Social Change, Cultural Policy, and the Functions of Literature: Understanding Culture and Revolution in Cuba, 1959–1989

Abstract

This chapter underlines the value of literature to the Cuban Revolution and to the post-colonial nation-building project from 1959 to 1989. Through tracing cultural policy over 30 years, the chapter argues that the social value of cultural participation in terms of its contribution to subjective well-being (SWB) has been much overlooked in studies of Cuban social change and, more significantly, that literature (as a socialized cultural form) had a crucial role in representing, and also questioning, social and political change. The chapter ultimately proposes that the development of a multi-functional role for literature—as writing and reading—laid the foundations that help to explain the survival of the Cuban Revolution after the collapse of Communism in 1989.