Cuba detrás del telón I: Teatro cubano: Vanguardia y resistencia estética (1959-1961) , and: Cuba detrás del telón II: El teatro cubano entre la estética y el compromiso (1962-1969) (review)

Abstract

SPRING 2010 217 her double identity as saint and whore, as poor little country girl transformed into Cinderella, as champion of the masses and robber of state coffers. Unlike Kahlo, however, Evita’s performance(s) had profound political repercussions forArgentina; as Misemer notes, “what is unique about Evita is the extent of her manipulation of the public through texts in which she describes the creation of her dual roles” (103). Perhaps her most manipulative performance was in death, when her body laid state to be worshipped and mourned by a devoted audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and then afterwards, when it began its surrealistic journey from one place to another. “The Brown Madonna: Crossing the Border’s of Selena’s Martyrdom,” looks at how the Queen of Tex-Mex shares with her fellow icons a dramatic death and subsequent mythologizing of her life. While alive all four were idolized (or in the case of Evita, reviled) figures; in death, they become sacred myths of contemporary popular culture, the secular saints to whom Misemer refers in the title of this beautifully written and well-researched study, which not only looks at these “saints” but also at a body of plays that recreate them as polyvalent signifiers for equally unstable, and therefore, forever fascinating (and exploitable), signifiers; for example, Alberto Castillo’s El espíritu de la pintora, about a young man who is possessed by Frida’s spirit; Carlos Gorostiza’s El acompañamiento and José Ignacio Cabrujas’s El día que me quieras, which recuperate the Gardel icon to make indirect political commentary; the French-Argentine playwright Copis’s demonization of Eva Perón in the play of the same name; and Hugo Salcedo’s celebration of the “brown madonna,” in “Selena: la reina del Tex-Mex,” among others. While certainly nowhere near as fascinating as the people who inspired them, Misemer’s analyses of these texts show them to be worth the reading (or the viewing). Kirsten F. Nigro University of Texas at El Paso Montes Huidobro, Matías. Cuba detrás del telón I: Teatro cubano: Vanguardia y resistencia estética (1959-1961). Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2008: 397 pp. Montes Huidobro, Matías. Cuba detrás del telón II: El teatro cubano entre la estética y el compromiso (1962-1969). Miami: Ediciones Universal, 2008: 365 pp. In the two initial volumes of Cuba detrás del telón, the dramatist and literary critic Matías Montes Huidobro accumulates a tremendous amount of information about the early years of post-revolutionary Cuban drama, spanning the decade 1959-1969. For the author, this period is the richest in Cuba’s dramatic history, but also one where Cuban politics increasingly limit cultural production on the island, and Montes Huidobro was not immune to these restrictions. Volume 1 covers 19591961 , a tumultuous three-year period for the island that began with the revolution’s initial triumph and concluded with enormous changes for Cuban citizens and for the 218 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW island’s international political relationships. This period ends with the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as with Castro’s famous speech “Las palabras a los intelectuales,” in which he ambiguously outlined what Cuban artists would be permitted to express: “Dentro de la Revolución: todo; contra la Revolución ningún derecho.” Within the year the literary supplement Lunes de revolución was closed by the state, an action which further motivated Montes Huidobro to leave that same year, in 1961. What distinguishes these volumes from other critical works with similar encyclopedic breadth is precisely Montes Huidobro’s ideological and physical break with much of his subject matter. Although the author was still in Cuba in the 1959-1961 period that Volume I covers, he is of course writing from a contemporary perspective, but with the memory of the frustration and anger that was building at that time. Even decades later, the pain from that moment of separation — a moment that stretches out and over the decades — is still palpable, and it informs the entire work. Montes Huidobro may have left Cuba in 1961, but by revisiting his and others ’ works from that...