy that would accept to help. These were not the same throughout the years, mostly depending of the current government. I recall Mexico, Sweden, Czech, and other, but both Spain and United States were always ready to help. We made weekly shipments (never a single shipment with the total) addressed to intellectuals and artists (mainly the same as described above) who didn’t mind to go to one of these Embassies to pick their Encuentro magazines. In many cases we sent 5 or 10 copies to the same person, who gave away the extra copies to some friends.” She continues: “We also sent (not through the Nunciatura) around 900 copies to different priests who wanted to distribute the journal in their areas, mainly in Oriente, Havana and Pinar del Río. This had no relation with the Bishops or the Church authorities, these were priests who volunteered to distribute a journal that they considered promoted analysis and reflection, plus an effort to reconcile the Cuban people wherever they lived. And this was the true purpose of Encuentro, a sort of global Cuban brainstorming about which path should the nation follow in order to recover a reasonable prosperous way of life, while giving strong support to social welfare state, without depriving the citizens of their civil rights. I understand that nowadays this view is better understood and shared by Cuban authorities than at that time, although freedom of expression and association is still considered too dangerous by them.” Personal communication, July 11, 2012.

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The Curator State

Successful artists are part of the wealthiest 1 percent of the population in Cuba. Many have well-appointed studios and look like well-to-do cuentapropistas. Some have their own “galleries.” For two decades, they have been able to sell their works to foreigners and be paid directly, in foreign currencies, including in American dollars, since buying Cuban art is not restricted by the US embargo.1 More than two decades ago a prominent Cuban art critic could say: “Today Cuban art is principally an export product.”2 Cubans simply cannot afford Cuban art. It is even more obvious today. Cuban plastic art (drawing, painting, engraving, sculpture, installations, mixed media) is a good investment and it has become a big business. Artists who play by the rules have been able to leave and return to their country for more than two decades. (They typically have business cards with two addresses: one in Havana and one in Miami, Madrid, or some other foreign cities.) Ordinary Cubans were only granted this basic universal right (Art.13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) in January 2013, though most exiled Cubans are still denied the right to return to Cuba. Arguably, letting artists in and out of the country was an experiment that worked well for the regime. It gave artists one more reason to toe the line. Since 1959 the field of visual arts has evinced its own internal structure, beyond the condition common to all fields in Cuba: compliance to the overarching logic of mass dictatorship. The parameters outlined in chapter 2 apply in a specific way to visual artists. Only officially approved images of Fidel Castro can be circulated and reproduced. To be approved the image must be flattering.3 According to Andrés Oppenheimer, the guidelines were revised in the early 1990s: “it was forbidden to show him standing next to anybody taller or to show him eating, and it was forbidden to divulge any information on his personal life.”4 His photographer Alberto Díaz (“Korda”) took 127

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obsequious pictures of his boss in the Sierra Maestra in … 1961, to replace the authentic but insufficiently flattering ones taken during the insurgency. This was the object of “Con Permiso de la Historia” (With History’s Permission), an interesting series of portraits by artist José Angel Toirac Batista (1966–). Since there is no prohibition on quoting or reproducing his words, artists like Sandra Ceballos and Toirac made interesting works (collage, multimedia, paintings) using Fidel’s words, long quotes or even numbers/ statistics in the case of Toirac’s witty work “Opus” (2005).5 Cases of censorship have often to do with portraying Fidel (or Raúl) in a way that could be construed as critical.6 This is simply not permissible “within the Revolution.” With the possible exception of poster art (huge during the 1960s and 1970s), for the promotion of films for instance, the visual arts are mostly for the happy few. They are typically less ideationally explicit in their “content” and often less legible in their “form” than written material. For instance, the most official painter in Castro’s Cuba for years was probably René Portocarrero (1912–1986), an internationally recognized artist best known for his abstract and baroque exploration of non-political themes: scenes from Havana, portraits of ordinary Cubans and urban landscapes.7 Portocarrero expressed his enthusiastic support for the regime in his public utterances and participation to various cultural events, not explicitly in his art. In short, in Cuba as in many other non-democratic countries, visual artists generally have more “space” for expression than, say, writers or popular singers, who in turn enjoy more leeway than academics or journalists. (Nobody is less free than a journalist in Cuba, excluding underground “independent” journalists of course.) Cubans are all equal, in being denied their “right to freedom of opinion and expression” (art.19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), but some are more equal than others. The caveat mentioned above is not to be taken lightly however: visual artists have more space, but those who want to take Fidel, the Che or Raúl as subjects have very little space to deploy their imagination. Furthermore, visual artists need physical space to work and to showcase their work, and some clearance from the state, to connect to national institutions and to the global market, is necessary. Through a system of state-owned galleries, museums, cultural centers and control of public space (including “the street”) more generally, the state can “curate” artistic activities and pre-empt improper conduct. Though some artists deal directly with foreign galleries, most of the commercialization of artistic products is undertaken by the Fondos Cubanos de Bienes Culturales (founded in 1990) and sometimes by the UNEAC. Plus of course, Cuban artists are also Cubans, and as such they are monitored, only more so than most because of their public stature. Numerous artists told me that they are careful not to engage in even the most common and venial illegal activities (like buying from the black market), because they are under



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surveillance and it could be used against them by government officials. One told me he is careful what draft copies he throws in the garbage because State Security agents have looked there for suspicious material. Visual artists can show their allegiance to the regime in many ways beyond artistic production. They can sign petitions, occupy administrative positions in various government organizations, represent the country abroad, denounce dissidents, travel with the president, support the government’s campaigns (for the “five heroes” for instance, the five Cubans arrested for espionage in Miami in 1998) and publicly espouse official causes. The rules of political correctness (Cuban style) may be vague for their art, beyond the rule regarding images of the leaders, but not so much for their behavior. Pedro Pablo Oliva was censured (see chapter 1) because of some of his public statements about politics, not because of his playful and apolitical art. The idea that contemporary Cuban art was practically invented by “the revolution” is as erroneous as the notion that artists cannot produce works of high quality under the current regime. Throughout modern history, Cuban artists faced challenges of various kinds but continued to build a remarkable body of works. The milieu of arts has deep historical roots and it is a highly institutionalized field. The Ballet Alicia Alonso was founded in 1948, becoming the Ballet Nacional de Cuba in 1960. The Fine Arts San Alejandro National Academy was founded on January 11, 1818 in the San Agustín Convent in Havana.8 Among its notable alumni in the first half of the twentieth century one counts some of the most famous avant-garde painters and sculptor in Cuba, like Amelia Peláez (1896–1968), Victor Manuel García Valdez (1897–1969), Antonio Gattorno (1904–1980), Manuel Rodulfo Tardo (1913–1998), Mario Carreño (1913–1999), Wifredo Lam (1902–1982) [the most famous Cuban artist ever], Fidelio Ponce de León  (1895–1949), Agustín Cárdenas Alfonso (1927–2001) and Antonia Eiriz (1929–1995). In 1944 thirteen Cuban artists presented their works in an exhibit on Modern Cuban Painters at the MoMA in New York.9 A group of ten Cuban abstract and “concretist” painters known as “The Ten” (Los Diez), mostly active in 1959–1961 but individually active since the late 1940s, was featured in major exhibitions in London and New York in 2015.10 Building on this legacy, two important schools were created under Castro: the National Arts School (Escuela Nacional de Arte) in 1962, which specialized at the intermediary level in ballet, music, dramatic art, visual arts and dance; and the University of Arts of Cuba (Instituto Superior de Arte, or ISA), founded in 1976 as the only university-level school entirely devoted to the arts in Latin America. To these institutions one can add an impressive list of specialized academies and conservatories, both at the national and provincial levels. By the time a student graduates from the ISA, typically around the age of 23, she or he could have been studying art for up to ten years, from

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some of the most wordly-wise and competent teachers in Cuba. This is not to say that all artists graduate from these schools, but completely self-made successful artists seem rare in Cuba. In sum, the production of visual arts in Cuba is, within the cultural field, a well-structured sub-field of its own. It should also be said that for almost thirty years many Cuban artists studied in academies of the USSR and the Eastern bloc, where the technical training was apparently excellent. Since the downfall of European communism, various US and European grant agencies and foundations (such as the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami, the Ludwig Foundation, the Guggenheim, not to mention the almost infinite network of US universities and their galleries and residency programs) have become the main foreign destinations and sponsors for prominent Cuban artists. To repeat, the state remains central as a gatekeeper to determine who can benefit from the global art business. A light political footprint is key to receiving this considerable privilege in a country like Cuba. Cuban art schools have not been immune to political control and censorship. All schools and universities were purged during the early 1960s, in conformity with the new political parameters. During the 1970s artists were silenced and jailed for their improper conduct. Prominent teachers such as Antonia Eiriz, Raúl Martínez (1927–1995) and Servando Cabrera Moreno (1923–1981) were purged from the ISA for instance.11 One of the most famous (and expensive) contemporary Cuban painters, Tomás Sánchez, was fired from his teaching job at the National Art School, under accusations of “religious proselytizing” (essentially because he was practicing yoga).12 Plastic artist Umberto Peña (1937–) could not exhibit his work during the 1970s and most of the 1980s. Sánchez and Eiriz were rehabilitated a few years later, and even honored in the case of Eiriz. They nevertheless left the country in 1993.13 Arte Calle’s founder Aldito Menéndez was denied the right to return to Cuba in 2015, after being invited to participate at the Festival de Videoarte de Camagüey. He was not given explanation for “cancellation of passport.”14 Many, perhaps most of the ISA’s graduates now live in exile, though again, some can now travel and work in Cuba as well. Post-1959 “Cuban-American” art started in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, with notable cases such as painter Luis Cruz Azaceta (1942–) and performance artist Ana Mendieta (1948–1985) leaving with their families during the early 1960s. It is impossible to talk about Cuban art qua art without taking the immense contribution of exile into account.15 Many hyphenated Cubans continued to be concerned, even obsessed, by Cuban themes long after they left the island—in some cases, after their parents left—which makes CubanAmerican art every bit as “Cuban” as what is produced on the island. Observers of the Cuban art scene converge in considering that visual artists led the charge for more autonomy and critical space, within the cultural



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field and beyond, during the 1980s. After two decades of heavy-handed cultural policy, visual arts started to develop its own narrative of autonomy and symbolic resistance to some of the official dogmas. In fact, they are often credited for introducing post-utopian (post “New Man”) narratives that were used later on by writers and social scientists. Young visual artists born in the mid-to-late1950s, such Gustavo Acosta (1958), José Bedia (1959), Consuelo Castañeda (1958), Arturo Cuenca (1955), Juan Francisco Elso (1956–1988), Antonio Eligio Fernández (Tonel) (1958–), José Manuel Fors (1956), René Francisco (1960), Flavio Garciandia (1954), Gustavo Pérez Monzón (1956), Glexis Novoa (1964), Eduardo Ponjuan (1956), Ricardo Rodríguez Brey (1956), Leandro Soto Ortiz (1956), Rubén Torres Llorca (1957) and Israel León Viera (1957), challenged the official didacticism of the 1970s and adopted a fresh approach to artistic production in Communist Cuba.16 They were not unlike the painters of the Generación de la ruptura in Mexico (Alberto Gironella, Vicente Rojo, José Luis Cuevas, Vlady, Pedro Coronel), who defied their own dominant “socialist realist” tradition (Mexican muralism) during the 1950s. Some artists born in the 1960s continued this tradition during the 1990s—the 1980s “second generation,” like (René Francisco 1960–) and Tomás Esson (1963)—though most of them left the country, too. According to most observers, the exposition Volumen Uno in January 1981 in Havana officially inaugurated a new paradigm in Cuban art (the so-called “New Cuban Art”), one that broke with some of the visual conventions of the previous generations.17 There were eleven young artists who had one common disposition: to be stylistically nonconformist, but “within the revolution.” For Cuban painter (now living in Mexico) Flavio Garciandia (1954–): When we did Volumen Uno we were very, very conscious of the fact that the ‘state of the arts’ in Cuba was just awful, precisely because of those ideas of programmatic contentism [contenidismo programático]. We knew that Volumen Uno was a political exhibition … very polemical, precisely because we were positioning the problems in another part, not in the “content”–we had a completely distinct focus and in that moment this was practically a political challenge. … Given the circumstances of the context, it was an exhibition that was proposing … art as a totally autonomous activity, not as a weapon of the Revolution as the Constitution says.18

Comments on how irreverent and insubordinate this generation of artists was are largely generated by these artists themselves, and by the ubiquitous art critic Gerardo Mosquera, for whom the art of the period “concentrated the functions of an almost nonexistent civil society, putting up resistance to authoritarians.”19

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These assessments tend to downplay two phenomena: first, the slight change in cultural policy that made their new approach possible, and more important, the fact that for all the talk about how critical Volumen Uno was compared to public art of previous generations, the new symbolic language of the 1980s made it easier for artists to eschew some of the most controversial issues or events, such as the tragedy that took place only eight months earlier: the 1980 Mariel boatlift, in which 125,000 people left the country, among them numerous visual artists (Carlos Alfonzo, Luis Boza, Humberto Dionisio, Alberto Godoy, Victor Gómez, Eduardo Michaelsen, Andrés Varelio, Roberto Valero, Luis Vega, Ernesto Briel), writers (Reinaldo Arenas, Luis de la Paz, Roberto Madrigal, Andrés Reynaldo, Carlos Victoria) and musicians (drummer Ignacio Berroa, Orlando “Puntilla” Ríos, Felipe García Villamil).20 No reference to this exodus (and the actos de repudio that accompanied it) is made in Volumen Uno. There was no shortage of issues and problems to examine using the medium of art, from restrictions to civil and political liberties to the country’s massive involvement in various military adventures in Africa. Talking about the 1970s, art critic Gerardo Mosquera wrote: “It was also during this decade that Cuba began its wars in Ethiopia and Angola, which involved hundreds of thousands of Cubans and left no trace in art or in culture.”21 Ironic and carnivalesque deconstruction of symbols do not need trading in down-to-earth issues. The political perspective of the “generation of 1980s,” such as it is, was never to test the primary parameters but rather to explore the contours of the secondary ones: that is, what can be tolerated, aesthetically, “within the revolution”; how much of the gaffes of the past are fair game; what part of the Cuba-US relations and the experience of the Cuban dispora can be examined; what totems of the regime can be represented, by whom and where. They can be credited for testing those with courage and determination. Much of the 1980s experiments were tolerated by the regime, though there were many instances of censorship.22 The decade ended with an exhibition at the Castillo de La Real Fuerza in February 1989, a few months before the downfall of the Berlin Wall. The whole exhibition was closed, as was mentioned in chapter 1. Then the next logical step for artists came about: after engaging in politics with distance and irony, the new dominant trend (which doesn’t mean the only one) was to eschew politics altogether, while taking fuller advantage of the rapidly growing global market for Cuban art. Needless to explain, all of this coincided with the twilight of the Cold War. The Soviet Union (and its annual four billion dollars-a-year subsidy to Cuba) came to an abrupt end and the Cuban gatekeeper state accepted, de guerre lasse, to open up carefully to market forces. The 1990s coincided with the deepening of globalization in the field of art, and the début of numerous new Biennials, far away from the traditional



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capitals of global art: that is, Sharjah, UAE (1993), Shanghai (1996), Mercosur (Brazil, 1997), Dak’art (1998) and Busan (Korea 1998). The first Havana Biennial occurred in 1984 (every two years until 1994 and every three years afterward) as an early manifestation of this trend, in addition to being the only one operated under a communist state. In the new global market for art, the purported anti-imperialist and anticonsumerist mission of the Havana Biennial offered a refreshing choice for multicultural or postcolonial curators and critics, a sort of artsy Potemkin village for bourgeois anti-bourgeois consumers. For instance, in 1990 the German chocolate magnate and art collector Peter Ludwig acquired more than two-thirds of the exhibition of contemporary Cuban art “Kuba OK,” in addition to many other famous works of the artists of the 1990s. The Biennials were launching pads for a number of now successful Cuban artists, as well as a coup for the regime and its projected image abroad. After the depenalization of the dollar in 1993, the Biennials ceased to be “biennials” per se to become art fairs, with festive atmosphere.23 “During the Biennial,” observed artist and art critic Coco Fusco, “the controls on political speech are loosened within the realm of art for two weeks to help give foreigners the impression that Cuba is an endless party. But dissidents and artists working in unofficial contexts are kept out of that context, and members of marginal subcultures are swept off the streets by police near tourist areas before the Biennial begins.”24 A window is open, then it is closed. A number of measures were adopted around the turn of the decade that shaped a new direction in cultural policy in the post-Soviet period. In 1988 the status of “independent artist” was established for the first time, with the Decree No.106 on the Labor Condition and the Commercialization of the Works of Plastic and Applied Arts Creators. This was followed by the creation of the CNAP in 1989. In 1990 the Ministry of Culture created the Cuban Fund of Cultural Properties (FCBC), to control the sale of cultural products (fine arts or crafts) to both nationals and foreigners, and to handle transactions in foreign currencies. Today it represents more than seven thousand artists and artisans. Dispositions were also adopted to facilitate private and foreign financing of cultural activities of the ICAIC, the Cuban Institute of Music (ICM) and the Cuban book Institute (ICL). In 1989 the exhibition “Made in Havana: Contemporary Art from Cuba,” was presented in the United States. It included the works of five artists who had earlier participated in Volumen 1.25 The past twenty-five years have seen important changes in the polity as a whole, as was discussed in the first two chapters. In the field of visual arts, what is striking is a certain continuity, with on one hand successful artists acquiring more autonomy and opportunities to prosper in and out of Cuba— for example, Sandra Ramos (1969–), José A. Vincench (1973–) or Alexandre Arrechea (1970–)—and on the other hand, the state selectively loosening

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the shackles on culture in exchange for a new kind of loyalty from artists: one based on interest rather than ideology. From the state’s perspective, this resulted in badly needed stability in the cultural field, after the exodus en masse of the early 1990s. Although the cultural field as a whole, including the visual arts, suffered from the deprivations of the 1990s—hence the name “bad weeds” [mala hierba] given to artists of this generation—the new situation paradoxically allowed the art scene to make real gains and grow in the midst of the most difficult material conditions. The 1990s saw the birth of an interesting independent cultural space, called Agglutination Space (Espacio Aglutinador-1994), where visual artists and writers could present and discuss their work and criticize dominant cultural values and institutions. It is not clear the extent to which this “space”—in fact a small room in the private residence of artists Sandra Ceballos and Ezequiel Suárez, which I visited in 2014—was monitored by State Security, but the fact that such an apparently modest undertaking is generally considered a remarkable achievement speaks volumes about the extent of state control over cultural activities in Cuba.26 Ceballos has been censured sometimes, but not always—a good way to keep her “participating.”27 One of her works can be found in the Fine Art Museum in Havana, and she has been invited to be part of exhibits that were officially approved. The art of the past few years can have political overtone, but generally, nothing too explicit. Artists learned to deal with the international market, giving it what it wants: what Gerardo Mosquera called “A critical art for export, or even an art for ‘airport.’”28 In other words, Cubanía products, often with muted and aestheticized political overtones that make both the artist and the viewer feel astute, all of which transacted with the global language of art of the time—mostly conceptual art and arte povera. To repeat, for all the talk about postmodern art in Cuba, the country is literally stuck in modernity, with primary concerns about national identity, sovereignty, material well-being, basic freedom and security. These modern concerns are omnipresent in the Cuban art of the past twenty-five years, where they are at once localized and transcended by postmodern aesthetics. This confers Cuban art a trendy “glocal” cachet that simultaneously insinuates and defuses “content.” The global market seems to like its Cuban art with a dash of political irreverence, though many great works of Cuban artists sold abroad feature no obvious Cuban, Carribean or Latin American style or content. Cuban artists are often masters of double entendre and detachment (parody, irony, sarcasm and pastiche). The regime can afford to appear moderately open-minded since this kind of art is mostly inconsequential on the island. It can be censored when it appears to be crossing the line, perhaps leaving the artist free to present it abroad or at home, while continuing exhibit other works. What is often presented as “negotiation” between the artist and the state strikes me



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as something more oblique: artists trying to figure out where the red line is, perhaps with the help of state handlers, so that projects can be carried out. TOIRAC, LEYVA NOVO AND THE PROBLEMATIZATION OF HISTORY A good illustration of this low-intensity “curatorial” strategy can be found in the work of artist José Angel Toirac Batista (1966–) and its reception in Cuba.29 Toirac’s career is doing well internationally: his work is included in many private and public collections throughout the world, like the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Art critics and cultural theorists appreciate his playful associations of Fidel and Che Guevara with commercialism (a global phenomenon but also a growing trend in Cuba) and religiosity (Fidel and the “12” surviving guerrillas in the Sierra Maestra; Fidel’s “last supper”; Che’s body “ascending” in a helicopter, etc.). I met with Toirac twice at his modest studio in Old Havana. His personality matches his art: both are somewhat understated, gentle, low profile, and yet they exude intelligence and caution about what can be done in the Cuban context. Toirac takes very seriously what is often considered as the social or political mission of art: to shed a critical but non-judgmental light on complex and paradoxical reality; to ask questions and invite people to think outside of the box, rather than providing solutions or answers. His art is “critical,” if you ask him. But it is not explicitly or even deliberately so, which is a good strategy if you are an artist in Cuba—whether he thinks of it this way or not. Given Toirac’s fascination for history and memory and the heavy-handed monitoring of historical narratives in Cuba, it is all too easy to interpret his oeuvre as an indictment of propaganda and censorship. For Mosquera, Toirac “is the artist who has most systematically endeavored to criticize the representations of power in Cuba from within.” What is more, “Toirac has obsessed with the official representations of Fidel Castro, showing their religious connotations, transfiguring them in a critical sense, or deconstructing their propaganda rhetoric and contrasting them to the new capitalist propaganda in the country.” 30 In the same vein, fellow artist Tonel (Antonio Eligio Fernández) commends Toirac’s work for its vision on “the rise of the capitalist corporate image and its clash with another omnipresent likeness— the socialist image of power identified with the figure of Fidel Castro.” This, for him, “reveals the hybridity of social, economic, and ideological aspects of cubanidad.”31 Toirac’s work may be interpreted as an anti-utopian or ironic depiction of stereotypes, a common motif of that generation of artists (for instance, Carlos

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Rodríguez Cárdenas, Leandro Soto and Alejandro Aguilera). But his series of Fidel portraits (“Opium”) superposed to Yves Saint-Laurent, Calvin Klein or notorious Malboro commercials (or Che Guevara with Apple’s ad slogan “Think Differently”), for instance, can be seen as lampooning big corporations, not Fidel or Che. “Opium” can mean alienation, as in Marx’s famous quote (“religion is … the opium of the people”), but Marx also said, in the same sentence, that religion is “the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” During an interview for Spanish television with his wife Meira Marrero, who is an art historian and a collaborator, she plays up the critique of religion and religious-like celebration of Fidel’s political charisma in Cuba, but he qualifies by saying that religion (and its relevant political counterpart in the Cuban context) is also soothing for the masses.32 While he does not contradict his wife and artistic partner, he also differs with her in the significance of “Opium” and defuses its critical edges. One should also say that his portraits of Fidel and the Che are always pleasing, even iconographic. He often uses the “blurring” technique made famous by German artist Gerhard Richter, injecting mystery and awe in his characters. One can mention in particular Richter’s series “October 18, 1977,” based on photographs of moments in the lives and deaths (by suicide in their jails) of four members of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group in Germany. This work is very controversial because it invites the viewer to an aesthetic commemoration of terrorists as “victims” (there is still some controversy about how they manage to kill themselves in jail), rather than a condemnation of their actions.33 A comparable interpretation of Toirac’s portraits is plausible, since the artist’s considerable skills are mobilized to tease out the charisma of his subjects. That this suggests criticism is both plausible and irrefutable, though by no means unmistakable. In any case, to leave the ultimate meaning of his work sufficiently open to interpretation is probably good enough from the artist’s perspective. At least he manages to problematize the representation of Cuba’s iconic leaders, perhaps the most taboo topic in Cuba. Because he operates within the narrowest possible parameters, some of Toirac’s paintings with potentially ambiguous “content” cannot be exhibited publicly in Cuba. In 2009 he presented at the PULSE art fair in Miami the exhibit “José Toirac: Censure and Celebration in Cuba.” It featured the censored series “Cuba, 1869–2006” (2006), created in collaboration with Marrero. This consists of paintings of Cuba’s leaders from the man who made the declaration of Cuban independence in 1868 (Carlos Manuel de Céspedes del Castillo) to Raúl Castro, all hanging on a nail. The last spot on the wall highlights a single nail, with no painting, causing the viewer to question who will govern in Cuba’s future. This series was censored when it was presented in Cuba, conceivably because Fidel and Raúl appear as just one of the many leaders and heads of state over 137 years of Cuban history.



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Similarly, in the “Alma Pater” series (2011), Toirac paints many male political figures of Cuban history with their children, without mentioning their names (each is titled “Untitled” nos 1, 2, etc.). This strategy humanizes Fidel, in a rare image with his son Fidelito (Cubans have rarely seen Fidel with his family), as well as Raúl with son Alejandro, but also Batista and other Cuban leaders with their children, again with the same effect: the Castros are no different than other leaders in their basic finitude and humanity. One can see how Toirac is opening a Pandora’s box without explicitly doing anything disloyal toward Fidel or Raúl. The reason why this could be seen as critical is because it all deals with history, and history in Castro’s Cuba is heavily scripted by the regime. But most important, because it examines the biggest totem and taboo on the island: Fidel. Another telling example is the young artist Reynier Leyva Novo (1983–). A student of Tania Bruguera during the 1990s, Leyva Novo’s art is political, according to Rafael Rojas, “because it unequivocally assumes the citizenization of history.”34 In a personal communication with Leyva Novo in Havana in 2014, he indeed said that in Cuba discussions about the present and the future always connect back to the past, and that is why it is the central theme of his (and so many other artists) work.35 To support his claim, Rojas, whose many books on Cuba deal with the politicization of history, mentions several clever works of conceptual art, such as a red hardcover book “Revolución una y mil veces” [Revolution once and one thousand times, 2011], which features nothing but this single word repeated 1,000 times. For Rojas, The basic concept of Cuba’s official ideology appears in the artist’s aesthetic as the mechanical reiteration of a word. To do, to defend, to live or to dream—any infinitive is valid, in this case. Revolution is nothing more than pronouncing the word ‘Revolution,’ abandoning all pretense of meaning. The concept of “Revolution,” then, is reduced to a phoneme, and the phoneme, in turn, is reduced to a text. The emptied, deserted archive of a word repeated a thousand times is the archive of power.36

Again, the viewer can decide to abandon all pretense of meaning. Or not. A slogan may just be a slogan. Another piece Rojas discusses in his article consists of a “base shrine glass, which contains, preserves and exhibits the ashes of the complete combustion of the work by  José Martí.”37 In an interview realized in March 2016, Leyva Novo says about this work (entitled “Don’t save me if I die” [No me guardes si me muero]): I burned the collection to preserve it, rather than destroy it. The thinking of José Martí, a person known in Cuba both for organizing the war to liberate the country from Spanish domination and for being a peerless poet and thinker, was manipulated to bolster ideologies that succeeded him, thus creating a compelled historical continuity. On the one hand, fire burns and deforms, and so

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does instrumentalization, which may even resignificate words and ideas. On the other hand, fire purifies—in this case, it purifies the oeuvre from its posthumous manipulation. While the urn containing the ashes is their intellectual space, the ashes are the body of José Martí’s thought.38

Rojas, who is the author of José Martí, la invención de Cuba (2000), is therefore right to interpret “Don’t save me if I die” as an indictment of the propagandistic use of Martí (and history more generally), though without knowing the publicly expressed intent of the author, it could also be viewed as an indictment of all posthumous manipulation of his legacy (i.e., not just by the Castro regime). It can also be viewed as nothing (explicitly) more than a faithful rendition of something José Martí actually said: that after his death his work should be burned. Rojas mentions other works as well, all involving historical leitmotifs. Leyva Novo’s art is indeed political but in a “light” and highly aestheticized way. It has been seen in US galleries like the Lisa Sette Gallery, the Hoffman Gallery, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and the Walker Art Center and Perez Art Museum. Though Rojas’ interpretation is insightful, it is also possible to speculate that for Cuban censors, much of Leyva Novo’s oeuvre is basically an inoffensive mix of Cubanía (lots or red color, recurrent themes of battle and revolution) and global youth culture. Other works by this artist reinforce this interpretation, such as “Margin Notes,” involving collage of newspaper clippings on paper and presenting, for instance, miniatures of Vladimir Putin kissing Xi Jinping (Margin Notes No.8, 2015), or the famous image of an Abu Ghraib hooded prisoner holding a hammer-andsickle flag (Margin Notes No.24 [The Ends Touch or The wise man does not fight], 2015). Another piece called “The desire to die for others” (2012) is a beautiful assemblage of eight objects (three revolvers, four machetes, one bullet), possibly a political theme but with no ideological or policy strings attached. A few years ago Leyva Novo marketed a collection of tee-shirts called “Colección Novo Aniversario,” targeting young customers who are craving logos with catchy leftist themes and symbols.39 They typically involve contrasts between bright red symbols or inscriptions on black or gray backgrounds: for example, a big red star with inscription “Como un sol de fuego” [like a sun made of fire]; a microphone with bright red inscription “Hablará mañana” [you will speak tomorrow], etc. Made in Portland, United States, these tee-shirts sell a whiff of rebellious attitude but no precise message, for a good price. Meanwhile, in Cuba, when Leyva Novo tried to present a work entitled “Revolution is abstraction,” he was censured on the grounds that, as he was told, “Revolution is never abstraction.” Repeating the word revolution in a red book is apparently ok, on the other hand, conceivably because it is not a clear statement about revolution or anything else.



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The always-perceptive Rojas is not mistaken: as an historian, he sees the critical undertone that is no doubt endorsed (in private) by the artist. But from the censor’s perspective, Leyva Novo generally works within the parameters and his international success is good for the country and not bad for the regime. KCHO’S FLOATING POLITICAL ART The case of artist Alexis Leyva Machado (1970–), known as Kcho, is celebrated as Cuba’s most internationally established artist since Wifredo Lam (1902–82). Kcho almost instantly became an international star in his mid-20s, winning numerous international prizes. In his short career he had more than 90 solo exhibitions and 200 group exhibitions in 35 countries. His work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world. Kcho is mostly known for his installations, an artistic genre (pioneered by Marcel Duchamp almost a century ago) that came to prominence during the 1970s and 1980s.40 Two of Kcho’s installations (Infinite Column no.1, and In the Eyes of History) are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and his works sell for decent sums—and in dollars (in 2007 his Infinite Column II sold at Christie’s New York for $73,000, roughly the equivalent of 240 years of average annual salary in Cuba). Kcho has been called Fidel Castro’s favorite artist. “I’m proud that Fidel calls me his brother,” he said.41 He is a Stakhanovite who called upon fellow Cuban artists to join him in working harder to build socialism. He has been chosen to be deputy of the Popular Power National Assembly since 2003.42 In 2012 he urged Cuban artists to continue working “for free and voluntarily for the people,” without receiving any tax benefit.43 He supported the regime’s attack against fellow artist El Sexto, by publicly echoing the view that “El Sexto is nobody. In Sweden, you do graffiti and they throw you in jail. … This is not art or anything”.44 Kcho’s very public loyalty to the regime and exclusive personal connection to the heart of the “revolution” (Fidel himself) afford him an extraordinary level of recognition by the political leadership. He was given his own museum/gallery/cultural center in Havana, where his work is presented along with a permanent collection of Wifredo Lam’s works. In 2015 the state telecom agency Etecsa granted approval to Kcho to open the country’s first public wireless hub at his cultural center.45 In an Internet-starved country like Cuba, the inauguration of a “Google+Kcho.Mor” Internet center at his Romerillo studio in March 2016, free of charge for users and sponsored in part by Google, gives a measure of how “connected” the artist is with the government. In one of his typically mystifying messages, Kcho characterized the

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center as a “space of sovereignty and freedom, which shows the daily struggle against the blockade.”46 Never mind that such partnership with a prominent US corporation would have been unthinkable if there was a blockade. In 2014 Raúl Castro took Kcho with him to visit the Pope, with whom the artist had an epistolary exchange. “I am the son of the Revolution of the humbles and for the humbles, led by Fidel,” he wrote in his letter.47 In July 2015 Kcho was in Washington DC, along with Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez, former parliament president Ricardo Alarcon and Havana City historian Eusebio Leal, as part of the Cuban delegation attending the official opening of the Cuban embassy in the US capital.48 In the spring of 2016 the Cuban government gave one of Kcho’s paintings to the city of Paris to express solidarity following the terrorist attacks of the previous months.49 If Kcho is as official an artist as one could find on the island, his art is far from being conventional in style, let alone realist socialist in content. And yet, the police apparently took dissident artist El Sexto to Kcho’s cultural center to teach him what real art looks like! It is doubtful that the Cuban police, or Fidel Castro for that matter, have a great appreciation for his unorthodox installations and sculptures. It is more likely that they value Kcho’s unshakable dedication to verbally defend the regime at home and abroad. Almost all of Kcho’s work features rudimentary boats (float tubes, rafts, canoes), docks and oars, either in drawings or in large-size but graceful installations made of scavenged or improvised materials (beach debris, rocks, driftwood, twigs, pieces of rubber). Manuel E. González, a Cuban exile and current director of the art program for Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, said: “Kcho is the quintessential Cuban artist of the ‘Special Period.’”50 More important, virtually all of his work deals with the eminently political topic of migration, which is not uncommon in contemporary Cuban art (think of the works of Sandra Ramos or José A. Vincench, for instance). But these are all potent symbols, in the Cuban context, not merely of travel and migration but of escape. Kcho’s most famous work is arguably “La Regata” (1994), an installation shown at the 5th  Havana Biennial (May–June 1994) and consisting of small wooden toy boats, old shoes and other beached debris assembled on the floor in the shape  of a larger boat.51 La Regata was one of the most prominent pieces of the exposition and it appears on the cover of the very official Revolución y Cultura  magazine in Cuba (issue No. 5, 1994). It now belongs to the collection of the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, Germany. For Fernando Castro, “the title camouflages with a very Cuban sense of humor what may be going on when a flotilla of vessels suddenly takes a definite direction. ‘The world is made of migrations,’ wrote Kcho. What might be a reference to ‘Marielitos,’ to Elián González, or other local attempts of emigration and exile, Kcho understands as a more general case of the human condition.”52



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Similarly, in a comment on his Rome exhibition Vía Crucis, Kcho talks about “The suffering and the dreams of all the people who decide to emigrate in search of a better future.” For him, immigration from the developing world to rich nations is a “consequence of the inaction of rich and developed countries that do not adequately address this problem.”53 He mentions the case of Haitians who reach the coasts of the Dominican Republic, as well as refugees from Africa and the Magreb who risk their lives trying to reach the coast of Europe. He says nothing about the tens of thousands of Cubans who died and risked their lives crossing the strait of Florida on makeshift rafts. During a session of “Ultimo Jueves” organized by the Cuban social sciences and humanities journal Temas, Cuban writer and drama critic Omar Valiño expressed the official view on Kcho’s work in Cuba when he talks about “Kcho’s extraordinarily successful installations, which also take the representation of emigration as a theme, which of course is not, nor can one see it as just a Cuban problem.”54 The Havana-based Prensa Latina reports that Kcho focuses on migration and boats because “every part of Cuba’s history has arisen from the arrival of a boat: from the arrival of Christopher Columbus, the composition of the island, the arrival of Our Lady of Charity, the Granma yacht landing.”55 Again, no mention is made of post-1959 examples. During the summer of 1994, some 34,000 Cubans fled Cuba on makeshift balsas; from 1985 to 1993, according to Cuban migration expert Silvia Pedraza, close to 6,000 balseros managed to reach the United States safely. Thousands drowned. Manuel E. González says about La Regata: “People went into that gallery and cried, thinking about how the installation evoked the tragic fate of so many Cubans who have taken to the seas over the years.”56 And yet, as Julian Stallabrass points out, “Much of this art, while it draws on the resonance of political issues, takes no stand, and is characterized by ironic or mute politics.” Thus, “while 30,000 rafters were trapped in camps in Guantánamo and other parts of the Caribbean, serving as pawns in a tug of war between Fidel Castro and Washington,” wrote Cuban-American artist and writer Coco Fusco, “the Cuban cultural ministry accelerated its export of raft art.” For her, “Kcho’s floating rafts are a perfect morsel of Havana Lite. His lightweight boats have been emptied of a massive human drama that is his people’s deepest wound.”57 The example of Kcho suggests that the critical edge so valued in contemporary art is skin-deep and ready made for immediate consumption, rather than a demanding invitation to serious analysis. “For all the facile acknowledgement of the sociological dimension of Kcho’s work,” concludes Fusco, “no one seems to be asking how and why a Cuban citizen can zip around the world with symbols of the breakdown of national unity–which at one time could have landed him in prison–while his government continues to prohibit the very sort of emigration he’s representing.”

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Kcho does not discourage political interpretation of his work. The titles of his exhibitions typically give a political frisson: “The road of nostalgia” (El camino de la nostalgia) at Centro Wifredo Lam in Havana, “Salvation” (Tabla de salvación) at the Espacio Abierto Gallery, in Havana; “Everything Changes” (Todo cambia) for the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles; “Speaking of the Obvious Was Never a Pleasure for Us,” at the Israel Museum, Billy Rose Pavilion, in Jerusalem; “Don’t Thank Me for the Silence” (No me agradezcan el silencio) at Casa de las Américas in Havana.58 But really, it’s up to the viewer to decide what the “content” of Kcho’s art might be. About the exhibition “All the paths” (Todos los caminos) presented in May 2016 in the French capital’s Louis Carré Gallery, Kcho said: “I talk about the work, passion, responsibility, art as responsibility. You can’t create without a sense of responsibility, even more so today when everything is becoming nothing more than a commodity, pale and void of a genuine message.” Kcho’s allusions to contemporary problems have an appealingly authentic Cuban anchor, but they are pitched in a way that ducks questions about how Cubans are ruled. Kcho’s success is good for the Cuban economy and the Cuban brand; it is energetic, formally audacious, superficially critical and deliberately “light” when it comes to being relevant in the Cuban context. Kcho’s crudely beautiful installations are made-in-Cuba’s floating devices stranded in unnamed international waters. POLITICS AS A MIRROR OF ART: THE ARTIVISM OF TANIA BRUGUERA Performance art, by artists such as Tania Bruguera, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Manuel Mendive, Leandro Soto, Juan Sí González, or collectives like Grupo Provisional, Arte Calle and Omni Zona Franca, is one of the most critical art form in Cuba today. Coco Fusco talks about performance artists’ “frontal critiques of state power,” though the examples she gives suggest creative eccentrism and mischief (like defecating on a copy of Granma or mutilating one’s own body) rather than publicly legible denunciation of regime in place.59 In her insightful book Dangerous Moves, Fusco makes some thoughtprovoking comments about performance art. First of all, “performance is cheap to produce and portable,” she points out, “and, unlike painting and sculpture, it is imperceptible to authorities prior to its actualisation, making it an ideal means for intervening in unexpected places.”60 She then argues that “behavior” and “conduct” are notoriously contentious and significant in a country where, for at least the first three decades of the Castro regime, money



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was of little use and basic necessities were subsidized, and therefore “conduct became the currency that generated greater opportunity for advancement.” She concludes: “Given the political significance of conduct and its status as currency, it is not surprising that performance, as the art form that most assiduously explores the social construction of behavior, would become an arena for challenging the ways in which conduct was shaped, valued or condemned.”61 It is worth signaling that the majority of performance artists she discusses in this recent book now live abroad. What always seems blown out of proportion in writings about avant-garde political art is how much of a threat it represents for the ruling class. In a country like Cuba, performance art is much more “dangerous” for the artists than for the regime. Mosquera is right to point out that “The new Cuban art has managed to play a unique role as place for social discussion in a country where these kinds of places do not exist.”62 Except that it is not a space for widespread public discussions on issues. It is a relatively small space connected to the global market of art much more than to ordinary Cubans. And yet, nonconformist art of any kind both reflects and fuels a broader social phenomenon: the desanctification of revolutionary symbolism and the detotalitarization of the collective mind. Nonconformity does not imply the formulation of a political alternative to the status quo. It is typically openended; a contribution, potentially, to various kinds of political mobilizations that are safely “within” the parameters or dangerously close to crossing the red line. It does not need to offer clear alternatives to the regime and its policies to disturb and foster critical thinking. Fusco recognizes that “performance artists advanced a conceptual framework for internal dissent as a civil and aesthetic endeavor, rather than a strictly political or criminal one.”63 This is their strength as well as their limitation. Performance artist Tania Bruguera (1968–) is the most famous performance artist in and from Cuba. In the words of New York University art critic Boris Groys, she is “beyond any doubt … one of the best performance artists of our time.”64 Her confrontation as an “art-ivist” with the Cuban government became a cause célèbre, in the confined milieus of highbrow art and Cuba watchers, in December 2014, when Bruguera was denied access to one of the most famous political sites in the country, Revolution Square in Havana, to stage one of her defiant “open mic” performances. The spotlights were already beaming on the island in the wake of the epochal Obama-Castro agreement on December 17, which led to the reestablishment of full diplomatic relations between the two Cold War foes in 2015. Encore un effort, Bruguera seemed to say to Raúl Castro, if you really want to open up and liberalize Cuba. For an artist eager to provoke, the timing was perfect. The episode began with Bruguera using the social media, under the political hashtag #YoTambienExijo (I Also Demand), to announce her intention

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to stage her performance Tatlin’s Whisper #6, on December 30. She flew to Cuba from the United States on December 26, after years of absence from her home country. As an artist born in 1968, Bruguera belongs to the “1990s generation,” though she can be considered as “trans-generational,” according to art historian and curator Gerardo Mosquera, because “she took the critical political spirit of the previous generation that had left the country and developed it within the new one.” In fact Bruguera recently contended “The strategies of artists since the 90s, to speak of oblique and metaphorical demands and use displaced geographical examples to make the connection and talk about their immediate reality, are exhausted.”65 Bruguera has been the perfect example of a Cuban artist on the edge, living abroad but returning home; a dissonant artist who finds herself on the wrong side of the fence from time to time; finally, an often confrontational artist who, perhaps until the most recent episode of confrontation, did not really challenge the master narrative (and become a dissident) and seemed interested, most of the time, in keeping the lines of communication open with the gatekeeper state. Tatlin’s Whisper #6 features an open mic in a public place and an invitation to anyone in the audience to step forward and speak uncensored, about anything (including politics), for one minute. A dove is placed on each speaker’s shoulder, in a transparent parody of a famous speech by Fidel Castro in January 1959. Then, two actors in military uniform escort each speaker back into the crowd. Needless to say, such a performance would “perform” little in a free country, unless it took place in a specific group (a family, work place, etc.). The opportunity to break conventions and speak with one’s guts can be pretty disturbing almost anywhere. Tatlin’s Whisper #6 was presented once before during Havana’s 2009 Biennial, in a confined cultural space: the Wifredo Lam Center in Old Havana. Back then, blogger Yoani Sánchez used her minute to defend freedom of expression, which mightily annoyed the regime. She, not Bruguera, was accused of staging a “provocation against the Cuban revolution.” Bruguera’s insistence on using an open public place (in fact the most important public place in Cuba) and the 2009 precedent marked the difference between a permission in 2009 and an interdiction in 2014. Still, one wonders why the regime opted for suppression of speech and harassment, rather than giving her the green light and filling the Plaza with its own supporters. Raúl Castro had a choice of roles to play in Bruguera’s performance and arguably, he opted for the worst one. Bruguera made clear her intention to stage the performance after she was denied permission to do so, with predictable consequences. She was soon repudiated by the state-run art council, in rather surprising terms: Bruguera was basically accused of disrupting the rapprochement with the United States! “This action has no other purpose,” said the Declaration, “than to



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stand against the negotiations that give hope to many human beings, first and foremost to the eleven million Cubans. It will be supported, if at all, by the few local mercenaries of politics that President Obama himself has considered futile, for they are the only ones who hope to benefit from hindering the ongoing negotiations.”66 She was detained by the police three times. Up to fifty artists and dissidents were detained as well (or held under house arrest), many of them before they could even reach the square. So Bruguera’s performance never took place. Or did it? “Everything that happened—from the day that we formed the platform, is a performance,” she said. “And it turned out different from what I expected.” The new script involved the censorship of a Cuban artist of considerable international stature by a pseudoliberalizing communist regime. Her status as an internationally known artist has undoubtedly given her some privileges. The fact that she lives and travels in and out of the country is one of them, though it was used to put pressure on her: her passport was confiscated while she stood accused of “incitement to public disorder and crime, and resistance.” The passport could be immediately returned, she was told, if she promised to leave and never return to Cuba. She refused. The gatekeeper state decides who can come and go. Art can be political in various ways. As we saw in chapter 2, for many, starting with Plato, great art is by definition critical of established norms, thus it is always political and critical. In a more simplistic way, political art can mean any art that delivers political messages. It looks or sounds like the artist is saying: “Here’s my superior political viewpoint [fill in the blank], don’t you agree?” Some of Bruguera’s work illustrates another type of political art, in which politics can be found in the form rather than the content—in the content of the form. Bruguera describes her work as “political timing-specific art” or “useful art” (arte útil),67 her objective being “not representing the political but provoking the political.” She wants to “rethink the role of the art institution in terms of political effectiveness.” In a nutshell, she sheds light on a malaise (in the country and beyond) and forces viewers to think about it outside of the box, without recommending a political path forward. In interviews she constantly says that art should be political, ideological, “behavioral” (arte de conducta). “I do political art,” she says in a recent interview. “For me there is a clear division in art, between on the one hand art as representation because it provides a commentary, and on the other, the art that works from the political because it wants to change something. I make an art that uses the tools of politics and tries to generate political moments, an art through which one speaks to power directly and with its own language.” Political art is usually pretty content with itself, promoting (and representing) freedom, human development and justice. Bruguera’s art does promote

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freedom of expression, too, but it concerns power more than freedom. In her performances she often makes people do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise, even without their consent. She calls this an “unannounced performance.” Some of her performances seem more like experiments in social psychology, à la Stanley Milgram, than art. For instance, she describes her work Tatlin’s Whisper #5, performed in 2008 at the famous Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall Bridge in London, as follows: Two mounted policemen in their uniforms burst into the space while performing mass control techniques with the spectators in the Museum. Among other techniques used, one of the horses corners the audience that divides into two large groups and then are regrouped and compelled to crowd together while the size of circle made by the mounted police decreases making them stay within or without the space since entry is blocked by the horse’s body. Visitors generally answer by complying with the oral instructions of the officers and the imposing physical and historical presence of the horses used as repressive means.68

Obviously, the audience is not supposed to know that the mounted police officers are actors. She adds: “The names of the piece and of the artist are not announced before the presentation to try to make the experience fresh for the spectators, which is linked to their media memory, rather than their artistic one. The piece activates a police situation exercising the limits of authority and power on civil society and where, through their behavior, the members of the audience turn into citizens.” Into manipulated citizens, that is. In “Generic Capitalism” (Chicago, 2009), Bruguera “activates” an ideological situation by staging a panel discussion with Weather Underground activists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers. Bruguera is known for incorporating her own body in her work, but in this case she merely introduces the speakers and takes her place in the audience. “I’m a political artist, so I decided that I was going to give my space to people I admire as political people,” she declared from the back of a crowded Chicago lecture hall. During the Q&A period, combative interlocutors started challenging the speakers from the left. Neither the speakers nor the spectators knew that Bruguera had actually planted those outspoken questioners to steer the discussion in a certain direction.69 As art critic David Joselit wrote: “What had felt like a spontaneous and explosive conversation had therefore been manipulated, which led to another, unmanipulated, but equally impassioned discussion at the symposium the next day where several participants expressed their feelings of betrayal that the discussion had been fixed.” In the 2014 version of Tatlin’s Whisper #6, members of the audience were expected to work within some minimal parameters. They could speak for one minute only and follow some rules that this time, they knew of in advance. “I will not censor anyone, but we must give reasons, it is not an act



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of personal exorcism or a space to express hatred or demand for revenge. If you give your objective reasons, you have to say why, what motivated you to think that that is the solution.” Even if it is “a self-control exercise,” as she puts it, it is still she who minimally controls what can be said and for how long.70 Furthermore, although the manipulation of the audience is minimal, the consequences for speakers are considerable. They can be (and indeed were) harassed, detained or tagged by the police and other state officials. Would that constitute an illustration of art and politics on a collision course? Or rather, if one chooses the interpretation suggested by Bruguera, a perfect marriage of art and politics, since repression is part of the performance itself? Again, her art does not represent the political: it mimics it, warts and all. Gerardo Mosquera writes that Bruguera was the victim of “harsh censorship” prior to the showdown with Cuban authorities in December 2014, but gives only two examples: her performance at the 7th Havana Biennial in 2000 was shut down after one day, as was the underground art and culture newspaper she published in Havana in 1993–1994. But she was not always confrontational or persecuted. She managed to work in Cuba and abroad, back and forth, for years, which is a tribute to her political adaptability and agility. In 2002 she founded a new program called “School of Behavioral Art” (Cátedra de Arte de Conducta), teaching political performances and installation with the goal of producing new socially and politically engaged artists in Cuba. The program was offered until 2010. During the controversy caused by the 2009 version of Tatlin’s Whisper #6, the minister of culture (Abel Prieto) came out to defend her personally. This prompted her to praise the minister: “[Prieto] is not a bureaucrat, he does not lock things in old traps and he understands the value of art for creative political discourse. […] The institution understood that what I do comes from a place that is the revolutionary and constructive criticism I learned in school, and this helped.”71 In an interview she also said: “My job is to push the boundaries of the institution; their job [meaning the bureaucrats], is to preserve them, and in that ‘dance,’ we all know what we do and the music is over, but I am proud of the tolerance of the institution and of my claim as an artist.” It is fairly typical for a Cuban artist to talk about limitations to freedom of expression as a problem within the cultural field rather than a political problem that comes from the essence of the regime itself. That way, bad apples in the bureaucracy get the blame. But in December 2014, something snapped—for her—unexpectedly. In her own words: “I never thought there would be such a disproportionate response.”72 She apparently misjudged the parameters—like Jesús Díaz did in 1992. After the incident of December 2014, Bruguera renounced her UNEAC membership and a cultural award she had accepted in 2002 (the Distinction for National Culture). Her explanatory letter to Vice-Minister of Culture

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Fernando Rojas is dramatic in tone but somewhat elusive, calling for more freedom of expression—“Cuba cannot open itself to the world without opening itself to Cubans”73—but without challenging the political leadership or the master narrative (the primary parameters) directly. Of course it is almost impossible to do that in Cuba, so her words are both courageous and measured in order to maintain the lines of communication open. As she puts it: “The changes in Cuba cannot be real if Cubans are afraid to learn about certain words such as Human Rights. The changes in Cuba cannot be real if the Cuban is afraid that expressing an opinion can leave him without employment. The changes in Cuba cannot be real if the Government is only interested in Cubans for their money, not for their ideas.”74 One could not read anything like this in Granma or even in Temas, but these words are not a priori radical: the government routinely invites Cubans to be more critical and officially recognizes the right to free expression, even if it doesn’t really mean it. But given the overall crisis she created, it now appears that Bruguera is no longer a dissonant artist: she has become, if not deliberately, a dissident. That is another loss for the regime, because she is well known internationally (she was on Foreign Policy’s 2015 list of most influential artists of the year), and much of what she demands is compatible at least in theory with the official ideology. Bruguera provoked the regime and its reaction helped her to make her point about the absence of freedom of speech in Cuba. Her non-performance turned into a successful performance after all. During her detention Bruguera received significant support from the artistic milieu outside of Cuba. A petition started almost right away on the Internet to demand her release.75 The US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, tweeted that “something pretty remarkable happened” in Cuba with the Bruguera affair. Power mentions the petition and mistakenly states that many Cubans signed it. In fact, by mid-January there were more than two thousand signatures, but only a handful from Cubans residing on the island. To be sure, Internet access is severely limited in Cuba, and as Bruguera pointed out in an interview with blogger Yoani Sánchez: In Cuba we know that there is a cultural policy of many years in which there are certain invisible limits that people know that they should not cross, because there will be consequences, as is also true that in a place where you are pressured to position yourself, sometimes silence is the most articulate of all arguments. I have had a very warm and supportive response from many artists and people on the street that I do not even know.76

In an interview realized in the Fall of 2015, she still defends her colleagues and refuses to read too much into their decision not to offer her public support



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in Cuba, and suggests that intimidation by the State Security may well explain their reticence to openly side with her: It could be a government strategy to help isolate me further from my community. I know that this separation with my guild was orchestrated by the State Security. There were people who received visits from the Security. They told them that I was a CIA agent and that if they went to the Biennial and someone asked about my case, better to say they did not know anything about what was happening to me. Each one was told a different story. I have faith and I know that will change. I know that Cuban artists are going to join the struggle for freedom of expression because art is about the quest for personal freedom.77

Be that it as it may, the reaction from peers has indeed been remarkably moot. Pinar del Rio painter Pedro Pablo Oliva, himself a recent victim of censorship, offered his solidarity. So did Dagoberto Rodríguez Sánchez (member of the collective Los Carpinteros) and Arturo Montoto. But there was no petition like the one signed earlier in December by filmmakers opposed to the censorship of the film Regreso a Itaca. Cuban artist Lázaro Saavedra (National Visual Arts Award 2014), considered at times a dissonant political artist in Cuba, published a letter impugning Bruguera for being an opportunistic selfpromoter with no real interest in fighting for (more) freedom of expression in Cuba.78 He apparently said publicly what many thought in the milieu: Bruguera can afford to be confrontational because she no longer live permanently in Cuba and enjoys major support abroad. This silence of the artistic and cultural community in Cuba can be seen as part of the performance, too, for it shows how fellow artists have much to lose by siding publicly with someone now associated with the dissidence. Though several Cuban artists and academics who live abroad publicly manifested their support for Bruguera,79 a fellow visual artist and personal friend like Tomás Sánchez apparently wrote on his Facebook page (it is no longer viewable) that “The majority of Cuban artists, inside and outside of Cuba, do not pay attention to what she is doing.”80 I interviewed many artists in Cuba in 2015 and indeed, none of them had much sympathy for Bruguera. They may not agree with the regime’s line that she is a threat to the rapprochement with the United States, but nothing good for them could come out of a confrontation between one of them and the curator state. Coinciding with the opening of the 2015 Havana Biennial (May 22 to June 22), Bruguera shrewdly improvised a parallel event that caught the attention of the international media and the art world (including Judith Rodenbeck and Guggenheim UBS MAP Latin American Curator Pablo León de la Barra). Using a microphone and from a window of her apartment, only a few blocks away from one of the central locations of the Biennial: the Museum of Fine

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Arts, she read Hannah Arendt’s classic The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). When construction workers suddenly showed up in front of her home with sledgehammers, to perform very noisy repair on the street, nobody assumed it was a coincidence. One more time, the government fell into her trap: a totalitarian regime silencing an artist’s public reading of Arendt’s essay is more “useful,” as a political performance, than an artist’s public reading of Arendt’s essay. To be sure, it is hard to appreciate The Origins delivered in street-guerrilla form. After months of successful fund-raising, she created the Havana-based Artivism Institute Hannah Arendt, in March 2016.81 “The institute of art and activism that I am opening in Havana came about to understand that much of the violence that exists in the world is generated from fear as a response to things that you do not know you can handle, that you do not see clearly,” she said.82 The Institute’s invitation for its first artists in residence was all prominent free-speech “artivists” with international reputation: the very famous Russian collective Pussy Riot (imagine the Cuban government denying a visa to anti-Putin activists), Palestinian artist Khaled Jarrar and “surveillance artist” Trevor Paglen.83 Meanwhile, Bruguera flew back to the United States (her passport was returned to her on July 10) to participate in the 2015 Yale World Fellows program and to become the first artist-in-residence for New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Around the same time her performance and video work “Untitled (Havana 2000)” was bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.84 Over the years, Bruguera has been fighting for freedom of speech in Cuba, but her battle for freedom of expression and civic education is mostly pushing secondary rather than primary parameters. Recently asked what should be done “to advocate for an inclusive and democratic Cuba,” her answer in five points is textbook Bruguera: ostensibly radical, though without outright condemnation of the regime in place. She mentions 1) a massive civil literacy campaign; 2) freeing all political prisoners; 3) a referendum on which direction the Cuban people want to choose; 4) a Truth Commission but without going after and punishing guilty individuals; and 5) for a few generations, not to have a Castro in power. She adds: “The descendants of the Castro family can help the people, by working in foundations, but they should not get involved in politics. Out of respect for the people and because they are no better than others.”85 The Castros are not better than others? They would probably admit as much (in public), and not a few opponents would rather say they are much worse than average. A referendum is a poor substitute for free and fair elections. Again, what she proposes concerns basic civil and political rights, not a political platform, and as such, no doubt, it is very audacious. It certainly goes further than what is normally allowed within the secondary parameters, with the help of fame and international connections.



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It does not explicitly call into question the master narrative of the regime: the never-ending revolution, its identification with Fidel and now Raúl, the irrevocability of socialism, the single-party/man state and the US embargo. After her passport was confiscated she tried to meet with Cuban officials and even to sue them, thus showing a certain faith in the legal system. In other words, she still seems to strive to expand the space for expression “within the revolution.” In principle, this is not particularly radical since the regime always stated that it supports civil and political liberties. She said that her “useful art” [arte útil] is anti-capitalist and most of her political performances (in the United States and Europe) are geared toward cross-examining power in general, without distinction between democratic and non-democratic regimes. Bruguera typically said she was surprised by the regime’s reaction in December 2014. She thought that her use of public space was negotiable, as it had been in the past. Finally, her survival instincts are perfectly legitimate and understandable, but one can’t help raising this question: why choosing a public reading of Arendt’s arduous philosophical essay on Stalin and Hitler, rather than a much more legible and relevant (i.e., “useful”) text on Cuba, for instance, by Reynaldo Arenas, Heberto Padilla, Jesús Díaz, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Rafael Rojas or Carlos Alberto Montaner? Or just reading some of the articles written by independent journalists? In Cuba the use of the term totalitarianism is contentious, but “Stalinism” is routinely (and hypocritically) condemned in official venues. Bruguera’s art is perhaps true to itself by being iconoclastic in the form rather than (or much more than) in the content. But it is not so obviously radical (should we say revolutionary?) in the Cuban context. The enfant terrible of Cuban art received a written assurance that she could come back to Cuba in the near future. She probably will. In fact, in mid-October of 2016 she announced that she will be running for president of Cuba in 2018, and encouraged other Cubans to dare doing the same. She will not be allowed to, but in any case she said that the announcement itself was a “performance,” an act of “artivism.”86 What does the limited but unique government’s opening in the visual arts—except when it comes to images of Fidel or Raúl—tells us about cultural policy and Cuban governance in general? Is the milieu of art, as Rachel Weiss suggested, a “laboratory in which the security machinery could gain experience in dealing with unrest, something it had not really had to contend with previously”?87 For instance, now that Cubans can travel abroad, perhaps they will be very grateful for it, as visual artists seem to be, and learn not to be too critical and only at the right time and in the right place. As was argued in previous chapters, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the government seemed to have learned that to maintain a monopoly of power a regime does not have to control everything, especially not in the highbrow cultural field.

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It is actually smart for the regime to support and promote an artist like Kcho, who gratefully pays back. In sum, to rephrase Weiss’s hypothesis, the security machinery can gain experience in dealing not with unrest but with ambition. As Margaret Thatcher would say, give folks something to lose and they will become conservative. The Bruguera performance was not handled very well by the regime. Opening up is difficult, but the example of the visual arts field shows it can be done without seriously jeopardizing its sustainability, at least in short term (which is the time-span of politics). The regime is banking on the fact that all the players crave stability: the artists who have not left the country, the flourishing art market88 and last but not least the United States, which certainly does not relish the prospect of a massive wave of refugees from Cuba. In sum, the visual arts is a good example of a field of activities where the gatekeeper state successfully managed a limited opening, facilitated by the willingness of actors (visual artists, curators, galleries, agents) to participate. That the state lost the symbolic control of these activities is no less certain, however, and even though this loss does not seem to represent a great peril for the regime at this time, it can still be factored in as an indicator of detotalitarianization of collective imagination in Cuba. NOTES 1. See Maria Finn, “Visions of Dollars Dance Before Cuban Artists’ Eyes,” in Reinventing the Revolution, A Contemporary Cuba Reader, ed. Philip Brenner et al. (Rowman and Littlefield Publisher, 2008), 355–357. 2. Gerardo Mosquera, “The New Cuban Art,” in Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition, Politicized Art under Late Socialism, ed. Aleš Erjavec (University of California Press, 2003), 241. 3. The exhibition “The Many Faces of Fidel” was presented at the Cuban Art Space in Manhattan in the Fall of 2016. It shows Cuban artists’ attempt to explore the theme of Fidel’s leadership while negotiating the official ban on using Fidel’s images without government approval. 4. Quoted by Rachel Weiss, To and From Utopia in the New Cuban Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 117. 5. The five-minute video is based on a speech given by Fidel Castro in 2003. The audio track of the speech is edited to include only the numbers that Castro spoke. Simultaneously, the digits corresponding to those numbers appear in white on a black screen. Art Daily, November 22, 2009. See http://artdaily.com/news/34455/Jos-Toirac-Exhibition-Includes-Premiere-of-Works-Suppressed-in-Havana-#.V9_bqpMrInU 6. Talking about the censorship of his 2015 staging of Eugene Ionesco’s “Exit the King” (briefly discussed in chapter 1), Cremata mentions some of the precautions he took to stave off what in retrospect seems unavoidable: “I took the risk and made a



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point of avoiding the obvious, critical comparison with–and open mockery of—either the ‘maximum leader,’ Big Brother, or the Revolution’s historical leader (or however one might call Fidel Castro).” Another example, artist Esterio Segura produced a series of images for the 2012 Havana Art Bienal, “48 Entradas Victoriosas del Héroe a La Habana” (forty-eight heroic entrances of the Hero in Habana). This work consists of forty-eight individually framed drawings that portray Fidel Castro posing in various erotic positions with the Virgin de la Caridad del Cobre. This may be an extreme case but unsurprisingly, he was never permitted to present the series in a public venue. See “Censorship as Usual. Coco Fusco interviews Juan Carlos Cremata,” Cuba Counterpoints, November 24, 2015. http://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/2740 7. “After the triumph of the 1959 Revolution, Portocarrero became a sort of official Cuban artist; he was the favorite of Celia Sánchez, his paintings were given as gifts to visiting dignitaries, and in 1968 he created a ceramic mural for the Palacio de la Revolucion in Havana.” In Encyclopedia of Cuba, People, History, Culture, vol.1, edited by Luis MartínezFernández, D.H. Figueredo, Louis A. Pérez, Jr., and Luis González (Westport, Connecticut, London: Greenwood Press, 2003). 8. The founder of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes San Alejandro was the French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay. The school was called in 1832 “San Alejandro” in memory of Alejandro Ramírez, general superintendent and director of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country. The school features several departments: drawing, painting, engraving, sculpture, ceramics, jewelry, graphic arts and theoretical-cultural teachings. http://www.cubatreasure.com/san-alejandro-academy/. See also Paul Niell, “Founding the Academy of San Alejandro and the Politics of Taste in Late Colonial Havana, Cuba,” Colonial Latin American Review, 21, no. 2 (2012): 293–318. 9. Alejandro Anreus, “Notas sobre el expresionismo en la plástica cubana, Cuatro casos importantes de pintores que manifiestan visiones originales y universales del expresionismo dentro de la plástica cubana,” Cuba Encuentro, February 2, 2012. See also Juan A. Martínez, Cuban Art and National Identity, the Vanguardia Painters, 1927–1950 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994). 10. Roberta Smith, “‘Concrete Cuba’ Visits a Quieter Period of Latin American Modernism,” The New York Times, January 14, 2016; David Zwirner, “Concrete Cuba,” Artnet (n/d). http://www.artnet.fr/galeries/david-zwirner/concrete-cuba-2/; Rafael Acosta de Arriba, “Pedro de Oraá: reestructurando el espacio,” La Gaceta de Cuba 1 (January–February 2016): 32–36. 11. Weiss, To and From Utopia, 18. 12. “Largely scorned at the end of the 1970s and fired from his teaching job at the Escuela Nacional de Arte under accusations of ‘religious proseytizing’ Sánchez was rehabilitated only after winning the Joan Miró International Drawing Award in Barcelona in 1980.” Weiss, To and From Utopia, 23. 13. Weiss, To and From Utopia, 23. Sánchez has been returning to Cuba for visit since 1995 and present his first solo exhibition in 2014 for the first time since 1987. 14. See “El creador Maldito Menéndez denuncia que el régimen le impide entrar entrar a la Isla por razones políticas,” Diario de Cuba, March 27, 2015. http://www. diariodecuba.com/derechos-humanos/1427479926_13630.html

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15. The scholarly literature on this is abundant. See for instance Andrea O’Reilly Herrera, Cuban Artists Across the Diaspora, Setting the Tent Against the House (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2011); Armando Alvarez Bravo, El arte cubano en el exilio (Miami, Fl: Ediciones Universal, 2015). 16. Other than José Manuel Fors and Juan Francisco Elso (who died in Cuba in 1988), all others had left the country by the early 1990s. 17. David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (Yale University Press, 2002), 94–114; Luis Camnitzer, New Art of Cuba (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994); Gerardo Mosquera, “An indescribable adventure: the new Cuban art,” transition 10, no. 3 (2001): 124–38. 18. Quoted in Weiss, To and From Utopia, 11–12. 19. Mosquera provides a good summary of how these artists were somewhat tolerated at the end of the 1970s but not fully accepted and promoted until a decade later. Gerardo Mosquera, “The New Cuban Art,” in Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition, Politicized Art under Late Socialism, ed. Aleš Erjavec (University of California Press, 2003), 245, 221–222. For an example of a hostile reception to the dissonant art of the 1980s from an orthodox perspective, see Angel Tómas González, “Desafio en San Rafael,” El Caimán Barbudo 159 (March 1981): 7–27. 20. Fabiola Santiago, “Flowing from Mariel,” The Miami Herald, April 17, 2005. http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/mariel/flowing.htm. For a comparison, according to one estimate, about a third of the fifty best artists in East Germany left between 1982 and 1987; this was similar to the proportion of artists who emigrated during the worst period of Stalinist influence in the 1950s. Rueschemeyer in Marilyn Rueschemeyer and Victoria D. Alexander, Art and the State: The Visual Arts in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, MacMillan, 2005): 133. 21. Mosquera, “The New Cuban Art,” 218–219. Since the publication of this article, some artists (like Carlos Garaicoa) have broached the topic of the Cuban’s contribution to the war in Angola, but it is very much an exception. 22. For Mosquera: “As part of the cycle of shows of young artists in the Castillo de la Fuerza, a space dedicated to avant-garde art, an exhibition of work of two artists working together, Ponjuán and René Francisco, was partly censored after the opening in 1989. Two works in which the image of Castro appeared were withdrawn from the exhibit, and the event caused the fall of Vice-Minister Leiseca. The following exhibit in the Castillo, of work by the group made up of Tanya Angulo, Juan Ballester, José Toirac, and Tania Villazón, could not even open on its first night. Entitled Homage to Hans Haacke, it consisted of works that deconstructed the mechanisms of power in the Cuban cultural camp. The new vice-minister could not tolerate a piece that denounced an official painter, the creator of the Cuban Communist Party logo.” Mosquera, “The New Cuban Art,” 239. 23. Elvis Fuentes, “El trasfondo mezquino de las críticas a Tania Bruguera,” El Diario de Cuba, January 5, 2015. http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1420413154_12141. html.Holland Cotter, “The Havana Biennial is Running at Full Throttle,” The New York Times, May 29, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/30/arts/design/thehavana-biennial-is-running-at-full-throttle.html 24. Elia Alba, “Coco Fusco” (interview), BOMB Magazine, July 14, 2014. Http:// bombmagazine.org/article/1000179/coco-fusco



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25. Jorgelina Guzmán Moré, “En torno a la creación artística dentro de la estrategia general del Ministerio de la Cultura,” in La cultura por los caminos de la nueva sociedad cubana (1952–1992) ed. Mildred De La Torre Molina ed. (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2011), 168–198 26. See the blog “El Espacio Aglutinador, ‘Cuba’s Only Ongoing Independent Artists’ Space since 1994,” http://www.espacioaglutinador.com/. Coco Fusco comments on an interesting project, “Curators go Home!” sponsored by Espacio Aglutinador, “the goal of which was to fill an empty wall with the names of all the artists, curators and exhibitions that had been censored in Cuba.” According to Fusco, “Ceballos received a menacing message from the National Council of Fine Arts, accusing her of creating a political event whose special guests were well-known Cuban dissidents. Ceballos postponed the opening and responded to the message, accusing the National Council of defamation. An international media campaign and a petition to the Cuban government in support of Ceballos helped to create conditions that allowed her to open te exhibition.” Coco Fusco, Dangerous Moves: Performance and Politics in Cuba (London: Tate Publishing, 2015), 128–129. 27. Ceballos tells the story of how she was invited in 2014 to participate in an exhibit presented at the Centro Wifredo Lam in downtown Havana, “But as my work had an image of Fidel, which was even a page of a book they give children at school, where I wrote, as I have been doing for years, a speech from him, they were told that that work could not go.” And she did. In María Matienzo Puerto, “Espacio Aglutinador gira, no cierra,” Diario de Cuba, September 26, 2014. http://www.diariodecuba. com/cultura/1396130905_7879.html 28. Gerardo Mosquera, “Reporte del hombre el La Habana,” in Cuba, la isla posible, ed. by Juan Pablo Ballester (Centro de cultura contemporánea de Barcelona and Ediciones Destino, 1995): 138.  29. Guillermina De Ferrari, “Cuba: a Curated Culture,” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 16, No. 2 (August 2007): 219–240. 30. Gerardo Mosquera, “La isla infinita, introducción al nuevo arte cubano,” in Contemporary Art rom Cuba: Irony and Survival on the Utopian Island, ed. by Marylyn A. Zeitlin (New York, Arizona State University Art Museum, Delano Greenidge Editions, in collaboration with UNEAC, 1999), 136. 31. Antonio Eligio Fernández, “A Tree From Many Shores: Cuban Art in Movement,” Art Journal, 57, no.4 (Winter 1998): 70. 32. See on YouTube, interview with José Toirac and Meira Marrero, Espacio de Arte (Spain), June 17, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_RpSvl7Uqc 33. See Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, “A Note on Gerhard Richter’s ‘October 18, 1977,’” October 48 (Spring 1989): 88–109. 34. Rafael Rojas, “The Archives’ Ashes,” Cuba Counterpoints, September 1, 2016, Translated by Ariana Hernández Reguant and Susannah Rodríguez Drissi. http://cubacounterpoints.com/archives/3816. In Spanish: https://hypermediamagazine.com/2016/09/05/rafael-rojas-cenizas-del-archivo/Revolución una y mil veces, red book hard cover with single word revolution repeated 1,000 times. 35. Personal communication, February 26, 2014. 36. Rafael Rojas, “The Archives’ Ashes.”

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37. “Three shows for Continua: Reynier Leyva Novo—Juan Araujo—Qiu Zhijie,” Juliet, Posted on Monday April 4, 2016. http://julietartmagazine.com/en/ tre-mostre-continua-reynier-leyva-novo-juan-araujo-qiu-zhijie/ 38. Luisa Ausenda, “Interview with Reynier Leyva Novo,” ATP Diary, March 2016. http://atpdiary.com/interview-reynier-leyva-novo-continua/ 39. See the page on him and his work on the webpage entitled “Uprising art,” which devoted to art in the Caribbean region. http://www.uprising-art.com/portfolio/ reynier-leyva-novo-hablara-manana-serie-coleccion-novo-aniversario/ 40. His works also seem to have been influenced by the installations of Juan Francisco Elso (1956–88), among others Cuban artists. 41. Quoted in Walter Mayr, “The Waiting Room by the Sea, Times Are A-Changin’ in Havana,” Spiegel Online, January 9, 2013. 42. Three other visual artists are currently member of the legislature: Humberto Hernández Martínez (Pinar del Río, 1958–), Manuel Hernández Valdés (Matanzas, 1943–) and Nelson Domínguez Cedeño (Ciego de Avila, 1947–) 43. “Conocido pintor llama a los artistas cubanos a trabajar de manera gratuita,” Café Fuerte, July 25, 2012. http://cafefuerte.com/literatura-y-artes-plasticas/2047conocido-pintor-llama-a-los-artistas-cubanos-a-trabajar-de-manera-gratuita/ 44. Quoted in Ernesto Santana Zaldívar, “No quiero contaminar lo que el arte ha limpiado en mí,” cubanet.org, May 22, 2012. https://www.cubanet.org/articulos/ no-quiero-contaminar-lo-que-el-arte-ha-limpiado-en-mi/ 45. See “Cuba Approves First Public Wi-Fi Hub in Havana,” BBC News, March 16, 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31905794. 46. See Associated Press, “Google is opening a cutting-edge online technology center at the studio of one of Cuba’s most famous artists, offering free Internet at speeds nearly 70 times faster than those now available to the Cuban public,” March 21, 2016. https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2016-03-21/google-helpsoffer-vastly-faster-internet-in-cuba; “The Internet in Cuba,” August 30, 2016. http:// laredcubana.blogspot.ca/search/label/kcho. 47. “El Papa Francisco y Kcho intercambian cartas: ‘Rece por mí,’ pide el Sumo Pontífe,” Cubadebate, July 23, 2014. https://www.google.ca/search?q=El+Papa +Francisco+y+Kcho+intercambian+cartas%3A+%E2%80%9CRece+por+m%C3% AD%E2%80%9D%2C+pide+el+Sumo+Pont%C3%ADfice&oq=El+Papa+Francisc o+y+Kcho+intercambian+cartas%3A+%E2%80%9CRece+por+m%C3%AD%E2% 80%9D%2C+pide+el+Sumo+Pont%C3%ADfice&aqs=chrome..69i57.1393j0j4&sou rceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 48. Almost twenty years earlier he was denied visa to attend his exhibit in Los Angeles. Christopher Knight, “Cuban Artist Denied Visa to Attend His Exhibit in L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, October 4, 1997. http://articles.latimes.com/1997/oct/04/ local/me-39248 49. “El Gobierno dona a París un cuadro de Kcho en solidaridad por los atentados yihadistas,” Diario de Cuba, May 2, 2016. http://www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1462219907_22087.html 50. To recall, the “Special Period in Time of Peace” started in 1989 and it is debatable when (or if) it ended.



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51. L’Clerc, Lee, “Kcho’s La regata: Political or Poetic Installation?” in Latin American Identity after 1980, Gordana Yovanovich and Amy Huras eds. (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010). 52. Fernando Castro, “Some man is an island,” Literal Magazine 3 (n/d). http:// literalmagazine.com/kcho-some-man-is-an-island/ 53. “According to the summary of his statements collected by EFE, the artist did not mention the case of Cuban immigrants who risk their lives in the Strait of Florida to try to reach the United States.” See “Kcho: ‘En Cuba vamos por el buen camino,’” Diario de Cuba, May 3, 2014. http://www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1399111442_8422.html 54. In Temas 31 (October–December 2002): 79. My emphasis. 55. “Kcho Exbitits in Paris,” Prensa Latina, Granma.cu, May 25, 2016. http:// en.granma.cu/mundo/2016-05-25/kcho-exhibits-in-paris 56. Rosa Lowinger, “Making Waves,” ArtNews, posted June 1, 2000. http://www. artnews.com/2000/06/01/making-waves/ 57. Coco Fusco, The Bodies that Were not Ours, and other Writings (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 162. 58. The Wi-Fi password for his studio-worshop in Romerillo is “Aquí nadie se rinde” (here nobody surrenders). 59. Some of these performance artists held positions in the cultural bureaucracy during the 1980s, like Campos-Pons, Abdel Hernández, Rubén Torres Llorca. Fusco, Dangerous Moves, 169. 60. Fusco, Dangerous Moves, 22. 61. Ibid, 34. 62. Mosquera, “Reporte del hombre el La Habana,” 138. 63. Fusco, Dangerous Moves, 169. 64. Groys’ commendatory words are among many from prominent art critics, museum directors and academics on the occasion of her receiving the Herb Alpert award in visual arts in 2015. See http://herbalpertawards.org/artist/seen-others 65. Joan Antoni Guerrero Vall, interview with Tania Bruguera, “Cuba necesita una alfabetización cívica masiva en las calles,” El Diario de Cuba, October 4, 2015. http:// www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1443864302_17287.html 66. “Declaración de la Presidencia de la Asociación de Artistas Plásticos de la UNEAC,” CUBARTE, December 29, 2014. http://www.cubarte.cult.cu/es/articulo/ declaraci-n-de-la-presidencia-de-la-asociaci-n-de-artistas-pl-sticos-de-la-uneac/6083 67. See “Tania Bruguera by Kathleen Ditzig,” BOMB Magazine 128 (Summer 2014). http://bombmagazine.org/article/10071/tania-bruguera On Bruguera’s website: http://www.taniabruguera.com/cms/478-068. Tatlins+Whisper+5.htm 69. Carrie Lambert-Beatty, “Political People: Notes on Arte de Conducta,” on Bruguera’s website: www.taniabruguera.com 70. Joan Antoni Guerrero Vall, “Bruguera afrontará en solitario el reto de penetrar en la Plaza de la Revolución,” El Diario de Cuba, December 24, 2014. Online: http:// www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1419844298_12054.html 71. Yanet Pérez Moreno, “‘Nadie está dispuesto al borrón y cuenta nueva,’ Al habla con Tania Bruguera tras su performance en la Bienal de La Habana, donde

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blogueros y artistas pidieron libertad y democracia,” Encuentro en la red, April 20, 2009. http://www.cubaencuentro.com/entrevistas/articulos/nadie-esta-dispuestoal-borron-y-cuenta-nueva-171188 72. Tania Bruguera interviewed by Yoani Sánchez, “En Cuba hemos aprendido muy bien nuestros deberes pero no nuetros derechos,” 14ymedio, February 4, 2015. http://www.14ymedio.com/entrevista/Cuba-aprendido-bien-deberesderechos_0_1719428044.html 73. In “Tania Bruguera deja la UNEAC y devuelve la Distinción por la Cultura Nacional,” 14ymedio, January 5, 2014. http://www.14ymedio.com/cultura/BrugueraDistincion-Cultura-Nacional-UNEAC_0_1701429853.html 74. In “Tania Bruguera deja la UNEAC”. 75. In “Centenares de artistas dirigen una carta a Raúl Castro para pedir la liberación de Tania Bruguera,” 14ymedio, January 2, 2015. http://www.14ymedio.com/ nacional/Raul-Castro-liberacion-Tania-Bruguera_0_1699630026.html. “El Susurro de Tatlin #6” was presented in Duffy Square, New York city, in April 2015, in solidarity with her and with other persecuted Cuban artists and sponsored by a Who’s Who collection of important artists (such as Al Weiwei) and museums (MoMA, Guggenheim, Queens Museum, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas Museum of Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago). “Ai Weiwei, el MoMA y el Guggenheim apoyan una acción global a favor de Tania Bruguera,” El Diario de Cuba, April 10, 2015. http:// www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1428698918_13910.html 76. “Tania Bruguera: ‘In Cuba We Have Learned Our Duties Very Well but Not Our Righs,” interview by Yoani Sánchez, The World Post, February 15, 2015. http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/tania-bruguera-in-cuba-we_b_6631202.html 77. Joan Antoni Guerrero Vall, interview with Tania Bruguera, “Cuba necesita una alfabetización cívica masica en las calles,” El Diario de Cuba, October 4, 2015. http:// www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1443864302_17287.html 78. Lázaro A. Saavedra Gonxález, “Tania gana, los derechos civiles continúan perdiendo,” December 12, 2014, available on http://enrisco.blogspot.ca/2014/12/seabre-el-debate.html 79. For instance, historian Rafael Rojas and visual artist Carlos Garaicoa. 80. “Tómas Sánchez a Tania Bruguera: ‘Tu performance se la está llevando el viento,’” Diario de Cuba, June 9, 2015. http://www.diariodecuba.com/ cuba/1433850683_15052.html. During the Biennial, she was denied entrance to the National Museum of Fine Arts where she was personally invited by Sánchez for the inauguration of his exhibit. 81. See http://artivismo.org/ 82. “Tania Bruguera abrirá un centro en La Habana para promover la alfabetización cívica,” El Diario de Cuba, March 5, 2016. 83. Christian Viveros-Fauné, “Pussy Riot to Be First Resident Artists in Tania Bruguera Crowdfunding Initiative,” Artnet News, March 25, 2016. https://news.artnet. com/art-world/tania-bruguera-crowdfunding-pussy-riot-458618. 84. Randy Kennedy, “Tania Bruguera, an Artist in Havana, Has a Great New York Week,” The New York Times, July 14, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/arts/ design/tania-bruguera-an-artist-in-havana-has-a-great-new-york-week.html



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85. Joan Antoni Guerrero Vall, interview with Tania Bruguera, “Cuba necesita una alfabetización cívica masica en las calles,” El Diario de Cuba, October 4, 2015. http:// www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1443864302_17287.html 86. Victoria Burnett, “Artist Asks Cubans to Imagine They Are Running for President,” The New York Times, October 15, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/15/ arts/design/tania-bruguera-cuba-creative-time-summit-video.html?rref=collection% 2Fsectioncollection%2Farts&action=click&contentCollection=arts®ion=stream &module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=4&pgtype=sectionfront. Accessed November 14, 2016. 87. Weiss, To and From Utopia, 116. 88. One more time Coco Fusco is bang on: “Cuba draws thousands of foreigners to its cultural events each year and the smooth functioning of its promotional machinery depends on approval from and alliances with foreign institutions, benefactors, art world luminaries and tourists. Cuban artists living on the island rely heavily on income from sales to foreigners. In light of the fact that in the past year, artists and arts professionals invited to biennials in São Paulo and Sydney have exercised political will by expressing their opposition to financing from governments and corporate sponsors whose practices they consider unethical, it may well be time for art world cognoscenti who have for so long been charmed by Cuba’s eccentricities, anti-imperialist rhetoric, and relatively cheap art prices to consider what, beyond the convention of indignant public letters, might serve as a valid response to a state that imposes draconian measures to enforce its hegemonic control over public space and discourse.” Coco Fusco, “On the Detention of Cuban Artist Tania Bruguera,” e-flux (n/d), http://www.e-flux. com/announcements/on-the-detention-of-cuban-artist-tania-bruguera-by-coco-fusco/.

Chapter 5

How To Write From Mantilla, Or The Small Heresies Of Leonardo Padura

This chapter argues that Padura’s work appears to studiously travel along walls and edges of the secondary parameters, while never coming close to testing the primary parameters. Additionally, it is suggested that Padura’s work and itinerary exemplify how the Cuban gatekeeper state has managed the cultural field over the past quarter of a century, creating or tolerating limited space for public expression and successfully inciting writers and artists to confine their criticism of Cuban reality to the cultural field, where it can effectively be “culturalized” and depoliticized. “People think that what I say is a measure of what can or can’t be said in Cuba,” Leonardo Padura said.1 In fact, what he says is a measure of what he—along with some other Cuban writers or artists—is allowed to say in Cuba. It is a privilege, not a right. In Cuba lesser authors who don’t enjoy his international fame (and Spanish passport2) probably couldn’t have published a book like The Man Who Loved Dogs (El hombre que amaba los perros), as he did in 2010, a year after it was published in Spain by Tusquets. The book probably couldn’t have been published at all in Cuba decades or even years ago, which makes him the beneficiary (and the proof) of a recent opening. The Cuban’s “gatekeeper state” grants Padura some recognition (he won the National Literature Prize in 2012), as well as some privileges commonly bestowed to successful writers and artists: he can travel and publish abroad, and accept monetary compensation in foreign currency.3 But he is kept in a box. His books are nearly impossible to find in the island. The prestigious awards and accolades he is receiving abroad4 are mostly passed over by the Cuban media.5 Finally, his insightful but politically cautious journalism is read all over the world but not in Cuba (with few exceptions). Numerous times Padura has made clear his desire to live in Cuba, in the house where he was born in Mantilla, a working-class municipality in the 161

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outskirts of Havana.6 He sometimes signs his articles “Still in Mantilla, Leonardo Padura.” He also wants to be a “Cuban writer”—and as such, he feels he has “a certain responsibility because our reality is so specific and so hard for many people.”7 His success in conciliating these two potentially conflicting ambitions is, as Jon Lee Anderson put it, “a tribute both to his literary achievement and his political agility.”8 Blogger Yoani Sánchez wrote: “His ‘rarity’ lies fundamentally in having been able to sustain a critical vision of his country, an unvarnished description of the national sphere, without sacrificing the ability to be recognized by the official sectors. The praise comes to him from every direction of the polarized ideological spectrum of the Island, which is a true miracle of letters and of words.”9 In sum, Padura constitutes an interesting “hybrid,” almost an experiment in how to express freedom in a land bereft of freedom of expression. A prominent member of the cultural elite and at the same time, a marginal of sort, Padura constitutes a great case study to understand how the cultural field works in Cuba. Padura was born in 1955 in Mantilla, where he has lived all his life. He studied Hispanic-American literature at the University of Havana from 1975 to 1980, in a time of institutionalization of the regime. Padura is an interesting case study because he has been both a writer and a journalist, two “parallel, almost complementary, apprenticeships.”10 He worked as a journalist for two publications of the ruling party: El Caimán Barbudo, the monthly supplement of the PCC youth branch’s daily, Juventud Rebelde, from 1980 to 1983, and then to the daily itself, from 1983 to 1989. In his reception speech of the National Award, he describes El Caimán Barbudo as “reborn from the ashes of the gray decade.”11 At El Caimán Barbudo he “became acquainted with the world and with the figures of Cuban literature of the time,” and “developed a strong sense of generational belonging.”12 As a matter of fact, he wrote book and theater reviews as well as literary criticism. He rarely fails to mention, perhaps with some satisfaction, that he was thrown out of the monthly for breach of political orthodoxy. There was no major ideological quarrel though, only what he remembers as a series of “silly stuff” involving him and other journalists, which cumulatively caused unease on the part of the political leadership vis-à-vis the whole editorial team.13 This led to a major turnover in the direction of the magazine in June 1983.14 Though he often says that he and writers of his generation were under “constant pressures” and experienced “fear,” this was the only time when Padura was victim of parametración.15 In what hardly looks like a demotion, compared to the fate of so many writers in Cuba, he was transferred to Juventud Rebelde itself, to be (as he put it) “ideologically reeducated.” He pointed out that “At that time in Cuba, the state was the only employer, and they could send you wherever they liked, and generally you had to comply or look for another job that was



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invariably worse (as happens to my character Iván in The Man Who Loved Dogs).”16 This was a blessing in disguise, for this is where he really started his career as a journalist. In this daily he dedicated himself to long-form investigative journalism for the Sunday edition.17 His contributions consisted of well-crafted essays on pre-revolutionary Cuba (historical themes, historical characters, lost legends of Cuban folklore, as he puts it), with no politics either in content or in style. They could have been published in Bohemia in the 1950s. He remembers that “It was a strange and beautiful period, during which I could write about whatever I wanted—something that isn’t common in the press, and even less so in Cuba. The result was a very literary journalism, based on historical research—a kind of journalism that, by the way, is now considered a classic model in Cuba.”18 Thankfully, what he wanted to write about fell safely within the parameters of the time. Padura contends that during the 1980s, the quality of journalism improved dramatically for about a decade, even becoming a “reference” in Cuba and abroad.19 He talks about a “breath of fresh air pervasive in those auspicious times for the Cuban press, without attaining a complete renovation of a medium, whose subordination to the propaganda interests of the country’s political leadership has determine its destiny, as well as its qualities.”20 In his 2012 speech to the Casa de las Américas, he makes a different claim: “For a would-be Cuban writer, my work experience during the decade of the 1980s were the best that I could imagine or choose even today.” He talks often about how beneficial the experience has been for his career as a writer. And yet, he (at least) once admitted “there was still a lot of pressure about what you could and couldn’t say, and there was a member of the Ministry of the Interior who read our work and called us to account if we got out of line.”21 All in all, he says very little, and almost nothing critical, about his experience at either of these venues. In essays and interviews he routinely points out that his time at Juventud Rebelde gave him an opportunity to polish his skills as a writer, and taught him the political “rules of the game” in publishing (without explaining what those are). The experience had some indirect impact on the evolution of his consciousness as a Cuban writer and as a member of a “generation” (a favorite theme of his, as will be discussed later). While he sometimes talks about the constant pressure he and his colleagues felt, in others, he contends that he was free to write what he wanted while working at Juventud Rebelde. Between 1985 and 1986 Padura spent a year in Angola working “as editor for the weekly of Cuban civil collaborators posted there.”22 According to Jon Lee Anderson, this experience “helped inspire some of his first published short stories: ruminations about revolutionary faith, the varieties of exile, and loneliness.”23 “The year I spent in Angola,” Padura said in an interview, “acquainted me not only with fear (something very personal) but also with

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true material poverty, misery, and the kindness of human beings, manifest in their clearest and most strengthened states.”24 That was during the tail end of Cuba’s extraordinary intervention in this African country. Over 425,000 Cubans fought in this strange mission. Padura’s journalism on Cuban affairs does not include a serious examination of either this war or its repercussion in Cuba. From 1990 to 1995 Padura was editor in chief at the La Gaceta de Cuba, a high-brow cultural magazine published by the UNEAC. In one statement he sounds almost apologetic for accepting the position: “Unless you worked for an official outlet, you really couldn’t work at that time.” The UNEAC is officially a “non-governmental organization” but in fact it is evidently a government-controlled organization, like its sister institution, the ICAIC in the cinematography sphere. It is routinely used to ostracize writers and artists, for instance, by expelling them from its ranks, as it did to writer Jesús Díaz, Antonio José Ponte, and recently to visual artist Tania Bruguera, among others, when they crossed a red line. Unlike the daily media (newspapers, radio and television), however, the Gaceta deals with cultural issues and managed to publish moderately critical material (within the parameters) from time to time. UNEAC and especially the ICAIC have also been used to protect individual artists or writers, but when the chips are down they work as conveyor belts for the country’s political leadership.25 During his time at the Gaceta, the magazine ceased to publish for two years for lack of resources, leaving him with a modest stipend but no real responsibilities and lots of time to write. “I wrote and wrote,” he said. “Almost everyone thought about leaving Cuba, but I decided to stay, and from ‘90 to ‘95, I worked like a crazy man.” I found no specific comments of his on the actual experience of publishing in Cuba or the challenges facing a government-controlled writers and artists association. Samuel Farber contends that Padura “has refrained from supporting many of the statements promoted by the cultural apparatus of the Cuban State to denounce dissidents.”26 Padura never signed a petition to protest against the government either—like the “Declaration of Cuban Intellectuals” (better known as the “Letter of the Ten” [Carta de los Diez], published in the Miami Herald on May 31, 1991). In all, he seemed to have kept a low profile at the Gaceta, as he did in the previous two publications. Since his experience at Juventud Rebelde, most of his journalism has been available almost exclusively to foreign readers. Some of them circulated online on the island and a few were reproduced in Espacio Laical, a project of the Father Félix Varela Cultural Center of the Archdiocese of Havana. He participates from time to time in “debates,” organized by that Center, with other writers or artists. The word “debate” in Cuba generally means a discussion between individuals, often with different backgrounds, but who publicly



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agree with each other.27 In short, even though he seems risk-averse he is also keen to occupy whatever space is available for public expression. Padura is very astute when dealing with censorship (and self-censorship), and given his reputation he would be costly to castigate in a major way. Nevertheless, since the secondary parameters are never entirely clear and do change, one can imagine that Padura can never feel completely safe and sound in “revolutionary” Cuba. A LITTLE FREER EVERY DAY In his acceptance speech for the National Award in 2012, Padura said: “Throughout all these years, I have tried, with increasing awareness and insistence, to be a free and independent man, a person in a world and in a society such as the one in which we live. … I will fight to remain true to myself, to think with my head, to be a little freer every day.”28 Padura is on record denouncing the poverty of media, the mediocrity of much of what was considered literature during the 1970s and 1980s, and the continuous challenges to find great books in the island.29 He talks about the “very serious cultural information problem for a country with cultural consumption capacity like Cuba.”30 He asks “When will a Cuban reader read Roberto Bolaños? When will they be able to read the Japanese (Haruki) Murakami or the Swedish Hening Mankell?” All of which implicitly raises the key issue of political control of cultural activities and censorship, something he can’t or won’t discuss explicitly in either his essays or his literary work. For more than thirty years the Cuban readers were cut off much of what was published abroad, and largely missed the so-called “boom” of the Latin American novels during the 1960s and 1970s. Only a few Cuban writers could be published outside the island (essentially the ones who were already published abroad before the revolution), and only though a government agency (the Agencia Literaria Latinoamericana) that was the gatekeeper to the foreign market. This Agency charged in foreign currencies and paid writers in Cuban pesos, after taking a cut.31 In his novels, political problems are more openly mentioned and discussed if they belong to the past, becoming, to repeat, evidence of how things have changed for the better. Hence in the past, “a compañero was someone capable of handling with skill the castrating art of self-censorship to avoid the insult of being censored.”32 In a comment on the Obama/Castro accord: “For many years in Cuba, unanimity was promoted as the only alternative. In recent years, plurality has become possible. Although this has not materialized in the existence of political parties (…) it has meant the possibility of beginning to present different points of view without becoming an opponent. It is

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very important to understand that and put it into practice.”33 When talking about “liberty” in Cuba, Padura points out, in an interview, that the situation for writers has improved, as a result of their determination to conquer more space: “That space of freedom was not a gift, it was an achievement, it cost a lot of sweat, blood and tears.”34 Again, what Padura won’t or can’t talk about is the political cause of the problems he is examining. In Cuban literature, he wrote, “The political reality is submerged, and often remains unnamed, I assume intentionally.”35 That does not preclude the reader from drawing political conclusions. He himself makes that clear in the following two statements: My novel Pasado perfecto (1991) took four years to publish in Cuba; Máscaras (1997) was criticized as a work complacent with the “market” … but I insisted and increasingly went looking all the way to the bottom, down to the pits of society and its problems, without turning my novels into political documents, but without eluding the political interpretations that can be made not only on issues such as freedom and totalitarianism, but much more, like the loss of values ​and hopes, the drama of exile, the presence of opportunism as a way of life and betrayal as an attitude …36 In my case, the limits I do not want to transgress are precisely in the marshy and manipulated universe of politics. I am not at all attracted to a literature that plays with politics, because I am a writer and not a politician, and because I am not interested in having politicians use my literature like in an amusement park. And as that universe repels me, I turn away from it. I am a writer, fundamentally, of Cuban life, and politics cannot be outside that life, because it is a daily, active, penetrating part of it. Yet I manage it so that the reader decides to make political associations, without my books referring directly to it. I really don’t need it and it does not interest me, but on the other hand, I am very interested in having my books read in Cuba so that people could have a dialogue with them.37

This last sentence is important: his books are not easily available in Cuba, but they do circulate. Padura told me that his books are hard to find for three reasons: first, the economic crisis makes it difficult to publish many books; second, the high demand for his books; and third, and it seems to me most importantly, the “lack of will” to publish them.38 He says that his friends pressured the proper cultural authorities to reprint some of his detective story books for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first one, Pasado Perfecto (1991), and especially for the anniversary of its famous main character, detective Mario Conde. Although 4,000 copies of his book El hombre que amaba a los perros were published in Cuba, to his knowledge, only 1,400 copies were sold during two public presentations of the book (first 400 copies were made available, then 1,000). Padura doesn’t know what happened to the other copies, and indeed it is next to impossible to find a copy in a Cuban bookstore.39



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When journalist Jon Lee Anderson asked Padura if his novels had ever been censored, he answered “Fortunately, no.” About the current situation Padura recently said to a Cuban audience at the Spanish Embassy in Havana: “There is no current policy of what should or should not be published [. . .] I believe enough space has been achieved for almost everything to be published in Cuba.”40 But according to Anderson, “Onstage, Padura acknowledged that he had frequently suffered from political anxiety: ‘Every time I finish a novel, I say: This is the one they’re not going to let be published.’” Between this and the “almost” of the previous statement, one finds enough qualifying elements to make the first statement (“There is no current policy of what should or should not be published”) ring hollow. “You never know how far you can go,” he also said, adding: “Sometimes it seems as if spaces open and then close again.”41 With each book, his wife Lucía López commented, “it’s been a matter of pushing the envelope a little further, seeing how far he can go.”42 Asked if he ever fears retaliation, he responded: I have done that work in my narrative, but also in my journalism, and I would lie to you if I said that at I was not afraid from time to time. When I finished La novela de mi vida (2002), I thought I had passed certain limits of permissibility, but I went on. Same thing happened with La neblina del ayer (2005), and much more with El hombre que amaba a los perros. But the problem is not to be afraid, for it is normal and human in a society like Cuba, given what happened to so many Cuban writers in the past, with what happened to me at certain moments. … The problem, or the solution of the problem, is to confront fear. And it’s what I’ve done.43

Of course with institutionalized censorship comes the other side of the coin, the “castrating art of self-censorship,” a phenomenon he mentions briefly in a few essays.44 In one of them, he compares what he deplores as the hyperpoliticization of exiled Cuban literature, “while those who remained in the country, tackling the limits of official permissibility, often pushing them, use the resources of literature (metaphors and hyperbole of the most diverse and imaginary types) examine social phenomena.”45 Padura arguably mixes the signals of communication on everything related to freedom of expression and free art in particular. Hence, Cuban art appears to be both free and not quite free; his books circulate in Cuba without censorship (he thanks the Editorial Unión for that), though they do not circulate much at all and he is always afraid of censorship; he is free to write what he wants but he strives to be a “bit more free every day”; and so on.46 This ties in nicely with an insightful comment made by Marie-Laure Geoffray about artists and writers in Cuba: “On the whole, the best strategy was to seem not to be clearly positioned, and thus hard to blame.”47 To the question of whether

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he considers himself a “heretic” (the title and topic of his most recent novel), his answer is revealing: “I always maintained a critical attitude regarding what is going on in Cuba. Without excess. I have never been active in any group: neither in the [Communist] party nor in the dissidence. My great struggle has always been to be independent.”48 He basically puts a totalitarian government and a weak and persecuted opposition on the same moral scale. But the interviewer (Fernando García) persists and asks: “But independence is an heresy in Cuba, isn’t it?” He answers: “My thinking is rather heterodox, in the sense that I am opposed to orthodoxy of any kind. And that can lead to heresy. But in essence, what I have always wanted to show is what life is in Cuba without losing the literary quality; if I were to convert these texts into political statements I would be writing pamphlets. But I also do journalism, and there I tend to be much more critical.”49 Asked about the recent lifting of restrictions to travel abroad for Cubans, and if it means they are more free, he answers yes, “A person who has the possibility of living in the place he chooses is a freer person.” He then adds that “freedom is never absolute, anywhere,” and talks about the time he censured himself in Spain, in an article that had nothing to do with Cuban politics (it was about hurting sensibilities on violence against women) to illustrate his point. In sum, he manages to depoliticize the issue of censorship in Cuba. Similarly, in a book entirely devoted to reminiscing on the mistakes of the past, Padura and coauthor John Kirk passively write: “The freedom for all cultural figures on the island, as Antón Arrufat explained, is conditioned by the political and social reality of the country.”50 “In all of my crime novels,” he told Oscar Hijuelos, “from Havana Blue to the one I will publish in Spain this year, Herejes (Heretics), I have always taken a critical view of Cuba’s reality.”51 The story of detective novels in Cuba is interesting. In 1972, the MININT announced a competition to develop the genre: “The works that are presented will be on police themes and will have a didactic character, serving at the same time as a stimulus to prevention and vigilance over all activities that are antisocial.” The heroes were to be champions of the people, so upright that they refrained from swearing.52 As Samuel Farber points out, “The first two prizes were awarded in 1973 to two works authored by two Ministry of Interior’s lieutenants, but in subsequent years the prizes were awarded to civilian writers.”53 In Padura’s novels, on the other hand, the bad guys are not the serviceable “counterrevolutionaries”: they are typically bad apples of the ruling class. As Anderson puts it, “what Padura does is to find a politically acceptable way to acknowledge the obvious.”54 His most daring novels, from the point of view of publishing in Cuba within the parameters, are the past two: El hombre que amaba a los perros (2009), a fictionalized account of Leon Trotsky and his assassin, Ramón Mercader, and Herejes (2013), on prejudices in various times and places. Both are historical novels that do not concern Cuba directly, which a priori is a smart



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way to handle censorship: it is always easier (in fact it is often encouraged) to talk about faults committed in the past (El hombre) or in any society at any time (Herejes). His previous novels focusing on Cuba tended to think of the past as a cemetery of errors—for instance institutionalized homophobia during the 1970s in Máscaras (1997)—hinting that they may or may not have been rectified today, something the reader has to figure out for herself. As he publicly stated (in Spain): “As I understand it, in the novel that relies on history to make its artistic journey, the writer must take into account that he only fulfills his mission if his effort serves to illuminate the present through the examination of the experience already accumulated by mankind over time, which is to say, historically.”55 How does El hombre illuminate the present? “My novel has been experienced as a revelation in Cuba, since that history is still unknown here today. The fact that this novel was published in Cuba and that it has won prizes also shows that it’s possible now to talk about Stalinism in the Soviet context and in relation to the rest of the world—with respect to the Spanish Civil War, for instance, and, of course, to Cuba.”56 But the novel does not shed direct light on the relations between Stalinism and Cuba, and he does not make that link clear in interviews either. It does not address the simple question: what was Ramón Mercader (Trotsky’s assassin) doing in Cuba? As we know, he lived in Cuba and worked as an adviser to the MININT. Mercader’s mother Caridad worked for seven years in the sixties as the functionary in charge of public relations at the Cuban embassy in Paris. Padura can’t or won’t connect the dots. None of this takes away the importance and interest of the novel in the Cuban context. Almost anywhere else in the world, this novel would be appreciated primarily for its historical and literary value. There are few other places in the world where condemning Stalin’s assassination of Trotsky “breaks myths,” as he said about the book’s impact in Cuba. This suffices to acknowledge that the novel was clearly dissonant in the Cuban context, and therefore an act of courage on the part of the novelist. The novel Herejes is more ambitious but it is also further steps removed from controversies about how Cubans are ruled. As Padura said in September 2013: “In order to reflect on the freedom of the individual in Cuba, I found it appropriate to find parallels showing that this phenomenon has been a constant in human history.”57 His new search for the present gets drawn in the history of humanity, leaving the quest for freedom in today’s Cuba a distant and diluted quest. Herejes is a celebration of freedom and a condemnation of intolerance, in different periods and situations, emphasizing the rather obvious fact that intolerance has been part of the human condition for ever (i.e., it is not specifically a Cuban issue). In an interview Padura calls José Martí a “heretic” (“the intellectual who committed the heresy of having a superior

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human talent and sensibility”), which arguably defuses the possibility of talking about heresy to critically “highlight the present” in Cuba. If the official hero of the regime is a heretic, then possibly, Fidel is too, fighting for freedom in Cuba, and so on. A heretic is a rebel, and officially, in Cuba, rebels are in power.58 There is no doubt that both El hombre que amaba a los perros and Herejes can be read as critiques of the regime and the official history in Cuba, as indeed they are by most readers. But they can also be read as criticism of Stalinist Russia (which is allowed and to some extent encouraged in Cuba since the end of the USSR) and as an ahistorical celebration of freedom, a value that is officially embraced, in principle, in the 1976 Cuban constitution. His choice of the situation of Emos in Cuba (tattooed and pierced urban youths who defy the revolutionary totem of the “new man”), in Herejes, is interesting for it concerns persecution for being different socially, not politically, although their apoliticism is in a way a critique of stale utopia and hyper-politicization: “And here comes the world of urban tribes, and more specifically the Emos, who meet at night and who you saw in the street G of Havana. They looked like strange bugs, but they were a manifestation of something deeper: the desire to move away from the masses and create an identity of their own, which in the end expresses historical fatigue. Cubans need reaffirmation and their most usual strategy is to take distance, not to believe. They are heretics.”59 The political ramifications are clear, but perhaps less so than the psychology of urban youth, making Havana just another city dealing with youth alienation in the twenty-first century. Herejes may be read as a Cuban-style J’accuse or as a mostly apolitical historical novel that confirms Tory prejudice on human nature. Padura and the Emos he describes reach the same conclusion: one cannot oppose the political status quo, one can only retreat from it. In sum, novels like Herejes and El hombre que amaba a los perros are small heresies in the Cuban context. But they can be read as condemnations of intolerance and celebration of freedom, with full political implications, which no doubt is a source of concern for the most conservative and shortsighted members of the regime. If one can’t call Padura a dissident, it is equally impossible to deny that his work can be read as an invitation to “break myths,” foster critical thinking and enlarge freedom. Which is why Padura’s books are not readily available, let alone publicly discussed in Cuba. GENERATIONS When Padura looks back at his and his country’s itinerary he thinks in terms of decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s), periods (e.g., since 1959, since the 1990s),



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and most importantly, generations. He devoted some of his writing to individuals and events in the distant past: typically, the heroes of independence, or non-political characters (musicians, baseball players), but not much at all on key political events of the mid-twentieth century, such as the revolution of 1933, the democratic years (1940–52) or the coup of 1952. All of this is basically préhistoire, a bias strongly encouraged in official Cuban history.60 An interesting exception can be found in his book Un hombre en una isla (2012), where one can read this: From the watchtower of today’s revolutionary moment, the pre-revolutionary past is usually portrayed as dark, nebulous, and faded; what is more it is also malicious, corrupt, and often unworthy, so we should never returned to it, and if we do (analytically), it will only be to prop up what came after, but above all to look at its stains and be even more certain that the past can never return (in reality). On the other hand, the after has very different characteristics: it reveals itself and behaves like an eternal revolutionary present, glorious and clean, full of victories, a coming that merges with the future, because the future belongs to it. This one then feeds on its own past and rises on the remote ruins, almost without form, of the other past, that of before.61

Like the other articles in this collection, the article is not referenced, but it is interesting to note that it is an article on baseball in Cuba. Padura is clearly generation-centric: he talks a lot about his own generation—which he calls the “hidden generation”62—, the previous generation (the one that made the revolution) and the younger generations, practically conflated into one: all Cubans who came to adulthood since the late 1980s-early 1990s. Here generations are somewhat dissolved in a “period”: the crisis of 1990s and its apparently endless aftermath. Thus, In my father’s generation were those who believed in the project and those who did not. My generation was educated in the system; to believe in it was part of everyday logic. We were the first to arrive massively at the university. We were competent. At the beginning of our development, in the eighties, we lived on our salary and began to dream about the future: perhaps one could get an apartment, or a Lada. Or travel to the Soviet Union, the GDR, Spain or Canada. And suddenly, in the 90s, the ground sank and we fell into a pit.

On his generation: My generation was frustrated. It came from a long obedience. We cut cane, collected coffee and tobacco, opened the disastrous camp schools, went to Angola as soldiers and in the end we were left with nothing. And at this moment, when society begins to change, we are too young to retire and too old to undertake a different dynamic. A trapped generation, and who still today has

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the responsibility to continue helping the children and to look after the parents pensioners.63

The disenchantment started slowly during the 1980s and became a glaring reality for the country after the downfall of the Soviet bloc. For him, “the 80s was a golden age but after 1989 (and the fall of the Soviet Union) that artificial world vanished and there was an economic crisis. A more critical vision of the past arose and that was when I started writing my novels.”64 The 1990s were a time of great suffering and hardship on the island, perhaps the least of which was “crisis of paper” (lack of paper and resources for publishing), which resulted in cuts in the publishing budget and coincided with yet another massive exodus of artists and writers. “We grew up in its romantic period—the sixties and seventies,” he says in one interview. “I remember in school we had posters that said that the future of humanity belonged completely to the socialists.”65 If his generation experienced disillusion, the younger generations never really had much illusions to begin with, something Padura laments in part (they do not acknowledge the sacrifices of his generation) but understands. As he said in an interview: “The times are different, the country is different, and we were forced to believe, but today most do not believe in anything, because the best example not to believe is given by members of our generation, with the sum of failures and frustrations that they experienced.”66 The motif of generation is all over his literary work as well. “I think the drama of my generation runs through my work,” he said to Mauricio Vicent.67 His main characters, starting with detective Mario Conde but also Iván Cárdenas in El hombre que amaba a los perros, are both emphatically from his own generation. “If you think Iván is similar to Conde, it’s because he is,” he said. “They are two Cuban men from the same generation [i.e., Padura’s], who have had the same historical experiences, the same passion for literature, and the same frustrations and lost dreams,” he said to Oscar Hijuelos.68 Incidentally, the little history of Mario Conde is that he wanted to be a writer as a young man, but when his first short story was about to be published in a magazine, the publication was shut down for being anti-Communist. Conde never wrote again; instead, he became a policeman.  Padura considers that his generation, unlike the previous one, never had power and was the most “beaten.”69 It would not be difficult to find numerous Cuban politicians of his generation occupying nominally important positions, but the point is that the real power in the hands of the Castro brothers and their close collaborators since the time of the insurgency.70 From this common experience he and many writers and artists of his generation developed a strong bond of solidarity that has more to do with friendship in adversity than artistic coherence. They look up for each other, like comrades who went to



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war together—in fact, they are still fighting. Many are now living in exile but they keep in touch and refused to be divided, despite efforts of the regime to do so.71 What is striking here is how they all are on the generational raft and basically strive to defend themselves and to survive, not to change conditions beyond their control. This is, it seems to me, an important point to understand Padura’s viewpoint: individuals are historically determined; they are presented a deck of cards and try to make the most of it. Politics is divisive, and one should never let it stand in the way of more important things like loyalty to place and friends. Talking about the film Return to Ithaca, to which he collaborated as a screenwriter (it is loosely based on an episode of his novel La novela de mi vida, 2001), Padura said “it is the story of a broken generation, a true chronicle of survival,” referring again to his own generation.72 Laurent Cantet’s French-Cuban film, shot in Habana, was scheduled to be presented at the International Festival of Latin American New Cinema in December 2014, after winning prizes at the Biarritz Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. But the political leadership, via the Ministry of Culture and the ICAIC, curiously took it out of the program at the last minute, without explanation. According to Padura, the “official” explanation became that the president of the festival had seen the film, but the director, Iván Giroud, had not. Hence the need to withhold its presentation. It was finally presented early in 2015 during the French film festival, where because there were fewer films being presented, it could reach a larger audience, according to Padura. If it is clear that the film was censured, after someone made the mistake of including it in the program, one can only guess if the decision was reversed because of the pressures coming from the film community, in the form of a petition signed by twelve filmmakers. While the authors of this petition denounce this as a case of “censorship” it also praises the “five heroes,” the former director of ICAIC Alfredo Guevara, and of course, Fidel. Padura, on the other hand, made no public comment about the event, a silence that is condemned by exiled Cuban writer Antonio José Ponte, in a scathing article. Ponte highlights the fact that while the novel and the movie examine the controversial issue of political persecution and exile, the culprit winds up being the bad apple, not the political leadership or the totemic revolution.73 In art and literature, his generation was negatively impacted by politics and, to survive, what it needed to do was to keep politics at bay, giving themselves and their work some distance and autonomy from official rhapsodies. Thus, if characters in, say, Jesus Díaz’s Las iniciales de la tierra (see chapter 2) live in osmosis with politics, characters in 1980s’ novels are typically driven by personal experiences in a disenchanted environment. The same scenario happened in visual art: the 1980s generation sought to distance itself from the politically didactic trend adopted by its forebearer. The new trend was one of

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rupture with the revolutionary didactism, what painter (from Padura’s generation) Flavio Garciandia called “programmatic contentism” (contenidismo programático). In Padura’s words: An emerging consciousness that politics and literature should have independent existences, that man and his dramas can or should be the center of artistic creation, and that looking critically at one’s surroundings was a possible responsibility for a writer began to shape collective interests, becoming obvious in the works that we created and even published in those years.74

For the cultural field as a whole, Padura sees a silver lining in the hardship of the 1990s. This harsh decade made possible “a new sense of both literary and economic independence.”75 Before the 1990s the publishing output was marked by abundance and mediocrity. The “crisis of paper” weeded out mediocrity and gave genuine authors (he mentions Abilio Estévez, Senel Paz, Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, Eliseo Alberto Diego and himself) a chance to publish and gain recognition abroad. During the previous three decades only authors who were famous before the 1959 revolution (Carpentier, Sarduy, Lezama Lima) were known internationally (authors known in the Soviet bloc thanks to cultural agreements do not count here). Padura’s interpretation of his and his country’s itinerary is fundamentally affected by (or perhaps is a consequence of) the passive role he bestows to actors. Basically, history gives two options to individuals: to stay or to leave the country. Those who stay are shaped by the dominant trends of their generation. Though one can hardly think of a single country in the world that has been more decisively shaped by political will than Cuba, indeed by the political will of one individual, the decision-making process is almost entirely absent in Padura’s account of life in Cuba. Padura is a character in this comédie humaine, coping like everybody else. Hence, he writes sentences such as: “(due to fortuitous cosmic conjunction or a simple historical-concrete necessity) the 1990s would be my decade of real and definitive transformation into a writer who was Cuban, of course, and who would live in Cuba, ending in the culmination of my becoming a professional writer in 1995.”76 Needless to explain, this interpretation irons out variations within and between generations. Most significantly, it leaves out individuals (many writers and artists among them) who “exit” the situation and live in exile. It deals only with the ones who play by the rules.

REALITY CHECK: PADURA’S JOURNALISM Padura subscribes to the fairly common view in Cuba about literature replacing government-controlled media as a source of information and reflection on



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the reality of daily life in Cuba,77 but he can’t bring himself to explain why journalism is so poor.78 On the other hand, in her foreword to a collection of Padura’s essays that were mostly published abroad, his wife Lucía López writes: “The writer himself has recognized on more than one occasion that he resorts to journalism to say what he cannot express in his literary work.”79 In any case, one has to turn to his articles for foreign readers to find Padura’s famed journalism on current events in Cuba. Most of Padura’s articles on Cuba were commissioned by the Inter Press Service (IPS), an independent and moderately leftist “international communication institution with a global news agency at its core, raising the voices of the South and civil society on issues of development, globalisation, human rights and the environment” (www.ips.org/institutional/). They were published for twenty years under the rubric “La esquina de Padura,” in many countries but not in Cuba—except illicitly via the Internet, or the few times his essays were reproduced in the Catholic magazine Espacio Laical. Padura underlines, defensively, that IPS doesn’t belong to any government and that it pays him very little: about 15 CUCs per article.80 His pieces vary in genres from “street” journalism (if not very “investigative”) and storytelling to thematic essays on the meaning of history or utopias. A selection of those finally came out in Cuba in three books published in 2005 (Entre dos siglos, La memoria y el olvido and Un hombre en una isla), all with marginal publishers. One looks in vain for any of these books in Cuban bookstores. Padura explained to Le Monde’s columnist Paulo Paranagua why his journalism is not considered acceptable for publication in Cuba because his “vision of reality was not the one promoted by the Cuban press, which favored propaganda rather than information or analysis.”81 During the presentation of one of his books featuring a collection of his articles (Un hombre en una isla) at the Havana Book Fair in 2014, Padura publicly stated that these articles were considered unfit for publication in mainstream Cuban newspapers. It begs the question: why? To begin with, in contrast to the Panglossian views peddled in Cuban media, his journalism is not triumphalist in tone, quite the opposite. His articles discuss the harsh conditions of living in Cuba, the growing inequalities, problems of corruption, bureaucratic inefficiencies, opaque and top-down decision-making, and the bland kowtowing of the media. Padura’s unadorned portrait clashes with official media but it is quite in sync with the dominant literary trend that started during the 1990s, which he characterizes as a “narrative of deconstruction, ruins, apocalypse and marginality.”82 Always mindful of boundaries, Padura warns that one can go too far in this direction: “Like any reaction,” he commented, “it ran the risk of extravagance, and the Cuban narrative once overflowed with fighters, militiamen, self-sacrificing workers and happy peasants, is now overcrowded with prostitutes (jineteras),

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emigrants (rafters), corrupt characters, drug addicts, homosexuals, marginalized of all kinds and disenchanted of the most diverse categories.”83 Padura alludes to the collapse of the Soviet Union (another rather unusual topic in Cuban media), often referring to it as the “Stalinist” model. It is not always clear if he does that to distinguish it from the better Leninist original model, that is, to denounce the deviation from the model rather than the model itself, or because it is a safe way to denounce communism in Cuba. One of his articles entitled “Utopías perdidas, utopías soñadas” (2010) discusses the Katyn massacre and the censorship of Vassili Grossman’s Life and Destiny (a novel that impressed him tremendously). It quotes Orwell and states that totalitarianism is still alive today, though without saying where. He calls for a lucid understanding of past mistakes but remains elusive on lingering effects of those in Cuba. I am and will always be convinced that it is useful, indeed urgent, to know and relive in the 21st century the political as well as social and human reasons for the perversion of the marvelous idea that man can live in a society with equality, and not only with free health care and education but also the maximum freedom and the maximum of democracy, to make human existence truly more complete and whole. The urgency and relevance of this understanding derives from the reality of our world today, battered by economic, ecological, migratory, and religious crises. It is a world that extols its democracy but in which millions of humans suffer from chronic hunger and misery, which makes us consider the necessity of refounding a utopia, a better world, and one doesn’t repeat the mistakes and horrors that characterised (and ruined) the first attempt, scarring the 20th century.84

In this quote, it is typical that as he is becoming more specific with comments on trade-offs between health care and education on one hand, freedom and democracy on the other, he changes course and revert to beauty contest platitudes on “a better world” free of hunger and misery. In both his essays and his literary work Padura condemns the most egregious mistakes committed years ago by the “revolution” (one is left to wonder: not by Fidel?): the UMAP, the Five Grey Years, and the persecution of homosexuals. All of this is done in scrupulous compliance with the primary parameters. In fact, Fidel Castro is rarely mentioned in his essays and never in his literary work. And yet, if government officials admit some of these mistakes from time to time, comments like this are a rarity in the media, so just to admit the possibly admissible appears edgy. Padura and Raúl Castro seem to agree on what is the most urgent problem in post-Soviet Cuba: the lethargic economy, still reeling from the post-Soviet crisis, and the persistently low standard of living of the population. He told El País’s columnist Mauricio Vicent that in his view, the worst legacy of Stalinism in Cuba has been its economic model (i.e., not its totalitarian



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political system, which Padura can’t or won’t discuss.) For Padura, as we saw earlier, the relative prosperity of the subsidized 1980s was a mirage and the contradictions of the socialist economic model were exposed when the socialist bloc fell like a house of cards. Most of Padura’s articles deal with how Cubans can’t afford basic necessities. He talks repeatedly about the weight and inefficiency of the bureaucracy as a particularly negative legacy of the “Stalinist” model. All of his articles on Raúl’s reforms find some faults; typically, they are not fast and comprehensive enough, information and transparency in the process are insufficient, and the like. As with many “middle-class” Cubans, he seems particularly frustrated by the clumsy policy on sale of private cars. In sum, for him, “the problem is that the great pending question of the Caribbean island is its domestic functioning and economic development, and the changes carried out in the heat of the project of ‘updating of the economic model,’ as it has been called, have failed to address that.”85 Still, he remains supportive and cautiously optimistic about the actualización’s chance of success. On the issue of relations between the islanders and the exile, he comes across as generally tolerant and favorable to reconciliation. He berates “fundamentalists at home and abroad” and advocates dialogue and reconciliation. Many of his avowed literary influences squarely belong to the anti-Castro camp (Padilla, Cabrera Infante, Vargas Llosa), or to American literature (Chandler, Chester Himes, Faulkner, Hammett, Hemingway, Salinger, Updike), which gives his intellectual profile an aura of audacity and independence. After the election of Barack Obama his articles were cautiously optimistic about the possibility of a rapprochement with the United States. He does denounce the “embargo/blockade” (prudently remaining neutral on which term is most appropriate) but does not dwell on this issue and never indulges in anti-Americanism. He emphatically welcomed the 2014 Cuba– US December 17th agreement, as well as the rapprochement between the two countries more generally. Padura is on record saying he is “not a dissident,” adding that he can’t even imagine what he could be dissenting against.86 Dissidents do not appear to be part of the “reality” he describes in Cuba either. He simply never talks about groups or individuals opposed to the Castro regime. When I asked him about this, he first responded half in jest that two out of three are undercover security agents, admitting that this assessment hardly does justice to the third one.87 Then he added his main point: he wants to preserve his independence from all sides. As he explained to Jon Lee Anderson, he has “no militancy, not with the Party, nor with the dissidence.”88 This equal distance between the party and dissidence means that he must be equally critical of the latter, which may seem absurd, since the Cuban dissidence is minuscule, oppressed and powerless. In fact, he has nothing to gain from the opposition “side,”

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whereas he clearly needs to maintain a good working relationship with the reigning regime. He should therefore at least seem to be more jealous of his independence from the much-maligned opposition. A recent event illustrates this. In March 2012, protesters occupied a church in Havana just days before Pope Benedict was scheduled to arrive in Cuba. They demanded a papal audience and political change on the island. Then Cardinal Jaime Ortega, who Padura considers a friend, had police called in to break up the sit-in. In a speech delivered at the Harvard’s Rockefeller Center of Latin American Studies, Ortega defended his action and described the protesters as “former delinquents” with “no culture.” This was taking place in a time when his gentle prodding of the Castro government (to speed up reform and release political prisoners) was accused of legitimizing the government’s plan of “orderly transition” (as Cuban sociologist Haroldo Dilla put it: more order than transition). Padura wrote an article for IPS, which was soon reproduced in Espacio Laical, where he offers support to the Cardinal and appears to lose his cool when alluding to the Cardinal’s critics, referring to them as “extremists at home and abroad” and denouncing their “ingratitude and extremist positions” that “only serve to show their own personal importance or, in the worst case, to make sure that nothing changes.”89 Here Padura’s fire has one clear target: the opposition. This prompted Dilla to reply: “if we are absolutely true to the facts, we should recognize that the Cardinal has not been an innocent victim of the ‘crossfire of extremists,’ but one of the riflemen.” For him Padura too had become a “rifleman.” Padura doesn’t understand or respect opponents who, unlike him, are not given space to express themselves “within the revolution,” because they are not part of the “cultural elite” and are not satisfied with “critiques lights” of the system. For Dilla: “Again we return to the same, good against bad, virtuous against sinful, loving against hateful. To the whole Manichean dichotomy that will effectively lead us to that future of ‘hatred and resentment’ that Padura wants to avoid, unilaterally extolling the Cardinal.”90 Padura evidently has no illusions about the dictatorial nature of the regime in place.91 But he seems to believe in the possibility of participation under this system of government. In 2009 he wrote: Now the country’s leadership has called the population for the second time in three years, to discuss problems, deficiencies, inefficiencies, dysfunctions in our society, politics and the economy, from all perspectives, and again, it is said with insistence, without being scared of dissensions, all of which is something really new in a country that took pride in the most impenetrable unanimity of its official discourse, and where decisions concerning national affairs are taken in a top-down manner.92



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In sum, for all of his open-eyes chronicles of day-to-day hardship in the island, his musing on the political situation in Cuba—undoubtedly the central part of the “reality” he professes to describe—is overly cautious. It is not clear the extent to which this results from choices he made freely (like when he freely wrote uncontroversial pieces for El Caimán Barbudo). Here we touch the thorny issue of free will in a totalitarian or post-totalitarian environment such as Cuba. What would Cubans say if they could express themselves freely? Who would they vote for if they had free and fair elections? How different would Padura be as a writer? Arguably, the binary scheme “free will/ censorship” doesn’t begin to illuminate the gray zone of self-censorship and path dependency that prevail under authoritarian systems. Leonardo Padura found or created a sweet spot allowing him to navigate the tumultuous waters of censorship while searching (and finding) his own expressive voice. In doing so, he became, as one observer wrote, “perhaps the foremost chronicler of the island.”93 As a general rule, Padura is less keen on pushing for more space for expression than in occupying all the space available, without crossing the red line. He always manages to work within the official “parameters,” avoiding the fate that befell so many writers in Cuba. His criticism of many aspects of Cuban society is achieved at the cost of a depoliticization. He does not or cannot talk directly about the political system in Cuba. This strategy works, in the sense that it provides him with a fairly clear path to practice his métier in Cuba. Padura is not an exponent of the “art for art’s sake” viewpoint. He wants to talk about the “reality” in Cuba, but without being an activist for change. He cultivates an “exercise of social and human introspection that sometimes leads to politics, but does not originate from it.”94 But one wonders, what happens when it “leads to politics”? The answer is: not much, because he can’t go there and continue to be living and working in Mantilla. Living and working in Cuba is most valuable not only for him, but also for his readers. In one of his essays entitled “I would like to be Paul Auster,” he complains that he would love not to be constantly asked about politics in his country and why he continues living there. But this is very much his niche: he is widely seen as the best writer in Cuba, a country whose best writers were all formed before Castro rule. He offers us an off-the-beaten-path visit of a relatively closed society, a prose that is free of propaganda (though not liberated from surveillance). By occupying a small but significant critical space in Cuba, Padura becomes more interesting for Cuba observers and more intriguing for students of cultural and literary trends in the island. In that he can be compared to authors and artists who produce somewhat critical material under dictatorial regimes while managing to work within the system, like Yevgeny Yevtushenko in Russia, the enigmatic Ismael Kadaré in Albania (and France) or Murong Xuecon in China. Padura is both a thorn in the flesh of the regime,

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and arguably one of its greatest cultural assets. For us readers, one can ask: Does he (do we) pay too high a price for his privilege to write “from Mantilla”? Would he be more valuable to us, and a better writer, in exile? NOTES 1. Quoted in Jon Lee Anderson, “Private Eyes,” The New Yorker, October 21, 2013 2. In 2011 the Spanish Council of Ministers gave Padura an honorary Spanish citizenship for his literary merit. 3. Padura published his first Mario Conde novel (Pasado perfecto) in Mexico in 1989, and was paid an advance. He was told by the Cuban authorities that this would be tolerated only for that one time. A few years later it became public policy. 4. Padura has received the Café Gijón Prize (1995), the Hammett Prize on two occasions at Gijón’s Semana Negra or Noir Week (1998 and 2006), the Premio de las Islas (2000), the Prix des Amériques insulaires et de la Guyane, the Prize for the Best Crime Novel translated in Germany and in Austria (2004), the Raymond Chandler Prize (2009) and the Francesco Gelmi di Caporiacco Prize (2010) for The Man Who Loved Dogs. This book also earned him the Prix Initiales (2011), the Critics Award from the Cuban Institute of Books (2011) and the Carbet del Caribe Award (2011). Holder of the 2012 National Literature Prize of Cuba, France’s Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2013, and the 2014 City of Zaragoza International Prize for Historical Novels, he was recently awarded the 2015 Princess of Asturias Award for Literature. 5. As he told Allan Woods: “Curiously on the day of the launch at the book fair no news appeared in the media about the presentation. Also afterwards the papers kept quiet even though the launch of the book was the most exciting meeting in the book fair, and the room was completely full with people outside trying to get in. A week ago the book won the national critics prize in Cuba, this highlights Cuba’s contradictions: twenty years ago maybe I wouldn’t even have been able to think about writing this book; ten years ago I could write it but it wouldn’t have been published in Cuba; now it can be published and even though it is silenced in the media it can win prizes.” To quote another similar declaration of Padura: “when the Maison de América Latina de Paris, the French PEN Club, the Society of the Friends, and the Readers of Roger Caillois gave me the prize that carries the name of that important writer, no official national media approached me or promoted the event, which that overwhelmed me as a writer and carried with it recognition of Cuban literature, especially that which is written in Cuba by resident Cuban writers. Now added to the list of those who were previously awarded this prize—none of whom are Cuban— including Carlos Fuentes, Mario Vargas Llosa, Álvaro Mutis, Adolfo Bioy Casares, was my own name, that of a Cuban who continues to write and live in Cuba.” Allan Woods, “Leonardo Padura: The Man Who Loved Dogs,” In Defense of Marxism, January 14, 2014, http://www.marxist.com/leonardo-padura-the-man-who-loveddogs.htm; Leonardo Padura, “Writing in Cuba in the Twenty-first Century,” adaptation of his November 2012 speech in Havana, Cuba, at the Casa de las Américas,



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World Literature Today (May 2013), http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2013/may/ writing-cuba-twenty-first-century-leonardo-padura. 6. In fact, he lives on a second floor he built for himself and his wife, Lucía López Coll. 7. Quoted in Jane Jakeman, “Leonardo Padura’s Revolution in Crime,” The Independent, May 23, 2008. 8. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 9. Yoani Sánchez, “Leonardo Padura: The Man who Loved Books,” Huffington Post, January 12, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/leonardopadura-the-man-w_b_2222197.html. 10. Quoted in Oscar Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura,” Digital magazine Bomb no. 126 (Winter 2014), http://bombmagazine.org/article/7456/leonardo-padura. 11. In “Padura: Lucharé por ser cada día un poco más libre,” Café Fuerte, February 13, 2013. 12. Padura, “Writing in Cuba.” 13. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 14. Leonardo Padura, Un hombre en una isla, Crónicas, ensayos y obsesiones, Selection by Lucía López Coll and Vivian Lechuga, Foreword by Lucía López Coll. (Santa Clara, Cuba: Ediciones Sed de Belleza, 2012), 279–280). This collection of Padura does not provide original sources of publication or the dates. 15. Padura, Un hombre, 281. 16. Quoted in Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura.” 17. A selection of his articles are reproduced in a book entitled El viaje más largo (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1994). 18. Quoted in Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura.” 19. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 20. Padura writes “cualidades y calidades,” which I translate by “qualities” since both terms are identical in English. Padura, Un hombre, 212. 21. Quoted in Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 22. Padura, Un hombre, 153. 23. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” See for instance “La Puerta de Alcalá” (1991), reproduced in his recent collection of short stories entitled Aquello estaba deseando ocurrir (2015). 24. Padura, “Writing in Cuba.” 25. Padura also wrote screenplays: “Seven days in Havana,” directed by various artists; also for a TV series (Conde). “In all of these cases I’ve gone into the screenwriting with another writer (with Lucía, in recent projects including Seven Days in Havana, or with the director of the film).” Quoted in Oscar Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura.” 26. Samuel Farber, “La izquierda y la transición cubana—En diálogo con El hombre que amaba a los perros, de Leonardo Padura,” Nueva Sociedad 23 (March–April 2012), 22. 27. To illustrate this, one can look at a “Debate” organized by the Catholic journal Espacio Laical and featuring writer and screenwriter Arturo Arango, anthropologist Dmitri Prieto, philosopher Jorge Luis Acanda, political scientist Hiram Hernández

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and Padura. As is usually the case, the “debate” was in fact a discussion, with no apparent divergence of opinions about reforms and the renovation of the socialist model. Only a tiny minority of Cubans have access to their exchange. All participants agree that changes are necessary. Arango is the most critical, calling for a free press and freedom of expression, but he is also particularly adamant that capitalism is the worst option for Cuba and that the system of “political parties” is obsolete everywhere where it is practiced. He also states that the “recentralization” under Fidel Castro during his last few years in power was “disastrous,” adding (for safety) “to judge by what was said publicly and repeatedly by Raul Castro himself after 2006.” Typically, Padura refrains from explicit political statement, blasting the media (a pretty low hanging fruit) and supporting the change of “style” taken by Raul, (he welcomes the “The considerable decline of political propaganda,” and the “Transformation in which decisions are not only made according to political considerations, but also taking into account economic issues.” See “Dossier,” Espacio Laical 2 (2013): 44–59. In a later interview Padura recalls this event and highlights that the “really very critical positions that we all maintain, which at other times would have caused many problems for us. There is not enough freedom of expression, I think it is necessary to increase this quota, but all in all, I think that things have changed in Cuba and I hope they continue to change, continuing to get better and spaces continuing to grow.” In Pablo Batalla Cueto, “Trotski y Mercader eran fanáticos,” interview with Leonardo Padura, Espacio Laical 4 (2013): 29. 28. Leonardo Padura Fuentes, “Lucharé por ser cada día un poco más libre,” Acceptance Speech for the 2012 National Award, reproduced in Café Fuerte, February 2013. http://cafefuerte.com/culturales/noticias-culturales/ literatura-y-artes-plasticas/2589-padura-luchare-por-ser-cada-dia-un-poco-mas-libre. 29. For a discussion on this see Rafael Rojas, El estante vacío, literatura y política en Cuba (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2009). 30. “‘Los cubanos no conocen la literatura’ del mundo y ‘eso retrasa a un país,’ dice Padura,” Cubaencuentro, October 4, 2011, http://www.cubaencuentro.com/ cultura/noticias/los-cubanos-no-conocen-la-literatura-del-mundo-y-eso-retrasa-a-unpais-dice-padura-268943 31. Leonardo Padura, “Literatura cubana:¿de espaldas o de frente al mercado? Temas 60 (October–December 2009). 32. Padura, “Writing in Cuba.” 33. “‘Siento que hemos salido de una pesadilla,’ dice Padura sobre el acuerdo Obama–Castro,” Diario de Cuba, December 26, 2014, http://www.diariodecuba.com/ cuba/1419584862_12014.html. 34. Quoted in Wilfredo Cancio Isla, “Leonardo Padura: ‘El problema es imponerse al miedo’,” Café Fuerte, February 18, 2014, http://cafefuerte.com/literatura-y-artesplasticas/11887-leonardo-padura-el-problema-es-imponerse-al-miedo/. 35. Padura, Un hombre, 33. 36. Quoted in Cancio Isla, “Leonardo Padura.” 37. “Entrevista con Leonardo Padura Fuentes, De la tetralogía de Mario Conde a ‘El hombre que amaba a los perros,’” Cubaencuentro, December 19, 2008, file:/// Users/ygrenier/Documents/CUBA/Writers/Padura/Padura%20part%201.htm



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38. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 39. A friend told me that on the street she was offered a “rare” Cuban edition of El hombre que amaba los perros for 25 CUCs, roughly $25 (about one month’s salary in Cuba). The original price was 30 Cuban pesos, a bit more than $1.00. 40. Quoted in Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 41. Padura, quoted in Victoria Burnett, “Blurring Boundaries between Art and Activism in Cuba,” The New York Times, January 23, 2015. 42. Quoted in Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 43. Quoted in Cancio Isla, “Leonardo Padura.” 44. Padura, Un hombre, 291. 45. Padura, Un hombre, 43. 46. Variation on the same pattern: he often uses the interrogative form. On the need for economic (not political) reforms for instance: “Is it time to shorten the pauses and encourage a faster pace? And is it not the moment for citizens begin to know what future awaits them, with those profound and more complex transformations that can shape the destiny of the country and, certainly, their own lives? It looks like it is” (IPS, March 27, 2013). His titles themselves are often interrogations like: “Cuba: ¿En línea con el mundo? (IPS, February 15, 2011), “¿País nuevo? (IPS, 220 December 2010), ¿La hora crítica de la burocracia? (IPS, January 15, 2009), ¿Cambia o no cambia? (IPS, February 7, 2008). After vague admonitions of both socialism and capitalism: “How can this future be, a future for which many already feel an anxious nostalgia? When will the crisis end, when will we overcome the various forms of fundamentalism and terrorism, when will the issue hunger or the devastating ecological devastation will be examined seriously? Will we still have time to build that better future, with real democracies and without demagogies, to save our own life on the planet? As I do not have answers, I prefer to leave you the questions and perhaps I have awakened in you that strange nostalgia for what we have not achieved.” IPS June 15, 2009. 47. Marie-Laure Geoffray, “Transnational Dynamics of Contention in Contemporary Cuba” Journal of Latin American Studies, 47, no. 1 (February 2015): 11. 48. Quoted in Fernando García, “Leonardo Padura, ‘En Cuba, la herejía expresa necesidad de reafirmación y cansancio histórico,’” Interview, La Vanguardia (Spain), September 22, 2013, http://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20130922/54389822909/ leonardo-padura-cuba.html 49. Quoted in García, “Leonardo Padura, ‘En Cuba, la herejía.’” 50. Leonardo Padura in John Kirk and Leonardo Padura, Culture and the Cuban Revolution, Conversations in Havana (University Press of Florida, 2001), 183. 51. Quoted in Oscar Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura.” 52. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” See also Stephen Wilkinson, Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture (Peter Lang Ltd.: International Academic Publishers, 2006). 53. “In contrast to the police novel popular in capitalist countries, where the private detective plays the central role, the Cuban police novel inaugurated in the seventies had two central sets of actors. One involved the members of the intelligence agencies; the other were ‘the people,’ usually members of the CDRs [Committee for the Defense of Revolution], who collaborated and privived information to the

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intelligence agencies. The genre reached its peak in the first half of the seventies and declined considerably by the late eighties.” Samuel Farber, Cuba since the Revolution of 1959, A Critical Assessment (Chicago, Ill: Haymarket Books, 2011), 24. 54. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 55. “Leonardo Padura, ‘El instinto de libertad del hombre es invencible,’” [speech, reception of X Premio Internacional de Novela Histórica, City of Zaragoza, May 28, 2014], Café fuerte, June 4, 2014, http://cafefuerte.com/documentos/14767-leonardopadura-el-instinto-de-libertad-del-hombre-es-invencible/ 56. Quoted in Oscar Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura.” 57. Quoted in García, “Leonardo Padura, ‘En Cuba, la herejía.” 58. This was expressed quite clearly by Abel Prieto in an article published in 1996, where he claims that thanks to a successful cultural policy, “heresy and officialism have been mixed in a social and cultural project that is anti-bureaucratic by definition, capable of self-renewal and of drawing permanent lessons from their own setbacks, where the intellectual (as a thinking, incisive, participant entity) has had an undeniable political, not circumstantial, influence, and without the more or less subtle constraints imposed in other places by the market and the instinct of conservation of the system.” Abel Prieto, “Ser (o no ser) intelectual en Cuba,” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 1 (Summer 1996): 94. 59. Quoted in García, “Leonardo Padura, ‘En Cuba, la herejía.” 60. On the selective use of history in Cuba, see Rafael Rojas, La máquina del olvido, mito, historia y poder en Cuba (Mexico: Taurus, 2011). 61. Padura, Un hombre en una isla, 367. 62. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 63. Quoted in García, “Leonardo Padura, ‘En Cuba, la herejía.” 64. Interview in Duncan Campbell, “The Hammettt of Havana,” The Guardian (UK), September 12, 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/sep/12/cuba. crimebooks. 65. Interview in Jane Jakeman, “Leonardo Padura’s Revolution in Crime,” The Independent (UK), May 22, 2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/ books/features/leonardo-paduras-revolution-in-crime-832684.html. 66. Cancio Isla, “Leonardo Padura.” 67. Mauricio Vicent, “‘Cuba se merece vivir mejor,’ El escritor Leonardo Padura, que acaba de adquirir la nacionalidad española, publica en la isla su novela contra el estalinismo,” El Pais (Spain), February 12, 2011, http://cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2011/02/12/actualidad/1297465205_850215.html. 68. Quoted in Hijuelos, “Leonardo Padura.” 69. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 70. Social scientist Rafael Hernández elides this important dimension when he says: “The average age of the fourteen members of the Political Bureau is 60.6 years. The Council of Ministers, however, has an average age of 58 years. That is the age which some authors call the age of the lost generation. There is a distinguished Cuban writer, my friend Leonardo Padura, who calls his generation, those who are now 59 or 60, the hidden generation, because that generation did not have the possibility to be in the leadership as they are very old now and too young before. But the truth is that if one looks at the average age of the Central Committee of the current party and the average



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age of the current Council of Ministers, you will see that it is composed of that generation, which my friend Padura calls the hidden generation, the one that has not acceded to power.” Interview with Hernández in “Con el retiro de Raúl Castro en 2018, se irían los de su generación,” Diario Las Americas, February 29, 2016, http://www.diariolasamericas.com/con-el-retiro-raul-castro-2018-se-irian-los-su-generacion-n3654595 71. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 72. Regino Pazos, “‘Regreso a Ítaca’ no regresa a La Habana,” Diario de Cuba, December 11, 2014, http://www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/1418302565_11750.html. Leonardo Padura and Laurent Cantet, Regreso a Ítaca (Barcelona: Tusquets, 2016). 73. Antonio José Ponte, “¿Dónde está Leonardo Padura?” Diario de Cuba, December 15, 2014. http://www.diariodecuba.com/cultura/ 1418640475 _118 24.html 74. Padura, “Writing in Cuba.” 75. Ibid 76. Ibid. 77. Ambrosio Fornet, El otro y sus signos (Santiago de Cuba: Editorial Oriente, 2008), 231. 78. “Many of us, almost all, have felt the complicated need to chronicle our time, given that this is not done or badly in the Cuban press. Many realities, characters, attitudes and, above all, the ways of thinking of Cubans of these years have only been examined in the literature (and to some extent in cinema: remember Suite Habana or documentaries made by our youngest directors).” In “Entrevista con  Leonardo Padura Fuentes,” Cubaencuentro, December 20, 2008, http://www.cubaencuentro. com/entrevistas/articulos/cuba-es-un-pais-que-mira-al-pasado-ii-140892 79. Lucía López Coll, “Prólogo” to Leonardo Padura, Un hombre en una isla, 13. 80. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 81. Paulo Paranagua, “L’écrivain Leonardo Padura critique la bureaucratie et l’anti-intellectualisme à Cuba,” Le Monde (blog), September 22, 2014, http:// america-latina.blog.lemonde.fr/2014/09/22/lecrivain-leonardo-padura-critique-labureaucratie-et-lanti-intellectualisme-a-cuba/ 82. Padura, Un hombre en una isla, 33. 83. Ibid, 43. 84. This is from the English translation available on the IPS website. 85. Leonardo Padura, “Cuba, la integración y la normalidad,” IPS, February 14, 2014. 86. Interview in José Curet, “‘Herejes,’ la novela más reciente de Leonardo Padura,” 80 grados, October 11, 2013, http://www.80grados.net/ herejes-la-novela-mas-reciente-de-leonardo-padura/. 87. Personal communication, June 14, 2015. 88. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 89. Leonardo Padura, “¿Odio o conciliación?” IPS, June 5, 2012. 90. Haroldo Dilla, “Padura: indolente, mirando para abajo,” Cubaencuentro, July 2, 2012, http://www.cubaencuentro.com/opinion/articulos/ padura-indolente-mirando-para-abajo-278117 91. His caustic description of the electoral process, for instance, leaves little doubt about that. Soon after the “elections” of February 2013, he wrote: “In the first days of this month, the Cubans went to the polls with the mission to elect the deputies of

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the municipal and provincial assemblies of the island’s parliament, the last instance in which the citizen vote has the capacity to decide. Voting numbers, as usual, exceeded 90 percent, and all candidates from all municipalities were elected, as is usual.” Leonardo Padura, “Cuba, cinco años decisivos.” IPS, February 11, 2013. 92. Leonardo Padura, “Cuba a debate,” IPS, September 21, 2009. 93. Anderson, “Private Eyes.” 94. Padura, “Un hombre,” 345.

Chapter 6

Faking Criticism

After several chapters focusing on artistic and literary production, this one turns to a strategic source of language production and social imagination: the academic field. It operates under closer ideological scrutiny and enjoys less space to deploy imaginative views and nurture critical thinking. This chapter actually makes the case that since 1959, the Cuban government has striven to depoliticize society, namely by “shrinking” the language used to talk about politics. The intuition for this chapter comes from Orwell’s novel 1984, in particular its appendix, in which “Newspeak” is explained as a long-term, thorny project to “shrink” language and narrowing the range of thoughts, eliminating words that could threaten the utopian master plan (adding new ones too), and erasing some memories. Incidentally, Orwell’s masterpiece is no longer censored in Cuba (which does not mean it is readily available in bookstores), since the International Book Fair of February 2016. This chapter looks at one glaring example of “shrinking”: the actual dismissal of political science as a discipline. In lieu of political science, one finds largely defanged social sciences and humanities that talk about politics and policies without actually talking about power. Illustrations are found primarily in the work of social scientist Rafael Hernández and in the academic journal Temas, of which he is the director. WITHIN THE REVOLUTION, NO POLITICS The appendix to the novel 1984 (1949), entitled “The principles of Newspeak,” explores in some detail Orwell’s most compelling insight on the inner-working and future prospects of totalitarian regimes: their use and abuse of language. This appendix is very much a part of the novel, though it 187

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is often unnoticed. In it, the narrator explains how the new language works and, in a futurist prediction post-1984 (the novel was published in 1949), offers this speculation: “The final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.” It turns out that “Oldspeak” (old English) is offering a formidable resistance, as it is being kept alive, one presumes, by writers such as the author of 1984 and Animal Farm (1945).1 Newspeak, we are told, “was designed not to extend but to  diminish  the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.”2 Furthermore, “it was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought—that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc—should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.” The appendix explains that words come in three categories: the A vocabulary, the B vocabulary (also called compound words) and the C vocabulary. The A vocabulary consists of the “words needed for the business of everyday life.” The B vocabulary consists of “words which had been deliberately constructed for political purposes.” No word in the B vocabulary is ideologically neutral” and a “great many” are euphemisms. “The C vocabulary was supplementary to the others and consisted entirely of scientific and technical terms.” According to the narrator, “Only a very few words were common to all lists, and there was no vocabulary expressing the function of Science as a habit of mind, or a method of thought, irrespective of its particular branches. There was, indeed, no word for ‘Science,’ any meaning that it could possibly bear being already sufficiently covered by the word Ingsoc.” The case of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in Cuba offers a new twist to Orwell’s scenario, bringing forward an official ideology, MarxismLeninism or “scientific materialism,” that uses both B and C vocabularies. Scientific materialism (also known as “historical materialism” [hismat] or “dialectic materialism” [diamat]) is an ideology that projects what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called an “effet de science” (scientific aura). The politicization of science and the scientific ambition of politics is a key to understanding the relations between academia and politics in communist countries.3 In SSH, power and academia do not meet midway: power is canniblizing science, instrumentalizing it for political purposes. Officially Marxism-Leninism is one of the two pillars of the official ideology in Cuba. Cuban leaders, starting with the Castro brothers, routinely have urged fellow Cubans to study Marxism and Marxism-Leninism. The Cuban Constitution of 1976 (amended in 1992 and 2002) contains five references to Marx, Marxism and Marxism-Leninism—interchangeably. “Martian ideology” is the other pillar.4 This does not attenuate, let alone contradict the allegiance to Marxist-Leninism (remembering that Zhdanov always



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encouraged comrades abroad to draw from national cultural traditions), plus the distant musings and thoughts of the “apostle” are vague enough to be celebrated (selectively) by the entire Cuban “nation,” at home and abroad. Martí’s thoughts are not free from intolerant and illiberal cravings,5 but they are mostly pluralistic and democratic, and his imprint on current political institutions in Cuba, beyond the anti-imperialistic rhetoric, is hard to find. In sum, one cannot underestimate the magnitude of what the journal Temas, in its choice of topic for its third issue in 1995 (July–September), called “La cultura marxista en Cuba.”6 Marx wrote extensively about the structural failings of capitalist (and pre-capitalist) societies. Apart from nebulous references to the Commune of Paris and comments on revolutionary strategies in his Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx’s concrete analysis of communism (to be sure, still just a dream in his lifetime) is more teleological than political. Communism is what is left standing once class exploitation (from which all problems derive) has been thrown in the dustbin of history by a successful proletarian revolution. The state is scheduled to disappear—no less. Before he seized power in 1917, Lenin’s prescriptions on policy making under communism were risible. In The State and Revolution (1917) Lenin claims that during the “first stage of communism,” “All  citizens become employees and workers of a  single countrywide state ‘syndicate.’ All that is required is that they should work equally, do their proper share of work, and get equal pay; the accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost and reduced to the extraordinarily simple operations—which any literate person can perform—of supervising and recording, knowledge of the four rules of arithmetic, and issuing appropriate receipts.”7 The fact that in the real world, communism emerged in single peasant societies, rather than following the push of the most advanced capitalist countries worldwide, gravely invalidates Marx’s “philosophy of history.” In the writings of Marx and, more tragically, in Lenin’s, the transition from capitalism to communism is undertheorized; the transition from pre-capitalism to communism is practically nonexistent. Marxism-Leninism is a convenient ideology in Cuba for two reasons. First and foremost, espousing and studying its canonical texts numbs curiosity about actual decision-making processes under communism. Simply put, while it can be used to skewer capitalism and imperialism, it is inappropriate to hold communist leaders accountable. Second, Marxism-Leninism can be used as a theory or a paradigm in SSH, as it is in the West—nowadays more in humanities and cultural studies than in social sciences and not at all in economics. But in the West, Marxism and Marxism-Leninism compete with other theories and interpretations. In Cuba, it can only be paired with secondary theories and methods that do not compete for hegemony in the field. It is a pensée unique.

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The Marxist-Leninist repertoire offers to users several false problems that provide fertile ground for apparently vital but in reality pointless (and endless) discussions and debates. For instance, the idea of “relative autonomy” of ____ (fill the blank: politics, the economy, culture) ostensibly countering “mechanical” or “rigid” interpretations, keeping in mind that neither “relative” nor “autonomy” is properly defined. Similarly, Marxism-Leninism breeds suspicion of both “subjectivity” (if not “objectively” grounded) and “objectivity” (if it means inattention to ideological or cultural factors), so debates on the “subjective” and “objective” conditions of ____ (fill the blank), and how the subjective and objective conditions must be discussed, can go on pointlessly and accomplish very little. How is one supposed to know the difference between critical and humanist Marxism on one end, and rigid, mechanical Marxism on the other, if they both lead to the same conclusions? How can the adoption of a Russian constitution in the Caribbean not be at least a soupçon “mechanical”? The use of this jargon has been toned down of late, but the paradigm remains unchallenged by anything else than benign neglect. While Cuban political leaders and academics constantly glorify criticism and debate, they are in fact shrinking the repertoire of concepts and explanations available, making genuine criticism and debates, “within the revolution,” almost impossible. The examples of the Soviet Union, and especially Eastern Europe, suggest that to get out of this predicament, SSH will need some critical distance from the Marxist paradigm itself, and especially from its Blanquist version: Leninism, with its building kit of single-party state, terror and control of media.8 As Rafael Rojas points out in El estante vacío, critical biographies of Stalin by Robert Service or Walter Laqueur are not available on the island, nor were the critical works not only on Stalin but also on the “stalemate” of the Brezhnev period (1964–1982) by Soviet authors starting in the early 1980s.9 Fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ultimo Jueves featured a “debate” (i.e., a discussion) on a key question, “Why did socialism fell in Eastern Europe?”10 The “why it fell?” question is mostly answered in the sense of “what were the challenges?”. Everybody safely agree that Stalin and bureaucratization are the culprits, without clearly suggesting they are the only ones. Nobody mentions as possible topic for discussion (let alone as causes of the USSR’s collapse) the political and economic model put in place by Lenin (single-party state, planned economy, censorship and repression) or Marxism-Leninism. Julio A. Díaz Vásquez opens his remarks with the view that “when the archives are open” we will know more about the subject. No reference is made to what East European or Russian scholars and intellectuals have found in their own archives about the topic.11 Similarly, it is easier to denounce “Soviet Marxism” than to explain why Cuba always adopted the most rigid and reactionary



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version of Marxism coming from the USSR, even after the collapse of European Communism. Cuban philosopher (in exile) Alexis Jardines points out that unorthodox and “critical” Soviet Marxism—dissonant Marxist theorist Evald Ilyenkov (1924–1979) for instance—was “neutralized” in Cuba.12 According to David Craven, Mexican Marxist and theorist Adolfo Sánchez Vásquez had a significant impact in Cuba during the 1960s, because of his liberal interpretation of Marx’s views on art. My impression is that the theoretical level of discussions on art and politics or art and revolution was generally low. Pretty much any Marxist, neo-Marxist or quasi-Marxist preference could be expressed in the competition for recognition within the cultural field. Sánchez Vásquez’s vision of a non-dogmatic Marxist perspective sat well with most players, since nobody was prepared to be identified as dogmatic. Let us also remember that all this took place roughly a decade after the revelations of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party, so to reject Stalinism was not a particularly daring position.13 In short, since the collapse of European communism it is safe in Cuban SSH to articulate tame criticism of “Soviet Marxism” or “Stalinism,” identified (rather than explained) as deviation from the Marxist-Leninist model, but it is not to undertake a comprehensive analysis, let alone to offer a radical criticism of the model itself. One can bypass the celebration of the model by resorting to bland descriptions or loose discussions of issues, as is often the case in Temas. In fact, nowadays SSH often seem post-ideological, presenting signs of the fading away of the official ideology—a characteristic of “post-totalitarianism”—rather than vigorous engagement with it. MarxismLeninism is still the official ideology in Cuba though, and there is only one official ideology, which cannot be challenged publicly. Cuba is arguably one of the most conservative countries on the continent. POWER DOESN’T LIKE TO BE STUDIED In a clear case of what Hegel called the “cunning of history,” the triumph of the Cuban revolution led to the end in the island of the academic discipline that critically examines the use of power in society: political science. In a rare article on political science in Cuba—published in a Chilean political science journal—by Cuban diplomat and scholar Carlos Alzugaray, a brief mention is made of the foundation of a School of Political Science within the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Havana, around the time of the university reform of 1961.14 The directors were Drs. Raúl Roa García (history) and Pelegrín Torras de la Luz (law), respectively, foreign minister and viceforeign minister. It is not clear how distinct this Escuela was from the Escuela de Servicio Exterior, founded in 1960 by the same Roa García.15 If the School

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continued to exist during the 1960s, as Alzugaray suggests, it did not leave a trail of academic initiatives to show for it. As “politics” became equivalent, both in theory and in practice, with “revolution,” “socialism” and “MarxismLeninism,” the school and the discipline quickly disappeared, to be replaced by the teaching of Marxism-Leninism as an official ideology and as a mandatory paradigm in universities, schools and in the media. The Escuela was one of the most dogmatic units within the university during the 1960s, following the mot d’ordre “University is for revolutionaries.” In a recent article Canadian economist Arch Ritter highlights some of the implications of this situation: One consequence of the absence of the discipline of Political Science in Cuba is that we have only a vague idea of how Cuba’s government actually functions. Who within the Politbureau and Central Committee of the party actually makes decisions? To what extent and how do pressures from the mass organizations actually affect decision-making, or is the flow of influence always from top to bottom rather than the reverse? What role do the large conglomerate enterprises that straddle the internationalized dollar economy and the peso economy play in the process of policy-formulation? Is the National Assembly simply an empty shell that unanimously passes prodigious amounts of legislation in exceedingly short periods of time—as appears to be the case? One is left with a feeling that the real political system is one of black boxes within black boxes linked in various ways by invisible wires and tubes.16

Then Ritter asks rhetorically: “Why is such political analysis essentially offlimits in Cuban universities? You can guess the answer.” Well, we can: censorship, pensée unique, ideological thinking, taboo surrounding the leader and his decisions. But the full answer is not so selfevident. Political science can exist under dictatorial rule, as it did (in fact it flourished) under Fascism in Italy for instance.17 And again, it is worth exploring why a country so awash in “extensive politicization,”18 where almost n­ othing happens without government intervention, is at the same time strangely apolitical. Apolitical here means that for all the inflation of political symbols and the constant rhetoric, there is actually very little space for political discussions, debates and analysis of the political process, and remarkably few reliable sources of information and data on “who gets what, when and how,” to use political scientist Harold Lasswell’s definition of politics. As exiled Cuban social scientist Armando Chaguaceda points out, “the absence of substantial studies and the lack of public access to such key issues as the makeup of Cuba’s political elite and its real circulation and decision-making mechanisms maintain almost all production in the field at a superficial level.”19 Politics is everywhere, but as a totem, not as an open and deliberative process. Political analysis means more than merely describing or praising the



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political system, all of which is copiously undertaken in the media and the education system.20 It means first and foremost using analytical tools to find out how power is used in Cuba, for what purpose (i.e., what are the political outcomes), by whom and to what effect, very much echoing Ritter’s set of questions. The history of SSH in Castro’s Cuba follows the evolution of censorship more generally. At some basic level, the challenge for social scientists in the island is the same as the one faced by writers and artists: how to commit to a line of work that requires imagination and critical thinking, without scrutinizing the single most important organizing factor in Cuba: the political regime in place. Academia, in particular SSH, occupies a special place in the field of public expression. It is not as tightly controlled as official media, but it is more so than the arts and literature. It does not reach the “masses” like the media, so it can afford a bit more latitude, but unlike the artistic field, it deals with concrete problems and political issues, and it is very much used by decisionmakers, both for knowledge production and ideological reproduction. So it must be kept on a tight leash. One would think that SSH would be pivotal in a country engaged in a radical project of social engineering. The simple fact is that every country needs to train economists, statisticians, historians, sociologists, psychologists and so on.21 Apparently, one can do without political scientists (sigh). As Masha Gessen wrote in an interesting op-ed piece about sociology in Putin’s Russia: “An ideal totalitarian regime would find a way to obtain sociological data without the sociologists.”22 There is no such thing as an ideal totalitarian regime, so plan B is to have social scientists, but to control them. Both teaching and research have been tightly instrumentalized by the Castro regime since the early 1960s. As Fidel Castro said in December 2, 1960, in his inaugural speech for the creation of the schools of “revolutionary instruction”: “Socialism is also built in classrooms.”23 The current Cuban Constitution stipulates that “The state orients, foments and promotes education, culture and science in all their manifestations,” and that “its educational and cultural policy” is based on “the progress made in science and technology, the ideology of Marx and Martí, and universal and Cuban progressive pedagogical tradition” (Article 39). Since the early 1960s, SSH have evolved following the ebb and flow of official ideology. According to Cuban social scientist Fernando Martínez Heredia, social sciences almost disappeared during the most intense period of Sovietization (1971 to the end of the USSR).24 They were replaced by the study of Marxism-Leninism and Soviet “manuals” (e.g., Konstantinov, Yajot, Makarov). With the help of “diamat/hismat,” there was no need for specific SSH disciplines, for it is a “scientific approach” that contains and supplants them all. Cuban scholars seem to agree that a

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“renovation” of sorts started to take place during the second half of the 1980s, in the wake of Fidel’s “rectification of the errors” campaign.25 It is now pretty common to hear that revolutionary nationalism has replaced Marxism-Leninism both as the official ideology and as dominant paradigm in SSH. Since 1991 it is a common motif in academic and semiacademic publications to play up Fidel and Che’s real or inflated criticism of the Soviet Union and the Soviet model, citing passages of speeches from the mid-1960s or the post-Soviet period. Nevertheless, revolutionary nationalism operates in the shadow of Marxism-Leninism, without challenging it or replacing it with an equally comprehensive and institutional alternative. The political system is still Marxist-Leninist, and in social sciences nobody can seriously challenge this paradigm. One can only leave it aside, concentrating on descriptive analysis or on purely rhetorical exercises. What is the use of nationalism if it does not permit to question the adoption by the regime of an old Russian constitution (Stalin’s)? Cuban SSH boasted significant achievements prior to 1959, as was mentioned in chapter 1, but they were reinvented after 1959, to meet new academic and political objectives. Two landmarks of the early 1960s were the Law for University Reform (January 1962) and the creation of a new National Commission (February 1962) to transform the Cuban Academy of Sciences, created in 1861.26 New “Institutes” and “Groups” were created in literature and linguistics, philosophy, ethnology and folklore, history, archeology, with rapidly increasing influence of the Soviet bloc. Later on, an Social Sciences Institute was created (1973), combining old departments or institutes of archeology, ethnology and history. The director of the new National ­Institute of Ethnology and Folklore (Law 994, December 1961), Argeliers León, conveys the mind-set behind the reorganization of academia since the early 1960s: We cannot settle for a careful investigation or a long collection of scientifically arranged records. What is more, we cannot be satisfied with pouring ourselves in those files, the results of our individual scholarly works, only to have them circulate among experts (…) We are no longer talking about consecrated gentlemen meeting periodically in prestigious assembly halls, in order to be heard passively. We are talking about real teams of active work, and about the economic possibilities that only a social revolution, of ours’ magnitude, put in the hands of those who work.27

Ten years later, in his speech commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, its President Antonio Núñez Jiménez ratchets up the political mission: “Our strategy: founding the first Socialist Academy of Sciences of America, the Western Hemisphere and the intertropical



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zone [. . .]; that is to say, an institution that develops a science inspired by dialectical materialism and serves an engine to promote the construction of Socialism and Communism.”28 The First Congress of the PCC (December 1975) adopted a “thesis” and a “Resolution” on “National scientific policy,” in which the importance of social sciences is formally acknowledged. For authors Sandoval and Hernández: From then on, the importance of social sciences for the analysis of our society’s problems was increasingly appreciated. The need to develop research projects in the theoretical field of Marxism-Leninism was emphasized, in order to analyze our nation’s problems. It was realized how important it is to guarantee the greatest freedom of action for economists, historians and philosophers, not burdening their scientific work with official and dominant criteria, while theoretical interpretations or conclusions that deviated from official guidelines were subjected to [Communist] Party control.29

The “thesis” states that “research work and theoretical analysis must always be carried out with the knowledge and under the guidance and control of the superior organizations of the Party.”30 From Congress to Congress of the PCC, similar calls were made to promote scientific activities in all areas, under the close supervision of the party-state. Nowadays, the University of Havana features three “degrees” [carreras] in SSH, which are germane to the study of power in society: law, MarxistLeninist philosophy and sociology. (The same model is replicated in provincial universities.) To repeat, there is no department of political science per se, but some faculty members (e.g., Daniel Rafuls) are entrusted to handle political science type of “subjects” (asignaturas), like “sociopolitical theory,” in one of the Faculties of the University. The degree in law appears to be part of the Law Faculty, the sociology degree is part of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, while the Marxist-Leninist philosophy degree is part of the Faculty of Philosophy and History. Definitions of these options appear to be both concise and nebulous and they tend to highlight their political raison d’être. The answer to the question “What is the Law degree about?” on the Faculty’s website, for instance, reads like this: “In general terms, we aim for a jurist of integral and basic training, who is capable of performing professionally in all fields of legal action and without normative limitations, a jurist who is a scientist of law, as well as a militant in a political process that is a distinct example in today’s world.”31 Philosophy is taught as “Marxist-Leninist philosophy.” The career prospects of a graduate in this discipline include not only the various research centers but also the national and provincial schools of the PCC, the Communist

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Youth organization, as well as “research centers” of the PCC and the “higher education centers of the MINFAR, MININT, etc.” Call it practical or applied philosophy! Finally, sociology is defined in a way that could include political sociology, because of its ambition to analyze the decision-making process: “The function of a sociologist is to know society in its complexity, heterogeneity, with its specificities, in order to diagnose, evaluate, predict, and solve existing problems, preventing them as much as possible and participating in decision-making and in the design of alternatives for social change at different scales and spheres of society (local, community, business, territorial, national).”32 The discipline of sociology was abolished from 1980 to 1991, to be replaced by strict adherence to Marxism-Leninism and Soviet manuals. Talking about this period of “grey mimetism” [mimetismo gris],33 sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto (Center for Psychological and Sociological Research, CIPS) writes: In 1980, after the restructuring of the University of Havana and the creation of the Faculty of Philosophy and History, the last undergraduate sociology students graduated. From that moment until 1991, this career ceased to exist and was subsumed as a specialization of the degree in Marxist-Leninist Philosophy. The same happened to doctorate students. Although I have not been able to find specific data on this, it is known that graduates in philosophy and scientific communism, both in Cuban universities and in universities of the former socialist bloc (especially the USSR) surpass, by a very large margin, those with a sociological formation.34

The University of Havana features several major research centers working in and around the area of politics, such as the Centre for Demographic Studies (CED-1972), the Cuban Society of Philosophical Research (SCIF-1984), the CIPS (1983), the International Migration Research Center (CIMI-1989), the Centre for the Study of the Cuban Economy (CEEC-1989), the Center for Studies of Political Alternatives (CEAP), the Center for International Economic Research (CIEI-1970), the various area studies center (on Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa) and the Center for Public Administration Studies (CEAP-2002). The CEAP’s mission appears to be limited to provide assistance to the government rather than truly investigating the making of public policies.35 Under “Shared and/or desired values” of the CEAP, one can read: “Commitment to the homeland [Patria], the Revolution and Socialism in our country: we know our history and we identify with the revolutionary principles, the Martí legacy and the thought and the work of Fidel Castro. We love the homeland, the Revolution and the Socialism, and we are unconditional defenders of those values.”36



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SSH and political studies are also undertaken in research and cultural centers such as the Theoretical-Cultural Center Criterios (1972–), the Centre of Martí Studies (1977), the Casa de las Américas (1959), the Foundation Fernando Ortiz (1995), the Center for Research and Development of Cuban Culture Juan Marinello (1995) [called Cuban Institute of Cultural Research Juan Marinello since 2007] and the National Institute of Economic research (1976–). Academic work and ideological training are not clearly separated activities in Cuba. Therefore, our list must include training schools of the ruling party. The National System of Revolutionary Instruction was created on December 2, 1960 by Fidel Castro and led by the Communist leader Lionel Soto, to train political cadres for the party (if we can call a “party” the group led by Fidel Castro in 1960), the government and the mass organizations. The “system” includes schools at the national, provincial and local [básicas] levels.37 The crown jewel of the system is the Party School Ñico López (called Superior School since 1978). The Ñico López is the most important “political school” in the country, but it is not an academic institution. What is more, the party or group in power has had various units involved in preserving ideological purity, like the Department of Revolutionary Orientation (DOR), and in more mundane information-gathering tasks like the Center for Sociopolitical and public Opinion Studies (CESO). Ministries also have their own institutes, such as the recently renamed Center for Hemispheric and the United States Studies (CEHSEU),38 linked to the Department of Intelligence of the MININT, the National Institute of Economic Research (INIE-1976) linked to the Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Center for Research in the World Economy (CIEM-1979) under the State Council, and most important for this chapter, the Advanced Institute of International Relations Raúl Roa García (ISRI)—which publishes the Revista de Política Internacional—linked to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to the official website EcuRed, the ISRI “has as its background the first Foreign Service School founded in 1960 by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dr. Raúl Roa García, with the objective of guaranteeing the basic knowledge of diplomatic activity to young revolutionaries who entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MINREX).”39 The Institute “features teachers committed to Cuba, the Revolution and Socialism.” The Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (CITMA) underwrites the Superior Council for Social Sciences as well as the Council for Social Sciences; the Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences is linked to the Ministry of Education; and the Center for the Improvement of Higher Education is attached to the Ministry of Higher Education. Several other institutes are linked to the ministries of culture, commerce, interior, armed forces and the General Prosecutor (Fiscalía General) of the Republic.

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One could mention other institutions like the José Martí Library, the various art schools (especially the ISA), museums and even an institution like the UNEAC, to which one of the sociologists whose work is noticeably concerned with politics, Juan Valdés Paz, is (oddly) affiliated. And last but not least, some of the research in SSH is performed by NGOs like FLACSO (very close to the regime in Cuba) and perhaps more important, the Christian Centre Martin Luther King (1987–) and the Centre Félix Varela (1993–), which published some of the scarce books concerned with political science in the island.40 For Chaguaceda, “the closest thing to a Cuban political sciences journal is Espacio Laical, a Catholic opinions and editorial journal.”41 No doubt there are more units in academia, government and the ruling party that deal in some ways with the study of social, cultural, economic and political phenomena, and the control of SSH activities. The number of academic or quasi-academic centers of one sort or the other is truly impressive. If no department or major research center is devoted to the study of the Cuban political system, it is not because of a lack of institution-building drive on the part of scholars and their government sponsors. All the units mentioned here have in common is that they enjoy limited to no autonomy from the state, and their longevity depends on the political mood of the moment. Research centers and researchers can be terminated or fired for political reasons at any time, as was famously the case of the Study Centre for the Americas (CEA) in 1996, or more recently, in March 2016, the parametración of economist Omar Everleny Pérez, who lost his job at the University of Havana but found refuge in Rafael Hernández’s Temas. Over the past two decades, a number of workshops, conferences and teaching initiatives have been undertaken with the purpose of examining political themes. Research groups and institutes (like the SCIF) organize “sections” of political science or “sociopolitical theory.” For instance, a US organization called Global Learning—Encounter the Third World in Cuba, organized two conferences on “New Political Science” in Havana in 2014 and 2015.42 The Cuban Society of Philosophical Research, the Division of Philosophy and History of the University of Havana, and the Higher Institute of International Relations sponsored the events in Cuba. The main organizer in Cuba was professor Thalía Fung, an orthodox Marxist-Leninist presented as a “political scientist,” as she is indeed the head of the school of “Political Science from the South.” This “school” is not specialized in political science per se. It is a “transdisciplinary initiative, including scholars in political science, economics, history, philosophy, anthropology, and sociology.” On the Cubadebate website, Dr. Fung is presented as a doctor in Sciences and professor emeritus, and a specialist of Marxist philosophy at the University of Havana.43 This is indicative of a common trend: though social scientists sometimes present themselves (or are presented) as “political scientists,” neither their degree



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nor their academic positions indicate specific training in the discipline—that is, unless they received some training abroad, like Rafael Hernández, who received an MA in political science from the Colegio de Mexico. Armando Chaguaceda makes an interesting comment on this point: “a friend of mine at the time, reprimanded me for signing my first articles on Cuban politics with the epithet of ‘political scientist.’ ‘You shouldn’t do that,’ he said. ‘Here, the only people who can call themselves political scientists are …’ and he mentioned a number of authorized voices of the island’s academia.”44 An excellent example of how Cuban scholars talk about politics without talking about power is a recent Ultimo Jueves “debate” held in February 2016 on a very rare and sensitive topic: “How the Political System Works?” In fourteen years of existence, this was the first “debate” on the political system organized by Ultimo Jueves. As was mentioned earlier, Temas organizes these events, which include panel discussions followed by Q&As. They take place at the ICAIC’s Cinematographic Cultural Center “Fresa y Chocolate.” For this panel the guest-speakers were Andry Matilla, president of the Cuban Society of Constitutional and Administrative Law; Roberto Conde, secretary organizer at the National Bureau of the UJC; and Daniel Rafuls, a professor of the “sociopolitical theory” at the Faculty of Philosophy and History of the University of Havana. Cuban journalist and Temas’ contributor Tania Chappi Docurro summarized the event on Temas’ website.45 According to Chappi Docurro, all participants called for “‘renewing citizen relations to share decision-making spaces and mapping future scenarios’; by increasing participation, democracy and self-management; for a public discussion on the Cuban political system, prior to the 7th Congress of the Party.” “When I talk about political power,” said Conde, “I do not mean only the government, there is a responsibility for all the factors that make up the system; there is a collective responsibility, but also an individual responsibility of each of members.” He adds that in Cuba “We have not witnessed the people parading with posters in front of the headquarters of the Party and the government, demanding that the system cease to exist.” Signs of depoliticization are nowhere to be found in the country according to Conde, and ever since the speech given by Raúl in 2007, he observes that “more spaces for debate have been made available, in anybody can participate and express one’s view.” He still thinks that there is room for improvement though. Chappi Docurro summarizes his views as follows: “[Conde] does believe in the desirability of perfecting the political system, because it does not function as designed, ‘because of the behavior of the citizens’ representatives, who have to make it work.’ He also acknowledged that ‘economic limitations’ affect Cubans and ‘when people do not see their problems solved, they lose confidence in the existing mechanisms to defend their interests and they avoid

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them.’” On popular participation Conde concludes: “The space is available, what we have to do is take advantage of it.” Daniel Rafuls formulates a criticism of the PCC for being “verticalist,” adding, prudently, that it is an accepted view in officialdom: “It is not just me who says that, the Party’s congresses recognized it when they indicate that they have been usurping functions of other institutions.” For him, “to the extent that organizations (CTC, UJC, FEU, cooperatives …) become more independent and assume their authority, the Party, which is currently the center of the Cuban political project, should for pure practical reasons back off these responsibilities.” The fact that the party actually controls these organizations seems irrelevant. Also according to Rafuls, youth emigration is a problem that “clearly has to do with the political system,” for “despite being a socialist and humanist project, we have not been able to break with the tradition of backward and underdeveloped countries, from which people migrate to find solutions to their problems.” In other words, Cuban youth want to leave the country not because of the political system, but “despite” its benefits. For his part, Matilla defends the single-party state, tracing its history back to José Martí’s Cuban Revolutionary Party, as it is routinely done (misleadingly) in Cuba.46 Before Rafael Hernández’ tedious conclusion on the need to “To foment a political culture, because we are all deficient in that respect, and not only those at the top of our society,” Matilla summarizes the big challenge facing the political system in Cuba today: “The leadership wants the masses to support the process and they want the leadership to give them greater participation, that is part of the contradictory process we are experiencing.” Two comments can be formulated on the event, before examining the journal Temas. First and perhaps most obviously, despite the title, there was no discussion on how the political system works in Cuba. Much of the time is spent praising the current institutions. When areas of possible improvement are examined, the best that could be formulated is the need to give more power to government-controlled mass organizations, and to make sure that the government’s goal for increased mass participation actually meets the masses’ identical desire for the same outcome. La Revolución does not “function”: it just is, by historical necessity, and everybody’s role is to embrace it as wholeheartedly as possible. All the concepts usually employed to describe and analyze power—starting with power itself, but also influence, public policy, resource allocations, types of authority, chain of command, division of power, possible checks on the executive power, the rule of law, and the like—are simply elided from the vocabulary. This “shrinking” of the vocabulary here reflects not only the prohibition to talk about certain things, but conceivably, the actual ignorance of how political decisions are made, since there is no discussion or clear information



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available on the subject. An official from the US Government Accountability Office told me that during the ongoing and multilayered negotiations taking place between Cuban and American officials, technical questions by Americans about issues like procedures, who is in charge of what, how terms are defined in various policy areas could not be answered properly by Cuban negotiators, apparently because they don’t seem to know the answer. In other words, the absence of political analysis illustrates the absence of transparency and due process. Second, there was some room for mild criticism of the political system in place in this “debate.” For instance, the participants could have talked about the problem of verticalism, beyond blaming the masses for not occupying all the available space for participation. Why is it a problem, fifty-six years after the triumph of the revolution? The theme of youth’s dissatisfaction could have been explored at some critical length without blaming it all on the United States. But the panelists didn’t even try. They are correct on one point: Cubans often don’t use all the space available; as a matter of fact, they didn’t in this panel. They won’t or can’t say why they kept beating around the bush, and for good reason: it is not entirely clear what can be said, when is the right time and what is the right place to say it, who is entitled to strike a dissonant note, and last but not least, how exactly the political system works. The Cuban version of “Newspeak” concerns public expression in general, within the parameters discussed in chapter 1, not just SSH. But this is especially important in the educational field (and then again, especially in SSH) because this is where official totems and taboos are reproduced and sometimes produced. For work in SSH, it is necessary to start from Marxism-Leninism as a mandatory methodological and ideological foundation, one that is in fact enshrined in the Cuban constitution. From there one can explore Marxist, Leninist, Neo-Marxist theories (Gramsci is particularly popular), even the occasional non-Marxist one, but carefully, without calling into question the mandatory foundation. Last but not least, SSH scholars should always denounce dogmatism and celebrate criticism and debate, as the political leadership does, while making sure to espouse the official dogmas and to stay clear of debating anything shielded by the primary parameters. In other words, their main task and challenge is to fake criticism. Social scientists in Communist Cuba work with a diminished range of thoughts, concepts and data, using a language that has been pruned of certain words and preoccupations. The 1976 Constitution (amended version of 2002) mentions words like democracy, democratic rights and elections several times, but always in the sense of actively espousing government policies. Arguably, the assumption is that negative liberties (freedom from) are superfluous since the government seamlessly expresses the general will. “All citizens have the right to struggle through all means, including armed

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struggle,” according to Art.3, “against anyone who tries to overthrow the political, social and economic order established in this Constitution.” The word “democracy” is mentioned only once with the adjective “socialist” (Art. 68: “State agencies are set up to carry out their activity based on the principles of socialist democracy”), and the word “democratic” is used three times, in the broadest possible terms. The word “participation” appears seven times and sits more comfortably in the narrative, as it basically means active support to government policies. The Constitution guarantees “Freedom” of various kinds as long as it means free to support the regime and its policies. Article 62 sums it all up: “None of the freedoms which are recognized for citizens can be exercised contrary to what is established in the Constitution and by law, or contrary to the existence and objectives of the socialist state, or contrary to the decision of the Cuban people to build socialism and communism.” Here “Cuban people” means the government, and vice versa. Needless to explain, history books are written to celebrate the regime in place and excoriate its various enemies. Pictures are doctored to “erase” parametrados characters (e.g., the disappearance of Carlos Franqui from official pictures), and dictionaries of Cuban literature routinely “unperson” famous authors in exile.47 Nineteenth-century national heroes (Martí, Heredia, Maceo) are lionized as the precursors of the 1959 generation. Meanwhile, the 1933 revolution, the democratic years (1944–1952) or pretty much any positive developments taking place from the Mambies to the M26 are largely ignored. Rafael Rojas wrote extensively on the memory gaps of official history in post-1959 in books like El Estante Vacio and La máquina del olvido (2012).48 Systematic censorship also means that most Cubans are prevented from accessing publications and cultural works widely available elsewhere.49 News about domestic and international events are filtered to the point of completely cutting off Cubans from globally reported events. Cubans who can surf the net, purchase “weekly packages” (see chapter 2), or travel and access unapproved publications can spice their private conversations with interestingly heretical material, but public speech (including SSH output) must abide by the twin set of parameters. One of the effects of the “shrinking” of language in SSH is the presence of a certain style of communication that is bland, slippery and oblique, one that fakes complexity and multiplies enumerations and causal arrows, ending up saying nothing, or not much. For instance, University of Havana professor Fernando Martínez Heredia, who was parametrado as member of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Havana, as director of Pensamiento Crítico in the 1970s and as CEA member during the 1990s, now president of the program for the study of Antonio Gramsci at the Cuban Institute for Cultural Studies “Juan Marinello” made a long presentation on “The challenges of social sciences in Cuba today,” for the Hermanos Saíz Association



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(September 30, 2015). In a nutshell, he talks about challenges for SSH in Cuba but cannot bring himself to express what those challenges are, beyond some empty calls for doing more of the same. To quote: The social problems that we analyze refer to facts and processes that, among other differences between them, have the degree of permanence of its main aspects. The social sciences and their problems combine a set of characteristics and history of their own in various contexts that it is essential to take into account when dealing with the situation and the problems of their conjuncture, although, as always, what is essential is what is thought and what is done or not at the present time.50

Martínez Heredia uses the distinction between “social thought” and “social sciences” to attack “the mainstream approach in academia and in the professional use of social sciences in today’s world, which is controlled by imperialism.” He calls for a defense of “social thought” against “the belief among social scientists that reality does not need them.” Here “social thought” means politics as vocation, for social scientists are engaged in a political battle, on their government’s side, against imperialism and the “pseudo ‘objectivity’” of capitalist SSH. Social scientists, for Martínez Heredia, must be soldiers on the cultural and educational front, defending the revolution. He wages another easy battle, this time against the official Marxism of the 1970s (the Soviet one), in its “very deformed and downgraded version,” without explaining how the official Marxism of the day is any different. The problem seems to be when (in the past) it is applied and by whom. He concludes: “If we recover the memory of this people’s wonderful actions and the awareness of the changes and colossal advances that the people conquered with its Revolution, and if we are consistent, we can expose the North American offensive, and defeat it.” A recipient of the Social Sciences National Award, sociologist Aurelio Alonso offers cryptic answers to straightforward questions by Trova singer Silvio Rodríguez, on the singer’s blog Segunda Cita (2014).51 The topic is a favorite one in Cuba: the debate about debate, that is, how much debate there is and how much more there should or could be. It is a tricky question because debates in Cuba are tamed by the absence of freedom of expression and by systematic fear of parametración. But nobody can say that, so plan B is to look inside the cultural or educational fields for missed opportunities to occupy the available space. Rodríguez asks: “To what extent does the current policy in Cuba identify the need for systematic and public debate of our problems?” Alsonso’s answer is a masterpiece of evasion: As with almost all the problems we face, an affirmative or negative response in absolute terms would be simplistic, and the two would move us away from reality. The spaces for debate to exchange views on the problems of our society, and

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on theoretical themes that transcend it, although they are decisive in the definition of ways and options, are still insufficient, loaded as they are with obstacles and misunderstandings that should be overcome. Although—I make a parenthesis—it would be wrong to think that difficulties will ever disappear, and that the political optic might cease to be totally restrictive towards theoretical dissent, since even within the sphere of decision I believe it would be healthy to better reflect differences and the discussion when confronted with different views, as one suppose does happen. Unity is a sign of political health, but uniformity cannot be.52

If one can get past this cryptic first paragraph, almost as if he had to provide a buffer zone, he finally seems to be saying something, if obliquely, of significance: I think it would be impossible to deny that, at the present time, the spirit of debate is opening up, and that it must consolidate itself within our revolutionary culture. The debate in all spheres, institutional, academic, and those of the people in general. And, of course, all of these spheres between them. Everything else that we may need thematically and more specifically might be considered legitimate or not, but also secondary as long as it is not linked to what we popularly call “the thing.”53

It is not entirely clear what he means by “the thing,” but Alsonso is content to conclude that there is more “space” for debate in 2014 than five or ten years earlier (and why would there be less space then?), and wishing that the Poder Popular could be more participatory—a lieu commun of all discussions on improving socialism in Cuba. The haze of extra-cautiousness that permeates all discussions of political issues is thickened by the tedious use of terms such as “complexity,” “heterogeneity” and even “plurality,” to characterize undefined phenomena and mask the monism of official values, institution and discourse. For example, Rafael Hernández, who is undoubtedly one of the masters of the genre, recently declared, in an article on the “political structures” in Cuba, that in his country one can find an altered, contradictory and heterogeneous political consensus, in the reproduction of which converge old and new social subjects, who are the real Cuban citizens. Strictly speaking, these are not just distributed in factories and fields, university courses and masters in business, hospitals and nursing homes, cooperatives, electronic equipment workshops, parishes, but also in ministries, PCC offices, artillery battalions, colleges for the formation of cadres of direction, as well as state and ecclesiastical publications. These diverse social subjects exert their citizenship from an unusual plurality, corresponding to a range of classes and groups, occupations, generations, genres, skin colors—in addition to, of course, their particular political ideas.54



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To give one last example of particular relevance, since it concerns “debate” about cultural policy in Cuba, Yanet Toirac has this to say, in so many words: At the conceptual level, it seems imperative to overcome an illuminist vision of culture, present in more than a few areas of the institutional discourse, and the need to understand this is increasingly apparent as an emancipatory practice of the social subject; an approach that for all its attempt to position itself through the promotion of the term integral general culture and, with it, of references that went beyond the artistic and aesthetic areas, did not manage to translate completely into institutional objectives that transcended the artistic-literary -patrimonial from a fuzzy conception. That in practice a constrained interpretation of the notion of culture is being privileged not only responds to limitations of the existing institutional structure within the cultural field, but it also reflects the permanence of certain ambivalent conceptual presuppositions that still strongly underpin the analysis of cultural processes created from an institutional discourse, as well as the persistence of sectoralized rather than multidimensional views of the cultural sphere. In this sense, confronting the hegemonic cultural model and its ideational-aesthetic [ideoestéticos] referents in particular, understood as the ultimate goal of cultural policy, must be a challenge that can also be interpreted from the problematization of the complex dynamics between forms of domination and subordination, or from an analysis of the main tensions that go through the processes of cultural hybridization in the context of globalization, both in the centers and in the peripheries.55

Literally thousands of pages of this blancmange populate academic journals and books on all kinds of topics, giving the appearance of a busy and wideranging scientific output in the SSH. Predictably, “debates” in Cuba feature ultra-cautious speakers who mostly agree with each other, all the energy being redirected toward safe jousting against officially sanctioned nemeses and timeless scourges of the regime: dogmatism, corruption, the ineptitude of the media, insufficient enthusiasm, youth disaffection, residues of sexism and racism from pre-Castro time, and of course US imperialism, the “blockade” and the capitalist world order. Everybody agree that more should be done to “improve socialism.” Solutions to problems typically call for a stronger commitment to the dogmas of the regime in place: more participation in government-sponsored activities, more commitment to the revolution, more “debates” on how to improve everything and the like. Critical thinking is not encouraged; critical perspective is: the government’s perspective. Within such parameters, what can be said publicly about the challenges facing the country is limited, but it is not insignificant. Discussions of political issues can be found in highbrow cultural magazines (Revolución y Cultura, La Gaceta de Cuba, Cine Cubano, Arte Cubano), academic journals

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(Temas, Criterios, Contracorriente), and in well-monitored public panels, such as the ones taking place during international events (Book Fair, the Havana Biennial), with a special mention for the series of monthly “debates” called Ultimo Jueves (2002–), held the last Thursday of the month (except in August and December) and sponsored by Temas.56 It can also be found, as we have seen, in literature, cinema, music and the visual arts. There were times recently when the parameters seemed to be “expanding,” at least for artists and writers, but the evidence is contradictory. Signs of an opening in academic circles are scant, to say the least. Examples of opening are cancelled out by instances of closing of space, and vice versa. As was discussed earlier, it is common to say that in Cuba periods of “opening” alternate with periods of “closing,” when in fact their coexistence and competition have been the dominant pattern since the early 1960s. Concomitantly, cultural actors typically align with the “liberal” side and congratulate themselves for opening some space for expression, while siding with Fidel in saying that the revolution already gave them all the space they need. This sounds contradictory, because it is. As a prominent Cuban intellectual once wrote to me, in reference to the modus operandi of a major journal in Cuba: “without censorship, or rather, pushing back against it.” To conclude this section, Cuba invests resources and energy in education. The regime cultivates the image of a country with a sophisticated and active higher education sector, one that organizes international conferences and workshops, publishes numerous books, academic journals and magazines. For the first decade or so of its existence, the Castro regime courted foreign intellectuals (with institutions such as the Casa de las Américas and events like the Salon de Mai in 1967 and the Cultural Congress of 1968). Relations with foreign intellectuals became sour in the wake of the Padilla Affair,57 and mutual suspicion became the main feature of their relations ever since. On the other hand, Cuba continued to open its universities to students from all over the global south, cultivating the image of a country with advanced graduate programs. The country may not need SSH programs as much as it needs scientific and technological ones, but it still needs them. And more than any other academic programs, they need to be tightly monitored by the state. As Armando Chaguaceda wrote, recalling what his MA thesis advisor (he calls him a “devout Stalinist”) once told him: “Power does not like to be studied.”58 RAFAEL HERNÁNDEZ RODRÍGUEZ, GATEKEEPER As director of Temas (described as “The magazine of reference in the social sciences on the island” by Rafael Rojas59), coordinator of Ultimo Jueves and member of the PCC, Rafael Hernández (1948–) is in a unique position to act



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as a gatekeeper within the cultural and academic field. His recognition inside the island has resonance abroad, and vice versa. In a foreword to a collection of Hernández’s essays translated into English and published as a book in 2003 by the University Press of Florida (entitled Looking at Cuba, Essays on Culture and Civil Society, collection Contemporary Cuba Series), Harvard scholar Jorge Domínguez, a leading Cuba scholar in the United States, presents him as “one of Cuba’s premier intellectuals today.”60 In yet another foreword, to a book edited by Hernández on Cuba’s foreign policy and relations with the United States, Hal Klepak, a Canadian specialist of Cuba with privileged access to officialdom on the island, presents him as a “pioneer” on the subject of Cuba-US relations and security issues, even though Hernández is not particularly well published in the area.61 Rafael M. Hernández’s biographical note reads as follows: political scientist. He has been professor and researcher at the University of Havana and the Higher Institute of International Relations; director of US studies at the CEA for 18 years; and a Senior Research Fellow at the ICIC, in Havana. He has taught as a visiting professor at Harvard, Columbia, the University of Texas (Austin), the CIDE and ITAM in Mexico, and the University of Puerto Rico; and conducted research at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Johns Hopkins, other academic institutions in the United States and Latin America, and the Institute of Developing Economies (Tokyo). He received the Illiteracy Campaign Medal in Cuba and he claims to have received the LASA Academic Excellence Award in 2006 (in fact he received the award from the Cuba Section of LASA).62 Though he is now recognized as a political scientist, Hernández’s expertise is hard to capture in a few straightforward lines. His first book appears to be a collection of poems published in 1974 by the ICL, entitled Versos del soldado. Presented by Hernández as a “poetry manual for the fighter,” it was awarded the Poetry Award by the “Political Direction” of the Cuban Armed Forces.63 The poem entitled “Cueca del Che Guevara,” for instance, is emblematic of the kind of “poetry” sponsored by the Cuban Armed Forces during the Five Grey Years.64 The biographical note for this book presents a young man with an interest for and specialization in literature.65 In Ensayo cubano del siglo XX, a book he coedited thirty years later with exiled Cuban historian Rafael Rojas, the biographical note mentions that he “studied” (no mention of degrees) philosophy, French literature and political science at the University of Havana, El Colegio de México and the UNAM in Mexico. In a short biography in his book Otra guerra, it is mentioned that “he graduated with a Master in Political Science from the El Colegio de México.” His tenure as a director of US Studies at the CEA is a good place to start the analysis of his trajectory as a gatekeeper in the academic field. The story of the rise and fall of this official research institute, which was a think tank of the PCC’s Central Committee, is relatively well documented.66 Suffice to say that after it fell victim to perhaps the most famous case of parametración

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in SSH, many of its members chose the path of exile (Ana J. Faya, Haroldo Dilla Alfonso).67 Others continued working as social scientists for a while in Cuba in some lower profile capacity (Pedro Monreal González). Luis Gutiérrez Urdaneta left academia to work for the tobacco and then the tourist industries, with great success. Finally, a fair number of scholars like Rafael Hernández, conceivably the most inclined to serve the regime, kept their mouths shut about the experience and successfully pursued their careers as social scientists in Cuba.68 Their signatures can be found regularly in Temas: Hernán Yanes Quintero, Carlos García Pleyán, Julio Carranza Valdés, Fernando Martínez Heredia, Aurelio Alonso and of course Hernández himself. On the CEA affair Jorge Domínguez wrote: “It is the first time since the constitution of the revolutionary regime that intellectuals accused of seemingly unacceptable behavior”—indeed they were called traitors and agents of imperialism—“manage to emerge relatively unscathed from the incident.”69 Domínguez had forgotten about the journal Pensamiento Crítico (February 1967–June 1971), which was terminated by the same general for the same reasons twenty-five years earlier. Several of the CEA’s members had in fact contributed to Pensamiento Crítico (former director Fernando Martínez Heredia, Aurelio Alonso, Juan Valdés Paz, Ana Julia Faya and Rafael Hernández) and came out relatively “unscathed from the incident,” at least in the short term. Before Pensamiento Crítico there was the case of El Caimán Barbudo, parametrado in 1967 for the same sin of “ideological diversionism.”70 As was examined in chapter 4, became a prominent figure in Pensamiento Crítico, and then an institutional refugee in ICAIC, where he had some success as a filmmaker. It is far from clear how any of these publications or groups, all entirely devoted to the regime, deviated in any significant way from what appeared to them as the official line. In any case, they transgressed the second parameters, not the first, so after some time in purgatory, they could be given another chance. As novelist Milan Kundera once wrote, “The arbitrariness of power is manifested also by its leniency.”71 Chief among the former contributors to Pensamiento Crítico and CEA who were given a third chance is Hernández, a man who seems determined not to make the same mistake thrice. In exchange, the minister of culture (Armando Hart), along with the future minister of culture and president of UNEAC (Abel Prieto), offered him what is perhaps the top political position in the SSH field: director of Temas. Rafael Hernández’s academic output is modest. He is the coauthor (with Dick Cluster) of The History of Havana (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Two other books came out under his name, but they are slim compilations of previously published articles: Otra Guerra [Other War] (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1999), featuring articles on foreign policy and CubaUS relations published in Cuba when he was at the CEA; and Mirar a Cuba



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[Looking at Cuba] (La Habana, Cuba: Editorial Letras Cubanas, c1999).72 Hernández published articles in semi-academic journals (working papers for the CEA, articles in the UNEAC’s La Gaceta de Cuba, etc.), but he is better known abroad as editor or coeditor of eight multiple-author volumes on Cuba and Cuba-US relations, mentioned above, half of them published in the United States in coedition with prolific North American book editors like Joseph Tulchin (Wilson Center), Jorge Domínguez (Harvard) and John Kirk (Dalhousie). For the book entitled Transformation and Struggle: Cuba Faces the 1990s, editors Sandor Halebsky and John M. Kirk acknowledge with thanks the “assistance of Rafael Hernández.” That is a good clue: for North American scholars kind-hearted toward the regime (John Kirk, Max Azicri, Piero Gleijeses, Hal Klepak, Nelson P. Valdés), and for scholars not polemically engaged against the regime, or able to act that way for the benefit of maintaining the lines of communication with Havana (Joseph Tulchin, Jorge Domínguez), Hernández is as good a contact as one can get, to cultivate scholarly relations with Cuban institutions, and maybe getting some insider’s information. Needless to explain, it is next to impossible to conduct research openly in Cuba or to publish with Cuban scholars without institutional contact and support, something you can obtain only if you accept to work within pretty much the same parameters compelling Cuban colleagues. Thus, SSH books published in the United States, with participation from Cubans like Hernández, typically refrain from expanding the language too far from what is permitted in the island. The inclusion of some Cuban authors in a collection published abroad, while (apparently) a normal and salutary overture to perspectives from the country being analyzed, could result, in fact, in the shrinking of the repertoire of concepts, theories and topics admissible for the analysis. Canadian economist Arch Ritter mentions an interesting anecdote that illustrates this point. He contributed to a book entitled Debating U.S.Cuban Relations: Shall We Play Ball?, edited by Rafael Hernández and Jorge I. Domínguez (2012). The same collection of articles had already appeared in Temas in 2010 (no. 62, April–September). Ritter tells the story of how, to his surprise, his piece was not significantly censored. As he put it on his blog: “The vetting process that the article underwent was rigorous but surprisingly un-ideological. A long series of critiques were made of the draft that arrived in Havana by the editorial advisors of Temas. Some of the criticisms were useful, some were ideologically oriented and a few were neither ideological nor useful.” He did his best to address some of the issues raised, without compromising his argument. In the end, Hernández accepted his revisions. “One interesting change that the editors proposed and that I accepted,” he writes, “was to remove the name of president Fidel Castro who I had referred to in mentioning the ambiguity of Cuba’s policies towards direct foreign investment.”73

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The other anecdote is interesting since it consists of basically the same situation (publishing collections of essays by Cubans and non-Cubans in the United States), this time involving cultural studies scholar John Beverley, a very supportive observer of the Cuban cultural and political scene, who edited a special issue entitled “From Cuba” for the US journal boundaries 2. Here is what he says: There was a moment, early on in this project […] when I wanted to include in the collection a piece by Fidel Castro himself. Through a mutual friend, I was offered the text of a speech on globalization Fidel gave at the South Summit two years ago. To have been able to list el comandante himself in the table of contents in simple alphabetical order was part of the image of Cuban intellectual life I was hoping to present: that there was not a single, monolithic voice, that Fidel’s voice was certainly a commanding one, but not the only one. But that hope turned out to be illusory, like so many others connected to Cuba. My intermediary got wind of the fact that I intended to include a piece by a noted dissident (his characterization was stronger: a ‘‘counterrevolutionary’’), and he let me know in no uncertain terms that it would be inappropriate for Fidel to appear in such company. He also withdrew his own contribution.74

One could find other examples of the same phenomenon outside academe: for instance, the Cuban film Santa y Andrés, directed by Carlos Lechuga, was banned from the award competition by the organizers of the 18th Havana Film Festival in New York, because they want to “cultiva cultural diplomacy” and “remain as apolitical as possible and avoid controversy.” It is rather incongruous that to maintain good relations with Havana, a film already banned in Cuba had to be also censored in the United States!75 Back to Hernández: Otra Guerra uses the language of Cuban diplomacy with ease but does not offer much by way of original analysis. Mirar a Cuba/Looking at Cuba is a better place to look for Hernández’s distinctive voice. To begin with, Hernández presents these essays as “‘think pieces,’ not academic studies,” a characterization that seems appropriate for most of his academic output.76 The book features essays on recurrent themes in his work, such as the debate about the concept and theories of civil society, perceptions of Cuba abroad, the evolution of Cuban socialism and the need for criticism and debate on the island. What is striking in this collection is the lingering presence of a defensive and at times acrimonious tone against Cuban studies in the United States and human rights/dissidents groups (one and the same for him) at home, and a polemical engagement with concepts (democracy, market, transition) or theories of “civil society” that are not sufficiently forgiving of the Cuban model. In fact, he seems to write as if his mission was to elucidate what fits “within the revolution” and what is “against” it—a pertinent mind-set for a gatekeeper.



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It has been said that Hernández (and other CEA members) is influenced by the work of Antonio Gramsci, a founding member of the Communist Party of Italy and prominent Marxist theorist who is often credited for fixing some of the rigidities in the Leninist theory of political change—by insisting on the importance of culture, hegemony and other “subjective” considerations for instance. Hernández mentions Gramsci here and there, and Temas (no.10, April–June 1997) presents the texts of a conference on “Gramsci, los intelectuales y la sociedad actual,” organized by the ICEC and the Fundación Gramsci Internacional (18 April 1997). And yet, Hernández offers no systematic engagement with Gramsci’s work. A possible indicator of Gramsci’s influence can be detected in the subtitle of Temas: “culture, ideology, society.” Culture and society are, for Hernández as for Gramsci, the place where ideological battles are waged. Hence the importance of “subjective” conditions, battles for ideological hegemony and the like. His kinetic conception of culture is revealed in this rather clumsy passage: From a political point of view, culture represents a system of resistance to forces that break down social cohesion. To borrow from the language of biology, we can say that such pathologies, both external and internal, grow more virulent in times like these. There are no more effective mechanisms for neutralizing the invasion of antigens of the (post)modern world, and for repairing dysfunctions in our own system, than those provided by the many facts of culture. In their response to foreign and hostile entities, cultural products act according to the principles of immunity, not as the kind of ideological condom whose ineffectiveness is well known. Culture can generate a more trustworthy system of antibodies and bodily repair.77

To be fair, the next sentence reads: “But this biological metaphor—which is just that, and should not be seen as a functionalist approach to culture—does not fully describe the intellectuals’ task” (p.51). This throat-clearing comment leaves intact the main thread though: that culture is where you can find the enemy and “neutralize” it. One of his accomplishments as an academic is that he is, according to Beverley, “one of the intellectuals who opened up the influential discussion of the concept of civil society in Cuba.”78 Cuba was lagging behind this discussion in SSH but also in the Latin American left during the late 1980s and 1990s. After the downfall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union (not to mention the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas and the termination of Central American “revolutions”), a somewhat disenchanted left was rediscovering the unspoiled virtues of grassroots mobilization, social movements, co-ops and identity politics. It is significant that Hernández wrote a negative review (included in Looking at Cuba) of one of the most discussed books praising this new turn in the Latin American left: Utopia Unarmed (1993),

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by Mexican author and politician Jorge Castañeda.79 In this book Castañeda takes issue with the Cuban model and offers harsh criticism of what he calls the “thirty-years war” (1960s–1980s) opposing Cuba-supported guerrillas to counter-insurgency forces in Latin America. For Hernández, there cannot be a contradiction between the new trends in the Latin American left and the Cuban experience. That is arguably what his opening up of the “discussion of the concept of civil society in Cuba” is all about. If Hernández contributed to the effort of catching up with the discussion on “civil society,” he does not offer a “systematic analysis” of Cuban civil society, as he readily admits.80 What he does, essentially, is tinkering with the concept of civil society to make it compatible with “Cuban socialism.” While recognizing the “specificity and autonomy of the social, as a factor that interacts with the institutionally political,” he creates a false dichotomy between the view (which nobody defends) that “state and civil society” are “paired in a mutually exclusive antagonism,” and a speciously more nuanced conception that quickly leads to the claim that in Cuba, state and society are in symbiosis. This being the case, he sees no reason to exclude statesponsored mass organizations (or cultural institutions like his Temas) from Cuban “civil society.” This approach underpins the recent participation of representatives of government-controlled mass organizations at the “Civil Society” Forum of the Summit of the Americas in Panama (April 2015). The Cuban delegation, headed by former minister of culture Abel Prieto, was there to represent the “true” civil society, and to denounce (and harass) the small delegation of Cuban dissidents, better known in Cuba as the “mercenaries.” A common accusation was that contrary to misinformed or biased observers from abroad, dissidents do not represent anybody in Cuba, and ergo they are false representatives of civil society. This is textbook Rafael Hernández. Indeed, he repeatedly challenged the view that “to be credible, the author of a work on Cuba must be outside the country or be a ‘dissident’ within it.”81 His essays in Looking at Cuba offer multiple iterations of this view: “For some, the concept of civil society is limited to describing the ‘human rights groups’ or ‘dissident organizations.’ Those groups unite and subdivide in such a manner that it is difficult to refer to them as a defined sector, much less discover their connection with sectors of Cuban civil society itself. Apart from ‘being against,’ their agenda does not reveal much ideological identity or organic relation to specific social components of civil society.” Or: “Insofar as it is possible to make an objective characterization of the socalled human rights groups, it seems evident that they should more properly be called political opposition groups. They form and divide in such a fashion that it is difficult to refer to them as a defined sector, much less to see any connection between them and Cuban civil society.” Or: “Their most common



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feature seems to be the contrast between their notoriety abroad and their lack of true presence in Cuban civil society itself.”82 It is worth noticing that while Hernández is irritated by Cuban human rights/dissident organizations and by their high profile abroad, he is not particularly curious about them. He does not try to understand what they stand for, or wonder if their purported lack of popular support could be explained, at least in part, by their illegal status, their exclusion from the media and universities, their penetration by state agents as well as the repression meted on them by police forces and their “civilian” allies during “Acts of repudiation.” For Hernández a good illustration of a vibrant civil society in socialist Cuba is the “debate spurred by the Call to the Fourth Party Congress in 1990—updated to some degree by the recent trade-union-organized discussion of the most pressing economic measures in the first third of 1994.” For him: “This civil society is definitely not mute. The differing projections of distinct social sectors in the spaces for political participation are significant in developing an understanding of the dynamic of civil society in Cuban socialism.”83 Civil society is a reality only if defined as mobilizations sponsored or deemed acceptable by the Cuban government. Another theme dear to Hernández is the present and future of social sciences and humanities in Cuba. In his essay “The Second Death of Dogma,” published in Mirar a Cuba/Looking at Cuba, Hernández talks about how in Cuba the “unceasing U.S. siege narrowed the spaces for diversification of teaching, schools of thought, interpretations, and home-grown modes of viewing culture and ideology.” For him, Without a sufficiently large or autonomous space in the mass media or a dynamic role in the higher education, the outstanding figures of Cuban culture, despite all their capacity and prestige, have not been able to exercise the sort of moral and ideological influence or authority that would leave its mark on public opinion or in the configuration of referents and diverse currents of thinking, in the way such an influence was historically exercised by Enrique José Verona or the intellectuals of the generation of 1930.84

In this same text he blames the “deficient communication among fields of artistic-literary production, social science, higher education and political thought,” the “mutual suspicion between the realms of politics and culture,” the “paternalistic habits that have characterized some styles of leadership in many spheres,” and of course, the “bureaucracy.”85 Furthermore, “just as some political figures fail to see culture as anything but a means of mobilization, or to understand the social role of the intellectuals, certain intellectuals consider politics to be a totally alien zone and remain incapable of setting foot outside their own realm or of grasping the logic and problems of any other

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one.”86 Finally, he argues the following: “Although the nucleus of Cuban revolutionary ideology has always been, to a large degree, antithetical to dogma, still there have been those who have tried to reduce it to a textbook of learned and immutable truths.”87 Here the unimpeachable “nucleus,” we are forgiven to conclude, is represented by Fidel’s thoughts; “those” (plural) other “political figures” are the devious bureaucrats and officials. These are the operational parameters for Hernández, the space for a “debate”: on one side, “critical” intellectuals who side with Fidel (and now Raúl) and who are the genuine custodians of the Cuban revolutionary culture, against mid-to-low level dogmatists ensconced in state institutions. There is no debate to be had with mercenaries and pseudo representatives of civil society. His essay entitled “On Discourse,” originally published in La Gaceta de Cuba in 1999 and included in Mirar a Cuba/Looking at Cuba, delves into the topic of “language and society.” That makes it particularly relevant for this article. The piece starts with the well-known quote from Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”: “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

No need to resort to Carroll to realize that Cuba offers rich terrain for examining how power affects language. What Carroll does not mean here is the banal statement that there is “not just one language but several,” in any society. But that is Hernández’s interpretation of this quote. He talks about the Literacy Campaign of 1961, commenting on the use of the acronym for the Organization of American States to teach children the vowels O, E and A. (He does not mention a more common lesson: F, I, D, E, L). He tries to be critical of what he calls the “politics of language” by calling into question “words like ‘market’ or ‘democracy,’ ‘civil society’ or ‘transition.’” For him, “Each one alludes to a global referent that is homogeneous but serves to differentiate. Whatever the critical examination they may deserve as concepts, these terms are frozen into a state that has little to do with their original meaning.”88 It is doubtful that Hernández would be more positively inclined toward these concepts in their “original meaning” (whatever he means by that), but he warns us against terms often used abroad to criticize his government. He does not look at more common and relevant political words in Cuba, such as revolution, participation, socialism or communism, to see if they are manipulated for political reasons. That is because his concern is to have a discussion on language that is “grounded in the need for effective ideological action that succeeds in its mission to convince.”89 In other words, his text unwittingly



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illustrates Carroll’s witticism, rather than using it as a springboard to examine critically the interface between power and language in Cuba. One more time, Hernández addresses a politically controversial topic but only to depoliticize it in the Cuban context. He narrows the range of possible interpretations of an invitation to think critically about power and language. In a paper he wrote with Haroldo Dilla (now in exile and very critical of the regime), entitled “Political culture and Popular Participation,” Hernández and Dilla present an evaluation of the Cuban political system but strictly in terms of “participation,” away from considerations such as civil and political liberties, free and fair elections, rule of law and the like. Their “criticism” is the one readily accepted by the political leadership: Cubans are fortunate to have a legitimate and participatory system, but it could be better by being more participatory, more decentralized and more efficient.90 This is what Cuban leaders have been saying for decades and in every single CP congress. All in all, Hernández’s discussion of key political concepts is consistently an exercise in shrinking or reducing their signification to remove their critical edge in the context of Cuban socialism. His writing is political in the sense of a quest to find a proper way of positioning himself politically, but he has very little to say about the political system in Cuba and how Cubans are ruled. TEMAS AND ANATHEMAS The first issue of Temas (January–March 1995) appeared during the Special Period, ostensibly to stimulate “discrepancy” and “exchange” in the cultural and academic fields.91 Hernández considers journals like Temas “organs of Cuban civil society,”92 a “space” that “has not been graciously granted, as is sometimes assumed, but rather, is was granted in successive advances and restrictions, defending and accrediting its legitimacy, through dialogue, negotiation, understanding and, above all, the recognition of principles.”93 In the transcription of a speech given by the minister of culture Armando Hart and published in the third issue (July–September 1995) under the title “Science and Politics: a necessary dialogue,” Hart gives the tone of the new initiative: “Temas can offer a space for the development of the most consistent and radical line of the Cuban Revolution. At this moment, the Revolution, perhaps more than ever, needs organic intellectuals, as Antonio Gramsci called them, capable of collecting the best of the tradition of Cuban thought” (p.91). The journal contains a main section, “Focus,” on a special theme, followed by a section called “Controversy,” which since 2002 transcribes live Ultimo Jueves “debates,” and two shorter sections entitled “Insertions” (Entremetas), consisting of shorter articles on various topics, and “Successive reading” for book reviews. Temas does not read like an official organ of the regime, like

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Cuba Socialista, Hoy or Teoría y Práctica, nor is it a pure journal of opinions like Espacio Laical. It is a hybrid publication that is semi-official. It is also a bridge to the outside world, if only because it regularly features contributions by non-Cuban scholars from abroad, even Cuban-Americans who can be critical of the regime (though never in Temas), like Jorge Domínguez, Louis A. Pérez, Alejandro Portes, or Roberto González Echevarría. These scholars would not have been published as easily before.94 Finally, the style of the journal is generally sober and academic. Of the 60 issues published until 2015, only two issues are explicitly “focused” on politics in Cuba: issue no.29 (2002) on “Politics as knowledge,” and issue no.78 (2014) on “Doing politics.” Out of roughly 720 articles published from January 1995 to January 2015, only about a dozen explicitly concern the political system in Cuba or the study of politics in Cuba. The most common disciplines featured in Temas are history and sociology, and one counts many articles on visual art, drama and literature as well. In a way, articles on politics are many, if one includes all the articles on the Cuban revolution, Marxism, socialism, foreign affairs and politics in other countries (mostly the United States and Latin America), or on policy areas like gender, inequalities, visual art, urbanism, etc. Again, the first impression when “looking at Cuba,” to use Hernández’s expression, is that everything is political in this country. But this is largely an illusion. Articles with a clear focus on how Cubans are ruled, how decisions are made, how the legislative process functions, how the branches of government interact and so on, are very, very rare. There is only one article on political science, and it deals with political science in general, with no particular focus on Cuba. Significantly, a foreign contributor wrote it: political scientist (and Cuban-American scholar) Jorge Domínguez.95 Only a few articles in Temas mention the fact that political science disappeared in Cuba during the 1960s. Perhaps surprisingly, the name of Fidel Castro is not mentioned very often in Temas. This seems to confirm Hernández’s assertion that obsession with Fidel is a fixture of US cubanology that doesn’t reflect SSH concerns on the island.96 An alternative explanation is that given the primary parameters, very little can be said about Fidel or Raúl that is not strictly adulatory.97 The safest strategy is to avoid the topic altogether. Significantly, the only two articles on quien tú sabes (who you know) in twenty years of Temas are signed by foreign contributors: a book review of Leycester Coltman’s The Real Fidel Castro (2003) by John Hopkins University’s Piero Gleijeses (Nos. 41–42, 2005), and an unctuous article on Fidel’s “charismatic authority” by University of New Mexico sociologist Nelson P. Valdés (no.55, 2008). Both these authors are beyond safe for Cuban authorities. There is also a review of Hal Klepak’s laudatory book on Raúl and the Cuban military.98



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Based on what can be found in Temas, it seems fair to conclude that the quality of SSH is very low in Cuba. The overwhelming majority of articles are long “essays”—in fact many are long-winded essays: “shrinking” language is a qualitative process, not a quantitative one—based on scant empirical evidence beyond very basic fact-finding and descriptions. There is virtually no concern for, or discussion on, methodology in SSH. There was some interest for postmodernity during the 1990s, inasmuch as it can be mobilized to criticize the canon of modernity (the Enlightenment, liberal values and institutions), but that petered out quickly. Data collection is problematic in Cuba (especially political data) and Temas’ output certainly reflects that. Libraries are not well stocked and researchers need special political permission to access any books or archives deemed potentially controversial. In sum, our Cuban colleagues have to work with very limited theoretical, methodological and empirical tools. Though Marxism is the official paradigm used in SSH, the quality of discussion on Marx and Marxist works in Temas is surprisingly poor. After more than half a century of promotion of Marxism in the education system, the country doesn’t count a single prominent Marxist theorist. Temas features more than 80 articles concerned with Marxism as a repertoire of ideas to interpret our time, but virtually none systematically examines Marx’s (or Marxists) specific works, with rigorous content analysis. A special issue on “Marxist culture in Cuba” (no.3, 1995) offers six articles that are mostly repetitive and thin in content. The only contemporary Marxist (other than Marx, assuming that Marx was “Marxist”99) routinely mentioned in Temas is Antonio Gramsci. And yet, one looks in vain for a scholarly article on his writings and ideas, even in a “Controversy” on Gramsci in issue 10, 1997. To be sure, Marxism and socialism matter a great deal for Cuban academics. It is the source of much anguish, but mostly as a lieu commun for ideological positioning. Furthermore, though Temas features many articles written by philosophers, as well as two “controversies” on “Philosophy in Cuba” (no.18, July–December 1999) and “What philosophy is being taught? (no.58, April–June 2009), there is virtually no serious discussion on philosophy as an academic or intellectual discipline, almost no reference to the Western philosophical tradition other than Marx, and no serious philosophical discussion of key issues (fairness, justice, freedom) beyond fairly basic ideological positioning.100 Hernández frequently talks about how mistaken foreign observers are when they assume that in “totalitarian” Cuba, debates cannot take place.101 For him, Temas (and Ultimo Jueves) is the proof to the contrary. In fact, it is tempting to reckon that the mission of Temas is to prove to the world that Cuba is hospitable to debate and criticism. Nevertheless, there is very little debate either in the journal’s pages or in the monthly “debates” it sponsors.102

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Other than the “debate” on how the Cuban political system functions, briefly discussed above, no more “Controversia” concerned the political system in Cuba, which is not surprising, since this cannot be a matter of public controversy in Cuba. Reading this section of the journal one can conclude that there are many topics for discussion in Cuba (gender, youth, marginality, baseball, culture, religion, José Martí, etc.), but very little possibility of genuine debate about any of them. One particular motif is striking: almost all contributors affirm their opposition to “mechanical” Marxism, often associated with the defunct Soviet Union and its manuals. This gives a polemical tone to many of the discussions. But since nobody actually defends this kind of Marxism in Cuba, least of all the political leadership, one cannot “debate” with an opponent that is absent, silent and mostly unidentified. One knows that bad Marxism is still peddled by some in Cuba, but not by Fidel, Raúl or any high officials still in power, even though Fidel (as well as Raúl and many of the current high officials) aligned the country to the Soviet Union, adopted a constitution modeled after the Soviet constitution (in fact Stalin’s constitution of 1936), and set the tone for the Quinquenio gris in his closing speech to the 1971 Congress on Education and Culture.103 Criticism of the Five Grey Years, the Soviet Union or the Soviet influence in Cuban SSH is not controversial in Cuba; quite the opposite, as long as it is a purely ex post facto exercise, condemning the excesses of Stalin and bad cultural bureaucrats in Cuba, not the Leninist model and especially not the Cuban leaders who were in power then and are still now.104 As a rule, Temas publishes only articles that scrupulously abide by the primary parameters, as defined above. It is quite possible that most of its contributors, and especially its director, do that freely. With regard to secondary parameters, one can occasionally find a statement, rather than a fully developed claim, that seems close to crossing the line, because it alludes explicitly to institutional limitations to free inquiry and political participation. Sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto, for instance, saved the day on two occasions by saying something straightforward about the issue being discussed. Typically, nobody (least of all the moderator Rafael Hernández) encouraged her or other panelists to explore this line of argument further. Political sociologists like Emilio Duharte, Julio César Guanche and Juan Valdés Paz can occasionally bump into a controversial issue and at least talk about the political system in Cuba, but they never stray very far from the pack. One sometimes detects a desire to take the discussion to the next level. Temas likes to adopt a critical stance (or to be perceived that way), but the ultimate goal is to improve the existing system (“to improve socialism”), from a plurality of expertises (with some rare and minor divergences emerging during the discussion), but without what academic, artistic and political public spaces badly need in Cuba:



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real pluralism of views and good old critical thinking. Opportunities to push the envelope, with controversial topics like the story of “Lunes de Revolución” (no.30, 2002) or “why Cubans emigrate?” (no. 31, 2002), for instance, are deliberately missed by completely depoliticizing the discussion and ducking the rather obvious opportunities to challenge official interpretations. Here are specific comments about the few articles that do concern politics in a more explicit and concrete way. It is unfortunately impossible to avoid some repetition, but the reward is a clearer view of a very distinguishable pattern. Basically, what one can observe is that once political analysis has been purged of certain words, approaches and concerns (the anathemas), it stands to reason that one can talk about almost anything in Cuba, and at quite some length. This allows Hernández (and his sponsors in the Ministry of Culture and the PCC) to claim that in Cuba, pretty much anything can be discussed freely. One of the most credible “political scientists” in Cuba is Juan Valdés Paz. On EcuRed he is presented as “Sociólogo, politólogo, historiador y filósofo”. He was at least twice parametrado (Department of Philosophy in 1970 and CEA). In an exchange on social sciences in Cuba (“Controversia,” No.9, 1997), Valdés Paz mentions the absence of political science in the country (p.74), and even compare unfavorably the social sciences produced in Cuba to the scholarship on Cuba published abroad: “To curse Cubanology all the time does not solve the problem of providing a necessary scientific and academic response. We can disqualify the Cubanologists, but the works of Cubanologists must be answered with an equivalent or better. This is another problem of the Cuban social sciences: not to live up to the answer demanded by Cubanology” (p.75). Both his mention of the absence of political science and the critical humility when comparing to Cuban studies abroad are truly exceptional. In a passage that illustrates well his understanding of both the primary and secondary parameters, he says: Nor do I believe that a difficulty inherited from the previous decade has been resolved: that of political and ideological obstacles to the development of the social sciences. And I do not mean the central discourse of the political leadership of the country, but the behavior of state institutions as a whole. Problems of political expediency are still strongly weighing on the social sciences. They introduce biases or defer topics, information, debate; other priorities are set. Along with these criteria of political expediency, which, as I said, remain a difficulty, there are ideological obstacles, not problems related to the ideology in general, but problems with some officials. Although there has been a rupture, which cannot be compared to the situation of the decade of the 70’s, I would say that it is in a process of recomposition. There are still some tendencies to something like an official science, the idea that there is an official doctrine, philosophy, history and vision of society.105

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He adds that “The production of research institutions, in general, is oriented to bring results to the political and state institutions of the country, to a much greater extent than to society.”106 At least he raises some important questions, but he can’t or won’t mention the rather obvious culprits: censorship, absence of free expression and inquiry, and totems and taboos in SSH. In another publication of his, not in Temas but in a book edited by Rafael Hernández, Valdés Paz reiterates some of these points and makes some candid remarks on the status of “political science” in the country. Here are a few quotations from this article (initially presented as a conference paper): Most of the studies on Cuban political reality have not been written by Cubans at home, but by Cubanologists abroad, or by foreigners who study Cuba. We do not have enough studies of political organizations or of mass organizations. There are some—very few—studies on the State, but rather of a legal nature and some of historical character. The greatest contribution of studies on the State is concentrated on the local dimension. In my perception, the political sciences are still at the stage of emergence in the country, and we do not have an adequate institutional to promote them, because there is no institution that is dedicated to those studies, nor do we have political science taught as a specialty or discipline at the University of Havana.107

Why is it that political analysis is so discouraged in Cuba? If Valdés Paz knows the answer, he gives no sign of it. The issue no.29 (April–June 2002) dedicated to “Politics as knowledge” offers the article by Jorge Domínguez on political science mentioned above, as well as other articles by foreign contributors on politics and nationalism (which does not mention Cuba), José Martí, and the Newly Industrialized Countries (nothing on Cuba). The two articles by Cubans on Cuba are bland and could hardly be less controversial. Jorge Luis Acanda (University of Havana) discusses “The discomfort of the intellectuals,” using Gramsci’s insights on the roles of intellectuals in capitalist societies (about intellectuals in Communist countries?), and defends Cuban-styled “democratic centralism” against the “bureaucratic centralism” of the old Eastern bloc—without explaining the difference between the two. Then Aurelio Alonso signs a completely uncritical piece on perhaps the most commonplace and complianceinducing topic in Cuban SSH: the social legitimacy of the revolution.108 The double issue Nos.41–42 (2005) features a “Controversy” on “The debate of ideas in Cuban culture and thought.” One of the speakers, Pedro Pablo Rodríguez, recognizes that “We do not have an adequate culture of debate” and talks about “a deficiency in academic and cultural fiels in general.” He also talks about “Taboos, which do not appear in the public debate” (p.133). Quite typically, he does not say what those taboos are, and cheerfully



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concludes that debating culture is quite healthy in Cuba. For him the big problem is poor diffusion of academic work and low impact on society. (p.138) Nobody disagrees with him. Another speaker (Ernesto Altshuler) joins in: “I am concerned that in this ‘debate on the debate’ there has been no debate yet and I contribute to the original sin by being basically in agreement with all who have spoken.” Then comes an exceptional passage, again from sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto (and member of Temas’ editorial board), which deserves to be quoted at length: There is not enough space for that debate, that confrontation, that contrast of perspectives, because the political design of our society is excessively authoritarian, verticalist, centralist, and strategic ideas are pre-elaborated, so that debate is left for minor issues. To untie those knots that limit debate involves a redesign of participation and its purpose, to become aware of what it consists of, how diverse we are, how much unity is nourished by that diversity. As long as it is assumed that the unity and diversity of the country depends on a unanimity defined as a premise, there will be no progress, because that unanimity is based on the fact that the issues are not discussed with due depth, but on a scale of generality where everybody may agree or, for some other reason, the divergence was not made visible. Therein lies the true drama, in the design of political relations, the way in which the country’s social and political change agenda is constructed (pp.141–142).

This statement closes the presentations and is followed by soporific comments from members of the audience, and Espina’s insightful criticism falls flat. But if one looks for evidence that Temas can sometimes—indeed rarely—venture a bit beyond what seems to be tolerated in public discourse, this intervention from her is perhaps the best example of dissonance in this journal. Issue No. 47 (July–September 2006) features a rare article on human rights, but not by a Cuban and not on Cuba. Signed by Deborah M. Weisman, from the University of North Carolina, it is entitled “The human rights project: a critical perspective.” The critical perspective revolves around the idea that we pay too much attention to civil and political rights and not enough to socioeconomic ones, which is basically the government’s position. Issue no. 48 (Oct-Dec 2006) contains an article by Jorge Luis Acanda (Faculty of Philosophy and Science, University of Havana), with the unusual title: “A look at political science.” But it is a book review of Hiram Hernández Castro’s  Poder-saber: una Ciencia Política de la liberación (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 2006).  Hernández Castro is a young scholar who belongs to a group defined by Acanda as follows: “The remarkable thing is that this group has been characterized by its political and intellectual commitment to the liberating and disalienating ideals of the revolutionary project, and by its interest in developing an interpretation

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of Marxism far removed from any mechanistic and dogmatic reductionism, this allowing it to function as a theoretical foundation to think about the pressing problems that, as a generation, we face.” Alcanda insists that “the author does not pretend to address any specific political issue, but to reflect on the reflection of the political. Rather than thinking from political science, it is proposed to think about political science.” Both the author and the reviewer express hostility toward United States and bourgeois political science, with its emphasis on “governance,” “conflict management,” identification of “decision-making politicians.” Basically, this is a book (and a book review) against political science, “To build a political science from the revolution and for the revolution,” using the works of “Marx, Lenin and Gramsci.” Issue no. 50 focuses on “Transition and Post-Transition,” a potentially controversial topic, but apparently not in Cuba. Of the thirteen articles on the special topic, most deal with transitions abroad (Argentina, Chile, Centroamerica, Spain, China). One of the two articles on economic reforms in China is signed by a Cuban scholar and is quite favorable. In the articles on Cuba and Venezuela, transition essentially means transition toward socialism, or toward an improved form of socialism. This section is followed by a “symposium” on “socialist transition in Cuba” with thirteen participating scholars. None of them doubt that the “construction of socialism” continues, with some challenges: for example, Cuba is still reeling from the collapse of the Soviet bloc; it needs to foment more participation, more efficiency, less corruption and the like. The only debate concerns the relevance of the term to describe the continuing improvement of the Cuban model. As one of the participants, Ramón de la Cruz Ochoa, puts it: “I do not observe an ongoing transition process in Cuba. Perhaps we are on the eve of a new stage of the Revolution, but not a transition” (p.130). To which the next speaker, Enrique Gómez Cabezas, responds: “Yes, there is a transition towards a more socialist society” (p.130). Issue No. 54 (April–June 2008) features a book review of Emilio Duharte (comp.), La política: miradas cruzadas (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 2006), by sociologist Antonio Aja. Duharte belongs to the Political Theory Group for Social Sciences and Economics, in the (it becomes complicated) Department of Philosophy and Political Theory for Social Sciences and Economics at the University of Havana. The contributors come from multiple disciplines. They all challenge “A wide range of sociopolitical scholarship, almost all reflecting a ‘first world’ perspective” and “addresses the problems from the positions of revolutionary Marxism, that is to say, creatively, and from a Martian and Third World perspective, an approach that is deficient in most of the publications that are made today in the world, referring to that branch of scientific knowledge” (p.156).



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The 55th issue is the first of two issues devoted to the anniversary of the revolution. It opens with Nelson P. Valdés’s article on Fidel, mentioned above, and offers also two seemingly pertinent articles. Sociologist Juan Valdés Paz presents a political analysis in “Cuba: The constitution of revolutionary power (1959–1963).” To quote him: “The hypothesis we hold is that it [the constitution of revolutionary power] was largely due to the extraordinary nature of the power emanating from a political revolution that would, between 1959 and 1963, become a hegemonic social power in the service of the interests of the great majorities of the country” (p.18). Then he proposes a basic description of “the political system” (the various ministries, the armed forces, G2, the National Revolutionary Police, militias, the branches of government, mass organizations, etc.), without analysis. He talks about Fidel the only way it can be done: Particularly significant was the ratification of Fidel Castro as the maximum leader, the undisputed and maximum leader of the Revolution. In his multiple status as Commander-in-Chief, Prime Minister, First Secretary of the ORIPURS and maximum popular leader, Fidel as a person constituted a subsystem, which operated as the supreme leadership of the political system, insofar as it endowed him with his personal qualities and his permanent function of arbitration (p.23).

Valdés Paz recognizes the existence of an opposition to the new regime during the early 1960s, but “The efficacy and legitimacy of the new institutional order, the firmness of its revolutionary leadership and the extraordinary leadership of Fidel Castro were able to confront and defeat the imperialist offensive and consolidate revolutionary power on new bases” (p.28). Another article by Julio Antonio Fernández Estrada and Julio César Guanche, entitled “Se acata pero … se cumple. Constitución, República y socialismo en Cuba,” (pp.125–37), revisits the same themes, describing the “popular state,” the constitution and its amendments, and so on. One gets the sense here that some mistakes were made during the Soviet period (by whom?), but then came Fidel Castro and his “Process of rectification of mistakes and negative tendencies” (1986) to save the day, plus the constitutional reforms of 1992 and 2002, as a result of which power in Cuba is more “popular” than ever. The following issue (No.56) offers an article by Emilio Duharte (1959–), who is presented as professor and researcher in Political Science; Applied Ethic; Social Studies on Science, Technology and Innovation; Methodology of Social Research at the University of Havana. In “Reforms and likely trends in the development of the Cuban political system,” Duharte explains that “reform” is not the opposite of “revolution.” In fact, “from a socialist and Marxist vision,” there are steps to transition to socialism, to improve socialism and reform can play an important role in doing that. Cuban socialism is

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not perfect, but it is a “system open to improvement.” All the areas of possible improvement he proposes have already been highlighted more or less directly by the PCC in its latest congress. He calls for the “Strengthening of the leading role of the CCP in society, as a party of the Cuban nation, guaranteeing unity around the broader socialist objectives and the continuity of the revolutionary process.” Issue no. 59 (July–September 2009) revisits a potentially controversial topic: the “practices of human rights.” The title hints at the official position on human rights in Cuba, which is that there are several approaches to human rights, not one, and Cuba’s is not only as legitimate as others, it is in many ways superior. As seems to be a pattern in Temas, foreign contributors handle controversial topics, taking the focus away from how Cubans are ruled. In the opening article, Joy Gordon argues against a conception of human rights centered on political rights. Next is a Canadian scholar, who examines the theme of human rights and “translation,” without mentioning Cuba. The third article (not on Cuba) is signed by a Norwegian scholar; the fourth on human rights in the United States; the fifth on human rights problems in Canada, followed by yet another one on the United States (how embargo violates US citizens rights), and one on human rights and the environment in Colombia. After this sobering tour of global human rights violations, come Cuban authors on Cuba: Léster Delgado Sánchez talks about human rights in Cuba but focuses on the intricacies of international treaties, not the human rights situation on the island. Next, two jurists (Ramón de la Cruz Ochoa and coauthor Narciso A. Cobo Roura) argue that “access to justice” could be improved in Cuba, by tinkering with some secondary rules. The authors are critical of the view that the situation in Cuba is perfect: At certain stages of the Revolution we thought that all justice has been achieved and that socialism, by itself, by its democratic and popular character, would guarantee all justice and respect and protection of the rights and freedoms of individuals. Life has shown, as in so many other things, that it is not a spontaneous process and that the State needs to create mechanisms that in one way or another guarantee its exercise and defense.

Another law professor, Antonio Raudilio Martín Sánchez, handles a potentially controversial issue in “Labor rights and human rights”. After a lengthy praise of the revolution and its benefits for Cuban workers, the author mentions errors committed during the 1970s. He says nothing about core labor standards of the International Labour Organization, one that is problematic in Cuba: to use the ILO wording, the right to “join trade unions that are independent of government and employer influence.” Final words hint at possible areas of improvement, but they reflect the employer’s perspective, such as



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they are, not the workers’: “The shortcomings that may be noted include the need to increase productivity through the revaluation and motivation of work, the application of payment systems that contribute to labor efficiency, in addition to the rescue of the discipline in its broad conception of stimulation and requirements, as well as providing greater ethical motivation, social and moral recognition to work, both productive and intellectual” (p.82). In “Controversy” one finds a roundtable entitled “Human rights practices: a Cuban symposium.” Not much is added to the previous discussion. Seemingly, problems come mostly from the prerevolutionary period. Did the revolution solve all these problems? No. But fundamentally, there seems to be no major human rights problems in contemporary Cuba. Freedom of expression is guaranteed by the constitution (art. 53). One participant, Miguel Alfonso, declares: “As far as I know, no one has been convicted in Cuba for expressing, in accordance with our legal system, his or her views regarding the labour of the Revolution. At the same time (and for objective reasons) it is impossible to deny the existence among us of a mentality of besieged fortress” (p.96). It is surrealist to have a debate about freedom of expression in a country where it does not exist, but that inconvenient truth cannot be mentioned. Again, criticism obliges, nobody denies that problems remain and one can always improve on what is already quite admirable. For instance, the “Right to address complaints and petitions to the authorities” could be improved. A speaker (Jorge Bodes Torres) also talks about freedom of movement, but mostly to defend the regime’s policy to restrict it. Issue no. 60 features two relevant articles, the first by Carlos Alzugaray Treto, a diplomat and IRSI fellow, entitled “ Cuba, fifty years later: continuity and political change” (pp. 37–47). He starts with a long tribute to Fidel, then addresses the need for reforms, strictly following the guidelines presented by Raúl Castro (whom he quotes abundantly). Then in “Bureaucratism in the light of socialism in the 21st century,” Jorge Luis Guasch Estévez (University of Holguín) confronts the problem of bureaucratism in Cuba (also lamented by Raúl and Fidel), and concludes that “It is imperative to permanently apply the Leninist, Guevarian, Fidelist and Raulist legacy on revolutionary criticism as an irreplaceable weapon of revolutionary construction” (pp.53–54). Under “Controversy” on the “special period,” sociologist Mayra Espina Prieto, quoted earlier, offers another uncharacteristically candid comment: We have been talking about the consequences of the economic and social crisis, but we did not talk about politics. This dimension is absent because we have studied it so little; it is a kind of taboo subject, because the society we are today is not going to go back to the 1980s, we are getting further away from that point. I say that there is no shortage of returns to those years, but to something new and better. We are a more diverse, multicentric society, and yet this feature is

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not reflected in politics. Participation and decision-making structures have been maintained almost the same since the 1980s, or even earlier. There is a latent contradiction that has not manifested itself, but it can do so at any moment. It is necessary to realize that the crisis also impacts the political sphere, and that transformations should also involve this sphere.109

As was the case previously, she does not take the claim further or explore its implications, and nobody miss the opportunity to miss the opportunity. Just a few more examples will suffice. Issue No.70 (April–June 2012) focuses on “democracy and society,” but offers only one article on the political system in Cuba, by Julio César Guanche (University of Havana), entitled “Citizen participation in the Cuban State” (pp.69–79). Basically, Guanche offers yet another description of the Cuban electoral system, without substantive comment or analysis. He quotes Granma: “From 1976 to 2010, electoral participation ranged from 95.2% to 95.9%. These figures have traditionally been considered as a ‘sign of support for our political system, and as a resounding answer from voting Cubans to the media campaigns orchestrated by the United States government, the European Union and its lackeys.’” Then he calls for some minor improvements within the actual system. Under “Controversy” issue no.76 (2013) tackles a relevant issue: “Politization / depoliticization in contemporary civic culture.” Two quotes are noteworthy. First, the suave Carlos Alzugaray strays away from Marxist-Leninist jargon but comes home to Raúl: I really like a definition of an American academic who says that politics is the science that studies who gets what, when and how; other political scientists define it as the administration of public goods, the art of governing, and of course, in Cuba public goods are almost everything. So to politicize in a certain way means to participate in that administration of public goods. The approach with which Marcela starts is a classic Marxist analysis, class struggle, maintenance of power, and at a given time that was very important. Now, we have to create in Cuba a little analysis in the style of Habermas, that is, the idea of tolerance in politics; politicization requires tolerance and listening to the other, and arrive at solutions, as Raúl Castro proposes, and let the best solutions emerge from the broad debate on things.110

Habermas and Raúl, same struggle!! Then comes a rare unguarded comment by Julio César Guanche: “The depoliticization in Cuba expresses the crisis of official politics; that is to say, the disconnection, the dissociation, the break with the official policy … […] Depoliticization occurs when there is a certain mismatch and a certain anachronism between the official culture and the cultures that are existing in our society.” Even though he does not really



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explore why this “disconnection” exists, to mention it is another example of Temas hanging close to the secondary parameters, if still on the safe side of it. Issue No 78 (April–June 2014), as was mentioned earlier, is concerned with “Doing politics.” The “Focus” features seven articles (one on the USSR and one on Argentina). The first article is a “Simposium” on “How todo socialist politics,” with, among others, Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada, President of the National Assembly of Popular Power (1993–2013) and Yuniasky Crespo, First Secretary of the Communist Youth Union. One finds the usual themes: mistakes were made in the past under the influence of the Soviet Union, some discussions on policy areas (migrations, popular participation) but very little substance. One article on the electoral system, by Daniel Rafuls Pineda, starts by praising it for its capacity to represent Cubans and to be seen as legitimate. “This is seen both in the high percentage of voters during the last electoral elections and in the fact that the National Assembly, as well as the provincial and municipal ones, feature a profound popular character, in terms of their political, social and professional composition, and also in their legislative or decision-making projections.” He does identify problems but nothing major, in spite of some rather obvious limitations such as the fact that Cubans cannot directly elect their president, or that elections for seats to the provincial and national legislative assemblies (which meets briefly twice a year to approve without opposition 100% of the bills proposed by the executive) are vetted and controlled by the only party in power via the “candidacy commissions”. A problem for him is the quality of local representation. He admits that the National Assembly is not powerful, but criticizes this situation only within the narrow parameters of the Cuban Constitution. His solution? “To create a new Electoral Law” that allows broader representation in Municipal Assembly of the Popular Power, something that can be done “as part of the ongoing improvement of the Cuban state.” Also in this issue is a rather extraordinary piece by Daniel Díaz Mantilla entitled “George Orwell 110 years after his birth,” in which “Soviet totalitarianism” is mentioned once and no reference is made of its Caribbean child. Still, discussing Orwell is daring. It is worth recalling that less than a year later, during the Havana’s Book Fair, the novel 1984 was discussed and made available to the public (no doubt in very limited edition) for the first time since the triumph of the revolution. This is progress. Shrinking the language is not a once and for all operation, because some of the keywords in the official repertoire are always at least potentially risky, given their meaning in “Oldspeak”; terms like revolution, rebellion, criticism and debate. They can never be entirely owned and controlled by any regime. In fact, the opposition routinely appropriates them as well. All political generations in Cuba (the generation of independence, 1933 or 1959) are “revolutionary.” In other words, echoing the Appendix to 1984, one can say that after fifty-six years of cultural and educational policies in Cuba, the construction of

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a Newspeak is very much a work in progress. Hence the need for a scholarly class in SSH and for state control of that class. Based on the case study of Temas, it can be concluded that to be successful as a scholar in Cuba, one needs to have the right mix of courage and fear, and to know when and how to deploy these attributes. There are obviously many social scientists who are talented and who could do a good job if they had better tools to work with. The quest for participation and recognition, to emerge as a leading scholar with rights and opportunities to travel abroad, or simply to stay in the game, seems to be, by far, the most compelling motivation. It is also likely that for all its limitations, Temas is considered by many academics as the best they have, and they know that the government can pull the plug at any time. To speak with a truncated vocabulary is better than not speaking at all. Jorge Luis Borges once said that theology is a branch of “fantastic literature.” In some ways, the same can be said of SSH in Cuba. While society is completely penetrated by the regime in place, and the regime by Fidel and now Raúl Castro, who of course have never been directly and freely elected and like Napoléon in Orwell’s Animal Farm are “always right,” the level of scrutiny allowed is inversely proportional to the level of authority being scrutinized in a sharply vertical pyramid of power. Some scrutiny is allowed at the bottom of this pyramid, to look at residues of problems inherited from the old regime, problems with prerevolutionary mentalities or social problems common to most societies. One can seek to improve elections, but only at the local level and without questioning the underlying logic of a non-competitive and fake electoral system. Simply put, the vocabulary that can be used to talk about power in Cuba has shrunk to a point where political analysis is almost impossible. In fact, the oxygen necessary for critical thinking and proper academic work becomes rarefied as one starts looking up at the higher echelons of political leadership. Low-to-middle rank officials are fair targets if they are accused of acting on their own, serving nothing but their individual interests rather than the “revolution.” Indeed this helps the political leadership to prune the bureaucracy’s ranks and find culprits for the long list of problems ordinary Cubans face. For Cuba to become a “normal country,” as Cubans often say, even before it becomes democratic (if it ever does), it will need better data on how the political system actually works, better analysis of problems and if not rule of law at least what the Chinese call “rule by law,” lifting the veil of secrecy covering most political transactions in the country. Normalization of relations with the United States and other nations will require that. NOTES 1. Not to forget his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), in which Orwell famously says: “Political language—and with variations this is true of all



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political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Available online: http://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/Politics_and_the_English_ Language-1.pdf. 2. Shrinking the language is also a key strategy of totalitarian rule in Boualem Sansal’s masterpiece 2084, La fin du monde (Paris: Gallimard, 2015). 3. See for instance John Connelly and Michael Grüttner ed., Universities under Dictatorship (Penn State University Press, 2005). 4. Chapter V [Education and Culture], Article 39, section (a): [the State] bases its educational and cultural policy on the advances of science and technology, the Marxist and Martian ideology, the Cuban progressive pedagogical tradition and the universal one. 5. See Maarten van Delden, “José Martí and his Legacy,” in Maarten van Delden and Yvon Grenier, Gunshots at the Fiesta, Literature and Politics in Latin America (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2012), 33–54. According to historian Rafael Rojas: “When Soviet Marxism prevailed in the first decades of the Revolution, criticism of the ‘bourgeois overtures’ of Marti’s thought was frequent. On the other hand, from the 90s onwards, the figure of Martí has become untouchable and, at the same time, many criticisms of Marxism-Leninism and, especially, the Soviet system, although subtle and untimely, have been tolerated.” Rafael Rojas, El estante vacío, literatura y política en Cuba (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2009), 11. 6. On the “colonization” of Cuban culture by the most dogmatic version of Marxism available even in the Soviet Union, see Alexis Jardines, La filosofía cubana in nuce, Ensayo de historia intelectual (Madrid: Editorial Colibrí, 2005): 223–233. As Rafael Rojas said, “The Soviet cultural policy was reproduced on the island in a colonial fashion: Cubans received a culture twice censored, first in Moscow and then in Havana.” Rojas, El estante vacío, 80. 7. Vladimir Lenin, The State and Revolution, section “The Economic Basis of the Withering Away of the State,” available online: https://www.marxists.org/archive/ lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch05.htm 8. Alexis Jardines takes a more categorical stance about the milieu itself: “The reform of the teaching of philosophy in Cuba remains a pending task. The principle of authority, uniformity of thought, theoretical stagnation, marasm, lack of creativity and originality, mediocrity, the hostility towards personal talent and the strengthening of individuality, towards newness and dissent and, in general, toward the quest for different orientations, continues to be the main feature of ‘Cuban Marxism.’” Jardines, La filosofía cubana, 233. It is also worth remembering that the dystopian novel We (1921), by Yesvgeny Zamyatin, was the first fictional work to be banned under Lenin’s (not Stalin’s) new censorship laws. 9. Rojas El estante vacío, 22, 68. 10. The panelists were Francisco Brown (Centro de Estudios Europeos), Ariel Dacal (Editorial de Ciencias Sociales), Julio A. Díaz Vásquez (Centro de Investigaciones de la Economía Internacional) and Fernando Rojas (Consejo Nacional de Casas de Cultura.) 11. Ultimo Jueves, Los debates de Temas, vol.2 (Havana: Revista Temas and Instituto Cubano de Investigación Cultural Juan Marinello, 2008), 13–40.

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12. Jardines, La filosofía cubana, 226. 13. See Adolfo Sánchez Vásquez, “Las ideas estéticas en los Manuscritos económico-filosóficos de Marx,” Casa de las Américas (Havana) 2, nos. 13–14 (1962); Las ideas estéticas de Marx (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 1964); David Craven, Art and Revolution in Latin America, 1910–1990 (Yale University Press, 2002), 94–116. 14. Carlos Alzugaray Treto, “La ciencia política en Cuba: del estancamiento a la renovación,” Revista de ciencia política, 25, no. 1 (2005): 137. 15. Alzugaray Treto, “La ciencia política en Cuba,” 141. 16. Archibald Ritter, “Political Science: When Will Cuban Universities Join the World?” on his blog The Cuban Economy, June 17, 2013, http://thecubaneconomy. com/articles/2013/06/political-science-when-will-cuban-universities-join-the-world/ 17. See Ruth Ben-Ghiat, “Italian Universities under Fascism,” in Connelly and Grütner, Universities under Dictatorship, 58. 18. Dopico Black, “The Limits of Expression,” 133. 19. Armando Chaguaceda, “House of Cards and Political Science in Cuba,” Havana Times, 21 March 2014, http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=102538. Chaguaceda was trained in Cuba and presents his profile as follows: “My curriculum vitae presents me as a historian and political scientist.” He now lives in Mexico. 20. The website CubaEduca, “el Portal Educativo Cubano,” features the educational program on the political system in Cuba for ninth grade students. The “objective” of the program is as follows: “Characterize the Cuban political system as the main conquest of the revolution which we must protect.” http:// civica.cubaeduca.cu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11253%3 Ael-sitema-politico-cubano&catid=441%3Aayuda-para-su-desempeno 21. In the new Politbureau formed during the 7th congress of the PCC, two of the five new members come from academia: Miriam Nicado García, President (Rectora) of the University of Information system Sciences, and Marta Ayala Ávila, ViceDirector of the Center for Genetic and Biotechnological Engineering. 22. Masha Gessen, “Sociology, According to Putin,” The New York Times, October 4, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/opinion/sociology-according-to-putin.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&versio n=Moth-Visible&moduleDetail=inside-nyt-region-3&module=inside-nytregion®ion=inside-nyt-region&WT.nav=inside-nyt-region 23. Yaditza del Sol González, “El socialismo también se construye en las aulas,” Granma, December 1, 2015. http://www.granma.cu/cuba/2015-12-03/ el-socialismo-tambien-se-construye-en-las-aulas-01-12-2015-22-12-25 24. Fernando Martínez Heredia, “Izquierda y marxismo en Cuba,” Temas 3 (July–September 1995): 21 25. See Martínez Heredia’s introduction as a moderator to a roundtable (Controversia) on “Las ciencias sociales en la cultura Cubana,” Temas 9 (January–March 1997), 68. See also Alzugaray Treto, “La ciencia política en Cuba.” 26. Orieta Sandoval, and Alfredo A. Hernández, “Las ciencias sociales en la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba (1962–1981),” Tiempos de América: Revista de Historia, Cultura y Territorio 9 (2002): 59–78. 27. Argeliers León, “Palabras inaugurales del Instituto de Etnología y Folklore el 12 de marzo de 1962,” Instituto de Etnología y Folklore de la Academia de Ciencias



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de la República de Cuba, La Habana, 1962, págs. 5–6, quoted in Sandoval and Hernández, “Las ciencias sociales,” 62. 28. Antonio Núñez Jiménez, “Décimo Aniversario. Sesión Solemne de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba en conmemoración de su Décimo Aniversario, La Habana, 20 de Febrero de 1972,” Academia de Ciencias de Cuba: nacimiento y forja (Havana: Departamento de ediciones de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba, 1972), 340–341. Quoted in Sandoval and Hernández, “Las ciencias sociales,” 67. 29. Sandoval and Hernández, “Las ciencias sociales,” 68–69. 30. “Sobre Política Cientifica Nacional,” Tesis y Resolución, Departamento de Orientación Revolucionaria del Comité Central del Partido Comunista de Cuba (La Habana, 1975), 282–83, quoted Sandoval and Hernández, “Las ciencias sociales,” 69. 31. My emphasis. See University of Havana, “Derecho,” http://www.uh.cu/ pregrado/ciencias-sociales-y-humanisticas/derecho 32. See University of Havana, “Social Sciences and Humanities,” http://www. uh.cu/pregrado/ciencias-sociales-y-humanisticas 33. Mayra Paula Espina, “Cuba: La Hora de las Ciencias sociales,” first presented during a conference organized by Rafael Hernández at the Centro Juan Marinello in 1999, then published in Rafael Hernández ed., Sin Urna de Cristal, Pensamiento y cultura en Cuba contemporánea (La Habana: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello, 2003), 33. 34. Mayra Espina Prieto, “Tropiezos y oportunidades de la sociología cubana”, Temas 1 (1995): 44. Juan Luis Marín contends that the “matrícula” was closed in 1976 and the discipline was eliminated in 1980. Juan Luis Marín, “Investigación social en Cuba,” Temas 16 (October 1998–June 1999): 147. 35. According to the CEAP’s website: “We are a national reference center for the study, training and improvement in the field of Central and Local Public Administration management, and we assume our country’s challenges with excellence, competitiveness and political commitment.” http://www.ceap.uh.cu/ 36. CEAP, University of Havana, http://www.ceap.uh.cu/index.php?showall=& start=1 37. Radio Santa Cruz, document published on December 2, 1960. http://www. radiosantacruz.icrt.cu/efemerides/ver/1960-fundacion-de-la-escuela-superior-delpartido-comunista-de-cuba-ico-lopez. Accessed on June 26, 2016. 38. The CEHSEU used to be called Centro de Estudios sobre Estados Unidos 39. This website further explains that in 1976 the Higher Institute of Foreign Service (ISSE) was created, “attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, under the teaching-methodological direction of the Ministry of Higher Education. Its graduates received the Diploma of Graduates in International Political Relations.” In 1981 the ISSE became the Higher Institute of International Relations (ISRI) “Raúl Roa García.” Source: http://www.ecured.cu/Instituto_Superior_de_Relaciones_Internacionales_Ra%C3%BAl_Roa_Garc%C3%ADa 40. Emilio Duharte, ed., Problemas Actuales de teoría socio–política (La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela, 2000); Talía Fung Riverón ed., Reflexiones y Metarreflexiones Políticas (La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela, 1998); Talía Fung Riverón and Ileana Capote Padrón ed., La ciencia política en el tránsito al siglo XXI, En búsqueda de salidas a la Complejidad (La Habana: Editorial Félix Varela, 1999).

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41. Chaguaceda, “House of Cards.” Espacio Laical (“Secular Space”) was founded in 2005 by the Consejo de Laicos de la Arquidiócesis de La Habana. Their former editors, Roberto Veiga González and Lenier González Mederos, are now editor of Cuba Posible, an online magazine and research organization based in Havana. See Victoria Burnett, “Extolling Moderation to Get Cubans Talking about Politics,” The New York Times, May 21, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/22/world/ americas/cuba-posible-roberto-veiga-lenier-gonzalez.html?_r=0 42. Global Learning, Encounter the Third World in Cuba, http://www.globallearning-cuba.com/ 43. http://www.cubadebate.cu/autor/thalia-fung/ 44. Chaguaceda, “House of Cards and Political Science in Cuba.” 45. See summary of the event by Tania Chappi Docurro, on Temas’ website:http:// temas.cult.cu/noticias/c-mo-funciona-el-sistema-pol-tico 46. Though José Martí did defend the idea of a single revolutionary party in the context of the war for independence, his writings do not lend support to the idea of a single-party state as a model for governance. 47. Carlos Franqui, Retrato de familia con Fidel (Madrid: Seix Barral, 1981); Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego, Revolución, disidencia y exilio del intelectual cubano (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2006), 108. 48. Rojas, El estante vacío; and La máquina del olvido, Mito, historia y poder en Cuba (Mexico City: Taurus, 2012). 49. Rojas, El estante vacío. 50. Fernando Martínez Heredia, “El reto de las ciencias sociales,” In http:// www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2015/11/20/el-reto-de-las-ciencias-sociales-en-la-cubade-hoy/#.VyIDxqMrLWc. 51. “Entrevista a Aurelio Alonso,” Blog Segunda Cita, http://segundacita. blogspot.ca/2016/06/la-necesaria-apertura-un-debate.html 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Rafael Hernández, “Demografía política e institucionalidad. Apuntes sociológicos sobre las estructuras políticas en Cuba,” Espacio Laical, February 2014. 55. Yanet Toirac, “Política cultural en la Cuba actual: apuntes para el debate,” Temas 72 (2012): 62. 56. Hernández presents this series of monthly discussions as a complement to Temas, one that is more frequent and more open to the public. Rafael Hernández, “Hacia una cultura del debate,” in Ultimo Jueves, Los debates de Temas (Havana: Ediciones Unión, 2004), 5–14. 57. Alfred G. Cuzán, “Totalitarianism in the Tropics: Cuba’s ‘Padilla Case’ Revisited” (August 24, 2015). Available at SSRN:  https://ssrn.com/ abstract=2136252 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2136252. 58. Chaguaceda, “House of Cards and Political Science in Cuba.” 59. Rafael Rojas, “La democracia postergada, pluralismo civil y autoritarismo político en Cuba,” in Bobes, Velia Cecilia ed., Cuba ¿ajuste o transición? Impacto de la reforma en el contexto del restablecimiento de las relaciones con Estados Unidos (Mexico city: FLACSO, 2015), 154.



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60. I don’t know if Domínguez was being sarcastic in this comment. In a second Foreword to the same book, John M. Kirk, writing as the Series editor and certainly without sarcasm, calls him “One of Cuba’s top political analysts.” 61. Rafael Hernández, Otra Guerra, Ensayos cubanos sobre estrategia y seguridad internacional (La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias sociales, 1999). Klepak praises Hernández in his Foreword: “It is not surprising that the Cuban editors decided that the Cuban writer they choose was Rafael Hernández. He has made it his own. We, the readers, are the greatest beneficiaries of this wise decision” (pp.XVII). 62. The Cuba section of LASA (one of about forty) is closely monitored by scholars from the island and their allies. For a good essay on the romance between LASA and the Cuban regime, see Al Cuzán, “Dictatorships and Double Standards: The Latin American Studies Association on Cuba” (2000), available online: http:// uwf.edu/media/university-of-west-florida/colleges/cassh/departments/government/ cdocs/V.A.2.-Cuzan-2000-Dictatorshps-and-Double-Standards.pdf. 63. Dirección política de las FAR, “Concurso 26 de Julio, 1973.” The jury was composed of Fayad Jamís, Luis Suardíaz, and Eduardo López. Rafael Hernández, Versos del soldado (La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro, coll. Editorial de arte y literatura, 1974). 64. Here are some of the quatrains: “Today I come to sing to you / to the guerrilla / to the hero, the commander / to the comrade To the companion and man / of the 20th century / that has traced the way / for what is coming The illuminated road / by his word / his word and his blood / already spilled Blood from north to south / of the Continent / being born as the day / in the east There in the East / was his landing / in the history of America / with Fidel Castro.” 65. “He was born in Havana in 1948. His childhood was spent in Cabaiguán, Las Villas, where he attended primary school. At the age of 13, he joined as the ‘Conrado Benítez’ brigadier to the Literacy Campaign. He studied, with a scholarship, at a middle school and graduated bachelor in Science and Literature at the Institute ‘Raúl Cepero Bonilla.’ He participated in several coffee harvesting campaigns in the Sierra Maestra, in 1962, 1963 and 1964. He has performed several tasks: professor of Spanish, translator, and professor of History of Philosophy at the University of Havana. Currently graduated from the Degree in French Language and Literature at the School of Arts and Literature he teaches courses on Critical Realism and French Literature, at the same University. From a very young age, he has been writing poetry and short stories. At age 19, in 1967, he obtained a mention at a UNEAC Poetry Contest, with Pañuelo de cuadros rojos (unpublished). His play Aparentaciones sobre la vida y la muerte del bandolero nombrado Polo Véle was recommended in the Contest of the Casa de las Américas in 1973. In 1970, the Instituto del Libro published his translation of the anthology Desde Vietnam, by Vietnamese poet To Huu. He is a militant of the Communist Youth Union.” Hernández, Versos del soldado. 66. Maurizio Giuliano, El caso CEA: Intelectuales e inquisidores en Cuba. ¿Perestroika en la isla? (Miami: Ediciones Universal, 1998); Alberto F. Alvarez García and Gerardo González Núñez,  ¿Intelectuales vs. Revolución? El Caso del Centro de Estudios Sobre América, CEA (Montreal: Ediciones Arte D.T., 2001). To offer a

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comparison: early in 2017, while China’s president, Xi Jinping, professed the virtues of market-oriented reforms at Davos, the government shot down the online accounts of the Unirule Institute of Economics, a sort of Chinese CEA founded in 1993 and home of academics and “moderate liberals.” The Economist, February 18, 2017, p.37. 67. Alberto Álvarez and Gerardo González left the CEA and chose exile almost two years before the whole crisis. Thanks to Ana Faya for this information. 68. According to Giuliano, “It is likely that Rafael and Luis [Suarez] simply chose not to fight for something that they would hardly attain. Both would end up in highly respectable positions, and perhaps in those times of bewilderment they preferred to keep a low profile.” Giuliano, El caso CEA, 46. In the stunning transcripts of the reunions the CEA members had with Commissars of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Rafael Hernández says relatively little. 69. Jorge I. Domínguez, “¿Comienza una transición hacia el autoritarismo en Cuba?” Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana 6/7 (Fall–Winter 1997): 17. 70. Jesús Díaz, “El fin de otra ilusión A propósito de la quiebra de El Caimán Barbudo y la clausura de Pensamiento Crítico,” Encuentro de la cultura cubana, 16/17 (Spring–Summer 2000): 110. 71. Milan Kundera, La plaisanterie (Paris: Gallimard, 1967), 139 72. Mirar a Cuba was also published in Mexico by the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2002. 73. Archibald Ritter, “New Publication on US-Cuba Relations: Cuba-Estados Unidos, tan lejos, tan cerca,” http://thecubaneconomy.com/articles/2010/09/new-publication-on-us-cuba-relations-cuba-estados-unidos-tan-lejos-tan-cerca/. Also personal communication with Ritter on June 15, 2016. 74. John Beverley, “Introduction” to special issue “From Cuba,” boundaries 2 (Fall 2000): 8–9. 75. See “Already banned in Cuba, film gets censored in U.S,” Miami Herald, March 17, 2017. Upset by this “unilateral” decision, Lechuga pulled his film from the fest. Accessed April 5, 2017: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/ americas/cuba/article139198618.html. 76. Hernández, Looking at Cuba, xv. 77. Ibid, 51. 78. Beverley, “Introduction,” 6. On the topic of the use and abuse of this concept in Cuba, see Marlene Azor Hernández, “El debate sobre la sociedad civil en Cuba: actores emergentes,” Fronesis, Revista de Filosofía Jurídica, Social y Política, Vol.19, no.1 (2012): 19–48. 79. Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, The Latin American Left after the Cold War (Vintage Books, 1993). 80. Hernández, Looking at Cuba, 32. 81. Ibid,11. 82. Ibid,32, 95 and 96 83. Ibid, 31. 84. Ibid, 44. 85. Ibid, 46. 86. Ibid, 47. 87. Ibid, 48.



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88. Ibid, 122. 89. Ibid, 124. 90. “As in all contemporary societies, political participation in Cuba has its limitations” say the authors. Namely: “weaknesses in the subsystem of information, bureaucratism, the persistence of a certain marginalization of some social groups, excessive administrative centralization, underutilization of participatory mechanisms as a consequence of the traumatic rejection of old styles of ‘politicking,’ and so on.” Rafael Hernández and Haroldo Dilla, “Popular Culture and Popular Participation,” in The Cuban Revolution into the 1990s, Cuban Perspectives, Edited by the Centro de Estudios sobre América (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), 38. 91. In spite of penury of resources, the year 1995 saw the launch of two other journals also dedicated to SSH and “debates” in Cuba: Contracorriente (created by the Ministry of Culture and associated with the UNEAC) and Debates Americanos (University of Havana). The year 1995 also saw the foundation of the Center of research and Development of the Cuban Culture Juan Marinello (it became an “Institute”, hence the ICEC, in 2013), which publishes a journal in many way similar to the other three mentioned, except that its focus is mostly cultural: Perfiles de la Cultura Cubana. The Centre was created by decree on October 7, 1981; it seems that the 1995’ Center grew from there. The association Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana was created the same year by dissidents in Madrid. An earlier version of Temas, “primera época,” was published from 1984 to 1992. In Orwellian fashion, Contracorriente is not against the mainstream and Debates Americanos contains no real debate. 92. He typically complains that “Although they do not always appear cited as principal sources in books published outside Cuba about the topics taken up in their pages, these magazines are read on the island not only within cultural and academic circles but in political ones as well.” In Looking at Cuba, 130. 93. Hernández, “Hacia una cultura del debate,” 9. 94. One of the official reproaches against the CEA was that it published American Cubanólogos like Jorge Domínguez, Wayne Smith and Robert White. The first has been published several times in Temas. See Guiliano, El caso CEA, 66. 95. Domínguez seems a bit mischievous though, but cautiously. At some point he discusses how some countries have done well since the late 1950s: “In 1957, for example, the per capita of the following countries, among others, was superior to that of Taiwan and South Korea: Ghana, Albania, Honduras, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, South Africa, Bulgaria and Cuba.” He also talks about the problem of the diaspora, without mentioning Cuba directly. Another possible example of irony is when he calls Rafael Hernandez “one of Cuba’s premier intellectuals today.” (Thanks to Al Cuzán for pointing this out to me.) Jorge I. Domínguez, “Las ciencias políticas, reflexiones sobre estudios de opinión pública y economía política,” Temas 29 (April–June 2002): 49–50. 96. Hernández, “Hacia una cultura del debate,” 13. 97. See for instance Paola Laura Gorla, Patria o Muerte, ¡venceremos!: La retórica de Fidel Castro (La Habana: UH editorial, 2014). 98. Hal P. Klepak, Raúl Castro and Cuba: a Military Story (New York: Palgrave/ Macmillan, 2012). Klepak’s book is reviewed by Gustavo Placer Cervera in Temas 68 (October–December 2011). Placer Cervera salutes Klepak’s “respect for Cuba, its leaders, its armed forces and its people.”

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99. Remembering that he told his French (but Cuban-born) son-in-law Paul Lafargue: “if you are Marxist, then I am not Marxist.” 100. In El estante vacío, Rafael Rojas writes “The majority of philosophers included in Patricio Lóizaga’s already old Diccionario de Pensadores Contemporáneos (Barcelona: Emecé, 1996) is unknown in the island.” Furthermore, “Unlike the case of literature, where several prerevolutionary classics (Carpentier, Guillén, Lezama, Diego, Vitier, Piñera) remained in the island, anchoring the literary canon, Cuban philosophy, after the exodus of its main figures, was totally reconstructed according to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism.” Rojas, El Estante vacío, 13 (note 11), and 75, respectively. 101. See for instance Hernández, “Hacia una cultura del debate,” 5–14. 102. An exception that confirms the rule: in Temas 66 (April–June 2011), one can read a substantial essay by Rafael Rojas, entitled “Diáspora, intelectuales y futuros de Cuba,” followed by two very scathing responses: “Para un diálogo entre sordos” (Arturo Arango) and especially “Cuba y las trampas del totalitarismo” (Iroel Sánchez). 103. Giuliano writes this about the naiveté of CEA members writing to the Castro brothers to plead their revolutionary innocence and ask them to intercede in their favors against the Commissars: “It is most significant that, despite the fact that the Commission was an expression and part of the partisan control apparatus headed by the Castro brothers, the group decided to appeal to them in the hope that they could intervene on their behalf. Hope is always the last thing lost.” He also points out that “Despite the serious confrontation with the [state] apparatus, the collective did not renounce any of its rights. And it did not even give up its right to remain members of the Party. A Party in which they believed or continue to believe.” Giuliano, El caso CEA, 125, 129. 104. See for instance Ariel Dacal Díaz, “Por qué fracasó el socialismo soviético? Temas 50 (April–September 2007): 4–15; and Angel Marqués Dolz, “Un hereje en el convento, Conversación con Aurelio Alonso,” On Cuba Magazine, July 17, 2015 http://oncubamagazine.com/sociedad/un-herejeen-el-convento-conversacion-con-aurelio-alonso/ 105. Juan Valdés Paz, “Las ciencias sociales en la cultura Cubana,” Temas 9 (January–March 1997): 75. 106. Valdés Paz, “Las ciencias sociales,” 76. 107. Juan Valdés Paz, “Ciencia política: un estado de la disciplina,” first presented during a conference organized by Rafael Hernández at the Centro Juan Marinello in 1999, then published in Hernández ed., Sin Urna de Cristal, 150, 156 and 162. 108. Aurelio Alonso Tejada, “La institutionalidad civil y el debate sobre la legitimidad,” Temas 29 (April–June 2002): 39. 109. Mayra Espina Prieto, “Controversia,” Temas 65 (January–March 2011). 110. Carlos Alzugaray, “Controversia: Politización / despolitización en la cultura ciudadana contemporánea,” Temas no.76 (2013), http://www.temas.cult.cu/revista/76/ pol%C3%ADticas-de-la-fe.

Conclusion

This book is an essay, and as Mexican poet Octavio Paz once said about this genre, in an essay, the point is not to say it all, but to say what needs to be said.1 This is not a book on dissidents, independent journalists and bloggers. A full analysis of censorship and contestation in Cuba could not be realized without focusing on their stories as well. Furthermore, I concede that my selection of case studies is to a certain degree deficient because it does not sufficiently examine an important repertoire of artistic production in Cuba: contestatory popular music, especially the hip-hop and reggaetón genre. As I said, no art form is more popular than music in Cuba. I looked at signers like Carlos Varela, Pedro Luis Ferrer, Frank Deldago and especially Robertico Carcassés, who travel along the parameters of a quite official music style on the island (the Trova), but hip-hop is more of an underground style, and it appeals to young and black Cubans, a segment of the population the regime has reasons to fear.2 If an official intellectual like Rafael Hernández can be called a “gatekeeper,” some of these young musicians could definitely be called “gatecrashers.”3 And yet, they, too, need to calibrate their audacity to stay in the game. The vast majority of artists, writers and academics in Cuba are neither gatekeepers nor gatecrashers. They are like the Emos described by Leonardo Padura in Herejes: they take distance, they are not (or no longer) believers, and they live in the present, attentive to risks and opportunities. Unlike the characters in Padura’s novel, however, they are not “heretics”: their position and dispositions have to do with something else, more like a compromise, a plan to stay in the game, and indeed for many, to stay in their own country. If they occasionally “play with the chain,” they mostly leave the “monkey” alone. None of this implies that the emancipatory impact of art in Cuban politics is trivial. It is hard to measure the potential energy for contestation brewed 237

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by a detotalitarianization (a re-individuation) that, as was pointed out in the book, was generated in large part by the cultural actors opting out of propagandistic schemes. What would it take for occasionally dissonant and risk-averse writers and artists to come out strongly for more autonomy in their field and beyond? The potential for cultural actors to act as agents of profound change is probably there, but they don’t seem to be able to pull the trigger themselves. In a way Che Guevara was right to say that they are not politically revolutionary. It is not an “original sin” though: genuine art and literature is always emancipatory but in a more subtle, subterranean, diffuse and incremental way. It does not need to be openly political to be revolutionary. Although this book does not pretend to be comprehensive, it does offer a contribution to knowledge on the nature and limitations of political participation in dictatorial regimes, with a focus on the cultural field in Cuba. It is inch added to a pretty tall house of scholarship on Cuba, cultural policy, art and politics, and comparative authoritarian regimes. The book concludes that the government’s control of a fragmented public space, where the actors’ limited autonomy is tenuous and contingent on the political imperative of the moment, fosters a certain type of participation guided both by certainty (about the irrevocability of the regime and its master narrative) and uncertainty (regarding the possibility of public expression within official parameters). The various fields of action (namely the cultural field) find themselves in a panopticon-like situation, though they are operating with the prospect of enjoying more space for expression from time to time, either for the field as a whole or for specific actors within that field. This uncertainty fosters continuous competition for political recognition. Primary parameters are the same for everybody and the possibility of horizontal cooperation and critical cross-pollination between fields remains very limited. Secondary parameters are, in a way, similar to other gray zones in Cuban society: what is illicit but tolerated, what is tolerated in some milieus but not in others, what one can say in private but not in public and so on. These shades of gray are the homage Cuban society pays to the monochromatic palette of official discourse. As a general rule, the regime, its myths and taboos, cannot be directly and publicly questioned, though it can sometimes (at the right time and the right place) be examined indirectly and, as in the case of visual arts, almost “privately,” in the sense that it does not reach a large domestic audience. In spite of its pretence to lead a cultural revolution, the Castro leadership never had much interest for arts, literature or intellectual pursuit, beyond their usefulness as political resources. But from time to time, the dominant view on culture as propaganda has coexisted with the sensible view that the country could not afford an avant-garde art scene, genuine writers and some musical genres (like hip-hop) if they were subjected to the same kind of mind-numbing heterophobia meted on the media. There are no North Korean Leonardo

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Padura, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea or José A. Vincench, though one could find their counterparts in China (or perhaps Vietnam) and in the history of the Soviet Union. This suggests that a country can preserve its totalitarian core without completely embarrassing itself and its cultural policy on the world stage. This is a lesson the Cuban leadership seems to have learned over the years. Better have dissonant art and literature than either of its alternative (free cultural production or retro-Stalinist folklore), especially if cases of dissonance remain rare and publicly contained. Less concession are made to academics whose work is to examine public policies. The result is social sciences and humanities that fake criticism, meaning they fake their own existence, at a huge cost for good governance and enlightened citizenship. As Octavio Paz wrote in Postdata (1970), “When a society becomes corrupt, the first thing that gangrenes is language. The critique of society, therefore, begins with grammar and with restoring the meaning of words.”4 One cannot prove that corruption of language is chronologically the canary in the coal mine, but it is most certainly the first order of business to restore the conditions for critical thinking and genuine intellectual endeavor. Eliminating parameters will not automatically end old habits, such as the tendency to think that in politics everything revolves around the alternative “revolution/ counterrevolution.” But it will make possible a renovation and an enlargement of the vocabulary used to analyze complex problems. The point about the distinction between primary and secondary parameters is to operationalize a fair amount of empirical evidence suggesting that in a country like Cuba, the lines not to be crossed are not born equal. Everybody knows that some topics are taboo, while others may be fair game, up to a point. To be engaged in an activity that requires public expression and imagination inevitably puts one in constant danger of crossing the lesser, governance-related lines. This can give the impression that cultural actors are constantly engaged in some form of transgression, but in fact the political leadership decides what counts as transgression. It can produce as many “dissidents” as needed, managing the cultural field as a “critical” space for its own benefits. One knows that a regime is authoritarian when the political leadership regularly challenges journalists and intellectuals to be more critical. Mention almost any artist or academic of a certain age, say in his or her fifties or older, including some very official soldiers on the cultural front, and chances are that he or she was “parametered” at one point or another, losing employment, being banned from publishing or performing for a while, sent to the countryside or to the department of garbage collection (like economist Omar Everleny Pérez), or simply spending a few unpleasant hours at the State Security’s office. They could also be sent to jail, like the economists Marta Beatriz Roque and Oscar Espinosa Chepe, and sociologist Héctor Palacios in 2003. That builds a certain type of character, shall we call it the Homo

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Cubanicus: tough, crafty and generally risk-averse. There are few openly dissident groups in Cuba and the least we can say is that “intellectuals” do not seem to dominate them, as was the case in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.5 Seizing this opportunity to talk more broadly about the interface between policies and culture, it seems clear that while most political scientists readily agree that culture matters a great deal in politics, and not just as “political culture,” works on the political significance or impact of cultural activities (e.g., visual art, literature, music) are primarily undertaken in the humanities and to a lesser extent in sociology, and much less in political science. Liberal democracies (especially those of the Anglo-Saxons) typically consider culture as a private matter that is only marginally affected by government spending and regulation. Public policy scholars rarely pay much attention to cultural policies, unless the study concerns a state with an ambitious political agenda of radical cultural change—typically, a totalitarian state. The literature on “totalitarian art” is abundant (interest for “Nazi art” or “Stalinist art” never seems to fade6), but the cultural regimes of dictatorships more generally receive very little scholarly attention. The Cuban regime is not as totalitarian as it used to be, but it is still totalitarian in design, if not always in practice. This hybridity is less a feature of the regime itself than a consequence of its contradictory contact points with real social life of Cubans on the island. Culture is always hybrid and plural, and for that reason it is always a rich repertoire of indicators to study real life rather than ideal types. When looking at public expression for instance, rather than looking at only two possibilities (freedom of expression or suppression of speech), one finds a gray zone of co-optation, manipulation, quid pro quo, selective application of shifting rules and accommodation. Cuban politics is simple in its logic but complex in its application. Simple, because for all the rhetoric about the never-ending revolution, the same top leaders have been in power for more than five decades, and the regime has not changed fundamentally since the first foundational years. The logic is one of both inclusion and exclusion: active inclusion of actors willing to participate in government’s sponsored activities and exclusion of everybody else. The identification of the government with the regime and the regime with the revolution makes legal opposition inconceivable. At the same time, to repeat, certain openings have taken place, in different fields and periods, in particular in the cultural field. The variations, the exceptions, subjective factors and not to forget, fortuna (or simply put: life) have intervened and made the subject matter interesting for a better understanding of how the Cuban regime works. The time when everything was either mandatory or forbidden being over, at least for the time being, government consultations of some sort can take place, though never from a posture of rights—unless one is talking, like Fidel Castro in 1961, about the “rights of the revolution.”

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Among the key issues that can be better elucidated by examining the cultural field from a political science perspective, this book examined the pendulum between periods of “opening” and “closing” of the public space for expression (seemingly a fixture of Communist rule), the fragmentation of the polity resulting in individuals and groups being treated differently, the need to secure cooperation and participation from a potentially vocal sector of the population, the production and reproduction of the regime’s master narrative and symbols, the charismatization of the political leadership and the regime’s minding of its image abroad. We saw that periods of opening in culture tend to parallel “liberalization” in economic policy. The latter attracts much more attention from scholars of comparative politics, but an understanding of the cultural field allows for a better understanding of processes of opening (in the forms of liberalization, democratization, relaxing of control, decreasing capacity of the state, among others) as a whole. Insiders of the old regimes always managed political transitions to democracy in Latin America. There is currently no transition of that sort in Cuba, but if it is to occur in the future, or even if no substantial change is undertaken in the short or medium term (in long term we will all be dead as Keynes once said), a better grasp of how actors are incited to participate will be invaluable, in particular actors who are supposed to be prone to criticism like writers, artists and academics. This is all germane to another discussion dear to historians: the connection between ideas and historical development. I am indebted to the work of historian of ideas Trygve R. Tholfsen, who wrote, “the connection between ideas and their consequences is significantly different in many ways from the causal relations characteristic of the natural world.” For him, “we are not dealing with the separate ‘cause’ and ‘effect,’ but rather with two interconnected entities, one of which not only influenced the other, but also became an essential component of it; moreover, the connection between them is logical and conceptual in character, an intrinsic relation different from the extrinsic relations of the world of nature.”7 Tholfsen invites us to use a “non-causal terminology” to capture the fluidity and at the same time tangible reality of embedded ideas in action.8 The same can be said about the interface between culture and politics, for they are indeed made of each other. Imagination in all its forms (sociological, political, cultural and artistic) is not merely a cause or an effect of its political environment: it is very much part of it.9 This important insight does not make the task of comparativists easier, in their quest for a better understanding of the relation between culture (and not only political culture) and politics. In fact, it probably requires an ability to examine politics from a cultural perspective. What we need is a theory of cultural regimes, one that would invite researchers to go beyond familiar oppositions (like state and society, government and opposition) and look for patterns of cultural production and reproduction, across time and places.

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NOTES 1. Octavio Paz, “La verdad frente al compromiso,” Foreword to Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Tristeza de la verdad: André Gide regresa de Rusia (Mexico City: Joaquín Mortiz, 1991), reproduced in Paz’s Obras completas, Vol.9: Ideas y costumbres I, La letra y el cetro (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995), 447. 2. Fortunately, there are several good studies of hip-hop, politics and underground (namely black) consciousness in Cuba. See for instance Tanya L. Saunders, Cuban Underground Hip Hop: Black Thoughts, Black Revolution, Black Modernity (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015). 3. I thank Ted Henken for suggesting this insightful expression. 4. Octavio Paz, “Postdata” (1970), reproduced in his Obras completas, vol. 8: El peregrino en su patria, Historia y política de México (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994), 293. 5. For Steven Saxonberg, “intellectuals normally dominate the dissident groups, although some professionals and workers may also join the ranks.” In his Transitions and Non-Transitions from Communism, Regime Survival in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 158. 6. See for instance Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art, trans. Robert Chandler (Oxford Books, 2nd edition, 2012); Middel Bolt and Jacob Wamberg ed., Totalitarian Art and Modernity (Aarhus University Press, 2010); Klara Kemp-Welch, Antipolitics in Central European Art (I.B. Tauris, 2014); Steven Heller, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State (Phaidon Press, 2011); Michal Glowinski, Totalitarian Speech (Peter Lang, 2014); Boris Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism: Avant-Garde, Aesthetic Dictatorship, and Beyond (Verso, 2011). 7. Trygve R. Tholfsen, Ideology and Revolution in Modern Europe, An Essay on the Role of Ideas in History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), 2. 8. Tholfsen, Ideology and Revolution in Modern Europe, 2. 9. Several years ago, I made the case ideas and ideologies were at least as important as so-called structural causes in explaining the emergence of insurgency in El Salvador, in my book The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador: Ideology and Political Will, Foreword by Mitchell A. Seligson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Latin American Series; London: Macmillan, International Political Economy Series).

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Index

Acanda, Jorge Luis, 181n27, 220–21 Acosta, Gustavo, 131 Adorno, Theodor W., 81 Advanced Institute of International Relations Raúl Roa García, 197 Agramonte, Roberto, 13 Aguila, Gorki, 69, 89 Aguilar León, Luis, 13 Aguilera, Alejandro, 136 Aguirre, Mirta, 13, 17, 34, 56n150 Aja, Antonio, 222 Alarcon, Ricardo, 140, 227 Alberto, Eliseo, 95n21, 103n142 Aldana, Carlos, 75 Alemany, Rafael, 18 Alfonso, Miguel, 225 Alfonzo, Carlos, 132 Alicia en el pueblo de Maravillas, 112 Almendros, Néstor, 33 Alonso, Alicia, 19, 97n45, 103n142 Alonso, Aurelio, 203–4, 208, 220 Alonso Tejada, Aurelio, 120n20 Altshuler, Ernesto, 221 Alvarez, Santiago, 33 Alzugaray, Carlos, 191–92, 225 Amnesty International, 51n92 Anderson, Jon Lee, 162–63, 167, 177 Angulo, Tanya, 154n22 Arango, Arturo, 8, 69, 181n27

Arcocha, Juan, 34 Arco Progresista, xxin12, Arenas, Reinaldo, 11, 13, 32, 34, 54n136, 67, 132 Arencibia Concepción, Andy, 91 Arendt, Hannah, 150–51 Ariza, René, 111 Arrechea, Alexandre, 133 Arrufat, Antón, 9, 31, 34, 39, 41, 68, 76, 84, 107, 168 Artaraz, Kepa, 109 Arte Calle, 12, 130 Arte Cubano, 67, 205 Artivism Institute Hannah Arendt. See Bruguera Association Hermanos Saíz, 18 Auster, Paul, 179 Ayala Ávila, Marta, 230n21 Ayers, Bill, 146 Azicri, Max, 209 Azor Hernández, Marlene, xxixn47 Bain, Mervyn J., 44n18 Baker, Josephine, 12 Ballagas, Manuel, 111 Ballester, Juan, 154n22 Balzac, Honoré de, 78 Baquero, Gastón, 98n58 Bárbaro el Urbano, 89 269

270 Index

Barnet, Miguel, 8, 39, 48n72, 74, 97n45, 111, 118 Barquero, Gastón, 13 Barthélémy, Françoise, 115 Barthes Roland, 109 Batista, Alberto, 84 Batista, Fulgencio, 5–7, 13–15, 29, 34, 137; coup of 1952, 14 Bauer, Raymond, 45n38 Beatriz Roque, Marta, 239 Bedia, José, 131 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 49n75 Bell Lara, José, 120n20 Benda, Julien, 82 Benedetti, Mario, xi Benítez Rojo, Antonio, 34, 54n136, 69–70 Berg, Alban, 81 Berman amendment to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 11 Berroa, Ignacio, 132 Beverley, John, 210–11 Bioy Casares, Adolfo, 180n5 Blanco, Roberto, 34 Blanqui, Louis Auguste, 15 Bloch, Vincent, 101n96 Bloom, Harold, 13 Bobes, Marilyn, 11 Bobes, Velia Cecilia, ix Bodes Torres, Jorge, 225 Bohemia, 110, 163, Bolaños, Roberto, 165 Bolívar, Simón, 15 Borge, Tomás, 64 Borges, Jorge Luis, 228 Borlo, José Manuel, 88–89 Borodin, Alexander, 49n75 Bourdieu, Pierre, xvi–xviii, 64 Boza, Luis, 132 Brahms, 49n75 Breton, André, 20 Brezhnev, Leonid, 20, 101n117, 190 Briel, Ernesto, 132

Brouwer, Leo, 71, 97n45 Brown, Francisco, 229n10 Bruguera, Tania, xiii, xix–xx, 68, 71, 76, 142–52, 164; Artivism Institute Hannah Arendt, 150; on censorship in Cuba, 72–74; Generic Capitalism, 146; Tatlin's Whisper #5, 146; Tatlin's Whisper #6, 142, 144, 146; Untitled (Havana 2000), 150 Burgos, Elizabeth, 114 Cabrera, Lydia, 13, 98n58 Cabrera, Servando, 34 Cabrera Infante, Guillermo, 9, 13, 22, 34, 35, 47n51, 52n105, 107, 110, 176 Cabrera Infante, Sabá, 22 Cabrera Moreno, Servando, 130 Cachivache Media, xxiiin25, Camnitzer, Luis, 76 Canel, Fausto, 33 Cantet, Laurent, 173 Carcassés, Robertico, 88, 237 Cárdenas Alfonso, Agustín, 129 Carlitos P and P, 89 Carpentier, Alejo, 13, 17–18, 107, 174, 236n100 Carpentier, Guillaume, 12 Carranza Valdés, Julio, 208 Carreño, Mario, 129 Casa de América (Madrid), 125n81 Casa de las Américas, 16–19, 31, 76, 85, 89, 106, 110, 114, 163, 197, 206 Casagran, Jesús, 12 Casas de Cultura, 18 Casaus, Victor, 107 Castañeda, Consuelo, 131 Castañeda, Jorge, 212 Castillo Pérez, Maikel, 88 Castro, Fidel: importance of personal contact with, 19, 87, 111;

Index

and political culture in Cuba, 5; and Popular Socialist Party (PSP), 16; representation of, 76, 135–37, 144, 152n3, 152–53n6, 154n22, 176; speech to Congress on Education and Culture (1971), 31, 32, 63, 218; speech to Cultural Congress (1968), 5; speech "Words to Intellectuals" (1961), 16, 20–29, 88, 90; style of leadership, ix, 8, 21–29, 61, 65, 78 Castro, Fidelito, 137 Castro, Mariela, 69 Castro, Raúl: contrast with Fidel Castro, 31; government under, 39, 67, 75, 91, 95n16, 143, 145, 176; and UMAP; and US President Obama, xiii, 143, 165 Castro regime, xxn1, xxin7, 4, 7, 10–14, 17–18, 35, 61–62, 65–66, 83, 97n45, 106, 112, 105, 127, 143, 179 caudillism, xvi, 65 CEA. See Study Center on the Americas Ceaucescu, Nicolae, 30, 83 Ceballos, Sandra, 128, 134, 155n27 censorship, vii, xi, xiii–xiv, xviii, 61–63, 68, 70–77, 94n5, 96–97n38, 98n62, 102n120, 103n142, 108, 114, 128, 130, 132, 135, 145, 147, 149, 152–53n6, 165–67, 169, 173, 179, 192, 202, 206, 220, 229n8; self-censorship, 68, 70, 74–75, 84, 165, 179, 192–93 Center Félix Varela, 198 Center for Contemporary Culture (Barcelona), 125n81 Center for Demographic Studies (CED), 196

271

Center for Hemispheric and the United States Studies (CEHSEU), 197 Center for International Economic Research (CIEI), 196 Center for Psychological and Sociological Research (CIPS), 196 Center for Public Administration Studies (CEAP), 196 Center for Research and Development of Cuban Culture Juan Marinello, 197, 202, 235n91 Center for Research in the World Economy (CIEM), 197 Center for Sociopolitical and public Opinion Studies (CESO), 197 Center for Studies of Political Alternatives (CEAP), 196 Center of Martí Studies (CEM), 197 Center Wifredo Lam, 155n27 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 73, 125n81, 149 Central Institute of Radio and Television, 18, 89 Cepero Bonilla, Raúl, 13 Cervantes, Miguel de, 115, 123n60 Céspedes, Carlos Manuel de, 64, 136 Chaguaceda, Armando, 192, 198–99, 206, 230n19 Chanan, Michael, 12, 49n80–81, 98n59, 112 Chappi Docurro, Tania, 199 Chavarria, Daniel, 11 Chehabi, Houchang E., 42 Chekhov, Anton, 49n75 China, 64, 179; censorship, 3, 74–75, 79, 95–96n22; Communist Party, 40; Cultural revolution, 96n27; impact of internet, 6; Mao's speech at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, 26–28; Mao Zedong, 26–28, 30; model for Cuba, 15, 26–28; Rectification campaign in China, 59n93;

272 Index

Xiaoping, Deng, 75 Christian Centre Martin Luther King, 198 Christian Democratic Party of Cuba, xxin12, Ciclón, 13 Cienfuegos, Osmay, 33 Ciné Cubano, 67, 112, 205 Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, 130 Clark, Toby, 30 Cluster, Dick, 208 Cobo Roura, Narciso A., 224 Cofiño López, Manuel, 3 Cohen, J.M., 54n136 Cole, Nat 'King', 12 Colina, Enrique, 87, 91 Collmann, Lillian Oliva, 105, 116 Coltman, Leycester, 216 Columbus, Christopher, 141 Committees for the Defense of Revolution (CDR), 61, 183n53 Communist Party of Cuba, xii–xiii, xviii, 16, 18–20, 50n84, 62, 65, 75, 87, 108, 110, 112, 114, 117, 195–96, 199–200, 206–7, 219, 224; Congress(es) of, 49n78, 50n84, 95n16, 195, 199–200, 213, 215, 230n21; Department of Revolutionary Orientation, 18, 103n142, 197; Integrated Revolutionary Organization, 65; Politbureau, 230n21; Popular Socialist Party (PSP), 4, 33, 52n105 Communist Youth Union (UJC), 107–8, 196, 227 comparing Cuba with: China, 6, 15, 40, 74–75, 239; East Germany, 11, 81–82; Ethiopia, 29, 35, 92; fascist Italy, 63, 82; Iran, 2, 42, 58n192, 99n68; Nazi Germany, 18, 30, 32, 35, 63, 81, 240;

North Korea, 41; Peru, 2; Romania, 30, 82–83; Soviet Union, 2, 9–10, 30–32, 36, 39–40, 61, 68, 82, 100n95, 121n41; Vietnam, 8, 64, 239; Yugoslavia, 62 Concretist painters ("the Ten"), 129 Conde, Roberto, 199–200 Confederation of Cuban workers (CTC), 55n149 Congress on Education and Culture (1971), 51n98, 218 Constitution, 9, 20–21, 63, 71, 78, 170, 193, 201–2, 223, 227, 229n4; on education and culture, 78, 193 Consuega, Hugo, 33 Conte Aguero, Luis, 64 Contracorriente, 206, 235n91 Convivencia (Center of studies), x, xii Coordinating Commission for Cuban National Encounter, x Coronel, Pedro, 131 Corrales, Javier, vii Corriente Agramontista, x Cortés, Hernán, 15 Council for Social Sciences, 197 Coyula, Mario, 31 Coyula, Miguel, 94n5 Craven, David, 114, 191 Cremata, Juan Carlos, 12, 32, 87, 91, 103n137, 152n6 Crespo, Jorge, 12 Crespo, Mireya, 120n20 Crespo, Yuniasky, 227 Crombet, Jaime, 107–8 Cruz Azaceta, Luis, 34, 130 Cruz Varela, María Elena, 12, 67, 76 Cuadernos de Pensamiento Plural, x Cubadebate, 68 Cubahora, 68 CubaLex, xiii Cuban Academy of Sciences, 194 Cuban Book Institute (ICL), 17, 41, 207 Cuban Cinematheque, 17

Index

Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), xiii, xxin12 Cubanet, xxiiin25 Cuban exile, xix, xxivn39, 9–11, 47n48, 49n77, 69, 77, 81, 83, 85, 100n95, 105–6, 110–11, 113, 118, 127, 130, 140, 202, 207, 215; internal exile (insilio), 9, 11, 83 Cuban Fund of Cultural Property (FCBC), 128, 133 Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), 16, 18– 19, 31–32, 34, 50n83, 55n149, 85–86, 89–90, 111–14, 133, 164, 173, 208 Cuban Institute of Music (ICM), 133 Cuban National Dance Ensemble, 17 cubanology, 219–20 Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), xxin12, Cuban Recording and Music Publishing Company, 17 Cuban Society of Philosophical Research, 196 Cuba Posible, x, xii Cuba Socialista, 216 Cuenca, Arturo, 131 Cuesta Morúa, Manuel, xiii Cuesta Palomo, Ruben, 88 Cuevas, José Luis, 131 Cugat, Xavier, 12 Cultural Congress (1968), 206 Cuzán, Alfred, 99n62, 233n62 Daniel, Youli, 78 Darnton, Robert, xiv 62, 81 Debates Americanos, 235n91 De Blasio, Bill, 150 Debray, Régis 15, 43n11, 96n23 De la Barra, Pablo León, 149 De la Cruz Ochoa, Ramón, 222, 224 De la Nuez, Iván, xv, 29, 105 De la Paz, Luis, 132 De Lara, Dionisio, 13

273

Delgado, Angel, 12, 76 Delgado, Frank, 71, 237 Delgado Sánchez, Léster, 224 Del Llano, Eduardo, 8, 40 Del Valle, Rubén, 88 Desnoes, Edmundo, 35 Díaz, Alberto ("Korda"), 127 Díaz, Jesús, xix, 19, 32, 76, 105–19, 147, 164, 173, 208; 55 hermanos, 112–13; Dime algo sobre Cuba, 124n76; El Caimán Barbudo, 106–11, 114, 116, 123n62; Juventud Rebelde, 106; Las initiales de la tierra, 111, 114– 15, 173; La piel y la máscara, 124n76; Las cuatro fugas de Manuel, 124n76; Las palabras perdidas, 116, 124n66, 124n76; Lejanía, 112–13; Los anillos de la serpiente, 117; Los años duros, 106; Pasado perfecto, 166; Pensamiento Crítico, 108–12, 114, 116, 120n21, 120–21n30; Polvo Rojo, 112–13; Siberiana, 124n76 Díaz, Julio A., 229n10 Díaz de Villegas, Néstor, 34 Díaz Espí, Pablo, 122n56, 125n84 Díaz Mantilla, Daniel, 227 Díaz Martínez, Manuel, 35, 54n136, 93n1 Díaz Torres, Daniel, 87, 113 Díaz Vásquez, Julio A., 190 dictatorship, viii, 1, 8, 15, 29, 36, 61–62, 66, 83, 87, 92, 127, 178–79, 193, 238; hybrid, viii; mass/grassroots, 1; totalitarian, 20, 30, 35, 63, 78, 179, 187–88, 191, 238, 240; universities under, 82 Diego, Eliseo Alberto, 77, 174, 236n100

274 Index

Dikotter, Frank, 96n27 Dilla Alfonso, Haroldo, xvii, 178, 208, 215 Dioniso, Humberto, 132 Directorate of Military Counterintelligence, Cuban Armed Forces, 61 dissidence, xiii, xviii, xix, xxin7, xxiin12, 11, 41, 63, 66, 70, 81, 105, 108, 124n17, 129, 133, 140, 148, 164, 168, 170, 210, 212–13, 235n91, 237, 239, 242n5 dissonance, xi, xix, xxvii, 8, 32, 37, 41, 66, 68, 70, 93n37, 106, 108, 112, 115, 117, 144, 148–49, 154n19, 169, 191, 201, Djilas, Milovan, 3 Dohrn, Bernadine, 146 Domínguez, Jorge, 207–9, 216, 220, 235n94 Don Quijote, 109, 115, 123n60 Dopico Black, Georgina, 36 Doré, Gustave, 17 Dortícos, Osvaldo, 17, 52n102 Dos Passos, John, 109 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 49n75 Drezner, Daniel W., 45n32 Duany, Jorge, xiii Duchamp, Marcel, 139 Dudintsec, Vladimir, 31 Duharte, Emilio, 218, 222–23 Edwards, Jorge, 98n59 Eiriz, Antonia, 4, 9, 129–30 El Caimán Barbudo, 32, 106–11, 114, 116, 123n62, 208 El Estornudo, xxiiin25 Eliade, Mircea, 64 El Puente, 32, 111 El Sable, 32 El Sexto. See Maldonado Machado, Danilo Elso, Juan Francisco, 125n84, 125n85, 126n86, 131, 154n16

Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, 118 Encuentro en la red, 125n80 Entralgo, Elías, 13 Escobar, Reinaldo, 102n130 Espacio Aglutinador, 134, 155n26 Espacio Laical, x, xii, 198, 216 Espina Prieto, Mayra, 8, 196, 218, 221, 225 Espinosa Chepe, Oscar, 239 Esson, Tomás, 131 Esténger, Rafael, 13 Estévez, Abilio, 174 Estorino, Abelardo, 34, 97n45 Everleny Pérez, Omar, 198, 239 Fabelo, Roberto, 97n45 Fandiño, Roberto, 33, 87 Farber, Samuel, 12, 56n156, 64, 90n176, 164, 168 Fariñas, Guillermo, 101n103 Faulkner, William, 176 Faya, Ana J., 208, 109 Federation of University students (FEU), 55n149 Fedorov, Tatiana 16 Fegueredo, Ricardo, 87 Félix Varela Center, 164 Fernandes, Sujantha, ix, 39, 46n45, 79–80 Fernández, Daniel, 34 Fernández, Jorge, 72 Fernández, Pablo Armando, 9, 35, 39, 85, 97n45 Fernández Estrada, Julio Antonio, 223 Fernández Retamar, Roberto, 8, 19, 35, 38, 79, 85, 97n45 Fernández, Antonio Eligio ("Tonel"), xxixn40, 131, 135 Ferrer, Pedro Luis, 71, 237 Fine Art Museum (Havana), 134 Fine Arts San Alejandro National Academy, 129, 153n8 Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 2, 41 Five Grey Years. See Quinquenio Gris Flores, Baeza, 7

Index

Ford Foundation, 118, 125n81 Fornet, Ambrosio, 35, 67, 90 Fors, José Manuel, 131, 154n16 Foundation Fernando Ortiz, 197 Francisco, René, 131, 154n22 Franco, Ania, 34 Franqui, Carlos, 7, 34–35, 56n150, 85, 202 Frederick II of Prussia, 8 Freedom House, xii–xiii FREEMUSE, xiii Fuentes, Carlos, 79, 180n5 Fuentes, José Lorenzo, 31 Fukuyama, Francis, 81 Fung Riverón, Thalía, 120n20, 198 Fusco, Coco, 71, 97n44, 133, 141, 155n26, 159n88 Gabroussenko, Tatiana, 41 Galeano, Eduardo, xi, 117 Gandhi, Jennifer, viii Garaicoa, Carlos, 158n79 García, Daura Olema, 25 García Bárcena, Rafael, 13 García Buchaca, Edith, 33–35, 52n105 García Espinosa, Julio, 97n45 García Márquez, Gabriel, 8, 98n57 García Marruz, Fina, 97n45 Garciandia, Flavio, 131, 174 García Pleyán, Carlos, 208 García Tudurí, Rosaura, 13 García Valdez, Victor Manuel, 129 García Villamil, Felipe, 132 Gattorno, Antonio, 129 General Prosecutor of the Republic (Fiscalía general), 197 Geoffray, Marie-Laure, ix, xviii–xix, 11, 69, 80, 88–89, 101n96, 167 Gessen, Masha, 193 Giral, Sergio, 86–87 Gironella, Alberto, 131 Giroud, Iván, 173 Giuliano, Maurizio, xi, 236n103 Gleijeses, Piero, 209, 216 Global Learning, 198

275

Godoy, Alberto, 132 Goebbels, Josef, 30 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 78 Goldfarb, Jeffrey, 41 Gómez, Sarah, 33 Gómez, Victor, 132 Gómez Cabezas, Enrique, 222 González, Elián, 140 González, Juan Sí, 12 González, Manuel E., 140–41 González, Reynaldo, 39 González Díaz, Alejandro, 46n46 González Echevarría, Roberto, 118, 216 González Toledo, Julián, 18, 89 Gordon, Joy, 224 Gordon-Nesbitt, Rebecca, 36, 49n77, 103n135 Gramsci, Antonio, 201, 217, 220, 222 Granados, Manuel, 9 Granma (newspaper), 116, 148 Grenier, Yvon, 88, 242n9 Grossman, Vassili, 176 Groys, Boris, vii–viii, 5, 46n40, 78, 143 Grüttner, Michael, 82 Guanche, Julio César, 218, 223, 226 Guang, Chen, 79 Guasch Estévez, Jorge Luis, 225 Guerra, Lillian, 1, 15, 32, 111 Guerra, Ramiro, 13 Guerra, Wendy, 71, 97n42 Guevara, Alfredo, 17–18, 31, 34, 38, 52n102, 52n105, 56n150, 103n142, 111–14, 173 Guevara, Ernesto "che", 1, 4, 7, 11, 15, 19, 25, 36, 43n1, 96n23, 110, 128, 135–36, 194, 238 Guillén, Nicolás, 13, 32, 66, 107, 236n100 Guillén Landrián, Nicolás, 33 Guillermoprieto, Alma, x Gunder Frank, André, 109 Gutiérrez, Pedro Juán, 11, 52n100, 71, 174 Gutiérrez Alea, Tomás, 19, 33, 50n83, 86–87, 89, 113, 239

276 Index

Gutiérrez Urdaneta, Luis, 208 Habermas, Jürgen, 226 Hacer, 12 Halebsky, Sandor, 209 Hammett, Samuel Dashiell, 176 Haraszti, Miklós, 38–39, 42, 49n75, 94n5, 99n63 Hart Dávalos, Armando, 17–18, 20, 38, 52n102, 85, 90, 114, 117, 208, 215 Hartman, Karl Amadeus, 99n83 Havana Biennial, 73, 133, 140, 142, 147, 149, 206 Havana International Book fair, 175, 187, 206, 227 Havana Times, x Havel, Vaclav, xi, 117 Heckel, Erich, 30 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 81 Hemingway, Ernest, 176 Henken, Ted, 242n3 Heras de León, Eduardo, 34, 76, 123n62 Heredia, José María, 202 Hermanos (brothers) Saíz Association, 203 Hermanos de Causa, 89 Hernández, Alfredo A., 195 Hernández, Hiram, 181n27 Hernández, Iván, xiii Hernández, Orlando, 91 Hernández, Rafael, x, 8, 184n70, 187, 198–99, 203, 206, 232n56, 233n61, 237; on civil society, 210–11; Debating U.S.-Cuban Relations, 209; Ensayo cubano del siglo XX, 207; as gatekeeper, 206–15; on Gramsci, 211, 215; Mirar a Cuba/Looking at Cuba, 206, 208, 210–13; as moderator, 218; Otra guerra, 207, 210; Temas, xii, 39, 68, 141, 148, 187, 189, 191, 198–99, 206–7, 215–28;

Ultimo Jueves, 68, 141, 190, 199, 206, 217; views on opposition, 210, 212–13 Hernández Castro, Hiram, 221 Hernández Espinosa, Eugenio, 34 Hernández Martínez, Humberto, 156n42 Hernández Valdés, Manuel, 156n42 Higher Institute of Art (Instituto Superior de Arte, ISA), 17, 123n62, 129–30, 198 Hijuelos Oscar, 168, 172 Hilbig, Wolfgang, 81 Himes, Chester, 176 Hitler, Adolph, 8, 30, 32, 81 Honecker, Erich, 30 Hoy, 216 Human Rights, xiii, 11, 51n92, 66, 97n45, 210, 212–13, 221, 224–25 Human Rights Watch (HRW), xiii Hung, Chang-tai, 3 Iber, Patrick, 99n92 ICAIC. See Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry Ichaso, Francisco, 13 Ilyenkov, Evald, 191 independent bloggers and journalists, x–xi, xiii–xiv, xxiiin25, 87, 102n130, 142, 144, 148, 162 Infante, Pedro, 12 Inkeles, Alex, 45n38 Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). See Higher Institute of Art Integrated Revolutionary Organization (ORI), 65 International Book Fair, 71, 84 International Labour Organization, 224 International Migration Research Center, 196 internet, xiii, 7 Ionesco, Eugène, 152n6, 91 Jardines, Alexis, 120n21, 191, 229n8 Jarrar, Khaled, 150

Index

Jian, Guo, 79 Jiménez Leal, Orlando, 22 Johnson, Peter, 19, 57n162 Joselit, David, 146 José Martí Library, 103n142, 198 Judt, Tony, 9, 82 July 26th Movement, 14, 17, 34, 202 Juventud Rebelde, 32, 88, 106, 162–64 Kádar, János, 39 Kadaré, Ismael, 179 Kafka, Franz, 109 Kapcia, Antoni, 24 Kapuściński, Ryszard, 29, 35, 92 Karimi, Keywan, 58n192 Kcho (Alexis Leiva Machado), xix–xx, 18, 46n45, 139–42, 152; All the Paths, 142; Con permiso de la historia, 128; The Desire to Die for Others, 138; Don't save me if I die, 137; Dont Thank Me for the Silence, 142; Everything Change, 142; Infinite Column no.1, 139; In the Eye of History, 139; La Regata, 140–41; Margin Notes, 138; The Road of Nostalgia, 142; Salvation, 142; Speaking of the Obvious Was Never a Pleasure to Us, 142; Vía Crucis, 141 Kerensky, Alexander, 14 Keynes, John Maynard, 241 Khomeini, Huhollah ("Ayatollah"), 2 Kim Il-sung, 8 Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig, 30 Kirk, John M., 74, 83, 98n52, 168, 209 Kiš, Danilo, 62 Klepak, Al, 207, 209, 216, 233n61 Kochelyaeva, Nina 16 Kolakowski, Lezlek 15 Konstantinov, Fedor Vasil evich, 193 Krastev, Ivan, 44n23 Kumaraswami, Par, 26 Kundera, Milan, 208

277

La Aldea Maldita, xxiiin25, La Alianza, 89 Laboratorio Casa Cuba, x Ladies in White (Las Damas de Blanco), xiii, xxin12 Lafargue, Paul, 235n99 La Gaceta de Cuba, 67, 111, 117, 164, 205, 209 La Jiribilla, 68, 115 Lam, Wifredo, 12, 18, 129, 139 Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di, xi La Pupila Insomne, 68 Laqueur, Walter, 190 La Rosa Blanca, x Latin American Solidarity Organization, 120n25 Latin American Studies Association, xiii Leal, Eusebio, 97n45, 140 Leante, César, 35 Lechuga, Carlos, 87, 210 Leiseca, Marcia, 76 Lenin, Vladimir, 9, 14–15, 32, 52n103, 64, 69, 109, 189, 222 Lennon, John, 69 León, Argeliers, 194 Le Riverend, Julio, 13 Lesaga, José Ignacio, 13 Letras Libres (Mexico), 125n81 Letter of the Ten, 164 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 109 Lewis, Oscar, 109 Leyva Novo, Reynier, 137–39; Collection Novo Anniversary, 138; Don't Save Me If I Die, 137; Margin Notes, 138; Revolution is Abstraction, 138; Revolution Once and One Thousand Times, 137 Lezama Lima, José, 3, 9, 13, 34, 36, 54n136, 77, 57n162, 107, 174, 236n100 Llinás, Guido, 33 Lockwood, Lee 36, 52n101 Loomis, John A., 33 López, César, 9, 34, 76 López, Lucía, 175

278 Index

Los Carpinteros, 149 Loynaz, Dulce María, 18, 77 Ludwig, Peter, 133 Ludwig Foundation, 130 Ludwig Museum, 140 Lukács, György, 96n32 Lunacharsky, Anatole, 30 Lunes de Revolución, 32, 34–35, 56n150, 79, 85, 119n12, 219 Lusby, Jo, 7 Maceo, Antonio, 202 Machado Bermúez, Ricardo J., 120n20 Madison, James, 29 Madrigal, Roberto, 132 magical thinking, 92 Makarov, A. D., 193 Maldonado Machado, Danilo (El Sexto), 76, 139–40 Mañach, Jorge, 13, 98n58 Manea, Norman 30 Manet, Eduardo, 33 Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, 20 Mankell, Hening, 165 Mao Zedong, 26–28, 30; Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art, 26–28 Mariel Boatlift, 113, 140, 122n48 Marinello, Juan, 13, 17 Marrero, Leví, 7, 13 Marrero, Meira, 136 Martí, José, 118, 137–38, 169, 188, 193, 196, 199, 202, 218, 220, 229n5 Martínez-Fernánez, Luis, 48n70 Martínez Heredia, Fernando, 108, 117, 120n20, 193, 202–3, 208 Martínez, Raúl, 34, 130 Martín Sánchez, Antonio Raudilio, 224 Marx, Karl, 3, 78, 136, 188–91, 193, 222, 235n99 Marxism-Leninism, 20, 188–90, 193– 96, 201, 217 Matilla, Andry, 199–200 Mauss, Marcel, xvi Mendieta, Ana, 130

Mendive, Manuel, 34 Menéndez, Aldito, 130 Mercader, Ramón, 168–69 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, xvi–xvii Mesa de la Unidad de Acción Democrática (Democratic Roundable, MUAD), xxin12 Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, xiii, 30 Michaelsen, Eduardo, 132 Milanés, Pablo, 69, 71, 84 Milgram, Stanley, 146 Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP), 33, 55n147, 176 Milosz, Czeslaw, 4 MINFAR (Ministry of the Armed Forces), 114, 196 MININT (Ministry of Interior), 61, 63, 168–69, 196–97 Ministry of Culture, 16, 19–20, 31, 45n39, 85, 89, 173, 219 Ministry of Economy and Planning, 197 Ministry of Education, 16, 18, 197 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 197 Ministry of Higher Education, 197 Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, 197 Miranda, Carmen, 12 Miró Cardona, José, 1 Molotov, Viacheslav, 2 MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), 129, 139 Monreal González, Pedro, 208 Monsiváis, Carlos, xi Montaner, Carlos Alberto, 5, 19, 48n73 Monte Rouge, 125n85 Montoto, Arturo, 149 Moore, Robin, 12 Morales Domínguez, Esteban, 39, 67 Moravia, Alberto, 94n8 Morejón, Nancy, 39, 85, 97n45, 111 Moreno Fraginal, Manuel, 13 Mosquera, Gerardo, 131, 132, 134, 135, 143–44, 147, 154n19, 154n22 Moulin, Léo, 21 Mo Yan, 7 Murakami, Haruki, 165

Index

Mussolini, Benito, 20, 63, 82 Mutis, Alvaro, 180n5 Nagy, Imre, 96n32 National Art Schools (ENA), 17, 49n77, 129 National Assembly of People's Power, 85, 139 National Ballet of Cuba, 129 National Choir, 17 National Commission for Museums and Monuments, 17 National Congress on Education and Culture (1971), 32, 90 National Council of Culture (CNC), 16, 18, 25, 52n102, 52n105, 103n142, 123n62, 155n26, 155n27 National Council of Performing Arts, 91 National Council of Plastic Arts (CNAP), 76, 88, 133 National Cuban American Foundation, xxin12, National Folklore Ensemble, 17 National Institute for Agrarian Reform (INRA), 15–16 National Institute of Economic Research, 197 National Institute of Ethnology and Folklore, 194 National Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), xxin12, National Symphony Orchestra, 17 National System of Revolutionary Instruction, 197 National Theatre, 17 National Union of Arts and Entertainment Workers (SNTAE) 16 National Union of Cuban writers and Artists (UNEAC), 16, 18–19, 31–32, 48n68, 48n72, 54n136, 57n162, 74–75, 85, 89–90, 107, 117, 128, 147, 164, 208 Navarro, Desiderio, 26, 54n130, 90 Navarro, Félix, xiii

279

Neruda, Pablo, 82 New Economic Policy (NEP), 109 New JEWEL Movement, 48n62 Nguyen Qui Duc, 8 Nicado García, Miriam, 230n21 Nicola, Noel, 71 Nicolas I (Tsar), 8 Nogueras, Luis Rogelio, 107, 124n66 Nolde, Emil, 30 Novoa, Glexis, 131 Nuestro Tiempo, 13 Nuñez Jiménez, Antonio, 194 Obama, Barack, xii–xiii, 40, 66, 76, 101n97, 143, 145, 176 Observatorio Crítico, x Ochoa, Arnaldo, 116 Oliva, Pedro Pablo, 87–88, 129, 149 Oliva, Tomás, 33 Olof Palme International Center, 125n81 Onda Libre, 89 opening and closing, 30–42, 66, 154n22, 155n26, 206, 212 Ordoquí, Joaquín 15, 17 Organization of American States, 89 Orígenes, 13 Orizondo, Rogelio, 91 Ortega, Jaime (Cardinal), 178 Ortega y Gasset Foundation, 125n81 Ortega y Gasset, José, 120n21 Ortiz, Fernando, 3, 13, 77 Orwell, George, 71, 176, 187–88, 227, 228n1 Otero, Lisandro, 107 Overy, Richard, 2, 8, 81 Pablo Iglesias Foundation, 125n81 Padilla, Heberto, 3, 11, 15, 31, 33–35, 56n150, 67, 76, 78, 84–85, 98n59, 107, 110, 120n14, 176, 206 Padrón, Ián, 11 Padura, Leonardo, xx, 8, 10–11, 40, 71, 83–84, 91, 161–80, 237, 239; awards, 180n4;

280 Index

El Caimán Barbudo, 162, 179; El hombre que amaba a los perros, 161, 163, 166, 168–70; Entre dos siglos, 175; on generations, 170–74; Herejes, 168–70; journalism, 161–64, 167–68, 174–79; Juventud Rebelde, 162–64; La Gaceta de Cuba, 164; La memoria y el olvido, 175; La neblina de ayer, 167; La novela de mi vida, 167, 173; Máscaras, 166, 169; Retorno a Íthaca, 149, 173; Un hombre en una isla, 171, 175 Paglen, Trevor, 150 Paideia, 12 Palabra Nueva, xii Palacios, Héctor, 239 parameters, xix, 24, 32, 36, 42, 67–77, 81, 83–93, 110–12, 119, 161– 65, 168, 179, 238; primary, 63–66, 84, 87, 161, 176, 238; secondary, 63, 66–70, 87–88, 91, 96n23, 161, 165, 238 Paranagua, Paulo, 10, 50n83, 113, 175 participation, vii–viii, 2, 5, 6–7, 55n137, 63, 66, 70, 81, 86, 90, 134, 152, 178, 199–202, 204–5, 212–15, 218, 221–22, 226, 228, 234n90, 240–41 Party School Ñico López, 197 Pasternak, Boris, 31 Pavón Tamayo, Luis, 89–90, 103n133 Paz, Octavio, xi, 6, 237, 239 Paz, Senel, 11, 40, 86, 93, 97n45, 174 Pedraza, Silvia, 118, 141 Peláez, Amelia, 129 Peña, Umberto, 130 Penal Code, 71, 97n41 Pensamiento Crítico, 39, 108–12, 114, 116, 120n21, 120–21n30202, 208 Péret, Benjamin, 77

Pérez, Fernando, 85 Pérez, Louis A., 216 Pérez Monzón, Gustavo, 131 Perfiles de la Cultura Cubana, 235n91 Picasso, Pablo, 17, 35 Piñera, Virgilio, 3, 7, 9, 34, 39, 41, 44n14, 57n162, 77, 236n100 Piñera Llera, Humberto, 13 Pizarro, Franciso, 15 Placer, Gustavo, 235n98 Plato, viii, 77, 98n62, 145 Platt Amendment, 14 PM (Pasado Meridiano), 22, 25, 34, 56n150, 87 political science in Cuba, 187–235 Ponce de León, Fidelio, 129 Poniatowska, Elena, xi Ponjuan, Eduardo, 131, 154n22 Ponte, Antonio José, xi, 69, 90, 118, 173 Pope Benedict XVI, 178 Pope Francis, 140 Popular Socialist Party (PSP), 4, 33, 52n105 Porro, Ricardo, 49n77 Portante, Jan, 116 Portela, Ena Lucía, 11 Portell Vilá, Herminio, 13 Portes, Alejandro, 216 Portocarrero, René, 128, 153n7 Portuondo, José Antonio, 13, 17, 79, 114 Power, Samantha, 148 Prats Páez, Rolando, 12 Prats, Delfín, 31, 39 Prensa Latina, 17 Prieto, Abel, 18, 77, 87, 147, 184n58, 208, 212 Prieto, Dmitri, 181n27 Proust, Marcel, 109 Pu, Bao, 74 Pushkin, Alexander, 49n75 Pussy Riot, 150 Putnam, Robert, 32

Index

Quesada, Armando, 89, 123n62 Quinquenio gris (Five Grey Years), 31, 37, 90, 176, 207, 218 Rafuls, Daniel, 195, 199–200, 227 Ramos, Sandra, 133, 140 Raudel Escuadrón Patriota, 89 recognition, viii, xi, xvii–xx, 3–4, 8, 10, 22, 24, 34, 36, 37, 39, 41–42, 44n20, 48n68, 57n163, 75–83, 121n41, 174, 180n5, 161–62, 191, 207, 228 Rectification campaign in China, 59n93 Rectification Process of Errors and Negative Tendencies, 18, 37, 194, 223 Renovación Urbana, 89 Revolución y Cultura, 67, 84, 140, 205 Revolutionary Offensive (1968), 109 revolution as slogan and ideology, 2–4, 7, 21–29, 61, 63–65, 74, 78– 79, 84, 94n9, 94n13, 106–8, 110, 112, 137, 189–90, 192, 200, 222 revolution of 1933, 202 revolution (propagandistic use of), xix, xiii, xvi, xix, xxin10, xxivn39 Revuelta, Vicente, 34 Reynaldo, Andrés, 132 Richter, Gerhard, 136 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nicolai, 49n75 Ríos, Orlando, 132 Ripoll, Carlos, 31, 36, 38, 120n30 Ritter, Archibald, 192, 209 Rivera, Diego, 20 Rivero, Miguel, 117 Rivero, Raúl, 67 Roa, Raúl, 12, 13, 191 Roca, Blas, 34 Rodenbeck, Judith, 149 Rodríguez, Carlos Rafael, 5, 13, 38 Rodríguez, José Mario, 111 Rodríguez, Pedro Pablo, 220 Rodríguez, Silvio, 36, 69, 71, 84, 88, 97n45, 140, 203

281

Rodríguez, Silvito, 69 Rodríguez Brey, Ricardo, 131 Rodríguez Cárdenas, Carlos, 135 Rodríguez García, Annabelle, 118 Rodríguez Rivera, Guillermo, 11, 107, 124n66 Rodríguez Sánchez, Dagoberto, 149 Rodríguez Varela, Miguel, 107 Rojas, Fernando, 88, 148, 229n10 Rojas, Orlando, 87 Rojas, Rafael, ix, 11, 14, 25, 37, 39, 47n51, 94n9, 94n13, 98n58, 114, 137–38, 158n79, 202, 206–7, 229n5, 229n6, 235n100 Rojo, Vicente, 131 Roldán, Alberto, 87 Rosales, Guillermo, 9 Rosenberg Weinreb, Amelia, 101n96, 116 Ross, Alex, 81, 99n83 Rosselini, Roberto, 82 Rouhani, Hassan, 58n192 Rueschemeyer, Marilyn, 44n20 Ruta 11, 89 Saavedra, Lázaro, 149 Sahkarov, Andrei, xi Saint Just, Louis Antoine de, 20 Salinger, J.D., 176 Salon de Mai, 55n137, 206 Sánchez, Tómas, 72, 130, 149, 153n12, 153n13 Sánchez, Yoani, xi, 87, 102n130, 142, 144, 148, 162 Sánchez Vásquez, Adolfo, 191 Sandinists, 48n62, 211 Sandoval, Orieta, 195 Sansal, Boualem, 229n2 Santamaria, Haydée, 48n73, 103n142 Santí, Enrico Mario, 55n137 Saramago, José, xi Sarduy, Severo, 13, 98n58, 174 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 22, 36 Saunders, Tanya L., 102n127 Saxonberg, Steven, 242n5

282 Index

Scheidel, Walter, 95n15 School of Behavioral Art, 147 Schools of Revolutionary Instruction (EIR), 106 Schubert, Franz, 49n75 Scott, James, 101n96 Selassie, Haile, 29, 35 Selser, Gregorio, 109 Serguera, Jorge, 89 Service, Robert, 190 Simo, Ana María, 111, 121n39 Sinyavsky, Andrei, 78 Skocpol, Theda, 6 Smith, Hedrick, 40, 68, 101n117 Smith, Roberto, 102n120 Smith, Wayne, 235n94, 235n95 Soandry, 89 socialist realism, 25, 110 Social Sciences Institute, 194 sociology in Cuba, 195–96, 216 Socrates, 98n62 Solás, Humberto, 33, 113 Solé, Maria Elena, 55n147 Somos Más, xxin12 Sontag, Susan, 36 Soto, Leandro, 136 Soto, Lionel, 197 Soto Ortiz, Leandro, 131 Soviet Union, 40–41, 46n40, 52n111, 54n136, 57n163, 64–65, 97n45, 130, 151, 170, 172, 176, 190, 193–96, 211, 218, 227; collapse, 116 Special Period in Time of Peace, 9, 37, 140 Stalin, Joseph, 2, 4, 8, 14, 30, 42, 45n31, 45n31, 49n75, 64, 66, 78, 190, 218; stalinism, 151, 176–77 Stallabrass, Julian, 141 Stan, Lavinia, 83 state, vii–viii, x–xi, xiii, xvii–xviii, xxn4, xx 2, xxivn39, 2, 5–6, 9–11, 16, 18–21, 25, 27, 39–

41, 46n39, 62, 69, 70, 74, 77, 80, 85, 94n5, 226–27; communist, 40–41; constitution, 9, 20–21, 63, 71, 78, 170, 193, 201–2, 223, 227, 229n4; control of media, 48n72; Council of State, xii, 18, 61, 85, 94n10, 197; cultural institutions and regulation, 35, 44n20, 128, 134–35, 144, 164, 193, 198, 202, 206, 214, 228; curator, chap.4; fascist, 63, 82; as gatekeeper, vii–viii, x, 10, 74, 130, 133–34, 144–45, 152, 161, 206; intelligence and counterintelligence, 61; Marxist-Leninist account of, 20, 189–90, 212; one-party, 39, 63, 151, 190, 195, 200; personalistic, xvi, 65; recognition by, 81–82; state capitalism, 31; totalitarian, 20, 30, 35, 63, 78, 179, 187–88, 191, 238, 240 State Security, 70, 134, 149, 239 Steiner, George, 98n61 Strauss, Richard, 99n84 Stravinsky, Igor, 81 Study Center on the Americas (CEA), 11, 39, 198, 202, 207–9, 211 Suárez, Ezequiel, 134 Sumac, Ima, 12 Summit of the Americas, 89 Superior Council for Social Sciences, 197 Tabió, Juan Carlos, 19 Tallet, José Z., 54n136 Tardo, Manuel Rodulfo, 129 Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilych, 49n75 Temas, xii, 39, 68, 141, 148, 187, 189, 191, 198–99, 206–7, 215–28

Index

Teoría y Práctica, 216 Theory and Cultural Center Criterios (CTCC), 68, 89, 197, 206 Third Reich, 30 Tholfsen, Trygve R., 241 Toirac, Yanet, 205 Toirac Batista, José Angel, xix–xx, 128, 135–37, 154n22; Alma Pater Series, 137; Censure and Celebration in Cuba, 136; Cuba, 1868–2006, 136; on Ernesto "Che" Guevara, 135–36; on Fidel Castro, 135–36; Opium, 136; Opus, 128 Tolstoy, Leo, 49n75, 109 Torras de la Luz, Pelegrín, 191 Torres Llorca, Rubén, 131 Triana, José, 34 Tricontinental, 120n25 Trinquenio amargo, 31 Trio Los Panchos, 12 Trotsky, Leon, 15, 20, 168–69 Trump, Donald, 31, 66 Tulchin, Joseph, 209 Turgenev, Ivan, 49n75 Ultimo Jueves, 68, 141, 190, 199, 206, 217 UMAP. See Military Units to Aid Production UNEAC. See National Union of Cuban writers and Artists Unión, 85 Union of Journalists, 48n72 Union of Young Communists (UJC), 88 United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution (PURSC), 65 United States: embargo, 65–66, 127, 151, 205; Interests Section, 88; National Endowment for Democracy, 118, 125n81;

283

Obama, Barack, xii–xiii, 40, 66, 76, 101n97, 143, 145, 176 University reform, 191 Updike, John, 176 Urrutía Lleó, Manuel, 1, 65 Vaissié, xv, 65, 97n45 Valdés, Chucho, 97n45 Valdés, Nelson P., 209, 216, 223 Valdés, Zoé, 124n78 Valdés Paz, Juan, 110, 198, 218–19, 223 Valero, Roberto, 132 Valéry, Paul, 5 Valiño, Omar, 141 Valls, Jorge, 7 Van Delden, Maarten, 229n5 Varela, Carlos, 88, 237 Varela Project, 97n45 Varelio, Andrés, 132 Vargas Llosa, Mario, xi, 36, 79, 176, 180n5 Varona, Enrique José, 213 Varona y Pera, Enrique José, 13 Vásquez Montalbán, Manuel, 124n77 Vega, Luis, 132 Vega, Pastor, 33 Velasco Alvarado, Juan, 4 Vermay, Jean Baptiste, 153n8 Vicent, Mauricio, 172, 176 Victoria, Carlos, 34, 132 Viera, Israel León, 131 Villazón, Tania, 154n22 Vincench, José A., 133, 140, 239 Vitier, Cintio, 236n100 Vitier, Medardo, 13 Vittorini, Elio, 82 Vlady (Vladimir Victorovich Kibalchich), 131 Vogel, Ezra F., 75 Volumen Uno, 131–33 Weber, Max, xvi Webern, Anton, 99n84 Weisman, Deborah M., 221 Weiwei, Ai, 79, 158n75

284 Index

White, Robert, 235n94 Wifredo Lam Center, 142, 144 Wolin, Richard, 35, 63 Wong, Edward, 7 Wright Mills, C., 22 Xiaoping, Deng, 75 Xuecon, Murong, 179 Yajot, 193

Yanes Quintero, Hernán, 208 Yevtushenko, Yevgeny, 179 Yimi con Klase, 89 Yu Hua, 7 Zamyatin, Yesvgeny, 52n103, 229n8 Zedong, Mao, 26–28, 30, 75 Zhdanov, Andrei, 188 Zola, Émile, xi Zylberberg, Jacques, xxn2

About the Author

Yvon Grenier is professor of political science at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. He is the author of Guerre et pouvoir au Salvador (Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1994), The Emergence of Insurgency in El Salvador (University of Pittsburgh Press and Macmillan, 1999), Art and Politics: Octavio Paz and the Pursuit of Freedom (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001; Spanish trans. for the Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2004), and coauthor with Maarten Van Delden of Gunshots at the Fiesta: Literature and Politics in Latin America (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009, 2012). He edited (selection of texts and introduction) a book of political essays by the Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, entitled Sueño en libertad, escritos políticos (Seix Barral, 2001). Professor Grenier was editor of the Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and he is contributing editor of the magazine Literal, Latin American Voices.

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