Reading response:

I started reading Montoya’s ‘Gendered Scenarios of Revolution’ last week, which felt a little removed for me as her introduction talks so much of what constitutes a scenario, how communities being examined, viewed, analyzed, produces new scenarios both within and without the community, and the how land and place collide with these factors to produce new scenarios. Why did I feel removed? Because I was reading it on one of Latin America’s busiest beaches, which is purposely reserved to exclude local communities. Montoya’s introduction, and indeed much of the book, conjures up these moments (or scenarios) when she is confronted with her own subjectivity and assumptions. This has been one of those serendipitous readings as it’s mirrored much of my own experience doing research in Cuba. Many of the questions I am asking have shifted away from “oh, look at this really interesting moment and time in this place” to needing to step back and view things with a wider frame of reference, as well as try to try to go deeper into specifics of experience rather than exhuming events to plop neatly on a timeline or relegate to yet another study (imposed) on Latin America. Montoya’s experience in El Tule and initially balking at the village’s request to be named as researchers, serves as a good reminder of the ever present trap that historians especially are susceptible to: going in, extricating research, and taking it away to type it up. That literally mirrors what my research notes say for this week: go into institutions, extract knowledge, go sit in a colonial hotel, and type them up. Once again, I am being forced to confront what utility, if any, my own research will have to Cubans. I finished Montoya’s book sitting in bed in the casa I am staying in during a brownout in Havana this morning. Mary, the matriarch of the house, shrugs off the lack of power: “es normal.” What choices do we make when we are confronted by our subjectivities as researchers, in many ways looking for what is “abnormal?” But who is it abnormal for and who is it normal for? Do we, as Montoya initially felt, look for the abnormal and interesting stories that satisfy our own political and professional desires? Additionally, looking for fractures within narratives, particularly of political and ideological cultures allows for the nuance that has been at times absent from the large scale histories we have read. I still get muddied on what constitutes social versus cultural history but Montoya’s work, based in anthropology and history, to me is where histories can come to life: on the ground as lived through people’s experiences. For the Spanish readings, I decided to set the mood for Guerra Fria by completing them at the bunker and tunnels built during the middle crisis, at the back lookout of the Hotel Nacional. Reading the Spanish pieces was disorienting as much of my last few days has been listening carefully and when I read, I’m often not totally clear on exactly what I’m reading until I’m at the end, and then need to go back and reread the article. Which in some ways mirrors reading and history. This makes me think about our practice as historians to constantly re-examine and reinterpret what we have read.

Moving through the Garcia piece, I’m admittedly a little distracted by form- as I’ve seen a very similar set up in almost every Spanish academic piece I’ve read on this trip, the two column approach, with very clear demarcations of themes and topics, often framed with questions. I’m also trying to figure out <>. Garcia breaks down the key moments of the Cold War from around Latin America and uses the through line of revolutionary (but primarily counter revolutionary) justifications of violence and cultural warfare as legitimatized by the Truman Doctrine. There’s an awful lot of load tourists watching me as I read this article out loud to myself in a makeshift trench and I’m becoming self conscious about how much I really understand. A woman just walked by and proclaimed loudly “this was from back when Cuba was Communist.” I guess she’s not wrong. But it reminds me of how skewed histories displaced from the land in which they took place create historical affectations. Garcia’s approach comes out a little on the side of the revolutionaries but why shouldn’t it? I want to go on a rant about neoliberalism and historiographies of capitalism but will just get on with finishing this article. It seems to mention the battle for ideas and the various ways in which ideology and state imaginations targeted young people and poor people- both left and right claiming the moral high ground but Garcia recognizes the conditions created prior to and during the Cold War that did not significantly improve the fortunes of most people. And of course for many, things got much much worse. The embargo has so little practical use beyond punishing Cuba for remaining socialist. I don’t suspect if free and open the elections were to occur tomorrow, the embargo would be lifted. The readings this week do a good job of illuminating, from various angles and local to pan- Latin American perspectives, how ideological battles played out. For the interview with Maria Mudrovcic, I sat out on the steps of the university to reread it. The first time I struggled with it because I have two modes of reading Spanish: 1. Letting it wash over me and thinking in Spanish instead of translating and 2. Going through translating word for word and it’s frustrating how little control I have over which mode I’m in. Mudrovcic, I believe, is arguing that cultural Cold War meant that control of flow of information, ideas, and cultural messages are was paramount and while in certain times and places books were scarce, the Cold War also provided new platforms and created something of a cultural/artistic boom, albeit one that was sponsored at times by the CIA and other groups. It’s odd I feel more self conscious about my Spanish comprehension the more I am around Spanish. It’s as if reading these articles is like asking for directions. I receive a response, nod to myself, then wander off confidently hoping that I am headed in the right direction. And eventually I get to where I’m going but I definitely misinterpret things and make unscheduled stops along the way. Like yesterday when I asked for directions back to the street I’m staying on and as I walked past a tower at the bottom of the street I had to go “Ohhh, they meant a tower!” I had been looking for a bull. Part of the readings for me now has become incorporating the walking element and letting what I read settle into my head to see if new ideas emerge or new things are illuminated through rumination. I suppose pondering meanings in Spanish is not all that different than pondering historical meanings in texts.