Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth Culture and Politics in 1960s Cuba 1498532063, 9781498532068

Citation preview

Youth and the Cuban Revolution

Lexington Studies on Cuba Series Editor: John M. Kirk, Dalhousie University and Mervyn Bain, University of Aberdeen This series will publish texts on all aspects of Cuba, focusing on the post-1959 period. It seeks to be truly interdisciplinary, with studies of all aspects of contemporary Cuba— from foreign policy to culture, sociology to economics. The series is particularly interested in broad, comprehensive topics (such as women in Cuba, economic challenges, human rights, the role of the media, etc.). All ideological positions are welcomed, with solid academic quality being the defining criterion. In exceptional circumstances edited collections will be considered, but the main focus is on high quality, original, and provocative monographs, and innovative scholarship. Recent Titles in This Series Cuba's Forgotten Decade: How the 1970s Shaped the Revolution, edited by Emily J. Kirk, Anna Clayfield, Isabel Story Everyday Adjustments in Havana: Economic Reforms, Mobility, and Emerging Inequalities, by Hope Bastian Cuba’s Gay Revolution: Normalizing Sexual Diversity Through a Health-Based Approach, by Emily J. Kirk Youth and the Cuban Revolution: Youth Culture and Politics in 1960s Cuba, by Anne Luke

Youth and the Cuban Revolution Youth Culture and Politics in 1960s Cuba Anne Luke

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 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2018 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 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 978-1-4985-3206-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-3207-5 (electronic) TM 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

Acknowledgments Glossary of Abbreviations Introduction: A Study of Youth, the Sixties, and Cuba 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Revolution 1959: Being Young, Being Cuban The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution A New Youth Policy for a New Era Cuba and the Global Sixties Youth Activism: The Evolution of Youth Organizations in Sixties Cuba Participation and Voluntarism Youth at the Cultural Margins

Conclusion: Reflections on Youth in Cuba 1959, 1989, 2019? Bibliography Index About the Author

v

vii ix xi 1 17 37 55 71 97 111 133 141 157 163

Acknowledgments

When I began working on youth in Cuba back in 2000 I was, I suppose, young enough to be considered to belong to the category of youth myself. As the winds of time propel me toward that period which must be at least called adulthood, or even middle age, I am now a spectator on youth, trying as I may to see the world through my children’s or my students’ eyes. Was research into Cuba for me, in my late youth and as one colleague suggested to me, my own youth cultural response to life in the West? If it was, such an interest in youth globally and in distinction to the Global North has followed me out of my own youth, into further research and into my post-thesis life as a university lecturer. I must now reflect upon the many people over the years who have supported me with this research. For all this support I am deeply grateful, but any errors in this volume are entirely my own. I have a great debt of gratitude to my former doctoral supervisor Professor Antoni Kapcia who was instrumental in my maintenance of a diligent, questioning approach in my thesis days. Today his continued leadership of the Cuba Research Forum in the UK is crucial in keeping many a lone Cubanist like me, scattered throughout the disciplines of Higher Education in the UK, within the field that is Cuban Studies. My thanks also to Professor Jean Stubbs and Professor Paul Willis for their support during my doctoral days. In Cuba, Pablo Pacheco and Fernando Martínez Heredia, now both sadly deceased, were of great assistance, as were Luis Gómez, José Carlos Vásquez López, Paula Ortíz and Oscar Guzmán and family; and in the UK my thanks to my intellectual comrade-in-arms Dr. Katerina Gachevska. Lucky as I was then to have a professional translator in the family, my father Tom Luke assisted in the translations of the Spanish quotes in my original thesis, many of which remain in this book: I publish this in loving memory of him. Heartfelt thanks also to my mother Mary Luke for her unstinting support and help. My sister Nicola Thomas painstakingly helped me with editing and proofing this manuscript with incredible diligence and accuracy for which I am very grateful. Thanks also to Brian Hill and Eric Kuntzman at Lexington for their support and that essential quality of many an editor—patience. Note that extracts of this work have been published previously in the following publications: extracts of chapter 2 appear in Luke, A. (2012) “Creating a Quiet Majority? Youth and Young People in the Political Culture of the Cuban Revolution” in Par Kumaraswami (ed.) Rethinking vii

viii

Acknowledgments

the Cuban Revolution Nationally and Regionally: Politics, Culture and Identity (Malden/Oxford: Blackwell/Wiley; Bulletin of Latin American Research (BLAR) Book Series), pp. 127–43; extracts from chapters 4 and 7 can be found in Luke, A. (2013) “Listening to Los Beatles: Being Young in 1960s Cuba” in Anne Gorsuch and Diane Koenker (eds.) The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press); and sections of chapter 5 can be found in Luke, A. (2014) “A Culture of Youth: Young People, Youth Organizations and Mass Participation in Cuba 1959–62” in Mauricio Font and Carlos Riobó (eds.) Handbook of Cuban Literature, History and the Arts (Boulder: Paradigm). Finally, my partner Glyn Hambrook has made every attempt, often successfully, to appear unperturbed on those many nights when I have felt the need, in the small hours, to discuss one or another aspect of this work with him; he has read and commented on this work in its entirety, and without his support I cannot imagine how I could have finally brought it to print. For his help I will be ever grateful; and to our children Abigail and Faye, I say this: I hope that one day you will understand that my love for Cuban studies, great though it is and which has taken me away from you on many an occasion, will never compete with my love for you.

Glossary of Abbreviations

AJR

Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes [Association of Young Rebels]

CJC

Columnas Juveniles Centenarias [Centenary Youth Columns]

DR

Directorio Revolucionario [Revolutionary Directorate]

EIR

Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria [Schools of Revolutionary Instruction]

EOC

Educación Obrero-campesina [Worker-peasant educational scheme]

ER

Ejército Rebelde [Rebel Army]

FAR

Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias [Revolutionary Armed Forces]

FEU

Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios [Federation of University Students]

ICAIC

Instituto Cubano de Artes e Industrias Cinematográficas [Cuban Institute of Cinematography]

INDER

Instituto Nacional de Deportes Educación Física y Recreación [Institute of Sport, Physical Education and Leisure]

JS

Juventud Socialista [Young Socialists]

LPV

Listos Para Vencer [Ready to Win]

MinFAR

Ministerio de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias [Ministry of Armed Forces]

M-26-7

Movimiento de 26 de Julio [26th July Movement]

MNR

Milicias Nacionales Revolucionarias [National Revolutionary Militias]

ORI

Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas [Integrated Revolutionary Party]

PCC

Partido Comunista de Cuba [Cuban Communist Party]

PSP

Partido Socialista Popular [Popular Socialist Party] ix

x

Glossary of Abbreviations

PURS

Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista de Cuba [United Party of the Cuban Socialist Revolution]

SMO

Servicio Militar Obligatorio [Compulsory Military Service]

UES

Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios [Union of Secondary School Students]

UJC

Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas [Union of Young Communists]

UMAP

Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción [Military Units to Aid Production]

UNEAC

Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba [National Writers and Artists Union]

UPC

Unión de Pioneros de Cuba [Union of Cuban Pioneers]

UPR

Unión de Pioneros Rebeldes [Union of Rebel Pioneers]

Introduction A Study of Youth, the Sixties, and Cuba

On the brink of entering its seventh decade, and as Fidel Castro and the remaining revolutionaries of the fifties one by one join the eternally young Guevara, Cienfuegos, Santamaría and Echeverría as revolutionary icons rather than politicians, the Cuban Revolution remains central to life on this Caribbean island. On reflection, the death of Fidel in 2016 was more symbolic than material in its impact, a stage in the inevitable necessity of passing on the revolutionary baton definitively to a nation born and forged entirely within the revolutionary period. Custodianship of the Revolution must perforce become the responsibility of a new cohort. This leads us to these questions: what exactly is this Revolution which must be passed on; how much remains of the early years of the Revolution in its present incarnation; how has it been forged and maintained; and who are those Cubans (not individually but in terms of identity) now tasked with its defense? At risk of being guilty of blind exceptionalism, as is so tempting with this island which repeatedly fails to behave according to predictions, it may be suggested that a simple explanation would certainly not be capable of embracing the complexities of the Cuban Revolution. But the answers, in part at least, lay in enhancing our understanding of that decade as mythologized as the Cuban Revolution itself, the sixties, and that group who are so often the key protagonists in our stories of that decade, youth. My approach in this study will take the form of a conceptual triangulation. I will take these three units of analysis which in their own right have provoked debate and dissent, and examine how our understanding of each can be enhanced through the lens of the others. Two of them are familiar bedfellows—the “sixties” and “youth.” I do not deny that accounts of the sixties have on occasions overemphasized the place of youth, but by and large understandings of that decade have become contingent upon an understanding that youth as a social group or as a movement is one of the key explanatory factors in assessing why the sixties stand out in twentieth-century history, not merely as a decade, but, as Eleanor Townsley (2001) argues, as a trope. Telling the story of the Cuban Revolution in the sixties through the unit of analysis of youth provides us not with a revisionist tale of that decade, but with a parallel perspective to more traditional histories and, I hope, adds to a more comprehensive xi

xii

Introduction

understanding of that complex but crucial decade. The third unit of analysis here is of course Cuba. As with assessments of “the sixties” (though less so youth), any analysis must confront the assumption that an exceptionalism is at play. If the sixties were unlike anything that came before or came after (as the discourse of exceptionalism which pervades studies of the decade would have it), Cuba, with the explosive launch of its Revolution at the opening of our period, refuses to fit neatly into a regional or transnational model. “Does Cuba fit in yet” asked historian Antoni Kapcia in 2008 “or is it still ‘exceptional?’” My view of sixties Cuba is circumspect in this regard; it was a country, which, as we shall see, was shaped in part by a global sixties, but which received and echoed international cultural flows, Cubanizing and, if necessary, re-Cubanizing these, and rendering the origins of such flows only faintly recognizable. And yet this is something of a truism. Is anything in this world received as it is transmitted? And in particular if there is some intent behind the meeting of cultures—for example with attempts by the USA to foster discontent among the Cuban populace through the transmission of rock music to the island on the radio (Kapcia, 2005a: 145)—the success of that intent is highly questionable in particular with regard to youth who rarely act as adult authorities would assume or wish. So we should not be surprised that Cuba found a way to incorporate and transform cultural imports to create new national narratives, as this could apply to any form of reception. But to create a Revolution as an embodied internalized concept, as more than merely a trope, as a triumph of process over moment, as affect in tandem with effect, as sixty years (and counting) of history, now, that is indeed both exceptional and extraordinary. Part of the rationale for this study was that the Cuban Revolution needed to be read historiographically, rather than through contemporary studies. So much interest has the Revolution attracted that generation after generation of political scientists, literary theorists and so on have, albeit in a compelling way, made readings of Cuba contemporary to their moment of writing. In Cuba, furthermore, history is a discipline usually concerned with the pre-revolutionary era, and so historiographic studies of the Revolution have been scarce. So although this study took its inspiration from the present day (as it was when I started writing)—that is, empirical work indicating that youth in Cuba was foregrounded to a much greater extent and in a different way to elsewhere—it looked into the past to uncover the origins of such a concept of youth; and indeed, following the work of Antoni Kapcia (2000), sought to interrogate further his position that the myth of generations must be overwritten, as a result of the Revolution, by the myth of youth. In undertaking this historiographic study, my focus on the sixties was in recognition of the profound changes in Cuba during the decade. The mass migration, the radical restructuring of the political and economic system, a reconfiguration of international relations, the move to social-

Introduction

xiii

ism, wide-ranging new social policy initiatives and, as I came to learn was of core importance, a new vision of cultural development, all led to the irresistible pull of the sixties. The relatively stable state which emerged from the first decade of the Revolution might lead us to forget both the profundity of changes in Cuba and the deep-seated insecurity and instability felt at the time. This instability was unsurprising: “Few nations” wrote political scientist Richard Fagen as the sixties came to a close “have ever undergone such massive transformation in so short a time” (1969: 3). On almost every front life was transformed. Both push and pull factors drew young Cubans into a new life of revolutionary participation. The exodus of many middle-class Cubans created a vacuum, and those who remained on the island were sucked into its irrepressible pull, offered radical new possibilities for involvement and participation whilst at the same time operating in a climate of great uncertainty. The effervescence of the sixties in Cuba was not necessarily comfortable—metaphorically the decade was not a bubbling pot sitting on the stove but rather an overheated pressure cooker always at risk of explosion. As well as structural factors, on an individual level life was transformed. The population was moved (into empty houses vacated by those who had left the island), made literate (or made into literacy teachers), educated—even if this meant that the new first year university students had to be taught by final year students because of the lack of teachers (Kapcia, 2008a: 48)—and given opportunities (combined with a good dose of moral pressure) to be in the driving seat for a multitude of initiatives which would all contribute to the creation of the new society, even if the vision of what exactly that society would look like was still taking shape in those early years. The extraordinary youth of the three key leaders of the Revolution (Fidel, Che and Raúl) in the sixties also merits attention. In 1959 even Fidel, the oldest of the three at thirty-three years old, was still within the fairly wide definition of youth. It was with good reason that writer Elizabeth Sutherland termed Cuba’s new era as “the Youngest Revolution” when she wrote an account of her 1967 visit to the island. Indeed it was in part the youth of the leadership which led to such a powerful belief in youth; there was a sense that if young people could lead and be successful in an era of rebellion, they could most certainly do the same (or more) in an era of revolution. This of course was neither straightforward nor linear. To have participated in an armed rebellion had, at face value, a considerably greater “élan” in 1959 than participation in some of the more prosaic initiatives the Revolution needed, and so the language of all types of participation came to mirror that of military involvement. What is more, the commonality of position between the leadership and Cuba’s youth could only be assured for some short years as the passage of time would naturally separate the leadership from new generations of young Cubans. In one sense the sixties were unique in that commonality, but in

xiv

Introduction

another sense, a task of the revolutionary leadership was to explore ways in which the involvement of youth could continue to be harnessed once the leadership could no longer declare themselves young. In the context of the extraordinary first decade my hypothesis—which has largely been endorsed by this study—was that the concept of youth as we know it today in Cuba underwent significant developments across this decade. And yet, as we will see, the empirical findings also threw up tensions and disagreements over the construction of new meanings. These can be teased out with difficulty—by using a wide selection of sources as I have here—from those relevant to the hard politics of the era, such as the leadership speeches pertaining to young people, but also sources which helped to elucidate the new youth cultures of the era— such as magazines, song lyrics or cartoons. Interviews were used to corroborate and to fill in gaps but also, importantly, to understand Cuban interpretations of youth in Cuba so as to avoid, as far as is possible, the reliance on only an outsider’s perspective. That said, the use, as we will see, of various tools of analysis from youth studies outside Cuba—most notably that regarding moral panics—proved irresistible as the empirical research highlighted vast gulfs between the experiences of young people on the island and those elsewhere. There were also lines of similarity which such a theory helped to explore. There are gaps which naturally pertain to any research project—in particular readers will note the absence of sources from the exile community in the USA from the time. Although there are obviously time and resources constraints which in part explain this, in actuality the aim has always been to try to put across an island-centric view of youth; in other words, my aim has been to try, as far as possible, to explain youth in Cuban—rather than diasporic—terms, allowing me thereby to take account of Cuban exceptionalism. The exceptionalism of the Revolution is evident in the conclusions to chapter 1, which argues that we cannot really talk of the sixties generation (or youth) in Cuba in the way we do elsewhere. The sixties generation elsewhere may have been made up of activists, or members of a movement, hippies or radicals perhaps, and they became, once the effervescence of the sixties subsided, absorbed into the institutions and structures of adult life. Our understanding of what happens to a given group of young people when their “generational moment” passes is in part contingent upon whether and to what extent the young person is an economic actor in those dominant structures (generally the structures of work or family) or instead resists participation therein. Importantly to this case study, in Cuba we see reference to a new structure, the Revolution itself. We can, I would argue, consider the entire course of the Revolution as encompassing a single generation, insofar as being Cuban on the island since 1959 has come to mean being formed by—and forming—the Revolution itself. Of core importance to the development of this single

Introduction

xv

generation is youth, that group on which I will focus in this book, because we can see that the revolutionary generation has been and is shaped by youth both as a concept and with reference to young Cubans as a demographic group at any given moment during the Revolution. To argue that it is inaccurate to speak of a sixties generation in Cuba is not to undermine the importance of that decade on the island. The Cuban Revolution, alongside youth, is a determinant in the descriptors of sixties exceptionalism. We could even ask, as the Cuban magazine Bohemia did in 1968, if the youth movements in the West were revolutionary precisely because they took their inspiration from the successful creation of a revolution in Cuba. In an international context, the importance of Cuba to the sixties is paramount. But, interestingly, on the island we see the emergence of a Cuban sixties, distinct (though not opposite) to the global sixties. And it is when we explore what these sixties comprised that we become aware of the power of youth. The theories of youth and generation, and the context of the Cuban Revolution, discussed in chapter 1, can only take us so far in understanding how youth was constructed on the island in the decade in question. This volume argues that the sixties in Cuba created Cuban youth layer by layer. To this end, chapter 2 examines the way in which youth was created within the discourse of the Revolution. Youth was constructed not only as the heroic force in a way familiar to a student of socialist realism, for example, but also as a potential bête noire via the form, so familiar to students of youth, of moral panic in Stanley Cohen’s sense. Youth, I will argue, emerges as an unavoidable folk devil (Cohen, 1987) when the conundrum of how to marry potential heroism and purity with the reality of young people acting in all sorts of ways which do not conform to this ideal is confronted. A (relatively) young leadership could not envisage constructing a Revolution without youth, but youth (in a revolutionary era) was a concept still up for grabs. If youth were only a discursive construct we might finish this work at thirty pages or so and consign Cuba’s attempts to create a revolutionary youth to the realm of historical curiosity. But discourse is only one of the layers in the construction of youth, and perhaps more important in Cuba in the sixties was the creation, well ahead of its time in Latin America, of what was in effect a youth policy. Chapter 3 examines how this policy was formulated—firstly, through the educationalization of life for young people; secondly, through a focus on the morality of work (hence of course, the moral panic which arose when young people did not work, and which led to now well-known policies such as the UMAPs and the Ley contra la vagancia); thirdly, through the militarization of young lives in response to the sense of threat from external attack (and in the early sixties in particular we must try to understand the high intensity with which this threat was felt to appreciate why this militarization is core); and finally through moral and ideological education in a country which, in the sixties, had relatively little suitable intellectual capital to resource

xvi

Introduction

such education and in which cadres from the existing communist party therefore played a key role despite their rather belated entry into the fifties rebellion. I think we might guess where this argument is going next—which is to argue that discourse and policy are not enough to explain the construction of revolutionary youth. Youth became revolutionary, I will argue, in part because of Cuba’s interaction with the global sixties, which is the focus of chapter 4. It is in the sixties that youth culture comes to the fore. The Cuban Revolution was succeeding on the island, although that was by no means certain at the time; but could it be part of something altogether larger—global revolution perhaps? European youth leaders visited Cuba, New Leftists visited Cuba, Black Power activists visited Cuba. Cuba became a hub of the global sixties—a fact to which Cuba itself had to sometimes uneasily adapt given the rather censorious views (to say the least) of some in Cuba at the time toward certain expressions of external youth culture. What was all this talk of youth about in Cuba? Could Cuba have the Beatles, and rock music and hippies even, without betraying a firmly anti-imperialist Revolution? That interaction, complex and contested, developed a relationship with forces from outside which continues to this day. All this fed in to the development of the idea of youth; to the ideology, policy and influences which created youth in the revolutionary period. And in tandem with ideology and policy, a revolution needs foot soldiers. And, if not forged in their youth, these foot soldiers could not be nurtured. The fear of the “tree that grew twisted” of which Castro spoke (Castro, 1963d: 3)—the idea that once immorality or deviance were embedded it was near impossible to rectify—informed the discourse of youth so profoundly that the creation of that army of activists who could be, in the words of Guevara, the “cadres” who would carry the Revolution to the rest of youth, became a cornerstone of the Revolution. Chapter 5 will look at the substantial struggles to create this army. In 1959 there were various existing models, including the Young Communists, but then, accelerating from behind, emerged the Association of Young Rebels (AJR), which overtook the former organization and represented much more of the affective dimension of the values of the Revolution. The story of an eventual compromise unfolds, out of which a youth organization— the Union of Young Communists (UJC) was formed; an organization which continues to exist today but which, by virtue of its selectivity, represents still, perhaps, a slight betrayal of the original revolutionary aim of the AJR to be a genuine mass organization. So youth was created through the evolution of a key political organization but it lacked its very own mass organization. But if the politics of youth excluded by virtue of selectivity some of those young people who may, potentially, have wished to be political activists, the sixties heralded another key facet of youth in the revolution-

Introduction

xvii

ary era which has emerged recurrently as a force throughout the whole revolutionary period, and that is participation in the building of the Revolution, which is the subject of chapter 6. Because political participation did (and does) not solely comprise membership of the party organization, this type of involvement was key in the broader development of a population busy with constructing the Revolution and, moreover, was the methodology by which the Revolution intended to bring into being an era of direct democracy. Every epoch of the Revolution has generated its own cohort of young participants, so perhaps this is the most important group to consider. I could take another decade and find participation happened very differently, but I think the core principles of participation would remain the same. Firstly, there is a link with education; hence in the sixties it was the young teachers who were a key cohort. Secondly, there is a link with supporting the Revolution against external threats, so in the sixties membership of the Revolutionary militias was key. Thirdly, there is a connection with culture (which is perhaps the greatest achievement of a Revolution which has at times struggled to satisfactorily meet the material needs of the people); in the sixties this meant the development of a mode of amateur cultural engagement called the aficionado movement which aimed to democratize culture and promote cultural engagement in every corner of the island. Finally, the development of youth in its broader cultural sense was all about defining what it meant in Cuba in the sixties to be at the forefront of the construction of revolutionary identity. This struggle, which is the theme of chapter 7, was a highly contested terrain, and is the area of this text where we most sense the effervescence and insecurity of the Revolution. We will examine the cultural margin, where a young vanguard (at least self-proclaimed as such) sat. We will explore the virtual site, within the Revolution, of those young poets, intellectuals and musicians who set about defining and redefining how culture could work within the Revolution. This is resonant of a sixties outside Cuba, where youth cultural expression reigned supreme, and we have to remember that poetry and music are often young (or youngish) endeavors, certainly in the context of undertakings that are considered epoch-defining. Open to the outside and exploratory, these groups were always, one could surmise, going to struggle with the cultural bureaucracy which could at times—as chapter 7 will show—be inflexible. But if not every cultural youth movement would survive (although the Nueva Trova movement did), the imprint created by these was part of the construction of a revolutionary youth. The travails and dilemmas of the cultural producers reflect this: how, asked Silvio Rodríguez (2008, 153–54), can you write a song which is outside (note, not against) the vanguard? Silvio asked (and answered) his question in the way many a songwriter has in the past, through writing a song about it.

xviii

Introduction

So there we complete our enumeration of the layers that create youth in the revolutionary era—that youth which in turn fed into the creation of the revolutionary generation. Are there other times in history when we can see a generation so perpetual; a generation of sixty years of development? Perhaps, but the force in its creation in this case permeates all of these layers which lend to the concept of youth much more than just the individuals who, by virtue of their year of birth, happen to make up that cohort at that given moment in time. This is not an over-glorification of heroic youth (indeed, wherefore moral panic if that were the case?) or even an argument that young lives did not matter on an everyday level. Rather I am trying, in a small way, to move beyond those existing paradigms which are centered on revolutionary nationalism (Font & Tinajero, 2014: xiii) whilst at the same time attempting, through the use of a range of Cuban materials from the time, to produce the sort of “analytical and dispassionate” study of the Cuban Revolution which, as Antoni Kapcia argued back in 2008, is much needed (2008b: 649). By so doing I hope that this work will feed into our understanding of what exactly the Cuban Revolution, whose construction started in 1959, comprises and how, apparently against all the odds, it survives to this day.

ONE Revolution 1959 Being Young, Being Cuban

A study of youth in historical and geographic context gives rise to both a definitional and a theoretical conundrum. In terms of definition, “youth,” write Mayssoun Sukarieh and Stuart Tannock, “is a concept whose definition and boundaries is notoriously fuzzy” (2015: 3). Whilst the temptation is to put age boundaries on the category (fourteen to twenty-seven years old, say) we can always find an exception which will test that definition. From a theoretical point of view, talking globally but researching locally creates problems. For example, how and to what extent can theories of youth and generation based on an understanding of a capitalist means of production (such as theories of subcultures) or a particular national specificity (such as the US counter-culture) be utilized? In what follows, theories of youth and generation will be discussed, critiqued and interrogated in relation to their applicability to the Cuban case; but more than that, the national specificity of Cuba will also be explored. My argument is as follows: in common with the youth explosion of the sixties globally, youth markedly rose in prominence in Cuba over the decade. But national specificity was at play here: a new stable structure—the Revolution—was created and developed by what has become in effect a single generation—the Generation of Revolution—the ranks of which have been filled by the entire population by virtue of the passing through the life stage of “youth,” either actually (because of age) or metaphorically (because of the broader sense of rebirth of the nation). Thus any definitional worries concerning age can be removed from the equation, as both youth and generation are of a greater importance than age alone when we examine Cuban history of the sixties, and the contribution of that decade to Cuban history. 1

2

Chapter 1

YOUTH IN THEORY, YOUTH IN PRACTICE The global “youthquake” of the sixties led to lengthy and sometimes controversial reconsiderations of youth as a concept. One could even argue, as Medovoi (2005: 3) does, that narratives of youth of the sixties were a cradle in which identity politics were nurtured; but Medovoi’s identity politics-based explanation is US specific, and by no means in every context and certainly not in Cuba can we understand the trajectory of youth in the second half of the twentieth century as part of a deterministic move to identity politics that is fundamental to the US interpretation. This was because the “message” in Cuba was, due to the uncertainty, instability and effervescence of the early sixties and the risk of attack from the outside, a stable revolutionary discourse around which Cubans could unite. The social change of the sixties led to new conceptualizations of both youth and generation. And whilst the youth “explosion” may have been exaggerated both at the time and subsequently, we must not forget that in not just one country but in country after country, region after region, capitalist country or socialist country, developed or less developed, youth seemed to have reached the moment to raise its head. There was no agreement, either theoretically or politically, on whether such a youth explosion was a positive development or something to be feared; a solution to societies’ problems or a desperate but futile cry from the disenfranchised mass of young people; a sign of a promising future or a sign of moral decline; a sign of class clashes and fights or a sign of postclass identity; a fleeting historical moment or the start of a momentous change in societal relations. But what is certain is that suddenly youth was no longer the preserve of the psychologists, or criminologists concerning themselves with young delinquents; instead cultural studies, history, sociology took up the challenge to try to explain why everyone, it seemed, was talking about youth. The connection between youth and the sixties leads us to ask ourselves if the sixties marked a generational moment—perhaps even in a transnational sense—when we could talk about a generational identity which set the sixties generation apart. The problem with a transnational perspective is that while we see transnational links, overlaps and hybridization between various youth movements or forms of youth expression, we cannot fail (particularly when we look at the Cuban case) to be struck by the cultural specificity of that moment in certain contexts. And if we can talk of a generation, perhaps we can only talk in this study on a national basis; the Cuban Revolution may, for example, have played a role in defining the international New Left of the Sixties, but that generation of New Leftists, even taking into account their visits to Cuba and involvement with the intellectual development of the Revolution in Cuba in the early years, was removed from the young people living and experiencing the Revolution first hand. And, moreover, even if we were to limit

Revolution 1959

3

ourselves to a national rather than transnational model of generation, in Cuba the notion of generation was invoked differently depending on whether the discussion was from a strictly political or broadly cultural perspective, which further muddies the concept of generation. In Cuba it is participation in youth as a mass movement which constructs the generationally determined culture in the revolutionary period. As I write this, I read on the website of Granma (the Cuban Communist Party newspaper) that on 1st May 2017 50,000 young people will lead the parade in Revolution Square in Havana. A single person may be leader, but without the 50,000 and the next 50,000 (and the actual number matters less than the symbolism of mass participation) and so on, the construction of revolutionary identity cannot be affirmed. Youth mass participation has functioned as a rite of passage into revolutionary society. So in a sense we can talk of a single generation in Cuba—the post-1959 generation—transcending a single decade, and evolving over sixty years of history. Certainly there are sub-generations during the revolutionary period in Cuba—the most significant of these is the generation of the Special Period of the nineties which we would be foolish to ignore—but even that generation layered the experience of actual hardship onto a habitus of revolutionary involvement, the two experiences competing for generational dominance. We need to return to the sixties to see how a “revolutionary” generation was created right from the early years of the Revolution. Antoni Kapcia writes of the importance, in the early years of the Cuban Revolution and in the interests of the Revolution’s self-preservation, of using and enhancing myths which already formed a part of Cuba’s rebelde consciousness (2000: 175–215). Kapcia counts among the three core myths, alongside Martí and history, the myth of generations. The group of insurgents of 1953 who had sparked the rebellion against Batista had termed themselves the generación del centenario (centenary generation), referring to the centenary of the birth of that hero of Cuba’s prior great rebellion, José Martí. Certainly those who fought in the rebellion of the fifties could be termed a generation in the classic sense as expounded by Mannheim in his seminal work on generations, due to their “participation in the common destiny of this historical and social unit” (Mannheim, 1952: 303; original emphasis) and realizing their potential to be considered a generational unit through the “tempo of social change” (Mannheim, 1952: 309). Going from dictatorship to Revolution in six short years from 1953 to 1959 will, I think, by any account be considered transformative; so a generation can be seen to have formed, albeit one of somewhat modest membership. Indeed, with regard to scope, the rebel experience of the 1950s falls short itself of creating a mass generational identity during that decade, and it was instead the subsequent positioning of the fifties rebellion in Cuban revolutionary history that fed the new revolutionary identity. Moreover, come the triumph of the Revolution, the use of generation

4

Chapter 1

in the sense it had been used in the self-definition as generación del centenario by the fifties rebels no longer held the appeal it did during the rebel years. As Kapcia rightly notes, the incorporation into the myth of generations of the sense of inter-generational betrayal and then rescue by the new generation was problematic, not least because the victorious rebels had no intention of betraying (or being seen to have betrayed) their ideals (2000: 178). So the myth of generation needed recasting and was, according to Kapcia, recast as a myth of youth, thus allowing the concept of generation to remain fixed to the generación del centenario rather than signposting any experience or generational unit post-1959. After 1959, the alignment of youth with the generación del centenario (because not all Sierra and Llano fighters were young) is part of the use of generation. To imbue youth with revolutionary identity and to then construct a rolling generational succession was to ensure, eventually, that all members of society had the opportunity to be that guerrilla fighter of the fifties, of course metaphorically and discursively rather than in actuality. This also meant that the generation of the fifties could not be accused of being fleeting—thus negating the hypothetical suspicion that Annie Kriegel articulated in her 1979 analysis of generation, that when we speak of a generation we may be witnessing a fashion, not a generation at all (1979: 33). Kriegel goes so far as to argue that “generational specificity is itself a fiction: in truth, all successive generations resemble each other in their laments as in their triumphs” (1979: 34). Perhaps it was Kriegel’s disappointment that the potential radicalism of the European sixties had abated that led her to this conclusion, because when we look at 1959 in Cuba we certainly are witnessing at least the start (and not the entirety) of a generational moment in Cuba. If we consider the Cuban Revolution, we can certainly consider generation in a collective, rather than individual or biographical, sense through the generational experience of living one’s youth in a revolutionary epoch. This was experienced not only by the leadership (leaders will do what leaders will do) but also by the masses. The next question to now address is how was the concept of youth itself constructed on the island? Like Anne Gorsuch’s (2000) study of Russian youth in the twenties (a decade with which we can read significant parallels to the sixties in Cuba), this study contends that the concept of youth needs to be understood in terms of youth as a cultural construction; that is to say, it is the meanings that are given to the concept of youth in a given set of circumstances which matter. We could even say that we are borrowing from the new paradigm in childhood studies which argues that childhood is a social construction providing an “interpretive frame for understanding the early years of life” (James & Prout, 1997: 3). Such a conceptualization may be equally applicable to youth, in particular when we consider cross-cultural case studies. Such a conceptualization also rescues us, a little, from the unease which may be felt at the only limited applicability to the Cuban case of the theories on youth, such

Revolution 1959

5

as those on youth subcultures which came out of the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham in the seventies. Youth subcultures—those explosive expressions that captured the attention of scholars at the time—were contingent upon the class position of the members of the given subculture; young people were acting out their class position in order to “magically resolve,” largely through the use of leisure and style, the contradictions of that position. These attempts at resistance are incorporated by the dominant culture, and the young subculturalists lose their power, once again to be the victims of their class position, even, eventually, reproducing it through moving into workingclass jobs. (Clarke et al., 1976; Cohen, A., 1997; Cohen, P., 1997a; Murdock and McCron, 1976; Hebdige, 1979; Willis 1977). We must remember that theory is a reaction to the historical moment in which it is developed— Stuart Hall’s attention even crossed the Atlantic with an early paper on the hippie movement (1968) before he directed his attention to the UK case; in summary, the CCCS saw that it was an historically apt moment to theorize youth. But appealing though they are, those theories have as their foundation assumptions which we cannot take forward to a study of youth in Revolution in Cuba. However, there is one aspect in which the CCCS’s work is relevant to the Cuban case and this is in the emphasis it places on leisure; and we can even see evidence in Cuba in the sixties, that there is a little bit of magical resolution making (of which more in later chapters). Overall, a young person in the Cuban Revolution could not be a mod or a rocker or a hippie or a skinhead in the same way in which those cultures were expressed in the West, even if it is that very style that a young person is espousing. How the use and function of leisure and youth culture may differ in the Cuban case, given the construction of Revolution as the core variable in our interpretations of the Cuban sixties, is fundamental. Contemporary to youth in the present study and subject to much academic and popular debate at the time, and subsequently, were the US youth movements of the sixties, largely surrounding the hippie counterculture. Given the common transnational moment and the explosion of youth in the sixties, it is interesting to explore how and whether youth in Cuba can be seen as constructed in common with youth in its larger neighbor. The US counter-culture is interesting to this study in three ways: firstly, the existence and contemporary theorization of the counterculture within Cuba’s large neighbor itself influenced young people in Cuba (for example Villares, 1968); secondly, it is indicative of the divergence of views of utopia between youth in Cuba and those in the United States, despite the apparently common utopian aim—Ginsberg’s visit to Cuba in 1965 (see chapter 7) really brought those discrepancies to the fore; and thirdly, as with theories of subculture, the focus upon leisure time is presented as a key axis along which the study of youth can develop. Counter-culture never underwent the intense theoretical conceptual-

6

Chapter 1

ization that subculture did; rather it was explored empirically as a phenomenon which pointed to youth dissatisfaction in the US with the postwar consensus and the rise of the technocracy (Roszak, 1968: xiii). In common with subcultures, attention was drawn to ritualized resistance, whereby the new generation chose to express itself through one or all of the tropes of “dope,” “revolution” and “fucking in the street” (Green, 1999). Kriegel’s argument that a generation may be no more than a fashion can be brought to bear if we consider the hippie movement—and similarly, Stuart Hall’s contemporaneous study of the hippies saw hippie culture as a product of an “American moment” that allowed the hippie movement to develop, marked by a convergence of political radicalism, expanded consumerism and mind-altering drugs (Hall, 1968). Attention has also been drawn to the radical change in the popular music scene as one of the key components of young lives (Gitlin, 1987: 195–214). In light of these considerations, can we say that the hippie movement was entirely oppositional to mainstream culture? Arthur Marwick suggests not, arguing rather that “the various counter-cultural movements and subcultures, being ineluctably implicated in and interrelated with mainstream society while all the time expanding and interacting with each other, did not confront that society but permeated and transformed it” (Marwick, 1998: 13; original emphasis). And the hippie movement was subsequently criticized as being merely an extension of middle-class values (Murdoch and McCron, 1976: 22), and the triumph of the individual over the collective, fostering a “cult of the self” (Hetherington, 1998: 8). To that end some choose to blame the counter-culture for all the ills that followed it, particularly the shift to the right in US politics (Farber, 1994b: 309–10; Hijiya, 2003; Klatch, 2001; MacGirr, 2001). From a Cuban perspective there was no doubt that there was an awareness of the counter-culture, and even an interest therein (see chapter 4); but perhaps our best way to conceive of the hippies for the present study is by considering how this “American moment” was represented and received on the island rather than as a theoretical tool for understanding youth. Despite the considerable theoretical limitations of theories of subculture and counter-culture in relation to a study of the Cuban Revolution, we are not entirely bereft of theoretical models. This is because one important body of theory on youth suddenly comes to life in front of our eyes—empirically something was certainly happening regarding youth which was not just the construction of a revolutionary youth; I came, through the research for this book, to perceive moral panic—repeated, cyclical, and on more occasions indeed than I can consider in these pages. Even if, as I argue, there has been only a single generation in post-1959 Cuba, there certainly have been signs of moral panics over youth which signpost other, age-related schisms. Sociological (and often criminological) theories of moral panic have tended to be applied to minoritarian groups, such as the Mods and Rockers in Stanley Cohen’s seminal text

Revolution 1959

7

(1987). Youth is not always at the center of a moral panic (as the “folk devil”), but often is, and a fear of youth deviance which the theory of moral panic points to echoes the proverb “the tree that grew twisted cannot be straightened” that Castro himself cites when he laments youth deviance in Cuba in 1963 (Castro, 1963d: 3). So, in reference to Cohen’s theory of moral panic, who or what in Cuba were the “right-thinking people” such as bishops, editors and politicians who manned the moral barricades (Cohen, 1987: 9)? The moral leaders did certainly not comprise the bishops, who were criticized heavily particularly in the early sixties; they did comprise the political leadership but they were not the only group to catalyze moral panics. In Cuba young people themselves (particularly some of the young political activists) were responsible for stirring up moral panics. How important was the role of young people in prompting those moral panics? Young people in Cuba in the sixties had many ways to express themselves which did not trigger moral panics, and were repeatedly not represented as folk devils, and it would be misleading to overemphasize deviance or delinquency. Furthermore, there are residual difficulties in appropriating this theory for the Cuban case, because both media (for Cohen, the conveyors of moral panic) and morality are so vastly different to Cohen’s UK-based examples. It is by mapping the new dominant moral universe in Cuba, that we can see a clear explanation of why moral panics in Cuba came about; and keen though I am not to pre-empt my punchline, it is work which is the harbinger of the new revolutionary morality. Therefore young people who sat outside the new morality of work—notably those young people who neither worked nor studied—became a new folk devil. Such a folk devil must be punished by policy—there must be a resolution to this moral degeneration if you like—and we see the UMAPs and the Ley contra la vagancia seeking (but failing) to exorcise this demon. As young people were indeed more than merely the minoritarian folk devils, it is contingent upon this work to explore what alternative ways of being young existed and where those young people could operate in sixties Cuba. To that end, a short literature review will help to reveal the geography of young lives (and therefore the favorite foci of moral panic). THE GEOGRAPHY OF YOUNG LIVES IN SIXTIES CUBA The bodies of theory discussed above lead us to conclude that understanding the geography of young lives is key to understanding sixties youth in Cuba. On first view, the core spaces of youth that can be identified in the Cuban context look familiar to any youth researcher. School, of course, certainly for the younger end of the youth scale, was of key relevance, as were work and further study. Also of importance was “free” time, although leisure as a concept has distinct meanings in Cuba.

8

Chapter 1

Whilst Western views of leisure time dominated the perspective of students of Western youth, the Cuban concept of leisure time has more in common with European socialist views of leisure of the thirties where organized leisure was an essential means to bind members of socialist movements—especially young people—to the leftist ideology and to prepare them for struggle. Sport was of particular importance to this end (Cross, 1989: 603). The Cuban perspective on leisure time added, moreover, an educational dimension. Psychologist Gustavo Torroella, writing in Bohemia in 1966, discussed how use of free time “in addition to rounding off school education . . . complements the development of the personality” (Torroella, 1966: 41; original emphasis) and so could be useful in preventing deviance or delinquency. Moreover, the use of the physical spaces of leisure would, according to architect Roberto Segre, promote integration: [E]ach piece of land, park or open space becomes a children’s park, a sports ground, an experimental allotment, a tranquil and shady corner for reading and meditation [on the basis that] to promote the active use of urban spaces means fostering individuals’ social integration, and enriching their personal experience through direct contact with social reality and with the physical reality of the environment. (Segre, 1968: 33)

So the places and spaces of leisure, rather than being of necessity sites of resistance to authority (although they still might be), could actually be part of the formation of the new citizen. Of course, young people did not all wish to use public spaces for the quiet contemplation which Segre advocated—and perhaps he forgot that while young people in Cuba may not have been so alarmingly loud as the US counter-culture, they did (particularly in Havana) enjoy music and engage with new styles as a public means of expression. Music often has a strong association with youth counter-culture—so, for example, in Mexico in the sixties, music was central to La Onda counter-culture (Zolov, 1999), but this association is not sufficiently clear in the Cuban case for one to be able to talk of a counter-culture as such in confident terms. I would argue that in fact the Cuban “youth movement” that arose surrounding the Nueva Trova musical movement had more in common with the Tropicalia movement in Brazil (Dunn, 2001) where a home-grown artistic movement was the impetus for the creation of a home-grown youth culture. Robin Moore draws attention to the fact that the first generation of Nueva Trova performers were at grade school in 1959, making it a generation of cultural producers firmly created within the Revolution (2006: 142), but more than that, not only were the artists young, their fusion of influences from across the world lent them great appeal to Cuba’s youth. It was not only through education and leisure that young people in sixties Cuba played a role; they also had an enhanced role in the political

Revolution 1959

9

scene. The Revolution needed a politically committed and, more to the point, active youth to achieve its aims. To this end some studies which deal (even tangentially) with youth point to youth political participation as a key innovation of the sixties. An interest in youth participation was, until recently, the cornerstone of youth research carried out on the island. In the eighties, the Center for Youth Studies in Havana published two volumes on the Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes, the first unity youth organization in revolutionary Cuba (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989 and Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986). These are both significant additions to the historiography of this organization but also serve to perpetuate the myth of the innate heroism of youth by canonizing the organization (albeit with reservations) and by skirting round the eventual demise of the mass organization in favor of the highly selective Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas. More recent work at the Centro, notably through its journal Estudio, which in the contemporary era has been published since 2001, is much more sociological in focus and deals with social issues and problems such as desvinculación (un-connectedness) and issues of sexuality. The earliest attempt from outside Cuba to understand youth in the context of the Cuban Revolution is Richard Fagen’s The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba (1969), which explored how, through the building of new institutions and a new leadership culture and a discourse that created new forms of participation, “Cuban man” could be transformed into “revolutionary man.” Fagen recognized the chasm between the Cuban understanding of youth as an untainted “blank slate” and Western concepts of youth culture (Fagen, 1969: 145–47). Fagen, ahead of his time perhaps, understood more than any other commentator the influence of discourse on political culture in reference to youth. As early as 1970 Hochschild (1970) wrote that “[y]oung people in Cuba . . . are celebrated as a ‘chosen people’” and went on to stress that “their ability to act as a shock absorber of change, their willingness to innovate, to be ideologically committed, make the youth a ready and trusted workforce” (Hochschild, 1970: 57–58). Jorge Domínguez’s later study, which refers more to the structures of the Revolution, argues that young people in the early sixties showed attitudes similar to the fifties until structural changes became apparent in the mid-sixties (Domínguez, 1978: 474–78). By taking together the themes in these texts—discourse, participation and structure—we can come to understand the complexity of the construction of revolutionary youth. The discussion of youth deviance in the sixties continued to be controversial on the island long beyond the decade of the sixties. In Kirk and Padura’s interviews with cultural producers, only Leo Brouwer referred to the controversial stance, in the sixties, of the dual youth culture forms of expression of wearing long hair and listening to the Beatles (Kirk and Padura, 2001: 100 & 102). There was certainly an acknowledgement of

10

Chapter 1

youth deviance in sixties Cuba, as Julie Bunck has argued, but her contention that “youth remained largely resistant and hostile to Cuba’s leaders” (1994: 85) oversimplifies the complex situation underlying the relationship between youth and state and suggests, erroneously I would maintain, that a unitary mass of youth were all speaking with the same (anti-revolutionary) voice. Similarly (but with vastly greater depth and scope) the wide-ranging and fascinating reconceptualization of the Revolution in Lillian Guerra’s Visions of Power (2012) is concerned with control of the people (by the leadership, the state, the bureaucrats, and, eventually, by the people themselves through conformity). And yet her account in fact illustrates the limits of control—the use of humor, for example, which Guerra understands so well, prompts us to consider a much broader concept of Revolution. Guerra accurately identifies challenges to the “grand narrative” of the Revolution, often articulated by young people who “launched critiques of the state within the paradigm of the Revolution itself” (2012: 230). But what is perhaps lacking from Guerra’s account is a sufficient appreciation on the one hand of historical continuity with pre-revolutionary tenets, particularly with reference to culture (Miller, 2008), and on the other, the power (even if impossible to enact) of the Cuban government’s own discourse of “recurrent apocalyptic renewal based on the regenerating powers of youth” (Miller, 2008: 694; my emphasis). The grand narrative was neither unitary nor imposed, but rather it was a muddy, contested, effervescent process which required constant renewal (hence the successive waves of cultural insularity and cultural openness over the many years of the Revolution). In a sense, Guerra is considering the question asked by many a scholar of the Cuban Revolution: how can the Revolution survive and what exactly is surviving. But her argument that the Revolution created an “authoritarian political culture” which created a “grassroots dictatorship” (Guerra, 2012: 13) ironically fails to take into account her own clear and fascinating demonstration (for example, through her examination of El Sable satirical magazine) that political culture of the sixties was in flux. Guerra’s work, rather than leading to its own conclusions of a grassroots dictatorship, might in fact be deemed to prompt the reader to consider an alternative conclusion closer to that of Damián Fernández who wrote in 1993 that “the state has been unable to make Cuban youth think and act in official ways, which demonstrates, on the one hand, the limits of the state and, on the other, the latent pluralism of Cuban society (Fernández, 1993: 209). Fernández later convincingly argued that the role of lo informal and the crucial role of the affective dimension of political culture feeds into a more inflected understanding of the Revolution (2000). Indeed, Kapcia takes this further, arguing that young people were able to protest through recourse to the myths that were created within the Revolution, so that “by clinging to Che, the young can . . . be revolutionary and still distance themselves from the present leadership” (Kapcia, 2000: 212). This tallies with Tsvi

Revolution 1959

11

Medin’s (1990) position that it was through the signs and symbols of the Revolution that revolutionary consciousness was built, but, according to Kapcia’s position, this was a far cry from the grassroots dictatorship which Guerra assumes and indeed allows space for a type of resistance within those signs and symbols. However, a subtler change was occurring to the concept of youth: on closer inspection the separation between Revolution and youth, between the state and youth, reveals itself to be a construct rather than a reality. One commentator who understood this nuance was Mario Benedetti who pointed out that, notwithstanding the age of the leadership, “in Cuba even veterans are moving to a youthful beat” (Benedetti, 1974: 21). A youth in revolution was to be delivered in terms of youth engagement with Revolutionary principles, but with the difference that all people could absorb and be transformed by the newly defined concept of youth. The Revolution successfully co-opted and reformulated the concept of youth just at the moment that youth was gaining prominence globally. CREATING THE REVOLUTION We must be careful that our discussions about how and where space for youth and youth agency is made do not distract us from the practical dimension of youth. Youth in revolution is not just created by the discourse on youth. The concept of youth also signposts a social group— young people—which, like the entire population, experienced radical changes in both discourse and material circumstances during the decade in question (and of course beyond). If the story of post-1959 Cuban history cannot be understood other than through narratives of exceptionality, pre-1959 Cuba as it was articulated in Cuba in the sixties looked acutely familiar from the perspective of neo-colonial dominance and the politics of under-development. There was a reason for this. The development of a new national identity in Revolutionary Cuba was based on two elements: firstly, an exploration of the Revolution’s relationship to the past, and secondly its projection of a virtual future. The discursive means of doing this involved anthropomorphizing the Revolution and fusing the notions of Nation and Revolution. The heroic past, found in the ideological trajectory of the Revolution, determined the heroic future that was demanded, whilst the ignominious past, which the Revolution was attempting to overturn, became the key discursive bête noire through which the Revolution sought to establish its authority and of which the Cuban people were constantly reminded in order to strengthen the national-revolutionary identity. The substantial material and social change in Cuban life in the sixties strengthened this and connected Cubans directly to the Revolution, as the new national project was projected in contrast to the profound social ills of the fifties, in particular poverty, inequality and US domi-

12

Chapter 1

nance. The inequalities experienced in the fifties had a material base: a poor Cuban in the fifties, particularly hailing from rural Cuba, was likely to have poor health, housing, education and employment opportunities. From agrarian reform to educational reform, from healthcare reform to urban reform, radical social change was effected in the sixties. Homes vacated by Cubans who went into exile were redistributed by the revolutionary government according to need. Working class, black and mulatto Cubans were moved into areas, such as Vedado in Havana, which had previously been home exclusively to the white middle classes. The nationalization of all US-owned enterprises put an end to the neo-colonial domination of the USA, which had owned not just a large proportion of the agricultural means of production but also factories, power companies, the telephone system, banks and urban housing (Seers, 1964: 45). Class relations, furthermore, underwent radical change in the early years of the Revolution partly due to the mass migration away from the island. The occupational composition of the refugee community displayed a high proportion of professional and semi-professional workers with a low proportion of low-skilled and agricultural workers compared with the demographic make-up of the island (Fagen et al., 1968: 18–19). 1 Of course, the exodus, which totaled 584,000 people between 1960 and 1974, reaching a peak in the periods 1960–1962 and 1966–1971 (Domínguez, 1978: 140), was in part facilitated by the US policy of open access to Cuban migrants. It effectively removed many potential opponents of the new system, and diminished the numbers of the potentially powerful middle classes, which had been a significant group in the fifties, at least in Havana (Kapcia, 2005a: 91). Those who left the Revolution were termed gusanos (worms) and deemed enemies of the new Cuba. Castro had spoken in 1953 of the “vast, unredeemed masses” (1953: 34) and it was these Cubans to whom the Revolution was appealing through social and material change. But if a more profound and permanent shift was to be achieved, material change needed to go hand in hand with a new form of national identity and a new ideology; otherwise indeed the wide-ranging social and material changes might only be temporary or reversible. Perhaps one of the most enduring successes of the Revolution was, indeed, creating “The Revolution”— or even as it has now become, nuestra Revolución (our Revolution)—as a stable and permanent entity. Authenticity and authority became the preserves of the Revolution itself (rather, for example, than a government, or a homeland). If we look at Fidel Castro’s famous Palabras a los intelectuales in June 1961 from the perspective of the populace (rather than artists and intellectuals), we witness the Revolution as a form being constructed. The familiar line “within the Revolution, everything goes; against the Revolution, nothing” may be the most keenly debated, but let us consider the following lines:

Revolution 1959

13

Nothing against the Revolution, because the Revolution also has its rights and the first right of the Revolution is the right to exist, and no one can oppose its right to be and to exist. As much as the Revolution understands the interests of the people, the Revolution signifies the interests of the whole nation; no one can rightfully claim the right to dispute it. . . . And this will not be a law just for artists and writers. This is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the Revolution. (Castro, 1961b; my emphasis)

The anthropomorphizing effect of this statement was that the Revolution was afforded its own rights. The semi-human form of the Revolution was constructed in part through the development of a revolutionary ideology and by the incorporation of the role of affect (Fernández, 2000) and ethics (Miller, 2008: 693). This helps to explain the alignment of revolutionary identity with morality (thus leading to moral panic as discussed above). Through this framework, policies such as education policy were constructed with a moral as well as practical underpinning. This was core to the ideology of the Revolution which, writes Cuban intellectual Rubén Zardoya, refers to “material and spiritual power” (1996: 36; my emphasis) and it is that affective domain, that spiritual power, which leads commentators such as Fernández to conceive of revolutionary ethos in religious terms. In terms of structure, essential to the new national identity and the ideology of national liberation was an enduring hostility to US imperialism. This was the cornerstone of historical continuity fostered by the Revolution. The deterioration of US-Cuba relations in the early years of the Revolution culminated in the imposition of the economic blockade in the final months of 1960. The breaking off of diplomatic relations in January 1961 and, of course, the Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 cemented an island identity as distinct from an exile identity; Cuban national identity was split between those who chose to take up arms to support the Revolution and those who would take up arms against it. Both sides claimed authenticity of nationhood but could not (or could only uneasily) coexist as claimants to Cuban heritage. The view from the island of yanqui power, both in funding and training the exiles, and in exercising its might in other ways, was an important fomenter of a distinct island identity. Through proximity and power, in particular through the Platt Amendment, and through the experience of the fifties, the USA had entirely supplanted Spain as the dominant foreign power, and memory of this— plus fear of a return to neo-colonial status—was and is an important part of Cuban consciousness. Thus anti-imperialism and anti-yanqui sentiment were the foundation stones of national-revolutionary identity and situated the Cuban sense of nationhood in firm contrast to the United States, which was the dominant Other, which had subjugated Cuba, and could do again.

14

Chapter 1

Revolutionary ideology, as well as being determined by the state of siege Cuba was in, also depended on a relationship between the Revolution and a particular notion of Cuban history (note, not Cuban history in general, but that Cuban history which could be seen to have led to Revolution). Kapcia claims that cubanía was the definable ideology in 1959, based on equality, the liberating effect of culture, agrarianism, community, heroic nationalism, responsibility of a benevolent state and faith in nationalism (Kapcia, 1997: 83–84). Kapcia’s theory aims to encompass all the diverse influences feeding into the revolutionary ideology, accepting that historical circumstances are specific to Cuba—hence the term cubanía—and also explaining that the ideological high ground (or, put another way, the right to take ownership of cubanista ideology) was earned by the revolutionaries as a result of the lack of legitimacy of the Batista regime (Kapcia, 1997: 85). So in what sense was revolutionary identity new? According to Cuban intellectual Martínez Heredia, identity was the daughter of a very slow and protracted accumulation of characteristics taken, created, re-elaborated, or re-created from daily life, mythical material, beliefs, artistic expressions, and the forms of knowledge acquired by different ethnic groups, their clashes, relationships and fusions, from the local communities and regions that make up the country. (Martínez Heredia, 2002: 140)

But his key point comes next—without the “ideology of social justice expressed in socialism” this new identity could not have become generalized (Martínez Heredia, 2002: 141). In other words, erect as many busts and portraits of Mella or Martí as you like, but the association of these figures to the present has to be materially and contextually meaningful in order to reconcile past and present in a new ideology. The signs and symbols were present for Cuban youth to see—in the classrooms, on billboards, in speeches of the leadership. But one of the troublesome qualities of youth is that it may at worse mock such a symbol or at best, ignore it, if it has no contextual meaning to the new generation. The key way in which the relevance of historical figures’ thought to contemporary young Cubans could be transmitted was through the institutions of state, and in particular through the education system. Denise Blum’s (2011) work on the education system is illuminating in this respect. She sees the work-study principle consciously blending the ideas of José Martí with Marxist-Leninist principles, and this is core to the promotion among Cuba’s young people of collectivist values via the education system. In terms of structures, Martin Carnoy’s volume exploring how and why Cuba continues to out-perform other countries in the region educationally points to the fact that education policy since the sixties has concerned itself with raising the quality of education for students from working-class and rural areas through using what he terms “state-

Revolution 1959

15

generated social capital” (2007: 29). Other engines and structures of mass participation beyond education—in sport, leisure, politics and so on—for young people further contributed to the development of a direct relationship between young people and the Revolution. CONCLUSION An interest in youth from multiple disciplinary perspectives was one of the effects of the explosion of youth globally in the sixties. Certain parallels and commonalities can be drawn bearing in mind attempts at transnational models; the role of leisure and popular culture (notably music) is key here, but the very meaning of leisure and culture had a local specificity which must be taken into account. Furthermore, as elsewhere, theorization of youth in the Cuban case intersects with the theory of generations. But in all of this, an understanding of the specificity of the Cuban case leads us to the need to understand that while the concept of youth in Cuba shared a prominence with other models of youth, the political and historical situation tells us a quite unique story. The cornerstone of this inimitability was the development of the new structure—The Revolution—through the development of ideology and the understanding of the Revolution as the natural successor to radical movements of the past. Even in terms of generation, the concept had a specific meaning in Cuban history which was invoked by the rebels of the fifties. Generation became, in the Cuban sixties, a historical pre-revolutionary category as the new ideology which outlined the Revolution proposed a new model in which no new generation would have to redeem the sins of the former. Instead what was in effect created was a single new generation; the generation of Revolution, which would be fed by youth. Youth existed politically but also culturally; the spaces of youth matter fundamentally when we ask what change young people can foster and what agency they have. In a sense, as Benedetti argued, all Cubans were youth in the Sixties. And yet young people can be considered to figure differently in this new chapter of Cuban history. They can be viewed as a type of exceptional case study, and there are two reasons why this is the case. Firstly, they would experience social change that was specific to their moment in the life course, thanks to a youth policy that was all-encompassing, covering all aspects of life, in particular leisure time. Secondly, and in part the catalyst for such a broad youth policy, “youth” was in fact part of the evolving national-revolutionary ideology that was developing, so a vision of young people was formed on the basis of this ideology which was sometimes removed from the actual experience of being young in sixties Cuba. The next chapter seeks to analyze what exactly that vision was.

16

Chapter 1

NOTE 1. It should, however, be noted that Fagen’s study does not cover the entire exile community, but a sample of those who registered with the Cuban Refugee Center in Miami (approximately 55,000 by 1963).

TWO The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

From the purest of Cuban youth came the revolutionary vanguard, which characterized the regime and guided the Cuban people in the last stage of national liberation. (Caption for display on the fifties rebellion, Museo de la Revolución, Havana, May 2003)

From the very earliest days of the Revolution, the notion of youth was irresistible to the new revolutionary government. 1 The youth of the Revolution itself, the youth of its leaders and the notion of the rebirth of nationhood all pointed toward the appeal of the use of “youth” as a construct in the revolutionary discourse. This was inexorably linked with the rapid mythification of the fifties rebellion. Children’s magazine Pionero printed cartoon strip versions of the rebellion of the fifties, and in 1961 ICAIC produced the film El joven rebelde, directed by Julio García Espinosa, telling the story of a young man who joined the rebel army in the Sierra Maestra. Young people, moreover, were seen as the social category that would comprise the architects and builders of the new society and those who would benefit most (along with children) from its construction. But it is worth putting this perspective in context. In 1959 youth as a category was very different (both in Cuba and elsewhere) to the post“youthquake” force which was firmly on the map by the end of the sixties. If youth radicalism in Cuba had been tried and tested in the leadup to 1959, it was via radical student underground politics and doughty young rebel soldiers of the fifties. Young people had proved themselves to be crucial in the resistance to a brutal and corrupt regime, but bringing youth in from the wild frontiers of resistance and rebellion of the fifties, and making youth a force capable of ensuring the permanence and stabil17

18

Chapter 2

ity of an as yet loosely defined Revolution was a challenge to be faced. That coordinate of young lives which would become a core factor in the construction of youth policy, tiempo libre (free time), was not, in 1959, a core priority. Rather, the priority was to channel the radicalism which youth had demonstrated in the pre-revolutionary period through hard work, moralism and a commitment to the new nation under construction. This could then ensure that the new generation which was being forged would (as far as possible) remain permanently committed to the new national project. PRE-REVOLUTIONARY YOUTH RADICALISM As stated above, the elevation of los jóvenes to a central position in revolutionary rhetoric derives not only from the central role of young rebel fighters in the fifties but also from the history of radical leftist student and youth movements in Cuba. In the first instance, it is useful to recall that Julio Antonio Mella was a student leader when he co-founded the Communist party in 1925. Even now, Mella continues to hold symbolic capital for the young communist movement in Cuba, featuring on its logo. However, for a variety of reasons the importance of students as a “youth group” diminished in the early years of the Revolution, obscuring somewhat the fact that prior to the victory of January 1959, youth radicalism found its expression through students at the University of Havana via their organization (also launched by Mella), the FEU. Even if this radicalism was tainted, particularly in the fifties, by bonchismo, violent gangs that penetrated student organizations in an attempt to co-opt student radicalism, the majority of student members were “students determined to introduce reforms and to oppose corrupt government” (Aguiar, 2000: 2). The anti-corruption movement appealed to students, many of whom lent their support—partly for that reason—to the short-lived anticorruption-focused Ortodoxo party led by Eddy Chibás. Following Chibás’s famous on-air suicide, it was at the University of Havana that his body was laid out in order that his supporters could mourn his death (Suchlicki, 1969: 56). This student radicalism continued in the underground struggle against Batista with the formation of the Directorio Revolucionario (DR). This was founded in 1955 under the leadership of FEU president José Antonio Echevarría. Echevarría’s death during action to attack the Presidential Palace and attempt to assassinate Batista in March 1957 (Suchlicki, 1969: 75–81) created one of the key youth martyrs of the rebellion. It was not just the student body and its respective organizations which played host to youth radicalism. There was also a history of youth political organizations which, it must be remembered, also fed into the discourse of youth which the Revolution inherited. The Liga Juvenil Comu-

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

19

nista (LJC), which was formed in 1928, was the first example of a radical youth organization, formed as part of the labor union, the Confederación National Obreros de Cuba (CNOC). The LJC was largely clandestine and was structurally organized as part of the communist movement (Vizcaíno et al., 1987: 4–9). Despite disbanding in 1938, it served as a model for, and a precursor to, the larger and more significant Juventud Socialista (JS), which was established in 1944 by the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP) and which, according to one account, had over 55,000 members in 1945 (Martín Fadragas, 1998: 19) (although that is surely an overstatement), as well as its own publication Mella. After 1952 the JS survived underground and continued to publish its magazine. Despite its struggle and survival under the batistato, its involvement in the rebellion mirrored the rather tardy involvement of its parent organization, the PSP. Finally, of course, there were the variety of rebel organizations of the fifties with which young people could be involved, though these were not youth organizations per se. Fidel Castro’s 26th of July Movement (M26-7) was, in the words of the Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, “a political organization basically made up of young people” (1986: 68n1), and the role of the young fighters of the rebel army certainly fed into the social construction of youth after 1959, explaining the beatification of young soldiers of the Sierra Maestra such as Guevara protégé Joel Iglesias, of whom more below. So in 1959 the social construction of youth was as follows: youth as rebel soldier, as socialist comrade in arms, as anti-corruption ideologue. But these strands were not neatly interwoven; and the role of revolutionary discourse was now to unify these distinct roles because, as K.S. Karol argued, “Fidel Castro will often tell you: it is five times more difficult to develop a country after the revolution than to seize power” (1970: 184). Such was the mission with which the as yet illdefined group which was youth was tasked. REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSE IN THE SIXTIES There were certainly a variety of key figures who contributed to revolutionary discourse, but of these I have chosen those at the heart of the revolutionary struggle—Fidel Castro, Raúl Castro and, up to and beyond his death, Ernesto Guevara. These three, if we take a long view, were at the heart of the “inner circle” as Kapcia terms the core leadership group, which was made up of leading guerrilla fighters, leading activists from the urban underground and important “link” people between the two (2014: 41–60). Furthermore, although in the early sixties the remit of each of these three key figures was broad, they all had a concern relating directly to youth. Therefore, in order to understand how young people were viewed by the leadership of the Revolution in the sixties, an analysis of a sample of key texts relating to youth with a focus on the work of

20

Chapter 2

those three key protagonists will be undertaken here. The speeches of Fidel Castro naturally occupy a prominent place in this discourse. Castro’s speeches were often adapted thematically to the live audience; that is to say that his focus depended on who was present to hear the speech. However, as the majority of Castro’s speeches were reprinted, often in full, in daily newspapers and weekly magazines, as well as being broadcast on the radio, the audience in a wider sense incorporated all Cubans in principle. They were texts which were studied at the Schools of Revolutionary Instruction, in part, perhaps, as Richard Fagen argues, due to a dearth of relevant ideological texts at that moment in time (1969: 108). Of course, not every citizen would have read all (or any) of the speeches, but Castro’s speeches invariably addressed a trans-generational mass audience. Therefore, even if some reference was made to issues specific to the live audience, the target was always a mass audience. Guevara’s speeches, though less frequent and less comprehensively broadcast than Castro’s, are also crucial to this analysis because of the close link between Guevara and young people. He was instrumental in establishing the first youth organization (the AJR) and his worldview depended on young people playing a role in the building of a new Cuba. Given that he is now a hero to young people both inside and outside Cuba, it is important not to assume that his importance in the early sixties was paramount. As Kapcia argues: [T]he picture of Guevara is less one of influence by a radical ideologue on a largely untutored, unsuspecting, gullible group [referring to the leadership] than one of coincidence with Guevara being the rebel leader best able and most willing to articulate the new positions being adopted and place them within a clear ideological and thematic context. (Kapcia, 2000: 122)

His key written texts became documents of the ideological polemic of the Cuban Revolution both when Guevara was a part of the revolutionary government and after his departure from Cuba. In addition to this, his proximity both to Castro and to young people and his propensity to talk directly to young people make Guevara’s texts essential to this analysis. Raúl Castro’s texts are perhaps less important given a lower frequency and narrower dissemination, yet are worth including for two reasons. Firstly, Raúl’s military perspective, deriving from his position as head of the Ministry of Armed Forces (MinFAR), is crucial, the sixties being a time when life in Cuba, particularly that of the young, became more militarized. Secondly—and a point which is still relevant to Cuba-watchers in the twenty-first century—Raúl’s speeches function as an echo of Fidel’s speeches, reinforcing, strengthening and even re-contextualizing the words of Fidel. 2 Finally, in order to build up a picture of the dominant discourse on youth of the sixties, one further text is considered—the Manual de capacitación cívica, published in 1960. This text, produced by the

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

21

Ejército Rebelde, functioned as a “state of the nation” piece and also an instruction manual to enable Cubans to learn what the Revolution represented. It was authored by a selection of revolutionaries, most significantly Núñez Jiménez on history and geography and Ernesto Guevara on morale and discipline. All branches of the burgeoning youth association (the AJR) were encouraged to have a copy in their library. 3 THE CATEGORIZATION OF YOUTH The cementing of revolutionary culture was, as discussed in the previous chapter, dependent not just on socio-economic actions, but on an affective dimension which attempted to link all Cubans to the revolutionary project. Youth as a concept had already tentatively appeared in a cameo role in Fidel Castro’s La historia me absolverá of 1953 when Fidel made reference to martyr Abel Santamaría who had been tortured and killed following the attack on the Moncada barracks. In his statement, Castro described Santamaría as “the most generous, beloved, and intrepid of our youth, whose glorious resistance will make him immortal in Cuban history” (Castro, 1953: 22). This section of Fidel’s statement made a further public excursion when Raúl Castro, in July 1961, quoted it in full in an article about the 1953 attack (Raúl Castro, 1988c: 57). Apart from passing references, right from 1959 youth was referred to as one of the social categories on which the Revolution depended for its support. Raúl Castro, speaking in September 1959, identified those groups to which the Revolution was indebted and on which the Revolution depended: “We have the trust and active cooperation of the Cuban nation, and in particular its workers, peasants, middle classes, students and youth [la juventud]” (Raúl Castro, 1988a: 15; my emphasis). Similarly, in the Manual de capacitación cívica, it was stated that among the groups which are key to the Revolution “it was youth that played a particularly significant role in the first phase of the Revolution—and is still playing it today” (MinFAR Departamento de Instrucción, 1960: 55). The Revolution was inclusive in so far as all Cubans, with the exception of children and those who neither worked nor studied (unless they could count themselves among the youth of the nation), were incorporated in one or more of those categories. Despite the radical youth tradition which the Revolution inherited, there was a degree of apprehension about less radical (and more “decadent”) youth of the past which must also, surely, have been considered the rather less welcome part of that inheritance: in a speech to students in November 1960 Castro made the point that the Revolution was now building “the inheritance of the future” but “[w]hat we have is not perfect. We have received the inheritance of the past, with all its negative features” (Castro, 1960c). The thesis of past decadence soon translated into high levels of expectation of revolutionary commitment

22

Chapter 2

placed on the shoulders of the young, based on the fact that those soon entering this category were surely less polluted by that facet of Cuban pre-Revolutionary society which had been US-dominated, bourgeois-led and scandalously corrupt. This assumption was later to prove troublesome as there began to emerge from cohorts of Revolution-born children a youth which most certainly was not, in some ways and at some moments, deemed to be unsullied in the expected way. There was of course a pragmatic reason for consecrating youth as a category. The young soldiers of the Sierra and Llano of the fifties were seen as key foot soldiers in the creation of the new society. They were fearless (and now experienced) fighters—“youth [la juventud] does not flinch in the face of death; it taunts death. It has no respect for it; it has confidence” said Guevara in 1961 (1977f: 602), but those young people were under-skilled in terms of the critical technical skills the Revolution needed (Guevara, 1967: 158). Guevara was, in respect of his new role in the revolutionary government, tasked with the prospect of converting the attributes of those young fighters (and those who identified with them) into useful revolutionary attributes so that this group could be capable of carrying out the tricky task to which Castro had referred, of developing the country. FROM NOSOTROS TO USTEDES In addition to the practical need for young people to become educated to fulfil the necessary tasks of the Revolution, turning to young people was very natural for the leaders of the Revolution in the early days because the leadership defined themselves as young. In January 1959, Fidel at thirty-three, and Guevara at thirty-one were surely approaching the upper age limit of youth. Raúl, on the other hand, was only twenty-eight, so perhaps safely young for a few years to come. This identification of the leadership with Cuba’s youth mattered and much was made of it, but even if the Revolution survived with the leadership intact, it would be only a matter of time before its members could no longer credibly claim to be part of Cuban “youth.” Thus we can witness a gradual move in leadership discourse from a direct identification with youth to a more remote and even paternal attitude. In July 1960, Raúl Castro explained why he saw youth as playing such a crucial role: Youth is a destroyer of long-standing myths. Firstly, it is youth that is now running Cuba and, despite its inevitable mistakes, we can honestly say it is making a pretty good job of it. (Raúl Castro, 1988b: 22)

We assume that Raúl counted himself among those young people to whom he referred. This identification by the leadership with youth continued into the mid-sixties—in 1964 a thirty-six-year-old Guevara was

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

23

still identifying himself as a young person, pointing out that he considered himself among the nation’s youth when he talked about their need to study (Guevara, 1977i: 645). But if Guevara was still identifying as young in 1964, not so his (slightly) older colleague—as early as 1962, Fidel was clearly discursively distancing himself when he spoke of “you, the members of our nation’s new generation” (Castro, 1962c: 5; my emphasis). The notion of generation was central to Castro’s conceptualization of youth, as stated in chapter 1, and this position was further elaborated by Castro in August 1962. In an important speech to the Union of Secondary School Students (UES) congress, Castro signaled a handing over from his generation to a young generation, with the discursive tool, repeated four times “lo que les damos a los jóvenes” (what we give to the young), the ultimate “gift” being “the future, the image of the future and of a future that will be eternally theirs” (Castro, 1962e: 3). The articulation of youth as inheritors of the future was a much more sustainable model of youth than was the model of young leadership. Cohort after cohort could continue to pass on the metaphorical battle for the Revolution to the next, thus constantly repopulating the category of youth with a new cohort of young people. By and large this is the enduring model of youth we encounter in Cuba in the twenty-first century, although the role of youth continues to be subject to debate. A further reason why differentiation between leadership and youth was a successful strategy is exactly because of the failings of youth to live up to the discourse—young people whether at school, at work or in the youth organizations were, as mentioned above, not always delivering on the leadership expectations leading to successive moral panics over youth—so the strategy was certainly judicious, in that it ensured that the core leadership group remained immune to the criticisms levelled at youth. Guevara, it seems, was becoming more aware of his own maturity even while considering himself counted among young people. In 1964 he reaffirmed the generational discourse on youth when he instructed the UJC to “develop people who can take our place, so that consigning us to oblivion as part of the past becomes one of the most important indicators of the role of our entire youth and our entire nation” (Guevara, 1977d: 318). In 1965 his reflective sense of maturity is articulated at the moment of leaving Cuba in his famous letter to Fidel when he wrote: “today everything sounds less dramatic, because we are more mature” (Guevara, 1977j: 697). In a similar vein, by 1966 relative youngster Raúl Castro pointed to the difference in age between himself and a group of students who he accompanied on a ten-day march in September 1966 following the path of the Rebel Army eight years previously (Raúl Castro, 1988d: 164). The transformation of the leadership from nosotros to ustedes allowed the creation of a more enduring notion of youth through renewability. The young guerrilla rebel image could be captured and preserved in

24

Chapter 2

myth, film, novel or cartoon strip; but it was the virtues of the caricature, not the actions of rebel soldiers, which were now needed by the Revolution. And because it became possible to espouse the virtues of youth (considered below) without being a young person, the entire population could identify with youth. Furthermore, this trend was part of an attempt to forge a new relationship: that direct relationship between youth and the Revolution (rather than the leadership per se). And as the sixties progressed, the Revolution as a new structural form became more and more dependable and stable, so the relationship forged between the youth and the Revolution gained in credibility. THE SYMBOLIC IDEALIZATION OF YOUTH In the previous section of this chapter we referred to the virtues with which the revolutionary leadership considered youth to be endowed. Of these the two core attributes of young people which were the focus of construction of the culture of youth were those very ones to which Kriegel draws attention in her study of generations (1979: 27)—purity and enthusiasm. While the enthusiasm of the new generation in Cuba corresponds to Kriegel’s conceptual framework—the ability to sustain a thirst for knowledge without the intrusion of routine (although one should mention that both school and agricultural voluntary work could comprise significantly routine activity)—purity works differently. For Kriegel the purity of the young generation was based on the idea of “protection against the contaminating influence of money” (1979: 27). The Cuban view of youth of the sixties was, in contrast, based much more on a broader enlightenment view of a child as uncorrupted at birth and youth as a continuation of this, with both stages susceptible to corruption from multiple forces (including political forces), not just money. Even given that broader definition, there was a feeling in Cuba—not least on the part of Fidel—that these key attributes transcended nation and that the social construction of youth was based on a universal concept to which Fidel Castro subscribed when he spoke of youth as pure and generous “anywhere in the world” (Castro, 1961c). In 1962, at an awards ceremony for sugar workers, Castro related stories of heroism among the sugar workers he had met. He noted that “a worker who said he was 72 came along, and you could see the enthusiasm of a young man of twenty in him” (Castro, 1962d: 3). The assumption that enthusiasm is a natural characteristic of youth was developed by Castro the following month, when he reflected that before the Revolution young people were unable to express themselves: “that world was incapable of channeling all the essential qualities of youth—vitality, enthusiasm, a yearning for the future, an urge to struggle, a thirst for life” (Castro, 1962e: 3; my emphasis).

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

25

Guevara in particular was a purveyor of the notion of purity as an attribute of youth. He argued that youth was more significant than social class—I repeat, Guevara argued that youth was more important than social class—because of the specific ideals that were attached to that stage in the life cycle: I had forgotten that there was something more important than the social class to which the individual belongs: youth, fresh ideals, a culture which, at the point of leaving adolescence, is devoted to serving the purest of ideals. (Guevara, 1977c: 220)

Crucial to the belief in the purity of young people was that purity was not, like enthusiasm, an inherent characteristic of youth. Instead, young people born into the Revolution were pure only by virtue of being untainted by Cuba’s corrupt bourgeois past. This attitude is clear from the outset of the Revolution, and the very goals for the future were based upon the premise that “[t]he enthusiasm of the people today must be replaced with the enthusiasm of a generation which will be entirely the product of the Revolution” (Castro, 1960c). This view is corroborated and extrapolated by Guevara in Socialism and Man in Cuba: “[i]n our society, youth and the Party play an important role” but between the two “the former is particularly important, as it is the pliable clay out of which the new man, with none of the earlier faults, can be fashioned” (Guevara 1977e: 380; my emphasis). 4 There would be a problem, though, in the construction of youth, if the past were to be seen in entirely negative terms. Certainly, Castro’s comments above on the constraints of the structures of pre-revolutionary society that prevented young people from demonstrating their natural virtues partly mitigate this and provide an explanation as to why large numbers did not join the fifties rebellion (remember, the history books of the rebellion tell us a lot about those who took up arms in the fifties but much less about those who did not). But a more effective strategy to exonerate pre-revolutionary youth was to draw attention to those who transcended such structural constraints. The use of Cuba’s radical history in speeches, in particular through a canonization of young martyrs of the rebellion, in parallel with (and in a similar way to) a celebration of young heroes of the rebellion was a means to achieve this. Drawing parallels between the fifties rebellion and the nineteenth century struggles for independence formed part of the attempt by the revolutionary government, to which Nicola Miller draws attention, to “represent itself as the culmination of Cuban history” (Miller, 2003: 148). Of course, this attempt was itself fraught with difficulties. The martyrs of the past were not necessarily “appropriate” young heroes for the present: a case in point would be the memorialization of a group of young students who were executed by the Spanish authorities on 27th November 1871. Guevara points out that the students “cannot be described as heroes exactly, but

26

Chapter 2

rather as martyrs; they were well-to-do students because, at that time, students had to come from wealthy families; their parents were Spanish” (Guevara, 1977f: 604). Martyrs could perhaps be bourgeois, but heroes must be humble and, importantly, Cuban. Much more suitable youth heroes were found by Guevara in the figure of Sierra fighter Joel Iglesias and by Castro in murdered literacy teacher Conrado Benítez, after whom the brigades of young literacy teachers in the Literacy Campaign were named. The mythification of Iglesias and Benítez works in a similar way to that of the higher profile figures, such as Martí, as the human face of the Revolution (Kapcia, 2000: 177-88), later Guevara as the embodiment of the New Man (189–93), and, much more recently, Elián González as the epitome of childhood innocence. The key credentials of both Iglesias and Benítez were that they were black, poor and from rural Cuba. The key to the success of the use of heroes and martyrs was the creation of a normative subject infused with the attributes of every young Cuban, so “Joel” or “Conrado” in fact represented “you”; they were experts, if you like, in the practice of everyday life. Joel, semi-literate when he went to the Sierra and was made literate by Guevara (Taibo, 1997: 134), became one of a small number of Comandantes and subsequently the leader of Cuba’s new youth organization, the AJR. By 1960, according to Guevara: [Joel] can speak to all the youth of the nation—not because he was transformed into a philosopher in the space of one and a half years [in the Sierra], but because he can speak to the people, as a part of the people, and because he feels what all of you feel in your everyday lives, and knows how to put it into words, how to reach you. (Guevara, 1977a: 87)

Joel, moreover, represented a powerful construction of youth subjectivity, great not in spite of but because of his youth. He joined the rebellion at only fifteen, an age to which Guevara draws attention as a type of coming of age: 5 “15 is an age at which a man already knows what he is prepared to die for, and is not afraid to die, when he has an ideal in his heart for which he is prepared to make this sacrifice” (Guevara, 1977f: 605). 6 Benítez did not have the military credentials of Iglesias, so the myth created around the former differed accordingly. The similarity between the two myths, however, is striking with regard to the idealized revolutionary subject. Both fulfilled the criteria for heroification or martyrdom central to which was the concept of overcoming the structures of preRevolutionary life but also being unsullied by bourgeois pre-revolutionary attributes. Like Iglesias, much is made of how Benítez was one of the people, “simply, a humble man of the people, a shoe shine boy, a baker, a night school student because he worked during the day” (Castro: 1961a). How different this martyr was to those students of 1871:

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

27

This young man did not go to Miami or Paris, he didn’t have expensive cars; he was a young man of 18 who had known nothing but honest sweat, poverty and sacrifice; he was a humble young man, a black man, and for this reason he was the victim of cruel and unjust discrimination. He was poor, he was black and he was a teacher. These were the reasons that the agents of imperialism killed him: he was a young black teacher, he was a poor worker. (Castro: 1961a)

Castro implored Cubans to embark on the struggle for education in memory of Benítez. An idealized but attainable revolutionary ethos could be aspired to by all through revolutionary action. The canonization of heroes and martyrs was used repeatedly in discourse: Martí, Maceo, Mella, Camilo Cienfuegos and Echevarría and others were constantly present in speeches of the leadership, particularly on anniversaries, the celebration thereof being closely linked to the evolving national-revolutionary identity. Few propaganda tactics have been used in Cuba as much as the anniversary celebration and this is part of a conscious attempt to connect the nation to its radical history while at the same time highlighting the merit of peasant or working-class attributes. Benítez and Iglesias were particularly relevant in this case because of the intimate link with the discourse of youth; moreover, the propagandist technique of using heroes, martyrs and anniversaries was one way in which the creation of a young revolutionary subjectivity could be forged. And yet the dilemma is there for all to see—this generation was not theirs, but needed building and it was a project fraught with risk. Young people born in the Revolution who failed to meet this ideal would, it seems, be going against nature itself if those inherent attributes were absent from them, and, even worse, against the Revolution itself if their adherence to the expected social values could be called into question. ATTAINING THE IDEAL: CREATING THE REVOLUTIONARY CADRE The view that young people will necessarily be pure, perfect products of the Revolution, in the vein of Iglesias and Benítez, might seem overly deterministic and almost quixotically idealistic, were it not closely linked to the fact that this ideal was a very real yardstick of what young people should aim to become. Castro, in an important speech to the AJR congress, made the connection between the idealized vision and the needs of the Revolution, and explained that the Revolution could hold those ideals while engaging with the struggle that young people were entering. For Fidel there were so many factors that fed into the revolutionary faith in young people that it is tempting to quantify them. But, rather than risk losing the rhetorical power of the contents of this long list (“creer en los jóvenes” repeated again and again), I will summarize rather than quan-

28

Chapter 2

tify. For Fidel, to believe in young people meant firstly that the Revolution had faith in those characteristics deemed inherent to youth discussed above, but also in young Cubans’ “love for the nation and belief in it, love for the Revolution and faith in it, confidence in themselves,” married to, on the part of the Revolution “a profound belief that youth can achieve things, that it has ability, a profound conviction that great responsibilities can be placed on young shoulders” (Castro, 1962b: 5). Castro implied that young people could achieve exactly because of the belief that the leadership had in young people. This belief existed in part because at the time this speech was made in 1962, young people had proved on a massive scale that Castro was right to place such great faith in them as drivers of revolutionary policy through participation (in the rebellion, the Literacy Campaign and so on). Furthermore, in this speech as in others, it is possible to identify the implicit belief that young people did not carry the burden of the decadent past and therefore could be depended upon, that they were “tomorrow’s generation—a better generation than our own, one with far more virtues and far fewer defects than our own” (Castro, 1962b: 5). This new cohort were not perfect, not at all—the Revolution was not yet forged, so how indeed could this generation consider themselves fully fledged revolutionaries? But of course this generation is situated as part of a revolutionary process, whereby this generation will pass on to the next and through this process there can be a constant renewal of revolutionary commitment. The next symbol in the discursive equation is the move from the idealized youth being forged to what young people actually had to do in order to meet the demands upon them. This in turn was determined by the ideology of the Revolution. In Lesson One of the Manual de capacitación cívica the aptitudes valued by the Revolution are made clear: A true Revolution doesn’t confine itself to the transformation of political, economic and social conditions; but rather it impacts upon the way of thinking of its citizens, it does away with a certain way of evaluating things, it does away with political fears and prejudices that claim to evaluate a series of problems; it launches the best human qualities: selflessness, sacrifice, solidarity, staying power, honesty. (MinFAR Departamento de Instrucción 1960: 25)

The methodology to build such moral attributes was through a commitment to education and an ethos of sacrifice, duty and work, which young people needed to show: [Educating yourselves] is your only duty. This is how you honor all the martyrs and all the comrades who still have to die in this struggle—by studying harder every day, by improving yourselves a little more every day; and also by remembering, whenever things seem tough, that the factories, the schools, the artists’ studios and the universities are all waiting for you—that the whole of Cuba is waiting for you and that

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

29

there isn’t a moment to lose, because we are all marching towards the future and the future needs skills, culture and a high revolutionary consciousness. (Guevara, 1977f: 601)

We see the start of the problem of how to train young people. In policy terms the means to ideological development and revolutionary consciousness was via the vanguard, yet the difficulty was having appropriately and sufficiently trained youth leaders (or “cadres”). The cadre is defined by Guevara in 1962 and this definition becomes dominant. Guevara sees a cadre as “an individual who has achieved such a level of political maturity that he can interpret the main guidelines from the central authority, take them on board and pass them on for the guidance of the masses, whilst understanding the masses’ expression of their most deeply-held wishes and motivations” (Guevara, 1977b: 156). The focus on the vanguard and the relationship between the vanguard and the masses indicates Guevara’s influence in the developing concept of how to create that ideal revolutionary. Castro in 1963 asked: How are we going to turn a youth into a professional cadre at 16 or 17? It cannot happen. The first obligation of the youth is to train, to prepare himself. He can be a communist youth, a cadre of the communist youth, but he must remain in his center of study and, in addition, he must actually study. (Castro, 1963b)

Such a cadre could not be developed without education, and, significantly, Castro maintained that young people who are potential cadres should remain in their school or university, implying the importance of contact between the cadres and the masses. It would be easy to be enticed into thinking the focus on the vanguard youth excluded from the discourse other young people who were not considered as vanguard, but this was not the case. The vanguard was expected to comprise the best citizens, but all young Cubans were subject to the same creed of work, lucha (struggle) and education. In 1964, Castro established a firm connection between education and work, by launching schools that would become centers of work and education; the philosophy of work was that “work should not be a way of making a living, but instead it should be part of the training, part of the education of that young person” (Castro, 1964: 4)—exactly the work-study principle the implementation of which Denise Blum discusses with reference to later decades of the Revolution (Blum, 2011). Fidel was, if you like, advocating a pedagogy of work, and one which would “complete and perfect the role and the position of a young person in our society” (Castro, 1964: 4). Certainly policy played a part in affirming the link between cultures of work and of education, and this will be discussed in the next chapter; however, the story of the attempt to link the ideal to the actual is not yet finished, and the discourse used the “Revolution” in a very specific way in its aim of persuading young people into revolutionary action.

30

Chapter 2

THE REVOLUTION AS CADRE The “story” of the discourse so far shows us how a view of what an idealized youth was and how it would be created was conveyed to the Cuban people. This could be achieved through policy, in particular education. The single element that is missing was how the commitment and duty that were needed in order to make a success of new policies could be maintained after the excitement and effervescence of the early months of the Revolution had lessened. The discursive tactic that was used to achieve this is an interesting one. The construction of heroes and martyrs was a relatively easy and much-used means to radicalize history, but the generation of myths went beyond the identification with an idealized version of former heroes and martyrs to the actual construction of a relationship between people and the Revolution. The Revolution thus appeared to speak directly to people through the speeches of the leadership, and as a result, although people may not have developed into philosophers as Guevara wanted to see, all Cubans could identify in some way or another with the Revolution, and could, through this relationship, internalize the new national-revolutionary identity and aspire to be cadre-in-arms with the Revolution itself. The anthropomorphism of the Revolution was conveyed for the most part through the speeches of Castro, although we see elements of it in Guevara, for example, paying homage to Maceo and reflecting on the success of the people of Cuba in repelling the Bay of Pigs invasion. Guevara pointed out that “[n]uestro pueblo todo fue un Maceo” (our entire nation was a Maceo) (Guevara, 1977g: 612) thus equating the people with the heroism of Maceo using the discursive technique of dehumanizing Maceo with use of the indefinite article. In Castro’s important speech to the UES congress in 1962, early signs of the Revolution developing into its concrete form in the discourse were evident. Castro outlined what the Revolution was doing to help young people: The Revolution clears young people’s minds of all the flippancy of bourgeois society, all that entertainment, all that waste, all that absurdity, and instead fills their minds with generous impulses, noble feelings, worthy sentiments. Ultimately, the Revolution is preparing young people for a new life in every sense—light-years away from what has gone before—preparing them for the life we must achieve. (Castro, 1962e: 3)

In this speech Castro spoke of the Revolution as an entity separate from leadership; indeed, he placed the Revolution in the role of virtual leader of all Cubans (including Castro himself). Some months later the Revolution was brought even closer to Cuban young people when Castro stated that educational advances “can enable this country to march forward in

.

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

31

forging a magnificent youth destined to inherit the conditions the Revolution is creating for that youth” and through this the Revolution “advances hand in hand with its youth; it can do it” (Castro, 1963a, my emphasis). Note that it is not the leadership, nor any institution that is concerned with building the utopic future, but the Revolution itself. The Revolution takes the form of a revolutionary cadre marching alongside the Cuban masses. But this conceptualization goes even further. The very design of the Revolution was contingent upon its relationship to young Cubans: “[o]nly a Revolution whose greatness, heroism and wide historical scope can encompass the young will be able to fight this battle” argued Castro (1963b). The Revolution had effectively become a collective noun definitionally encompassing and assessing human qualities—as Castro went on to say the following month, “one of the features of our Revolution was that it has provided a measure of the moral and human worth and the dynamism, attitudes and capacity of the young” (Castro, 1963d: 3). Not only did the conferral of human characteristics on the virtual entity that was the Revolution allow young Cubans to directly relate to the Revolution, it also consolidated the idealized image of the Revolution as the personification of the young hero. In principle, then, following the story of the discourse, young people in Cuba could, through relating to the Revolution, express themselves through the hegemonic national-revolutionary identity. But young people are a tricky group to predict, and the construction of a stable discourse on youth was of course being carried out amidst political, social and material circumstances of supreme instability. Naturally, therefore, problems arose when this new structure—the Revolution—that had been created, linking the perfect to the actual and hence to the virtual, stumbled in its battle to achieve those aims. MORAL PANIC AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF DEVIANCE The aforementioned problems arose at opposite ends of the social spectrum. Firstly, the so-called vanguard youth—those very cadres upon whom the development of revolutionary consciousness was contingent— were deemed to be underachieving, and secondly, certain groups of young people were actively rejecting the new construction of youth proposed by the Revolution. The result was a moral panic on the part of the leadership. The first sign of worry issued from Guevara. His concerns lay, as we would expect given his philosophical dependence on the concept of a young vanguard, with the faults he had identified in some revolutionary cadres: [W]e have seen many new cadres developing during this period; however, their development was different, because these young comrades

32

Chapter 2 found themselves facing the situation created by the Revolution without having received adequate guidance from the party. Some of them managed to achieve complete success, but there were many who were unable to make the grade and were left behind in mid-stream, or simply lost their way in the bureaucratic maze or amid the temptations of power. (Guevara, 1977b: 157)

These fears which amount to a lack of, in Cuban terms, conciencia (revolutionary consciousness), were restated by Fidel the following year, particularly with regard to levels of corruption among university teachers and some young people: Why were these mistakes made? Because many young people had no idea what a Revolution meant and believed things happened automatically or spontaneously, or because it was written in some book or because of some law of history. (Castro, 1963c: 4)

As well as the concerns about the lack of commitment in the vanguard youth, there was significant alarm about those young people who were expressing themselves entirely outside the new revolutionary identity. Being so young, the excuse of a bourgeois past did not for this sector of youth hold the weight that it could hold in explaining a level of decadence in the older generation. Castro addressed this worry at length in a speech given on the anniversary of Echevarría’s death in 1963, worth quoting here at length as it epitomizes the construction of deviance in the Cuban sixties: [H]ere we have an example, another sub-product we have to oppose. These are young people, aged fifteen, sixteen or seventeen who neither study nor work; they hang around like disaffected “lumpen” on street corners, in bars, they frequent certain theatres, behave badly and live in a profligate way. A young person who neither works nor studies— what’s his general idea? Does he expect to be able to live like a parasite? . . . If there is no room for them in the imperialists’ “free world,” they had better get ready to work. Many of these idle and alienated individuals, the children of bourgeois families, roam the streets wearing trousers that are too tight (laughter); some of them carry a guitar, try to look like Elvis Presley, and have taken their licentious behavior to the extremes of wanting to frequent certain public places to organize their effeminate shows just as the fancy takes them. . . . Socialist society cannot permit this type of degenerate behavior. Young people aspiring to that? No! “A tree that grew twisted . . .”— that’s a difficult problem to solve. I’m not saying we plan to take extreme measures against these “twisted trees”; but young people aspiring to imitate them . . . no. (Castro, 1963d: 3)

The phenomenon of the street-corner vagrant was essentially a masculine one, indicated by the couching of the severe criticism in “macho” terms: by accusing those elements of behavior that were effeminate, so this ex-

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

33

tract could also take its place in a study of anti-homosexual rhetoric of the sixties. Effeminacy, degeneration, licentiousness and vagrancy—these were the characteristics of a deviance which, according to Fidel, could not be tolerated in revolutionary Cuba. And, moreover, the concept of the deviant as “twisted tree” is core to revolutionary assumptions on youth of the sixties; by this adage, that which is ill-formed cannot be righted. In other words, to reverse that descent into deviance, once the latter occurred, would be impossible and consequently the youth on whose development the Revolution so depended, would not then come into being. The search for preventative policy solutions to this problem of deviance thus began. Despite attempts in policy to find ways of overcoming the assumed problems that would face young people on the road to becoming good revolutionaries without a revolutionary battle or war to fight, there was an increasing sense of nervousness about young people that emerged as the memory of the heroic role of young people in the literacy campaign and during the Bay of Pigs invasion faded. We only need to look at the militarization of the language of the Revolution (of which more in chapter 3) to help us to understand how important that connection with the struggles of the fifties and early sixties was. In a neat reversal to the early discourse pointing to older Cubans wishing they were young in order to experience the fruits of the Revolution (Castro, 1962c: 3), Castro accepted that young people who did not experience the rebellion (or pre-1959 life) might find it difficult to identify with the Revolution. 7 He pointed out that “no young person will have to feel regret at having been too young when this struggle began; no young person should feel any regret or have the idea that he was too late to take part in this struggle” (Castro, 1965a: 10). Somehow, that link between young people of the present and young people of the past needed forging: And you, today’s young people, must see yourselves as the followers of those men, as standard-bearers for those men, the ones who take up their banner, who continue moving forward, continue marching towards the future, along the upward path of our nation and for the glory of its history. (Castro, 1965a: 61)

And yet after 1965 the discourse of youth, whether as the early idealized vision or in terms of a moral panic, seemed to disappear from the speeches of the leadership. THE CULTURE OF YOUTH The disappearance of youth from the leadership texts by the late sixties was in part due to the stabilization of meaning of the concept of youth. As a structure of the Revolution, youth had been created, comprising core

34

Chapter 2

attributes both inherent to youth and crafted through the revolutionary process. Indeed, as Kapcia (2000: 201–2) argues, the myth of generations had been successfully replaced by the myth of youth. However, the way in which the myth of youth was used signifies the cleft between young people and the concept of youth. From the early days of the Revolution, but most noticeably into 1964/1965, the discourse of youth was not merely about young people and their perceived role, but rather about imbuing all of Cuba with this idealized notion discussed above. What resulted was a developing culture of youth. Taking the occasion when Castro spoke in 1963 when he voiced his views on how the cadre should develop, Castro, having talked to and about young people, then reflected: “But, in the final analysis, who here can say that he is older or younger than the rest? Without a doubt, this Revolution is young, we cannot create an exclusive group apart” (Castro, 1963b). Although Guevara did not relinquish the idea that only the current young cohort could espouse or develop the characteristics of the heroic revolutionary, his insistence on the maintenance of these characteristics indicates that he saw these very characteristics as an essential part of the new Cuba that was in the process of coming into being. He argued in 1964 that: “My insistence on this issue—the point I have repeatedly stressed to you—is that you should not stop being young, not turn into old theorists or theorizers, but instead that you should preserve all the freshness and enthusiasm of youth” (Guevara, 1977d: 313). The Generation of Revolution could thereby be created—a population created through its youth (although I suspect Guevara, had he lived longer, would have seen the value in creating from that generation a few theorizers of its own). By 1965 it is possible to identify very clearly the continued canonization of virtual youthful qualities within the discourse: The important thing here is really that we shouldn’t lose our youthful attitude, and that young people shouldn’t lose their revolutionary spirit. I believe that this is the point at which we shall always converge, where age doesn’t matter. . . . [However,] we are a long way from a situation where we can say that the revolutionary struggle of our nation is over, a long way from saying that there are no more big tasks and challenges for our young people. . . . It is for this reason that this profound and intimate link between the first and each subsequent revolutionary wave will not be lost. (Castro, 1965a: 10)

Later that year, Castro developed this further when he contended that “youth is not only a vital state of being; it is also a universal right of anyone who is not defeated by the passage of time and never loses the youthful spirit” (Castro, 1965b: 10). So where has this construction of youth taken us? It has led us to an understanding that in sixties Cuba youth was potentially the property of all—where such a concept was not confined only to those within a certain age bracket. The conclusion that

The New Framework for Cuban Youth in the Discourse of the Revolution

35

must be drawn from this last section is interesting. If all Cubans had a right to identify with youth (or as youth) the key point is that the fact that young people in Cuba were not appearing to act within the discourse of youth does not matter as much as may be expected. Certainly, the concept of youth deviance was core to policy development, and the many workeducation initiatives, some of which will be discussed in the next chapter, were in part a response to the fear of deviance. But because of the potential collocation of the entire population with youth and youthful attributes, the moral panic inherent in reactions to non-conformism was contained and somewhat muted. 8 CONCLUSION Revolutionary discourse fed into a social construction of youth which pointed to young people but did not refer exclusively to them. This was core to the broadly inclusive rhetoric of the leadership which sought to engage all social groups in the revolutionary process. But this attempt to make of the Revolutionary Generation an entire population of virtual youth sometimes meant that those going through that life stage in the sixties might be somewhat disregarded. Young people, whatever age parameters are chosen, were uniquely situated to experience both the new construction of youth outlined in this chapter, and also the multiple new policy initiatives (in part emanating from the new culture developing from this discourse). The next chapter will deal with this youth policy, which illustrates the focus on the future development of Cuba through an investment in young people. And the revolutionary leadership did talk to and engage directly with this cohort. Guevara, for example, argued in September 1963 that young people should be “free, engaged in discussion, exchanging ideas, concerned with events in the wider world, receptive to technical skills from anywhere in the world, taking what the world has to offer, and always sensitive to the struggle, the misfortunes and hopes of the oppressed peoples” (Guevara, 1977c: 228). Certainly this more practical vision could only be achieved through policy and its implementation, to which we will now turn our attention. NOTES 1. Parts of this chapter appeared in Luke, A. (2012) “Creating a Quiet Majority? Youth and Young People in the Political Culture of the Cuban Revolution” in Par Kumaraswami (ed.) Rethinking the Cuban Revolution Nationally and Regionally: Politics, Culture and Identity (Malden/Oxford: Blackwell/Wiley; Bulletin of Latin American Research [BLAR] Book Series), pp. 127–43. 2. To avoid confusion, in this chapter “Castro” or “Fidel” will denote Fidel Castro, and Raúl Castro will be referred to as Raúl Castro or Raúl.

36

Chapter 2

3. It is worth making a short linguistic point here. All the texts under consideration use some or all of the terms juventud, jóvenes and joven in a variety of meanings. Often when Castro refers to los jóvenes he is actually meaning “youth” as a concept rather than young people. The terms are therefore more meaningful if we look at the signified as opposed to the signifier. When making reference to a category, an idealized vision and a virtual future, the texts are referring to what I term “youth,” whereas when making reference to action that needs to be taken and alarm at weaknesses, the reference is to “young people.” This is not merely a linguistic point but also indicates the gulf between youth and young people conceptually. On a further point, La Juventud, often but not always capitalized, was increasingly used to refer specifically to the UJC. 4. The context makes it unclear whether Guevara is referring to youth in general or to the UJC specifically, but the implication of the comment remains the same whichever translation is used. 5. Interestingly, the age of fifteen also has significance for young Cuban women; the festival of Los Quince was (and is) a rite of passage which all but disappeared in the sixties but re-emerged in the seventies. 6. There was a considerable personal connection between Joel and Che; they had fought together in the Sierra, and, according to Che’s biographer Paco Ignacio Taibo, when Joel was seriously wounded, Che “ordered the doctors, as if his orders could stop the flow of blood, that the boy was not to die” (1997: 223). Happily Joel recovered. 7. In 1962 Castro had reflected on the sentiment of wishing to be young: “Or the old worker who said he would have liked to be young in order to see the Revolution. I understood what he meant: he wanted to be young so he could see the fruits of the Revolution, to see the future of our nation. . . . The worker who regretted not being young, was associating the Revolution with a feeling of regret, if you like. . . . It is natural that someone who has had a life of toil and suffering should want to be young at a time like this” (Castro, 1962c: 3). 8. In the twenty-first century deviance is now recast as desvinculación (un-connectedness) and is almost entirely referent to young people who neither work nor study.

THREE A New Youth Policy for a New Era

The development of national youth policies is a relatively recent development in the history of policy-making. As Sergio Balardini, writing on youth policy in Latin America, points out, [T]he pre-1960s conservative approach [to policy-making] ignored the specific characteristics and needs of the youth in relation to adults and hardly produced any youth-specific policies. This has only recently begun to change, with the exception of Mexico, Venezuela, Costa Rica and Cuba who were the first to implement policies designed specifically for young people, although these were mostly restricted to sports and leisure programmes for urban students. (Balardini, 2000: 43)

The first ten years of the Revolution saw the development of a de facto youth policy in Cuba, although it was not referred to as such. We can construct that youth policy retrospectively by considering together the multiple youth-focused policy initiatives in the first decade of the Revolution. These, I would argue, included but went well beyond the sport and leisure programs to which Balardini refers. Elements of education policy must be put within the framework of youth policy, along with the politics of work, the military and ideology. How youth was conceptualized in Cuba, as laid out in chapter 2, determined the formulation and priorities of youth-facing policy; and how policy was formulated and developed in turn created the social context in which young people operated. Policy in Cuba in the sixties was both responsive to participation and drove participation, so a cause-effect nexus is tricky to prove, but the change in culture often fostered by participation (such as the Literacy Campaign) was a necessary prerequisite to a successful policy proposal. In Cuba in the sixties the consensus on the role of youth drove the development of youth policy, while the successes of youth participation strengthened the likelihood of success of such policy. 37

38

Chapter 3

Each element of the youth policy reconstructed below was contingent upon the new ethos of education which dominated policy making, and the collocation of youth with revolutionary ideology and consciousness through work and education is embedded in each of the initiatives. The integration of education and revolutionary programs took place at a number of levels which will be explored below. Firstly, the broader ideology of education will be examined, to explain why all aspects of the youth policy were associated with the revolutionary goal of development of conciencia through education; a vastly improved access to education ensued which attempted to improve access regardless of social class through the provision of becas (scholarships). Secondly, the connection between education and work will be examined. While one of the central policy goals of the revolutionary government was to provide Cuba with a work force that could fulfil the economic aims of the Revolution, of more importance is the fact that the connection with work was part of the intimate relationship that was being forged through discourse between la Revolución and el pueblo (the people) and the link between work and morality (and, correspondingly, moral panic). Thirdly, bearing in mind the militarization of the language and discourse of the Revolution, the difficult business of building both educational and military participation by young people, whose time of course could not be devoted entirely to both, will be considered. The attempt to build education into the military (and vice versa) was part of the policy to create of Cuba’s youth the “civic soldier,” so that “[f]rom one point of view, civilians were militarized; from another the military were civilianized” (Domínguez, 1978: 353). Fourthly, the converging relationship between education and leisure will be explored through the policy initiatives, notably sports policy, paying particular attention to the Cuban conceptualization of Marxist thought on the function of leisure time. Fifthly, the direct link between education and ideology will be explored. Finally, policies developed when young people did not espouse the ideology of work and study, that discourse and policy encouraged them to internalize will be explored. The resulting moral panic prompted policy initiatives that, through punishment and/or re-education, attempted to align those non-conformist young people with the new revolutionary consciousness. AN IDEOLOGY OF EDUCATION It does not surprise us that education can be considered the foundation stone of a new youth policy. To zone in on education has proven an irresistible temptation for those writing on youth (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989; Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986; Gómez, n.d. e; Blum, 2011) and I do not propose to refute this paradigm here. Rather, I am interested in a particular nuance of this topic: how the construction of

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

39

youth was intertwined with the construction of education. Education was eminently appropriate as a policy initiative to help fulfil the aim of connecting the new young revolutionaries with Cuba’s radical past—José Martí, as the population were repeatedly reminded, had exalted the necessity of education to the very freedom of man: “the only way to be free is to be educated” (Martí, 2004 [1884]: 289). Fidel had taken up Martí’s position in his famous 1953 trial statement History Will Absolve Me. The reform of education was part of the program Castro envisaged at the time for a new Cuba (although not one of the five revolutionary laws) in order “to provide a proper education for the generations destined to live in a happier land” (Castro, 1953: 46–47). If 1898 had been about freedom from the yoke of imperialism through education, 1959 was surely even more so. Of course, taking education policy and ethos as our starting point to understand youth policy comes with its problems. New educational initiatives were not exclusively the preserve of the young—a focus on both adult education and early childhood education formed part of this broad picture. Education, moreover, was part of a wider social policy so educational initiatives were not only confined to schools, curricula, access and so on, but informed a spectrum of policies aimed at developing education as part of a revolutionary ethos. Notwithstanding this caveat, the new focus on education was and is a cornerstone of youth policy in Cuba, and given the construction of youth discussed in chapter 2, we should not be surprised that the impact of youth policy would be upon a community broader than just Cuba’s young people. Marquez makes the point that of the three-fold aims of Cuban education—democratization of education, answering economic needs and forming the new citizen—the first two were probably more widely understood and shared by the Cuban population (Marquez, 1972: 9). And yet the breadth with which education policy needs to be considered is contingent upon the belief by policy makers in Cuba that a focus on education would yield the third of those aims. In other words, the policy dividend of the investment in education was the development of revolutionary consciousness (conciencia) and thereby the development of the new citizen. Kapcia has argued that revolutionary Cuban ideology comprised notions of equality, the liberating effect of culture, agrarianism, community, heroic nationalism, responsibility of a benevolent state and faith in nationalism (Kapcia, 1997: 83–84) and education policy attempted to convey this ideological message. Crucial to ideological development through education were new educational initiatives which aimed specifically to develop this ideology on a mass level, such as the Schools of Revolutionary Instruction (EIRs), yet all education policy, not just specific initiatives, bore the hallmark of revolutionary ideology. The starting point for educational policy in Cuba after 1959 was to begin to redress the pre-revolutionary inequalities in education when the system had grossly under-provided for rural Cuba (Paulston, 1971: 379).

40

Chapter 3

An assessment of initiatives to redress this imbalance serves as a useful yardstick against which to measure educational developments of the sixties. As early as July 1959, attempts were being made to promote education and make it more inclusive, such as a 25–35 percent reduction in the cost of textbooks approved by law (EIR, 1966: 29) and the creation of 10,000 new classrooms, written into the law in September 1959 (EIR, 1966: 31). These developments built up to 1961 which was named the Año de la Educación (Year of Education) and during which major educational changes took place. The highest profile of these was the Literacy Campaign, which will be dealt with elsewhere in this work. However, other major policy changes with regard to education were also taking place, of which the most significant was the Ley de Nacionalización de la Enseñanza on 6th June 1961, which moved all private schools into state hands and ensured that all education in Cuba was free (Comité Estatal de Estadísticas, 1981: 148). Overall, the provision of and access to education in the first ten years of the Revolution was vastly improved—the number of primary and secondary schools doubled, the number of teachers tripled in that decade, and from 1961 to 1969 the amount spent on education increased fourfold (Paulston, 1971: 386; Valdés, 1972: 439). In addition to the nationalization of schools the beca (scholarship) program was established in 1962. The becados, those in receipt of the scholarships, would board during the week in the new schools and were expected to be exemplary students (Marshall, 1987: 152–53; Valdés, 1972: 440). The Plan de Becas ran through the whole post–sixth grade education system including universities. The rationale for the distribution of becas was laid out by Castro in 1961 as a means of provision for those young people who had been literacy teachers during the literacy campaign but who did not have the provision locally (or the material wealth) to continue their own education (Castro, 1961c). YOUTH, EDUCATION AND WORK The connection between education and work was made explicit in Cuban scholarship of the 1980s. Political and pedagogical scientist Gaspar García Galló, in a study of the problems of creating new revolutionary generations, wrote that “linking education to productive and social work has not been a mere didactic device, but is actually the essence of communist training, applied at all levels in accordance with the age of the students, the type of studies and the interests of society itself” (García Galló, 1986: 58). The idea that youth, education and work were essentially linked is related to both Marxist theory and Martí’s ideals (Figueroa Araujo, 1976: 128), once again linking Cuba’s radical past to the new radical present as demonstrated in chapter 2. Denise Blum goes so far as

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

41

to argue that the work-study principle was “the most salient mechanism for inculcating [the] new orientation [toward socialism]” (Blum, 2011: 5). The theme of linking youth and work, which culminated in the Escuelas en el Campo (Schools in the Countryside) program (Figueroa Araujo, 1976), was a theme that Castro raised on several occasions in the sixties. A headline in Revolución in 1964, introducing a speech by Castro to trainee teachers of the Makarenko institute, read: “We must aspire to a situation in which, one day, all our schools will combine study with work” (Revolución, 1964: 1). In a speech during the same month at the inauguration of the Echevarría University in Marianao, Castro had made clear the necessity of focusing on the link between work and study: [W]e must resolutely set ourselves the task of creating future conditions for study and must unwaveringly develop the notion that, at a certain age, at a certain point in the life of a young person, work must not be a professional activity, work must not be a means of earning a living, it must be part of the training, i.e. of the education, of that young person. (Castro, 1964: 4)

This conceptualization of work by Castro gave the notion of work status within the educational system, allowing it to function almost as a discipline in its own right or, at the very least, to assume a central role in the curriculum; it was core to the new pedagogy of the Revolution. It is not surprising, therefore, that we witness a swift translation into policy with three key initiatives of relevance: the Escuelas al Campo (Schools to the Countryside), and later the Escuelas en el Campo (Schools in the Countryside), the Columnas Juveniles, and the teacher training system. The precise nature of the link between work and education became clearer as the new policy initiatives emerged. The Escuelas al Campo program added an inflection to the link through the focus on agricultural work. The program, which was initiated in 1965 in Camagüey and rolled out nationally the following year, was a scheme whereby secondary school students spent forty-five days a year in the countryside contributing to agricultural work (Fagen, 1969: 259). Participation rose from 20,000 students in the first year to 160,000 in 1968 (Paulston, 1971: 387) and, coinciding with the launch of the 1968 Revolutionary Offensive, the number of days was increased from forty-five to sixty (Valdés, 1972: 449). A 1967 article in Bohemia summed up the program as follows: “school and countryside, intimately linked, have now become one in the pedagogical plans of Socialist Cuba” (Bohemia, 1967b: 53). The pedagogy of work, it was clear, concerned work in the fields and hills of Cuba, rather than the factories, affording as that did a greater potential to connect affectively to both the rural experience of the guerrilla fighter of the 1950s and to the Cuban land as part of the new revolutionary identity. The nature of the Escuelas al Campo program was that schools moved wholesale to the countryside: pupils, teachers, books and curricula. The days were inten-

42

Chapter 3

sive: they started at 5:30 am, with the singing of the national anthem and breakfast; agricultural work followed from 7 am until 11 am; lunch from 11 am until 1 pm; agricultural work again from 1 pm until 5 pm; bath, supper and recreational activities until 8:30 pm, and finally school work (with whatever energy the students had remaining) from 8:30 pm until 10 pm (Escobar, 1968: 12). If we look at the balance of traditional schoolwork to agricultural work (some one and a half hours of the former compared to eight hours of the latter) we can witness the centrality of agricultural work to these schools. The Escuelas al Campo program was later complemented by the Escuelas en el Campo, boarding schools (initially secondary level schools) situated in rural areas for young people from urban areas (Barzini, 1975: 222; Holly, 1979: 174). In 1971 this program was rolled out to younger pupils (aged thirteen to sixteen), in part with the aim of fulfilling the productive needs of the Revolution, while in part reflecting the ideological goal of education fulfilling the broad needs of the population, as elucidated by Castro in a speech opening one of these schools on 7th January 1971: This school is consistent with our pedagogical concepts. . . . It is based upon the most profound Marxist thought, which conceives of education and the training of the individual as closely related to productive and creative work; the school accords with the traditional thinking of our country and with the view of Martí, who also devised schools of this kind. (Castro, cited in Figueroa, 1976: 128)

To productive work, we now see the addition of creative work, a core pedagogical development of the time. By and large the Escuelas en el Campo were deemed a success, and one of the reasons for an extension of these schools was that the students did better on average at these schools than others; Figueroa claims that the rate of promotion (i.e., moving on to higher levels of education) of pupils at these schools was 11 percent higher than at urban schools (Figueroa, 1976: 131). 1 A further way in which work was incorporated into young lives was through the Columnas Juveniles Centenarias (CJCs), founded in 1968 and named after the centenary of the revolutionary war of 1868, which had the initial aim of developing agriculture in the province of Camagüey. The CJCs were founded in order to create a voluntary productive force of 100,000 young people across Cuba to assist with the achievement of a ten million ton zafra (sugar harvest) in 1970 (Bohemia, 1968k: 56). The initiative, coordinated by the UJC, Ministry of Work and Ministry of the Armed Forces, was closely linked with education and military training. The CJCs were seen as representing a “great ideological and political school for young people” in a similar way to the Literacy Brigades and Militias of the early sixties (Bohemia, 1968k: 56). The UJC was heavily involved in this initiative and many members of the leadership of the

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

43

UJC were incorporated into the CJCs (Marquez, 1972: 22). Involvement in the brigades aimed to link the lives of the young members to the heroes of Cuban nationalism, as one headline read: “100,000 young people, entirely educated to honor Céspedes, Martí and Frank País” (Rojas, 1968: 70). The plan to realize the educational potential was through the employment of a teacher—who was himself a member of the Columna—for every twenty-five members of the Columna. The educators, who were chosen to undertake the role of teacher by virtue of their level of education and training, underwent an intensive training program at the Carlos Marx Institute in Siboney (Rojas, 1968: 70). The methodology of the literacy campaign is clearly in evidence here; not only was the role of teacher deemed to be important for those being taught but also, of course, involvement in the CJCs was intended to cement the revolutionary consciousness and commitment of the teachers themselves. Using teacher education as a vehicle for socialization was part of a unique trend which developed over the sixties and which was, one contemporary commentator wrote “the most distinctive, almost dramatic, feature of formal education in Cuba” (Jolly, 1964: 237). As well as initiatives such as the Literacy Campaign and the CJCs, there were three new teacher training centers which are of relevance: the training college at Minas del Frío in the Sierra Maestra; the Instituto Pedagógico Makarenko and the courses at Tarará in Havana (Aguilera, 1964: 15). The story of one Makarenko teacher I interviewed gives an impression of the nature and aims of the schools. Having been a teacher at the age of thirteen in the Literacy Campaign, he attended the Makarenko institute at the age of fifteen. In the morning the trainee teachers worked in primary schools (thus helping with the teacher shortage in the early sixties), followed by independent study in the afternoons and classes in the evenings. After graduating from the Makarenko institute, the teacher attended university but still taught during the day, having his university classes at night (Pupo, 2003). Whereas the teaching of Marxist philosophy was not established in the Makarenko institute in the early sixties, the focus on pedagogical training, particularly psychology, was strong. A clear experiential link between study and work emerged, so that each young teacher was also a student. Indeed, through the exertions of the teachers’ union, the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Enseñanza y la Ciencia (SINTEC), teachers offered, between 1963 and 1964, over two million hours of voluntary teaching work (García, 1964: 143). This was praised by Minister of Education Armando Hart Dávalos at the I Asamblea Nacional de Organismos Populares de la Educación, with a request that voluntary teaching hours should become the main function of the Sindicato (Hart, 1964: 159). The link between university and work through the educator/student may be a contributory factor to the change in student identity, from the markedly counter-cultural anti-corruption student identity of the 1950s, to revolutionary participant.

44

Chapter 3

The integration of work and education reflected a concern regarding the work ethic of the Cuban population. Cuba in the fifties had suffered from seasonal unemployment and high levels of underemployment, accounted for partly by the fact that in the hierarchical social system of the fifties, manual labor was considered to be degrading. In order to build the envisaged Revolution, a need for a change in attitude was essential, and, in order to achieve that change, there was a need to ensure that young people’s attitude toward work—at that crucial point in the formation of the new generation—did not emulate that of the preceding generation. YOUTH, EDUCATION AND THE MILITARY Militarization of civilian life was part of the changing ethics, embodying the idea of a lucha (struggle) for all aspects of the Cuban Revolution. The integration of military ideology into the lives of young people in Cuba worked in two ways. On the one hand education became more militarized in style and curriculum, and on the other the military became more education-oriented in response to the difficulties they faced. Military instruction as part of the curriculum became more widespread in the midsixties until finally it was made compulsory at secondary school level in 1968, with agricultural institutes being put under the direct control of the military (Valdés, 1972: 453). The concept of the integration of education and the military had an aim that was connected not just to military need but also to the military ethos of the Revolution, partly based on discipline, as elucidated by Guevara in his chapter in the 1960 Manual de capacitación cívica, entitled “Moral y disciplina.” Guevara’s concept of discipline is based not solely on obeying orders, but also on a discipline that is internal to the subject. So, for example, a rebel soldier would refrain from drinking “not from fear of punishment, but because he was not supposed to drink; it was a moral question, one where his own inner discipline reinforced the army’s moral imperatives” (Guevara, 1960: 299). The connection between the ethos of morality and discipline in the military and that in education was made by Fidel who, in a speech in 1964, talked of the importance of discipline in an educational setting, stating that “education gains from this, as can be seen from improved student discipline, a more sustained and conscientious rate of work, excellent attendance and exceptionally good behavior” (quoted in Yasells, 1965: 12). As well as the concept of discipline travelling easily from its home in the military to the broader world of education, the language of youth policy became militarized. Almost every policy initiative was organized using military terminology—lucha, brigadas, cuadros, columnas—leading to a militarization of political culture in terms of the way Cuba perceived itself and certainly reflecting the sense of siege felt in the sixties. This also reflected the

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

45

positioning of the new generation of young Cubans as the rightful descendants of the 1868, 1898, 1933, and 1953 revolutionary generations. Military policy after the Bay of Pigs invasion was, of course, concerned principally with defense of the patria, but the integration of education and the military was also an important (but difficult) policy goal that expanded over the course of the sixties. The formalization of the connection between youth and the military did not really take place until the formation of a particular body, in this case the Society for Military-Patriotic Education (SEPMI) launched on 28th January 1980—exactly twenty years after the official launch of the first youth organization (the AJR)— which was a joint venture developed in the 1970s between the UJC and the MinFAR (Campos Menéndez, 1983: 11–12). Yet the connection between youth, education and the military was clearly forged in the sixties, right from the very earliest days of the Revolution. As discussed in chapter 2, there was a fear that the new generation who had not fought in the 1950s would lack that direct experiential link with the defense of the Revolution and a view that it was by incorporating the military into the education system (and as with work, we see an attempt to build militarization of young lives into the curriculum) that the new generation could forge that identity as defenders of the Revolution. One causal factor determining the militarization of education was the power, strength and breadth of activities of the armed forces. The ethos of the Armed Forces with reference to youth can be gleaned from this account in its magazine, Verde Olivo, as the case was made for the militarization of young people’s lives: it was argued that the outcomes of military training—discipline, abnegation and organization—meant that “a young person educated in the principles of military training carries inside himself the germ of the New Man” (Verde Olivo, 1968: 5). Military service had been obligatory since 1963 for men between sixteen and forty-five, but the first to be called up for three years military service were the sixteen-year-olds. The idea was that these young men would be able to both do military service and study, a concept already introduced by Castro in 1964 as a way of ensuring that the goal that all young Cubans would be in compulsory education until the pre-university level could be met and could be consistent with SMO (Castro, 1964: 4). In 1965 the MinFAR announced that young people could incorporate education and military service through military education institutes: “suitable young candidates for military service are recruited without interruption to their studies, which are so important and necessary for the training of technical and professional cadres vital to the scientific, economic and cultural development of the nation” (Yasells, 1965: 12). Despite the plans to ensure that all young people in military service could continue education, by 1968 it was clear that the two policies— SMO and the Plan de Becas—were not working in congruence. The Dep-

46

Chapter 3

uty Minister of the FAR, talking in 1968, clarified the problem the military were facing: [W]hile the majority of our young people complete their national service in accordance with the law, others who, by virtue of the very same law are exempted from so doing, not only remain untrained but also are in a privileged position compared with those who do undertake national service. As a result—and this is the issue here—this group of young people has not received an adequate training because as they followed different curricula they were not called up. (Castilla, 1968: 12)

The problem was two-fold: a lack of young people in the armed forces but also a lower level of education among those young people who were doing their military service as these were, by definition, those young people who had not managed to secure a scholarship. The solution on the part of the military was to make education an integral part of military service, through the inception of Centros Militares de Enseñanza, identical in principle to the military institutes of 1965, so that those participants would study at the same time as undergoing their military service. YOUTH, EDUCATION AND LEISURE: SPORT AS HEROIC PASTIME One of the key ways of understanding youth in international scholarship on the theme has been to interrogate how young people chose to use their time outside school and/or work. In Cuba, sport in particular was a key policy initiative in this area, and was seen as a key way to develop the new Cuban citizen. It was less contentious in the face of the revolutionary ethos than other leisure activities, such as music, and it has sometimes been overlooked in the history books of the Revolution. There have, however, been several in-depth studies of Cuban sport from a sports science perspective, which point to the aim of sports policy to reach the entire population, to the new structures created in Cuba to disseminate sports policy and to the respect afforded to success in sport (Hampson, 1980; Pickering, 1978; Pettavino and Pye, 1996). Pickering noted that “to excel at sport in Cuba is regarded in exactly the same way as the whole world regards excellence in art, drama, music or architecture. It is only in some areas of Western society that sport is regarded as a strange bedfellow in such company” (Pickering, 1978: 169). Having said that, in a survey of Cuban cultural leaders in 1969, when asked the question “Do you think that at present there is a real organic relationship between culture and sport?,” five respondents answered categorically that such a relationship did not exist and indeed would be unwelcome or impossible to build, one abstained in his answer, two spoke of the possibility as something positive that could be aimed at and only one, Héctor Azar, Director of the Bellas Artes theatre answered in the affirmative stating: “I think that

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

47

sport is a form of culture, if culture is understood to mean a way of expressing life’s issues” (Timossi, 1969: 127). The youth magazine Mella affirmed the importance of sport in the early months of the Revolution, recommending the development of sports policy on the island and stating that “until now, there had never been an understanding in Cuba of just how necessary it [sports policy] was in order to enable young Cubans to grow up strong and healthy” (Mella, 1959c: 20). This article pointed out that sporting equipment was now distributed free of charge by the Dirección General de Deportes (the precursor to INDER). It also emphasized the fact that sport was of particular importance to young people, who made up most of the spectators at sporting events, and who sought to emulate their sporting heroes. INDER was established in January 1961, under the leadership of José Llanusa Gobel (EIR, 1966: 69), who later became Minister of Education. For Llanusa, sport was key to the broader aims of the Revolution—it could help to maintain a healthier population which would in turn mean that production could be increased and Cubans would be better able to defend the nation (Llanusa, 1961: 43). In line with similar educational initiatives, the lack of expertise in sport was dealt with through the education of sports teachers. Again, we see a strong focus on teacher training and as the pedagogy of sport was under-developed in Cuba prior to the Revolution, one of INDER’s first tasks was to provide a manual for physical education teachers. This manual, produced in 1961, reflected the lack of pre-revolutionary expertise in education through its bibliography. A total of twenty-eight texts were drawn upon. Of these, fourteen were US-published, one British, one Soviet, two Spanish, nine from other Latin American countries and only one published in Cuba (Fernández Corujedo and Ruiz Aguilera, 1961: iii–iv). The focus in this text was upon the moral fortitude of the sports instructor (rather than any mention of the role of sport in the Revolution—a theme which is conspicuous in its absence in this text)—the authors write that the sports instructor “must be a pure man in all areas, a firm believer in a clean match, believing in the honest methods of amateur sport” (Fernández Corujedo and Ruiz Aguilera, 1961: 3). As the focus on sports increased, the goal of expanding sports education and participation came to be related to more than just production, defense and a healthy workforce; rather, as emphasized by Gustavo Torroella in the third of his articles on the education system in Cuba in Bohemia in 1967, [p]hysical education and sport aim to produce healthy minds in healthy bodies, to stimulate physical development and health and to develop attitudes of collectivization and comradeship which assist in integrating the individual into the group, as an essential aspect of the overall training of young people. (Torroella, 1967a: 22)

48

Chapter 3

Although the 1961 INDER manual covered both individual and team sports, both of which were encouraged, it was the collective nature of sport which Torroella points to as key to the socialization of young Cubans. There were several new sporting initiatives (outside classroom-based sports training) in which the young were involved. Soon after its inception, INDER launched the sporting trials entitled Listos Para Vencer (LPV) (Ready for Victory); this also in effect served as the slogan of the institute. Young people were encouraged to take part in the LPV trials which consisted of a series of sporting activities including gymnastics, running, rope-climbing and long jump (for a full list of sports, see Hampson, 1980: 66). In an open letter from the AJR to youth leader Joel Iglesias, at the time unwell, sent while he was on his six-month tour of socialist countries, the importance of sport to the youth movement was emphasized. It stated that “sport is a task for great numbers of our youth and of the people. We want you to get fit in order to pass the ‘Ready for Victory’ trials, although we know you are always ready for victory” (Mella, 1961d: 10). Other measures, alongside the LPV test, aiming to involve young people in sporting activities through competition and emulation were the Plan de las Montañas (Mountain Plan) starting in 1963 and the Plan de la Calle (Street Plan) starting in 1966. These were softer measures than the LPV tests. The Plan de la Calle involved the reservation of public spaces for youth sports on Sundays (Torroella, 1967a: 22) while the Plan de las Montañas aimed to promote rural sport (Hampson, 1980: 67). Sports policy was highly centralized through a pyramid structure with INDER sitting at the top, down eventually to policy implementation through organizations in localities and in schools (Pettavino and Pye, 1996: 123), but policy formation processes often began at a local level. Hampson pointed out that in the formation of the Plan de las Montañas, rural dwellers were first consulted over what type of sports facilities they would like (Hampson, 1980: 67). In the school curriculum, sports policy aimed to involve Cubans from a young age in mainstream schools whilst allowing for the continuation of those promising students through specialist schools, eventually aiming to provide Cuba with world-class athletes and pedagogically and theoretically trained coaches and teachers. Specialist sports education, like all areas of education, centered on the concepts of work and study, as well as training in sports. Sports policy, however, had a broader participatory aim, which was to encourage the enjoyment and appreciation of sport by the population at large. This aim was translated into policy in 1967 when all sports events were made free to spectators (Pettavino and Pye, 1996: 118). Sport served a pragmatic aim—that of having a healthy workforce—but more importantly it concurred with the view that the positive use of leisure time contributed to the formation of the New Man.

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

49

YOUTH, EDUCATION AND IDEOLOGY While access to schooling and universities was greatly improved by the Plan de Becas and expansion of the school and university systems, education also became, in some senses, more selective. This was particularly the case with the Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria (EIRs) (Schools for Revolutionary Instruction), which began operating on a national and regional level in January 1961 (EIR, 1966: 65). Castro laid out the role of these schools, saying “the fundamental task of the schools is, quite simply, the ideological training of revolutionaries and, in turn, of the people” (quoted in Soto, 1964: 62). The aim of the schools was to provide ideological training to a select group of individuals who, although the term was not yet used frequently in the discourse, would serve as the revolutionary “vanguard.” In the schools’ early days, the training was provided by the PSP as they were almost the only cohort of Cubans with a knowledge of Marxist principles (Fagen, 1969: 107). In Fagen’s study of these schools, information on the age of participants is unfortunately somewhat scant, but he did point out that in 1963 and 1965 between 70–80 percent of students were under thirty-five (Fagen, 1969: 256n), and that the minimum age was sixteen (Fagen, 1969: 130n). He also quoted data indicating that 39.4 percent of instructors at these schools were under the age of twenty-five, and 8.4 percent of instructors were drawn from the ranks of the UJC (Fagen, 1969: 134). Teacher training in general has been dealt with above, but this is a good example of the importance of young people as educators of other young people, and indeed of the population at large. Furthermore, there were specialist UJC EIRs from 1963 to 1966, 2 probably established in an attempt to counter fears that the cadres of the UJC had a weak ideological grounding. The second way in which ideology and youth development came together was through the renaming (and effectively a relaunching) of the Isla de Pinos as the Isla de la Juventud. Fagen describes this as “one of the most audacious of all the social experiments of the Castro government” (Fagen, 1969: 176). After the success of a youth column in repairing hurricane damage to the island in July and August 1966, the island was renamed the Isla de la Juventud, with the aim, through the Plan Camilo Cienfuegos, of developing the erstwhile underpopulated island into a site of agricultural prosperity. Young people travelling to the island to work also underwent education in the state farms, with other young people serving as their teachers, as well as participating in sport and recreational activities (Bravet, 1967: 4–10). Many of the international youth brigades went to the island to do voluntary work (Levinson and Brightman, 1971) alongside young Cubans. In essence, the Isla represented a utopic vision, a site upon which ideals of youth perfection, purity and commitment could be projected.

50

Chapter 3

POLICY RESPONSES TO MORAL PANIC While much of what has been discussed in this chapter covers the positive policy measures that aimed for the creation of a youth as ideal (if that were possible) as that defined by the discourse, the other side of the coin was the reaction in policy to apparent dissent. While differences could be dealt with locally, at the level of educational facilities, mass organizations, family, or at the workplace, certain measures were brought in to close down those forms of expression that were felt to be, in one way or another, contrary to the aims of the Revolution. Over the course of the sixties, as some young people continued to neither work nor study, a youth problem came to be perceived. This perspective deepened as the distance from 1959 widened, and besides attacks on those young people who were deemed unrevolutionary in speeches, there were also national policy initiatives—most notably the UMAPs and the Ley contra la vagancia—which aimed to use education to eliminate the deviant “twisted tree” so feared in the discourse. Moral panic in Cuba took the form of discussions and speeches, as explored in chapter 2, and as per the classic model of moral panic as outlined by Stanley Cohen, policy was framed to attempt to resolve the core moral issue. The moral issue triggering moral panic derived from the new morality of work. As outlined in this chapter, work was a cornerstone of the new pedagogy, and linked fundamentally to the new value system. So moral outrage centered on those who did not work or study (among other apparently moral issues) became possible. The folk devil in this theoretical conundrum was, in common with many a moral panic in many different cultural settings, that young person who did not conform to the expectations set out in the discourse. The construction of deviance in sixties Cuba, outlined so clearly by Castro, led to policy initiatives which aimed to correct the perceived moral frailty of this new folk devil. The first policy solution intended to re-educate young people was announced by Castro in 1963, on the anniversary of the Moncada attack: The undisciplined idle young absentee will be sent to certain schools in the mountains [applause] so that he doesn’t fall through the net, because a socialist society cannot and must not allow a parasitic element to develop in its veins, as tomorrow’s potential lumpen. And to this end we will have two institutions: the schools and obligatory military service. . . . Now every young man will have to go through school or go into the army [applause]. And these institutions will be the enemies of idleness and indiscipline. (Castro, 1963e)

The policies which Castro was, at that stage, anticipating (boarding schools and SMO) to deal with the moral panic were those that were already being implemented as positive policies to encourage young people to participate in the Revolution. These policy solutions were seen as a

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

51

way of saving—rather than punishing—those young people who were at risk of being tomorrow’s troublemakers. However, as the sixties progressed the moral panic deepened. Overtly non-revolutionary (if not counter-revolutionary) activity, particularly pertaining to homosexuals, but also to those who neither worked nor studied, came to be dealt with harshly. The most significant policy to deal with the problem and problematization of non-conformist cultures was the launch of the UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). The UMAPs were in operation from around 1965 to 1967, and were a form of forced labor camp. Although no single history of the camps has been written, various accounts of the policy are in existence. The most thorough account of the UMAPs comes from Yglesias’s account of Cuban revolutionary life. He describes the UMAPs as follows: [They] were begun to take care of young men of military age whose incorporation into the Army for military training was considered unfeasible. Young men known to avoid work were candidates; so were known counter-revolutionaries; and also immoralists [sic], a category that included homosexuals. (Yglesias, 1970: 269)

Although aimed initially at young men, the UMAPs grew out of control, with older Cubans also being sent to these camps. However, as Yglesias discovered in 1967, the year of his study during which the UMAPs had become unfeasible in the long term due to criticism from inside and outside Cuba, those released before their full sentence was served were the over-twenty-seven-year-olds. The implication is that the UMAPs had grown out of proportion, had overstepped their original aims, and that 1967 saw an attempt to reaffirm those aims. Yglesias also pointed out that the UMAPs were unpopular particularly with the intellectuals (Yglesias, 1970: 268) and with Castro himself (Yglesias, 1970: 273–74) and therefore the thinning out of the inmate numbers was the first step toward closing the units. UNEAC also campaigned for their closure, and may have been influential in the decision to do so (van der Plas, 1987: 229). Among the UMAPs’ high profile inmates were prominent young intellectual José Mario, formerly of the El Puente publishing group, and Pablo Milanés, a key protagonist of the Nueva Trova movement. 3 In 1971 a second policy initiative to deal specifically with young people who were neither working nor studying was launched. The scope of this issue was significant—in 1969 there were 400,000 young people (under the age of sixteen) who were neither studying nor working, 200,000 of whom were between the ages of twelve and sixteen (Castro, 1969). The Ley contra la vagancia, passed in April of 1971, aimed to deal with people who were neither working nor studying, or who were working unproductively, and reflects both the panic over the above figures and an attempt to enforce a work ethic. The new work ethic had partially taken hold, as attested by the high levels of voluntary work carried out

52

Chapter 3

(particularly surprising given pre-revolutionary attitudes to manual work) but not all Cubans adhered yet to this ethic. Very little has been written on this legislation, and even then it is cast in the context of the move toward a more hard-line regime (Bunck, 1994: 157–61), as a feeble attempt to prop up communism (Nelson, 1972: 121–26), or in the context of economic and labor policy. Yet rather than the start of a new Stalinist era which these accounts assume, it marked a stage in the particular moral panic that had begun in the mid-sixties precisely about youth who neither worked nor studied. The concept of vagrancy and the purpose of the legislation were set out by Castro in his May Day speech of 1971. Castro explained that in capitalism vagrancy was a way of life, based on shareholder indolence on the one hand and the need for an army of unemployed to keep wages down on the other. He went on to state his position that Under socialism unemployment should and must be impossible, because wealth comes from work and only from work. Work is required even to access natural resources. Work is the source of material goods and services that the people need. . . . This law . . . is not for the workers, it is a law for the non-workers! (Applause) It is not a law to govern those who are doing their duty, but for those are shirking their duty. (Castro, 1971b)

The legislation was both economic, in so far as it was attempting to solve the problem of underemployment and misuse of workforce resources, a key concern of the Ministry of Labor at the time, and moral in its relation to attitudes to work. Furthermore, the process of formulating the policy (a mass workplace consultation) to an extent negated the need for the law itself: by the time the law was on the statute books, 90,000 people had registered for work under its provisions (van der Plas, 1987: 230). The enactment of this policy would operate in two stages. Firstly, those who were not registered to work or were persistently absent would receive a warning and then be closely supervised by their workplace. If they persisted in unemployment or absenteeism, the second stage would come into operation. They would at that stage be considered to have committed the criminal offence of vagancia and would be sent to a reeducation center for between one and two years (van der Plas, 1987: 230). Van der Plas argues that this means of punishment emphasized “the educational aspect of the law and [complied] with the desire to correct those who did not work through convincing argument and education” (1987: 231). Perhaps the law was more symbolic than effective in policy terms—it came in the wake of the failure of the ten million ton sugar target of 1970, as a result of which there was a culture of autocrítica and a concern with economic development. Yet even in its symbolic form it is significant, representing a reaction to both structural problems and perceived redolent echoes of the Cuba of the 1950s. It was formulated in the

A New Youth Policy for a New Era

53

space where cultures met and clashed—the hard-working revolutionary versus the disaffected youth, material versus moral incentives, a less flexible ideology versus the cultural dynamism of the sixties, fear for the future versus fear of the past—and as such represented a barrier attempting to bring these confrontations to an end. CONCLUSION The range of policies discussed in this chapter lead us to several conclusions. The first is that there was a youth policy in all but name in sixties Cuba comprising nationwide initiatives that aimed to incorporate all young Cubans. Secondly, youth policy was unambiguously connected to education. Either policies were driven forward through educational initiatives, or other initiatives became “educationalized.” Thirdly, these policies had a practical purpose for revolutionary Cuba through their aim to satisfy the economic needs of the country. However, there was a more important force at work, which was the formation of the new generation based on the view of young people as a “blank slate” to which Richard Fagen draws attention (see chapter 1). Given that view, extensive policy initiatives were inevitable and the result was that young life in Cuba changed to an extraordinary degree, with opportunities improving, particularly in rural Cuba. The disadvantage of this expansive youth policy agenda is the constraint therein, leading young life to be effectively crowded out by ideologically driven engagement, allowing relatively little time for alternative forms of expression. Yet policy only told one story. Many young people both drove policy, as activists and participants, and benefited from or took advantage of policy initiatives. Despite positive aspects of youth policy, one criticism of Cuban education in the sixties— as stifling to creativity and originality—can to an extent be accepted, as the fear of the non-conformist led to a narrowing of opportunity for creativity. Both policy and discourse sought to develop a link between notions of youth and the morality of work; and the hope was that through new initiatives, a new consciousness could be created which could feed the cadres into the new generation of the Revolution. But fears of the impossibility of redemption for lost youth, along with a moral panic driven by the affirmation and reaffirmation of work as a moral and therefore cultural (rather than economic) issue, led to reactions in policy which, with the benefit of hindsight of course and with the help of Cohen’s theory on moral panic, seem a vast and unnecessary overreaction, tainting what was otherwise a policy and discourse infused with optimism and enlightenment. But such developments also operated in the context of a broadening of the concept of youth worldwide, with an explosion of youth movements on the global stage. Cuba in the sixties was neither isolated nor isolationist—from either the socialist or the capi-

54

Chapter 3

talist world—and the meeting between Cuba with its new moral, social, cultural and economic universe and the forces (national, transnational or global) of the sixties outside Cuba would lead to a further reassessment and reconceptualization of youth. Such exchanges are the subject of the chapter that follows. NOTES 1. In order to save costs, there were widespread closures of the schools for the younger age range in 2009 (Blum, 2015: 427). 2. In the lifetime of these special UJC schools, 1,848 young people graduated (Fagen, 1969: 226). 3. It was well-known that Milanés had been imprisoned in a UMAP but it was not until 2015 that he finally talked openly and explicitly about this experience in an interview with Spanish newspaper El País. This interview was then reprinted in Cuban online magazine La Jiribilla (2015).

FOUR Cuba and the Global Sixties

Decades are not generally deemed important enough in their own right to merit their own academic journal but the sixties was granted that honor in 2008. 1 Certainly, there will be continued debate and disagreement in the years to come, as there is now, over what aspects of the decade mattered most, and there will be attempts to uncover unreported aspects of the sixties; but such work will conform to the paradigm that the sixties—in whatever form the decade may be articulated, and as a period rather than a mere decade—matter to our understanding of twentieth-century history. If we view Cuba in the sixties through the lens of the global sixties we see an island which was not immune to the multifarious events of the global sixties but received them—and fed into them— in a multiplicity of ways. External influence interplayed with the discourse of the Revolution. The move to socialism on this Caribbean island can itself be conceived as one of the events of the sixties that gave distinctiveness to the decade; but on the whole the reception of the Cuban Revolution in the rest of the world is not my consideration here; rather, I am interested in exploring how the forces of the global sixties played out when they were received in Cuba. Young Cubans travelled both internally and externally, and young people from outside Cuba—from both the communist and the capitalist worlds—visited the island. The events, movements and styles of the global sixties filtered through to Cuba and there was a clear sense on the island of the significance of social movements and world events in particular where youth was concerned. The engagement with external forces and the consequent emergence of hybrid forms was in some instances unproblematic for the Cuban Revolution. Contact with some elements of the social movements of the sixties—such as the New Left and the Black Power movement—was fostered with key leadership figures of these being invited to and welcomed 55

56

Chapter 4

into Cuba. But with reference to some dominant sites of sixties “Western” youth culture—such as sixties music and style—a more uneasy relationship existed between that which was indigenously Cuban and that which was seen as external influence. On the whole, we can see that the reception of youth movements and culture in Cuba came in three different forms: firstly, there were some misunderstandings between Cuba and the external culture; secondly, what was deemed to be an external influence was assimilated and “Cubanized,” creating in effect a hybridization of forms, thus neutralizing any feeling of direct influence; and thirdly external influence was vilified, feeding those moral panics (internal) and creating those folk devils (both internal and external) familiar to any student of Stanley Cohen’s famous thesis. Such moral panics in Cuba often followed what was viewed by certain dominant forces within Cuban society as unhealthy Western influence. As is common when we see moral panics in operation, the core issue—in this case external influence on youth and youth culture in Cuba—was vastly overstated and disproportionate. Ironically, some of the purveyors of moral panic were young people, in particular political activists of the UJC who were themselves in part responsible for this closing of Cuban culture to some ideas and movements that were not necessarily antipathetic to the Cuban revolutionary ethos. But despite moral panic and some attempts to close the receptiveness of the island to the various forces of the global sixties, followed by resistance to these attempts, the overall picture is not only one of disapproval of all things Western, but rather one of cultural flows, and of hybridization of cultural forms. THE GLOBAL SIXTIES? THE LOCAL MEETS THE GLOBAL In the wealth of writing and research on the sixties, perhaps one of the most useful conceptualizations of the decade was put forward by Townsley in 2001, when she described the sixties as a “trope” engendering multiple meanings (Townsley, 2001). The history of the sixties can be obscured by the wealth of memoir and nostalgia that the decade has generated and it is still true (and will continue to be while we have the young generation of the sixties alive) that many accounts of the sixties are “acts of memory wrestling with history” (Farber, 1994a: 1). So let us interrogate the paradigm: are the sixties indeed worthy of consideration as a period rather than merely a decade like any other? The broader debate on the sixties cites both the depth of socio-cultural change in the sixties (such as Marwick’s 1998 study of the UK, France, Italy and the US) and the breadth of change which lends itself to a more global approach to the sixties; after all, in 1968 over seventy countries across the world experienced student protests (Watts, 2001: 167). Furthermore, a study of the sixties may encompass that critical issue of contemporary mythologiza-

Cuba and the Global Sixties

57

tion(s) of the sixties—an issue rightly highlighted by the editors of the Sixties journal who wrote that rather than shy away from the mythologized version of the period, one should “explore their dialectic [between the past and its representation]—the means by which history converts to myth, as well as how the past itself may resist certain forms of mythmaking” (Varon et al., 2008: 4). In this study, by examining the local specificity of events in Cuba it is possible to bypass the various debates on periodization of the global sixties, certainly with regard to when the sixties began, by looking at the local circumstances. I draw the unambiguous conclusion that los sesenta in Cuba can be seen to begin with the triumph of the Revolution in January 1959. The end point is trickier to determine. While the successes of some of the social policies of the sixties were not felt until the seventies or even eighties, and it would be tempting to talk of a “long sixties” in that respect, the coincidence of the failure of the ten million ton sugar harvest of 1970 with the calendar end of the decade make that a more convenient cut-off, and so the most logical periodization (and certainly the one understood in Cuba) is that in which, although we must allow some degree of flexibility, the period and the decade approximately coincide. In terms of the global sixties, the Revolution in Cuba itself became a coordinate of global importance to sixties culture and politics outside Cuba—the iconic status of Che Guevara in the rest of the world emphasizes this—but the multiple cultural and political forms of the sixties were also subsumed into Cuban life in the decade, often but not uniquely trickling through from the larger neighbor to the North. The difficulties that Cuba faced in dealing with external youth culture emanated from a clash between the concepts of rebellion and revolution, with the Cuban model differing greatly from that of many external manifestations in the sixties. Some external movements—in particular given the adoption of the iconic figure of Guevara—felt closer to Cuba than Cuba felt to them. So the question we need to ask is not “Did Cuba matter to the world?”— as a representation of the Revolution in Cuba clearly did—but rather “Did the rest of the world matter to Cuba?”—as this island decided to assert its own model of revolution. Youth is once again a key factor in the sixties paradigm. The explosion of youth culture which came to be termed the “youthquake” referred originally to fashion, but soon became the term of reference for the many elements of youth culture that appeared to be gaining ground. To some, the ascendance of youth was a truly global movement; Hobsbawm argues that “the political radicalization of the 1960s, anticipated by smaller contingents of cultural dissidents and drop-outs under various labels, belonged to these young people” (Hobsbawm, 1995: 324; my emphasis) and centered on a youth culture that was “demotic and antinomian” (330). 2 He focuses on the blurred boundary between youth activism and the counter-culture in the USA: “where rock fans and student radicals

58

Chapter 4

met, the line between getting stoned and building barricades often seemed hazy” (1995: 333). But this was not just US-centered—Hobsbawm argues that the sixties saw the emergence of a global youth culture, resulting from improved technology, travel and media, which together resulted in young people experiencing fashion, sex, drugs and rock music (and, one presumes, social movements) as an international phenomenon (1995: 333). Again, Cuba was not immune to these mobile forces which slipped across the national divides—and even through those divides separating East from West. If the sixties matter, as the paradigm proposes, a further factor is to consider which part within the sixties was of most relevance. As I write this, 1966 seems to be the flavor of the day. Jon Savage’s 2015 book 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded (and accompanying CD) about that year, Steve Turner’s 2016 book on the Beatles in 1966 and a 2017 exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London entitled “You Say You Want a Revolution? Records and Rebels 1966–1970” all imply that the radical part of the sixties began in 1966. All this is a refinement of the more traditional accounts which zoom in on the counter-culture’s Summer of Love, 1967, or the student-focused “Year of the Barricades” of 1968 (Caute, 1988). But whenever we date the origins of the youth culture explosion (and I would make a plea for the impact of the Cuban Revolution to be written into that search for origins), it was in the late sixties that dissent, protest and cultural expression by young people came together and spilled into the public domain. It was not just the students and the counterculture though, who were gaining in prominence; the rise of the Black Power movement in the USA during these years also brought civil disobedience and rebellion on to the streets of the USA—and brought a great deal of excitement and hope in Cuba that the late sixties might be a threshold moment for more extensive global socio-political change. My perspective here comes closest to Hobsbawn’s view that the youth culture must be looked at in its entirety—as a political movement and as a cultural movement—as it is through such a conceptualization that the dominance of youth to the sixties paradigm can be explained. Both politics and culture mattered to the global sixties, both mattered to youth, and both mattered to youth in Cuba in that decade. In Cuba, the dominant sites, sounds and artefacts of the global youth culture were certainly received, but this is not a case of simple influence from a hegemonic Other. These sites were used, adapted, Cubanized, made familiar—and unfamiliar—as Cuba trod the path toward a new culture which incorporated the global and the local.

Cuba and the Global Sixties

59

OF MUSIC AND MINI-SKIRTS Music, as a cultural form, was already a deeply embedded part of Cuban culture prior to the Revolution (Moore, 2006); but in the sixties traditional musical forms were supplemented by new forms both external (such as rock) and transnational (such as protest song). The importance of music to youth culture (both inside and outside Cuba) in the decade is paramount. Lipsitz argues that “the power of popular music in shaping and reflecting cultural changes makes it an important site for social and historical analysis” (Lipsitz, 1994:208). In the sixties rock and roll, with which young people fully engaged, emerged as an explosive addition to the existing music mix (Lipsitz, 1994: 208). Music, however, was more than merely something young people consumed. As Leech argues, “the ideas expressed through pop songs may . . . be potentially and actually subversive of the established order thereby central to understanding the counter-culture” (Leech, 1973: 8). Popular music in its many manifestations (from folk/protest music, to pop, to the rock music explosion, to psychedelic drugs-related rock), and in its close links with “the Movement” 3 therefore allowed young people to express themselves in spite of, as well as due to, its conversion into a big industry. Music was also a social leveler, uniting young people with different sub-cultural tastes, so that, as Lipsitz argues, “for a brief time [in the mid- to late-sixties], Bob Dylan’s audience was also James Brown’s and Grateful Dead listeners could also be Beatles fans” (Lipsitz, 1994: 218). Connections and interactions between Cuban musical trends and external music were a feature of the decade. Protest song—internationalist, leftist and most importantly, political above all—was a highly relevant form of music to the new Revolution. But it was not only politically committed music which filtered through to Cuba—there was also an interest in European popular music particularly if there was a Hispanic story to accompany it. For example, Bohemia magazine announced with interest that Petula Clark, described as “a favorite among European youth” had recorded two songs in Spanish (Bohemia, 1968a: 79), and gave extensive coverage to Spanish Eurovision winner Massiel, who had participated in the Varadero music festival in Cuba in 1967 (Abreu, 1968b: 80–81). Rock music (and in particular the music of the Beatles) was more controversial than other forms of popular music, but it was accessible to an extent to Cuba in the late sixties. It was not until 2000 that the Beatles were finally accepted unambiguously by the Cuban Revolution when Fidel Castro unveiled an appealing sculpture of John Lennon sitting on a bench in a park in Vedado in Havana. “Los Beatles” was used in the early years of the twenty-first century in Cuba to represent any kind of music (not just that of the Beatles) that had been accessible but of ambiguous official standing in the sixties. There was a reason for such an ambiguous standing—the United States’ 1967 policy of broadcasting rock music to

60

Chapter 4

Cuba as a subversive force led to the withdrawal of rock music broadcasts on Cuba’s official media (Kapcia, 2005a: 145). Of significance is the fact that debates over the Beatles happened after the band had broken into the US market in 1964, indicating a hostility to the US, as opposed to the European, cultural influence. In this battle with the Beatles, the lines of conflict were drawn up between those political forces that held the view that rock music harmed young people and those who listened to (and often loved) this new music. Of course, these debates played out not just in Cuba but in many countries as a battle between generations, but in Cuba we must bear in mind that youth was seen as so crucial to the building of the Revolution (as covered earlier in this work) that any threat to the revolutionary development of youth could not be ignored. Yet many young people continued to listen to Western rock music in spite of the political battle and the ban on broadcasting of rock music. Cuban musicologist Clara Díaz explains how this was possible: “There was a secret record exchange between young people announced through an alternative hit parade of groups and solo artists whose music was not officially in circulation” (Díaz, 1993: 16). Many young people in Cuba would sing along to Beatles songs but had no idea of the meaning of the lyrics. Listening to the Beatles was a means through which young people expressed themselves, but this was not the subversive force deriving from the message in the lyrics to which Leech referred. Because the recordings were considered almost clandestine, listening to them served to differentiate those people who listened to Western music from those who did not. The fact that some people disapproved of Western music was only half the reason why young people wanted access to it: its scarcity also raised its mystique; nevertheless, despite Beatles and Rolling Stones originals being hard to obtain, recordings of their songs in Spanish by Spanish or Latin American groups were readily available (Martínez Heredia, 2003). The establishment disapproval of rock music could cause inconsistencies—the erstwhile popular Bob Dylan, on joining the rock music explosion in the mid-sixties, was seen in Cuba to have betrayed the protest song movement and been seduced into the comfort of commercialism (Serrano and Nogueras, 1966: 10). In other words, it was “selling out” that was to be criticized rather than the shift to rock per se, which was perhaps a subtler interpretation than the famous shout of “Judas” from a fan in the audience at a UK Dylan concert in 1966. In sum, the debates over rock music, while they mirrored similar external debates, were reformulated in Cuba, given the enduring worry about the dominance of US culture. And such disapproval obscures the historical reality that Western music was influential on Cuban music; a story which will be told later when I consider the Nueva Trova movement. A further filtering through of Western youth culture concerned youth style and new sixties fashions. European fashions were particularly dom-

Cuba and the Global Sixties

61

inant and fashions from Britain, France, Spain and Germany were reported in the pages of the Cuban press. The idea (emanating both from the USA and Western Europe) that there could be any political message in fashion, or that fashion could serve as a political battleground (in particular from a feminist standpoint) was derided by the establishment as frivolous. For example, political columnist Mario Kuchilán was contemptuous of attempts by Western sociologists and psychologists to attribute importance to the phenomenon of the mini-skirt. Kuchilán, referring to attempts to link the length of skirts to international crisis, wrote that the mini-skirt, “to our frivolous eyes, is just an agreeable and pleasing show, glanced out of the corner of your eye” (Kuchilán, 1967: 78). The mini-skirt was also satirized: Ñico’s 1968 cartoon “La Minifalda” (The Miniskirt) demonstrates a comic reception that nonetheless coincides with Kuchilán’s view. In the foreground of Ñico’s cartoon we see fishnetclad legs stretching below a mini-skirt, taking center position. Surrounding these are smaller cartoons and annotations: two more women in miniskirts feature, one of them (of indeterminate age but probably not quite “youth”) saying to a man who seems like a tailor in his capable handling of the scissors and who is cutting her skirt to make it shorter, “Whatever anyone says, I am not moving without wearing a mini-skirt”; the other— a younger, more glamorous character—looks shocked and surprised as a man in a passing car (perhaps enjoying the “agreeable and pleasing show” to which Kuchilán refers) says to her “Why are you wearing that?” or perhaps “Why bother wearing anything?.” An old woman looks over the scenes saying “What a disgrace! It was different in my day.” Perhaps the most comical note in the cartoon is an arrow pointing to the fishnet stockings annotated “Made in Cuba”—indicating perhaps that the fishnet patterns were drawn by hand onto the legs due to scarcity of stockings (Ñico, 1968: 74). This cartoon raises generational issues regarding the mini-skirt, hints at a gender issue, and points to Cuban resilience in the face of a lack of availability of relevant fashions (the act of cutting the skirt short, or painting on the stockings). In this text we also see a nod in the direction of Western debates on the mini-skirt as an attempt on the part of the young generation to stay looking young (through the first woman above “versus” the old woman), thereby setting them apart from the parent generation (Green, 1999: 79). 4 But clearly, there was some tolerance of personal taste in dress, and fashion was only criticized when it crossed that divide into the political, such as the “bloody, cruel and inhuman” description of new English style “Vietnam chic” in 1968 (Bohemia, 1968d: 95). A battle of generations over new styles was also being fought on the streets of Havana, where fashion was more contested, particularly when imbued with negative associations. The first association regarded the relationship between certain fashion choices and the demonized Havanabased subculture known for their espousal of Western style and music,

62

Chapter 4

the enfermitos, which I discuss in more depth in chapter 7. In Elizabeth Sutherland’s 1969 book on the Cuban Revolution one sixteen-year-old she interviewed in 1967 expressed relief that the wearing of long hair and tight trousers for men, and mini-skirts for girls, and listening to Western music no longer needed to lead to concern about being associated with the enfermito subculture: “People have come to understand,” said the young woman to Sutherland, “that those things did not have to be rejected just because they typify the enfermitos” (Sutherland, 1969: 127–28). The second association refers to the “Battle for Virginity” (García, 2003), a reaction against the relaxation of sexual mores Cuba was seeing in the sixties—a generational battle already alluded to in Ñico’s cartoon at a time when the moral importance of family continued to play a considerable part in revolutionary politics. The sexual revolution was represented by mini-skirts for women and long hair for young men, with reports of older people even attempting to cut the hair of young men and to pull skirts down to protect the modesty of young women. New expressions of style were not limited to those which ran the risk of being considered in conflict with the aims of the Revolution. For example the cane-cutting boots, which were provided free for young people doing voluntary work, became a fashion item at parties, worn with pride as a representation of revolutionary credentials (García, 2003). YOUTH REBELLION Given the importance of youth activism in sixties Cuba, the question of how youth activism outside Cuba was viewed from the island is a pertinent one. The rumblings of the early and mid-sixties exploded into the campus rebellions of 1968 across the world as young people (and others) sought and found a direct route to making their voices heard. There was certainly much talk of revolution in the external youth movements of the sixties, but how would Cuba’s actual Revolution in the making react? The answer is, I think, that the reaction was cautious, perhaps more cautious than we might expect. Initially, we can identify a realization that youth had begun to take center stage, and then an engagement with some of the core issues relating to the youth movement (notably the anti-Vietnam protests); this is followed by an optimism at the spread of youth rebellion, in particular given that the Cuban Revolution was influential on the student movement. But the reception of this core facet of sixties history in Cuba is also muted—and we find that Cuba was much more significant to those international youth movements than the youth movements were to Cuba. Stories of the ascendance of youth gradually emerged in the pages of the Cuban press across the late sixties—as an example, the nomination of the Young Generation as man of the year by Time magazine in January 1967 was reported with interest: this generation, stated Bohemia,

Cuba and the Global Sixties

63

was the generation which was unafraid to confront the “ocambos” (old folk) such as LBJ (Bohemia, 1967a: 73). The key contribution of a “youth rebellion” to protests in West Germany in 1968 was reported (Bohemia, 1968f: 82). German student leader Rudi Dutschke was quoted as saying: “We are not in the presence of a socialist revolution in Western Europe, but we can and must create the conditions for one,” a sign, according to the Cuban commentary, that “a Third World wind is starting to blow throughout Europe” (Bohemia, 1968f: 84). Nowhere was that “third world wind” felt more strongly in Cuba than in relation to direct solidarity with Vietnam, with 1967 named by the Revolutionary government as the Año del Vietnam Heroico (Year of Heroic Vietnam). There was an awareness of the international protest—the Cuban press printed photos of Americans burning their draft papers (Bohemia, 1968b: 84) and reported anti-war demonstrations in London, Washington, California, New York, Brighton, Lyon, Rome, Milan, Salamanca, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Berlin and Montevideo. Yet in Cuba there was a feeling that the anti-war protest, particularly in the USA, was inauthentic, and such protest was maligned and mocked: protagonists were described as a “jean-wearing elite” waving their “hypocritical little peace flags” (Bohemia, 1967c: 58). Having said that, the words of British historian Arnold Toynbee and his argument that “young North Americans detest the ‘values’ which their parents uphold” made the pages of the same source (Bohemia, 1968e: 85), perhaps mitigating those earlier harsh judgements against North American young people. In general, however, the lines of solidarity were not between Cuban protest and US and European protest against the Vietnam war, but rather between the Cuban people and the Vietnamese people—and even if the movement in the US of the late sixties had taken up the mantle of Third World revolutions, it was Cuba that felt it had the authority (as fellow revolutionary-in-arms) to express solidarity with Vietnam. Despite a reluctance to align itself to mainstream protest in the US in particular, as the student movement of 1968 grew in impact, Cuba experienced a growing pride at the influence of the Cuban Revolution on the student movements. Student leaders, such as Dutschke, along with New Leftists Robin Blackburn and Stuart Hall, visited Cuba (Artaraz, 2001: 59n). There was a sense that the international youth movement was spurred into rebellion thanks to Cuba—thanks to “the presence of a triumphant young revolution, run by young people” which awakened in the international activists “a sense of responsibility in the communities of young people” (Bohemia, 1968g: 57). The genuinely international nature of this moment was not lost on Cuba either—even if reporting of May 1968 was dominated by reports of Paris and the influence of Guevara on this movement, student protest elsewhere—in the USA, Italy, Britain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Spain and Argentina—did not go unnoticed (Bohemia, 1968h: 82–86). Whoever the protesters were (and it did not really matter if

64

Chapter 4

they were not entirely made up of the young), this was, from a Cuban perspective as elsewhere, a youthquake in action—“we live in an era in which we old folk have to give way to the young folk” wrote one Cuban commentator, reminding readers that “[t]his has been happening in Cuba since 1959; It is a sign of the times” (Bohemia, 1968i: 56). The leadership role of students in the global youth protest was viewed with optimism in Cuba—not surprising given the fifties student radicalism of many of the leaders and martyrs of the Cuban anti-Batista struggle. One Cuban cartoon of 1968 shows a book serving as a barricade from under which the barrels of two guns are seen to emerge. On the cover of the book were the words “Student Rebellion in Europe,” under the title “Ready for War” (Bohemia, 1968j: 64). Perhaps what is most surprising is that, despite such coverage and despite signs of excitement at a potential global rebellion, the rebellion was underemphasized in the Cuban press. MinFAR magazine Verde Olivo gave no coverage at all to the student protests. Bohemia confined it to the middle pages. Granma covered the protests, and saw it as a more international movement, focusing particularly on student protests in Latin America and the United States, with Paris being given less coverage than in Bohemia. Instead, Granma in May 1968 was interested in Paris as the place where the peace negotiations between the USA and Vietnam were taking place. The muted reaction to the European youth rebellion in the Cuban press can be viewed in the context of international relations. Despite a natural excitement felt in Cuba at the events in Europe, in particular in the context of the perceived Cuban influence on events, Western Europe in the late sixties was choosing to ignore the US embargo and continue trading with Cuba (Lambie, 1998). So perhaps what we are seeing here is an instance of real-politick overcoming a natural emotional affinity with Western and non-Western rebel youth. CUBA AND THE COUNTER-CULTURE The youth movement of the late sixties was much broader than simply the student protest. Young people did not choose to use their new-found high profile to express themselves exclusively in political terms and the late sixties was also the age of youth cultures. Associated with youth culture was always, not far behind, the possibility of an often generationally sparked moral panic in Cuba. If the student movements across the globe represented one form of youth rebellion, could the new youth cultures also be articulated in Cuba as a form of rebellion? And if so, how could Cuba deal with the tricky business of seeking to overturn the cultural hegemony of the USA of the pre-revolutionary period, while still being in support of some US cultural forces such as a youth movement which seemed to be moving toward a revolutionary stance? The answer,

Cuba and the Global Sixties

65

of course, was that it was in the absorption of these cultural forces that a fault line emerged. Utterly at odds with the positive discourse on youth, a moral panic was triggered on the island over youth due to the relationship between Cuban youth and the US counterculture. Remember, it was not just Cuba which grappled with the issue of whether to come out in support of the hippie movement; the same issue had perplexed the New Left, as one of Stuart Hall’s earlier studies of this movement demonstrates (Hall, 1968). The hippies (and it is the US hippies in which we are interested here as European movements never had the same importance—at least not to Cuba) crossed a variety of sites of culture: fashion, music, sex and psychedelic drugs, as well as an anti-establishment politics (including the anti-war movement discussed above) which of course they had in common with the students. The initial association of the emerging hippie culture with homosexuality and drugs, particularly following Ginsberg’s visit to Cuba, which I will cover in a later chapter, led to a developing perception in Cuba of the counter-culture as a threat; Ginsberg’s deportation from Cuba certainly fed into that view. In 1967, Cuban coverage of the counter-culture was scant, with the “summer of love” passing unmentioned, for example, in the pages of Bohemia. Were the hippies to be seen as some kind of comical absurdity, as they were depicted in a 1968 article which shows a photo of a hippie and describes them as “a type of animal whose head is a mess” (Bohemia, 1968c: 95)? Or instead, should the hippies be subject to a more elaborate leftist theorizing, in order to ensure a fuller consideration of their role, as seen by the response in Cuba to US leftist activist Margaret Randall’s discussion of whether the hippies represented “rebels or escapists.” Randall’s views fed into the debate and provided evidence for both sides, which led to the following conclusion: [T]here is a danger that the hippies might drift towards fascism, but there is also evidence of an encouraging potential for collaboration with the left or the black movement, that is to say, a predisposition to follow a revolutionary course. (Villares, 1968: 21)

Randall is quoted as writing, “[i]f this great mass of human energy—in youth—allied itself to the true left, . . . there would be a civil war or a revolution” (Villares, 1968: 21). The hippies, by this account, are frustrating from a leftist activist position. As a group they conveniently incorporated that most potent of groupings—youth—but as yet failed to create actual change out of that. The Cuban view of the hippie movement was circumspect, even when one takes into account Randall’s considerations. But these considerations were of course theoretical and based on the movement as something interesting but entirely external to Cuba and as such they failed to take account of cultural flows and hybridity which meant that the development of a hippie-type movement on the island was possible. As dis-

66

Chapter 4

cussed above with regard to fashion, the US youth culture did penetrate the island and there was a hippie movement of sorts in Havana in the late sixties. There were several bandas (gangs) of pseudo-hippie groupings in Havana. These cultures were certainly seen as a problem in the late sixties in Cuba, and in part account for the Anti-Vagrancy Law of 1971. Furthermore, it was within these cultures that a malignant (rather than neutral or positive) external influence was perceived to be at work. BLACK POWER While Cuba’s leadership saw relatively little prospect of furthering the cause of the Revolution via the hippie movement, they took a much greater interest in the Black Power movement. In the solidarity events in Cuba of the sixties we witness the degree to which this movement permeated the Cuban consciousness. However, because the Cuban government was reluctant at that stage to admit that there was a race problem in Cuba, support for the Black Power movement was limited. Moreover, the way in which the movement was conceived of was a “Cubanized” version of Black Power as a result of which the Black Power movement became the most acceptable and admired non-Cuban youth culture. Pensamiento Crítico, the intellectual journal of the late sixties, printed articles in translation by Black Power leaders, and Bohemia gave substantial coverage to Black Power. According to Artaraz, “blacks were seen as a natural constituency of a potential rise of the ‘wretched of the earth’ that lived at the heart of the imperialist enemy” (Artaraz, 2001: 185). The link between Cuba and the Black Power movement is no surprise. Black Power took its inspiration in part from the guerrilla warfare ideas of Che Guevara (particularly by 1968 when the Black Power movement was espousing “urban guerrilla” tactics), which in turn had of course canonized the role of “youth” in revolution. This common ideological territory was clearly evoked by Stokely Carmichael, speaking at the OLAS conference in Havana in 1967: It is particularly those of “young blood,” filled with hatred, to whom Che Guevara is referring when he says: “Hatred, as a factor in the struggle, obstinate hatred for the enemy which spurs them on beyond the limitations of their human weakness and changes them into an effective, violent, selective and cold-blooded killing machine.” The Black Power movement was the catalyst for those [sic] young blood: the true revolutionary proletariat prepared to use all necessary means in the fight to free our people. (Carmichael, 1967: 30)

During the course of 1967 and 1968, as the Black Power movement grew more radical in the United States, the Cuban press became more and more interested in Black Power.

Cuba and the Global Sixties

67

Young people were understood to be the foot soldiers of the Black Power movement. As Carmichael stated: “the true revolutionary potential of this country [the USA] lies in the black youth in the ghettoes” (Carmichael, 1967: 31). Indeed, already in January 1967, journalist Talia Carol, who wrote regularly on the black struggle in the USA, quoted a US study that found that those who were most disadvantaged among the black community were adolescents, and those who most hated white Americans were the young (Carol, 1967a: 26). Poverty was seen as the main reason prompting black Americans to join the struggle, and Carol argued that “[y]oung people of this generation have already unleashed the rebellion, and it is impossible to contain it” (Carol, 1967c: 58). The difficulty for Cuba in embracing Black Power lay in an ambiguity: whether at the heart of the struggle lay social revolution (in line with Cuba’s own) or racial identity. The Cubanized articulation of Black Power is embedded in Carol’s work: “The Revolution is beginning in the USA” in which she wrote, “[a]nd it is the black man who started the social revolution in the United States. The racial aspect is a mere accident in this revolutionary process (Carol, 1967b: 10, my emphasis). The Black Panther ideology of separatism was also downplayed—and, for example, the struggle to release jailed Black Panther leader Huey Newton was seen as one in which both white and black Americans must participate (Bohemia, 1968m: 67). When, in 1967, Cuba established a campaign of solidarity with black Americans, its rally in August in Havana illustrated this “Cubanized” version of the black struggle in the USA when it was considered on the island. Elida Acosta, of the organizing committee, spoke briefly of “the end of racial discrimination in Cuba brought about by the blow dealt by revolutionary justice, which eliminates oppression in all its forms” (Bohemia, 1967e: 61). Quite aside from the naivety of believing that racism had ended in Cuba, the black question was seen as part of a broader process of freedom from oppression. UJC leader Jaime Crombet also spoke at length during this event and his speech, not surprisingly, invoked the words of Martí which conformed with the position of the Revolution on racial politics: Recalling phrases of the Apóstol condemning racial discrimination, he said that “man is more than black, more than mulatto” and that, whatever the color of his skin, the only thing that mattered was that he was a revolutionary, a defender of the nation. (Bohemia, 1967e: 61–62)

Cuba’s view seemed curiously outdated when seen from the perspective of US politics, more reminiscent of the multi-racial Freedom Rides of the early sixties than the new separatist aspiration of the late sixties. The make-up of the rally reflected the “post-racism” ethos of the Revolution—the keynote speech came from a white Cuban, Crombet, while musical entertainment came from black American Lena Horne, white

68

Chapter 4

American Barbara Dane, and black Cuban guajiro singer “El Jilguero” (Bohemia, 1967e: 63). While engaging with the US Black Power Movement, the two parallel processes of change—the Cuban Revolution and the Black Power movement—failed, by and large, to converge because of that very racial settlement to which Crombet speaks above. Cuba, unlike other Caribbean countries, would not see the development of a Black Power movement internally in the sixties (Quinn, 2014). Cuba’s support for Black Power did not go as far as funding the movement, nor was there an attempt to promote racial consciousness in Cuba in the sixties; furthermore, the Black Power movement had a circumspect relationship with communism (Seidman, 2012: 14). The moment of heightened interest in mutual engagement passed, and the two movements continued onward with their parallel rather than convergent struggles. CONCLUSION Cuba was certainly not culturally isolated from the forces of the Global Sixties, but the ways in which these forces were received and understood varied. By and large, the representations of Western youth cultures in Cuba demonstrate a continuum running from only minor engagement, through Cubanization to hybridization of forms. This is not to say that external influence was lacking, and young lives in particular were influenced by external youth cultures; but rather the perceptions of what youth was, could and should be were so radically different that the internal and external had very little to do with each other—Black Power in particular is a good demonstration of this. While external youth movements were seen (and saw themselves) as anti-establishment and as a challenge to dominant power forces, internally youth was seen as a positive force for change within the dominant revolutionary ideology; and these opposing views and discourse limited the possibility of convergence or solidarity with the revolutionary potential of these forces. This difference of perception affected the experience of young people on the island. Some attempted to live up to the Cuban revolutionary version of what youth represented, some chose to be involved but less intensively, and others tested where the margins of the revolutionary culture of youth fell. These three groups are the focus of the next three chapters. NOTES 1. Parts of this chapter appeared in Luke, A. (2013) “Listening to Los Beatles: Being Young in 1960s Cuba” in Anne Gorsuch and Diane Koenker (eds.) The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press). 2. This position counters the point made by other writers on the sixties, arguing that the role of youth has been exaggerated, such as Lyons, who argues that “[t]hose events [associated with the sixties] were by no means exclusively or even in some

Cuba and the Global Sixties

69

significant instances predominantly shaped by baby boomers. The peace movement and antiwar sentiment are cases in point. Older Americans were more opposed to the Vietnam War than were the young; and leadership in the peace movement included a remarkable number of less boisterous, less telegenic personalities born before 1946, often considerably earlier” (Lyons, 1996: 7). 3. “The Movement” was originally used as a term to describe the activism associated with the Students for a Democratic Society but came in the late sixties to have a broader meaning. As Miller (1996) writes, “by focusing on the fate of the SDS as a national organization, scholars overlook the mass movement that flourished in the late sixties and early seventies after SDS expired. . . . By 1970 the Movement and the related counter-culture had expanded numerically, had gained importance in the lives of participants, and had penetrated or influenced virtually every aspect of American society, from the armed forces to religion, from business to sports” (Miller, 1996: 5). 4. The mini-skirt caused more problems outside Cuba. In some areas of the USA there were even fears that the mini-skirt might increase the incidence of rape (Marwick, 1998: 467).

FIVE Youth Activism The Evolution of Youth Organizations in Sixties Cuba

The Revolution opened up new opportunities for young people to express their political commitment to the cause of building a new Cuba. 1 The development, formation and consolidation of youth organizations offered young Cubans, very early in the Revolutionary period, an institutional structure for them exclusively. The organizations—the Juventud Socialista (JS), Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes (AJR) and the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC)—were dominated by the developing discourse on youth so that they were guided by, and contributed to, both discourse and policy. These youth organizations were the means through which politically engaged young people could express their commitment and play an active part in building the political life and structure of the new Cuba. But the story of the evolution of the “official” youth movement in Cuba reveals uncertainties to which young people were exposed, firstly in the search for identity which the youth movement underwent in the early Revolution and secondly in the search for excellence. In terms of discipline, commitment, purity and heroism, the new discourse of the Revolution led to high demands on young people. These demands permeated attempts to develop the youth organizations. They also explain how and why such organizations moved from crisis to crisis and why attempting to create stability in a period of such effervescence was so difficult. Because of the rapid changes in the early years of the Revolution in almost every area of Cuban life, it is not surprising that the emergence of the youth activist movement was uncertain, changeable, both proactive and reactive and, to an extent, spontaneous. The occasional crises and panics that hit the youth organizations can, however, be explained by an 71

72

Chapter 5

exaggerated response to teething problems encountered. The story of the evolution of the main youth organizations is of a movement from vanguard to mass and back to vanguard again. The political-activist sphere in which young people overall operated was opened, with the advent of the AJR, then closed, with the move to the UJC, a vanguard organization. Therefore, the space in which young people in the sixties expressed themselves—in particular those who were politically engaged—was in flux. This chapter will first explain the evolution of the youth movement from 1959 to 1962, during which time significant changes took place, and judge the success and identity of the newly emerged youth political organization, after which developments—and difficulties—in the UJC will be considered. After 1962 the youth organization changed remarkably little in structure—indeed to this day it remains a vanguard organization which operates as a training ground for membership of the PCC—although of course the plethora of initiatives with which it was involved have continued (and continue today) to develop and change. After the sharp decline in membership following the 1962 Congress, reaching a low in 1964, membership steadily increased throughout the rest of the sixties and seventies (Domínguez, 1978: 321). The pressures exerted on the youth movement by revolutionary discourse and attempts by the youth organization to deal with these will be shown here. The result was a series of crises, repeated autocríticas (self-criticism) and an attempt by the youth organization to assert its identity as the opposite of non-conformist elements both in youth and society at large by vehemently criticizing such elements. The UJC therefore engaged with—and fed into—the moral panic over non-conformism, even to the extent of defining what the latter was. Furthermore, activism on the part of the UJC inhibited alternative activism, as demonstrated by the case of the students’ association, the FEU, also discussed below, which, despite a rich radical history, was unable to situate itself in a position of strength to counter the dominance of the UJC. THE PATH TO UNIDAD During the fifties, youth organizations had continued or been formed in support of the rebellion, the most significant of these being the youth wings of the M-26-7 and the Directorio Revolucionario (DR), the FEU, and the communist party’s Juventud Socialista. Furthermore, many young people had fought in the Ejército Rebelde but, quite naturally, given the greater aim of overthrowing the dictatorship, lacked an organization specifically for young fighters. In January 1959, youth organizations were not integrated or organized. Although many young people had played key roles in the fifties rebellion, there was no dominant youth organization in Cuba in a position to capitalize on the effervescence

Youth Activism

73

which characterized the early months of the Revolution. As a result, the new activists of the Revolution in its early days saw it as their task to foster unity of disparate groups. It was on this task that the JS was focused. Aside from the FEU, the JS was the largest and most organized of the youth organizations at the beginning of 1959. With the exception of the pamphlet by Martín Fadragas (1998) on the JS, many studies on youth organizations in Cuba perhaps surprisingly focus largely on the AJR and the UJC rather than the JS (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989; Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986; Gómez, n.d. a, c, d and e). Given the importance of these two in Cuba today, this is not surprising, but it leaves a gap in the history of the development of youth organizations in post-revolutionary Cuba that needs to be filled. The significance of the JS in 1959 was two-fold. Firstly, it was the only organization that had a fixed institutional structure, having been founded in 1944, and secondly it had its own publication, Mella, which had survived clandestinely during the dictatorship when the JS itself was banned (Thomas, 1971: 846). As early as April 1959, the JS showed itself to be a confident organization, keen to play an active part in the building of the Revolution. The JS Executive Committee sent a letter to all youth organizations in Cuba, which urged the unidad (unity) of youth organizations and institutions across society—from workers’ or students’ organizations to sports clubs and societies. They declared that “We young socialists are prepared to work with you all with the aim of integration of a united revolutionary movement of all young people; a sort of revolutionary confederation of youth,” (Comité Ejecutivo del JS, 1959: 20). The JS was not certain exactly what type of organization it was proposing: integration and confederation could be two entirely different structural possibilities; but it is certain that it saw its role as broadly cultural rather than solely political which is perhaps surprising for an overtly political organization. The very essence of youth is summed up in this emphasis on culture. The JS went on to say that, as well as supporting the objectives of the Revolution, the movement would serve as “a daily struggle for the demands and desires of the young and the daily achievement, by [our] own efforts, of all those things which—along with work and politics—fill the life of the young: sport, art, culture and leisure” (Comité Ejecutivo del JS, 1959: 21). This proposal of the creation of an all-encompassing youth movement showed an ambitious and confident JS in 1959, with a clear sense of strategy and destiny. Calling for unity, however, was a long way from achieving that unity, and some of the leaders of the M-26-7 rejected the letter and the idea of the organizations merging (Calcines, 1959: 12–13). Talk and action on unity had not yet converged and the deliberations at the youth level were a mirror of the debates at the national level between the PSP, M-26-7 and the Directorio. In July the JS reasserted its heroic legacy through Mella, by adding the strapline to the contents page, “80 ediciones bajo la tiranía.

74

Chapter 5

Fundado en 1944” (80 editions under the tyranny. Founded in 1944) (Mella, 1959a: 3) and by outlining the activity of the Juventud Cívica Unida, the nascent unity organization of youth. 2 For several months following this, the magazine did not mention unidad, although the strapline once again changed, to “Voice of Youth. Fortnightly publication edited by the SOCIALIST YOUTH” (Mella, 1959b:10). This made clear the magazine’s role as official publication of the JS and its self-perception as the publication for all Cuban youth, as well as announcing, prematurely, an increase from monthly to fortnightly publication. After this assertion of its authority, the discourse of the JS shifted away from unidad in the sense of integration or confederation, toward a discourse of vanguardía, that is to say that the JS started to see itself as an organization of vanguard youth responsible for directing other young people. At its September 1959 Plenary at Yaguajay, its followers were urged that We must keep fighting to get all youth standing shoulder to shoulder in the battle to defend and drive forward our Revolution! The young socialist must be the vanguard in applying and disseminating these instructions and in fighting to ensure they are followed. (Mella, 1959d: 25)

The military tenor of the JS discourse here is striking—the language of lucha (struggle) and combate (fight) had been absorbed from the M-26-7 and as a consequence of the rebellion into the JS discourse, mirroring that of the PSP President Juan Marinello, who at the same time stated that “The JS must . . . be the vanguard of the fight, of constructive action and of the unity which is so essential” (Marinello, 1959: 15). By the beginning of 1960 another subtle change in JS policy came about. After the Santiago JS plenary of November 1959, another call to Cuban youth was made: The Young Socialists, together with our brothers of the “26th July Movement,” of the Directorio Revolucionario, etc., must bring to the vanguard of Cuban youth the revolutionary principles and deeds which have already become part of our beloved nation. . . . Unity is more important today than ever before. (Mella, 1960b: 48–49)

In this first joint declaration of the JS and other youth organizations (excluding the AJR which was very much in its infancy in January 1960), the principles of unidad and vanguardia had now fused. The JS made sure it asserted its identity, in this case also promoting its logo, showing a star containing a picture of Julio Antonio Mella in the center (Mella, 1960a: 46). Shortly afterward, the pages of Mella were opened to new contributors, some of whom were not members of the JS, such as Rolando López del Amo and cartoonist Alfredo Calvo, with the aim of making the maga-

Youth Activism

75

zine of, and for, all young Cubans (Mella, 1960c: 27), although the editor continued to be Isidoro Malmierca, secretary and later president of the JS. In the lead-up to its 4th National Congress in April 1960, the JS was keen to place itself in a strong position, both contemporaneously and historically. Its president, Ramón Calcines, reinforced the fact that it was the only political organization for young people in existence (in contrast to the broader-based revolutionary organizations, the AJR and the DR), and made much of the survival of the JS underground in the fifties (partly surely to mitigate criticisms that communist support for the fifties rebellion had been rather late in the day). The rhetoric is more impressive than the reality of JS involvement in the rebellion: “We can proudly state that this will be the Congress of the only political organization which emerged from the underground alive and with its honor intact, and with the glory of having contributed with all its might to the overthrow of the bloody Batista regime” wrote Calcines (Escalante, 1960: 28). This repositioning of the JS in the history of the fifties rebellion indicated an attempt by Calcines to augment the importance of the JS in the fifties, and may be related to the fact that by April 1960 a meteoric rise was taking place of an alternative youth organization—the AJR—with much more intimate and profound links to the fifties than the JS—but more of that organization below. 3 The April 1960 JS Congress itself marked an important moment in the history of youth organizations in Cuba. Participating alongside JS members and leaders were guests from the M-26-7, the Directorio and the AJR, as well as representatives of smaller organizations. The opening was presided over by PSP dignitaries Aníbal Escalante (executive secretary) and Juan Marinello (president) (Mella, 1960f: 21). The key outcome of the Congress was the decision to dissolve the JS if one unified youth organization formed (Mella, 1960d: 18). This decision is celebrated in Cuban historiography: Rodríguez Rodríguez points out that this decision “shows the political maturity of this organization and the confidence the revolutionary leaders placed in it” (1989: 27) while Martín Fadragas writes that “this decision changed that Congress into one of the most important acts and the finest gesture in the life of a political organization” (1998: 80). A subsidiary resolution of the Congress was that the JS’s constituency should be persuaded to join the Milicias Revolucionarias, created in October 1959, stipulating in its llamamiento (call) to young people that “[y]outh has the inescapable duty of learning how to bear arms and to participate massively in the popular militia” (Mella, 1960e: 20). This indicated a convergence with the aims of the AJR, as the JS moved closer toward a defense role. This was a clear move to unity, as, at the time of the Congress, the future duties and tasks of a unified youth organization were perceived to be multifaceted and not solely political. These changes on the part of the JS started to be fulfilled shortly after the Congress, demon-

76

Chapter 5

strating that the JS found its role more defined as a source of foot soldiers for the new revolutionary initiatives. The JS encouraged its members to join the Brigadas Juveniles de Trabajo Voluntario (Youth Voluntary Work Brigades), an initiative of the AJR (Mella, 1960g: 2), pointing out that the AJR “sets out to bring together in its ranks all the fit young people of the country, to educate them to do the work which is so vital to the growth of our nation and to the achievement of all the goals of the Revolution” (Mella, 1960h: 27). By expanding its scope thus, the JS was allowing its members to become more closely involved in the evolving aims of the Revolution. The meteoric rise of the AJR tells a rather different story to the fluctuating dilemmas of the JS. It is probably most telling to begin at the end of the story—the end for the JS at least. All the compromises, considerations and promises came to a head in October 1960 when it did, indeed, dissolve itself to merge with the recently formed AJR which—and let us not be unaware of the significance of this—gave its name to the unified youth organization. A student of youth has a sense that the AJR, thanks to its élan and prestige, was a young upstart, metaphorically overtaking the experienced but intransigent elder cousin (the JS). So, for a while at least, the AJR was victorious. What was it about this new organization which hit the “sweet spot” of revolutionary radicalism at absolutely the right moment? A drill down into the early days of the AJR reveals much. Its creation was first proposed in a document, published by the Departamento de Instrucción del Ejército Rebelde on 30th August 1959 (reprinted in Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989: 8–11). The rebelde ethos of the new organization, in line with the discourse of heroification of the rural/peasant/ guerrilla, was indicated in the AJR’s proposed program, which included organization into brigades, marching exercises and sports programs, but also exchanges between young people from the campo (countryside) and the llano (city). The glorification of the campo was a part of the rebelde ethos, given that the Ejército Rebelde comprised those who had fought in the Sierra Maestra and saw contact with the countryside as an agent of socialization serving the aims of the Revolution. The aim was that by visits to the countryside, young Cubans, as well as appreciating and deepening their connection with the physical geography of the island, would come to understand Cuban agriculture and Cuban peasant life and thereby enhance their understanding of the process of agrarian reform which was underway. In line with this ethos, the first tasks to be fulfilled by the AJR were to help with agrarian reform and alfabetización (literacy training). By so doing, the new organization was intimately linking itself to the key early aims and objectives of the Revolution. Moreover, it was created in the image of the rebel army of the fifties, thereby serving as a means for those who had not participated in the rebellion to retrospectively feel part of it. So while the AJR had an urgent practical function linked to the fundamental early aims to create mass social

Youth Activism

77

change in a short period, by involving young people the AJR served as a key organ via which young people could become fundamentally committed to the revolutionary process. The official launch of the AJR took place at its first public event on 28th January 1960, although it already comprised 7,000 members at that date (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989: 22). The launch date was no accident and was fused with a high-profile event to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of José Martí, as well as marking ten years since the first major march against Batista. During the event, Che Guevara gave a speech extolling the virtues of young Sierra hero Commandante Joel Iglesias, who was placed at the helm of the new organization. The organization became active with the formation of the brigades, which were named after the recently deceased hero of the Sierra, Camilo Cienfuegos, which Fidel Castro, in a television appearance in May 1960, encouraged young people to join. In this broadcast, Castro elaborated on who would be the core constituency of the new organization. He stated that the aim of the AJR was “to organize, under the aegis of the Ejército Rebelde, all those young men from poor families, who don’t go to school because due to their age they have lacked the opportunity for secondary education, who have no work, who are badly clothed and poorly fed, and who are a problem and source of concern for their families” (Castro, reprinted in Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989: 53). There are early signs here of the perception of a potential youth problem—those who were neither working nor studying—which would continue to run through Cuban youth policy throughout the Revolution. The training of young members was to take place in the Sierra Maestra—indeed, the formation of these young men and women was designed to resemble, as far as it could in peacetime, the guerrilla life of the fifties and this in itself contributed to the mythologization of the Sierra Maestra in the revolutionary imagination. In the letter accompanying the “Solicitud de Ingreso” (call to join), dated 20th May, Castro’s TV appearance was cited, and the aims, terms and conditions of the brigade to which entry was being solicited were clear: Thousands of young people must go up into the hills to work in reforestation, in the building of schools, hospitals, roads, etc. They will be given education, military training, clothes and everything they need to live. (Departamento de Instrucción de MinFAR, reprinted in Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986: 167)

Young people would be fed and be provided for by the Revolution in these brigades. Entry thereto did not depend on wealth or education, which certainly would aid recruitment, but there is a further rationale at work here. If indeed the constituency were to comprise those young people who were potentially problematic (in part, as is made clear, by virtue of the lack of opportunities afforded by pre-revolutionary society to those without the financial means to be useful to either themselves or their

78

Chapter 5

community), by promising that the Revolution would provide to those young people all they would need to survive, the Revolution was attempting to defuse the so-called problem while relieving families of the burden of supporting a member who was not contributing to the family. The young rebel could be incorporated into the Revolution by his or her activities in the Sierra, while the family could feel a commitment to a Revolution offering its support in a time of need. But of course, a retrospective connection with the rebel struggle of the fifties, and a willingness to be involved in revolutionary initiatives had an appeal well beyond only the underclass, which led to a rapid increase in AJR membership. One of the key changes to the membership profile of members of the AJR was the incorporation of the militants of the JS into its brigades. In supporting the AJR both in principle and in affiliation, the JS was actually altering the recruitment constituency and profile of the AJR. This was reflected in the expanding role that the AJR came to play. This did not just politicize the AJR; it also militarized the JS. The work of the AJR brigades was essentially military in nature, not least because defense of the country by the people was a core revolutionary goal. One of the rites of passage of entry to the brigades was that the member should climb the Pico Turquino five times over a three-month period, living the life of the guerrillas. More than 20,000 young Cubans underwent this challenge (Quintela, 1962: 31) and it was seen as a “test of determination, physical fitness and revolutionary training” (Gómez, n.d. e: 19). Each brigade comprised 100 young men, led by a jefe (Chief) and segundo jefe (Second in Command), who were members of the Ejército Rebelde, and a maestro adoctrinador (Political Commissar). Almost all Political Commissars were members of the JS (Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986: 31), which is not surprising because the JS had a long history as a youth organization incorporating political training and so possessed the personnel to fulfil the role of young teachers. For young Cuban women, the Centro Clodomira, a school for underprivileged girls teaching transferable skills, was established (INRA, 1961: 34–41). From 21st to 24th October 1960 the AJR held its first National Plenary. At this meeting the AJR became independent of the Ejército Rebelde (Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986: 63) and became the main youth organization, incorporating all other youth organizations with the exception of the FEU. Membership of the Brigadas and the Milicias Revolucionarias was compulsory. The JS made good the promise made in its April Congress to dissolve and send its members to the AJR. JS President Malmierca made a speech at the plenary outlining and justifying this intent: When we ask all young socialists to join the Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes, when we announce the decision to dissolve our organization,

Youth Activism

79

we do so in the knowledge that the AJR is already—and will increasingly be—an organization able to occupy the vanguard of youth in the struggle to promote revolutionary activity. (Malmierca, 1960a: 15)

This is an interesting statement, because Malmierca was asserting the vanguard nature of young members, a position carried over from the Yaguajtoay meeting of October 1959, while also associating himself with the revolutionary nature of the AJR by continuing to articulate the position of youth using the militarized discourse of the time. The Plenary did not lay out every detail of the transfer from JS to AJR, and Malmierca afterward wrote an open letter to Joel Iglesias urging the latter to continue publishing Mella (Malmierca, 1960b: 33). By the following edition, Mella had become the “Órgano de la AJR” (Official publication of the AJR), under the editorship of one of the AJR leaders, Fernando Ravelo, and with an expanded editorial board including Malmierca, and Ricardo Alarcón of the FEU (Mella, 1960j: 15). The speed with which unidad was achieved during the early months of the Revolution will come as no surprise to a student of that tumultuous moment. While this chapter has so far examined the internal developments of the organizations in question, and in particular of the JS, one of the exogenous problems that the organizations faced related to the broader reorganization of politics in revolutionary Cuba, the move to socialism and subsequently Marxism-Leninism. In 1959 it was by no means clear what role the PSP, the parent organization of the JS, would play, and the politicking between and within existing youth organizations did not take place without reference to this. The implication of this search—or even struggle—for identity posed a dilemma for young people. Many young people were eager to support the Revolution but the question of how they should do this, given two organizations with very different cultures, hampered youth activism. The AJR, as the united organization of youth, had the task of bridging these two cultures. The tricky path to walk between differing visions of unity—and whether the new unified organization should follow the AJR’s ethos of mass participation membership or confine itself to a strictly narrow vanguard membership leading youth in its revolutionary tasks—was not resolved by the merger. The question of whether the new version of the AJR could stay true to its original ethos given its new expanded constituency dominated the life of the organization in the months which followed. THE TRIUMPH OF VANGUARDIA The early months of the AJR appear as a catalogue of successes. It actively used its new organ, Mella, to foster recruitment to the Literacy Campaign and the Militias. It increased contact with youth groups in the Communist bloc: AJR leader Joel Iglesias undertook a six-month tour of

80

Chapter 5

the socialist bloc in 1961 (Mella, 1961c: 26-29; Mella, 1961e: 20–24; Mella, 1961f: 3–5). Broadly speaking, the AJR was attempting to fulfil its aim to be the organization of all youth; its magazine circulation in 1961 was at 100,000; its membership had risen to 100,000 in early 1962 (Domínguez, 1978: 321). Yet there was evidence that the AJR was failing to cope with its own success. In the early months of 1961 the student contingent of the organization was urging a move further to the left—their March 1961 plenary was reported in the April 1961 issue of Mella under the slogan “Izquierda, izquerda, siempre izquierda” (Always toward the Left). This would lead to criticism the level and import of which is not apparent in Cuban historiography on the AJR, in part because of the canonization of the organization in the story of the Revolution on the island. Rodríguez Rodríguez, for example, writes that these first experiments in the organization of young people were valuable but that the benefit of hindsight allowed them to be explained in terms of the “predictable immaturity and inevitable imperfections of something being done for the first time” (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989: 5). Contemporary criticism—which, I would argue, was a sign of a crisis which was brewing in the organization—was strong. At only one year old the organization was the subject of serious criticism from PSP leader Blas Roca about its organizational fragility, and about problems within its membership. It was accused of failing to organize structurally at a grassroots level, leading to a takeover by mavericks who, though they called themselves young rebels, paid scant heed to the need to abide by any sort of organizational discipline and, indeed, lacked ideological training (Roca Calderío, 1961: 24–25). Roca referred to the youthful tendency toward “extremismo izquierdista” (leftist extremism), and criticized the AJR for adopting the motto “Izquierda, Izquierda, siempre Izquierda” (Always toward the left) referred to above in respect of the March 1961 plenary, in favor of preferable slogans, referring to, for example, study or unity (Roca Calderío, 1961: 27). The AJR was at risk of losing its reputation as a revolutionary organization. Blas Roca’s criticism of the AJR in late 1961 was reformulated by Fidel Castro in the run-up to the 1962 youth congress. Castro made an important speech directed to young people in March 1962 on the anniversary of student leader José Antonio Echeverría’s death in 1957. The revolutionary press reported the speech with the resounding headline: “We need to imbue young people with a greater communist spirit” (Revolución, 1962b: 1). The plans for the transformation of the AJR into a communist youth organization were well underway. The criticism of Cuban youth in this speech was less explicit than Blas Roca’s; indeed, it was only criticism if we consider that the perceived need for a greater communist spirit implies the presence of a lesser communist spirit. Harsh criticism in the speech was directed toward an individual rather than young people collectively: youth leader Capitán Fernando Ravelo, who had been acting president of the AJR while Joel Iglesias was on his six-month tour of the

Youth Activism

81

socialist world. The criticism centered on Ravelo's omission (apparently under instruction “on the way in” to the event) of the section of Echeverría’s work thanking God (and thereby referring to Echeverría’s Catholicism). 4 Ravelo’s actions in omitting this were used as an example of what was wrong with young people, with Castro interrogating what exactly it was that was hoped for in respect of Cuba’s youth: What sort of youth? Perhaps a youth which merely listens and repeats? No. We want a youth which thinks, which learns revolutionary behavior for itself, which convinces itself, which develops its thinking fully— and this youth has everything it needs to achieve that. (Castro, 1962a: 1)

Castro’s speech was also, like Blas Roca’s earlier, critical of the adoption of leftist and/or negative slogans, and warned of the dangers of sectarianism. This was in turn reiterated by Blas Roca shortly afterward, when he stated that “Fidel’s criticism of the error, and Ravelo’s public acknowledgement of his responsibility, will go a long way to counteract the influence of sectarianism, subjectivism and left-wing extremism in the ranks of young people in general and of the AJR and student movement in particular” (Roca Calderío, 1962: 2). In the context of the youth movement, the affair marked the advent of the Leninist technique of autocrítica (self-criticism) which would permeate the new organization. 5 It was significant, moreover, that this affair would overshadow somewhat the announcement of a new communist youth organization, although the April Congress was still promoted effusively in the press. The move from a young rebel organization to a communist youth organization would come as no surprise at the April 1962 Congress. As well as prior mention of this in the speeches of Castro and writings of Blas Roca, AJR president Joel Iglesias announced on television at the beginning of March that the AJR would be the youth wing of the ORI, underlining the “vanguard role to be exercised in the future by young rebels in directing the destiny of our socialist nation” (Revolución, 1962a: 6). In situating the AJR as the youth wing of the ORI, Iglesias was indicating a change in its orientation away from an independent youth organization. By incorporating the concept of the vanguardia, the AJR was moving away from its roots as a mass youth organization, and closer to the JS position, showing the enduring influence of the latter in the organization. This position was corroborated by the invitation to members of the AJR to the April 1962 Congress, in which it was stated that “[o]ur Congress will approve the rules to govern the new life of our organization . . . with which our organization, through its ideas and through its actions, will transform itself into the Marxist-Leninist organization of Cuban youth, the youth organization of the future United Party of the Socialist Revolution” (Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986: 134–35). On the days preceding the National Congress the national press intensified its coverage of the event. As an example, on 28th March Revolución

82

Chapter 5

ran a story about the lead-up to the Congress in the Oriente province on the front page, which was an identical story, with just a few words changed, to that which had been run two days previously on page five. This may have been a simple editorial error, but it certainly indicates the rising profile of AJR stories within the newspaper. The Congress itself coincided with the trial of mercenaries from the Bay of Pigs invasion, which dominated the headlines of the national press, but the coverage was still considerable on the inside pages of the papers. The importance of the Congress can be measured in the people it attracted. It was opened by President Dorticós on 30th March and closed in a mass event in the Parque Latinoamericano Stadium in Havana by Fidel Castro on 4th April. As well as 596 AJR members from across Cuba, it was attended by 52 representatives of other youth organizations (Noticias de Hoy, 1962a: 1) from 26 countries (Revolución, 1962c: 12). Mella was produced daily during the Congress to keep the delegates informed of events and developments. Ten committees were established to discuss all aspects of the role of young people. 6 During the Congress, mirroring Fidel Castro’s criticism of Ravelo’s conformity, and using a criticism focusing on the organization’s failure to develop a culture fostering the transformative reflective practice of autocrítica, the AJR made this statement (and note that this is a collective rather than individual autocrítica): [W]e began to show signs of a spirit of complacency in what we were doing, seeing only the positive side of things. This self-congratulation crushed our spirit of self-criticism, and we were gradually becoming critics of other people but not of ourselves, of our work, of the work of our body, constituency or organization—attitudes which because they deadened our critical faculties also prevented us from working collectively. (Revolución, 1962d: 5)

The Congress gave birth to a new organization quite different in scope and character to the AJR, to which the AJR would send its 80,000 members and transfer Mella, with a circulation of 300,000 (Rivero, 1962: 48–49). The AJR was renamed the Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas and new statutes for the UJC were approved. The statutes stated that the UJC, while being structurally independent, would serve as the youth organization of the successor of the ORI, the PURS. Most significantly, in my view, the UJC was to be a selective organization. Adolfo Rivero wrote, with some contradiction, that “if the UJC is in a certain sense a mass organization, it is equally certain that it is also an organization related to the political vanguard of the working class” (Rivero, 1962: 49). Clearly the organization could not be both mass and vanguard at the same time, unless it was assumed that the masses of potential members also comprised the vanguard. Indeed, the new entry criteria would severely limit the numbers of members and aspirantes. 7 The relationship between the organization and young people evolved into one where the UJC had a crucial mobilization

Youth Activism

83

role in order to make a success of the many revolutionary tasks for which it was deemed to be responsible. This was relatively easy with large numbers of people willingly participating in the early Revolution, but as this became more difficult, the UJC itself needed to expand in membership terms in order to maintain its army of young volunteers. The move from mass to vanguard meant that while in the early years of the Revolution activism had the potential to be a mass culture among young people, after 1962 a smaller body of young people who were accepted as members of the UJC claimed the authority to determine what constituted revolutionary youth activism. The UJC statutes stipulated that anyone between the ages of fourteen and twenty-seven who demonstrated a vanguard attitude to study, work, and defense, accepted the revolutionary program for the construction of socialism, and agreed to carry out the aims of the UJC could apply for membership. Each application had to be backed by the signatures of two existing members of the UJC or one member of PURS (Rivero, 1962: 51). The new organization in fact had more in common with the JS than the AJR, given the reestablishment of the concept of the vanguard, and even adopting a logo adapted from the JS logo, rather than that of the AJR. In another important change at the congress, the children’s organization, the Unión de Pioneros Rebeldes (UPR) was renamed Unión de Pioneros de Cuba (UPC) (Revolución, 1962e: 4) and put under the control of the UJC (Noticias de Hoy, 1962b: 3). The top-level organization of the UJC would be the biennial National Congress which would elect an executive to run the organization in the interim years (Rivero, 1962: 52). 8 It is significant that the new youth organization was given the denomination “communist” long before the parent party was named as such (in 1965). The name seems to have been popular with the members: in Castro’s speech to the Congress (Castro, 1962b: 1 and 5) there was reportedly applause every time he mentioned the words socialismo and comunismo. Much was made of the concept of being given the name “communist,” both by Castro in this speech and by Guevara in a speech to the UJC in October 1962. Guevara’s speech was crucial to the youth movement. Despite being to an extent critical of young people and their attitude to work, Guevara placed young communists at the center of the revolutionary project. Guevara emphasized the point that the youth organization was given the name communist before the party (Guevara, 1967: 361) and he stated that he expected young people in the organization to live up to this name as a vanguard both for youth and for all society, stating, “You . . . must be the vanguard of all movements. You must be the first in terms of the sacrifices demanded by the Revolution, irrespective of the nature of these sacrifices, the first in terms of work, the first in terms of study, the first in the defense of the country” (Guevara, 1967: 357; my emphasis). He expanded this point later in the speech, saying that a young communist must “be a living example, a mirror for friends who

84

Chapter 5

are not members of the young communists, an example for older men and women who have lost something of their youthful enthusiasm” (Guevara, 1967: 364). These quotes clearly show that Guevara viewed some young people as potentially deeply committed to the Revolution. A young vanguard was held up as a good, even a perfect, example, to all of society. This placed a much greater emphasis on youth than that seen, for example, in the 1959 Manual de capacitación cívica, where youth was seen as one of several important groups but not necessarily unique. The language of that manual tells us much about the story of the ever-increasing prominence of youth in the first three years of the Revolution. In it we are told that “youth played a very important role in the first phase of the Revolution, and continues to do so now” (MinFAR Departamento de Instrucción, 1960: 55). Clearly there was a leap between the perceived role in the earlier months of the Revolution and that in 1962 once the youth organization had been given the designation “communist” and had become selective; this reflects the increased importance of youth in revolutionary discourse. The 1962 Congress, through the move to selectivity and the status as the communist youth wing of the ORI/PURS, defined the youth organization. Theoretically this status should have strengthened it, as its mission was now much clearer. Over the next two years, however, while the UJC expanded in scope its membership fell sharply. From the 80,000 members at its inception, by May 1964 the UJC had only 29,508 members (Martín, 1964: 50). UJC branches were opened in the Armed Forces in 1964 and in the Ministry of the Interior in 1965 (Gómez, n.d. d: 4). At the 1962 Congress it had been decided that the UJC would have a University Bureau to deal with students; however, the relationship between the students and the youth organization was continually awkward with UJC SecretaryGeneral Miguel Martín complaining in 1964 that one of the reasons why the UJC was having difficulties was because of its failure to attract the vanguard among the university students (Martín, 1964: 50–51). This was not a new phenomenon: remember that Blas Roca had blamed the students in particular for the move to ultra-left sectarianism. Despite its clearer identity, the UJC did not have an easy birth. Its relationship with the ORI (later PURS) was troublesome and difficult, and in 1964 Miguel Martín bitterly complained about the parent party: [T]he role of Party leadership must be free of two tendencies. . . . Firstly, the tendency towards paternalism, reflected in an underestimation of the degree of maturity of young people. This tendency leads to the placing of obstacles in the way of the organization’s initiative, preventing its normal development, and making its entire life and attitude dependent on “what the party says.” The second tendency . . . is not to help or pay attention to the UJC, leaving it alone, not concerned with its problems or helping it to overcome its difficulties. (Martín, 1964: 68)

Youth Activism

85

Martín’s complaint seems contradictory, complaining of the lack of respect for young people’s maturity and initiative on the one hand while on the other berating the parent party for its lack of support for the UJC. THE EMERGENCE OF A UJC ETHOS: MORAL PANIC AND THE TRICKY BUSINESS OF CONSTRUCTING A VANGUARD ORGANIZATION Despite the problems in the relationship with the Party, the ethos of the new organization began to consolidate during these early years. The mission of the UJC was summed up in its slogan: “Junto al trabajo y al estudio, el fusil” (The rifle, an adjunct to work and study) (Martín, 1964: 66). Young communists were expected to display a vanguard attitude in every area of life. It was not enough to excel in study, one also had to participate—and excel—in sport, culture, defense and voluntary work. In addition to this, the young communist needed to seek excellence in the lucha ideológica (ideological struggle) (Martín, 1964: 59). The level of excellence demanded ranged from grand objectives, such as being alumnos ejemplares (star pupils) in their place of study (Martín, 1964: 58) to the minutiae of life, so that “for instance, the young communist has to be a comrade able to plant seeds at the correct distance and depth” (González, 1965: 59). Of course, these demands were adapted according to the situation of young people. For example, in the lead-up to the IX Festival of Youth in Algeria scheduled for 1965, in order to obtain the festival “badge,” targets for young students and workers centered around attendance, while those of young agricultural workers focused on productivity (Mella, 1965e: 17). High expectations were reflected also in new criteria for entry to the UJC, which mirrored those of the PURS. This process involved the proposal of membership of an individual from the masas (masses); this was followed by a decision on membership made by existing members of the UJC or PURS based on whether the potential member displayed a communist attitude; there then followed a presentation of the potential member back to the masas (Martín, 1964: 53). The concern with the quality of UJC membership was reflected in a Mella editorial in February 1965, which, in the context of a reflection on the previous year’s process of “restructuring and building,” stated that “it is our responsibility to ensure that our Vanguard organization grows stronger, so that all new entrants have the right qualities and so that no one with the right qualities fails to gain admission” (Mella, 1965a: 11). One way to achieve this excellence was through aspirante status, a half-way house to membership of the UJC through which each applicant to the UJC would have to pass. At this stage, future UJC members were “trained and imbued with the

86

Chapter 5

spirit and working methods of the Youth Organization of the Communist Party” (Mella, 1965f: 8). In tandem with this ethos of vanguard behavioral standards was a fierce criticism of that which was anathema to this ideal. Often this criticism was directed at any evidence of bourgeois influence, particularly if it was deemed to emanate from North America. Indeed, this was something of an obsession with Secretary-General Miguel Martín, in a manner reminiscent of Fidel Castro’s speech of March 1963 discussed earlier in this work. Martín saw this counter-vanguard ethos as the central threat to victory in the ideological battle, because “[t]he bourgeois ideologues fostered a contempt for work . . . offering people like James Dean or Elvis Presley, etc. as role models—people who bear no resemblance to a laborer or to a manual or intellectual worker. Those who work, on the other hand, are considered as stupid, backward” (Martín, 1964: 59–60). The role of hero, for young people, needed to be played by the revolutionary hero or martyr—Martí, Benítez, Iglesias, Echeverría—rather than the youth culture idols of the capitalist world. Martín continued into 1965 to express his unease with external youth culture, laying the blame for youth weaknesses at the door of rock and roll and “elvis presleyism,” on the one hand, and nostalgia for the past, on the other (Suárez, 1965a: 25). This criticism was expressed through humor in the pages of Mella. One cartoon strip, showing a young man dressed in a Western style flanked by two girls in mini-skirts, bore the caption: “Certain groups idolize him . . . he wants to fill our heads with the Beatles all the time . . . these groups are the rebels without a cause . . . they don’t know it, but someone else is pulling their strings”; that last phrase describing the final frame showing the man as a wind-up doll, with Uncle Sam turning the key (Nuez, 1965: 11). Criticisms were not restricted to condemning displays of approbation of Western culture, but were directed also toward Cuban behavioral cultures. Religion came under censure (Martín, 1964: 61), as did bureaucracy in a cut-out card game equivalent to Old Maid, in which the Old Maid is represented by “El Jinete Burócrata” (the Bureaucratic leech or freeloader) (Mella, 1965c: 18–19). Yet it was in its criticism of its own constituency that the inflexibility of the ethos of the UJC came across. It may seem surprising, considering that the antecedent to the UJC was the AJR with its firmly rural ethos, that one of the moral panics that engulfed the UJC surrounded agricultural workers. When González, Secretario Organizador (General Secretary) of the UJC, wrote at length in Cuba Socialista in 1965 about the role of the UJC in the countryside, he began by praising them: “These young [agricultural workers], because of their class position and combative traditions, are, alongside adult workers, the first bastion of the Revolution in the countryside” (González, 1965: 47). However, González then argued that despite the fact that the class position of young agricultural workers made them the most natural constituency of

Youth Activism

87

the UJC, the UJC in the countryside needed to create cultural and existential codes similar to those in the cities (González, 1965: 47). He went on to point out that, due to the counter-revolutionary activities that had taken place in the early sixties in rural areas, the UJC would have to combat “prejudice and mistaken ideas” still present in the countryside (González, 1965: 49). At the same time, the UJC, prompted by the crucial economic importance of the development of agriculture after the failure of initial attempts to industrialize which resulted in a renewed focus on Cuba’s potential agricultural strength, particularly with regard to sugar, set out to develop an agricultural conciencia, in order to prevent flight from the countryside to the urban areas. This was in line with policy initiatives which intentionally neglected Havana in favor of the development of rural areas. The development of revolutionary consciousness to this end was a practical economic goal as well as an ideological one. Expanding membership and fighting the lucha ideológica (ideological struggle) in the countryside were therefore key aims. Another of the potential constituencies of the UJC with whom it struggled to the point that it triggered a self-generated moral panic around them were the secondary school students. The counter-vanguard in terms of this group was represented by, at worse, students of a counter-revolutionary bent, and, at best, those students who played truant or who cheated in exams. The UJC made it its mission to root out and eliminate such behavior. A declaration from its national body stirringly declared that “[o]n all the secondary school campuses in the country, we are flexing our muscles to fight the battle for study and discipline against cheating, such as copying and sharing answers, and in favor of academic excellence” (Mella, 1965d: 11). To this end, the UJC organized the Semana de Asistencia (Anti-Truancy Week) between 21st and 28th March 1965. Secretary-General Martín shortly afterwards demanded that the UJC, in collaboration with the UES, should ensure that those secondary school students who were committing the aforementioned offenses should be, through special meetings, excluded from the becas (scholarship) program and prevented from entering university (Martín Pérez, 1965: 10). The effort not only to prevent the counter-vanguard from entering university, but effectively to demonize that group of young people, was then stepped up, and in a letter to secondary students from the UJC and the UES, the students were urged to expel these “counter-revolutionary and homosexual types” in their final year of school in order to impede their entry into universities (UJC, 1965: 3). The familiar trait of mid-sixties Cuba whereby counter-revolutionary attitudes and homosexuality were portrayed as synonymous is clearly in evidence here. The suggested remedies for this most feared group were stark—either to be lost though their own weakness, or to re-educate themselves through joining the workforce. This move coincided with the establishment of the UMAP camps, which also housed perceived counter-revolutionary individuals, particu-

88

Chapter 5

larly young homosexual males and those who did not work or study. For those young people who were not counter-revolutionary per se but rather had shown lazy and corrupt attitudes (blandenguerría or spinelessness in the words of the UJC), an alternative remedy was found: military service. Through this they could improve their records enough to gain entry to university, if, of course, their behavior in the army was deemed appropriate (UJC, 1965: 3). Overall, the ethos of the UJC was closely related to the leadership discourse of fear or panic that young people simply were not approximating the behavioral ideals of vanguard youth that the Revolution expected of them. The lack of stability, fluctuating membership and uncertain future—even extending to uncertainty in 1964 over the future of its magazine, Mella (Mella, 1965b: 2)—caused it to be overcritical of its own constituency. Yet, to an extent, the restructuring of 1964 helped the organization, and from the moment that Crombet took over as SecretaryGeneral in February 1966, it began to stabilize. Furthermore, it was helped in its self-definition by Guevara’s 1965 text, Socialismo y el hombre en Cuba, which reiterated the importance of nurturing a new generation unsullied by the bourgeois past. This gave the UJC a clearer sense of mission and a renewed belief in the importance of youth after early doubts. It rose to the challenge of countering what it perceived as nonconformism through its coordination of mass participation activities, such as the Columnas Juveniles Centenarios (Centenary Youth Units, hereafter CJCs), which inspired a great faith in young people and in the youth organization which would be refreshed as new initiatives arose, right up to the present day. THE PROBLEM WITH UNIVERSITY STUDENTS If the panic about secondary school students’ possible lack of revolutionary commitment was strong, it was at least straightforward. In terms of the relationship with university students, the role of the UJC was muddied and unsure. The UJC on the one hand desperately needed university students in order to fulfil its role in the technical revolution but, on the other, was deeply critical of them at certain moments during the sixties. The fight for dominance between the UJC and the FEU effectively forced aside the ability of university students to assert their identity despite their historic importance and their ownership of two of the crucial youth martyrs, Julio Antonio Mella and José Antonio Echeverría. The university students emerged at the start of the Revolution as a confident group. They had largely peopled the Directorio Revolucionario and the FEU was still intact organizationally, despite the fact that the universities had been closed from November 1956 (Suchlicki, 1969: 74). Part of the confidence of the FEU came from its revolutionary roots.

Youth Activism

89

Founded by Mella in 1923, it also carried out a significant role in the fifties struggle, under José Antonio Echeverría, who had led and was killed during the unsuccessful but heroic attack on the Presidential Palace on 13th March 1957. Not only was Echeverría important as a martyr of the fifties struggle, as leader of the FEU he had extended its role in the fifties beyond that of a purely university student organization, building links with secondary schools, technical colleges, teacher training institutes and others; and as regards university students, he had also maintained an important link between the Universities of Havana and Oriente (García Oliveras, 2003: 103–4). The FEU therefore emerged at the triumph of the Revolution with its revolutionary credentials firmly intact; indeed its revolutionary credentials were stronger, I would argue, than the JS because of the links between the FEU and the DR. Like the JS, the FEU had its own publicity organ, the magazine Alma Mater, and when the first edition in the revolutionary period was produced only days after the triumph, the confidence of the university student body was evident in these stirring words which graced the front page editorial of the magazine: Alma Mater reappears with its rights and obligations as the organ of those who began the revolutionary struggle in Cuba. As in the first War of Independence, as in the first years of the Republic, as during the dictatorship of Machado and so too during these terrible years of Batista, the university student body has been the precursor and instigator, giving the call to arms. (quoted in Contrera Areu, 1989: 92)

This confidence was not reflected in the continued success of the magazine which went on to produce only two more editions in 1959 (Contrera Areu, 1989: 94). Yet that is perhaps to be expected given the substantial overhaul of the university system which would take place in 1959. One of the problems for the FEU was that it was clearly a very different type of organization from the JS or AJR. Despite its role in unity and mobilization during the fight against Batista, and despite Echeverría’s attempts to broaden its scope, it still had a limited potential constituency comprising university students who numbered just over 25,000 in 1959 (Domínguez, 1978: 166). It therefore had limited appeal. Its membership had traditionally been radical but largely urban middle class, occasionally associated with the bonches (violent gangs), and somewhat at odds with the new revolutionary ethos championing the poor, the rural and the rebelde. However, it had a rich history and tradition as the student voice within the universities, an antecedence which it was keen to assert. Therefore, in spite of signing the act of integration of youth organizations in October 1960 (Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986: 67), the FEU maintained its organizational independence rather than becoming a part of the AJR. Cuban historian Rodríguez Rodríguez explains that the FEU kept its own institutional integrity “because of its historic past, and the

90

Chapter 5

real possibility of using, for the benefit of the Revolution, its international relations and the well-earned prestige it enjoyed in the leading youth forums throughout the world” (1989: 100–1). This view is corroborated by Suchlicki, who adds that the fear of alienating students who were proud of their organization led to it being allowed to maintain its organizational structure (Suchlicki, 1969: 101). 9 The FEU at the University of Havana went through an early power struggle in the election shortly after the university reopened in 1959, between Pedro Boitel, previously of the M-26-7, and Rolando Cubela, previously of the DR. The latter eventually emerged victorious (Suchlicki, 1969: 89–90). We should remember that the FEU had a tradition of bitterly fought elections, so a battle for leadership should not surprise us. Echeverría himself had indeed undergone a struggle for the FEU presidency in 1955 (Thomas, 1971: 864 n10). However, soon the new generation of students from working-class backgrounds were not familiar with historic, sometimes violent, FEU power struggles, which weakened the organization in terms of support from new students. In order to move on from this and to assert its identity and role in the newly restructured universities, as well as wishing to maintain its revolutionary credentials, the FEU began to align itself closely with the revolutionary program. In July 1960 the FEU produced a document encouraging depuración (purging) of perceived counter-revolutionary elements in the universities as well as promoting greater access for poorer students. The latter move was probably also a response to a perceived crisis in enrolment, as university student numbers had dropped by 6,000 between 1959 and 1960 (Domínguez, 1978: 166). Despite the radical tradition of the FEU, the role of the students in the early Revolution was not an uncontentious one. One of the problems that affected the students more than any other sector was that they were proponents in the early Revolution of a radical anti-clericalism. This may have been a response to the fact that, according to Domínguez, at the start of the Revolution “the government launched an ideological campaign against the church, intending to foster a fear of persecution [amongst its adherents]” (Domínguez, 1989: 48), although this view is at odds with Castro’s pronouncements and it is likely that issues more specific to the students explain the vehemence of their position. Fidel Castro, while criticizing the clergy in his speech at the University of Havana in November 1960, was explicit in not criticizing religion or the church, instead blaming corruption amongst the clergy on economic interests and class. During this speech the students and young people began to chant “Fidel, seguro, a los curas dales duro” (Fidel, come on, hit the clergy hard) (Castro, 1960c). Given that much pre-revolutionary education had been controlled by the church, and that the Catholic students tended to come from the traditional student classes (from middle-class backgrounds), the newer generation of students from working-class backgrounds (who were

Youth Activism

91

more likely to be members of the AJR) saw attempts to spread the seeds of dissent as deriving from church-dominated groups, notably the Agrupación Católica Universitaria, at the University. In early 1961, there was fear of a conspiracy on the campuses, fueled by the foiled attempts by “esbirros con sotana” (cassocked meddlers), as Mella magazine terms them, to organize a student strike on university campuses, and to convene a counter-revolutionary demonstration. This led the AJR to campaign against them with the slogan “HORMIGA, ARAÑA, ¡QUE LOS CURAS CORTEN CAÑA!” (ANT, SPIDER! LET THE CLERGY CUT SUGAR CANE) (Mella, 1961a, 1961b). The use of “ant” and “spider” in this slogan to describe and decry the clergy reminds us of the use of gusano (worm) around the same time to describe those Cubans who left the island and went to the USA. Student fears of counter-revolutionary activities among the religious groups intensified when it was discovered that a former member of the Agrupación, Manuel Artime, had commanded the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 (Crahan, 1989: 9). The FEU then launched a fierce attack against the bishops: You are trying to divide our nation. . . . You are raising the flag of the reactionaries, landowners, mercenaries, exploiters, war criminals and imperialists. You are not following Christ, you are betraying him. You are showing that the terms bishop and merchant are synonymous. The route you are following is that of contempt for the people and for history. (FEU, 1961: 27)

The on-campus battles which were being fought divided the potential FEU constituency and also diverted their attention and resources. The struggles did not, however, preclude FEU members at the universities from being activists in support of the Revolution, participating, mobilizing, and trying, like the UJC, to live up to the definition of vanguard laid out by the dominant culture of youth. The FEU was supportive of the Revolution, and it played a role, by establishing Brigades—by January 1960, 2,000 students had joined the Brigadas Estudiantiles “José Antonio Echeverría” (Terrero, 1960: 17)—as well as founding the specialist University Militias (Cruz, 2003). Whilst the student body, deemed to be so important to the UJC, did not initially yield to the pressure to conform to the rather narrow culture of the UJC, the relative weakness of the FEU meant that in 1965 the FEU allied itself closely to the UJC, 10 and the two joined forces in 1965 in the wave of depuración (purging) on university campuses which we also saw on the school campuses at the same time. The definition of those who needed purging was broad, according to FEU member Ileana Valmaña: The active counter-revolutionaries have to be purged . . . citizens with a negative, relentless, irrelevant, confusionist, opportunistic attitude, isolated from the masses they despise; the masses can easily identify

92

Chapter 5 them. The university student body has fought an ideological struggle with those people and therefore, well within their revolutionary rights, has demanded that they be purged. (Sautie & Perdomo, 1965: 2; original emphasis)

Like the UJC struggles of 1965, the merging of the concept of the counterrevolutionary and the homosexual was again asserted here in strong language: “The classification has to include that public scum, namely scandalous homosexuals, irrespective of whether they are men or women by birth, and, logically, those who engage in thought and deed in the counter-revolution” (Sautie & Perdomo, 1965: 2–3). This was a clear display of the institutionalized homophobia and moral panic. Because the students were already a de facto vanguard on the basis that they were selected on academic excellence, the UJC felt a particular need to ensure a vanguard attitude in all areas among them and, in the political culture of the time, open homosexuality was anathema to this ideal from the perspective of the UJC and the FEU. The successful purging of the university did not cause the activists of the UJC to relax. The eventual solution to keeping the university students as a vanguard, which occurred in 1967, was to merge the UJC and the FEU, purportedly to prevent duplication of duties caused by an overlap of membership. In fact, only 30 percent of FEU members were also UJC members (Domínguez, 1978: 280). Domínguez sees this as extraordinary: [t]he political demobilization of the university students in the late 1960s is the most important exception to the trends in the politics of the time. . . . The suspicion that the federation had been dismantled to eliminate a source of political trouble for the government is reinforced by the outpouring of remarks made by student leaders in 1971 [when the FEU was re-established] professing the loyalty of university students to the revolutionary government. (Domínguez, 1978: 280; my emphasis)

The panic over the revolutionary credentials of the students preceding the merger of the two organizations corroborates this. Exclusion of the masses from the UJC was a policy decision, but the de facto exclusion of 70 percent of students from the UJC-FEU, given that the students were anyway a small population, seems remarkable. There may, however, be a further reason for the collapse of the FEU: the expansion in higher education. No longer were university students the small elite group who continued education after school. In Educación Obrero-Campesina (workerpeasant education) colleges and polytechnics a new generation of students was created that had no link with the historic radicalism of the FEU which had been, after all, closely linked to the liberal arts and legal studies. As a result, in the sixties pre-revolutionary organizations such as the FEU no longer had the same place in the radical politics as they had had in the past.

Youth Activism

93

UJC: SUCCESSES Despite the narrow ethos of the UJC, it did take measures that drew young people to it and that partly explain the expansion in membership through the second half of the sixties. The UJC was strengthened by changes in the national press in 1965. It was given its own daily newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, replacing its weekly publication Mella. This was a paper aimed at young people, but saw its constituency as much broader. An editorial in Granma announcing its launch stated that its function was [T]o fulfil the role of informing and providing guidance to young workers, peasants, students, sportsmen and young members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, to fight fiercely to improve the ideological level of our youth, while at the same time providing general information to the workers and the people as a whole on these and all problems—this is the objective of the new publication we are welcoming today. (Granma, 1965: 1; my emphasis)

It is significant, though, that the name given to this paper was Rebelde rather than Comunista. This demonstrated the enduring mass appeal of the rebelde ethos, which carried the youth culture and activism to the rest of the population based on the code of the heroic young guerrilla of the fifties and also shared its heritage with the defunct AJR. A further way in which young people gained in status was in relation to the Isla de Pinos. Following the devastation of the island by Hurricane Alma in June 1966, the UJC issued a call to members to go to the island and assist in its reconstruction, under the slogan: “To recover what was lost and make things even better than before!” (Gómez, n.d. a: 9). This call led to hundreds of young people joining to assist with the reconstruction, and marked the beginning of the structure of columnas (units) which thenceforth dominated youth participation. In September the designation of the island as the “Isla de la Juventud” (Isle of Youth) first appeared in the press, although it was not until 1978 that the name of the island was officially changed (Gómez, n.d. a: 13). The island became the focus for youth activism, attracting international youth brigades as well as settlements for young Cubans. One area in which the UJC saw considerable success was in external relations, and perhaps the counterpoint to criticism of Western youth culture associated with Elvis, Rock and Roll and the Beatles was the solidarity between Cuba and the Black Power movement in the USA, with UJC leader Jaime Crombet being a key participant in the solidarity event of 1967. Aside from solidarity with Black Power, international links with the socialist world were also an emergent part of the work of the UJC. Students on becas went to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to study, and similarly Eastern European and Soviet delegations (notably from Komsomol, the Soviet youth organization) visited Cuba. Further-

94

Chapter 5

more, the UJC used participation in international youth festivals—Helsinki in 1962 and to a greater extent preparation for Algeria in 1965 (later cancelled)—to increase the activism of its members and to inspire participation in all young Cubans. In terms of initiatives, one of the main responsibilities of the UJC was to guide and organize the children’s organization, the Unión de Pioneros de Cuba (Union of Cuban Pioneers, UPC). In this it only had partial success. Although it was given responsibility for organizing the UPC in April 1962, the internal turmoil in the next two years meant that this task was the object of relatively little attention from the UJC. In a classic moment of autocrítica in 1965 the UJC berated itself for its failure in this task (Hernández, 1965: 5) and began to focus its attention on managing the children’s organization by recruiting guías de pioneros (pioneer leaders) (Suárez, 1965b: 18). As was characteristic with the UJC, the aim of this initiative, which was to recruit 40,000 guías, was perhaps unrealistic bearing in mind the number of other tasks that were demanded of young people. In 1962 it had been perceived that the UPC would follow the character of the UJC, by becoming a selective organization, but in 1966 it was determined that it should be a mass organization, open to all children, and connected with the classroom (Wald, 1978: 185–86). This led to a natural separation of the two organizations as the aims of a mass organization differed significantly from that of a vanguard organization. This was finally formalized in 1970, when the UPC was made legally distinct from the UJC, although young people were (and are) still considered to play an important role regarding work with children. CONCLUSION While the successes of the UJC in the first phase of its life were limited in respect of its intentions, such relative failure must be put in context. The UJC vastly over-reached its ability to deliver. By demanding vanguard behavior in every aspect of life on the part of its members, and by narrowing that concept of vanguard to exclude anyone who would have even sympathy with that which it considered non-conformist, the UJC made it almost impossible for its members to achieve a sense of duty duly fulfilled. You could say that this was autocrítica gone mad. Furthermore, by creating that sense of differentiation from the counter-vanguard it automatically took the latter culture to include any espousal of Western culture. Whether or not the UJC could have functioned better as a mass organization is a moot point, but if it had allowed itself latitude in its definition of vanguard, it could have succeeded without repeatedly fueling moral panics. True, these moral panics came from the revolutionary leadership as well as from the leadership of the UJC, but because the latter did not allow itself to evolve pragmatically, the concept of lucha, so

Youth Activism

95

crucial to the Revolution, started to work to the detriment of the youth organization. So although it is beyond doubt that some young activists were highly committed and worked extremely hard to fulfil the aims of the Revolution, spending their time outside school or work on the multitude of initiatives in which the UJC was involved, the latitude of expression was very narrow. As a result, large groups of young people found themselves inhabiting an almost non-conformist position in the eyes of the UJC through failing to reach the standards, levels and forms of participation expected by the youth organization. After the early successes of the AJR, the lack of a mass organization for young people led to a limitation in the scope of political participation for young people. But interestingly, the narrow concept of youth vanguard according to the ethos of the UJC and the controls on entry to the organization left a wide field for non-activists to populate. There was a spectrum of possibilities to occupy non-members of the UJC to enable them to fill time outside work and school. At one end of this spectrum, young people could participate in revolutionary programs, or at the other, they could take the risk of operating closer to the margins of what was deemed broadly acceptable. The movement of young people back and forth along that spectrum is the focus of the next two chapters. NOTES 1. Parts of this chapter appeared in Luke, A. (2014) “A Culture of Youth: Young People, Youth Organizations and Mass Participation in Cuba 1959–62” in Mauricio Font and Carlos Riobó (eds.) Handbook of Cuban Literature, History and the Arts (Boulder: Paradigm). 2. It appears that this organization petered out as new initiatives overtook it. 3. It is important not to overstate this potential “threat”—the AJR was primarily established for the specific purpose of finding education or employment for young people who had neither; its aims could thereby be complementary to those of the JS. That said, being an organ of the Ejército Rebelde, the AJR clearly had a closer link to the Sierra than the JS. 4. This speech is important in the broader context of the Revolution as it effectively marks the onset of the “Escalante affair.” The accusation of sectarismo was made toward Aníbal Escalante shortly afterward, in a speech on 27th March (Thomas, 1971: 1379). 5. As in the Soviet Union, the Leninist technique of self-criticism was both a practice which could refer to “an activity of the individual directed at himself” and the rather different “activity of the collective body” (Kharkhordin, 1999:144); these were clearly quite different activities but, as in the Soviet case, Cuba would witness both forms with the latter (the collective form) predominating. 6. These were agricultural production, industrial production, secondary students, universities, sport, work with children, culture, organization, propaganda and revolutionary instruction (Revolución, 1962d: 5). 7. An aspirante was an applicant who was going through the pre-membership preparation period at the end of which a decision on full membership could be conferred. 8. However, the second National Congress did not happen until 1972, reflecting ongoing problems in the organization.

96

Chapter 5

9. The FEU still exists today with a high profile—at the mass memorial rally for Fidel Castro on 3rd December 2016, the FEU president at that time, Jennifer Bello Martínez, was one of the speakers; her speech celebrated the role at the University of Havana of its most famous alumnus, pointing to the time Fidel was at university as the period in which he emerged as a revolutionary. 10. FEU leader Crombet later became the long-standing leader of the UJC.

SIX Participation and Voluntarism

As a form of socialization of young people, the various means of participation in Cuba in the sixties were striking. Voluntary work gave the young a space in which to express themselves in the company of other young people, and, in particular for young women, provided a level of independence that amounted to an unprecedented degree of liberation. Much work on political participation in Communist systems sees involvement in politics not as participation exactly, but as mobilization in favor of the ruling party (Gripp 1973; Holmes, 1986). 1 The high level of participation in the early Revolution in Cuba was, however, triggered by a different impetus. It is worth remembering that Cuba in the early sixties did not have the made-for-purpose institutions to facilitate mass participation, so the various forms of participation that will be considered below drove the development of new structures and cultures. New initiatives and institutions to host these initiatives grew up with great rapidity; as Cuban historian Luis Gómez states, the new institutions “mushroomed explosively and instantaneously, in a revolutionary manner; there was no time for long group agreements, and even less for evolutionary development” (Gómez, n.d. e: 4). As a consequence of the relatively low levels of participation in the struggle against Batista, the majority of Cubans had not been directly instrumental in bringing about the victory of the rebel army in 1959. Popular participation gave many Cubans the right to internalize the Revolution even without having been active in the guerrilla struggle, particularly in the context of the discourse of the revolutionary leadership, which increasingly connected the Revolution directly with all Cubans. It was not essential to be an activist for the party to be involved in the building of the new Revolution; moreover, the type of participation in the early sixties in Cuba was highly active rather than passive; a participation motivated by the will to “do” rather 97

98

Chapter 6

than “be.” Part of this process was the focus on direct democracy, which meant that the leadership, in particular Castro, enjoyed and worked for a proximity to the Cuban people that was unprecedented: [Castro] would often spend hours with small groups of people discussing local problems, ordering action to solve the problems, or explaining why the problems were unsolvable. Not infrequently, he would take the side of the citizenry against abuses or inefficiency by local officials. Castro personally came to be regarded as a more reliable bulwark against governmental irregularity than any set of structural safeguards. (LeoGrande, 1978: 118)

According to Chanan, “in the 1960s, Cuba was overtaken by revolutionary euphoria, mass enthusiasm, the spontaneous self-incorporation of the masses, the phenomenon of direct democracy” (Chanan, 2001: 400). One of the means of direct democracy as Chanan articulates it, was through participation in initiatives aimed at constructing the Revolution. The aim of this chapter is to explore the role of young people specifically as participants in the sixties and to examine the nature of such participation. There were multiple new initiatives, so rather than reviewing all initiatives in which young people were involved, I will take three case studies from the sixties of initiatives which fostered youth participation. These cases are chosen due to their scope, covering culture, education and the military—three core zones of revolutionary life in sixties Cuba— and because of the importance of youth rather than the population at large in their successes. I will revisit the much-discussed Literacy Campaign of 1961, from the perspective of youth participation, and in particular the socializing effect of participation on the young literacy teacher. I will then explore two other examples of popular participation in which youth was critical, the Revolutionary Militias and the aficionado movement. These corroborate the view that the young participant in Cuba was an actor in the formation of a new ethos and culture—and policy—of the sixties. EDUCATIONAL VOLUNTARISM: THE LITERACY TEACHERS The Literacy Campaign of 1961 is still held up as one of the key successes of the early Revolution. Although education was one of the elements in Castro’s fifties program for reform laid out in La historia me absolverá (Castro, 1953: 42), his focus at that stage was on improving working conditions for teachers (47–48) and, although he mentioned illiteracy, pointing out that 30 percent of Cuba’s peasants could not sign their own name (48), the Literacy Campaign emerged from the development of the guerrilla struggle and the impetus toward education of the early Revolution. The former was partly inspired by the role that educated guerrilla fighters in the Ejército Rebelde in the fifties, including Che Guevara, had

Participation and Voluntarism

99

played in teaching literacy to illiterate or semi-literate cadres (Anderson, 1997: 298). Skierka argues that Castro incorporated a mass literacy campaign into his second Sierra Maestra Manifesto of 1957 in response to advice from urban revolutionary leader (and martyr) Frank País in order to broaden the appeal of the rebellion (Skierka, 2004: 55). The Literacy Campaign was unprecedented and rightly deserves its place in revolutionary history. Pérez Cruz argues that Literacy emerged as an historic necessity for the development of the revolutionary process and as a genuine democratic and popular demand of the Cuban masses, faithfully interpreted by the revolutionary vanguard. (Pérez Cruz, 1988: 181–82)

Evidence of the rapid progression is at play here, as policy strove to catch up with events. Fagen argues that “when the planning for the national Literacy Campaign formally began in the autumn of 1960, there was already considerable organizational and pedagogic experience to draw on,” as INRA, the Ejército Rebelde and volunteer teachers had already begun to undertake literacy work (Fagen, 1969: 38). If we take this perspective further, by the time of Castro’s mobilization speech in May 1961, he was capitalizing on the existing popular participation in the Literacy Campaign, and pointed out that there were already 60,000 young teachers (Castro cited in Fagen, 1969: 182). Among other means of registering participation as literacy teachers in the Literacy Campaign, youth magazine Mella printed the registration form in its pages in December 1960 (Mella, 1960k: 34–35). This recruitment campaign preceded the formation of the specialist literacy brigades. Assessments of the success of literacy campaigns across time and space tend to judge their success in terms of the number of people made literate, and the effects that this new literacy has at an individual or societal level (Arnove & Graff, 1987); the success in terms of the transformative experience of being a literacy teacher, however, is rather overlooked; yet in the case of the Cuban campaign, it could be argued that the focus on the teachers was as great as that on the students. My interest is in one particular group of participants—members of the Brigadas Conrado Benítez. These were of key importance because of the participation of tens of thousands of young Cubans as literacy teachers, which meant that the campaign functioned as an important socializing agent for a generation of young Cubans. As Medin points out, Illiterates were taught not just a language but the language of the Revolution, and the literacy teachers were taught a new terminology that incorporated them into the conceptual and axiological world of the socialist Revolution. (Medin, 1990: 69; my emphasis)

To this end, the manual for the literacy teachers consisted of twenty-four “Temas de Orientación Revolucionaria” (Themes for Revolutionary

100

Chapter 6

Guidance), including the Revolution, Fidel as leader, nationalization and imperialism, among others (Ministerio de Educación, 1961: 7). 2 Through this, and through the action of giving the benefit of their own education to others, the experience that young teachers would gain was one of the key aims of the campaign. Castro, speaking to the literacy teachers in May 1961, pointed out that the teachers, though being given the task to teach, would also learn about rural life: You are going to teach, but as you teach you will also learn. You are going to learn much more than you can possibly teach and in the end you will feel as grateful to the campesinos [farmers/peasants] as the campesinos will feel to you for teaching them to read and write. . . . They will teach you the “why” of the Revolution better than any speech, better than any book. . . . [T]hey will also teach you the real meaning of sacrifice, and how honest and healthy the hard life is. (Castro cited in Fagen, 1969: 183)

Who, indeed, was the student in this scenario and who the learner? The ethos of the campaign reconfigured the common teacher-student power relationship by seeing learning as a process which would operate in both directions. The focus on the rural was tied up with the hero/martyr ideal, whereby the virtues of the humildes were held up as genuine and authentic, unsullied by a bourgeois urban culture. Therefore the experience of young people from the cities as literacy teachers in the countryside was one of the most important aspects of the campaign, with 88.2 percent of the brigadistas hailing from urban areas (Fagen, 1969: 45). One contemporary commentator wrote: [young people] have abandoned their urban home comforts, their books, classrooms and juvenile entertainment, and taken themselves off to the hills or the marshes, sleeping in hammocks or on the ground, helping to till the land or make furnaces with the charcoal-burners and suffering illnesses and inclement weather. (García Galló, 1961: 79)

It was through sacrifice and an experience of rural life, including a direct connection between young urbanites and the land and those who worked the land—a radically different experience to the literacy teachers’ urban everyday lives—that conciencia could be forged. The success thereof later translated into policy with the Escuelas al Campo program in 1965 and, in the seventies, the Escuelas en el Campo program. The role played by young people in the Literacy Campaign is one of the ways through which it is remembered. The youth brigades of literacy workers were named after Conrado Benítez, a young teacher killed by counter-revolutionary guerrillas, who was used in Castro’s speeches to develop the discourse of youth in terms of a rural, humble ideal, representing commitment and martyrdom. Fagen pointed out astutely that “[a]lthough there were never as many Conrado Benítez brigadistas participating in the Literacy Campaign as there were adult alfabetizadores popu-

Participation and Voluntarism

101

lares, it was the élan, the image, and the exploits of the former that captured national attention” (Fagen, 1969: 42). In Castro’s speech to the 1962 Youth Congress, he made a point of praising young people for their role in the campaign (Castro, 1962b: 5). An analysis of involvement in the campaign corroborates this. Of the 271,000 literacy teachers or alfabetizadores, about 100,000 were members of the Brigadas Conrado Benítez (Fagen, 1969: 47; Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud, 1986: 83). Within these youth brigades, 40 percent were in the age range ten to fourteen, 47.5 percent from fifteen to nineteen, 9 percent from twenty to twenty-nine, with the 3.2 percent remaining over twenty-nine (Fagen, 1969: 45). The young volunteers were sent to a training center in Varadero, and from there were sent to rural areas. Each brigadista was expected to teach between six and ten people (Fagen, 1969: 182). The manual (Alfabeticemos) was given to all literacy teachers, and, as well as the twenty-four themes, included direction to young teachers on how to behave toward their adult students, advising them to be friendly, interested, non-authoritative, and understanding of economic and other difficulties (Ministerio de Educación, 1961: 11–12). Interestingly, aside from the manual (Alfabeticemos) and the primer (Venceremos), the arsenal of each brigadista also comprised an arithmetic primer (García Galló, 1961: 77), indicating that the campaign saw literacy and numeracy as going hand in hand. In other words, this was not just a literacy campaign but also an education campaign. The Campaign sewed the seed of future policies to raise the level of education of all Cubans first to third grade and later to sixth grade; the achievement of literacy was merely the starting point. Participation in the Literacy Campaign had an effect on young literacy teachers which itself, according to Cuban intellectual Fernando Martínez Heredia, had an influence which marked out that generation (Martínez Heredia, 2003). For many it was the first time they had left their home environment. For young women in particular, this was a fundamental social break from the past, as more than half of the literacy workers were women (Fagen, 1969: 45; García Galló, 1961: 79). Young women found themselves firmly away from the casa (home) and could thereby subvert the casa/calle (private/public) divide that prevailed from pre-revolutionary times. Not only were they leaving their homes, but they were leaving for several months, generally going from urban to rural areas. Of course, there was also a practical element driving the involvement of young people in the campaign; while older people were involved in productive work without which the economy would suffer, by closing the schools, young people were freed up to be alfabetizadores without a direct impact on production. The Literacy Campaign emerged as a result of the ever-increasing centrality of education to the Revolution, with the influence of Martí being constantly present. The ad hoc literacy teaching in the Sierra Maestra, along with its incorporation into the program of the Revolution in the

102

Chapter 6

late fifties, and the naming of 1961 the Year of Education, made literacy a central aim of the Revolution. However, the level of success it had was based on the emergence of a genuine mass movement on the part of those who wished to be literacy teachers. While later initiatives did not have the level of popular involvement that the Literacy Campaign enjoyed (perhaps until the Elián affair of 1999/2000), the latter laid the groundwork for a new way of educating Cuba, dependent on mass participation and ruralism. This led to the initiatives to raise education to third and sixth grade, and to the Escuelas al Campo and Escuelas en el Campo programs, but it also influenced the way in which teachers were trained, whereby the system of teacher training commenced with training in the rural school at Minas del Frío at which a method “based on the success of the rough training methods used for volunteer teachers in 1959 and 1960” was developed (Jolly, 1964: 237). While the direct effect on those who had been alfabetizadores is significant, also of significance was (and is) how these 100,000 would become memorialized and mythologized as a marker of the success of popular participation, as the Revolution evolved. MILITARY VOLUNTARISM: THE REVOLUTIONARY MILITIAS An examination of the Milicias Nacionales Revolucionarias (MNRs) as a mass participative movement reveals another remarkable success of the early Revolution. From January 1959 onward, it was clear that Cuba was under threat from counter-revolutionary forces both inside the country and, shortly afterward, from exiles outside. The need to defend the country became acute, particularly after the 21st October air raids on Havana by Pedro Luis Díaz Lanz. As a result it was decided that the arming and training of civilians was a necessary solution to the military threat. To this end, at a mass public event on 26th October 1959, the founding of the Militias was announced. Castro, stating that “the people are on a war footing,” called on workers, peasants and students to play a role in defending Cuba alongside the rural Rebel Army soldiers (Granma, 1970: 2; Castro, 1959). The concept of a people’s Militia was not a new one. Militias formed part of both Cuba’s and Latin America’s historic defense forces (Sartorius, 2004). However, the meaning of participation in Militias had, by the time of the Revolution, changed substantially, with the Militias of the fifties being associated with rebellion against the standing army rather than merely defense. This change in the role of the Militias was reflected in the evolution of the rebel forces in the Sierra and the llano in the fifties. According to the editorial of a fifties underground publication, reproduced in Granma on the anniversary of the founding of the MNR, the militias of the fifties were based originally in the cities but as Batista’s regime was strong in urban areas, they moved into the countryside. There, they became part of the Ejército Rebelde, having as their

Participation and Voluntarism

103

mission to sabotage the routes of communication of Batista’s forces (Granma, 1970: 2). Militias had become one of the arms of military strategy within the rebel forces so the move to Militias as a military strategy after January 1959 was a logical one. There was not, however, a direct continuation of the Militias after January as these were demobilized in January 1959 when the Ejército Rebelde attempted to transform itself into a more professionalized operation. Despite this hiatus between the victory of January 1959 and the official launch of the MNR on 26th October 1959, de facto militias had apparently already been formed: From their inception . . . the National Revolutionary Militias obtained valuable cooperation from enthusiastic comrades, selfless revolutionary militants . . . who months before that memorable 26 October 1959 had taken part in organizing the first militias. (Gutiérrez, 1965: 1; my emphasis)

Militias followed a similar model of development to the Literacy Campaign—at first, a rather ad hoc participation-led emergency measure followed by a policy-driven formalized strategy. In the case of the militias, the emerging need to defend the Revolution in the face of increasing hostility from outside gave impetus to both the emergent phase and to the formalization; Domínguez argues that “forming a militia was an ad hoc response to the need for organized support at a critical time” (Domínguez, 1978: 208; my emphasis). The result was that when the creation of the Militias was announced on 26th October 1959, and notwithstanding the fact that the leadership had not really referred to militias before this date, there was already a significant militia-type force consisting of organizations such as the Patrullas Juveniles. The formal announcement of their creation was therefore in effect an announcement of their formalization and expansion. Membership of the militias was massive and rapidly accelerated, from 100,000 in 1960 to something nearing 300,000 in 1961 (Domínguez, 1978: 208). The first Militia officers graduated from special officer training schools in November 1960, having undergone a five-month training period in the Sierra Maestra, climbing the Pico Turquino (Castro, 1960b), much like the first members of the AJR. 3 The work of the Militias, unlike that of other organizations such as the CDRs, was predominantly physical—handling weapons, marching, preparing for combat. This inclined membership toward the young and fit, as well as toward a manual worker/peasant workforce. The early militias were led by Captain Rogelio Acevedo, who himself was under twenty years old at the time the militias were formed (Thomas, 1971: 1268). From October 1960 it was compulsory for all members of the AJR to be incorporated into the MNRs (Rodríguez Rodríguez, 1989: 118). At its April 1962 Congress, the AJR numbered 100,000 members (Quintela, 1962: 37), indicating that perhaps as many as

104

Chapter 6

one in three Militia members were also members of the AJR. The youth of Militia members even encompassed near childhood. The role of the antiaircraft gunners, aged around fourteen, is well documented. These young militia members were particularly singled out for praise by Fidel Castro in his speech to the 1962 Youth Congress (Castro, 1962b: 5). The involvement of university students in the Militias is perhaps one of the cases of clear and enthusiastic participation on the part of this otherwise occasionally problematic group. The treatment of students as a separate group led to the establishment of special university militias. This initiative was important for two reasons: firstly, an ideological battle was being fought on the campuses (particularly the University of Havana) and Castro was keen to revolutionize the universities and the students, and visited the University of Havana several times in the early Revolution in order to achieve that aim; and secondly because much technical expertise was concentrated in the student body as well as their teachers, who would also join the university Militias. Medical students, an important group at the time because it was necessary to counter the shortage of doctors created by the exodus of a proportion of the middle classes, formed their own Brigadas Sanitarias which would serve all other Militias. The university Militias paraded in uniform on 13 March 1960, being then the very first Militias to have formed and trained under the auspices of the new policy. According to the organizer of the Brigada Universitaria Sanitaria at the University of Havana, the majority of university students were members of the Militias (Cruz, 2003). During the Bay of Pigs invasion all the university Militias were mobilized, and although one unit from the Ejército Rebelde was mobilized, the rest of the defense force at Playa Girón was made up of Militias (Cruz, 2003). Militias were mobilized across Cuba not only in the region surrounding Playa Girón, as there was no certainty where the attack would take place, but those who saw fighting during the Bay of Pigs invasion were Militias from Havana, Matanzas and Cienfuegos. The students’ specific advanced skills were essential to the Bay of Pigs defense, with the Brigada Sanitaria servicing the needs of all the other Militias by sending its members to join larger Militia groups (in the case of Cruz, six students joining a company numbering 180) (Cruz, 2003). The Militias are remembered not only for their actions at the Bay of Pigs but also for their role in defeating the counter-revolutionaries in the Escambray mountains. Experience of combat was, however, rare; militias were more routinely involved in military training and the guarding of public buildings. Members gave up eight hours a week to fulfil their duties (Thomas, 1971: 1321). Although not all members of the militias experienced direct combat, the island was felt to be threatened from all directions and so the militias across the island remained on alert. Militias were usually responsible for defending their locality in the case of attack. Pinar del Río province, for example, saw no direct invasion, but was felt

Participation and Voluntarism

105

to be both of strategic importance and at risk. In 1960 at a speech to newly graduated milicianos in that province, Castro pointed to their importance: This province is of great revolutionary and military worth. . . . This province, if well defended, is incredibly important from a military point of view. Because of that, we are going to pay special attention to training the Militias of this province. (Castro, 1960a)

Despite not necessarily being involved in direct combat, being a miliciano was a unique socializing experience in itself: Albert Manke speaks of the militia members as “the most politicized sector of the pro-revolutionary camp” (2014: 31; my emphasis). For young people to be trained in using weapons to defend an as yet only loosely defined project was clearly revolutionary in any sense of the word. Indeed, Castro speaking on 1st May 1960, in a speech that was reprinted in the Manual de capacitación cívica, stated that “This is democracy: it is not only the rights of the majority which count, but also that that majority should bear arms” (MinFAR, 1960: 307). The Militias were downgraded in the mid-sixties to a “civil defense force and military reserve” (LeoGrande, 1978: 117) as the army metamorphosed into a more recognizable professional armed force (Kapcia, 2008a: 80) and it was not until the eighties when the Milicias de Tropas Territoriales were launched that this means of military defense was re-established. But participation in the Militias, as in other initiatives, had had the effect of providing the leadership of the Revolution with evidence of the success of young people’s involvement in the defense of Cuba. This commitment was formalized when compulsory military service (SMO) was introduced in 1963, bringing with it the end of volunteer-based service. Cuban historian Luis Gómez sees a link between the introduction of the SMO and the successful military role of young people prior to this: [w]hat is important about this qualitative step-change is that it was made possible to a large extent by the active, voluntary and selfless participation of young people from the earliest days of the revolutionary process. (Gómez, n.d. e: 36–37)

SMO was soon linked to youth directly when it was decided that young people could carry out their military service in the CJCs and later, in the seventies, the EJT (Gómez, 2003b), both of which had a more productive than military character. CULTURAL VOLUNTARISM: THE AFICIONADO MOVEMENT Much as new educational and military initiatives emerged, flourished and become embedded, a raft of new methods of participation in the cultural domain came into being in the early years of the Revolution. Even that survivor of US cultural domination, cinema, could be used to

106

Chapter 6

revolutionary ends and so Cine-Clubs were founded in 1959 with the aim of bringing cinema to the whole population while encouraging cine-debate (discussions prior to watching films) and education relating to cinema as part of the Cine-Clubs (Ochoa, 1959: 22; Rodríguez Rivera, 1961: 48–49). 4 Television was also seen as serving an important role in terms of the cultural democratization of the Revolution, as a means to disseminate culture to the Cuban masses and thereby, according to one commentary, “to provide the people with the individual and universal art of which they have always been deprived” (Mella, 1960i: 51). Culture, in all its forms, was moving closer to the Cuban people. A new structure to enhance cultural democratization was established, at the helm of which was the Consejo Nacional de Cultura. Established in January 1961 (EIR, 1966: 66), the Consejo fed down to cultural participation at a community level, eventually, from 1970, via the Casas de Cultura. This also went hand in hand with an expansion in printing output and increase in the number of museums and libraries (Rojas, 2003). An important part of this cultural policy was the aficionado movement. The idea of this movement was to create a culture of amateur participation in the arts stretching across the whole country, and with a particular focus on rural areas aimed at reducing the cultural hegemony of Havana. It is not clear where the impetus behind the creation of the movement lay, but it is related to the concept of leisure time. Two things are of importance here: firstly, leisure time was seen as critical to the development of conciencia; and secondly, as elucidated in Torroella’s 1963 survey (of research conducted in 1962), young people can express themselves through their leisure time and through interpersonal relationships. Promulgation of culture was one of the key aims laid out in Castro’s Palabras of 1961, so the aficionado movement provided a social space in which young people could operate which was firmly and unambiguously revolutionary in nature. After its inception in the early years of the Revolution, the movement was developed via three branches of cultural organization for young people. These three were the Movimiento Nueva Trova (formed in 1972), reflecting the particular importance of new Cuban music, the Brigadas Hermanos Saíz 5 (1963) for young amateur artists, and the Brigada Raúl Gómez García 6 (1963) for instructores de arte (see below) who had some prior artistic training. 7 By 1963, the aficionado movement was developed enough to celebrate its first national festival, described in rather overly sentimental celebratory tones in the Cuban press: “A top quality display of the creative power of a liberated people, which, with its work and the help of international solidarity, builds its happy socialist future” (Noticias de Hoy, 1963: 1). The aficionado movement was no mere pastime or leisure activity; it was a crucial ingredient in the construction of the Revolution. By 1965 the aficionado movement in the arts was becoming more developed, although still relatively small, a modest 1,500 participants at the III

Participation and Voluntarism

107

Festival de Aficionados shows (Reyes, 1965: 4). Subsequently, the movement was given a particular impetus in the run-up to the IX Festival of Youth due to be held in Algeria in July 1965. 8 Prior to the mobilization for the festival, there were 1,144 aficionado groups, which expanded phenomenally in the months preceding the festival to 5,380 (Mella, 1965g: 25). What had begun as a relatively small initiative had, largely due to critical momentum and the work of the UJC and the mass organizations, become a widespread initiative. The development of the movement was to continue into the seventies, and by the late seventies, the movement was a genuine mass national movement, with, in 1975, over 220,000 aficionado performances played to audiences totaling 42 million (Ministerio de Cultura, 1982: 83). The aficionado movement went hand in hand, as mentioned above, with the formation of Instructores de Arte, who were responsible for heading the groups of aficionados. A school was opened to train the instructors in 1961: The first purpose of the School of Instructores de Arte, which is under the management of INRA, states: “It is not a center for training artists. Its role is to train the art instructors who will work in the schools, people’s farms and cooperatives. And there, the beautiful and fraternal message they will take with them is: popular culture for their brothers in the countryside.” (Soto, 1961: 22)

There was an awareness of cultural poverty in the regions which, prior to the Revolution, had also been victims of economic poverty, and the Instructores de Arte were, like the Literacy Campaign teachers, part of a serious program to develop rural areas in the most holistic sense, by shifting the focus of the expansion of cultural activity away from Havana. The instructors were mostly recent graduates and the existence of schools to train instructors professionalized this activity (Rojas, 2003). Although, as Soto observed above, instructors were not necessarily artists themselves, their mission was to bring culture—notably art, theater, literature and music—to the Cuban masses. The aim was that the instructors would, after graduation, form groups of aficionados. By 1965 it appears that there was a close proximity between the instructors and amateurs, with instructors and members of groups alike making up single brigades (Rojas, 2003). Despite the apparent distinction between professional artist, teacher and amateur, it is worth noting that young artists of the sixties did participate in this movement, and considered it an important part of the cultural story of the sixties. The success of the aficionado movement in the arts led to the creation of aficionado groups in sciences as well, launched in 1965 by President of the Academy of Sciences Antonio Núñez Jiménez, who delivered their aim as “to make it possible for our young people to study sciences, either by giving them the most effective

108

Chapter 6

and useful guidance possible, or by supplying them with their material needs for research and study” (Nuñez Jiménez, 1965: 16). The aficionado movement took off and became a mass movement partly because it was participation-driven. Given the revolutionary aim to develop the “conditions to enable the people to satisfy their cultural needs” (Castro, speaking in June 1961 cited in López Lemus, 1980: 15), it became an important part of cultural policy. The expansion of these groups needed the structures that provided training for the instructors, but the levels of participation could not be created merely by the existence of teachers. This was a genuine movement of mass involvement, which both fulfilled and created new revolutionary aims. As such, it gives us a window into the true breadth of transformation—far beyond mere economic change or political survival—to which the Revolution aspired. CONCLUSION Primary agents of socialization for young people have traditionally been considered to be the family, school and work (Almond and Verba, 1989: 266–306). Although Almond and Verba accept that there may be alternate agents of socialization (Almond and Verba, 1989: 305), revolutionary participation is rarely included as one of them. Participation by young people (in many cases at the lowest end of the youth age group) in the building of the early Revolution fed into the creation of the new revolutionary generation. The fear articulated by Castro—that the tree that grows twisted cannot be righted—is worth restating here as it underscores this debate. The participation of young people in the revolutionary initiatives outlined here (as well as other initiatives) meant that the first cohort to enter the generation of the Revolution were socialized through participation into revolutionary commitment. This participation could be truly transformative both personally and generationally. Young people as participators were held up as so crucial in the early stages of the Revolution that they felt themselves to represent not a particular cohort, but an integral part of a new, rejuvenated nation. By the late sixties, participation was institutionalized through mass organizations and programs of voluntary work were connected to schools and workplaces. Consequently, much popular participation which had previously been voluntarism came to resemble mobilization. But still the modes of participation were not only constructed due to economic need, but equally as a result of the success of early forms of participation. And because, through their level of participation, young people had been so essential in these initiatives early on in the Revolution, the incorporation of youth involvement and commitment into later initiatives became a logical step. Hand in hand with the dominance of

Participation and Voluntarism

109

youth in the discourse of the Revolution, “youth as participant” became central to revolutionary youth culture of the sixties. This centrality of youth to the revolutionary project, though still relatively unchallenged in Cuban culture today, can be questioned by taking into consideration practical actions that the Cuban state later took: the UMAPs in the midsixties and the Anti-Loafing Law of 1971 (to deal with young people neither working nor studying), and the establishment of the Centre for Studies on Youth (to counter fears that young people would not be the revolutionary citizens necessitated by their role in the processes described above). The next chapter will examine the groups of young people who existed at the very edge of the definition of what it meant to be a young revolutionary in the Cuban sixties. NOTES 1. This view is challenged by Schulz (1981), who argues that in the study of communist regimes the concept of what constitutes political participation must be expanded to include not only participation relating to the political process, but also participation in the non-governmental realm. 2. The full list of themes is a follows: 1. The Revolution, 2. Fidel is Our Leader, 3. The Land is Ours, 4.The Cooperatives, 5. The Right to a Home, 6. Cuba had riches but was poor, 7. Nationalization, 8. Industrialization, 9. The Revolution is turning barracks into schools, 10. Discrimination, 11. Friends and Enemies, 12. Imperialism, 13. International Commerce, 14. War and Peace, 15. International Unity, 16. Democracy, 17. Workers and Peasants, 18. A United and Alert People, 19. The Freedom of the Educated, 20. Health, 21. Popular Recreation, 22. Literacy, 23. The Revolution is winning all its battles, 24. The Declaration of Havana (Ministerio de Educación, 1961: 7). 3. It is not surprising that the AJR and the Militias would undergo a similar training. They were both under the auspices of the Ejército Rebelde and probably had some overlap in personnel, as young members of the AJR were encouraged to join Militias. 4. Cinema is an interesting example of democratization of culture as Cuba had almost no film industry prior to the Revolution. Although this developed over the course of the sixties, many of the films shown were international. The best of world cinema, ranging from Soviet to Japanese to Indian, was part of the itinerant Cine-Club program, and among young people Agatha Christie films were particularly popular (Gómez, 2003a), indicating a cultural link with the popular taste in detective fiction (Wilkinson, 2000). Furthermore, the link with Latin American cinema—particularly Brazilian—was strong due to the presence of expert technicians from Latin America coming to Cuba to teach the trade of film-making (García, 2003). 5. In line with the theme of young martyrs, this Brigade was named after Sergio and Luis Saíz, who were killed in Pinar del Río province in the fifties struggle (Gómez, n.d. e: 32). 6. Gómez García was another martyr of the Revolution, a young poet killed in the attack on the Moncada barracks on 26th July 1953 (Gómez, n.d. e: 32). 7. In 1986 all three organizations were merged to become the Asociación Hermanos Saíz (Rojas, 2003). 8. This was canceled due to regime change in Algeria.

SEVEN Youth at the Cultural Margins

From the very earliest months of the Revolution, a polemic on the role of the artist in the Revolution raged. 1 The protagonists in the debate were many, and these were not just young artists, in particular as several established literary figures returned from exile. We find, however, that once again youth plays a role beyond its relative size both in metaphor and in membership when we look at new groupings of artists. 2 Of these groupings, three of the most prominent will be explored here as case studies: those that surrounded the El Puente publishing house, those connected with the first era of cultural review Caimán Barbudo from 1966 to 1968 (henceforth the Caimán group), and the musicians who are associated with the Nueva Trova musical movement. These groups were Havana-based, and found their own physical space on the streets and in the bars of the capital. There were many inter-group personal connections, as well as connections between young people in these groups and the political vanguard. They comprised people mostly in their twenties but sometimes younger who saw themselves as a cultural vanguard but who were always at risk of being seen as non-conformist. Like thousands of other young Cubans, they participated in revolutionary initiatives, so had a direct connection with the project to construct the new Cuban nation. They had greater links with the outside world, particularly North America, than most other Cubans, through literary awards, festivals and so on. And, significantly, they enjoyed an automatic authority and authenticity as the first artistic generation created wholly within the Revolution. These groups existed where the discourse of youth met the discourse of culture and where internal and external influences interacted. This convergence was not without its tensions and collisions. This was in part because the version of youth created through the discourse of the Revolution was too unitary and perhaps limiting for young artists whose very 111

112

Chapter 7

existence centered on working at the cultural margins; and it was on the margins of this discourse—at that very moment of defining and redefining what it meant to be revolutionary—that they found themselves situated. It is not my aim to assess their literary or musical importance—that is ably done elsewhere—but rather to explore intersections between these groups and a broader youth culture and with the discourse of the Revolution. These intersections tell us a story of excitement, effervescence and debate, yet also of frustration and disappointment. The explosive meetings of cultures and meanings of the sixties led to a tumultuous path toward the creation of a new reality for Cuban youth. THE EMERGENCE OF THE SIXTIES CULTURAL POLEMIC The young cultural producers developed their art in a set of changing and uncertain circumstances, both with respect to cultural structures and institutions, and with respect to the normalization (or otherwise) of what was deemed the “correct” role of the artist in the Revolution. Institutionally, culture was brought under the control of the state: new institutions created to house culture included the cinema institution ICAIC; the writer’s union, UNEAC; a new cultural center, Casa de las Américas; and the new national publishing house, the Imprenta Nacional. The expansion of publishing and the establishment of cultural supplements to national newspapers (such as Lunes de Revolución, and, later, the cultural supplement of the daily newspaper Juventud Rebelde, Caimán Barbudo) aimed to increase the audience of both indigenously produced and imported culture. As well as these developments, access to culture was to be democratized, as discussed in the previous chapter, through the aficionado movement. The result of these multiple initiatives meant that by the late sixties, culture had risen vastly in status and scope; there was, however, a continual and evolving uncertainty due to a fiery and sometimes bitterly fought polemic surrounding artistic freedom and the role of the artist. While it is not the aim here to restate the intricacies of the polemic (for which see Martínez Pérez, 2006), a brief tour of the axes of the debate helps us to contextualize the lives of young Cubans who were forming as artists at the time. The first of these axes regards artistic quality (and the fear that a mass culture would mean a dilution of such quality). A manifesto produced during the very first weeks of the Revolution (and printed on 31st January 1959) argued that The dissemination [of culture] refers particularly to the poorer classes within the population; the stimulus concerns the country’s intellectual groups and creative people. This is a necessary distinction, but it does not imply that a second-rate product should be delivered to the people, a “popularization” of culture. On the contrary, we believe that one of the main benefits of doing what is proposed would be to give the

Youth at the Cultural Margins

113

poorer classes frequent and direct contact with the purest and most timeless outpourings of the human spirit. (Revolución, 1959: 14)

This perspective was taken further and clarified in a second manifesto, written by a group of writers, artists and intellectuals in November 1960: We must make an attempt to equate the nature of our works wholly with the future needs of the Revolution. The aim is to close the gap between people and intellectuals, intellectuals and people, without the artistic quality of our work suffering as a result. (Revolución, 1960: 1)

It did not take long for controversy over artistic freedom to emerge. The first crisis prompted by the debate on the role of the artist came in May 1961. The controversy was over the showing of the short film P.M. and was played out in Lunes de Revolución, which was subsequently closed due to the affair. Michael Chanan argues that the film itself was perhaps “only a mildly offensive film” but that the moment and context of the film explain its prominence in the intellectual history of the Revolution (Chanan, 2004: 133–43). Indeed, the affair owes its fame no doubt to the involvement of Fidel Castro, whose intervention in the debate—the famous Palabras a los Intelectuales on 30th June 1961—certainly overshadows the controversy over the film itself. One of Fidel Castro’s most debated statements in the history of the Revolution of how culture must operate in Revolutionary Cuba—“dentro de la Revolución todo; contra la Revolución nada” (within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing) (Castro, 1961b)—came to dominate the debate over the role of the artist. This speech affirmed that the Revolution must work to satisfy the cultural and spiritual needs of the population through art and culture, much as it must satisfy their material needs. The polemic played out on the pages of a variety of journals and magazines. In Bohemia in August 1961, veteran communist activist and poet (shortly to become Rector of the University) Juan Marinello weighed into the debate in a letter to the Grupo Novación Literaria, a group of young writers based in Camagüey, explaining (or restating) the Palabras. His explanation of Castro’s words at the Primer Congreso de Escritores y Artistas centered explicitly upon what artistic freedom meant in a revolutionary sense: No-one must feel compelled to use a specific form of expression, noone must surrender his ideas—on condition that these ideas contribute to a vast national determination, which can brook no legitimate contradiction or challenge. Freedom, yes, but not to depart from the path consciously chosen by the people, with all the risks it involves. (Marinello, 1989: 96–97)

The debate continued to rumble on, erupting again in late 1963 over the showing of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. The battle once again made the national press: Noticias de Hoy versus Revolución, and even Noticias versus

114

Chapter 7

Noticias (Halperin, 1976: 197). Eventually, the screenings of the film across Cuba were continued—a pragmatic move, according to Halperin: “there was the practical matter of providing entertainment for the Cuban people, strongly addicted to the movies and brought up on American and other capitalist films” (1976: 199). 3 In the course of the debate, an article in Revolución asked people to explain which films they felt it was appropriate to watch. The response mirrored the debate: Eduardo Manet, a cinema director, reproducing the artists’ plea for quality, opted for those films that were of the highest quality no matter where they originated; Remy Martínez Silveira, FEU cultural chief and president of the university Cine-Club, was fearful of the impact of such cultural texts on the audience and argued that while all films, including La Dolce Vita, should be shown, there should be “explanatory notes or references to help achieve a correct understanding of the film” in the cinema (Revolución, 1963: 13). Elsewhere, a survey of young cinema-goers in the Noticiero de la Juventud put across the opinion of one viewer, Elisa Rivas, who felt that capitalist films must be witnessed as a window into the realities of capitalist decadence, while another viewer, Orlando Gils, worried about the immorality of films such as La Dolce Vita, not least because of the prostitute and homosexual being given a hero status (Noticiero de la Juventud, 1963: np). EL PUENTE, GINSBERG AND THE ENFERMITOS The El Puente publishing group, under the leadership of poet José Mario Rodríguez, emerged in 1960 while this polemic was underway and while institutional structures were still being developed. El Puente was a privately financed project, and so initially outside the direct direction of the new cultural institutions. 4 The intention was to publish books and collections of poetry, and a journal called El Puente: Resumen Literario, the aim of which was to publish new Cuban literature as well as translations of foreign literature. The controversial “Howl” by beat poet Allan Ginsberg was of particular interest (Zurbano, 2005: 2). 5 El Puente is hard to categorize as an entity; poet Gerardo Fulleda León, who published with them, argues that “we weren’t exactly a literary movement . . . rather a group of young people who needed to express ourselves through literature” (Fulleda Leon, 2005: 5). Josefina Suárez (also one of the group but not published), on the other hand, claims that “I think that we did consider ourselves a literary group, for some people even a literary ‘generation,’ but our attitude was not exclusive” (Arango, 2005: 8). The reality is probably somewhere in between the two positions. They identified themselves as a group through personal links, friendships and common aims. They had a public space in which they met, the Gato Tuerto bar, where they listened to feeling music, a style of US-influenced music popular in

Youth at the Cultural Margins

115

the fifties. They also spent evenings and nights of songs, poems and conversation sitting outside on the Malecón (Havana sea wall) (Fulleda Leon, 2005: 4; Mario, 2002: np). 6 Artistically the group never had the time to mature or consolidate its literary identity, but it did emerge as a youth culture incorporating identification with poetry, music (including the music of the Beatles) and extravagant forms of dress (Fulleda Leon, 2005: 6). However, this group also participated in rallies, and organized the Brigada Hermanos Saíz (Arango, 2005: 7), so to place them beyond the cultural margin of acceptability would be inaccurate; and perhaps the history of El Puente needs to take into account that the bitter argument between Ana María Simo and Jesús Díaz, discussed below, led to a memory of El Puente which put it further away from the next grouping, the Caimán group, than in reality it was. Indeed, both groups identified with and worked for the Revolution but also tested the limits of the Revolution, and were part of the process of defining exactly what the Revolution was and what the role of artists within it could and should be. Over its lifetime El Puente produced thirty-eight titles (Zurbano, 2005: 2). Its most celebrated text was Novísima Poesía Cubana in 1962, the prologue of which served as a “statement” from the publishing group. The editors, Ana María Simo and Reinaldo Felipe, 7 stated that “we want to spark a movement that finally eradicates intellectual complacency, ambiguity and bad faith, that have led from the scarce literary criticism that exists amongst us, to the ineffectual state of play today” (Espinosa, 2005: 11–12). The text attempted to consolidate the group as a new generation operating in rejection of flaws of the past. The new cultural institutions took an interest in this group, particularly as it included several AfroCuban artists. José Mario was invited in 1962 by UNEAC president and cultural grandee Nicolás Guillén to integrate El Puente with UNEAC. Fearing the loss of independence, José Mario initially refused, but El Puente was eventually integrated with UNEAC in 1964 (Mario, 2002: np). Mario blamed the end of El Puente on criticism deriving from some elements within UNEAC and from the UJC, including attacks made by Caimán founder Jesús Díaz. The group was dissolved in 1965, following accusations of “a number of aesthetic (transcendentalism), moral (homosexualism), and, primarily, political (being unreliable . . . revolutionaries) sins” (Casal, 1971: 450). The decline and fall of El Puente could be considered a spectacular failure. It was largely written out of the literary-cultural history of the sixties until a 2005 issue of Gaceta de Cuba revisited the topic. Literary historian Isabel Alfonso argues that “in spite of its incorporation [into UNEAC] and of the participation of those poets in the revolutionary process, being examined under the spotlight of an essentialist and reductionist position, the El Puente group found itself further and further from the literary canon of the time” (Alfonso, 2005: 9). However, the group

116

Chapter 7

was sitting at the margin not just of the literary canon, but also at the margin of what was deemed to be acceptable revolutionary behavior. One of the nails in the coffin of the El Puente group was the visit to Cuba of poet and hippie guru Allen Ginsberg. He was invited to Havana as a judge in the Casa de las Américas annual book competition. Ginsberg’s visit, which eventually led to his deportation from Cuba, turned out to be disarmingly controversial. José Mario, writing from exile in Paris in 1969, recounted Ginsberg’s visit. He claimed that at first Ginsberg’s visit was seen as a “happening” (Mario, 1969: 49), but Ginsberg became persona non grata when he spoke out about the treatment of the enfermitos and did not attempt to disguise his pro-marijuana stance. The enfermitos were a small youth sub-culture, based in Vedado (but connected to the arts scene), who listened to European or North American music, danced the twist and wore flamboyant fashions. In the UJC publication, Mella, they were criticized as attempting to be neoyorquino or europeo, that is, being sops to an imported ideology that had nothing to do with—or was even dangerous to—Cuba: Their ramblings range from the idiotic to the counter-revolutionary, such as the view that “there is no freedom if a group has no means of expression or vehicle through which to show its idea of the world,” they stretch the concept of “sick.” (Jane, 1965: 7)

The group was labeled “a meagre minority,” and their domination of La Rampa in the Vedado zone of Havana was thwarted through the declaration by Jane that that zone was the property of all Cubans. 8 Young people were exhorted to “clean up” from the inside out, to rid themselves of this small element. Echoing the language of description of exiles as worms, or priests as ants or spiders, Jane likens the enfermitos to cockroaches and rats (Jane, 1965: 8). However, they were not demonized to such a great extent elsewhere, and the extremism of the UJC may be evident here. In FEU magazine Alma Mater, the enfermitos were later given slightly softer treatment. They were compared to the Teddy Boys in the UK and the Beatniks in the USA as, similar to these, the use of fashion defined their members as belonging to a certain group. They were described as “an alienated group, a million miles away from the construction of socialism” (Rodríguez, 1967: 4). Ginsberg learned of arrests of the enfermitos and/or homosexuals in Vedado from the young poets of El Puente and spoke up instantly to both journalists and the head of the Ministry of Culture, Haydée Santamaría (Miles, 1989: 342). Part of the conflict between Ginsberg and the Cuban authorities was based on differing views of what constituted “revolution.” Ginsberg saw it as the acceptance of homosexuality and the legalization of marijuana and took those views to Cuba, according to his biographer Barry Miles, expecting to experience a sympathy but instead discovering that the Cuban vision of revolution—schools, hospitals and lit-

Youth at the Cultural Margins

117

eracy—had nothing to do with this vision (Miles, 1989: 367-68). Indeed, when Ginsberg was in Cuba in 1965, he debated the issue of marijuana with Haydée Santamaría, who explained, according to Ginsberg, that his ideas were contrary to the law of Cuba, and, more particularly, damaging to young people (Miles, 1989: 348–49). The revolutionary “code” of moralism (Kapcia, 2000: 87) clashed with North American counter-cultural definitions of freedom. But more importantly, perhaps, than the issue of drugs, was that of homosexuality—and 1965 marked a toughening of Cuban attitudes toward homosexuals. School children were encouraged by the UJC and the UES to seek out “counter-revolutionary and homosexual elements, who must be expelled from their classes in the last year of school so that they can’t get to university” (UJC, 1965: 3). Those young poets who spent time with Ginsberg were under suspicion, were occasionally arrested, and, in the case of José Mario (a homosexual himself), eventually sent to a UMAP. Mario expressed surprise at the gossip that was developing surrounding Ginsberg, writing that he thought that “Allen’s personality set him above gossip” (Mario, 1969: 50). In a sense Ginsberg acted as a type of unwitting conduit linking El Puente with censured displays of youth culture of the enfermitos and equally unpopular public displays of homosexuality. The El Puente group was, as it were, tainted by association. Overall, with the failure of the El Puente group and the success of the new cultural institutions, by the mid-sixties the “old guard” had, to a large degree, survived. Roberto Fernández Retamar is an example in this regard. In the early days of the Revolution he was editor of the Nueva Revista Cubana (although the first two numbers were edited by Cintio Vitier), a cultural review. He went on to be the editor of Casa de las Américas. This group survived during the sixties with a reasonably high degree of artistic freedom while playing their revolutionary role as outlined in the aforementioned manifestos. Insecurity on the part of the political establishment (which felt that young cultural producers could be loose cannons), and fears of dissidence (particularly as a result of deep-seated institutionalized homophobia) made the environment in which the young cultural producer operated a highly uncertain and unstable one. It was in this context that the magazine Caimán Barbudo emerged. INTER- AND INTRA-GENERATIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS: THE CAIMÁN GROUP The testimony of poet Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera is interesting in respect of the conflicts reviewed in the preceding section. He was on the editorial board of Caimán and wrote the opening statement of the first issue. He claimed subsequently that the reestablishment of the influence of the cultural old guard did not create generational antagonism between

118

Chapter 7

older, more established cultural producers and the Caimán group. Rather, in his words, “we wanted to do something different” (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003a). The emergence of the Caimán group was facilitated partly by coincidence and partly through unexpected opportunity. Rodríguez Rivera, who was fifteen years old at the start of the Revolution in 1959, became acquainted with Jesús Díaz, at the University of Havana. Rodríguez Rivera was a student at the Escuela de Letras, where Díaz was one of a generation of very young graduates who became teachers to fill the gap created by the exodus of a large number of established lecturers. The position of lecturer gave Díaz considerable power. Both Rodríguez Rivera, in a series of interviews (2003a, 2003b & 2003c) and Díaz, in his later memoir of the Caimán era (Díaz, J., 1994) characterize the mid-sixties as a period of great uncertainty and effervescence. Rodríguez Rivera (2003a) referred to the Sino-Soviet split, the deterioration of relations between the Soviet Union and Latin America and the distance between Che Guevara’s thought and orthodox Soviet socialism. Díaz saw the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, decolonization in Africa, the increasing distance between Cuba and the Soviet Union, the deaths of Che and Martin Luther King, and the events of 1968 in Paris, Mexico and Prague, as the events that led in particular to a feeling among these young artists of impending world revolution (Díaz, J., 1994: 65). A sense of possibility and hope— feelings of effervescence and convulsion—fed the spirit of this new group of cultural producers. The idea of Caimán originated from Díaz. He claimed there were five coinciding factors that explained its creation (Díaz, J., 1994: 65). The first was the emergence of a new talented literary generation. The second was that control of the press by the party and the UJC was not absolute, so there was “some scope—but admittedly very little—for idiosyncrasy and the unexpected.” The third was that he was friends with Miguel Rodríguez Varela (known as Miguelito), the new editor of Juventud Rebelde, the official daily newspaper of the UJC that was founded in 1965. The fourth was Díaz’s receipt of the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize in 1966 for his short novel Los Años Duros, which raised his status as an artist. The fifth and final factor Díaz pointed to for the birth of Caimán in 1966 is perhaps the most interesting: Fifth, . . . the combination of the prestige enjoyed at that time by the Revolution and the literary brilliance of contemporary Havana blinded us, giving us the illusion that one was the consequence of the other, that a “political vanguard” as we called it then, could be reconciled with an “artistic vanguard” capable of being experimental, and even heretical. (Díaz, J., 1994: 65)

This account was written from exile, and reflects Díaz’s eventual disillusionment with the Revolution, but it also points to the sense of possibility and ambition that infused the new publication.

Youth at the Cultural Margins

119

To the reasons expounded by Díaz for the creation of Caimán I would add two more. Firstly, Díaz the individual is an important factor. This is not to say that the publication would not have come about without Díaz; but such was his profile as a rising cultural star—young academic, novelist, and revolutionary—that the publication attracted far greater attention than would have been the case without his involvement. Secondly, the youth of the contributors was a driving factor of the publication, on the one hand because of the impatience of the young artists to assert themselves and break the literary glass ceiling and on the other because the discourse of the Revolution had created a culture of youth that was based on excelling and achieving, which opened up the possibility that this group of young people could be influential or, at the very least, have their work read. This last reason concurs with Kapcia’s view that, in the early Revolution “there was no consensus, within either the community or the revolutionary vanguard, about who the cultural ‘leaders’ should be, the established ‘giants’ who were returning to Cuba . . . or members of the new generation” (Kapcia, 2005a: 131). This very uncertainty ironically made Caimán a possibility, and gave it a sense of mission. Díaz approached Rodríguez Rivera at the University of Havana with the idea of founding the magazine, to which initiative Rodríguez Rivera was able to bring a group of young poets with whom he was acquainted (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003a). The aim of the Caimán group was laid out in their statement in the first issue of Caimán in January 1966, which led to Caimán being the next focus of the cultural polemic discussed above and to bitter conflict with other groups, which will be discussed below. Their editorial statement “Nos Pronunciamos” set out their view of culture in Cuba, stating that “Cuba’s culture will be saved as part of Cuba’s own salvation; the country’s development is the development of its culture.” The statement also explained how culture must be produced within the Revolution: “We don’t want to dedicate poems to the Revolution. We want to write poems about, from and by the Revolution” (Caimán Barbudo, 1966: 11). Casal interprets this as meaning that the group “could present a critical view of the Revolution and the problems of constructing socialism, taking for granted their involvement with and loyalty to revolutionary principle” (Casal, 1971: 451). In that way, the Caimán group could find space for themselves within the cultural polemic while presenting themselves as a new vanguard, much as the politically committed young people sought space for themselves to function as the new political vanguard. In this sense the Caimán group was more focused than the UJC, with a clearer sense of mission and identity based on the concept of operating dentro de la Revolución as per Fidel’s famous palabras. In the opening statement poetry was given a central role: We think that poetry can encompass every type of subject. We reject bad poetry that tries to justify itself with revolutionary allusions, re-

120

Chapter 7 peating feeble and threadbare maxims. A poet is creative or he is nothing. (Caimán, 1966: 11) 9

Unlike the political vanguard that had various ways of attempting to express its commitment, the prioritization of poetry gave the Caimán group a clear focus as well as an authority, given the traditional primacy of poetry in the cultural hierarchy. Rodríguez Rivera acknowledges that he sees the statement that he authored as naïve, but justifies this on the basis of its authors’ youth. He saw it as a rite of passage in the maturation of the young artist. Rodríguez Rivera argues that the Caimán group was rejecting art as a form of vulgar propaganda—while accepting that everything is propaganda in some way—and trying to prevent the reduction of the condition of art and poetry to such a level (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003b). The Caimán group saw themselves as distinct from populist poets—which eventually led to accusations of elitism 10—while believing that the central function of poetry was to communicate. Essentially, the group was trying to place culture at the center of the Revolution, rather than it being a servant of the Revolution. At the same time the group was fulfilling the role ascribed to (and signed up to by) artists very early on in the Revolution to bring culture to the pueblos humildes. They argued that they were doing this doubly, as, prior to this generation, Rodríguez Rivera recalls, poetry tended toward the hermetic and dark, and was not accessible to large numbers of Cubans. Caimán, on the other hand, had a production run of approximately 200,000 per issue and was sold with Juventud Rebelde, thereby reaching a vastly larger audience than published poetry in the past (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003b). 11 In this sense, Caimán aspired to be the exception to a trend whereby “the new poetry and narrative were, essentially, still produced by a minority for a minority” (Kapcia, 2005a: 141). Furthermore, Juventud Rebelde was the only newspaper to be distributed in the afternoon, thus affording it a potentially distinct audience from the morning publications (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003b; Díaz, J., 1994: 65). The Caimán group saw their fight to publish those texts that they wished to publish as part of their contribution to the revolutionary struggle, although publication of certain items, particularly those making reference to homosexuality, was proscribed. Rodríguez Rivera asserts that Caimán’s editorial policy was less constrained than that of the El Puente group, explaining that the publication criteria for Caimán were that the work in question must be something that would interest young people in Cuba (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003b). We have already seen how criticism of youth by youth plagued the new youth organizations of sixties Cuba. In keeping with this, the bitterest struggle undertaken by the Caimán group was against other youth literary movements—particularly the El Puente group. It was played out in the pages of Gaceta de Cuba between Díaz and Ana María Simo from

Youth at the Cultural Margins

121

the El Puente group. 12 Díaz laid harsh accusations at the door of El Puente, arguing that the new generation’s “first statement as a group was the editorial ‘El Puente,’ produced by the most dissolute and negative part of that generation. It should be emphasized that, in general, these were very poor artists” (Díaz, 1966a: np). 13 Simo responded by fervently denying any type of editorial constraint, and indeed denying the presence of a group culture among the El Puente contributors: “neither aesthetically nor ideologically did the Ediciones [El Puente] form a defined and homogenous group,” despite attempts by some within the group to forge such an identity (Simo, 1966: np). Simo pointed to the role that the El Puente group had played in establishing the Brigadas Hermanos Saíz as a reflection of their central concern that “young creative individuals, all of them, took an active role and refused to act as mere passive spectators” (Simo, 1966: np; original emphasis). Simo acknowledged that deep divisions existed within the El Puente group, and admitted that many of the publications by that group were of a poor artistic quality—“I believe that, along with the worthwhile pieces of work, we also produced a mass of the most dreadful literature ever conceived by man” (Simo, 1966: np)—but claimed that the reason for this was the split within the El Puente group between those for whom generational agitation was the prime motive (above aesthetic quality) and those who saw literature as the end in itself, and saw ways other than publication to encourage literary production (Simo, 1966: np). Díaz responded to Simo’s defence of El Puente by asking this question: “Where does Ana María Simo share responsibility for this? She obviously shares responsibility for the mistakes, the silence and the ideological weakness—since she denies effectively determining editorial policy” (Díaz, 1966b: np). Díaz, in other words, would not allow Simo to absolve herself by claiming to have disagreed with the editorial line of the El Puente group. It is fair to say that in this bitterly fought debate the participants adopted exaggeratedly conflictive positions. In actuality, the two positions were not diametrically opposed, as both combatants aspired to conquer the same territory—that is, being the authentic representatives and promoters of young people. 14 The Caimán group, it should be remembered, had witnessed the failure of the El Puente group, so an attempt to distinguish itself from the latter was based on practical as well as aesthetic reasons, not least in respect to the accusations of homosexuality which had led Jose Mario to spend time in a UMAP. The Caimán group largely avoided publishing overtly “homosexual” art (whether defined by the content of the work or the sexual preferences of the artist). Díaz identified eight occasions on which the publication was disonante (dissonant) 15 and on not one of those occasions does the reason for such dissonance have anything to do with homosexuality; on the contrary, they were related to criticism of the Revolution or praise of Cubans who had travelled into exile. Rodríguez Rivera referred to the Caimán group’s struggles with the

122

Chapter 7

UJC over the publication of certain items, deriving from their different visions of culture. According to Rodríguez Rivera, the UJC, under the leadership of Jaime Crombet, did not differentiate between the work of the poet and the worker, so concluded that young intellectuals were actively attempting to differentiate themselves, thereby posing a threat. Conversely, the young artists at Caimán saw the struggle to publish as not just part of the Revolution, but as their central role dentro de la Revolución (Rodríguez Rivera, 2003b). If the one side of the struggle for survival of the Caimán group— comprising the conflicts with El Puente and the UJC—was intra-generational, the other side firmly positioned the Caimán group as young pretenders in an inter-generational struggle. A fierce battle raged in 1966 on the pages of Bohemia between Díaz and populist poet Jesús Orta Ruiz, “El Indio Naborí.” Bearing in mind the position on poetry set out in the manifesto in the first edition of Caimán, there was a certain inevitability to this conflict; indeed it is impossible not to sense that the part of Caimán’s opening statement regarding bad poetry may have been a direct allusion to the type of work published by Orta Ruiz. In debating who or what the “future Homer of Cuba” could be in an open letter to Díaz in Bohemia, Orta Ruiz fiercely accused Díaz of elitism, arguing that “it would be ridiculous for a revolution of workers and peasants to dismiss popular art, the only basis for the Homer of the future, because of the scruples of a few aspiring elitist intellectuals” (Orta Ruiz, 1966: 27). Orta Ruiz blamed what he viewed as Díaz’s errors on his youth: Look, when you are twenty-four, you can be a genius in any art form, but it is hard to be a consummate critic. At that age, passion can cloud reality and a critic has to be serene and objective. (Orta Ruiz, 1966: 26)

Orta Ruiz was accusing Díaz of youthful arrogance, or of overstepping his role; at such a young age he could not, Orta Ruiz opined, possess the wisdom to lead a cultural critique. His criticism of Díaz was harsh, but considering this statement in the context of the revolutionary discourse on youth reveals not only possibilities but also constraints under which the young people of the Caimán group were operating. On the one hand, the passion to which Orta Ruiz referred was related to the idea of “enthusiasm,” one of the key characteristics of youth according to the revolutionary leadership. Orta Ruiz intentionally focused on the importance of youth, arguing that “the Revolution needs to form new values, and one vital source is the vanguard youth” (Orta Ruiz, 1966: 26), and yet was using the concept of youth to accuse Díaz of, at best, naivety and at worst, arrogance and elitism. This coincided with Castro’s invocation that revolutionaries are not born but have to be made: Should every young person be viewed immediately as a fully-fledged revolutionary? [Shouts of “No”]. Why can no young person be consid-

Youth at the Cultural Margins

123

ered a fully-fledged revolutionary? Because a revolutionary has to be developed, has to be forged. (Castro, 1962b: 5)

Orta Ruiz’s invocation of Díaz’s youth as the cause of his errors was somewhat disingenuous. Díaz picked up on this, and was able to claim the moral high ground in defending himself: And if it seems unfair to lump all mature intellectuals together, class them as a group and judge them with a whole series of preconceived ideas, it is even more unfair and less revolutionary to brand young intellectuals—who were born with, by and for the Revolution—with the stereotype of intellectual elitism. (Díaz, 1966c: 37)

Díaz here reiterated the position of Caimán: that its authority derived from the fact that the young intellectuals producing it had been and were being formed firmly within the Revolution. Here he availed himself of the revolutionary discourse on youth which argued that young people were by definition purer because they grew up within the Revolution and therefore did not suffer from the influences of a bourgeois upbringing. This enabled him to define the work of the new generation as superior by definition to that of its predecessors: Therefore, Cuba—Socialism—can only aspire to an art and literature whose depth, beauty, truth, universality and sense of the future surpass everything now being created and everything created under the yoke of the bourgeoisie. (Díaz, 1966c: 37)

Furthermore, Díaz was able to use to good effect the discourse that linked young people to the future. He argued that “there is therefore a responsibility of youth and to youth. The artist in his everyday work must be mindful of his responsibilities, of a sense of the future” (Díaz, 1966c: 38). What emerges from the two key debates prompted by Caimán is the way in which this group of young artists forged their identity—and justified their position—using the building blocks of the powerful discourse on youth which emerged in Cuban life in the sixties. The group was in essence a product of the prominence of youth in discourse, the democratization of culture in policy and the polemic on what the function of culture within the Revolution should be. It may therefore surprise us that this contentious phase in Caimán’s history was so short-lived. 16 There are two interrelated reasons for the ending of the first phase of Caimán. The first was the role of Caimán in the early stages of what came to be known as the Padilla affair. The latter affair was instigated in the pages of Caimán in 1967 when poet Heberto Padilla criticized Lisandro Otero’s novel Pasión de Urbino and eulogized Tres Tristes Tigres by novelist in exile Guillermo Cabrera Infante. Padilla’s actions were criticized by Verde Olivo, the official magazine of the revolutionary armed forces. Verde Olivo published attacks on Padilla’s award-winning volume of poetry Fuera del Juego, and, when Caimán was relaunched under a new editorial board in

124

Chapter 7

1968, the editorial position made a full turn, supporting Otero and allowing him to publish a statement condemning Padilla (Caimán Barbudo, 1968: 2–5; Otero, 1968, 6–8). 17 To praise a writer in exile over a revolutionary one was in effect to be dissonant; and from Caimán’s perspective demonstrates the fine line which the editorial board of the first phase of Caimán trod between artistic freedom and the didactic and dogmatic views which were gaining power in the still-continuing cultural polemic. The frequently uneasy relationship with the UJC constitutes the second reason why Caimán was so short-lived. Miguel Martín, leader of the UJC at the inception of Caimán, was in favor of the publication, but Jaime Crombet, who took over as leader of the UJC in 1966, was more difficult to work with. Eventually, the whole editorial board was asked to resign and Caimán continued but under the editorial leadership of cultural bureaucrat Félix Sautié. Díaz viewed the continuation of the publication with regret, arguing that “[o]ur modest efforts were not even allowed the right to die” (Díaz, J., 1994: 67). The first Caimán group did not enjoy the patronage of a particular institution once the support of the UJC was lost, and therefore the possibility of survival was minimal. Although the young poets were closely connected to the Nueva Trova movement and shared some similar perspectives and difficulties, the protection which the Nueva Trova movement enjoyed through the patronage of ICAIC or a similarly powerful cultural body was absent for the artists at Caimán. Certainly, the individuals within the group continued in their artistic careers, with some, such as Díaz and Orlando Alomá, choosing exile (although Díaz did not leave Cuba until the eighties) while others, including Rodríguez Rivera, stayed in Cuba and continued, after the austere cultural landscape of seventies Cuba, to be respected as artists. 18 Thus the concept of the young vanguard artist as outlined in their manifesto was lost. The early demise of the Caimán group was a tragedy not only in its own right but also an early warning sign of the impending quinquenio gris (the time in the early seventies during which many young artists, including Rodríguez Rivera, but also some of the preceding generation such as Pablo Armando Fernández, were unable to publish). In the seventies, non-publication effectively functioned as a form of censorship. However, there is a broader context to the rise and demise of the first Caimán group and this merits examination. In some ways, the group acted sub-culturally, attempting “to express and resolve, albeit ‘magically,’ the contradictions which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture” (Cohen, P., 1997a: 94). It operated, like the literary generations that came before it, in the context of the debate on the role of artist within the Revolution. In attempting to seek dominance in this debate, it found itself dealing with the same problems encountered by its literary predecessors. That these young artists felt themselves to be differentiated, due to their youth and the revolutionary discourse on youth which empowered them and gave

Youth at the Cultural Margins

125

them unparalleled space in which to operate, was insufficient to guarantee their survival as a group. Their search for a new identity was likely to fail because the constraints upon them, though ostensibly fewer than those on the preceding generation, were in fact exactly the same. As the strength of the political vanguard increased, the space for which the aspiring cultural vanguard fought diminished. The culmination of this struggle, marking the triumph of the strictly political over the broadly cultural, came at the 1971 First National Congress on Education and Culture. This effectively halted the cultural polemic for some years, because it focused on “the basic assumption that culture, like education, is not and cannot be apolitical or impartial, because it is a social and historical phenomenon conditioned by the needs of social classes and their struggles and interests throughout history” (del Duca, 1972: 103). All this is reminiscent of the dichotomy in the discourse on youth which, on the one hand, saw the possibilities which youth held and, on the other, feared that young people did not or would not act to espouse the principles and characteristics of young people which were held so dear. The young artists could by no measure be deemed dissidents, but the contradiction between empowering and constraining young people was played out in this case, as was the difficulty which young people had in finding (and keeping) space in which to express themselves. However, another group of artists—young musicians—were to fare a little better. “I’VE GOT TO CUT MYSELF IN TWO”: THE NUEVA TROVA GROUP The crossover between poetry and other cultural forms came via the Nueva Trova movement. Nueva Trova was caught up in the cultural polemic, but managed to channel it into an alternative cultural form popular with young people—music. Musical production in the Revolution in the sixties followed a similar trajectory to other areas of culture, and is of particular interest in a study of youth as music was so central to young people’s leisure time. When Cuban psychologist Gustavo Torroella considered leisure activities in his 1963 UNESCO study of Cuban youth, the main aim of which was to establish what elements of life motivated and mattered to young people, his findings demonstrated the importance of music to young Cubans. 19 In response to a survey that asked young people what their preferred activities were, 20 the respondents chose high cultural forms (theatre, ballet, opera, drama and comedy) above other pursuits such as cinema, sport or television (Torroella, 1963: 138). Yet, above these, the most favored pursuit of young people was the enjoyment of music. This featured twice in the answers of the survey, emerging as the favorite when respondents were asked to rank the arts (architecture, cinema, music, dance, sculpture, literature, painting, theatre, tele-

126

Chapter 7

vision) (Torroella, 1963: 155), and also as something which young people would choose (and the only one of the arts which figured in this response) to console them when they were suffering (Torroella, 1963: 112). Young people declared that music “enable[d] individuals to express their emotions” and, as they grew older, “to communicate feelings with one another” (Torroella, 1963: 48). Music, from the point of view of both listener and performer, was contested cultural territory in sixties Cuba. As we have seen in chapter 4, certain foreign influences were welcomed, in the form of the global Canción Protesta movement, but some Western music—in particular rock music—was held in suspicion by certain sections of the party. Canción Protesta was a powerful musical mode in which Cuba had a proud history. This pride was demonstrated by Juan Marinello, who, when writing from Paris in March 1967, credited Pete Seeger and Joe Dassin with the popularization and internationalization of the Cuban song Guantanamera, and traced its popularity through North America, Europe and Latin America, but lamented all performers’ failure to credit Joseíto Fernández, the Cuban who, he reminded his readers, had first put Martí’s verses to music (although note that there is still debate over the song’s origins) (Marinello, 1967: 26–29). Guantanamera’s importance as an international protest song was reinforced in a 1967 Bohemia article on protest music: despite the impact of other famous protest songs, it argued that “Guantanamera has had the biggest impact around the world, with versions in seven languages” (Soloni, 1967: 18). Soloni went on to trace the foundations of Cuban protest music in the struggles for liberation, going back to 1844 (Soloni, 1967: 18–21 and 114). The importance of protest songs as an international movement was clear in Cuba in the late sixties. Entitled “La Canción Protesta,” a cartoon by Ñico showed a guajiro holding a guitar, singing Guantanamera, Si yo tuviera un martillo (Pete Seeger’s “If I Had a Hammer” popularized in the sixties by Trini López) and Sí, somos americanos (by Chilean protest singer Rolando Alarcón) (Ñico, 1967: 32). 21 Cuba’s role in the protest music movement was reflected in the convening of the Encuentro Internacional de la Canción Protesta in July 1967 (Díaz, C., 1994: 21), at a time when, in a sense, the protest song movement was suffering a crisis of identity. Writing some weeks before the festival, Bohemia’s cultural correspondent attempted to define what a protest song should constitute, and, invoking the endorsement of French protest singer Jean Ferrat, wrote that “we need to fight against the fake adherents to protest song” (Cossío, 1967: 47). He went on to quote Italian musicologist Piero Gigli as follows: “You just need to put the word ‘peace,’ or ‘liberty’ in a song, even if it is a bad song, and you can say you have written a protest song” (Cossío, 1967: 49). All this was most reminiscent of the debates on bad poetry in which Jesús Díaz of the Caimán group had become entwined. The definition of protest song deriving from this position was clear. A protest song should be “the

Youth at the Cultural Margins

127

revolutionary soul of a people fighting for liberation” (Cossío, 1967: 51). The appropriation of the protest song movement reflected Cuba’s attempt to maintain and propagate its revolutionary message off the island as well as at home. From a fusion of protest song and rock music there emerged a new Cuban musical style, the Nueva Trova. This musical style had an uneasy birth, partly because it took some time for the movement to garner the institutional support which many genres of music in Cuba enjoyed and, indeed, needed to establish themselves and to persist (Manuel, 1990: 299–300). The dissemination of Nueva Trova music began through the spontaneous nightly gatherings at Coppelia ice cream parlor on La Rampa in Vedado, where poets, musicians and students met to perform and to discuss the role of culture within the Revolution (Díaz, 1993: 17). Nueva Trova first entered the public domain in June 1967, when Caimán Barbudo organized an event at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes which, as well as poetry readings, included a performance from the twenty-yearold Silvio Rodríguez (Díaz, C., 1994: 18). Rodríguez, an artist, poet and musician who subsequently became one of the leading exponents of the Nueva Trova, was acquainted with the group of young poets and singers who were connected both with the University of Havana (especially the young artists who founded Caimán Barbudo) and the group of young people whose public space was the Coppelia ice cream parlor. Rodríguez began to appear regularly on the television show Mientras Tanto in 1967, which showcased his songs and turned him into a musical hero for Cuba’s youth. Silvio Rodríguez was seen as a unique type of revolutionary hero—one article in Bohemia wrote that “We can confirm that Silvio, dear readers, is becoming the star of a youth which is devoted to carrying out great social undertakings” (Abreu, 1968a: 76; original emphasis)—at a time when Cuba’s youth was seeking a new hero born out of the postSierra era. As well as being a musician, Silvio Rodríguez was an alfabetizador, an aficionado, and, by 1967, had carried out his military service. He, like many of the writers discussed, participated in the Revolution, and was seen as an example of the new generation of revolutionary cultural producers. Rodríguez was not only popular with young people because they enjoyed his music; his professed enjoyment of Western music and in particular the music of the Beatles in the Sergeant Pepper era struck a chord with young people in Cuba. His declared indebtedness to the music of the Beatles caused Nueva Trova’s first contretemps—Rodríguez’s television show was pulled from the air in April 1968 by “conservative tendencies” in the Instituto Cubano de Radiodifusión (ICR) (Díaz, 1993: 25) and Rodríguez then retreated to spend five months on a fishing boat named Playa Girón during which time he wrote a wealth of songs (Díaz, 1993: 20), one of which, “Debo partirme en dos” (I’ve got to cut myself in two) reflected on the removal of the show from Cuban television. Its

128

Chapter 7

lyrics refer to the personal struggle of the song writer pulled in two directions in the battle for what could be deemed authentically revolutionary, whilst also pleading for his music simply to be heard (Rodríguez, 2008: 153). This song demonstrates the difficulty the young trovadores found as they struggled to write music which they considered in keeping with revolutionary ideals, but were constrained in its dissemination. However, the very fact that Silvio Rodríguez wrote and performed this song (which he later recorded in 1975 without censure) shows the importance of the trovadores. In the late sixties they were a new generation, created within the Revolution, who “constituted a vanguard which confronted conservative ideas in that era” (Díaz, 1993: 18); in other words they were, rather than a counter-vanguard, an alter-vanguard. So I cannot agree with the view of one commentator who claimed that “Cuba is the only country in which the new song is not protest music” (Benmayor, 1981: 11). Robin Moore’s view, on the other hand, that they “considered themselves patriotic and rebellious at the same time, ready to defend Cuba despite the fact that it might not always give them reason to feel proud” (Moore, 2003: 11; my emphasis) articulates far more accurately the role of the young singer songwriters. This assessment could be applied as much to the groups of young writers discussed above as to the trovadores, with the key difference that the level of diffusion of the trovadores’ work remained high, as the songs of the Nueva Trova protagonists continued to be widely disseminated through live performances even after the cancellation of Mientras Tanto in 1968. Rodríguez’s lyrics contained an alter-discourse that was not contrary to the dominant discourse of youth, but which challenged dominant notions of vanguardia and criteria for what constituted a good young revolutionary—themes which come across powerfully in “Playa Girón,” another song written by Silvio Rodríguez while on the fishing boat. In the lyrics of this song, Silvio Rodríguez articulated the difficulty facing cultural producers; firstly, the fear of over-sentimentalizing, which he also dealt with in “Debo partirme en dos” where he rejected the idea of writing a song which was nothing more than a political slogan, correlates to the worries of the Caimán group about popular poetry; secondly, the expectation that they might fall outside the vanguard, which the lyrics of this song refer to, reflects the uneasiness over the dominant conceptualizations of vanguard, and a battle between political and cultural definitions of vanguard. This situation as alter-vanguard entailed an uneasy relationship with certain cultural bureaucrats and also led to problems for Pablo Milanés, another key proponent of Nueva Trova music, who spent some time in a UMAP (La Jiribilla, 2015). Despite the uneasy start, the Nueva Trova movement was important nationally and internationally in particular in Latin America. Its endurance and expansion were, however, not based only on its popularity, but also on the patronage of ICAIC under the directorship of Leo Brouwer.

Youth at the Cultural Margins

129

ICAIC nurtured the Nueva Trova within its Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC established in 1969 (Díaz, C., 1994: 26–27). So important was the music to become in the context of youth cultural institutions that the Nueva Trova had its own organization, the Movimiento Nueva Trova (MNT), independent of the Brigadas Hermanos Saíz, but affiliated to the UJC. The MNT nonetheless never really had an institutional structure, but was rather a loose virtual organization, leaving the music to develop “without stagnating” (Pacheco, 2003). This semi-institutionalization of Nueva Trova is interesting. It demonstrates how the concept of a music genre significantly influenced by the alien trends in Western music could eventually become acceptable to the Revolution. With institutionalization, the Nueva Trova movement was thoroughly “Cubanized,” allowing the influence of the external to be duly downplayed. Although the fan bases of the various protagonists differed—Silvio Rodríguez attracted more white urban Cubans who were fans of external music and Pablo Milanés attracted more black Cubans favoring national music (Moore, 2003: 13)—the institutionalization of the music brought the two musicians together (along with others) in a collaboration that yielded many new developments in Nueva Trova music. Furthermore, the incorporation of Nueva Trova music into the cultural mainstream demonstrates the success of this musical movement in both attracting and keeping a mass audience, particularly among the young—a level of popular endorsement that the more dogmatic elements of the UJC could not ignore. CONCLUSION The groups of young cultural producers considered in this chapter exposed themselves to censure from political authorities as a result of their association with elements and forms which were considered counterrevolutionary. However, by operating as an alter-vanguard they succeeded, albeit to varying degrees, in expressing their difference (from the dominant discourse) while at the same time their adherence to the demands of the Revolution (according to the dominant discourse). As with Western youth cultures, the necessity of semi-public spaces (such as Coppelia) was critical to the development of these movements, but because of cultural institutionalization and the de-marketization of music and literature, the sphere in which these young people operated was quite distinct from that of their counterparts in the Western world. While these Cuban groups felt that they fulfilled their responsibilities within their own definition of how they must act to be revolutionary artists, some elements within the cultural apparatus did not concur, and this led to difficulties of the types reviewed above.

130

Chapter 7

Yet censure could be mitigated by institutional protection. Such protection in the case of the Nueva Trova came via the patronage of ICAIC, and through enduring mass popularity and the ease of dissemination of music (both Cuban and Western) in sixties Cuba. The poets and writers too enjoyed some institutional patronage, but when this was withdrawn, they could not survive as groupings because the culturally conservative elements within the political structure felt threatened and responded by dissolving them. In the case of El Puente, the group found itself accused of going beyond the accepted cultural margin, while in the case of Caimán, a type of discreet censorship took place. The young artists thereby found themselves unable to reconcile the contradictory position the discourse of youth had placed them in. They were championed as representing a new generation unsullied by the past, but they were also subjected to moral panic that erupted whenever any attempt to seek an alternative vision of youth was made or whenever any feeling that youth was at risk from unsuitable elements arose. Thus they were both helped and hindered by the policies of the new revolutionary government and were left, as is evident in Silvio Rodríguez’s songs, uncertain as to what power they might have to attempt to stretch and redefine revolutionary discourse. Their attempts to push the boundaries of what it meant to be a young revolutionary in the Cuban sixties met with counter-attempts by political forces to constrain such a definition to a narrow, inflexible typology unsuited to artistic pursuits. This led to clashes and conflicts which it would have been impossible to foresee in 1959 and which owed much to cultural developments outside Cuba as well as to circumstances on the island. NOTES 1. Parts of this chapter appeared in Luke, A. (2013) “Listening to Los Beatles: Being Young in 1960s Cuba” in Anne Gorsuch and Diane Koenker (eds.) The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second World (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press). 2. The term “artist” will be used throughout to refer to artists practicing over a variety of genres. The term “artist” is almost synonymous with the term “poet.” This is part of the story of the literary tradition in Cuba deriving from the fin de siglo and coming to fruition in the mid-twentieth century. López Sacha (2000) argues that the mid-century poets opened “a cosmic line which defied earlier classifications, with a modern poetry which embraced everything Cuban, from social, ethnic, political and everyday concerns, to a permanent dialogue with the infinite. All this flood of poetry joined the Revolution and the colloquialists soon began to challenge their parents” (López Sacha, 2000: 156). For clarity, however, “poet” will be used here to describe those artists working with the specific literary genre. 3. Pérez (1999, 283–306) covers the dominance of US cinema in the pre-revolutionary period, and points to a particular influence of US cinema on Cuban youth (303). 4. The funding came from José Mario’s father, who owned a successful hardware store in the Buena Vista zone of Havana (Fulleda Leon, 2005: 4). 5. This poem sparked a trial for alleged obscenity in the USA in 1957, but was deemed by the judge to be of social importance, therefore not falling under the catego-

Youth at the Cultural Margins

131

ry of obscene. This gave the poem considerable publicity and increased its sales (Miles, 1989: 227–33). 6. The Malecón still serves, at the time of writing, as an important public nighttime space for young people in Havana. 7. Pen name of Reinaldo García Ramos. 8. The Pabellón Cuba on La Rampa was built in 1963 to promote universal access to Cuban culture. 9. The signatories of this statement were Orlando Alomá, Sigifredo Alvarez Conesa, Ivan Gerardo Campanioni, Víctor Casaus, Félix Contreras, Friolán Escobar, Félix Guerra, Rolén Hernández, Luis Rogelio Nogueras, Helio Orovio, Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, José Yanes (Caimán, 1966: 11). Interestingly, editor Díaz’s name is not on this list but probably because he was not an author of this statement and not a poet himself. As editor he clearly supported the position put across therein and his central role in the polemic that was sparked off by the inception of Caimán corroborates this. Rodríguez Rivera was the only one of the actual editorial board of Caimán who was also an author of this statement but other key protagonists in the Caimán group, notably Víctor Casaus and Luis Rogelio Nogueras did figure. 10. García spoke of this criticism (2003), probably referring to the debate between Díaz and El Indio Naborí, who was zealous in his criticism of Díaz. 11. Of course, Lunes de Revolución also served as a cultural supplement, so shared with Caimán the benefit of having a large audience. Rodríguez Rivera did not refer to Lunes, perhaps partly out of the feeling of being a new generation. Rodríguez Rivera instead drew attention to the era which just preceded Caimán rather than the early revolutionary era. 12. Simo went into exile shortly after this. 13. Díaz later withdrew his position, accusing himself of mixing politics and literature, and apologizing to Simo (Díaz, J., 1994: 66). 14. According to Mario, Rodríguez Rivera had also submitted his own work to the Segunda Novísima Poesía de Cuba, which El Puente was planning to publish prior to its closure (Mario, 2002, np). 15. Jesús Díaz makes the explicit point that while the publication could be viewed as dissonant, it would not be accurate to view it as dissident (Díaz, J., 1994: 67). 16. In this era seventeen monthly editions of Caimán Barbudo were published beginning in January 1966. 17. Although Padilla survived this onslaught, in 1971 he was arrested and some weeks later published a confessional statement admitting to having “committed serious transgressions . . . against the Revolution itself” (cited in Halperin, 1976: 205). 18. However, perhaps the profile of these artists is lower than would be expected considering that they were attempting to be a new vanguard in the sixties. For example, at a conference convened by the Ministry of Culture and Casa de las Américas in 1999, the names of contributors were those from that original group of cultural producers (Retamar, Pogolotti, Vitier, and Pablo Armando Fernández) rather than from the Caimán group. Miguel Barnet and Nancy Morejón, connected to the El Puente group, were represented however (Heras León, 1999). 19. The study posed open questions, and the answers (categorized and collated by Torroella and his team) do not, perhaps, surprise us, as the sample was taken entirely from young people in advanced educational settings (pre-university, technical institutes, teacher training colleges and universities), reflecting a relatively high level of revolutionary consciousness, which in turn reflected the changes in the educational curriculum. 20. This did not, like later sociological surveys, break down the amount of free time which was expended undertaking any particular activities, but gives us an outline of the preferences of this educated group of young Cubans between March and June 1962 when the survey was conducted. 21. He also quotes from three other unidentified songs in the cartoon.

Conclusion Reflections on Youth in Cuba 1959, 1989, 2019?

One of my reasons for conceiving this study in the way I did was my frustration with the persistence of commentators in both academia and the media in focusing upon the spectacular when considering youth. I felt that they were setting up a concept of youth whereby only those who, for example, chose a particular style, or took certain drugs, or were delinquent, were agents of change or worthy of study. I asked myself whether there were not multiple ways in which the agency of young people manifested itself which remained to be explored. I could understand how Annie Kriegel’s (1979) contention that a generation might just be a fashion could indeed be sustained if (and only if) young people were conceived of so narrowly. Yet neither in the sixties nor today can youth be defined only by this particular trope of the spectacular. The discourse of believing in the young in Cuba could never have stabilized or persisted if the moral panics over the spectacular had prevailed in the attempt to define young people. I am not denying that there were and are young people who use style and music as a form of expression (possibly counter-culturally and certainly sub-culturally)—indeed, I devote some of this book to those forms of youth expression. But to only see youth as formed in those terms is, at best, reductionist and, at worse, diminishes the worth of youth as a unit of historical analysis. My aim in this study has been to give precedence to neither the spectacular nor the everyday, but rather to build a model of youth and young lives in Cuba in the sixties by examining the culture (in the broadest sense) to which they were exposed and which they themselves played a part in creating, as well as by examining how they operated within, on the boundaries of and outside such a culture, and developed alternative cultures. 1 The examination of discourse, policy and external influence builds up a picture of how youth was constructed in the decade of the sixties in Cuba. As the Revolution came to define itself, so, indeed, did youth. The leadership discourse changed over time, as the leaders no longer identified themselves with young people and as the memory of the fifties grew dimmer. The concept of youth came to represent an aspirational state, while young people themselves (because of the rapid embeddedness of the concept of youth) were viewed as potential and important agents of change. The Revolution discursively developed its own 133

134

Conclusion

relationship with young people in Cuba, so that young people could relate directly to the Revolution rather than indirectly through the filter of a different generation. In terms of policy, the vast number of initiatives concerning young people made up a de facto youth policy by linking multiple policy initiatives to education underpinned by a dominant morality of work. Leisure, schooling, ideology and culture became part of this broad policy agenda. The high profile of youth in the outside world also influenced Cuba and was part of the culture of youth, although less than might be anticipated. As young people outside Cuba began to dominate the political and cultural landscape, Cuba welcomed certain events and movements, ignored others, and thoroughly Cubanized still others. Young people reacted in a variety of ways to the evolving culture of youth on the island, and these ways in turn determined the emergence of a variety of youth cultures in Cuba in the sixties. Those in the youth organizations, especially the UJC, who attempted to live up to the image projected upon young people found themselves struggling, and eventually unable to succeed in this pursuit. Not only did they attempt (and fail) to live up to this image, but in so doing they narrowed the definition of youth and limited its organic progression. The reasons for this were several. Unlike the leadership, the UJC did not have core responsibility for the pragmatic aims concerning production, development and so on, and therefore the way that the youth organization saw and constructed the culture of youth was entirely ideologically driven. Secondly, the organization was immature, as were its members, and it did not have the experience to devise practical solutions to the problems within its ranks. Consequently, its response at times took the form of moral panic, leading to a demonization of anything that appeared to be outside its narrow definition of what it meant to be a vanguard youth. The moral panic was particularly associated with external influence but it also included the enduring problem of young people who were neither working nor studying, which was also a cause of concern to the revolutionary leadership. Even more so, moral panic reached the organization’s own ranks. The repeated autocrítica damaged the organization and made it appear weaker than it was, or could have been. The potential that young people did fulfill, through the dual forces of policy and participation, was firmly within the boundaries of broad revolutionary goals and shifted concerns away from the impractical aspirations of the UJC, in tandem with revolutionary discourse, on to achievable goals that linked young people directly with the Revolution. One relationship in young lives, alongside that with, for example, family or teachers, was the relationship with the anthropomorphized concept of the Revolution. To this end, young people enjoyed the “gifts” of the Revolution—free education, better provision of leisure facilities and so on—while in return giving the Revolution part of their leisure time through voluntary participation in several mass movements, such as the

Conclusion

135

Literacy Campaign, the Militias and the aficionado movement. These were mass movements with mass involvement, and their success reminds us how the lack of a mass youth organization, once the era of the AJR was over, was a genuine failure of the Cuban sixties. If a mass youth organization had existed, it could have benefited from the high levels of youth voluntarism in that decade, although equally, had it been similarly plagued by the pervasive under-confidence of the UJC, it may have damaged that same voluntarism. While many young people participated in and forged their own relationship with the Revolution, others, sometimes even those who were participating enthusiastically and voluntarily, found themselves facing various difficulties. Firstly, there were repeated moral panics associated with youth as the decade progressed. Concerns about young people neither working nor studying continued to plague the sixties, and would in fact increase in the late sixties, as those young people who fell into this category were no longer permitted the excuse that pre-revolutionary structural, economic, social or class issues had forced them into underemployment and under-education. The moral panic created by these concerns suppressed alternative expressions of youth culture. A case in point was the relationship between the Cuban Revolution and events of the decade outside the island. Similarities between the Cuban sixties and the global sixties were played down by some in the vanguard (youth and otherwise), even when such a convergence could have been consistent with the new revolutionary identity; similarly many continuities from fifties Cuba were under-emphasized. Therefore, while the creation of a critical distance from the fifties had forged such an identity, it had not in a practical sense resolved enduring social issues, such as racism, the position of women, attitudes to homosexuality, and, most importantly in this case, fears of a non-participative youth. Secondly, the ideological inflexibility of the UJC sometimes alienated those young people who felt themselves to be revolutionary but did not conform in some way to the definition that the UJC prescribed. This had consequences even for its own members, and many young people who had been members of the AJR were not welcome, and did not necessarily even wish to venture, through the narrow gates of the UJC. This overly dogmatic, sometimes overly enthusiastic and always imperfect youth organization could not cope with its own shortcomings and therefore had to demonize the external Other in order to feel it could survive. The relationship with radical movements outside Cuba was consequently more muted than we might expect. Thirdly, the collocation made by the UJC and sometimes the leadership between the traits which were considered deviant and counterrevolutionary led to considerable uncertainty in the lives of many young people. The lucha in which these young people came to engage was not (or not only) the battle against imperialism, which dominated the revolutionary-national identity, but the battle against the narrowing of the defi-

136

Conclusion

nitions of “youth” and “Revolution.” The songs of Silvio Rodríguez eloquently express this struggle, and the cultural producers, while attempting to be not a counter- but an alter-vanguard, were tainted by association with demonized issues, notably homosexuality, the influence of Western culture, and dissidence. Of course, some of these associations actually existed. For example, José Mario of El Puente was associated with Ginsberg, who was associated with the enfermitos, the epitome of much that was deemed negative in Western influence: the use of Western clothing, the love of rock and roll-influenced music, and ostentatious displays of homosexuality. The Nueva Trova movement came into being in Coppelia in Havana, with its clientele of young men wearing their hair long, young women wearing mini-skirts with Militia boots, and young poets seeking to express themselves as an alter-vanguard by stamping the personality of their own generation on the young Cuban Revolution. The line between dissident and dissonant was a fine one. Most dissidents either left Cuba or were arrested and sent to UMAPs, while a level of dissonance with the mainstream could be expressed through style, poetry and music. The fineness of the line, however, meant that some young people existed at a cultural margin that they did not necessarily wish to populate but which, in order to express their identity, they were forced to inhabit somewhat uncomfortably. An exploration of the Cuban sixties such as this one tells us the story of how youth was constructed in Cuba in that decade, and of the divides, debates and confusion which the first decade of the Revolution brought to young lives on the island. But let us for a moment consider the implications of such a construction of a revolutionary youth for what came after. In 1989, at thirty years old, the Cuban Revolution faced perhaps it biggest challenge yet as country after country of Eastern Europe rejected its twentieth-century history in favor of a brave new world of private ownership and consumerism; the Soviet Union finally, in 1991, dissolved into its constituent parts as its peoples chose to attempt to create their own histories rather than as a part of the commonality, or empire, or whichever political spin we may choose to put on it. According to so much of the literature and commentary at the time, Cuba would surely be the next domino to fall. The profound economic shock leading to the Special Period—I think most both outside and inside Cuba would agree—put the very existence of the Revolution under threat. The surprise in the case of Cuba is that its system survived and this prompts the question as to how much can we can attribute the survival of the Revolution to the role of youth and the actions of young people. Young people were certainly among those who during the nineties sought to use any means to leave the island, including taking enormous risks on rickety constructions to travel across the Straits of Florida. And yet, in the discourse, it was the relaunch of the Revolution by youth—as a result of the Elián González affair of 1999/2000—that saved a system which had been rocked to its

Conclusion

137

very foundations. The ebb and flow of notions of Revolutionary acceptability of which any student of the Cuban Revolution is aware was probably doubly applicable to youth and not even sequential to but possibly in temporal coexistence with it. In other words, the dual belief in youth as a solution and youth as a problem continued (and continues to this day): both remain uneasy bedfellows. The limits of discourse come to mind here: however often you talk of young people as a chosen people who will solve all ills, and so on, the reality of those young people not really living according to that image needs to be countenanced. The structures under which young people live and the cultural and material worlds of young people matter certainly as much as how youth is represented. But it is through the intersection of discourse, politics, policy, culture, material change, history and generation that we can witness both the synchronic and diachronic construction of a specific notion of youth. If the notion of youth—as both problem and solution—remains, some of the issues dealt with in this volume we can (at least for now) consign to history. In economic terms, Cuba is now significantly more stable than in either the sixties or the Special Period. The construction of deviance is no longer associated with homosexuality and now, through the work of CENESEX and Mariela Castro on LGBT rights, Cuba has emerged as a regional leader in that regard. Nueva Trova still exists as a musical movement, but other contemporary forms of musical expression such as reggaetón have gained ascendance and certainly lead to new forms of hybridization (and, interestingly, to new moral panics). As I have made clear here, Cuba was never closed to global flows and trends, but the forces of globalization and the dominance of the global market make a substantive change, surely, to the effect of those flows. So we see a culture today which still holds on to the tenets of its Revolution but which is more aware than ever of its own exceptionalism; and those tenets continue to be threatened in the light of continued economic difficulties and the continuance of the US economic blockade. As with any field of contemporary history, a study of the sixties presents the researcher with a specific set of problems. The period in question is still within the memory of many and political systems and actors remain. It is necessary to confront and challenge not only a historical paradigm, but also a set of popularly held assumptions and rewritings. In the present case, these perspectives are often put forward by key youth protagonists of the period, some of whom are now in positions of influence both in Cuba and outside. Furthermore, subsequent representations and/or mythologization of the sixties (a study of which would be interesting in its own right, I surmise) and the role of youth therein create a mask which we must battle past in order to write the history of the period. The modest aim here has therefore been to help to move our understanding of the sixties away from what David Farber describes as “acts of memory wrestling with history” (1994a: 1) and our understand-

138

Conclusion

ing of Cuban revolutionary history away from an interpretation which situates participation at a particular moment (the fifties rebellion) as transcendental. By exploring the convergence and interaction of three coordinates—youth, the sixties and Cuba—our understanding of each is enhanced. The sixties was a critical decade in Cuba for establishing the discourse on youth which marks the revolutionary period in and beyond the sixties, and also for building and reinforcing the message that young people are critical in the production of profound social change. Yet those young people have, throughout the revolution, also confronted changing sets of circumstances which punctuate the history of youth in Cuba. When is the next marker of the history of the Cuban Revolution to be laid? Sixty years on from the origins of the creation of a new type of youth in revolution, we are confronted with multiple twenty-first-century realities which it is tempting to believe could be game-changers. Small-scale marketization through cuenta-propismo (self-employment), and youth migration away from the island, in particular, bring to bear a new set of considerations when we ask ourselves about the survival of the Cuban Revolution as we contemplate its sixtieth anniversary in 2019. The global sixties were Cubanized by the Revolution in order to make sense of developments outside Cuba and this trend continues to this day with the Revolution’s co-option and reformulation of international discourse. For example, in response to the death of Fidel in 2016, billboards in Cuba declared “Yo Soy Fidel” (I am Fidel); this illustrates the strength and power of metaphor but also provides an interesting parallel to the sixties. If, in the sixties, youth (globally) was a critical sign which was reimagined by the Cuban Revolution, now the prefix “Yo soy . . .” (echoing “Je suis . . .”) is similarly adapted to the Cuban case. It is unlikely that events of the years to come will mirror an existing model of development; surely what is to come will rather continue to incorporate complexity, hybridization and come into being with that effervescence which characterizes Cuban revolutionary history. And what are the young people of Cuba surmising about the future of their Revolution? In a recent debate in the Temas journal presenting the views of young people on the future of Cuban socialism, one commentator argued that “only a revolution can save the Revolution” (Luis Rojas & García Salas, 2016: 82). Could that be possible? Given the twists and turns in the history of this fascinating island, it would take a brave or foolhardy commentator to predict that it could not. NOTE 1. To this end, I must admit certain exclusions, which have, due to constraints of time and resources, necessarily laid outside it; these might form the bases for future study. Firstly, no research was conducted within the exile community, and thus a

Conclusion

139

youth culture which still considered itself Cuban, and probably affected life within Cuba was not explored here. Secondly, some of the evidence gathered has centered on young life in Havana, and it is anticipated that a more rural perspective, or a perspective from the east of the island, would yield further inflection on youth culture and identity in sixties Cuba.

Bibliography

CUBAN MAGAZINES AND NEWSPAPERS CONSULTED Alma Mater Bohemia Caimán Barbudo Casa de las Américas ContraCorriente Cuba Socialista Gaceta de Cuba Granma INRA Islas (Revista de la Universidad de las Villas) La Jiribilla [online] Mella Noticias de Hoy Noticiero de la Juventud Revolución Temas Verde Olivo

CUBAN DOCUMENTS CONSULTED Centro de Estudios Demográficos (1976) La población de Cuba. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Codigo de la niñez y la juventud (1978). Available at: http://www.parlamentocubano.cu/ index.php/documento/codigo-de-la-ninez-y-la-juventud/. Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (1981) Cuba. Desarrollo económico y social entre el período 1958–1980. Cuba: Comité Estatal de Estadisticas. EIR (1966) Cronología de la Revolución, 1959–1965. Havana: EIR. Fernández Corujedo, J. and Ruiz Aguilera, R. (1961) Los deportes. Su preparación y dirección. Havana: Departamento de Divulgación y Orientación de INDER. Informe-Resumen de la I Asamblea Nacional de Organismos Populares de la Educación. MinFAR Departamento de Instrucción (1960) Manual de capacitación cívica, Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba. Ministerio de Educación (1961) Alfabeticemos. Cuba: Ministerio de Educación. Rodríguez Rodríguez, I. (1989) AJR. Documentos para una historia de futuro. Havana: Editora Abril. Torroella, G. (1963) Estudio de la juventud cubana. Havana: Comisión Nacional Cubana de la UNESCO.

MUSICAL TEXTS CONSULTED Rodríguez, S. (1975) Dias y flores (cd). Buenos Aires: Lucio Alfiz.

141

142

Bibliography

Rodríguez, S. (1978) Al final de este viaje (cd). Buenos Aires: Lucio Alfiz.

INTERVIEWS Mario Cruz. Facultad de Biología, Universidad de la Habana; 1960s organizer, Milicias Universitarias. 26/05/03, Havana. Dénia García. Facultad de Arte y Letras, Universidad de la Habana; editor, Temas. 03/ 04/03, Havana. Luis Gómez. Historian, Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud. 02/04/03 & 28/05/03, Havana. Oscar Guzmán. Facultad de Filosofía e Historia, Universidad de la Habana. 07/03/02, 11/03/02 and 14/03/02, Wolverhampton, UK. Fernando Martínez Heredia. Centro Cultural Juan Marinello; 1960s: Editor, Pensamiento crítico. 19/05/03, Havana. Pablo Pacheco. Centro Cultural Juan Marinello. 29/04/03 & 27/05/03, Havana. Rigoberto Pupo. Facultad de Filosofía e Historia, Universidad de la Habana; 1960s: Trained as a Teacher at the Instituto Pedagógico Makarenko. 08/05/03, Havana. Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera. Facultad de Arte y Letras, Universidad de la Habana; 1966–1968: Editor, Caimán Barbudo. 06/05/03, 15/05/03 & 29/05/03, Havana. Fernando Rojas. President, Casas de Cultura; former president, Asociación Hermanos Saíz. 06/05/03 Havana.

LEADERSHIP TEXTS CONSULTED Fidel Castro Castro, F. (1959) “Discurso pronunciado ante el pueblo congregado en el palacio presidencial para reafirmar su apoyo al gobierno revolucionario y como protesta contra la cobarde agresión perpetrada contra el pacífico pueblo de La Habana por aviones procedentes de territorio extranjero,” 26th October. Castro, F. (1960) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de graduación de las milicias campesinas” 21st August. Castro, F. (1960) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de graduación de los responsables de milicia,” 24th November. Castro, F. (1960) “Discurso pronunciado en la Escalinata Universitaria,” 27th November. Castro, F. (1961) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de graduación de los maestros voluntarios, efectuado en el Teatro de la CTC Revolucionaria,” 23rd January. Castro, F. (1961) “Speech at Varadero to departing Conrado Benítez Brigadistas and their families” 15th May. Castro, F. (1961) “Palabras a los intelectuales,” 30th June. Castro, F. (1961) “Discurso pronunciado en la concentración celebrada en la Plaza de la Revolución ‘José Martí,’” 22nd December. Castro, F. (1962) “Discurso pronunciado en el Acto homenaje a los Mártires del Asalto al Palacio Presidencial, en la Escalinata de la Universidad de La Habana,” 13th March. Castro, F. (1962) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Congreso de la Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes, en el Stadium [sic] Latinoamericano,” 4th April. Castro, F. (1962) “Speech to departing Soviet technicians,” July. Castro, F. (1962) “Discurso pronunciado en el Acto de entrega de Diplomas a los Obreros más Destacados en la Zafra, efectuado en la playa de Varadero,” 16th July.

Bibliography

143

Castro, F. (1962) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Primer Congreso Nacional de la Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios, efectuada en la Plaza de la Revolución,” 10th August. Castro, F. (1963) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Congreso de Mujeres de toda América, celebrado en el Teatro Chaplin,” 15th January. Castro, F. (1963) “Discurso pronunciado ante los miembros del PURS de las provincias de Pinar del Río, La Habana y Matanzas,” 22nd February. Castro, F. (1963) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del X Congreso Médico y Estomatológico Nacional,” 24th February. Castro, F. (1963) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del acto para conmemorar el VI Aniversario del asalto al Palacio Presidencial, celebrado en la escalinata de la Universidad de La Habana,” 13th March. Castro, F. (1963) “Discurso pronunciado en la conmemoración del X Aniversario del 26 de julio, celebrada en la Plaza de la Revolución,” 26th July. Castro, F. (1964) Speech at inauguration of Echevarría University, December. Castro, F. (1965) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto celebrado en la escalinata de la Universidad de la Habana honrando a los mártires del 13 de marzo,” 13th March. Castro, F. (1965) “Discurso pronunciado a los delegados cubanos seleccionados para representar a Cuba en el IX festival mundial de la juventud y los estudiantes. 26th June. Castro, F. (1967) “Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en memoria del comandante Ernesto Che Guevara,” 18th October. Castro, F. (1969) “Discurso pronunciado en la inauguración de un Seminternado de Primaria y un Policlínico, en el Cangre, a la vez que el Policlínico de Valle de Perú, en Guines,” 5th January. Castro, F. (1971) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de inauguración de la Secundaria Básica Ceiba 1,” 7th January. Castro, F. (1971) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto central por el 1ro de mayo,” 1st May.

Raúl Castro Castro, R. (1959) “El mensaje de la Revolución cubana” (Lecture), 11th September. Castro, R. (1960) “El I Congreso Latinoamericano de Juventudes” (Speech), 19th July. Castro, R. (1961) “VII Aniversario del 26 de julio” (Article), July. Castro, R. (1966) “La graduación de estudiantes integrantes de la marcha del segundo frente “Frank País,” 30th September.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara Guevara, E. (1960) “Moral y disciplina,” (chapter in Manual de capacitación cívica). Guevara, E. (1960) “José Martí,” “Discurso en el acto de homenaje a José Martí,” 28th January. Guevara, E. (1960) “Despedida a las Brigadas Internacionales de Trabajo Voluntario,” 30th September. Guevara, E. (1961) “El 27 de noviembre de 1871,” (Speech), 27th November. Guevara, E. (1962) “El cuadro, columna vertebral de la Revolución” (Article), September. Guevara, E. (1962) “¿Qué debe ser un joven comunista?,” (Speech), October. Guevara, E. (1962) “Antonio Maceo,” (Speech), 7th December. Guevara, E. (1963) “En la clausura del Encuentro Internacional de Estudiantes de Arquitectura,” (Speech), 29th September. Guevara, E. (1964) “La juventud y la Revolución,” (Speech), 9th May. Guevara, E. (1964) “El 30 de noviembre de 1956,” (Speech), 30th November. Guevara, E. (1965) “Carta a Fidel Castro” (Letter), 1st April.

144

Bibliography

Guevara, E. (1965) “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba” (Article), 12th March.

OTHER SOURCES Abreu, P. (1968a) “Silvio, solo,” Bohemia, 60(12), 22nd March, p. 76. Abreu, P. (1968b) “Massiel de abajo a arriba,” Bohemia, 60(16), 19th April, pp. 80–81. Aguiar, R. (2000) El bonchismo y el gangsterismo en Cuba. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Aguilera, J. (1964) “Informe presentado a la asamblea” in Consejo Nacional de Educación (ed.) Informe-Resumen de la I Asamblea Nacional de Organismos Populares de la Educación. Havana: Secretaría de Educación, pp. 5–25. Alfonso, I. (2005) “Cruzando El Puente en las encrucijadas de la historia,” Gaceta de Cuba, 4 (July-August), p. 9. Almond, G. and Verba, S. (1989) The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations. Newbury Park: Sage. Anderson, J. (1997) Che Guevara. A Revolutionary Life. London: Bantam. Arango, A. (2005) “Josefina Suárez, la memoria de El Puente,” Gaceta de Cuba, 4 (JulyAugust), pp. 7–8. Arnove, R. & Graff, H. (1987) “Introduction” in Arnove, R. & Graff, H. (eds.) National Literacy Campaigns: Historical and Comparative Perspectives. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 1–28. Artaraz, K. (2001) The Cuban Revolution and the European New Left in the 1960s. A Study of Intellectual Cross-fertilisation. PhD Thesis: University of Wolverhampton. Balardini, S. (2000) “Youth Policy in Latin America: from Past to Present,” in Rollin, J. (ed.) Youth Between Political Participation, Exclusion and Instrumentalisation. Eschborn: GTZ, pp. 42–44, online, accessed 12/05/06. Formerly available at: http://www.gtz.de. Barzini, L. (1975) “Breaking Educational Barriers,” in Goodsell, G. (ed.) Fidel Castro's Personal Revolution in Cuba. 1959–1973. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 220–23. Benedetti, M. (1972) “Present Status of Cuban Culture,” in Bonachea, R. and Valdés, N. (eds.) Cuba in Revolution. New York: Anchor Books, pp. 500–26. Benedetti, M. (1974) Cuaderno Cubano. 3rd ed. Argentina: Schapire. Benmayor, R. (1981) “La ‘Nueva Trova’: New Cuban Song,” Latin American Music Review Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 2(1), pp. 11–44. Blum, D. (2011) Cuban Youth and Revolutionary Values. Austin: University of Texas Press. Blum, D. (2015) “Cuban Educational Reform during the ‘Special Period’: Dust, Ashes, and Diamonds” in Brenner, P. et al (eds.) A Contemporary Cuba Reader. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 423–31. Bohemia (1967a) “Zafarranchitos,” Bohemia 59(3), 20th January, pp. 72–73. Bohemia (1967b) “En Cuba: La escuela al campo,” Bohemia, 59(8), 24th February, pp. 52–53. Bohemia (1967c) “Solidaridad con el Vietnam heroico,” Bohemia, 59(10), 10th March pp. 58–61. Bohemia (1967d) “3 canciones de protesta,” cartoon, Bohemia, 59(29), 21st July, p. 71. Bohemia (1967e) “En Cuba,” Bohemia, 59(34), 25th August, pp. 60–64. Bohemia (1968a) “Música,” Bohemia, 60(2), 12th January, p. 79. Bohemia (1968b) “A través del mundo,” Bohemia, 60(4), 26th January, pp. 84–86. Bohemia (1968c) “En pocas palabras,” Bohemia, 60(6), 9th February, p. 95. Bohemia (1968d) “En pocas palabras,” Bohemia, 60(9) 1st March, pp. 94–95. Bohemia (1968e) “A través del mundo,” Bohemia, 60(10), 8th March, pp. 85–87. Bohemia (1968f) “A través del mundo,” Bohemia, 60(17), 26th April, pp. 82–85. Bohemia (1968g) “Zafarranchitos,” Bohemia, 60(21), 24th May, p. 57. Bohemia (1968h) “A través del mundo,” Bohemia, 60(21), 24th May, pp. 82–89. Bohemia (1968i) “En zafarrancho,” Bohemia, 60(22), 31st May, pp. 56–57. Bohemia (1968j) “En pie de lucha” [cartoon], Bohemia, 60(23), 7th June, p. 64.

Bibliography

145

Bohemia (1968k) “Avanza la organización de la columna juvenil del centenario,” Bohemia, 60(25), 21st June, p. 56. Bohemia (1968l) “Cámara-bazar,” Bohemia, 60(33), 16th August, p. 55. Bohemia (1968m) “La rebelión negra: en busca de la etapa superior” Bohemia, 60(33), 16th August, p. 67. Bravet, R. (1967) “La Isla de La Juventud,” Bohemia, 59(9), 3rd March, pp. 4–10. Bunck, J. (1994) Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State Press. Caimán Barbudo (1966) “Nos pronunciamos,” Caimán Barbudo, 1, p. 11. Caimán Barbudo (1968) “Editorial,” Caimán Barbudo, 21, pp. 2–5. Calcines, R. (1959) “Ante el complot ¡UNIDAD!,” Mella, 163, 2nd May, pp. 12–13. Campos Menéndez, R. (1983) 35 preguntas y respuestas sobre la SEPMI. Havana: Editora Política. Carmichael, S. (1967) “¡Lucharemos ahora fieramente hasta vencer o caer en el intento!,” Bohemia, 59(32), 11th August, pp. 29–32. Carnoy, M. (2007) Cuba’s Academic Advantage: Why Students in Cuba do Better in School. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Carol, T. (1967a) “¿Cómo piensan los negros en USA?,” Bohemia, 59(4), 21st January, p. 26. Carol, T. (1967b) “Comenzó ya la Revolución en estados unidos,” Bohemia, 59(33), 18th August, pp. 10–11. Carol, T. (1967c) “Los negros en USA comen almidón y barro,” Bohemia, 59(34), 25th August, p. 58. Casal, L. (1971) “Literature and Society,” in Mesa-Lago, C. (ed.) Revolutionary Change in Cuba. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 447–69. Castilla B. (1968) “El servicio militar a los centros de enseñanza media,” Verde Olivo, IX(9), 3rd March, pp. 8–14. Castro, F. (1953) La historia me absolverá. Havana: Radio Havana Cuba. Castro, F. (1959) “Discurso pronunciado ante el pueblo congregado en el palacio presidencial para reafirmar su apoyo al gobierno revolucionario y como protesta contra la cobarde agresión perpetrada contra el pacifico pueblo de La Habana por aviones procedentes de territorio extranjero,” online, accessed 06/06/17. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1959/esp/f261059e.html. Castro, F. (1960a) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de graduación de las milicias campesinas,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1960/esp/f210860e.html. Castro, F. (1960b) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de graduación de los responsables de milicia,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1960/esp/f241160e.html. Castro, F. (1960c) “Discurso pronunciado en la Escalinata Universitaria,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1960/esp/ f271160e.html. Castro, F. (1961a) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de graduación de los maestros voluntarios, efectuado en el Teatro de la CTC Revolucionaria,” online, accessed 27/ 05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1961/esp/f23016 1e.html. Castro, F. (1961b) “Palabras a los intelectuales,” online, accessed 22/03/02. Available from: http://www.min.cult.cu/historia/palabrasalosintelectuales.html. Castro, F. (1961c) “Discurso pronunciado en la concentración celebrada en la Plaza de la Revolución ‘José Martí,’ para proclamar a Cuba Territorio Libre de Analfabetismo,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/ discursos/1961/esp/f221261e.html Castro, F. (1962a) “Discurso pronunciado en el Acto homenaje a los Mártires del Asalto al Palacio Presidencial, en la Escalinata de la Universidad de La Habana,” Revolución, 14th March, p. 1.

146

Bibliography

Castro, F. (1962b) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Congreso de la Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes, en el Stadium Latinoamericano” speech to AJR congress, Revolución, 5th April, pp. 1 and 5. Castro, F. (1962c) “Speech to departing Soviet technicians” Revolución, 6th July, p. 5. Castro, F. (1962d) “Discurso pronunciado en el Acto de entrega de Diplomas a los Obreros más Destacados en la Zafra, efectuado en la playa de Varadero,” Revolución, 17th July, p. 3. Castro, F. (1962e) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Primer Congreso Nacional de la Union de Estudiantes Secundarios, efectuada en la Plaza de la Revolución,” Revolución, 11th August, p3. Castro, F. (1963a) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del Congreso de Mujeres de toda América, celebrado en el Teatro Chaplin,” 15/01/63, online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1963/esp/f150163e.html. Castro, F. (1963b) “Discurso pronunciado ante los miembros del PURS de las provincias de Pinar del Río, La Habana y Matanzas,” 22/02/63, online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1963/esp/f220263e.html. Castro, F. (1963c) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del X Congreso Médico y Estomatológico Nacional,” Revolución, 25th February, p. 4. Castro, F. (1963d) “Discurso pronunciado en la clausura del acto para conmemorar el VI Aniversario del asalto al Palacio Presidencial, celebrado en la escalinata de la Universidad de La Habana,” Revolución, 14th March, p. 3. Castro, F. (1963e) “Discurso pronunciado en la conmemoración del X Aniversario del 26 de julio, celebrada en la Plaza de la Revolución,” 26/7/1963, online, accessed 27/ 05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1963/esp/f26076 3e.html. Castro, F. (1964) Speech at inauguration of Echevarría University, Revolución, 3rd December, p. 4. Castro, F. (1965a) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto celebrado en la escalinata de la Universidad de la Habana honrando a los mártires del 13 de marzo.” Verde Olivo, VI(11), 21st March, pp. 10 & 61. Castro, F. (1965b) “Discurso pronunciado a los delegados cubanos seleccionados para representar a Cuba en el IX festival mundial de la juventud y los estudiantes.” Verde Olivo, VI (26), 4th July, p. 10 Castro, F.(1967) “Discurso pronunciado en la velada solemne en memoria del comandante Ernesto Che Guevara,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available at: http:// www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1967/esp/f181067e.html. Castro, F. (1969) “Discurso pronunciado en la inauguracion de un seminternado de primaria y un policlinico, en El Cangre, a la vez que el policlinico de Valle del Peru, en Guines,” online, accessed 23/9/17. Available from: http://cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1969/esp/f050169e.html. Castro, F. (1971a) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto de inauguración de la Secundaria Básica Ceiba 1,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/ gobierno/discursos/1971/esp/f070171e.html Castro, F. (1971b) “Discurso pronunciado en el acto central por el 1ro de mayo,” online, accessed 27/05/05. Available from: http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/ 1971/esp/f010571e.html Castro, R. (1988a) “El mensaje de la Revolución cubana.” Lecture, Havana, 11/09/59, in Castro Ruz, Raúl, Selección de discursos y artículos. Havana: Editora Política: pp. 1–17. Castro, R. (1988b) “El I Congreso Latinoamericano de Juventudes.” Speech, Havana, 19/07/60, in Castro Ruz, Raúl, Selección de discursos y artículos. Havana: Editora Política: pp. 18–36. Castro, R. (1988c) “VII Aniversario del 26 de julio.” Article, in Castro Ruz, Raúl, Selección de discursos y artículos. Havana: Editora Política: pp. 37–75. Castro, R. (1988d) “La graduación de estudiantes integrantes de la marcha del segundo frente “Frank País.” Speech, Mayarí Arriba, Oriente, 30/09/66, in Castro Ruz, Raúl, Selección de discursos y artículos. Havana: Editora Política: pp. 163–81.

Bibliography

147

Caute, D. (1988) Sixty-Eight. The Year of the Barricades. London: Paladin. Centro de Estudios Demograficos (1976) La población de Cuba. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Centro de Estudios sobre la Juventud (1986) La Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes. Havana: Editora Abril de la UJC. Chanan, M. (2001) “Cuba and Civil Society, or Why Cuban Intellectuals Are Talking about Gramsci,” Nepantla: Views from the South, 2(2), pp. 387–406. Chanan, M. (2004) Cuban Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Clarke, J., Hall, S., Jefferson, T., and Roberts, B. (1976) “Subcultures, Cultures and Class: a Theoretical Overview” in Hall, S. and Jefferson, T. (eds) Resistance through Rituals. London: Unwin, pp. 9–74. Cohen, A. (1997) “A General Theory of Subcultures” in Gelder, K. and Thornton, S. (eds.) The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 44–54. Cohen, P. (1997a) “Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community,” 1972 in Gelder, K. and Thornton, S. (eds.) The Subcultures Reader. London: Routledge, pp. 90–99. Cohen, P. (1997b) Rethinking the Youth Question. Education, Labour and Cultural Studies. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan. Cohen, S. (1987) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. 2nd edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cohen, S. (2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panics. The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. 3rd edition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Comité Ejecutivo del JS (1959), Mella, 162, April, pp. 20–21. Comité Estatal de Estadísticas (1981) Cuba. Desarrollo económico y social entre el período 1958–1980. Cuba: Comité Estatál de Estadisticas. Contrera Areu, N. (1989) Alma Mater: la revista de Mella. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Cossio, N. (1967) “Encuentro de la canción protesta,” Bohemia, 59(27), 7th July, pp. 46–51. Crahan, M. (1989) “Catholicism in Cuba,” Cuban Studies, 19, pp. 3–24. Cross, G. (1989) “Vacations for All: the Leisure Question in the Era of the Popular Front,” Journal of Contemporary History, 24(4), pp. 599–621. Cruz, M. (2003) Interview with the author, 26th May, Havana. del Duca, G. (1972), “Creativity and Revolution: Cultural Dimensions of the New Cuba,” in Suchlicki, J. (ed.) Cuba, Castro and Revolution. Florida: University of Miami Press, pp. 94–118. Díaz, C. (1993) Silvio Rodríguez. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas. Díaz, C. (1994) La Nueva Trova. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas. Díaz, J. (1966a) “Respuesta a encuesta sobre las generaciones,” Gaceta de Cuba, 50, April-May: typescript copy, page numbers unavailable. Díaz, J. (1966b) “Respuesta a Ana María Simo,” Gaceta de Cuba, 52, August-September: typescript copy, page numbers unavailable. Díaz, J. (1966c) “Para una cultura militante (Tres notas sobre arte, y otra),” Bohemia, 56(37), 16/09/66, pp. 35–38. Díaz, J. (1994) “Cuba: el fin de una ilusión. La quiebra de ‘El caimán barbudo’ y la clausura de ‘Pensamiento Critico,’” Claves de Razón Práctica, 104, pp. 65–70. Domínguez, J. (1978) Cuba: Order and Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Domínguez, J. (1989) “International and National Aspects of the Catholic Church in Cuba,” Cuban Studies, 19, pp. 43–60. Dunn, C. (2001) Brutality Garden: Tropicalia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture. Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press. EIR (1966) Cronología de la Revolución, 1959–1965. Havana: EIR. Escalante, N. (1960) “Un congreso para defender y hacer avanzar la Revolución” Mella, 172, 1st April, pp. 27–30. Escobar, S. (1968) “La escuela al campo,” Bohemia, 60(6), 9th February, pp. 12–13.

148

Bibliography

Espinosa, N. (2005) “Para cruzar sobre las aguas turbulentes,” Gaceta de Cuba, 4 (JulyAugust), pp. 10–14. Fagen, R., Brody, R. and O’Leary, T. (1968) Cubans in Exile. Disaffection and Revolution. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Fagen, R. (1969) The Transformation of Political Culture in Cuba. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Farber, D. (1994a) “Introduction” in Farber, D. (ed.) The Sixties. From Memory to History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 1–10. Farber, D. (1994b) “The Silent Majority and Talk about Revolution” in Farber, D. (ed.) The Sixties. From Memory to History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 291–316. Fernández Corujedo, J. and Ruiz Aguilera, R. (1961) Los deportes. Su preparación y dirección. Havana: Departamento de Divulgación y Orientación de INDER. Fernández, D. (1993) “Youth in Cuba: Resistance and Accommodation,” in Baloyra, E. and Morris, J. (eds.) Conflict and Change in Cuba. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 189–211. Fernández, D. (2000) Cuba and the Politics of Passion. Austin: University of Texas Press. FEU (1961) “Carta abierta a los obispos de Cuba,” Islas, III(2), January-April, pp. 25–28. Figueroa Araujo, M. (1976) “The Cuban School in the Countryside,” Prospects, VI(1), pp. 127–31. Font, M. & Tinajero, A. “General Introduction” in Font, M. & Tinajero, A. (eds.) Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts. New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change. Boulder: Paradigm, pp. ix–xiii. Fulleda León, G. (2002) “El creador de un puente,” Gaceta de Cuba, 6, NovemberDecember, p. 17. Fulleda León, G. (2005) “Aquella luz de La Habana,” Gaceta de Cuba, 4, July-August, pp. 4–6. Gaceta de Cuba (1962) “Editorial. Los escritores y artistas cubanos y la Revolución” Gaceta de Cuba, 10, December 1962: typescript copy, page numbers unavailable. García, D. (2003) Interview with the author. 3rd April, Havana. García, G. (1964) “Intervención” in Consejo Nacional de Educación (ed.) Informe-Resumen de la I Asamblea Nacional de Organismos Populares de la Educación. Havana: Secretaría de Educación, pp. 143–44. García Galló, G. (1961) “La lucha contra el analfabetismo en Cuba,” Cuba Socialista, 2, pp. 69–81. García Galló, G. (1986) Problema de la formación de las nuevas generaciones. Havana: Editora Política. García Oliveras, J. (2003) Los estudiantes cubanos. Havana: Ediciones Abril. Gellner, E. (1983) Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Gitlin, T. (1987) The Sixties. Years of Hope, Days of Rage. New York: Bantam. Gómez, L. (n.d. a) Cronología mínima de la Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas y el sistema de organizaciones juveniles e infantiles, 1959–2001. Unpublished. Gómez, L. (n.d. b) Cuba: Revolución y Política Social Juvenil, 1959–1965. Unpublished. Gómez, L. (n.d. c) La Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes. Reseña. Unpublished. Gómez, L. (n.d. d) La Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas. Reseña. Unpublished. Gómez, L. (n.d. e) Cuba: revolución y política social juvenil, 1959–1965. 9. Participación y asociacionismo juvenil. Unpublished. Gómez, L. (2003a) Interview with the author. 2nd April, Havana. Gómez, L. (2003b) Interview with the author. 28th May, Havana. González, V. (1965) “El trabajo de la UJC en el campo,” Cuba Socialista, V(44), pp. 45–63. Gorsuch, A. (2000) Youth in Revolutionary Russia: Enthusiasts, Bohemians, Delinquents. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Granma (1965) “Aparecerá hoy el diario ‘Juventud Rebelde,’” Granma, 22nd October, p. 1.

Bibliography

149

Granma (1970) “26 de octubre de 1959, milicias, pueblo y fusil,” Granma, 26th October, p. 2. Graubard, S. (ed.) (1979) Generations. New York: Norton and Co. Green, J. (1999) All Dressed Up. The Sixties and the Counterculture. London: Pimlico. Gripp, R. (1973) The Political System of Communism. London: Nelson. Guerra, L. (2012) Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption and Resistance, 1959–1971. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Guevara, E. (1960) “Moral y disciplina,” in MinFAR Departamento de Instrucción (1960), Manual de capacitación cívica, Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba, pp. 297–300. Guevara, E. (1967) Obra revolucionaria, Mexico: Ediciones Era. Guevara, E. (1977a) “Despedida a las Brigadas Internacionales de Trabajo Voluntario,” 30/09/60 in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd edition. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 81–91. Guevara, E. (1977b) “El cuadro, columna vertebral de la Revolución.” Cuba socialista, 09/62 in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd edition. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 154–60. Guevara, E. (1977c) “En la clausura del Encuentro Internacional de Estudiantes de Arquitectura,” 29/09/63 in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd ed. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 219–29. Guevara, E. (1977d) “La juventud y la Revolución,” Speech, 09/05/64, in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd ed. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 308–18. Guevara, E. (1977e) “El socialismo y el hombre en Cuba,” 12/03/65, in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd ed. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 367–84. Guevara, E. (1977f) “El 27 de noviembre de 1871,” Discurso en la Universidad de La Habana 27/11/61, in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd edition. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 601–8. Guevara, E. (1977g) “Antonio Maceo,” Discurso, 07/12/62 in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd edition. Havana: Casa de las Américas pp. 609–14. Guevara, E. (1977h) “José Martí,” Discurso en el acto de homenaje a José Martí, in Guevara, E. (1977) 28/01/60 Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd Edition. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 615–19. Guevara, E. (1977i) “El 30 de noviembre de 1956,” Discurso, 30/11/64, in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd ed. Havana: Casa de las Américas, pp. 638–51. Guevara, E. (1977j) “Carta a Fidel Castro,” 01/04/65, in Guevara, E., Obras, 1957–1967, tomo II. La transformación política, económica y social. 2nd ed. Havana: Casa de las Américas, p. 697. Guevara, E. (2000) Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria, Cuba 1956–1959, Edición Anotada. Havana: Editora Política. Gutiérrez, R. (1965) “26 de Octubre de 1959 . . . y así sugieron las Milicias Nacionales Revolucionarias,” Granma, 25th October, p. 1. Hall, S. (1968) “The Hippies: an American ‘Moment,’” Stencilled occasional paper / SP No. 16. Birmingham: University of Birmingham, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Halperin, M. (1976) “Culture and the Revolution,” in Radosh, R. (ed.) The New Cuba. Paradoxes and Potentials. New York: William Morris and Co., pp. 190–210. Hampson, L. (1980) “Socialism and the aims of Physical Education in Cuba,” Physical Education Review, 3(1), pp. 64–82. Hart, A. (1964) “Discurso pronunciado en la sesión de clausura,” in Consejo Nacional de Educación (ed.) Informe-Resumen de la I Asamblea Nacional de Organismos Populares de la Educación. Havana: Secretaría de Educación, pp. 153–78. Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture. The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.

150

Bibliography

Heras León, E. (ed.) (1999) Cultura y revolución: a cuarenta años de 1959. Havana: Casa de las Américas. Hernández, D. (1965) “40.000 nuevos guías,” Mella, 330, 28th June, p. 5. Hernández, R. and Dilla, H. (1991) “Political Culture and Popular Participation in Cuba,” Latin American Perspectives, 18(2), pp. 38–54. Hetherington, K. (1998) Expressions of Identity. Space, Performance, Politics. London: SAGE. Hijiya, J. (2003) “The Conservative 1960s,” Journal of American Studies, 37(2), pp. 201–27. Hobsbawm, E. (1995) Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. London: Abacus. Hochschild, A. (1970) “Student Power in Action,” in Horowitz, I. (ed.), Cuban Communism. 1st ed. New Brunswick: Transaction Books, pp. 53–71. Holly, D. (1979) “Education,” in Griffiths, J. and Griffiths, P. (eds.) Cuba. The Second Decade. London: Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, pp. 171–81. Holmes, L. (1986) Politics in the Communist World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. INRA (1961) “Clodomira: crisol donde se forja una nueva generación abona,” INRA, II(5), May, pp. 34–41. Jane, E. (1965) “El mundo de los diferentes,” Mella, 340, 6th September, pp. 7–8. James, A. & Prout, A. (eds.) (1997) “Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood.” London: Routledge Falmer. Jolly, R. (1964) “Education,” in Seers, D. (ed.), Cuba. The Economic and Social Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 161–280. Kapcia, A. (1997) “Ideology and the Cuban Revolution: Myth, Icon and Identity” in Fowler, W. (ed.), Ideologues and Ideologies in Latin America. Westport: Greenwood Press, pp. 83–104. Kapcia, A. (2000) Cuba. Island of Dreams. Oxford: Berg. Kapcia, A. (2005a) Havana. The Making of Cuban Culture. Oxford: Berg. Kapcia, A. (2005b) “Educational Revolution and Revolutionary Morality in Cuba: The ‘New Man,’ Youth and the New ‘Battle of Ideas,’” Journal of Moral Education, 34(4), pp. 399–412. Kapcia, A. (2008a) Cuba in Revolution: A History since the Fifties. London: Reaktion Books. Kapcia, A. (2008b) “Does Cuba Fit Yet or Is It Still ‘Exceptional’?,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 40(4), 627–50. Kapcia, A. (2014) Leadership in the Cuban Revolution: The Unseen Story. London: Zed Books. Karol, K. (1970) Guerrillas in Power. The Course of the Cuban Revolution. New York: Hill and Wang. Kharkhordin, O. (1999). The Collective and the Individual in Russia: A study of practices. Berkeley: University of California Press. Kirk, J. & Padura Fuentes, L. (2001) Culture and the Cuban Revolution: Conversations in Havana. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Klatch, R. (2001) “The Formation of Feminist Consciousness among Left- and RightWing Activists of the 1960s,” Gender and Society, 15(6), pp. 791–815. Kriegel, A. (1979) “Generational Difference: The History of an Idea,” in Graubard, S. (ed.) Generations. New York: Norton and Co., pp. 23–38. Kuchilán, M. (1967) “En zafarrancho,” Bohemia, 59(30), 28th July, pp. 78–79. Kuchilán, M. (1968) “En zafarrancho,” Bohemia, 60(14), 5th April, pp. 56–57. La Jiribilla (2015) “Entrevista concedida al periódico El País por Pablo Milanés.” La Jiribilla, 717, 21–27th February, online, accessed 06/06/17. Available from: http:// www.epoca2.lajiribilla.cu/articulo/9827/entrevista-concedida-al-periodico-el-paispor-pablo-milanes. Lambie, G. (1998) "Cuban-European Relations: Historical Perspectives and Political Consequences.” Cuban Studies Association Occasional Papers 10.

Bibliography

151

Leech, K. (1973) Youthquake. The Growth of a Counter-culture through Two Decades. London: Sheldon Press. Leogrande, W. (1978) “Mass Political Participation in Socialist Cuba,” in Booth, J. and Seligson, M. (eds.) Political Participation in Latin America. Volume I: Citizen and State. New York: Holmes and Meier, pp. 114–28. Levinson, S. and Brightman, C. (1971) Venceremos Brigade. Young Americans Sharing the Life and Work of Revolutionary Cuba. New York: Simon and Schuster. Lipsitz, G. (1994) “Who'll Stop the Rain? Youth Culture, Rock 'n' Roll, and Social Crises,” in Farber, D. (ed.) The Sixties. From Memory to History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, pp. 206–34. Llanusa, J. (1961) “Habla Llanusa,” Mella, 192, 6th May, p. 43. López Lemus, V. (ed.) (1980) Revolución, letras, arte. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas. López Sacha, F. (2000) “Literatura cubana y fin de siglo,” Temas, 20–21, pp. 155–60. Luis Rojas, F. & García Salas, C. (2016) “¿Qué socialismo? El turno de los jóvenes,” Temas, 87–88, July-December, pp. 81–88. Lyons, P. (1996) New Left, New Right and the Legacy of the Sixties. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. MacGirr, L. (2001) Suburban Warriors. The Origins of the New American Right. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Malmierca, I. (1960a) “Saludo de compañero Isidoro Malmierca,” Mella, 183, 1st November, pp. 14–15. Malmierca, I. (1960b) “Carta a la A.J.R.,” Mella, 183, 1st November, p. 33. Manke, A. (2014) “In Defense of the Cuban Revolution: Mobilization and Popular Support for Revolutionary Change, 1959–1961” in Font, M. & Tinajero, A. (eds.) Handbook on Cuban History, Literature, and the Arts: New Perspectives on Historical and Contemporary Social Change. Boulder: Paradigm, pp. 25–36. Mannheim, K. (1952) Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Manuel, P. (1990) “Music and Ideology in Contemporary Cuba,” Politics, Culture and Society, 3(3), pp. 297–313. Marinello, J. (1959) “1868/1956,” Mella, 168, October, pp. 12–15. Marinello, J. (1967) “Riesgo y victoria de la Guantanamera,” Bohemia, 59(10), 10th March, pp. 26–29. Marinello, J. (1989) “Carta a un grupo de escritores jóvenes,” in Marinello, J. (ed.) Cuba: Cultura (Obras). Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, pp. 94–99. Mario, J. (1969) “Allen Ginsberg en La Habana,” Mundo Nuevo, 34, pp. 48–54. Mario, J. (2002) “La verídica historia de Ediciones El Puente, La Habana, 1961–1965,” Revista Hispano-Cubana, 6, online, accessed 14/07/2006. Available from: www.cervantesvirtual.com/descargaPdf/num-6-invierno-enero-abril-2000/. Marquez, R. (1972) Cuba’s Educational Revolution. London: Fabian Society. Marshall, P. (1987), Cuba Libre. Breaking the Chains. London: Unwin. Martí, J. (2004) “Maestros Ambulantes. New York, mayo de 1884,” Cuba Cultura, online, accessed 12/12/06. Available from: http://www.cubacultura.org/articles.asp? cID=93&sID=293&aID=525. Martín Fadragas, A. (1998) Seguidores de Mella. Las luchas revolucionarias de la Juventud Socialista. Havana: Instituto de Historia. Martín, M. (1964) “Nueva etapa de la Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas Cubanos,” Cuba Socialista, IV(36), pp. 50–69. Martín Pérez, M. (1965) “Nuestro opinión: a los comités de base estudiantiles secundarios,” Mella, 322, 3rd May, p. 10. Martínez Heredia, F. (2001) El corrimiento hacia el Rojo. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas. Martínez Heredia, F. (2002) “In the Furnace of the Nineties: Identity and Society in Cuba Today,” Boundary 2, 29(3), pp. 137–47. Martínez Heredia, F. (2003) Interview with the author. 19th May, Havana. Martínez Pérez, L. (2006) Los hijos de Saturno. Intelectuales y revolución en Cuba. Mexico: FLACSO/Miguel Ángel Porrúa.

152

Bibliography

Marwick, A. (1990) British Society since 1945. 2nd ed. London: Penguin. Marwick, A. (1998) The Sixties. Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United States, c.1958–c.1974. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Medin, T. (1990) The Shaping of Revolutionary Consciousness. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Medovoi, L. (2005) Rebels: Youth and the Cold War Origins of Identity. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Mella (1959a) 164, 1st July, p. 3. Mella (1959b) 166, 15th August, p. 10 Mella (1959c) “El deporte en Cuba,” Mella, 166, 15th August, p. 20. Mella (1959d) “Editorial: llamamiento de Yaguajay,” Mella, 168, October, p. 25. Mella (1960a) “Machadando” Mella, 170, 1st January, pp. 44–50. Mella (1960b) “Editorial: llamamiento de Santiago,” Mella, 170, 1st January, pp. 48–49. Mella (1960c) “Machadando,” Mella, 171, January, pp. 25–27. Mella (1960d) “Un congreso de unión y cooperación revolucionaria,” Mella, 173, 15th April, p. 18. Mella (1960e) “Llamamiento a todos los jóvenes revolucionarios,” Mella, 173, 15th April ,p. 20. Mella (1960f) “Un congreso de unión y cooperación revolucionaria,” Mella, 173, 15th April, pp. 21–24. Mella (1960g) “Inscríbete Hoy!,” Mella, 175, 28th June, p. 2. Mella (1960h) “Brigadas Juveniles de Trabajo Revolucionario,” Mella, 175, 28th June, p. 27. Mella (1960i) “¿Es posible superar nuestra TV?,” Mella, 175, 28th June, p. 51. Mella (1960j) “Mella: órgano de la AJR,” Mella, 184, 6th December, p. 15. Mella (1960k) advert, Mella, 184, 6th December, pp. 34–35. Mella (1961a) untitled, Mella, 189, 1st March, pp. 12–13. Mella (1961b) “Hormiga, araña, ¡que los curas corten caña!,” Mella, 189, 1st March, pp. 26–27. Mella (1961c) “La juventud dimitroviana de Bulgaria,” Mella, 194, June, pp. 26–29. Mella (1961d) “Editorial,” Mella, 195, 4th July, p. 10. Mella (1961e) “La Juventud Checa,” Mella, 195, 4th July, pp. 20–24. Mella (1961f) “Seis meses después,” Mella, 198, 5th October, pp. 3–5. Mella (1965a) “Nuestra opinión: a impulsar el fortalecimiento de la Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas,” Mella, 310, 8th February, p. 11. Mella (1965b) “Mella ayer: hacerlo costeable,” Mella, 312, 22nd January, pp. 2–3. Mella (1965c) “Juegue al ‘jinete burócrata,’” cartoon, Mella, 312, 22nd January, pp. 18–19. Mella (1965d) “Comunicado de la Dirección Nacional de la UJC,” Mella, 315, 15th March, p. 11. Mella (1965e) “Sello del IX Festival,” Mella, 319, 12th April, p. 17. Mella (1965f) “La UJC por dentro,” Mella, 327, 7th June, p. 8 Mella (1965g) “Cifras y hechos del IX festival,” Mella, 331, 5th July, pp. 24–25. Miles, B. (1989) Ginsberg. A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster. Miller, D. (1996) On Our Own. Americans in the Sixties. Lexington: D.C. Heath. Miller, N. (2003) “The Absolution of History: Uses of the Past in Castro's Cuba,” Journal of Contemporary History, 38(1), pp. 147–62. Miller, N. (2008) A Revolutionary Modernity: The Cultural Policy of the Cuban Revolution. Journal of Latin American Studies, 40(4), pp. 675–96. MinFAR Departamento de Instrucción (1960) Manual de capacitación cívica, Havana: Imprenta Nacional de Cuba. Ministerio de Cultura (1982) “Antecedentes de la cultura popular masiva; Cuba: 1902–1978,” in Anon (ed.) La Cultura en Cuba Socialista. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas., pp. 63–89. Ministerio de Educación (1961) Alfabeticemos. Cuba: Ministerio de Educación.

Bibliography

153

Moore, R. (2003) “Transformations in Cuban Nueva Trova, 1965–95,” Ethnomusicology, 47(1), pp. 1–41. Moore, R. (2006) Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berkeley/ Chicago: University of California Press. Murdoch, G. and Mccron, R. (1976) “Youth and Class: the Career of a Confusion,” in Mungham, G. and Pearson, G. (eds.) Working Class Youth Culture. London: Routledge, pp. 10–26. Nelson, L. (1972) Cuba. The Measure of a Revolution. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Noticias de Hoy (1962a) “Mil delegados en el congreso de la AJR,” Noticias de Hoy, 1st April, p. 1. Noticias de Hoy (1962b) “Rigen la UJC el colectivismo y el centralismo democrático,” Noticias de Hoy, 6th April, p. 3 Noticias de Hoy (1963) “Un comentario: el primer festival nacional de aficionados,” Noticias de Hoy, 22/01/63:1. Noticiero de la Juventud (1963) “La juventud opina: ¿qué películas debemos ver?,” Noticiero de la Juventud, 30th December, typescript copy, page numbers unavailable. Nuez (1965) cartoon, Mella, 307, 18th January, p. 11. Nuñez Jiménez (1965)“El movimiento nacional de aficionados a la ciencia,” Mella, 305, 4th January, pp. 16–17. Ñico (1967) “La canción protesta,” cartoon, Bohemia, 59(32), 11th August, p. 32. Ñico (1968) “La minifalda,” cartoon, Bohemia, 60(6), 9th February, p. 74. Ochoa, I. (1959) “Importancia y función de los Cine Clubs,” Mella, 162, April, p. 22. Orta Ruiz, J. (1966) “Respuesta fraternal a Jesús Díaz,” Bohemia, 56(31), 5th August, pp. 26–27. Otero, L. (1968) Caimán Barbudo, 21, pp. 6–8. Pacheco, P. (2003) Interview with the Author. 27th May, Havana. Paulston, R. (1971) “Education,” in Mesa-Lago, C. (ed.) Revolutionary Change in Cuba. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 375–97. Pérez, L. (1999) On Becoming Cuban. Identity, Nationality, and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Pérez Cruz, F. (1988) Las coordenadas de la alfabeticación. Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales. Pettavino, P. and Pye, G. (1996) “Sport in Cuba,” in Chalip, L., Johnson, A. and Stachura, L. (eds.) National Sports Policies. An International Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwook Press, pp. 116–38. Pickering, R. (1978) “Cuba” in Riordan, J. (ed.) Sport under Communism. The USSR, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, China, Cuba. London: C. Hurst and Co, pp. 141–74. Pupo, R. (2003) Interview with the author. 8th May, Havana. Quinn, K.E. (2014) “New Perspectives on Black Power in the Caribbean,” in Quinn, K.E. (ed.), Black Power in the Caribbean. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, pp. 1–24. Quintela, C. (1962) “La juventud cubana y la Revolución,” Cuba Socialista, 8, pp. 25–38. Rap Brown, H. (1968) “¿Quiénes son en verdad los que están fuera de la ley?,” Bohemia,60(15), 12th April, pp. 80–81. Revolución (1959) “Declaración de los intelectuales y artistas,” Revolución, 31st January: p. 14. Revolución (1960) “Manifiesto de unidad de escritores, intelectuales y artistas cubanos,” Revolución, 19th November, pp. 1 and 6. Revolución (1962a) “Dirigían la patria los jóvenes,” Revolución, 2nd March, p. 6. Revolución (1962b) “Hay que crear en la juventud un mayor espíritu comunista,” Revolución, 14th March, p. 1. Revolución (1962c) “Abren congreso de los jóvenes,” Revolución, 31st March, pp. 1 and 12. Revolución (1962d) “Comité nacional: informe,” Revolución, 2nd April, pp. 1 and 5.

154

Bibliography

Revolución (1962e) “Deciden hoy nuevo nombre de los Jóvenes Rebeldes,” Revolución, 4th April, pp. 1 and 4. Revolución (1963) “De adentro y de afuera: ¿qué opina el pueblo sobre las películas que debe ver?,” Revolución, 21st December, p. 13. Revolución (1964) “Debemos aspirar a que llegue el día en que en todas nuestras escuelas se combine el estudio con el trabajo,” Revolución, 7/12/64, p.1 Reyes, C. (1965) “Sobre el III festival de aficionados,” Mella, 311, 15th February, p. 4. Rivero, A. (1962) “La Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas de Cuba,” Cuba Socialista, II(12), pp. 46–56. Roca Calderio, B. (1961) “Blas Roca opina sobre las tareas de la AJR,” Mella, 198, 5th October, pp. 24–27. Roca Calderío, B. (1962) “Una asamblea estudiantil sin precedentes,” Noticias de Hoy, 20th March, p. 2. Rodríguez, A (1967) “La moda,” Alma Mater, 8, 20/07/67, pp. 4–5. Rodríguez Rodríguez, I. (1989) AJR. Documentos para una historia de futuro. Havana: Editora Abril. Rodríguez, J. (1968) “Una visita a la ‘ciudad de la juventud,” Bohemia 60(17), 26th April, pp. 58–63. Rodríguez, S. (1975) Dias y flores (cd). Buenos Aires: Lucio Alfiz. Rodríguez, S. (1978) Al final de este viaje (cd). Buenos Aires: Lucio Alfiz. Rodríguez, S. (2008) Cancionero. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas. Rodríguez Rivera, G. (1961) “Cine: el cine debate,” Mella, 194, June, pp. 48–49. Rodríguez Rivera, G. (2001) “De memoria (y paradojas),” La Jiribilla, 18, online, accessed 10/01/18. Available from: http://epoca2.lajiribilla.cu/2001/n18_septiembre/ 545_18.html. Rodríguez Rivera, G. (2003a) Interview with the author. 6th May, Havana. Rodríguez Rivera, G. (2003b) Interview with the author. 15th May, Havana. Rodríguez Rivera, G. (2003c) Interview with the author. 29th May, Havana. Rojas, M. (1968) “100.000 Jóvenes. Integralmente cultos para honrar a Céspedes, Martí y Frank País,” Bohemia 60(34), 23rd August, pp. 70–71. Roszak, T. (1968) The Making of a Counter Culture. London: Faber and Faber. Sartorius, D. (2004) “My Vassals: Free-Colored Militias in Cuba and the Ends of Spanish Empire,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 5(2). Sautie, F. and Perdomo, R. (1965) “Exclusivo. La depuración de la universidad de La Habana.” Mella, 318, 5th April, pp. 2–3. Savage, J. (2015) 1966: The Year the Decade Exploded. London: Faber & Faber. Schulz, D. (1981) “Political Participation in Communist Systems: The Conceptual Frontier” in Schulz, D. and Adams, J. (eds.) Political Participation in Communist Systems. New York: Pergamon, pp. 1–25. Seers, D. (1964) Cuba. The Economic and Social Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Segre, R. (1968) “Presencia urbana del tiempo libre en Cuba,” Casa de las Américas IX(49), pp. 28–39. Seidman, S. (2012) “Tricontinental Routes of Solidarity: Stokely Carmichael in Cuba.” Journal of Transnational American Studies, 4(2). Serrano. P. and Nogueras, L. (1966) “La canción protesta: historia de una tragedia americana,” Caimán Barbudo, 7, pp. 8–10. Simo, A. (1966) “Respuesta a Jesús Díaz,” Gaceta de Cuba, 51, June-July: typescript copy, page numbers unavailable. Skierka, V. (2004) Fidel Castro. A Biography. Cambridge: Polity. Soloni, F. (1967) “La canción protesta: tradición cubana de más de un siglo,” Bohemia, 59(30), 28th July, pp. 18–21. Soto, A. (1961) “En 84 y Mar: un día con los instructores de arte,” Mella, 194, June, pp. 22–25. Soto, A. and Casanova, M. (1961) “Con tremenda moral,” Mella, 195, 4th July, pp. 24–27.

Bibliography

155

Soto, L. (1964) “Las Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria en una nueva fase,” Cuba Socialista, IV(30), pp. 62–77. Suárez, M. (1965a) “Nuestra juventud debe inspirarse en el ejemplo de los mártires,” Mella, 321, 26th April, p. 25. Suárez, M. (1965b) “Pioneros en la plaza de la Revolución,” Mella, 325, 24/05/65: 18. Suchlicki, J. (1969) University Students and Revolution in Cuba 1920–1968. Coral Gables, Florida: University of Miami Press. Sukarieh, M. & Tannock, S. (2015) Youth Rising? The Politics of Youth in the Global Economy. Abingdon: Routledge. Sutherland, E. (1969) The Youngest Revolution. A Personal Report on Cuba. London: Pitman. Taibo, P. (1997) Guevara, Also Known as Che. New York: St Martin’s Griffin. Terrero, E. (1960) “Los estudiantes: firmes con la Revolución,” Mella, 170, 1st January, pp. 16–17. Thomas, H. (1971) Cuba or the Pursuit of Freedom. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode. Timossi, J. (1969) “Encuesta: deporte y cultura,” Casa de las Américas, IX(53), MarchApril, pp. 123–27. Torroella, G. (1963) Estudio de la juventud cubana. Havana: Comisión Nacional Cubana de la UNESCO. Torroella, G. (1966) “Psicología para la vida: educación y tiempo libre,” Bohemia, 58(52), 30th December, pp. 40–41 and 90. Torroella, G. (1967a) “Cuba: avanzada educacional mundial (II),” Bohemia, 59(4), 21st January, pp. 22–24 and 90. Torroella, G. (1967b) “Tareas de la edad juvenil,” Bohemia, 59(11), 17th March, pp. 36–37 and 90. Tosh, J. (2000) The Pursuit of History. 3rd ed. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education. Townsley, E. (2001) “‘The Sixties’ Trope,” Theory, Culture and Society, 18(6), pp. 99–123. Turner, S (2016) Beatle ’66: The Revolutionary Year. New York: Ecco. UJC (1965) “La gran batalla del estudiantado,” Mella, 326, 31st May, pp. 2–3. Valdés, N. (1972) “The Radical Transformation of Cuban Education,” in Bonachea, R. and Valdés, N. (eds.) Cuba in Revolution. New York: Anchor, pp. 422–55. van der Plas, A. (1987) Revolution and Criminal Justice. The Cuban Experiment, 1959–1983. Amsterdam: CEDLA. Varon, J., Foley, M. & McMillian, J. (2008) “Time Is an Ocean: The Past and Future of the Sixties.” The Sixties 1(1), pp. 1–7. Verde Olivo (1968) “El proceso revolucionario en la formación integral del hombre” Verde Olivo, IX(1), 7th January, pp. 4–5. Villares, R. (1968) “Los hippies: un problema interno del imperialismo,” Bohemia, 60(21), 24th May, pp. 18–21. Vizcaíno, L. et al (1987) Apuntes para la historia del movimiento juvenil comunista y pioneril cubano. Havana: Editora Política. Wald, K. (1978) Children of Che. Childcare and Education in Cuba. Palo Alto: Ramparts Press. Watts, M. (2001) “1968 and all that . . .,” Progress in Human Geography, 25(2), pp. 157–88. Wilkinson, S. (2000) Detective Fiction in Cuban Society and Culture. PhD Thesis, QMW College, University of London. Willis, P. (1977) Learning to Labour. Hampshire: Saxon House. Yasells, E. (1965) “El SMO y el estudio salen ganando,” Verde Olivo, VI(8), 28th February, p. 12. Yglesias, J (1970) In the Fist of the Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Zardoya, R. (1996) “Idealidad, ideales e ideología,” ContraCorriente, 5, pp. 32–39. Zeitlin, M. (1967) Revolutionary Politics and the Cuban Working Class. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zolov, E. (1999) Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zurbano, R. (2005) “Re-pasar El Puente,” Gaceta de Cuba, 4, July-August, pp. 2–3.

Index

26th of July Movement (M-26-7), 19, 72, 74 Acevedo, Rogelio, 103 aficionado movement, xvii, 105–108; instructores de arte, 107; science groups, 107–108 agrarian reform, 12, 76 Agrupación Católica Universitaria, 91 Alarcón, Ricardo, 79 Alma Mater (magazine), 89, 116 Anti-clericalism, 90–91 Artime, Manuel, 91 Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes (AJR), 21, 48, 76–82; April 1962 Congress, 81–83; Brigadas Camilo Cienfuegos, 77, 78; leftist extremism, 80; October 1960 National Plenary, 78–79 Asociación Hermanos Saíz, 109n7 autocrítica (self-criticism), 81, 82, 94, 95n5 Bay of Pigs invasion, 13, 82, 91, 104 the Beatles, 9, 59, 60, 127; criticism of, 86; popularity amongst Cuban youth, 115 beca (scholarship) program, 40, 45–46, 93 Benítez, Conrado, 26–27; literacy brigades named after, 100 Black Power movement: Cuban reception of, 66–68, 93 Blackburn, Robin, 63 Boitel, Pedro, 90 bonchismo, 18, 89 Brigada Raúl Gómez García, 106 Brigadas Conrado Benítez, 100–101 Brigadas Estudiantiles José Antonio Echeverría, 91 Brigadas Hermanos Saíz, 106, 115

Brouwer, Leo, 9, 128 Cabrera Infante, Guillermo, 123 Caimán barbudo (cultural supplement), 111, 112, 117–125; as dissonant, 121, 124, 131n15; conflict with UJC, 121–122; end of first era, 124; ‘Nos pronunciamos’ editorial statement, 119–120. See also Díaz, Jesús; Rodríguez Rivera, Guillermo Calcines, Ramón, 75 Carlos Marx Institute, 43 Carmichael, Stokely, 66 Casa de la Américas, 112 Casa de las Américas (review), 117 Castro, Fidel: criticism of clergy, 90; criticism of youth, 32, 80–81; death of, xi, 96n9, 138; definition of youth, 34; involvement with youth organizations, 77, 82; La historia me absolverá, 21, 39, 98; on student discipline, 44; Palabras a los intelectuales, 12–13, 106, 113; relationship with the people, 98 Castro, Raúl, xiii, 20, 21, 22, 23 Catholic church. See anti-clericalism Center for Youth Studies (CESJ), 9 Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX), 137 Chibás, Eddy, 18 children. See Unión de Pioneros de Cuba Cienfuegos, Camilo, xi, 27 cinema, 109n4; Cine-Clubs, 106, 114; controversy over La Dolce Vita, 113–114; controversy over PM, 113; influence of US movies, 130n3. See also ICAIC Clark, Petula, 59

157

158

Index

Columnas Juveniles Centenarias (CJCs), 41, 42–43, 88, 105 Confederación Nacional de Obreros de Cuba (CNOC), 19 Coppelia (ice-cream parlor), 127, 136 counter-culture. See hippie movement counter-vanguard. See UJC Crombet, Jaime, 67, 96n10, 122, 124 Cubanía, 14 Cubela, Rolando, 90 cuenta-propismo (self-employment), 138 culture: disonante (dissonant), 121; sixties polemic on, 112–114, 119. See also aficionado movement; cinema; fashion; music Dane, Barbara, 68 desvinculación (unconnectedness), 9, 36n8 Díaz Lanz, Pedro Luis, 102 Díaz, Jesús, 115; at the University of Havana, 118; battle with Orta Ruiz, 122–123; debate with Ana María Simo, 120–121; Los años duros, 118; on the role of the artist, 123 Dirección General de Deportes, 47 Directorio Revolucionario (DR), 18, 72, 74 Dorticós, Osvaldo, 82 Dutschke, Rudi, 63 Dylan, Bob, 60 Echeverría, José Antonio, xi, 18, 27, 81, 88, 89 Educación Obrero-campesina (workerpeasant education), 92 Education: and ideology, 38–40, 49; and Marxist theory, 40, 49; and role of young teachers, xvii; and the military, 44–46; Ley de nacionalización de la enseñanza, 40; policy, 39–40; teacher education, 43; work-study principle, 14, 29; Year of Education 1961, 102. See also literacy campaign Ejército Juvenil de Trabajo (EJT), 105 Ejército Rebelde, 21, 72, 76, 78, 98, 99, 103, 104 El Indio Naborí. See Orta Ruiz, Jesús

El joven rebelde (film), 17 El Puente, 111, 114–116; dissolution of, 115; funding, 130n4; publication of Novísima poesía cubana, 115 emigration, 12, 16n1, 136, 138 enfermitos, 62, 116–117, 136 Escalante affair, 95n4 Escuelas al Campo, 41–42 Escuelas de Instrucción Revolucionaria (EIR), 39, 49 Escuelas en el Campo, 41, 42 fashion, 60–62; and youth culture, 115 Felipe, Reinaldo, 115 Fernández Retamar, Roberto, 117 Fernández, Joseíto, 126 Ferrat, Jean, 126 FEU, 18, 72, 88–92; depuración (purging), 90, 91–92; merger with UJC, 92; power struggles in early Revolution, 90; social class profile, 89 the fifties, 11–12, 18–19, 135 First National Congress on Education and Culture 1971, 125 Fulleda León, Gerardo, 114 Gato Tuerto bar, Havana, 114 Generación del centenario, 4 generation : and the Cuban Revolution, xiv, xviii, 1, 3; and the sixties, 2; generational units, 3 Ginsberg, Allen, 5, 65; “Howl,” 114, 130n5; visit to Havana, 116–117 González, Elián, 26, 102, 136 Grupo Novación Literaria, 113 Guantanamera (song), 126 Guevara, Ernesto (Che), xi; and Cuban youth organizations, 83–84; influence on international youth movements, 63; link to young people, 9, 20, 34, 77; on discipline, 44; Socialism and Man in Cuba, 25, 88 Guillén, Nicolás, 115 Hall, Stuart, 5, 63 Hart Dávalos, Armando, 43 Havana: cultural hegemony of, 106; Vedado zone, 116

Index hippie movement, 5–6, 65–66 history: uses of, 3, 14, 25, 30 homosexuality: viewed as deviant, 33, 87, 92, 117 Horne, Lena, 67 ideology, xvi, 13–15, 28, 38–40, 49 Iglesias, Joel, 19, 26, 36n6, 48, 77, 79–80, 81 Imprenta Nacional, 112 Instituto Cubano de Artes e Industrias Cinematográficas (ICAIC), 17, 112, 128; Grupo de Experimentación Sonora, 129 Instituto Nacional de Deportes Educación Física y Recreación (INDER), 47 Instituto Nacional de Reforma Agraria (INRA), 99, 107 international youth brigades, 49 Isla de la Juventud, 49, 93 Isla de Pinos. See Isla de la Juventud Juventud Rebelde (newspaper), 93, 112 Juventud Socialista (JS), 19, 72–76; April 1960 congress, 75–76 leisure time, 5, 7–8, 37, 46–48; role of youth organizations in, 73. See also music; sport Ley contra la vagancia (Anti-Vagrancy Law), xv, 7, 51–53, 66 Liga Juvenil Comunista, 18–19 Listos Para Vencer (LPV), 48 literacy campaign, 98–102; AJR involvement in, 76; Alfabeticemos manual, 101, 109n2; fifties origins of, 98–99; importance of literacy teachers, 99–100; methodology of, 43 Los Quince festival, 36n5 Lunes de Revolución (cultural supplement), 112, 113 Makarenko institute, 41, 43 Malecón (Havana sea wall), 115, 131n6 Malmierca, Isidoro, 75, 78, 79 Manual de capacitación cívica, 28, 44, 105 marijuana: Ginsberg’s views on, 116

159

Marinello, Juan, 74, 113, 126 Martí, José, 3, 27, 39; on race, 67 Martín, Miguel, 84, 84–85, 86, 124 Martínez Heredia, Fernando, 14 Massiel, 59 Mella (magazine), 19, 47, 73–74, 79, 88, 99, 116 Mella, Julio Antonio, 18, 27, 88, 89; as emblem of youth movement, 74 Milanés, Pablo, 51, 54n3, 128, 129 militias, xvii, 75, 102–105; AJR incorporation into, 103–104; historical origins of, 102–103; specialist university militias, 91, 104 mini-skirt, 61, 69n4 moral panic, xiv, 6–7, 31–33, 50–53, 85–88, 92, 137 morality, 13 music, 59–60; disapproval of Western music, 60; feeling (musical style), 114; importance to Cuban youth, 125; record exchange, 60; reggaetón, 137. See also Beatles; Nueva Trova; protest song; rock music myth of youth, xii, 4, 34 the New Left, xvi, 2 the New Man, 25, 26, 45, 48 Newton, Huey, 67 Noticias de Hoy (newspaper), 113 Nueva Trova, 51, 125, 127–129; as altervanguard, 136; lyrics as alterdiscourse, 128; Movimiento Nueva Trova, 106, 129 Núñez Jiménez, Antonio, 21, 107 Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas (ORI), 82, 84 Orta Ruiz, Jesús, 122 Ortodoxo party, 18 Otero, Lisandro, 123 Pabellón Cuba, 131n8 Padilla, Heberto, 123, 131n17 País, Frank, 99 Partido Socialista Popular (PSP), 19 Partido Unido de la Revolución Socialista de Cuba (PURS), 82, 83, 84 Pico Turquino, climbing of, 78, 92

160

Index

Pionero (magazine), 17 Plan Camilo Cienfuegos, 49 Plan de la Calle, 48 Plan de las Montañas, 48 Platt Amendment, 13 poetry, dominance of, 130n2 political culture: affective dimensions, 9, 13; militarization of, 44–46 political participation: and direct democracy, xvii, 98; under communism, 97, 109n1 protest song, 59, 126; Encuentro internacional de la canción protesta 1967, 126 quinquenio gris, 124 Randall, Margaret, 65 Ravelo, Fernando, 79, 80 rebelde ethos, 3, 93; of AJR, 76 Revolución (newspaper), 113 Revolution: anthropomorphization of, 13, 30, 134; code of moralism, 117; construction of, 12, 24; exceptionalism of, xiv; militarization of language, 33, 44, 74, 94; possibility of global revolution, xvi, 63, 67; relationship to youth, 31; and revolutionary consciousness, 11 Roca Calderío, Blas : criticism of AJR, 80, 81 rock music, xii, 59–60, 126; criticism of ‘elvispresleyism’, 86 Rodríguez Rivera, Guillermo, 117, 119–120, 120, 124 Rodríguez Varela, Miguel (Miguelito), 118 Rodríguez, José Mario, 51, 115, 116 Rodríguez, Silvio, xvii, 127–128, 129; cancellation of television show, 127. See also Nueva Trova Rolling Stones, 60 Santamaría, Abel, xi, 21 Santamaría, Haydée, 116 Sautié, Félix, 124 Seeger, Pete, 126

Servicio Militar Obligatorio (SMO), 45, 105 Sierra Maestra, 19, 76, 77, 103 Simo, Ana María, 115, 120–121, 131n12 Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Enseñanza y la Ciencia (SINTEC), 43 the Sixties: as trope, 56; importance of young people questioned, 68n2; the Global Sixties and Cuba, xv, xvi, 56–58, 135; The Movement, 69n3; youthquake, 2, 57; youth rebellion, 62–64 social class, 12, 86; of university students, 90 Society for Military-Patriotic Education (SEPMI), 45 special period, 136 sports policy, 46–48; external influence upon, 47; free access to sporting events, 48 Suárez, Josefina, 114 subcultures, 5; See also enfermitos Third World solidarity, 63 unidad: of youth organizations, 72–79 Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (UMAPs), xv, 7, 51, 87, 117, 121, 128 Unión de Estudiantes Secundarios (UES), 30, 87 Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas (UJC), 23, 72, 82–88, 135; and EIRs, 49; aspirante status, 82, 85–86, 95n7; and counter-vanguard in secondary schools, 87–88; involvement with CJCs, 42–43; launch of, 82–83; move to selectivity, 84; significance of term ‘communist’, 83–84; statutes, 83; successes, 93–94; work in the countryside, 86–87 Unión de Pioneros de Cuba (UPC), 83, 94 Unión de Pioneros Rebeldes (UPR), 83 Unión Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC), 51, 112, 115

Index university students, 17, 88–92; international campus rebellions 1968, 62, 63 US-Cuba relations, 13 Vietnam, 64; criticism of US anti-war protests, 63; solidarity with, 63 Vitier, Cintio, 117 women: as literacy teachers, 101; Centro Clodomira, 78 work: and education, 29, 40–44; and morality, 28; voluntary, 43, 76 young people, 134; neither working nor studying, 51, 77–78; participation in international youth festivals, 94, 107

161

youth : as cultural construction, 4, 133; as folk devil, xv; as revolutionary cadre, 27–29; as vanguard, xvii, 79, 79–85, 83–84, 119, 122, 128; definition of, 1; deviance, 9, 32–33; essential qualities of, 24–27, 34; leadership discourse of, 19–31, 123; of leadership, xiii, 22–24 youth culture: and the sixties, xvii, 58 youth organizations, xvi, 71–95; discourse of vanguardia, 73. See also Asociación de Jóvenes Rebeldes; Juventud Socialista; Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas; Federación Estudiantil Universitaria youth policy, xv, 37–49 Zardoya, Rubén, 13

About the Author

Dr. Anne Luke is lecturer in childhood studies in the School of Education at the University of Leeds in the UK. Her teaching and research interests focus on youth and childhood in the Global South and she has written and published on youth, migration, and the 1960s in Cuba.

163