Introduction: "Origins" of Postmodern Cuba

Abstract

SOMETIME IN THE EARLY 1990S, AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION and in the context of Cuba's "special period" (el periodo especial), Cuban intellectuals began to return to the era before the Revolution and especially to the 1944-59 years. Historians inside and outside of Cuba characterize this era in terms of General Fulgencio Batista's authoritarian rule of the Republic. Since 1959, the historiography covering these years, especially after 1952, often is a little more than a narrative of events in the prehistory of the Cuban Revolution, beginning with Fidel Castro's initial insurrection on July 26, 1953, the date of the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago that gave its name to the revolutionary movement, and culminating with the Revolution's seizure of power on January 1, 1959. The success and failure of the July 26, 1953, exploit, the fateful landing of Castro's small expedition force in the Granma in 1956, the improvised guerrilla warfare in the Sierra Maestre, and finally the triumphant entry of the Revolutionary Army into Havana in 1959 are, to be sure, momentous and monumental episodes in world history, but these important incidents in the overthrow of the Batista regime and U.S. domination of Cuba also overshadow everything else in the prerevolutionary [End Page 1] era. As Louis A. Pérez, Jr.—one of the most preeminent U.S.-based contemporary historians of Cuba (see Buscaglia-Salgado's essay on his recent book in the review section of this issue)—has pointed out, the literature on Cuba for the years from 1934 to 1958 "reveals several skewed patterns" (435). Pérez notes further that: "The period between 1940 and 1952 . . . represents a lacuna of serious proportions. Comparatively little research has been undertaken for these years. Conversely, the literature for the period of the 1950s, particularly the revolutionary struggle against the Batista government, approaches vast proportions" (435).