Themes:

Havana-centricity

A note on the turn in focus on localized histories: "With time, the closeness and reciprocity of these two kinds of impulse—between the macrohistorical interest in capturing the directions of change within a whole society and the microhistories of particular places—pulled apart. The two ambitions became disarticulated. Social historians didn’t necessarily jettison an interest in the “big” questions, but they increasingly drew back to the intensive study of the bounded case, in which a particular community, category of workers, or event stood in for the “whole-society” argument. Such studies might deploy the full repertoire of the social historian’s methods and techniques but held off from the aggregative account of what might have been happening at the level of the society as a whole. Indeed, the very logic of the community study tended toward the speci‹city of the local account, generalizing its relationship to larger social processes via claims of exempli‹cation rather than aggregation.' ^[1] Theme arises again: “of course, before [coming to Havana] I was maricón, now I am gay.” in Moshe Morad's text

Public/Private Spheres

The thread between these readings here is what did the Cuban political establishment not want seen? Issues of what is allowed is often predicated upon the public sphere. Appears in Katherine Gordy, particularly around Socialist ideology and how the unique Cuba is a totalitarian example of Socialist politics but there are still a myriad of lived experiences of Socialism, including challenging the Castro dogma.

Jineterismo

how did this idea/perception interplay (or not) with gay Cuban identity/culture?

Socialist Ideology

Heavily rooted still in Jose Marti (nationalism) and how emotional education is done- connected to Battle of Ideas

Education

"We are proud of the history of our homeland; we learnt it in school and we have grown up hearing about liberty, justice and rights. We were taught from infancy to venerate … the glorious example of our heroes and martyrs … we were taught that … liberty is not begged for but is conquered with the blade of a machete … we were taught that to die for the fatherland is to live. ( Castro, [1953 ] 1973: 106 – 109)."

Questions

Is the battle of ideas being co-opted or is it being effective? And how?

Emotional education- how to "feel" Cuban and connection to the Revolution?

• UPDATE: How did Fidel re-imagine/re-construct Marti during the Special Period? Partly in calls for national unity

Readings

Fiesta de diez pesos-Moshe Morad

Hamilton’s point of white male middle-class to black, local female relations, as well as different stigmas related to homosexuals, based on behavior and on sexual roles rather than the choice of partner.

The Fidel regime’s sexual politics were intended to eradicate the 1950s “Havana as a sex haven” scene and their respective social structures- specifically through national campaigns- were there similar campaigns targeting gay relations or was that rolled into what was “public” and not?

“Yet, “the attempt to break with Cuba’s colonial and post-colonial past … was complicated by the fact that revolutionary leaders—most of them male, white, and middle class—had been raised under traditional sexual ideology”- again, how did this manifest and how does it fit into the various ways in which Cubans have learned to navigate “new” personal freedoms during the Special Period?

Oritz and transculturation as a broad term for shifts in culture for Cuban folk- since the Special Period, this is characterized by the destruction of old values and the creation of new, liberal, and capitalist values.

Allen comments:“In Cuba, the government privileges economic (human) rights [including free health care, free higher education, land rights] over sociopolitical (human) rights [including free expression and free association]” (2011:81). Whereas AIDS/HIV patients benefit from the free health care system, the gay sociopolitical scene is gravely ill, as free expression and free association are elementary to its existence and power.- Las Frikas podcast, Radio Ambulencia.

Opening of tourism again in 1980s led to more visibility in gays, away from the secretive and derogatory maricon but how does this perhaps mask a Western perceived shift towards openness on the part of Cuba, rather than a result of subversivesness and transculturation by the new gay Cuban identity?

Better informed, globally linked habaneros now have Western liberal expectations and perceptions, “There was a spirit of intellectual curiosity and excitement, fuelled by the crisis, to find answers to questions of our identity as Cubans and as individuals, outside the revolutionary paradigm,”- how did this “intellectual curiosity” translate to the larger higher education conversation through conferences, exchanges of scholars, etc?

Timba: The Sound of the Cuban Crisis, Vincento Perna

Previously marginalized aspects of Afro-Cuban culture, articulation of issues of race, class, and gender were brought to the fore, not previously available in discourses

Timba as the idea of ‘bad conscience” embodying what the political establishment did not want seen.

The notion of what can be seen as relating to what is acceptable is about more than just perceived Western capitalist “excess” but is also tied to longstanding struggles around Afro-Cuban identity and power

Timba’s power lies in it’s ambiguity and multiplicity of messages, rather than being a direct attack on the establishment.- in what ways does this mirror Batista’s regime?

Lipsitz: the black diaspora are long accustomed to code switching, syncretism, and hybridity

Living Ideology in Cuba, Katherine Gordy

Cuba not a static ideology "monopolized" by the Cuban state. ^[2] There were significant, organized challenges to socialist ideology becoming dogma- such as the Cuban academic think tank disbanded by the Party in 1996 (the subject of chapter 4)

Values include: socioeconomic equality, inclusive nationalism, and political unity- rooted in 19th-century discourse and practice- but is this all that surprising given that Fidel only embraced Socialism once there was Soviet support? Essentially, Gordy argues that Cuban socialist ideology exists in many spheres outside of just the state-sanctioned, both in ways that pre-date and proceed the Castro regime.

Gordy suggests as well that there is a sort of self-awareness (consciousness) of the presence of ideology as it is directly called that in the 60s-90s

The 1960s a period idealism when economic policy was driven less by Cuba’s economic, social, and cultural realities and instead by a revolutionary fervor focused on breaking with Cuba’s neocolonial and economically and instead on recalling the fervant pitch of Guevara, something it took a while for Castro to catch up to.

Gordy also troubles the notion that Cuba is always in transition or crisis

Education, Citizenship, and Cuban Identity, Rosi Smith

Values: "neoliberal market democracy, an effective education system (from the perspective of secure social reproduction) would be one that encouraged trust in representatives and structures, built skills that were not tied to any specific industry and represented history as a tale of various individuals, rather than of groups contesting power relation." ^[3]

The question is not whether or not ideology will be taught in school, but rather which ideology will be taught and how.

Che Guevara's "huge school"/Cuba's educational project to be one of not just propagation of ideology but of nation-building- how does Smith see these as separate?

Inequalities arising from dual monetary systems a key factor in ongoing dissent, both private and public- how this "private" sphere plays out in Smith is interesting

Cubans were hip to Bautista's tactics of misuse of martiano and the kowtowing to the US, so they're pretty savvy when it comes to Castro, at the same time, mistrust of foreign journalists/researchers meant limited access to outsiders around failings in Cuban education. Smith's interviewees would open up about pride in their own DIY approaches to instruction for the larger social good, which speaks to Katherine Gordy's work as well. "The Revolution has nothing to do with it. Revolution is one thing; Cuban is another."

"In truth, some things have been done well and others haven’t, but that’s the same everywhere, although maybe here in Cuba it’s a bit more, but in other places it’s the same: some things have been done well and others have been done badly, but I can’t say that no, “No, I don’t like the Revolution'"

The dual systems of neoliberalism and socialism mirrors the dual-money/dual market systems

Journal "somos jovenes"- look into this resource and other textbooks Book: Lily Guerrera- Marti

Smith talks about how history is important but doesn't really explore how.

Methods: 1. internal assessments of the successes, failures and trajectory of values education 2. social science studies on youth programs and identity, predominantly 3. interviews conducted for this study with a selection of Cuban experts- interviewees almost all from within Havana

The Emergente Generation

desvinculados the 20% or so of young people leaving school who were marginalized by lack of work- literally meaning "disengaged person" they found employment through the black market or not at all and did not pursue higher education. Indeed, what would be the point?

Youth rallying around the cause of Elian Gonzalez, re-centers youth in the political movement. The Battle of Ideas is declared by Castro, "The battle of humanism against dehumanization, the battle of humanity and fraternity against the grossest egoism, the battle of justice against the most brutal injustice."- this was in some ways, used to redirect disenfranchisement away from internal problems, to those of US influence. Students begin operating in a middle ground- they are told they are operating "beyond history" as the Revolution was the cultural culmination and the present where the realities of capitalism as essentially "winning."

Fidel's efforts mean engaging with the desvinculados, student groups, prison populations in efforts the recalled (purposely) the Literacy Campaign of the Revolution. -maestros emergentes

However, Smith seems to essentially argue that the values of her interviewees are still either directly challenging the Revolution and responses in the 90s, 2000s, or at least grappling with Cuban identity and Revolutionary ideology- as Gordy argues, still socialist and community based, but not necessarily in support of Fidel.

Media and means creating senses of belonging-

Lillian Guerra: The Myth of Jose Marti

Notion of "Multiple Nations, Multiple Martis" The competing imaginings of Marti mirrored the competing imaginings of nation and identity and social unity was espoused despite conflicting ideologies:

• The paradoxical use of Marti by the Republic as a unifier despite very few of Marti's aims becoming reality- obviously there's a parallel here with Che.
• Marti himself created circuitous, imprecise arguments to call for unity, fearing the collapse of the Revolution should he lose support of anyone.

Interesting that popular nationalists sought concessions from foreign powers that the political elites would not grant, thus paradoxically ensuring neocolonial hegemony- 19

1. What were ways in which Marti has been co-opted and re-animated (borrowing on some themes of Price using Marti as a specter)

• The Republic's elites used his image as messianic and an allegory for unity
• Racialized communities and popular nationalists use Marti as exemplary politician and champion of the underserved
• Guerra argues that Marti's private and public correspondence specifically never mentions racial or social inequality

2. What are the connections between the ambiguity and multiplicity of Cuban identity?

• The emergence of a multi-tiered and fragmented racial-econic class and how that continued to play out and evolve into the Special Period.
• Marti argued that racial hatred among Cubans was impossible, the Ten Years War had redeemed whites and blacks had overcome/transcended their slave past. Clearly, this glossing of racial structures and inequalities, while simultaneously evoking calls to overcome racial inequality, became (remains) a central theme in Cuban social stratification.

3. How is regionalism/Havana-centricty tied up in race?

• The ways in which numerous causes, particularly around race, have been used to provide some sense of ongoing national unity- yet the interesting piece remains not how that was successful, but rather how it wasn't and how Marti could be invoked again and again, yet really, there was never any singular, cohesive Cuban identity, beyond needing to position itself outside of or within a sense of belonging to a vague idea of nation and community.
• Race and multi-tiered class structure- proximity to political structures, particularly following the war of 1895, also informed structure, access to higher education also a factor- to what degree was this regulated, structured?
• In what ways did race inform the Special Period's limit on access to higher education?

The Spirit of Marti in The Land of Coaybay- Rachel Price

Marti as a specter, his bones and spirit invoked to dissuade anyone perceived as jeopardizing sovereignty. Writers continue post 1902 to try to "imagine a temporality outside of the transfer of empire."

Price argues that despite Marti's attempts to write a new Cuba into existence, the nation continues to be "haunted" by what it excludes.

Why ghosts, specters, ruins? Is Price just extending the metaphor from the literal remains of Marti or is there a longer use of this I'm missing?

Race, Labor, and Citizenship in Cuba (State of Ambiguity) Rebecca Scott

• Multiracial organizing that happened in the Cuban war of 1895-98 impacted or paralleled expanded citizenship
• Similarly to Guerra, Scott argues that there was a pragmatic approach to abolition but one in which freed slaves also moved within and made to benefit them in their own way, particularly in more remote, rural regions. Example: Partido Independiente de Color.
• Search for political voice has its origins in former slaves and rural workers.

Invento, luego resisto: El Período Especial en Cuba a través del lente de género, Sklodowska, Elzbieta.

Invention, then I resist? or Invention, then resistance?

Women and the Special Period: obviously, the burden carried by women during the Special Period, particularly in their role in the family, was enormous. The "socialist trinity" of cradle, kitchen and sex(?)- Papers of a Shipwreck explains the deconstruction of the house both literally in terms of items being sold for food and metaphorically as time was also "sold" to simply take care of the very basics.

transgresión y normatividad - Transgression and normativity. Gender roles remained more or less unchained following the Revolution. Likely the necessity of "transgression," i.e. sex work, created further ill sentiment towards women- perhaps another opportunity for the idea of the jineterismo to manifest?

Literary themes: Garbage, waste, repulsion, hunger, loneliness

What were the conditions that allowed women to be the instigators of a literary explosion?

Was the food scarcity such a potent and pervasive literary device because it hearkened back to sacrifices made prior to or as a part of the Revolution?

Planet/Cuba-Rachel Price

The highway into nowhere- themes of unchecked and directionless capitalism on the island.

Private/Public Discourse: this theme arises again, such as in Glenda Salazar's piece 'Produccion,' revealing the ineptitude of the Castro regime to adequately respond to the food crisis by allowing and encouraging personal food production, yet without any real plan or knowledge transfer. The duality of messages transmuted through Salazar's work allows her to critique the government indirectly/directly. My question is, how much does the state pick up on this? Given their involvement in almost every sphere of life, are they turning a blind eye to the criticism?

Surveillance the levels the government would go to to spy on artists detailed in chapter 6 gives the answer to my question. Like everything else, the government was involved, listening, and intervening with artists critiquing the response to the Special Period. Obviously this might be why surrealism and absurdity make so many appearances in Special Period art, a point I think Tonel made as well...

Thesis: I'm beginning to think the scarcity of material about higher education reform, etc is scarce not because of censorship but rather because it is indicative of what a backseat the arts and humanities took during the Special Period, similar to how the country ground to a halt during Fidel's failed grand harvest of sugar to repay the Soviets. This could seriously impact how I approach my research. The gap might just be an absence rather than a repressed story

US Cuban Relations in the 1990s, Dominguez and Hernandez

Internationalism- this is a notion I hadn't really explored much so it was illuminating to read beyond the military involvements in Angola, Morocco, etc, and into the reasons why. Dominguez's opening chapter about Cubans needing to be internationalists and counter American imperialism globally because American imperialism expresses itself globally.

Can Cuba survive in post-Revolutionary times? despite the book being written 1989, this question still remains. And now that the Special Period has happened and Castro has died, what is the way for Cuba to continue to survive without military conflict that galvanizes socialist support?

Cuba as a sovereign state this is the other main thread in this book, particularly as a suggestion to cessation of hostilities. It is unlikely that so long as Cuba remains socialist and America remains imperialist, that the two countries will achieve much in terms of cooling of tempers. As we've seen with the Obama/Trump transition, America's domestic politics remains a real barrier to significant and sustained diplomatic progress. However, the book points out again and again, that if America can bring itself to recognize Cuba as a sovereign state, rather than an isolated dictatorship stuck in the past, progress could be made. Again, with the fickleness of American political tone and policy towards Cuba, this is unlikely to change any time soon.

American and Cuban hypocrisy- the ways in which treatment of prisoners, foreign entanglements, and a long history of mistrust undermine most diplomatic endeavors. From assassination plots to Bay of Pigs, to cooperation and funding of drug trafficking and insurgencies, both countries continue to say one thing and do another. Without Castro, this might abate in Cuba, but the American domestic political situation remains highly volatile.

Maxine Molyneux, State, Gender and Institutional Change in Cuba’s Special Period: The Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas

In what ways does the Cuban government use organizations as a form of surveillance? There's a sort of duality between offering voices to those not necessarily heard prior to the Revolution but we also know the limited ways in which that was granted. Rectificacion points to the need to constantly have a Revolution, or a reification of Revolutionary ideas.

Although the Special Period may be through the worst and to some "over," it really does seem that few gains were made in regards to the reforms and that uncertainty remains in place.

Colantino and Potter, Urban Tourism and Development in the Socialist State: Havana During the Special Period

Role of Socio-economic stratification- the 1990s reforms did little to further civic dialogue but rather were yet another example of a reactive, re-Revolutionizing of economy. At the same time, the opening up, particularly within the tourism sector, has led to more social and economic stratification, which still(?) leaves a very big question mark over the limits of socialism in daily life for Cuba, not because socialism has failed to provide but because the stratification created by dual economies means that in essence, capitalism has been re-introduced to the island, but by isolating it, perhaps the stratification is even greater?

The role of the State in creating the form that tourism takes Tourism has the double benefit of providing States the ability to portray a nation positively to the outside world, while simultaneously invoking national pride and reifying a country's ideals to its citizens.

Cuban History Under Surveillance and Hidden In Plain Sight

In keeping with Cuba’s trajectory of internationalist efforts, the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art in Havana established the Havana Biennial in 1984, a project to bring together artists from Latin America and the Caribbean, but also other foreign artists. The uptake however by scholars to seriously examine the role of such projects in understanding Cuban culture have taken some decades to catch up. An example of a project from the Havana Biennial is the 2012 documentary “The Wrinkles of the City,” where French artist JR and Cuban American artist José Parlá collaborated on a series of large-scale mural installations where they photographed, and chronicled senior citizens they met walking on the streets of Havana about their experience living through the Cuban revolution. In the documentary, Parlá ruminates from the back of a taxi on Cuban interaction with art: “they put art on such a high level you can also see that they’re very careful about how the art is having an effect on the masses.” At the same time, Cuban’s engagement with art, although considered in some ways part of civic duty, also demonstrates an innate suspicion of the purpose and meaning of art projects undertaken.

As scholars have attempted to participate in a more nuanced conversation about state surveillance in Cuba, visual art has become a useful tool for historians to move beyond convenient and tired metaphors. As Rachel Price points out in Planet/Cuba, the oft-cited panopticon symbol has been applied to Cuban culture before but is now being challenged by Cuban artists, being replaced by a more nuanced understanding that surveillance is often done in areas of leisure and recreation. One artist who has engaged with this pervasiveness of surveillance is Tania Bruguera. Bruguera has received attention by historians as she has used iconic Cuban imagery such as the much-lauded dove landing on Fidel Castro’s shoulder during a speech in 1959 to reconstruct and perform powerful visual performance art pieces that engage Cuban citizens as the locus of importance, asking them to take to a podium to speak whatever they would like for 60 seconds, while having a dove placed on their shoulder. The subsequent re-mountings have had Burguera censured and rebuked by the Wifredo Lam Center of Contemporary Art. Bruguera’s sister concluded that “the art critics are working as police and the police as art critics in this case.” Bruguera has insisted on her innocence of message but the state-involvement shows the levels to which the state is willing to interfere. Artists like Bruguera offer a glimpse for historians of a liminal space not often afforded to Cuban historians of the ways in which ordinary Cuban people subvert and transgress with the materials available to them.

Price has argued that surveillance is a useful tool in understanding historical approaches but also must be viewed within the bounds of its own limitations, as artistic reckoning with the subject is at this point possibly also considered banal. Nevertheless, surveillance remains an important lens through which historians can approach post-Revolutionary history, even as it remains a potential ideological blind spot that overstates its importance and denies or obscures more nuanced understandings of Cuban history. This much is certain: surveillance is often explored by Cuban artists and cannot be overlooked without denying the sense of paranoia and over-reach that has permeated post-Revolutionary society. Indeed, whether an artist or any Cuban believes they are under surveillance or not, the notion is so ever present that real or imagined, surveillance exists temporally, a notion that drives home the transgressions and risks that Cuban artists undertake when producing their work. In this way, we may explore the methods that Cuban artists must camouflage meanings, or hide things in plain sight, something that serves both as a metaphor and literal example for how we may read seemingly obscured spaces, texts, and identities as historians of Cuba